Rating: 
Summary: Partisans And Redcoats
Review: The work was entertaining and an easy read, but his account was very biased. Most historians' aims are at a more objective view of thier topic, however Edgar fails miserbly. It is obvious that he wrote the book in a hurry to make money following the movie The Patriot. There were a number of errors and it is almost impossible to check his sources. He only cites paragraphs and will have three or four sources for each, forcing the reader to assume that he is offering an accurate account. Edgar also, places too much importance on Huck's Defeat. While the battle did aid in raising the morale of the Patriots, it was not the essential link that led to the possibility of a battle at King's Mountain. The subsequent victories were just as important, if not more so, to solidify the patriot's confidence. Edgar's account of the Waxhaw Massacre was truly embarassing. His version could have been written in the early to mid-1800s. If you want to read a more accurate account. One that is not as biased as Edgar's version. Read "The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas" by John Buchanan.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, if a bit obscure
Review: This book attempts to cover the part of the American Revolution in South Carolina (and by extension the South in general) that general history books overlook or at least partially ignore. This portion of the war (the partisan war that occurred between Loyalist and Rebel forces in the state) is often overlooked because what battles were fought between these forces were generally small. Those that were larger (King's Mountain and the Cowpens, primarily) are often treated as if they were isolated incidents, related only to one another and the battles of Camden and Guilford Court House. By contrast, Edgar weaves the account of the war in South Carolina into the overall history of the Revolution, and recounts various smaller fights in the state that he believes changed the course of the war. Chiefly, he beleives that the Partisan victory referred to as Huck's Defeat was crucial in turning the tide of public opinion in the Backcountry part of the state, which in turn was crucial in preventing the British from pacifying the whole region. He therefore ascribes a considerable importance to this minor battle, in which several hudred partisans ambushed about 115 Tories, killing or capturing most of them, including their commander, Captain Christian Huck.
This is interesting, and the author does a good job of depicting the war in the South in 1780. The civil nature of the conflict (brother against brother, etc.) is highlighted, and also the atrocities and violence of the war and its practitioners. The author doesn't spend much time on the conventional war in the state: King's Mountain and Guilford Courthouse are only briefly discussed, and the Cowpens isn't even really discussed at all, except in its consequences. This narrowing of the focus of the book leads to a very brief volume (less than 200 pages; less than 150 of text). This is in a way good: Mr. Edgar is a college instructor, and his writing style is much more suitable for a weighty tome than something someone would actually read.
All in all, though, this is a worthwhile book, and I would certainly recommend it to those interested in the American Revolution, or to partisan or irregular warfare in general.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This was the last in a series of books I read on the Revolution. It is disappointing in that it is a very broad summary of events in the South. In fact, it reads like a college paper overviewing several works without any real flavor of its own.
If you want to read an excellent account of the war in the Southern Theater, get "The Road to Guilford Courthouse." It is much better written and researched, and is in fact, one of the sources quoted by Edgar.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but didn't live up to expectations
Review: Walter Edgar's "Partisans and Recoats" purports to tell the story of the Revolutionary War in the southern colonies, and to some extent it does, but concentrates primarily on the fighting in the backcountry of South Carolina in the years 1780-1781 between the bitterly divided loyalist and patriot partisans who turned the backwoods of the colony into a bloody war zone. The book gives a brief history of the violence that threatened the stability of the colony in the years just after the French and Indian War. From the conflicts between outlaws, Regulators, and Moderators, grew the resentment and animoisty between the backwoods Scots-Irish frontiersmen and the more established Anglican Tidewater population. These political and religious differences soon carried over into the war of the rebellion as loyalists and patriots spent many years of the war butchering each other after the British invaded in 1780. Edgar goes on to emphasize his belief that, more than any other event in the war in South Carolina, that the rebel victory at Huck's Defeat was the true turning point in the war that helped to raise the patriot cause, leading to the Battle of King's Mountain and ultimate victory. This is a short book and one that seems to eschew details of the truly momentous events during the war in the South. It gives short shrift to the Battle of King's Mountain, where major Patrick Ferguson's Tories were crushed by the Over Mountain Men in a defeat that, in my opinion, was the real decisive and psychological victory that helped turn the tide against the British in the South by depriving them of the loyalist support Cornwallis desperately needed to bolster his efforts to subjugate the Carolinas. It barely even mentions Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse. This book is interesting for its attention to the little known events that shook the Carolina backcountry during the bloodiest years of the war, but leaves out too much detail and seems to provide little more than introductory material on a complex subject.
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