Please join us for our next Speaker at the Center talk with Carl Borick, author of Backcountry Resistance, the extraordinary story of a war fought by ordinary people.

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.

Carl P. Borick is Director of the Charleston Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, and the author of Relieve Us of This Burthen: American Prisoners of War in the Revolutionary South, 1780-1782 (USC Press, 2011) and A Gallant Defense: The Siege of Charleston, 1780 (USC Press, 2003). 

Contact

For more information, please get in touch with McCabe Rentz, SC Center for the Book Coordinator, at 803-734-4816 or mrentz@statelibrary.sc.gov.

Location & Parking

The event is held at the South Carolina State Library, 1500 Senate Street, Columbia, SC 29201. On-street metered parking is available. Enter between the two lions.

Accessibility

FM Auditory Assistance, large print materials, and other accessibility accommodations are available upon request. Please contact the program organizer in advance if you need a reasonable accommodation to participate.