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Charles Patrick Neimeyer

A unique and revealing analysis of the diverse body that made up the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

One of the images Americans hold most dear is that of the drum-beating, fire-eating Yankee Doodle Dandy rebel, overpowering his British adversaries through sheer grit and determination. The myth of the classless, independence-minded farmer or hard-working artisan-turned-soldier is deeply ingrained in the national psyche.

Charles Neimeyer here separates fact from fiction, revealing for the first time who really served in the army during the Revolution and why. His conclusions are startling. Because the army relied primarily on those not connected to the new American aristocracy, the African Americans, Irish, Germans, Native Americans, laborers-for-hire, and “free white men on the move” who served in the army were only rarely altruistic patriots driven by a vision of liberty and national unity.

Bringing to light the true composition of the enlisted ranks, the relationships of African-Americans and of Native Americans to the army, and numerous acts of mutiny, desertion, and resistance against officers and government, Charles Patrick Neimeyer here provides the first comprehensive and historically accurate portrait of the Continental soldier.

NYU Press

The American Social Experience

America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army

Elaine G Breslaw

“A fascinating re-examination of the Salem witchhunts and the woman whose confession initiated them” (Robynne Rogers Healey, University of Alberta).

 In this important book, Elaine Breslaw claims to have rediscovered Tituba, the elusive, mysterious, and often mythologized Indian woman accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692 and immortalized in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

 Reconstructing the life of the slave woman at the center of the notorious Salem witch trials, the book follows Tituba from her likely origins in South America to Barbados, forcefully dispelling the commonly-held belief that Tituba was African. The uniquely multicultural nature of life on a seventeenth-century Barbadan sugar plantation―defined by a mixture of English, American Indian, and African ways and folklore―indelibly shaped the young Tituba’s world and the mental images she brought with her to Massachusetts.

 Breslaw divides Tituba’s story into two parts. The first focuses on Tituba’s roots in Barbados, the second on her life in the New World. The author emphasizes the inextricably linked worlds of the Caribbean and the North American colonies, illustrating how the Puritan worldview was influenced by its perception of possessed Indians. Breslaw argues that Tituba’s confession to practicing witchcraft clearly reveals her savvy and determined efforts to protect herself by actively manipulating Puritan fears. This confession, perceived as evidence of a diabolical conspiracy, was the central agent in the cataclysmic series of events that saw nineteen people executed and over 150 imprisoned, including a young girl of five.

 A landmark contribution to women’s history and early American history, Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem sheds new light on one of the most painful episodes in American history, through the eyes of its most crucial participan

Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies

Steven Elliot Tripp

“Insightful . . . The best portrait yet of the elusive and seldom understood world of laboring class culture before, during, and just after the Civil War.” —Crandall Shifflett, H-CivWar
 
 One of the most hotly debated issues in the historical study of race relations is the question of how the Civil War and Reconstruction affected social relations in the South. Did the War leave class and race hierarchies intact? Or did it mark the profound disruption of a long-standing social order?

Yankee Town, Southern City examines how the members of the southern community of Lynchburg, Virginia experienced four distinct but overlapping events—Secession, Civil War, Black Emancipation, and Reconstruction. By looking at life in the grog shop, at the military encampment, on the street corner, and on the shop floor, Steven Elliott Tripp illustrates the way in which ordinary people influenced the contours of race and class relations in their town.
 
“A richly textured social history . . . a nuanced portrait of white class and cultural stratification in one southern town and the intersections of those divisions with the broader racial barrier that dominated both ante- and postbellum Lynchburg.” —The Journal of Southern History
 
“A readable and interesting book that . . . provides a vivid portrait of the evolution of one southern city during this trying period. It is a most worthy contribution to the literature of the South and to urban history generally.” —John Ingham, Journal of American History

Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg

Hal T Shelton

The first full-length biography of the British soldier who went on to become a major general in the Continental Army.

Brave, humane, and generous . . . still he was only a brave, humane, and generous rebel; curse on his virtues, they've undone this country.—British MP Lord North, upon hearing of General Richard Montgomery’s death in battle against the British 

 At 3 a.m. on December 31, 1775, a band of desperate men stumbled through a raging Canadian blizzard toward Quebec. The doggedness of this ragtag militia—consisting largely of men whose short-term enlistments were to expire within the next twenty-four hours—was due to the exhortations of their leader. Arriving at Quebec before dawn, the troop stormed two unmanned barriers, only to be met by a British ambush at the third. Amid a withering hail of cannon grapeshot, the patriot leader, at the forefront of the assault, crumpled to the ground. General Richard Montgomery was dead at the age of thirty-seven. 

 Montgomery—who captured St. John and Montreal in the same fortnight in 1775; who, upon his death, was eulogized in British Parliament by Burke, Chatham, and Barr; and after whom sixteen American counties have been named—has, to date, been a neglected hero. Written in engaging, accessible prose, General Richard Montgomery and the American Revolution chronicles Montgomery’s life and military career, definitively correcting this historical oversight once and for all. 

 “Shelton's well-written book will be of interest to any student of the American Revolution.”—The Houston Chronicle

General Richard Montgomery and the American Revolution: From Redcoat to Rebel

Kenneth D Rose

In 1933 Americans did something they had never done before: they voted to repeal an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Eighteenth Amendment, which for 13 years had prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, was nullified by the passage of another amendment, the Twenty-First. Many factors helped create this remarkable turn of events. One factor that was essential, Kenneth D. Rose here argues, was the presence of a large number of well-organized women promoting repeal.
 Even more remarkable than the appearance of these women on the political scene was the approach they took to the politics of repeal. Intriguingly, the arguments employed by repeal women and by prohibition women were often mirror images of each other, even though the women on the two sides of the issue pursued diametrically opposed political agendas. Rose contends that a distinguishing feature of the women's repeal movement was an argument for home protection, a social feminist ideology that women repealists shared with the prohibitionist women of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The book surveys the women's movement to repeal national prohibition and places it within the contexts of women's temperance activity, women's political activity during the 1920s, and the campaign for repeal.
 While recent years have seen much-needed attention devoted to the recovery of women's history, conservative women have too often been overlooked, deliberately ignored, or written off as unworthy of scrutiny. With American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition, Kenneth Rose fleshes out a crucial chapter in the history of American women and culture.

The American Social Experience - serían

The American Social Experience - serían

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