Narrative of the Battle of Cowan's Ford, February 1st, 1781

Vance, David, 1745-1813Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.7
Word count
84K words
Chapters
9

Tags

English Originals Military Historical ReappraisalMilitary StrategyWar of IndependenceMilitary CommandersHeroismPatriotismEye WitnessBattle ChronicleDocumentary NarrativeEighteenth Century

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Narrative of the Battle of Cowan's Ford, February 1st, 1781 by Henry and VanceAuthor: Vance, David, 1745-1813,Language: English, Class: E201: History: America: Revolution (1775-1783), Release Date: Oct 5, 2015

Editor's review

This is a short but historically valuable first-hand account of the Revolutionary War. The author, David Vance, personally took part in the Battle of Cowan's Ford on February 1, 1781, and in the first person records the specific course of the British march north, the American delaying action, and the fighting at the ford, preserving details of marching, formation, and casualties from an ordinary soldier's perspective that complement later macro-level military histories. As a public-domain e-book, its prose is plain and its length concise, suitable for reading as a primary source on the southern theater of the American Revolutionary War and for historical writers comparing different narrative versions. When reading, one should note its nature as personal recollection, with the narrator's standpoint and memory biases, and it should not be treated as the sole authoritative military history. It is suitable as supplementary material for readers interested in Revolutionary War sources and individual cases in military history after reading general military histories.

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Reading tips

  1. Consult maps and campaign background before reading the text, to locate the march route and the ford's position.
  2. Read alongside the chapter on the same battle in a general history, noting differences between participant narrative and later research.
  3. Note down people, dates, and places as you read to form a brief timeline, aiding understanding of the battle's course.
  4. Read together with other sources on the southern theater of the Revolutionary War to assess the memoir's reliability and standpoint.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9

FAQ

Is this book a complete military history or a personal memoir? It is a battle account written by the author David Vance as a participant, focusing on the Battle of Cowan's Ford on February 1, 1781; it is a primary document from a personal perspective, not a systematic military history covering the entire war. It should be read as one historical source, not the sole authoritative account.
Can I read it without background knowledge of the Revolutionary War? Yes, but it is advisable to first acquire basic background on the battle, such as the British southward route and the American intention to delay them; otherwise place names, unit designations, and the battle's sequence may feel unfamiliar. Reading with background knowledge will be more rewarding.
What limitations of the source should I be wary of when reading? A participant's recollection may contain memory biases and standpoint inclinations, especially in accounts of enemy actions and casualty figures. It is advisable to compare with other contemporary records or later research and avoid treating a single narrative as definitive.

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About the author

Vance, David, 1745-1813 Author

David Vance (1745–1813) is the author of Narrative of the Battle of Cowan's Ford, February 1st, 1781. Public information about his life is very limited: his nationality, education, career, and any honors he received are not reliably recorded, and the available records confirm only his name, dates, and this single work. Judging from the title and subtitle, the book is a chronicle of a specific engagement during the American Revolutionary War. Works of this kind typically present, from the perspective of a participant or contemporary recorder, the advance of troops, the terrain of the battlefield, the course of the fighting, and its aftermath in chronological order, and they bear a clear military-historical and documentary character. On the available evidence, his writing favors the accumulation of facts and the preservation of detail rather than literary embellishment; the book's value lies chiefly in offering a narrative text for the study of the Battle of Cowan's Ford and the local military operations of the period.