The story of the American Revolution has been so often told that it’s sometimes hard to believe there’s anything new left to say.
Even those traditionally left out—women, Native and African Americans, the poor—have seen their lives folded into the revolution’s history in recent decades. But in Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution, the historian Kathleen DuVal reminds us that all we have to do is expand the aperture a bit, to bring into focus the people living along the southeastern edges of the rebellious colonies, and an entirely new picture takes shape.
The mix of Indian nations, African slaves, and French, Spanish, and British colonists living in what is today Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana all played a critical role in the war, and yet, as the title of her book makes clear, independence for the 13 colonies was, for most these people, “independence lost.”