An intimate portrait of the first "first family" from the vantage of Washington's adopted daughter
ABOUT THE BOOK
Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis (1779–1852) was in many ways the quintessential southern lady, but as Martha Washington's granddaughter by her first marriage and George Washington's adopted daughter, she was also something of an American celebrity. Her lifelong correspondence with childhood friend Elizabeth Bordley Gibson records the experiences of the first family, the social and political gossip of the new republic's elite circle, and the difficulties of motherhood and marriage. Edited by Patricia Brady, the voluminous and unguarded letters also reveals the complex cast of family and friends associated with the Washington household, the details of plantation life, and the social limitations placed on even the most privileged eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women. This edition features an updated introduction from Brady.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Patricia Brady is author of Martha Washington: An American Life and editor of Nelly Custis Lewis's Housekeeping Book and Encyclopaedia of New Orleans Artists, 1718–1918. Brady holds a Ph.D. in history from Tulane University and served for twenty years as director of publications at the Historic New Orleans Collection. She lives in New Orleans.
REVIEWS
"This collection of intimate, chatty letters from Washington's adopted daughter to her lifelong friend in Philadelphia charts the narrowing compass of her life, from youthful exuberance as the darling of the president's family and a well-educated observer of public life to an embittered wife of an unambitious, aloof husband. . . . Revealing much about the daily concerns of a Southern woman over a lifetime, these letters remind us that, even as the nation was coming apart, the private worlds of women (and men) were held together by family, faith, and friendships."--Library Journal
"In Nelly's letters can be traced the passage of a Virginia belle of unique privilege into a mature woman who had a share of unhappiness in the premature death of her children and other family members. The letters are expressive; Nelly is forthright in her attitudes about the evils of slavery, the need for culture, the frustrations of societal expectations for women."--Publishers Weekly
"A fascinating window into Nelly's life and times."--Journal of American History
6 x 9, 320 pages, 9 illus.Neither fair nor balanced, journalistic warfare during America's first transfer of power
ABOUT THE BOOK
With the exception of Abraham Lincoln, no president prior to the twentieth century has been more vilified by the U.S. news media than Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson and the Press demonstrates the power of the press in the early years of the Republic. Four-fifths of the young nation's 235 newspapers were Federalist but, as Jerry W. Knudson explains, the minority Republican newspapers combated these odds through direct invectives and vehemently candid reportage.
Knudson details the coverage of four Federalist and four Republican newspapers in wide circulation to six major episodes of the Jeffersonian era: the election of 1800–1801, the return of Thomas Paine from revolutionary France, the Louisiana Purchase, the Hamilton–Burr duel, the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, and the economic embargo of 1807–1809. Rocked by domestic scandals, the American nation read accounts in Federalist papers that demonized Jefferson and in Republican papers that lauded the president's achievements. Knudson profiles the men projecting these radically different views—savvy editors who embraced their ability to channel public opinion and who often became famous personalities in their own right, including Samuel Harrison Smith of National Intelligencer in Washington, DC, and William Duane of Philadelphia's Aurora. He shows these editors to have been sophisticated political "scribblers" who fearlessly printed what they thought with bluntness and ferocity that might shock twenty-first-century readers.
Concerned with how these charged verbal skirmishes in the press both molded and reflected public opinion, Knudson reveals the power, abrasiveness, and polarizing effects of a free but quite partisan press as the only source of public information during the young nation's first major shift in leadership. Diverging from accepted views, he frames his argument to illustrate that newspapers reached their height of influence and malevolence during Jefferson's presidency rather than that of Andrew Jackson in the 1820s and 1830s.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jerry W. Knudson, professor emeritus of journalism at Temple University, is a former journalist who has specialized in the history of the press in both North America and Latin America. He earned a Ph.D. in history at the University of Virginia, where he was one of the first Jefferson Fellows, and received a Freedom Forum Award from Gannett Foundation for his long-term coverage of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.
