Partisans and Redcoats: The American Revolution in the Southern Backcountry

FAIN: BH-50157-07

Converse College (Spartanburg, SC 29302-1931)
Melissa Walker (Project Director: March 2006 to April 2008)

Two one-week summer workshops for 100 school teachers on the American Revolutionary War in the Southern backcountry, with visits to the sites of key battles.

Converse College proposes to host two teacher workshops on the theme "Partisans and Redcoats: The American Revolution in the Southern Backcountry." Our goal is to help teachers--and by extension, their students--come to a fuller understanding of the complexities of the American Revolution. Too often, students find it inconceivable that sensible Americans settlers might have sympathized with the British or resisted joining the Patriot cause. As a result, they rarely understand that much of the fighting in the Revolutionary War consisted of Americans fighting Americans--that is, Loyalist troops and militias fighting Continental troops and Patriot militias. They assume that the American victory was a foregone conclusion which leads them to minimize the truly revolutionary nature of the American Revolution. A study of war in the Southern backcountry, with its deep internal divisions provides an ideal lens through which to view the complexities of the struggle for American independence.