The Southern Strategy: Britian’s Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775-1780 by David K. Wilson. University of South Carolina Press, 2005. $39.95 — 376 pp.

1776 by David McCullough. Simon and Schuster, 2005. $32 — 400 pp.

Most of us, I suspect, on calling to mind the American Revolution, think first of the war as it was fought in the North—the battles of Lexington Green and Concord, the bloody repulses of Bunker Hill, the crossing of the Delaware, the brave persistence of the Americans at Valley Forge. The clash of New England granite and British steel initiated the conflict that would create a new nation and shape the world in a different way.

Yet in the American South there were battles that were just as violent and just as decisive as any fought to the North. Historians in recent years have begun to emphasize the importance of these battles. Scholars have written much about the battles of Yorktown, Guilford Courthouse, and the influence of the French fleet. In the popular arena, The Patriot, a film about the Revolution set in South Carolina and culminating in the battle of Cowpens, reflects this increased interest in the Revolutionary War in the South.

But as David K. Wilson points out in his impressive history, The Southern Strategy: Britain’s Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775—1780, historians have not given the same attention to the war in the American South as it was fought before 1780. This was the time of great divisions in the South, similar in many respects to the divisions that would occur in parts of the South during the Civil War, when neighbor was pitted against neighbor and savage atrocities dictated the conduct of the fighting.

While Wilson pays attention to all aspects of the war in the South through the spring of 1780 — he details the battles in minute detail, giving many wonderful stories along with his descriptions of tactic — the most important issue that he addresses has to do with the British failure to gainsay its victories in South Carolina and Georgia. British victories over the patriots at Savannah in October of 1779 and Charleston in May of 1780 allowed the English to extend their conquests deep into South Carolina and Georgia, demolishing most of the opposition there. How was it possible, then, for the Americans to achieve their great victory over the British at Yorktown within a year of these bitter defeats?

Though Wilson meticulously details reasons for the early American defeats as well as for the final British failure, he finds two major reasons for Britain’s loss in the South. The first had to do with intelligence. Though the ministers in London and even the generals in the field were given information to the contrary, they continued to believe and to fight the war as if a great pool of Loyalists awaited their coming with open arms. The South had Loyalists, a great number of them, but not in the numbers anticipated by the British.

Wilson also shows that the patriots’ ability to rise up again and again from defeat had a profound impact on British fortunes in the South. Though the English regulars fought hard and well in the field, they lacked the fervor of their opponents. The English could achieve tactical success on the battlefield, occasionally with apparent ease against the amateurish Americans, but American patriotism was a major factor in the failure of their grand strategy in the South.

Although The Southern Strategy has much to commend it — Wilson’s fine writing, his eye for detail, his ability to interpret events and to make them clear to the reader — what is perhaps most impressive about this book is that Wilson himself, though he has an M.A. in history and has taught both history and writing, is now in advertising. He is apparently removed from the world of academics, yet has produced a work that deserves to stand with the best history being written today.

•••

Another historian who does his work outside of the university, yet is one of the premier historians of the country, is David McCullough. John Adams, Truman, Mornings on Horseback, The Johnstown Flood: these are some of the works written by McCullough that show popular historical writing at its best.

Now McCullough has given us another wonderful gift in 1776. Here we follow the course of the Revolution in the North. McCullough is particularly good in his use of first-person accounts to bring alive this struggle. In his description of the crossing of the Delaware and the battle of Trenton, McCullough uses the writings of 16-year-old John Greenwood to illustrate the severity of the weather that famous night (the only American deaths at Trenton were two soldiers who froze getting there):

Over the river we then went in a flat-bottomed scow ... and we had to wait for the rest and so began to pull down fences and make fires to warm ourselves ... After a while, it rained, hailed, snowed, and froze, and at the same time blew a perfect hurricane, so much so that I perfectly recollect, after putting the rails on to burn, the wind and fire would cut them in two in a moment ...

Let these books serve as reminders not only of the sacrifices made by the Americans who came before us, but of our own obligation to honor those dead and their sacrifices by keeping the dream of American liberty alive.

(Jeff Minick lives in Waynesville. He can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)