6 x 9, 240 pages, 12 illus.Britain's Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775-1780
David K. Wilson
A reexamination of major southern battles and tactics in the war for independence
ABOUT THE BOOK
America's popular memory of the Revolutionary War casts New England minutemen facing off against redcoats at Concord Bridge and George Washington's frostbitten soldiers huddled together at Valley Forge, but David K. Wilson's new study challenges the generally accepted notion that the war was fought primarily in the North. Recalling that the ramparts of Savannah were no less bloodstained than Bunker Hill and the siege of Charleston no less important than the battle for New York, Wilson considers the waging of war in the southern colonies during the critical and often overlooked period from 1775 to the spring of 1780. He suggests that the paradox of the British defeat in 1781--after Crown armies had crushed all organized resistance in South Carolina and Georgia--makes sense only if one understands the fundamental flaws in what modern historians label Britain's "Southern Strategy."
Wilson closely examines battles and skirmishes in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia to construct a comprehensive military history of the American Revolution in the South through May 1780. A cartographer and student of geography, Wilson includes detailed, original battle maps and orders of battle for each engagement. Appraising the strategy and tactics of the most significant conflicts, he tests the thesis that the British could raise the manpower they needed to win the war in the South by tapping a vast reservoir of southern Loyalists. According to Wilson, the policy was flawed in both its conception and execution.
The sheer amount of empirical data Wilson has amassed here distinguishes this work and makes Wilson's recounting an invaluable guide to the war in the South.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David K. Wilson is an independent scholar who lives in Plano, Texas. He holds an M.A. in history from the University of Texas at Arlington and has taught history and English. He currently works in the advertising industry.
6 x 9, 38 illus., 376 pages
cloth, 1-57003-573-3, $39.95t May 2005
The Huguenots and Their Migration to Colonial South Carolina
Betrand Van Ruymbeke
A retelling of the first generation of Carolina Huguenots' strifes, settlement, and survival
The Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World
David Gleeson, Simon Lewis, and W. Scott Poole, series editors
ABOUT THE BOOK
From New Babylon to Eden traces the persecution of Huguenots in France and the eventual immigration of a small bloc of the French Calvinist population to proprietary South Carolina. Once there, rather than isolate themselves as a separate religious and cultural enclave, they chose instead to integrate into the Southern strain of nascent Anglo-American society. Through intermarriage and adaptation to the new economic, religious, and political environment, Huguenots soon numbered among the most influential and successful colonists and have left a persevering legacy throughout Charleston and the lowcountry. In a volume devoted to the first generation of Carolina Huguenots, Bertrand Van Ruymbeke describes in detail their gradual transformation from French refugees to South Carolina planters.
Van Ruymbeke recounts the escalating persecution that led to the Huguenot exodus from France and tells how approximately five hundred émigrés settled in South Carolina. He credits their decision to relocate to the vigorous marketing efforts of the Lords Proprietors, the owners and rulers of the province, who promised the French Calvinists a veritable Eden. The Huguenots quickly discovered the colony was not paradise, but they adapted to the new environment by abandoning their Old World silk, olive oil, and wine trades for the more lucrative pursuits of Indian trade, cattle ranching, and rice planting.
Placing the Carolina migration in the context of the larger Huguenot diaspora, Van Ruymbeke proffers an account that challenges accepted history. Describing their settlement as a process of acculturation and creolization rather than simply assimilation, he contends that the majority of these French Calvinists sought to create their own churches but were thwarted by an Anglicized elite eager to dominate carve itself a niche within Anglo-Carolinian society. He also reveals that most members of the initial generation were moderately--not exceptionally--prosperous and, rather, that it was their descendants who acquired the wealth often associated with lowcountry Huguenots. Van Ruymbeke concludes with an epilogue describing the Huguenot legacy in South Carolina.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bertrand Van Ruymbeke is a professor of American civilization at the Université de Vincennes-Saint-Denis (Paris VIII) and a former visiting professor at the College of Charleston. He is the coeditor of Memory and Identity: The Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora and has published in the fields of Huguenot history, early American history, and Atlantic history.
