The Price of Nationhood: The American Revolution in Charles County [Hardcover]

Jean B. Lee (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393036588 | ISBN-13: 978-0393036589 | Publication Date: June 1994 | Edition: 1st

The American Revolution is seen as a formative event, but it was also a shattering one to those who experienced it. Charles County, situated on the Potomac near Chesapeake Bay, long enjoyed the prosperity of a rich soil and thriving overseas trade. Its social order - white planters at the top, enslaved blacks at the bottom - was stable and its politics were local. This world was swept away by Independence and the war with Britain. Led by its accustomed elite, the county was drawn into the Revolution, fought battles local and distant, and emerged part of a nation, its society admitting greater degrees of freedom and yet impoverished and depleted. This text brings 18th-century seaboard Maryland to life in this in-depth study of the social and political history of an area greatly affected by the Revolution.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lee, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, uses Charles County, Md., as a provocative case study to make his point that the American Revolution brought radical change to American society. Before 1776, the county participated in the flowering of Maryland's plantation society, and a stable internal order was sustained by an economy profitably integrated into the British Empire. Yet the county entered the patriot camp overwhelmingly, supporting the war effort by providing tools and supplies while minimizing damage from British raiders. The elite continued to lead, but only by becoming increasingly sensitive to the general populace, black as well as white. Peace generated a brief burst of political, commercial and economic activity. The county, however, never recovered from the loss of its economic ties with Britain. Virgin land across the Appalachians beckoned to the ambitious. As Lee shows us with telling irony, for those who remained, Charles County became a backwater. Sacrifice of local identity was part of the price of winning national independence. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Community studies have resuscitated interest in Colonial America. Here, Lee (history, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) demonstrates that the American Revolution, like many other revolutions before and since, had some of its most significant effects at the local level and not just in the halls of power. Examining Charles County, Maryland, where the wealth was based on the labor of enslaved blacks, Lee asserts that the forces of the revolution not only brought independence to the nation but also unanticipated disruption of the social and economic order at the local level. The effectiveness of the author's argument depends on his ability to re-create for the reader an understandable whole from the microcosmic data, including court proceedings, land records, and other personal papers. In this regard, Lee succeeds extremely well. Recommended even for those not familiiar with Maryland history or the society and politics of the Revolutionary era.
Charles K. Piehl, Mankato State Univ., Minn.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 388 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (June 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393036588
• ISBN-13: 978-0393036589
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,667,368 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Understanding of the Colonial Tobacco Coast Culture, November 29, 1999

By 

Ed Malesky "coif" (FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Price of Nationhood: The American Revolution in Charles County (Hardcover)

I bought this book for genealogical purposes, but found that it was a very enjoyable book to read and explained the culture of the Tobacco Coast to me better than several other books I have read. There was also enough detail that I felt I understood much more of the thought processes of the people I have been tracing and has fleshed out their surroundings in a very complete way.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The True Price of Liberty To My Family, March 2, 2011

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M. Mankin "The Bell" (Sacramento, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Price of Nationhood: The American Revolution in Charles County (Paperback)

I bought this book because it describes in detail how my family and others in Maryland lost their plantations. Charles Mankin was the first sheriff of Charles County, elected 1783, and in those days had to collect the property taxes or pay them himself. The American Revolution created a free-for-all of confiscating British Loyalist lands, and since the Revolution drove out British landlords, no one wanted to pay rents. Land titles became clouded, the economy slowed to a halt. So guess who owed the unpaid tax money to the State? We did. Lost everything. Many others went west, looking for new land, while our forefathers struggled to salvage a new nation from an economic crash. Even at foreclosure sales, no one had any money to buy anything except the very wealthy, and even they could seldom sublet to get any income either. Businesses failed, and trade with the British ended. What happened to our family happened to many others, and until I read this book, I never realized why it happened, nor how it impacted so many. Great reading, no doubt, but also you get the real story after the Revolutionary War.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars History written from the sources that made history., June 10, 2010

By 

John Melius "Morfinman" (DC) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Price of Nationhood: The American Revolution in Charles County (Hardcover)

I bought this book years ago, and I have recommended it to many people for many years. As a resident of Charles County Maryland, I noticed many peculiar differences in the cultures here from those of neighboring counties. This book shed light on how those cultures evolved many years ago. Prof. Lee did an outstanding job of reviewing primary source documentation as opposed to reviewing the scholarly work of past historians. More of this kind of history should be done because it is based on the actual documents that are extant from the period of history being examined.

This look at the founding of our country by using a specific place, specific time, and specific sets of relationships, has given me insight into the trials and tribulations of running a successful revolution and the costs that are necessarily part of that process. All too often, history is written by those with a specific agenda as to the perspective that is being portrayed as common to that era. In this book, Prof. Lee allows the thousands upon thousands of primary source documentation to tell the story of the history of this county, and the role it played in the creation of our nation.

Don't be surprised to discover many surprising facts about the founding of this country in this book. As I have done in the past for many of my friends that are interested in history, I recommend this book with great pleasure.