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by Peter McCandless (Author), Elizabeth Chew (Foreword by), William Baldwin (Foreword by)
Those Who Fought for Liberty On Both Sides
In 1775, the people of Charleston were on the verge of eight years of revolution and war. They were bitterly divided. For Charlestonians, the War for Independence was a civil war, as some favored independence and some were Loyalists. Many on both sides contributed greatly to the war effort. They were famous and obscure, rich and poor, women and men, Black and white. Contrary to popular opinion, people on both sides appealed to patriotism and fought for liberty. For the enslaved majority, the war represented an opportunity to gain their freedom--by siding with the British. In telling the stories of a spectrum of participants, Peter McCandless recovers a history at odds with public memory, encrusted with layers of forgetfulness and myths.
Author Biography
Peter McCandless received his doctorate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He taught history at the College of Charleston, retiring as distinguished professor emeritus. He won the college's Distinguished Teaching Award and was selected as a South Carolina Governor's Distinguished Professor. Much of his early work focused on mental disease, culminating in Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness: Insanity in South Carolina from the Colonial Period to the Progressive Era (University of North Carolina Press, 1996). His book Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (Cambridge University Press, 2011) was awarded the SHEAR Prize in 2012.
