Poorest of the Thirteen

This book. with 61 maps, while briefly following the war in the north, to where North Carolina sent a brigade early in the con-flict, focuses on events in the south. In 1771 North Carolina, Governor William Tryon, at the head of his provincial army, killed many men in battle, hanged others, and marched through the countryside burning homes. He responded to people who had the effrontery to demonstrate against extortion by county clerks, lawyers, and appointed sheriffs. In 1775, when people in Massachusetts also had the effrontery to demonstrate against abuses, British troops spilled blood on marching against Lexington and Concord. All thirteen colonies then joined hands to fight a war. In 1780, after the fall of South Carolina, and with Johann de Kalb the senior soldier in the south, the Continental Congress ordered the so-called hero of Saratoga., Horatio Gates, to that command. At Camden, S.C., Gates' militia bolted and Gates raced them to Charlotte, with no word to de Kalb who stayed the fight with his Continentals and suffered mortal wounds. Congress then allowed Washington to appoint the next commander. It was Nathanael Greene, who finished the war in the south as local heroes emerged.