Walter Edgar's Journal

General U.S. history courses in many high schools depict the American Revolutionary War as a series of battles in the Northeast - Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, etc. - that lead inexorably to British General Charles Cornwallis's surrender of 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a French and American force at Yorktown, Virginia, October 19, 1781. The truth is much more complicated, of course. A major component of the war, one that paved the way to Yorktown, was the fighting that took place in 1780 - 81 in the South - especially in South Carolina. In essence, according to Dr. Jack Warren and Dr. Walter Edgar, the war was won in the South.