The Last Battle of the Revolution | Jeff Winstead

Transcript:

Rebecca Weber: Welcome back to Better for America, where we bring you the stories and voices that shape our understanding of history and the world around us. Today, we’re going to dive into a fascinating and often overlooked chapter of the American Revolution, the fight for the Kentucky frontier. Joining us is historian and author Jeff Winstead.

His book, The Last Battle of the Revolution, Daniel Boone and the War for American Independence. Kentucky frontier. This incredible book sheds light on the critical role that this rugged territory played in securing America’s future.  I, I found this just amazing, the meticulous research and the vivid storytelling,  Jeff really brings to life the battles, the hardships, the heroism of the pioneers like Daniel Boone,  revealing a side of the revolution that, that many may not have heard before.

So Jeff, welcome to Better for America. I’m thrilled to have you here with me today.

Jeff Winstead: Hi, Rebecca. Thank you so much. I’m really excited to be here and I’m so appreciative of you and AMAC for featuring the book, on your book of the month club. And,  just for the exposure an organization this size gives to a book, to an independent author, it’s just,  it’s had a huge impact.

So, thank you.

Rebecca Weber: Well, we’re thrilled to have you here, and you’re absolutely right. Your book is the AMAC Book Club’s Pick of the Month, and our readers have been captivated by really its portrayal of the Revolutionary War. I want to encourage everyone to pick up this book.  tell us what inspired you to tell us this story, and, and why do you think Americans really need to read this book at their hands on this great book, which revisits, a moment in history.

Jeff Winstead: Well, the short answer is my own ignorance inspired it.  what happened was my, my wife and I,  in 2005, we had just moved to North Carolina, and she had picked up a local paper, and there was a travel article about,  Blue Lakes, Kentucky.

Which is a national park in Kentucky where this battle, that’s the landmark for where this battle took place. And she’s like, oh, this sounds really interesting. I see that Daniel Boone and his son were involved in the battle. And what do you know about it? Because I’m a Kentuckian. I had to admit, I didn’t know anything about it and nothing about the battle.

And I, frankly, I barely even knew who Daniel Boone was. And, you know, so you, I, Perhaps, you know, that was a failure of mine, not paying attention to class that day. Maybe it was a failure of the education system, but regardless. So I was a little embarrassed by that. And,  so I, I started researching,  the battle.

And within a couple moments, it was pretty obvious, this is a really interesting story here. I couldn’t believe that, that I wasn’t familiar with it, and just Americans in general,  may not be. So I,  checked out my first couple of Boone,  biographies from the library.  one was a biography on Teva, I’ve listened to coming and going from work, I listened to it multiple times, and just really became fascinated by Boone and by this particular story of the Revolutionary War, which,  you know, takes place, the, In, in 1782, so it’s actually a little less than a year after Cornwallis had surrendered to George Washington, so the war on the East Coast is essentially over for all intents and purposes.

Now, we’re still a year away from the Treaty of Paris that officially ended the war, and so during that time, the British and,  using their sort of Native American allies are having these little incursions into the frontier.  which is Kentucky at the time. It’s essentially the original Wild West,  and sort of causing as much havoc as they can for the,  the people, the, the settlers who lived there, who had already been fleeing the territory from,  droughts and hardship and,  Native American attacks.

And, it’s pretty rough going. And so I became fascinated with that. And,  I was originally going to do this story as a comic book,   because I had never written a novel before. And so I spent about 15

years doing the research on and off, and eventually my wife had been sort of nudging me to, hey, maybe you should write a novel.

And so finally I decided, okay, maybe, maybe you’re, you’re right, let’s try it, let’s give it, let’s give it a go. And it turned out to be serendipitous because I, I started writing the novel when I was 47, which is the age Daniel Boone is in the book. Wow. So I felt like it was just sort of meant to be, and And as I was writing the book, without planning it, I got to be seeing where the battle takes place on the anniversary of the battle.

Wow. So, I just felt like things were really aligning. So I felt like it was divine intervention.

Rebecca Weber: It’s really terrific. You know, so many Americans believe the Revolutionary War ended at Yorktown. So you tell the story of the Battle of Bluelix. Why do you believe that that has been largely forgotten?

Jeff Winstead: Yeah, that’s a good question. I’m not entirely sure. So, the, the Blue Licks, the state park, you know, they advertise it as the, the, the location of the last battle of the, of the revolution. There’s some quibbling about that, you know, depending on the size of the people, you know, the number of people involved and whatnot.

But, so, I’m really not sure. I think part of it is,  America in general, we sort of lost our fascination with both the revolution and the The,  frontier. So, you know, there was the, the Fess Parker, Daniel Boone series in the, in the 60s.  that went into the, I guess the early 70s. But once that ended,  I think American pop culture just may have shifted to the Old West.

And something about the Old West is a little more tangible, like when you see white earth and costume and tombstone, you can relate to that clothing a little bit more. The, the clothing of the frontier is a little more strange,  you know, you get glimpses of that in the last Mohegan’s movie. Yeah. So maybe that’s part of it, it’s just a little, little, little alien.

I also think, just sort of culturally, we’re not,  as interested. There’s been a real move to sort of demonize the, The people who are the settlers and of course, just even the founding fathers, people who were involved in the revolution to begin with,  as I was writing the book, we were sort of going through that, you know, tearing down statues phase of the country.

And so I was, I was sort of keenly aware of the sort of cultural shift that was happening at the time.  so, you know, I felt like in some, some small part, this was a way for me to sort of tell this story to people.  bring these characters back to the, people, characters in my book, but the real people,  back to the forefront, sort of breathe,  life into them in a way that,  would make them relatable to a modern audience.

