On Line Meeting (7:00pm Zoom opens) (7:30pm Lecture begins)
The speaker for this meeting is Rod Andrew, Jr. He’ll be speaking about his 2017 book, The Life and Times of General Andrew Pickens: Revolutionary War Hero, American Founder.
Andrew Pickens (1739–1817), the hard-fighting South Carolina militia commander of the American Revolution, was the hero of many victories against British and Loyalist forces. In this book, Rod Andrew Jr. offers an authoritative and comprehensive biography of Pickens the man, the general, the planter, and the diplomat. Andrew vividly depicts Pickens as he founds churches, acquires slaves, joins the Patriot cause, and struggles over Indian territorial boundaries on the southern frontier. Combining insights from military and social history, Andrew argues that while Pickens’s actions consistently reaffirmed the authority of white men, he was also determined to help found the new republic based on broader principles of morality and justice.
After the war, Pickens sought a peaceful and just relationship between his country and the southern Native American tribes and wrestled internally with the issue of slavery. Andrew suggests that Pickens’s rise to prominence, his stern character, and his sense of duty highlight the egalitarian ideals of his generation as well as its moral shortcomings–all of which still influence Americans’ understanding of themselves.
BOOK PURCHASE: To purchase this book please click on this link: https://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-General-Andrew-Pickens/dp/1469631539
ABOUT ROD ANDREW JR : Rod Andrew, Jr., is professor of history at Clemson University. Professor Andrew specializes in the History
of the American South and U.S. Military History. His biography of Wade Hampton won the Mary Lawton Hodges Prize in Southern Studies in 2009. He is a Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and recently served as Officer-in-Charge, Field History Branch, U.S. Marine Corps History Division.