WILLIAMSBURG – Historian and author Alan Pell Crawford will visit the Williamsburg Library Theater to discuss his award-winning book This Fierce People: The Untold Story of America’s Revolutionary War in the South on March 24 at 7 p.m. as part of Williamsburg Regional Library’s One Book One Community program.
Crawford said his interest in the topic began years ago while living in Alexandria, Virginia, not far from Mount Vernon.
“I was living in Alexandria,” Crawford said. “And so naturally, if you have an interest in the American past, as I did, we were just down the road from Mount Vernon, I got interested in the whole Randolph family.”
That interest gradually expanded to the broader story of the American Revolution and what he felt was missing from many traditional histories.
“It began to dawn on me that a lot of time passes between the action in the North, the last battle at Monmouth, I think, and Yorktown in three years,” Crawford said. “Most of the standard histories either leave that out, there might be a chapter in the back called the Southern Campaign, and you know my background is in journalism, so I was like asking myself, what am I missing?”
According to Crawford, the deeper he looked into the Southern campaign of the war, the more compelling the stories became.
“The more I tried to understand that, the more interesting the stories were, and the people, and the battles, and the action in the South, where the real story was unfolding,” he said.
Crawford also said examining the Southern campaign changed how he viewed the leadership of George Washington.
“My sense of the man increased, and his importance increased rather than decreased, precisely because he understood leadership, and he could see promise in people,” Crawford said. “He delegates authority, and he had great judge of character, and knew who to trust, and it worked.”
The author believes the Southern campaign has historically received less attention for several reasons.
“I think, again, a lot of the early histories are in biographies of Washington, so the whole war is seen in that, in his shadow,” he said.
He also noted that shifting perspectives on historical figures can influence which stories receive attention.
“In our day, I think, there’s probably a reluctance to, a lack of, a desire not to give further glory to slaveholders, and so a lot of these Southern commanders, including Washington, are slaveholders,” Crawford said. “And for that reason, there’s going to be a desire not to.”
While researching the book, Crawford said he was surprised by many of the stories he encountered.
“All of them did,” he said. “Because I came through this with the Minutemen, and the Boston Tea Party, and all of that stuff that you learn as a kid … and then to discover places and people that I’d never heard of, like Kings Mountain, and Cowpens, and Guilford Courthouse.”
Crawford said he hopes readers will enjoy the stories highlighted in the book and explore the history further.
“I think that there’s all these great anecdotes and stories, and it’s time they got the credit they deserve,” he said. “And so I hope that they enjoy these stories, and then delve deeper into it.”
The author will speak as part of the One Book One Community program hosted by the WRL. Crawford said programs that encourage reading remain important.
“Our brains are getting rewired these days,” he said. “There’s always distraction. And so anything that gets people reading, I’m all for.”
