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Charles Patrick Neimeyer

A unique and revealing analysis of the diverse body that made up the American revolutionary army

One of the images Americans hold most dear is that of the drum-beating, fire-eating Yankee Doodle Dandy rebel, overpowering his British adversaries through sheer grit and determination. The myth of the classless, independence-minded farmer or hard-working artisan-turned-soldier is deeply ingrained in the national psyche.

 Charles Neimeyer here separates fact from fiction, revealing for the first time who really served in the army during the Revolution and why. His conclusions are startling. Because the army relied primarily on those not connected to the new American aristocracy, the African Americans, Irish, Germans, Native Americans, laborers-for-hire, and "free white men on the move" who served in the army were only rarely altruistic patriots driven by a vision of liberty and national unity.

 Bringing to light the true composition of the enlisted ranks, the relationships of African-Americans and of Native Americans to the army, and numerous acts of mutiny, desertion, and resistance against officers and government, Charles Patrick Neimeyer here provides the first comprehensive and historically accurate portrait of the Continental soldier.

NYU Press

The American Social Experience

America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army

Steven Elliot Tripp

“Insightful . . . The best portrait yet of the elusive and seldom understood world of laboring class culture before, during, and just after the Civil War.” —Crandall Shifflett, H-CivWar
 
 One of the most hotly debated issues in the historical study of race relations is the question of how the Civil War and Reconstruction affected social relations in the South. Did the War leave class and race hierarchies intact? Or did it mark the profound disruption of a long-standing social order?

Yankee Town, Southern City examines how the members of the southern community of Lynchburg, Virginia experienced four distinct but overlapping events—Secession, Civil War, Black Emancipation, and Reconstruction. By looking at life in the grog shop, at the military encampment, on the street corner, and on the shop floor, Steven Elliott Tripp illustrates the way in which ordinary people influenced the contours of race and class relations in their town.
 
“A richly textured social history . . . a nuanced portrait of white class and cultural stratification in one southern town and the intersections of those divisions with the broader racial barrier that dominated both ante- and postbellum Lynchburg.” —The Journal of Southern History
 
“A readable and interesting book that . . . provides a vivid portrait of the evolution of one southern city during this trying period. It is a most worthy contribution to the literature of the South and to urban history generally.” —John Ingham, Journal of American History

Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg