After the Battle of Eutaw Springs in South Carolina on September 8, 1781, the commander of the British forces reported, among other casualties 313 rank and file (that is, corporals and private soldiers) wounded and another 224 missing.[1] While surviving muster rolls can be used to determine which men were killed in a battle, it is […]
The two forces of paternalism and slavery shaped the lives of Loyalist slaveowners in the postwar British Empire. Historians rarely connect these forces in attempts to understand the relationship between refugees, colonial hosts, and British officials. In the postwar era, British officials treated Loyalists as an itinerant population to resettle to aid imperial expansion. In […]
According to Andrew Jackson O’ Shaughnessy, the San Juan Expedition was among “the most ambitious enterprises of the American Revolutionary War.”[1] In 1779, after Spain’s formal entry into the war, the British aimed at striking Spanish interests in Central America. They would invade by first securing control of the San Juan River in present-day Nicaragua. Their […]
We often think that the Siege of Yorktown, Virginia, and the surrender ceremony of October 19, 1781, was the effective end to fighting in the American Revolution. There were smaller skirmishes in isolated places, and some fights, but the two main armies never fought again. Yet the surrender allowed the French navy to return to […]
Much has been written about George Washington’s lack of formal education and his eager grasp of learning from other men, especially those of status and wealth such as Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Probably the most influential man in the young Washington’s early life was his older half-brother, Lawrence. Born in 1718, Lawrence was the eldest surviving […]
Thomas Fletchall was a man of considerable influence in the South Carolina backcountry. Born in Maryland in 1725, Fletchall and his family relocated to South Carolina. By the 1770s, he owned a plantation in the Fairforest Creek region where he served his locality as a justice of the peace, coroner, and militia colonel for the […]
