Summary of This Fierce People by Alan Pell Crawford ( Keynote reads )

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Alan Pell Crawford's book, This Fierce People, explores the overlooked aspect of America's Revolutionary War that was fought in the South. It reveals that the British surrender at Yorktown was a direct result of the southern campaign, and that the battles south of the Mason-Dixon line were America's first civil war. Crawford's book challenges the myth that the War of Independence was primarily fought in the North and highlights the contributions of unsung patriots.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keynote reads
• Release date: Jul 3, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224548651

Keynote reads

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Book preview

A Spirit of Independence

In mid-June 1780, Baron de Kalb and his men crossed from Virginia into North Carolina, facing intolerable heat, the worst of quarters, and the most voracious of insects. The war had dragged on for years without either the British or the Americans being able to defeat the other and bring it to a close. The last battle in the North, the inconclusive clash at Monmouth, took place in June 1778, exactly two years earlier. After that, not much had happened, and the cause of independence seemed to have stalled.

General George Washington, back in New Jersey, hoped that de Kalb could be of more use there than in the North. The trek to the Carolinas was hard-going for young men born and raised in the mid-Atlantic colonies, as they faced the harsh conditions of summer in the American South. Malaria, smallpox, typhus, dysentery, and other diseases spread through their camps, killing officers and men.

De Kalb never made it back to his wife and children in France. Eight weeks later, when the British commanded by Lord Charles Cornwallis annihilated the main Continental army under General Horatio Gates at Camden, South Carolina, an enemy soldier struck de Kalb with a saber, opening an alarming gash in his head. He would be wounded eleven times in the following seconds, and he would have been torn to pieces had not the Chevalier du Buysson, his aide-de-camp, shielded his commander's body with his own.

Johann Kalb, born in 1721, was a skilled and ambitious soldier during a time of constant warfare in Europe. He joined the French army at the age of twenty and later became a lieutenant in the Lowendahl Regiment. By 1747, Kalb had fought in sixteen major battles and was promoted from lieutenant to captain. By the end of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748, he had grown into a tall, imposing figure and was well-regarded by his fellow soldiers.

De Kalb was a reformer in the French army, proposing the formation of a special regiment of marine infantry trained to undertake surprise attacks on the English coast and its colonies. He also addressed matters involving individuals, advocating for more humane responses to harsher protocols of camp life.

With the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, de Kalb was fighting again as struggles between France and Great Britain spilled over into the New World. He was promoted to major in 1756 and fought in the Battle of Rossbach, an ancien régime engagement unlike what he and other veterans of European wars would see in the New World.

In the American Revolution, it was not unusual for major battles to be fought between troops totaling no more than two thousand or three thousand on both sides. However, Alexis de Tocqueville observed in 1840 that America had placed its inhabitants in a wilderness, where a few thousand soldiers were sufficient for their wants, but this was peculiar to America, not to democracy.

In 1760, de Kalb purchased a commission in the First Battalion of the regiment Anhalt and was appointed quartermaster general of the Army of the Upper Rhine. He spent almost two decades in the French army, fighting in at least twenty major engagements in two wars. In 1764, he married Anna Elisabeth Emilie Robais, a sixteen-year-old heiress to a clothmanufacturing fortune. De Kalb retired to a life of ease, but in 1767, he was on board the Hercules, sailing to the American colonies on a secret mission for France. The court of Louis XV wanted to know the rebels' needs, resources, and plan of revolt. De Kalb, known for his courage, sound judgment, and discretion, was the man for the job. He landed in Philadelphia in January 1768 and visited Boston and New York, cultivating sources and filing reports. He sympathized with the Americans' complaints and saw the effects of British policies on their lives. He found that the colonists' heritage was a paradox, as their liberties and pride swelled their presumption of independence.

