Tories: Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War by Thomas B. AllenMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Thomas B. Allen casts the Revolutionary War as a savage and often deeply personal civil war, America's First. This is a history of a well-worn area, from another vantage point. Among the things I learned is that the Revolution produced one of the greatest and least known migrations in Western history. More than 80,000 Tories left America, most of them relocating to Canada for the same global politico-military reasons thousands of Acadians ("Cajuns") had been ousted.
Also, this lament by British colonel Campbell occupying Georgia, of potentially etymological interest, about “irregulars from the upper country [of Georgia] under the denomination of crackers, a race of men whose motions were too voluntary to be under restraint and whose scouting disposition [was] in quest of pillage.” The crackers, he reported, “found many excuses for going home to their plantations.”
This is one of many primary source quotations that illuminate this book.
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