6 x 9, 20 illus., 424 pages
cloth, 1-57003-583-0, $49.95s
August 2005
Includes
searchable CD-ROM
ABOUT THE BOOK
With this detailed study of the importation of slaves to North America in the
decades following the American Revolution, James A. McMillin tests long-standing
assumptions about an enterprise thought to have waned in the wake of the United
States' successful revolution against Great Britain. Combing through previously
untapped public and private sources, McMillin uncovers data that challenges
entrenched beliefs about the slave trade and, as a result, has far-reaching
implications for our understanding of American life in the early republic.
McMillin examines the volume and business of importing slaves from 1783 to 1810,
the African origins of those captives, and their treatment by shippers and North
American merchants. Tracing a shift in North American slaving commerce from
New England to the lower South, McMillin tracks the vessels that imported slaves
to America, particularly into Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans. McMillin
suggests that previous scholars have underestimated the number of slave voyages
and consequently the magnitude of American overseas slave trading during this
era. He maintains the founding fathers did little to discourage the importation
of slaves and asserts that—with the lengthening duration and distance of
the notorious "middle passage"—conditions for African captives
most likely worsened after the Revolution.
To his revisionist narrative McMillin appends, on a searchable CD-ROM accompanying
the volume, the massive data that led him to these conclusions. The information
includes places of origin for the captives; names of vessels, captains, and
owners; size of slave cargoes; ports of arrival; and other data pertinent to
his investigation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James A. McMillin holds a Ph.D. from Duke University. The associate director
of Bridwell Library and an associate professor of American religious history
at Southern Methodist University, McMillin was a contributor to Warm Ashes:
Issues in Southern History at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century, published
by the University of South Carolina Press in 2003. He lives in Dallas.
ALSO FROM THE AUTHOR
Warm Ashes: Issues in Southern History at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century
6 x 9, approx.200 pages
1 halftone, 10 tables, 2 line art
cloth, ISBN 1-57003-546-6, $39.95s
August
An
original biography of an important, yet overlooked statesman in early U.S. history
ABOUT THE BOOK
Charles Pinckney (1757–1824) was born into one of South Carolina's most
prominent families and quickly became one of the state's most influential figures.
Born in Charleston, Pinckney grew up there and on his father's plantations in
the Carolina lowcountry. He served in the state militia during the American
Revolution and was captured at the surrender of Charleston in 1780. Later he
attended the Confederation Congress in 1784. But he is best known for his representation
of the Palmetto State at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, where he presented
one of the few complete drafts of government for the new nation. The "Pinckney
Draft" of the Constitution would play an integral part in the controversy
that swirled around him, giving Pinckney's political enemies ammunition for
their charges of arrogance and vanity,and perplexing historians for nearly a
century.
Within thirteen years of the convention, Pinckney forsook his heritage and broke
with his family—most of whom were staunch Federalists—to support the
Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson in the pivotal election of 1800. Pinckney's
efforts on Jefferson's behalf helped propel the Virginian into the presidency
and changed the course of American political history. As a reward, Pinckney
was named minister to Spain, where he served until 1806 before returning home
and to state and to national politics. Soon after suffering financial ruin in
his personal life, Pinckney was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives
and served during the Missouri Controversy of 1820. Pinckney's impassioned speeches
in Congress helped lay the groundwork for the states rights ideology that eventually
would dominate South Carolina and her southern neighbors, leading them to rebellion
and civil war in 1861.
Pinckney's importance has been long overshadowed by that of luminaries such
as James Madison and even by other members of the Pinckney family. In Forgotten
Founder, Marty D. Matthews addresses the reasons for such oversights and examines
Pinckney's many important contributions to the founding of the American republic.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, Marty D. Matthews received a B.A. in political
science and an M.A. in history from North Carolina State University and a Ph.D.
in American history from the University of South Carolina. Matthews lives with
his wife in Camden, South Carolina.
