Reflections

Authors, historians, and scholars have been commissioned to offer their observations related to the American Revolution and its enduring legacy. We welcome your reflections as well.

The Career of General Joseph Graham of North Carolina

by Scott Syfert

In Charlotte, a major uptown thoroughfare is Graham street – named for General Joseph Graham - although today the man behind the name is largely unknown.

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What Was It Like to Live in the Carolinas in 1775?

by Scott Syfert

Life in the Carolinas in the Revolutionary period is difficult to imagine. First of all, in 1775, North Carolina was a geographic expression – like Africa or the equator – not a coherent or homogenous political entity. Its territory encompassed a huge cross-section of the eastern coast and contained a diverse mix of inhabitants.

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Excerpt from The Midwife's Revolt

by Jodi Daynard

June 17, 1775. A shimmer of dawn was just rising to the east, casting faint light across the village, when I found myself knocking at the shack door of Isaac Copeland, who lived behind the small barn on the Adams property. He seemed to have slept through everything.

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Daniel Morgan, Rifleman

by Jack Kelly

“Betwixt every peal the awful voice of Morgan is heard, whose gigantic stature and terrible appearance carries dismay among the foe wherever he comes.” That was how a participant described Daniel Morgan during the unsuccessful American attempt to capture Quebec on the last day of 1775. “He seems to be all soul,” another of Morgan’s men said, “and moves as if he did not touch the earth.”

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Major Thomas Young: A Sixteen-Year-Old Carolina Patriot

by Tony Zeiss

The best way to describe what it was like for a South Carolina backcountry teenage partisan in 1780 is to tell it in his own words. The basic text is taken from Thomas Young’s Memoirs.

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Jewish Stories from the Revolutionary War

by David Bruce Smith

When the Revolutionary War began in April of 1775, the population of Jews in America was barely countable. They were two thousand out of two million, but they sprang into upholding the Patriot position:
“The freedoms that the evolution (sic) sought to secure for New World people were essential for the Jews, if they were to exist and prosper here—or anywhere… the Jews of America had no sense of belonging to any other nation… For… those reasons, most… eagerly supported the Revolution. In whatever capacity they served, they contributed…out of proportion to their paucity.”

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