Customer Reviews

The Price of Nationhood: The American Revolution in Charles County

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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.

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.

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.

Professor Lee gives us a scholarly review of a microcosm of the culture and weltanshauung of a relatively backwater Maryland county headed into revolution. That such scholarship is targeted at a minor topic is truly impressive. If anything, it gives one pause as to whether the investment in academic research in history is overdone. For here is a representative picture drawn, but at such detail it must have taken tremendous resources. One wonders what topics suffer to give such infinite color to a tiny leaf on a giant tree. But the beauty of scholarship and solid writing for those interested in this topic, such as genealogists or revolutionary war scholars, will find this book a delightfully sharp and detailed portrait of a place whose most might town was the now unremembered "Port Tobacco."