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Lunch at the Library: America's Revolutionary War in the South

Battle of Cowpens, engraved by Alonzo Chappel, 1858. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Gibby, 1984 [WB-MPB3]. MVLA.

Join us for lunch and compelling discussion with historian Alan Pell Crawford, who will discuss his new book, This Fierce People: The Untold Story of America's Revolutionary War in the South.  This groundbreaking history shows how the British surrender at Yorktown was the direct result of the southern campaign, and that the battles that emerged south of the Mason-Dixon line between loyalists and patriots were, in fact, America's first civil war.

This event is part of the Washington Library's new Lunch at the Library series. A boxed lunch (including sandwich or salad, fruit, pasta, cookie, chips, and drink) will be provided.

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Cost

$30

Location

George Washington Presidential Library

About the Book

The famous battles that form the backbone of the story put forth of American independence—at Lexington and Concord, Brandywine, Germantown, Saratoga, and Monmouth—while crucial, did not lead to the surrender at Yorktown.  

It was in the three-plus years between Monmouth and Yorktown that the war was won. 

Alan Pell Crawford’s riveting new book, This Fierce People, tells the story of these missing three years, long ignored by historians, and of the fierce battles fought in the South that made up the central theater of military operations in the latter years of the Revolutionary War, upending the essential American myth that the War of Independence was fought primarily in the North.  

Weaving throughout the stories of the heroic men and women, largely unsung patriots—African Americans and whites, militiamen and “irregulars,” patriots and Tories, Americans, Frenchmen, Brits, and Hessians, Crawford reveals the misperceptions and contradictions of our accepted understanding of how our nation came to be, as well as the national narrative that America’s victory over the British lay solely with General George Washington and his troops.

About the Author

Alan Pell Crawford is the author of numerous books, including Unwise Passions: A True Story of a Remarkable Woman and the First Great Scandal of 18th Century America and Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson, both of which concern the complicated lives of the interconnected families of the old Virginia gentry.  

A resident of Richmond, Va., he has been a resident scholar at The International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello—twice—and at Mount Vernon. His articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Atlanta Constitution, National Review, the Nation, American History and Vogue. 

Crawford is the guitarist for the Ham Biscuits, a gigging band in Richmond specializing in early jazz and blues. He describes the band’s sound as “New Orleans gumbo meets Virginia ham.”