Bøger af Steven D Smith

How leadership skills in South Carolina helped result in Patriot victory in the Revolutionary War.

On May 9, 1781, American general Nathanael Greene and his Continental army were outside of British-held Camden, South Carolina. Greene was despondent and contemplating resigning his commission, believing he could not force the British out of the fortified village. His compatriot Francis Marion, standing before Fort Motte forty miles to the south, was also in the same mood, informing Greene that he was frustrated by the militia, and he was going to resign after the fort's capture. The next day, Lord Francis Rawdon, commander of the Camden garrison and all British field forces in South Carolina, abandoned that backcountry village. Marion would capture Fort Motte two days later. In The Battles of Fort Watson and Fort Motte, 1781, the latest in the Small Battles Series, historian and archaeologist Steven D. Smith relates the history of four critical weeks from April 12 until May 12, 1781, in which the tide of the Southern Campaign of the Revolutionary War turned in favor of the Americans. The book focuses on General Francis Marion's and Colonel Henry Lee's capture of two key British forts, Fort Watson and Fort Motte, coordinating with Nathanael Greene in retaking the South Carolina backcountry. These posts defended the supply line between Charleston and the British-occupied villages of Camden and Ninety Six. Although there would be much more fighting to do, once the two forts were lost, the British had to abandon the backcountry or starve. The British would never again be on the strategic offensive and were confined to the Charleston environs until they abandoned the city in December 1782. The story of the capture of the forts is enhanced and enlightened by the findings of archaeological investigation at each site--and even mythology, such as Mrs. Motte providing the fire arrows used to burn her fortified house--which are seamlessly integrated into the account, providing a unique perspective on these important events during the Southern Campaign.

Traditionalist Christians who oppose same-sex marriage and other cultural developments in the United States wonder why they are being forced to bracket their beliefs in order to participate in public life. This situation is not new, says Steven D. Smith: Christians two thousand years ago faced very similar challenges. Picking up poet T. S. Eliot's World War II-era thesis that the future of the West would be determined by a contest between Christianity and "modern paganism," Smith argues in this book that today's culture wars can be seen as a reprise of the basic antagonism that pitted pagans against Christians in the Roman Empire. Smith's Pagans and Christians in the City looks at that historical conflict and explores how the same competing ideas continue to clash today. All of us, Smith shows, have much to learn by observing how patterns from ancient history are reemerging in today's most controversial issues.