Backcountry Resistance: South Carolina's Militia and the Fight for American Independence

The extraordinary story of a war fought by ordinary people

In Backcountry Resistance, Carl P. Borick delivers a groundbreaking account of the citizen militias that defied British forces in South Carolina's volatile Backcountry during the pivotal Southern campaign of the Revolutionary War.

Focusing on rank-and-file militiamen, Borick explores how these ordinary men were recruited, armed, fed, and motivated. Drawing on underused pension records and state claims, he reconstructs their everyday realities and their battlefield experiences. He also examines the war's devastating effects on civilians, including enslaved people and women, who played crucial roles in the struggle.

Richly detailed and grounded in the human experience of warfare, Backcountry Resistance offers the most comprehensive portrait to date of South Carolina's militia during the decisive years of the American War of Independence.