Protesting against Boston-Centered Histories of the American Revolution

My posting about Cousin David Dellinger yesterday reminded me of my disgust at Gordon S. Wood's THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, admittedly "old" by present standards (1992) but representative still of the arrogant ignorance New England historians have almost always shown toward the South, and in particular North Carolina. I am ridding myself of my Melville books, this year, I hope, and enjoying learning about the Revolution in the Carolinas. There is, in fact, a flourishing industry on that topic. Here are some of my recently purchased books acquired for "ORNERY PEOPLE: WHAT WERE THE DEPRESSION OKIES?"--all of them already looked through, some pretty carefully.

Oh, there are more, the really outsized books.

CAME 30 December 2014: FROM YALE TO JAIL: THE LIFE STORY OF A MORAL DISSENTER. Dust jacket intact, but (unmentioned by seller) water stained throughout. Readable, but I wanted a good copy after finding we are Dellinger cousins. So like all other Yankees he thought the Revolution began and ended in Boston. His mother's mother "was a leader in the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).

He went on: "My father's ancestors were also pre-Revolutionary Americans, but they lived in the mountains of North Carolina instead of in a suburb of Boston. Boston was the Fountainhead of the American Revolution and the Center of Modern Enlightenment. The leading Boston paper called it the 'Athens of America' and the 'Hub of the Universe.'"

He did not know. Like my folks, his father did not know about his Revolutionary ancestors. I will bet he did not know about the Association which my Uncle John Dellinger and Uncle or Cousin George Dellinger signed in August 1775 in Tryon County. These men put their lives and fortunes on the line a year before the Declaration of Independence.

http://allthingsliberty.com/2014/08/the-tryon-county-patriots-of-1775-and-their-association/

That's my article in the webzine JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. In one of the endnotes I talk about how history is still written by the North.

Henry Dellinger, the estate files show, helped his sister, my GGGG Grandmother, settle her husband's estate even though Peter Costner died at Ramseur's Mill thinking he was there to stand for his German king, we believe, although he may just have been confused since his brother Jacob signed the Association too and his brother Tom Costner fought on the right side at King's Mountain. 

The South forgot and the North took advantage of our ignorance.