Alexander Chesney, along with his parents and siblings, came from County Antrim, Ireland in 1772 with the Rev. William Martin and his five ship loads of Protestants. The Chesney family settled alongside kinsmen on the Pacolet River in the Up-Country of South Carolina. Chesney established a plantation and also became involved in freighting mountain produce and lumber to the coastal region of Carolina. He remained loyal to the British government in the American Revolution and was chosen by Maj. Patrick Ferguson, one of the two independent British commanders in the South, to be his adjutant in the American Volunteers. He was in the the defeat of Ferguson and his band of Loyalists in the battle of Kings Mountain. Next, at the battle of Cowpen, when Chesney faced his wife's Patriot father and brothers, the other British independent commander, Col. Banastre Tarleton, with regular British soldiers and militiamen met defeat at the hands of Daniel Morgan. Realizing that the British forces were destined to be driven from America, Chesney, while in poor health following his wife's death, returned to Ireland. There, he became an officer in the customs department and a militia officer. He recorded his experiences in two separate journals. In this book the two journals are united and edited. The result is a unique rendition of an eye witness account of the American Revolution in the South and the post war events in Ireland for many who returned to the land of their birth. Maps, illustrations, 247 pages (hard back); $29.95 plus $3.50 media mail, $4.00 priority mail.

This anthology examines the role of Loyalism in the American Revolution, building on the pioneering work of historian Robert M. Calhoon. Calhoon’s work on American Loyalists redefined their role in the Revolution, showing them to be dynamic figures adapting to a society in upheaval. In The Consequences of Loyalism, editors Rebecca Brannon and Joseph S. Moore shed light on Calhoon’s foundational influence and explore the continuing scholarship in the wake of his prolific career. This volume unites sixteen previously unpublished essays that build on Calhoon’s work and consider Loyalism’s relationship to conflict resolution, imperial bureaucracy, and identity creation. In the first of two sections, scholars discuss the complexities of Loyalist identity, while considering Calhoon’s earlier work. In the second section, scholars work from Calhoon’s later publications to investigate the consequences of Loyalism both for the Loyalists, and for the legacy of the Revolutionary War. This book brings Loyalist dilemmas alive, digging into their personalities and postwar routes. Loyalists from all facets of society fought for what they considered their home country: women wrote letters, commanders took to the battlefield, and thinkers shaped the political conversation. This volume complements Calhoon’s influential work, expands the scope of Loyalist studies, and opens the field to a deeper, perhaps revolutionary understanding of the king’s men.

Biography of Col. James Williams, 1740-1780, the highest ranking officer who died from wounds suffered at the Battle of Kings Mountain (October 7, 1780) during the American Revolutionary War.

A Nation is Born Lexington, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Washington, Hamilton, Benedict Arnold. All familiar names, but how did they all fit together? How did merchants, lawyers, farmers, and cobblers come together to defeat the British Empire, its powerful navy, and its Hessian auxiliaries? For that matter, who were the Hessians, and what is an auxiliary? Bringing together ten eminent Revolutionary War experts, editor Ed Lengel presents their stirring narratives of the military campaigns that changed history and gave birth to a new nation. These historians guide you through the fateful decade of the 1770s in British America. In 1776, you battle in Brooklyn Heights, then cross the Delaware with Washington. In the late summer and fall of ’77, you bushwhack down the Champlain Valley with Johnny Burgoyne. You struggle through winter with Washington and his beleaguered troops in Valley Forge. When the spring of ’78 turns to summer, you endure the oppressive heat and the massive battle on New Jersey farmland at Monmouth Courthouse. In 1780 your journey takes you south into a bloody civil war—Tory versus patriot, neighbor versus neighbor in Georgia and the Carolinas. Finally, in ’81, you join the patriots as they maneuver north into Virginia, whereWashington and the French navy can trap the British on the Yorktown Peninsula. Complete with maps and suggested further reading, The 10 Key Campaigns of the American Revolution is a short course in one of history’s most consequential wars, explaining how citizens became soldiers and how their dedication, determination, and force of will defeated the world’s greatest power and launched a nation like no other.

A compelling biography of a South Carolina slave who returned to fight the slave trade in his African homeland The inspirational story of John Kizell celebrates the life of a West African enslaved as a boy and brought to South Carolina on the eve of the American Revolution. Fleeing his owner, Kizell served with the British military in the Revolutionary War, began a family in the Nova Scotian wilderness, then returned to his African homeland to help found a settlement for freed slaves in Sierra Leone. He spent decades battling European and African slave traders along the coast and urging his people to stop selling their own into foreign bondage. This in-depth biography—based in part on Kizell's own writings—illuminates the links between South Carolina and West Africa during the Atlantic slave trade's peak decades. Seized in an attack on his uncle's village, Kizell was thrown into the brutal world of chattel slavery at age thirteen and transported to Charleston, South Carolina. When Charleston fell to the British in 1780, Kizell joined them and was with the Loyalist force defeated in the pivotal battle of Kings Mountain. At the war's end, he was evacuated with other American Loyalists to Nova Scotia. In 1792 he joined a pilgrimage of nearly twelve hundred former slaves to the new British settlement for free blacks in Sierra Leone. Among the most prominent Africans in the antislavery movement of his time, Kizell believed that all people of African descent in America would, if given a way, return to Africa as he had. Back in his native land, he bravely confronted the forces that had led to his enslavement. Late in life he played a controversial role—freshly interpreted in this book—in the settlement of American blacks in what became Liberia. Kizell's remarkable story provides insight to the cultural and spiritual milieu from which West Africans were wrenched before being forced into slavery. Lowther sheds light on African complicity in the slave trade and examines how it may have contributed to Sierra Leone's latter-day struggles as an independent state. A foreword by Joseph Opala, a noted researcher on the "Gullah Connection" between Sierra Leone and coastal South Carolina and Georgia, highlights Kizell's continuing legacy on both sides of the Atlantic.