To keep it plain and simple: After reading this book I've come to the conclusion that African-American history is an essential read, especially with this book. Often times, some of us may not think African-American history is rich or we may not really understand their situation in America today. This book changes that, it teaches that African-Americans have a rich history and that books like this must be read to understand their stance in American society today. GREAT BOOK.

Wayne Lee has written on the militia and crowds in his innovative work Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina: The Culture of Violence in Riot and War (2001). This study considers militia issues beyond fighting battles, including the necessity Continental officers faced using militia regiments, and the drawbacks from doing so as well. One of the subjects in Lee's study of the legitimacy of violence during the war is that of the bitter, bloody feuds between Whigs and Tories, a conflict that caused the Patriot militia to become mired in a struggle of 'retaliatory escalation,' vendettas, plundering, murder and other crimes, all of which served to weaken the authority of the newly-created state. For example, Lee describes the fine line between the impressment and stealing of much-needed supplies from the civilian population. 'In accordance with military tradition,' Lee notes, 'it was acceptable to impress from one's enemies without payment,' an assumption which too often led to random theft. This and other problems were a constant burden for Greene and other commanders in the south, just part of the many challenges arising from the reliance on militia troops.

This book was purchased from Amazon.com as a gift for my Mother. She is a historian, genealogist and life long resident of North Carolina. Her main field of expertise is the historical Colonial Period in North Carolina and especially the Regulator Movement. Having taught a college course in early North Carolina history she is well versed on the events and ideologies of the period. She was fascinated with the extensive research done for this publication and how very well the book was written. In her opinion, an excellent book which rates five stars *****.

I do not usually read a lot of military history, but I picked this book up almost by accident and ended up teaching it in my colonial history seminar. Lee uses revolutionary North Carolina to examine the meaning, purposes and imperatives of violence and the ways citizens and societies rationalize and sometimes challenge the use of violence. This is as much social history as military history, and the literary quality of CROWDS AND SOLDIERS makes it an excellent teaching book. I hope to assign it in my survey class next year, or as soon as it comes out in paper. It passed the "father test" with flying colors--I left my copy where my father would be sure to see it, he picked it up, and read it almost without stopping. This is a fine and important work of history that could hardly be more timely in its implications.

Stanley Harrold's well-written work is an important contribution to antislavery historiography. Taking to task those historians who see antislavery as primarily a movement to reform Northern society, Harrold demonstrates that Northern and Southern abolitionists were active in the South up until the Civil War. Furthermore, Harrold makes a convincing case that the very real abolitionist presence in the Upper South was a "precipitative cause of secession and the Civil War." For Harrold, the Southern response to the abolitionist threat was neither irrational or exaggerated. I commend Harrold's work to any student of antislavery or the antebellum South.