In June 1768, de Kalb translated articles from American newspapers from English to French and sent them to his handler, Choiseul Choiseul. Choiseul lost interest in the American colonies and de Kalb's reports, and they eventually met the following year. By 1776, French interests were covertly shipping arms, ammunition, and other supplies to the American insurgents. De Kalb and Marquis de Lafayette, a wealthy young nobleman, were introduced to de Kalb, who believed the Americans needed foreign troops for success against the British.

De Kalb was involved in whispered negotiations between Paris and Versailles, eventually obtaining a two-year furlough from the French army and a commission in George Washington's new army. He was first referred to as Monsieur Le Baron in official correspondence.

However, not everyone was enthusiastic about Lafayette's zeal for the cause of liberty. His family and the court of Louis XVI were against the scheme. Agents were sent to arrest him, but Lafayette and de Kalb slipped away in March 1777 on the Victoire, a ship purchased out of his own fortune. De Kalb advised him to sell the ship, but he acted from honorable motives and could hold up his head before all high-minded men. The voyage was a long and painful voyage, but they reached South Carolina on June 13, 1777.

Proud and Jealous of  eir Freedom

The Marquis de Lafayette, Baron de Kalb, and other French aristocrats were enchanted by their first glimpse of the American South. The weather was beautiful, and the novelty of the country captivated them. However, they had to trek overland, sometimes barefoot, through swamps and hot sand. Upon reaching Charles Town, they looked like beggars and bandits but were impressed by the simplicity of manners, desire to please, love of country, and liberty.

Charles Town was wealthier than any other city in North America and its fourth-largest port. It was also America's largest center of the slave trade, outranking Richmond and New Orleans. An early South Carolina constitution gave freemen absolute power and authority over Negro slaves, but the slave owners were utterly dependent on the people over whom they exercised this near-total control. The slaves not only knew more about the cultivation of rice than the planters did but also proved far better able to survive the malarial summers of the South Carolina lowcountry, having developed immunities in Africa. Over time, the colony began to look more like a Negro country than like a country settled by white people.

Charles Town, a financial and commercial center in the 17th century, was heavily reliant on the slave trade. Merchants turned to Caribbean and English connections for credit and made their profits by wharf-side auctions of slaves to Low Country planters, who usually paid in rice. The leading families of the city, such as Henry Laurens, Brewtons, Pinckneys, and Mottes, grew rich from the slave trade, giving a special tone and temper to the city and the colony.

The city's elite developed a way of life distinguished by great wealth and the elevation of pleasure seeking to the highest social goals. They carried luxury items, including cloth from Russia and Holland and wine from Portugal, in the shops. Whites and Blacks in equal numbers walked the streets of the city, though the laws and customs that governed their actions differed radically. Womanizing was another great pastime of the planter class, with many men viewing preying on enslaved women—including rape—as acceptable behavior.

The stench of the slave trade was inescapable, as slaveholders, traders, and white people generally lived in fear of slave insurrections and passed harsh slave codes to reduce their likelihood. The bloodiest uprising in the country took place in late summer of 1739, where slaves killed a dozen whites and burned their houses before being overtaken by planters. City dwellers feared their own domestic workers, and the fact that whites and Blacks lived close together in Charles Town meant their relations were more complicated than on the plantations.

The planter class in the American South held a powerful and unquestioned power over their lives, which was particularly evident in Charles Town and other plantations throughout the region. When the British tried to enforce the Stamp Act in 1765, Christopher Gadsden led the opposition, declaring the act inconsistent with the inherent right of every British subject, not to be taxed but by his own consent or that of his representatives. This led to mobs calling themselves the Sons of Liberty and staging their own Tea Party.

Edmund Burke, a prominent member of the Whig opposition in Parliament, understood the role of slavery in the South's push for independence. He believed that the Americans rebelled not because of fear of the British threat but because their experience of self-government had shaped their character as a people. They were increasingly suspicious of attempts to limit their liberty and were sensitive to being taxed.

The spirit of liberty among the southerners was still more high and haughty than in those to the northward, precisely because of the institution of slavery. In Virginia and the Carolinas, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.

Men from the Continent, unlike Burke, often took