Vignettes of Revolutionary Virginia

Illuminating and captivating stories of life in the American Revolutionary era, from the dean of Virginia history

Brent Tarter knows how to make history come alive. More than that, he knows that the best histories encompass everyone, not just “great men” making speeches in domed statehouses. Drawing on a celebrated career’s worth of experience in the archive, producing scholarship aimed not at the ivory tower but at the general reader, Vignettes of Revolutionary Virginia gathers together the most dramatic, poignant, and compelling tales of ordinary people who lived through the extraordinary days of the American Revolution.

As in Vignettes of Colonial Virginia, Tarter relates the incredible stories of his subjects in their own words. They show how life for everyone in Virginia then was radically different from life for anyone in Virginia now. They illuminate the differences that emerged between the struggle for independence and the revolution that it set in motion, and they illustrate the consequences of the disconnect between the Revolutionary language of liberty of 1776 and the continuing existence of slavery and of the hierarchical society of the colonial period. The past may be a foreign country, but Tarter is a handy, engaging guide.