6 x 9, approx. 200 pages
8 halftones
cloth, ISBN 1-57003-547-4, $29.95s
July
Katharine E. Harbury
Commentary
on two early manuals of food preparation and entertaining in colonial America
ABOUT THE BOOK
More diverse in scope than their modern counterparts, the cookbooks of colonial
and antebellum America contained recipes, medical cures, and housekeeping information
that women of that time deemed necessary for family life. The keepers of these "domestic" manuals recorded recipes and cures for their own use and
the use of friends, daughters, and extended families. Because they reflect a
range of daily living practices, such manuscript cookbooks serve as important
social history documents. In Colonial Virginia's Cooking Dynasty, Katharine
E. Harbury brings to light two cookbooks from eighteenth-century Virginia. Notable
for their early dates and historical significance, these manuals afford previously
unavailable insights into lifestyles and foodways during the evolution of Chesapeake
society.
One
cookbook is an anonymous work dating from 1700; the other is the 1739–1743
cookbook of Jane Bolling Randolph, a descendant of Pocahontas and John Rolfe.
In addition to her textual analysis that establishes the relationship between
these two early manuscripts, Harbury links them to the 1824 classic The Virginia
House-wife by Mary Randolph.
Harbury provides an introduction to and analysis of the manuals. She compares
them with others from the period, offers new insight into "old myths" of southern foodways, and contrasts three generations of culinary practice.
She explains how these two cookbooks shed light on the practices of upper-class
colonial society and how the recipe collections changed over time. Harbury finds
that while colonial cooks did continue British culinary traditions, these manuals
demonstrate that the emergence of Virginia foodways had begun as early as 1700.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Katharine E. Harbury is a graduate of Beloit College and holds a master's degree
in anthropology and historical archaeology from the College of William and Mary
in Williamsburg. An avid reader of historical and archeological literature,
Harbury has participated in archaeological excavations in England and the United
States. Her work as a historical archaeologist in Virginia has focused on regional
events from the colonial period through the nineteenth century. Harbury lives
in Mechanicsville, Virginia.
6 x
9, approx. 448 pages
11 halftones
cloth, ISBN 1-57003-513-X, $59.95s
August
Carl P. Borick
A
detailed account of the tactics, strategy, and grassroots galvanization in a
pivotal Revolutionary War campaign
ABOUT THE BOOK
In 1779, Sir Henry Clinton and more than eight thousand British troops left
the waters of New York to try a new tack in the war against the American patriots—capturing
the colonies' most important southern port. Clinton and his officers believed
that the capture of Charleston, South Carolina, would change both the seat of
the war and its character. The British were correct on both counts, but the
effect of the charge was defeat. In this comprehensive study of the 1780 siege
and surrender of Charleston, Carl P. Borick offers a full examination of the
strategic and tactical elements of Clinton's operations.
Suggesting
that scholars traditionally have underestimated its importance, Borick contends
that the siege was one of the most wide-ranging, sophisticated, and critical
campaigns of the war. While striking a devastating blow to American morale,
it transformed the war in South Carolina from a conventional eighteenth-century
conflict into a partisan war.
Borick examines the reasons for the shift in British strategy, the efforts of
their army and navy to seize Charleston, and the difficulties the patriots faced
as they defended the city. He analyzes the actions and decisions of key figures
in the campaign including Benjamin Lincoln, William Moultrie, Sir Henry Clinton,
Lord Charles Cornwallis, and Banastre Tarleton. Borick also delves into the
effect of the campaign on South Carolina civilians. He suggests that while British
leaders had expected to find multitudes of loyalist sympathizers in the south,
the conduct of British soldiers and sailors there actually served to arouse
more antipathy than allegiance.
Drawing on letters, journals, and other records kept by American, British, and Hessian participants, Borick relies on an impressive array of primary and secondary sources relating to the siege. He includes contemporaneous and modern maps that depict the British approach to the city and the complicated military operations that led to the patriots' greatest defeat of the American Revolution.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Carl P. Borick is the assistant director of the Charleston Museum in Charleston,
South Carolina. A certified public accountant, Borick received a master's degree
in history from the University of Alabama. He has served as a volunteer history
interpreter for the National Park Service and lectures extensively on the American
Revolution. Borick is the curator of an exhibition titled "Redcoats, Hessians,
and Tories: The British Siege and Occupation of Charleston, 1780–1782" that will open at the Charleston Museum in the summer of 2003. Borick lives
in Charleston.
