Book Review

Issues relating to the security of landholding long have figured anecdotally in studies of revolutionary conflict in the southern backcountry. Land matters recur as well in oral musings of researchers pondering the contexts in which backcountrymen chose sides, even temporarily, during America's war for independence. Leslie Hall uses land security as the focal point of a narrative of the American Revolution in Georgia. With security for settlers' land tenure depending on a reliable system of obtaining and protecting land, the narrative pursues political change, particularly in Georgia's interior.

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Hall's story does not dislodge the long-standing observation that the ultimate reason for Georgia's revolutionary course was its nearness to South Carolina. Far from cursory, however, Hall's examination of the frontier region's experiences supports the notion, not quite articulated by Hall, that fence-straddling backcountry people ultimately supported revolutionary forces because revolutionaries took control of the machinery of granting and protecting land—and kept control of it, even while British forces occupied parts of the southern states. The amalgam of militia service with recognition (and enforcement) of land ownership was pivotal throughout the region, and Hall's cogent Georgia details illustrate this broader process.

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