This Destructive War : The British Campaign in the Carolinas, 1780-1782

An exciting and accurate portrayal of the military action in the southern colonies that led to a new American nation.A companion to Pancake's study of the northern campaign, 1777: The Year of the Hangman, this volume deals with the American Revolution in the Carolinas. Together, the two books constitute a complete history of the Revolutionary War.Pancake tells a gripping story of the southern campaign, the scene of a grim and deadly guerilla war. In the savage internecine struggle, Americans fought Americans with a fierceness that appalled even a veteran like General Nathanael Greene."e;Utilizing extensive manuscript collections, John Pancake explains not why the colonists won the War of Independence, but rather why the British lost. Yorktown, he argues, was not the result of a momentary oversight by the British navy, but the final consequence of the longstanding failure of British military and political leadership."e; So said the Journal of Southern History when This Destructive War was first published in 1985. The Florida Historical Quarterly further opined, "e;Pancake has given us a well-researched and beautifully-and tightly-written book."e;General readers as well as scholars and students of the American Revolution will welcome anew this classic, definitive study of the campaign in the Carolinas.