I chose the long way to Revolutionary War history. Part of it can be blamed on the co-founders and early bloggers on ERW. They convinced me, a Civil War historian, to come to the “dark side,” and study the more pivotal, more complex, and more important era in American history. And thus I joined this merry band and “threw in” to start learning more about our turbulent founding. I can’t say that I am a master of this domain yet, but I’ve come a long in several years.

Today, however, as I walked through one of our country’s national cemeteries, one that does not have any dead from our War for Independence, I began thinking about the American consciousness and the path toward someone’s interest in our military history. I began by reflecting on my own experience and why I was drawn to study the Civil War. Certainly, visiting Civil War battlefields as a young child with a toy musket and kepi sold me easily enough to want me to pursue this field of study as a future career. But maybe it was also the impact of visual media. I could see my childhood heroes in pictures taken at the time, the wreckage of the battlefield, and the plight of dead and dying soldiers on those fields and at field hospitals.

So maybe the Revolutionary period does not garner the attention that study of later wars does as it lacks photographs, and for later conflicts, film, film with sound, and live frontline reporting on tv and the internet. But time may also factor into the perception of interest levels. Iraq, Afghanistan, Desert Storm, and Vietnam veterans are still with us, and although their numbers are marching into history, the Korean War and World War II generations. Their presence in our society makes the conflicts in which they served seem not so long ago, rather, more like recent history. As a public historian, however, when I have discussions regarding World War I and the Civil War it’s viscerally noticeable that modern society has a harder time making tangible connections to these moments in American history. It simply seems much further into the past, a long, long time ago to them. Maybe because there are no longer any living veterans from these wars. Bringing the Revolutionary War into the discussion only makes it seem even more remote from present day. The general public’s perception of time when thinking of this era might as well be the Dark Ages, but it is not even 250 years old yet. We are still a country in its infancy by world comparison. Thus, it’s a harder “sell” to the masses to become involved or interested in the Revolutionary War era outside of a cast of a few prominent characters, George Washington among the very top of that list.

Since April 2023, however, I have been on a crusade to change that thinking as I work with the public. The Revolutionary War was not that far away, and although we only have paintings and sketches from the war rather than photographs and live action film, it is enough to spark an interest and deeper appreciation and understanding. Perhaps, though, it is the tangible reminders of the war that can once and for all disprove the notion that this period is too far removed into the past to be relevant, worth note, or even remembrance.

Nearly eighteen months ago I stood on the battlefield of Camden, fought August 16, 1780. I watched as horsedrawn caissons returned the remains of twelve Continental soldiers of the Maryland and Delaware regiments, one British Loyalist of a North Carolina regiment, and one Scottish Highlander, 71st regiment back to the battlefield. The remains had been discovered earlier in 2022. After a moving ceremony, among a massive crowd gathered to pay their respects, I was able to walk among the flag draped coffins, made of wood from the battlefield itself. I was standing mere inches from soldiers that had given their lives on that field 243 years earlier. The vail of time instantly dropped at that stark realization. The Revolutionary War was not far into the past, hemmed in among long lost American decades. Rather it was right in front of me, in the present, in the now. You could further walk the battlefield that April weekend. Four white flag markers denoted the four corners of where each set of remains were found on the battlefield. You could literally see the battle unfold before you, and now lay witness to where these men had died and fell all those years before.

I have had many powerful experiences at historic sites of the years. Standing or walking in the footsteps of historical giants, visiting gravesites, being present on anniversaries of important moments. But no experience was as powerful as this day. And so, on this day, I reflect on the battle of Camden, South Carolina. I reflect on that April day. And I reflect on the unfinished work that lay ahead during the 250th anniversary commemorations of the Revolutionary War as public historians. We must rededicate ourselves “to the great task remaining before us” to bring these pivotal, complex, and important moments of this era back into the American consciousness and to ensure it remains ever present for the next 250 years.

For more information on the battle of Camden, the discovery of these remains, and their reburial, make sure to get a copy of Rob Orrison and Mark Wilcox’s book All That Can Be Expected: The Battle of Camden and the British High Tide in the South, August 16, 1780, part of the Emerging Revolutionary War Series.