Backcountry Resistance Book Launch with Carl P. Borick

Mar 25, 2026 @ 6pm | Location: The Charleston Museum, 360 Meeting Street Charleston, SC 29403

Mar 25, 2026 @ 6pm
Location: The Charleston Museum, 360 Meeting Street Charleston, SC 29403
Hosted by: The Charleston Museum

Join us for a book launch with Carl P. Borick who will discuss the South Carolina militia that defied British forces during the Revolutionary War as explored in his new book, Backcountry Resistance.

In Backcountry Resistance, Carl P. Borick delivers a groundbreaking account of the citizen militia that defied British forces in South Carolina's volatile Backcountry during the pivotal Southern campaign of the Revolutionary War. When Charleston fell in May of 1780 and the Continental Army retreated, many assumed the Patriot cause in the South had collapsed. In the state's rugged interior, though, partisan militias waged a brutal insurgency that challenged British control and changed the course of the 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, 2012).

This event is part of a series of lectures hosted by The Charleston Museum that focus on different aspects of the Revolutionary War in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States of America.

View The Charleston Museum event page.