6 x
9, 352 pages
12 halftones, 5 line art
cloth, ISBN 1-57003-487-7, $29.95t
Edited
by James M. Denham and Canter Brown, Jr.
Wild and wooly recollections from the Florida frontier
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives brings together the reminiscences of two pioneers
who came of age in antebellum Florida's Columbia County and the nearby Suwannee
River Valley. Though they held markedly different positions in society, they
shared the adventure, thrill, hardship, and tragedy that characterized Florida's
pioneer era. With sensitivity, poignancy, and humor, George Gillett Keen and
Sarah Pamela Williams record anecdotes and memories that touch upon important
themes of frontier life and reveal the remarkable diversity of Florida's settlers.
ABOUT
THE EDITORS
James M. Denham is a professor of history at Florida Southern College, where
he also directs the Center for Florida History. Before joining the faculty at
FSC, he held teaching positions at Georgia Southern University, Limestone College,
and Florida State University, where he received a Ph.D. in 1988. Denham lives
in Lakeland.
Canter Brown, Jr. is a visiting professor of history at Florida A & M University
and holds J.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Florida State University. A native of
Fort Meade, Polk County, Florida, he now resides in Tallahassee.
REVIEWS
"A must-own—a must-read—book. It opens a wide window to the nineteenth-century
Florida frontier that was sometimes treacherous, sometimes peaceful, but always
action-packed. . . .What a treasure."—Samuel Proctor, University of
Florida
"A meticulously researched body of work that will serve as an invaluable
source of information for historians for decades to come."—Florida
Historical Quarterly
"There is a nearly fifty page name-cited index for the people named in
both recollections. This alone makes the book a treasure trove for both historians
and genealogists."—Reviewers Consortium
6 x
9, 240 pages
14 halftones, 4 maps
paper, ISBN 1-57003-512-1, $16.95t
John W. Gordon
An assessment of critical
battles that led to American independence
ABOUT THE BOOK
An estimated one third of all combat actions in the American Revolution took
place in South Carolina. From the partisan clashes of the backcountry's war
for the hearts and minds of settlers to bloody encounters with Native Americans
on the frontier, more battles were fought in South Carolina than any other of
the original thirteen states. The state also had more than its share of pitched
battles between Continental troops and British regulars. In South Carolina and
the American Revolution: A Battlefield History, John W. Gordon illustrates how
all of these encounters, fought between 1775 and 1783, were critical to winning
the struggle that secured America's independence from Great Britain.
According to Gordon,
when the war reached stalemate in other zones, and the South became its final
theater, South Carolina became the decisive battleground. Recounting the clashes
in the state, Gordon identifies three sources of attack: the powerful British
fleet and seaborne forces of the British regulars; the Cherokees in the west;
and, internally, a loyalist population numerous enough to support British efforts
towards reconquest. From the successful defense of Fort Sullivan (the palmetto-log
fort at the mouth of Charleston harbor), capture and occupation of Charleston
in 1780, to later battles at King's Mountain and Cowpens, this chronicle reveals
how troops in South Carolina frustrated a campaign for restoration of royal
authority and set British troops on the road to ultimate defeat at Yorktown.
Despite their successes in 1780 and 1781, the British found themselves with
a difficult military problem—having to wage a conventional war against
American regular forces, the Continentals, while having also to wage a counterinsurgency
against the partisan bands of Francis Marion, Andrew Pickens, and Thomas Sumter.
In this comprehensive assessment of one state's battlegrounds, Gordon examines
how military policy in its strategic, operational, and tactical dimensions set
the stage for American success in the Revolution.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John W. Gordon is a professor of national security affairs at the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia. Formerly a professor of history and dean of undergraduate studies at The Citadel, he is the author of The Other Desert War: British Special Forces in North Africa, 1940–1943. Gordon lives in northern Virginia.
6 x 9, approx. 208 pages
14 line art
cloth, ISBN 1-57003-480-X, $29.95t
December 2002