Rebecca Weber: I think it’s just terrific because I think, you know, one of the major themes in your book is, is the price of freedom. that there were real sacrifices made by real people. And today in America, we see a battle over, as you’re pointing out history itself. So hopefully and prayerfully, we’ll learn some lessons,  that were Perhaps lost, forgotten, or, or maybe even intentionally distorted, which is what we’re seeing more and more of today. But we just love what you’re doing with this book.  I just want to talk for a minute on Daniel Boone because he is a legendary American figure and, and many people only do know him as a frontiersman. Not as someone who was deeply involved in the revolution.  what do most people get wrong about Boone, in your view?

Jeff Winstead: Well, the most obvious thing is he never wore a coonskin cap. So that’s sort of a, as I mentioned, this Parker earlier, that was sort of a holdover from, and this is why I think culturally, even though that I never saw that show, even in reruns, but culturally, I had this sort of confusion between Boone is because.

Tess Parker played both characters on two different shows and dressed exactly the same essentially for both, for both shows. So the, the, the headgear, which is the most minor thing, but it’s the most obvious thing that people get wrong. He actually would wear like a beafer felt.  hat with a white brim.

It’s a, it’s a Quaker style,  cap. And, of course, the reason that is, if you’re in the wilderness, it rains a lot, and it’s, it’s waterproof, and it’s sort of, the brim allows the water to run off, you know, without getting in your eyes. So there, there’s that. There’s also,   I think this idea that Boone is a sort of a semi literate,  person, which wasn’t true at all.

He was, he loved to read, and his favorite book was,  Gulliver’s Travels. Which he,  ran back and forth, he would bring with him on, he, he would go on long hunts, they would call them, and sometimes it would be with a group, sometimes it would be alone, and he might be three months in the wilderness at a hunting camp. Alone with just this book or with other guys reading to them from the book as a form of entertainment. So,  and also he was pretty well written during the research of the book. He, so he did have to write to the governor of Virginia about the results of the battle. And his,  writing, it’s a mate, all of these guys, frankly,  their grip on language is much closer to Shakespearean, you might say.

So, so they actually are very well written, you know, like none of them could spell a lick. Yeah, they all spelled phonetically, which was pretty common at the time as well. But,   the, it’s incredibly, very intelligent people, as you would imagine you’d have to be to sort of come into a new, come to the frontier,  literally carve the road into the frontier, and then once you get there and bring other people there, you have to sort of build an entire society, forts, blacksmithing, make your own gunpowder, like all this stuff has to be done because you cannot bring in supplies.

Rebecca Weber: I just find it so fascinating history. And whenever I’m driving,  going over old bridges or in parts of the country where we know that there was a battle, I can’t help but go back. I think about what was life like then, you know, just the basic survival. How did people survive? Stay warm. What did you eat day to day?

How did you get your water? And then when you mix in there, what was really happening, the building and the shaping of a nation,  is it’s, it’s Fascinating. And this book does such an incredible job telling a beautiful story. You’ve got a lot of,  references to real history.  I, I want to ask you though, given the political and cultural divides that we see in America today, Do you think Americans have really lost sight of the kind of unity that is necessary to secure our nation’s independence?

Because I do think that,  many were united.  and,  you know, we feel very divided today.  what lessons do we need to remember?

Jeff Winstead: That’s actually a great question because the thing that you take away from the book is,  or my research of the book was all these people are very individualistic. So they’re, they’re obviously, they’ve come to the frontier, they’re seeking their own fortunes, and for the most part, the last thing they want is to be forted up together at a fort. They want to be out miles away from each other on their own land,  growing, growing crops, building cabins, and all that. But as a community, they have to come together, or some, some of this stuff doesn’t get done. And at times it was difficult. They started building the fort at Boonesboro and they had a hard time initially getting people to come off their farms to, to, to contribute to the Fort building, but they eventually had to. So, yeah, it’s,  the, the community, it, it, it takes a combination of,  sort of talented individuals to come together as a community to make all this stuff work and so they actually becomes a family. So the Boone family features very largely in the book, obviously, but there are people who he’s not actually related to who are just as much family because of this,  close,  community ties. You know, even Boone himself,  the sort of interesting thing about Boone is, as I mentioned, he would go into the woods and hunt for three months at a time, but he was also very charismatic, loved people, loved being around people. So he’s sort of this weird, if you consider like a spectrum of an introvert and an extrovert, he was somewhere exactly in the middle, which was just the most fascinating thing I discovered about, about them.

Cause I just, I couldn’t really wrap my mind around how, how does some, how does one person do that? But he did it.

Rebecca Weber: You know, it’s like he, he really embraced rugged individualism, understanding that,  and that’s what we need to get back to a bit here in America, I think, is that,  you know, a merit based society that rewards people for good work, that recognizes,  individual talent and lifts people up one by one, because in doing that, when you feel empowered to be the best that you can be,  and the greatest,  you know, achieve the greatest that you set out to achieve,  then naturally you want to help other people. You know, you want other people to get to have the same opportunity.  and I do believe that we are a land of incredible, incredible opportunities. So I just want to thank you so much for being here with me today.  this has been a, a wonderful opportunity for us to really highlight AMAC’s book of the month. AMAC members are so passionate about preserving history.

So, Jeff, I just think this has been a fantastic conversation. We would love to invite you back,   as we invite AMAC members,  in the coming weeks to talk about this book. So we’ll have to see if we can’t get on your schedule so that you can engage directly with AMAC members. But thank you for this fantastic conversation.

Jeff Winstead: Oh, sure. Absolutely. And if anyone has any questions about the book as we’re going, I know there’s a discussion on the AMAC website. So if you just want to pose there and ask me something directly. I’d be happy to answer.

Rebecca Weber: We love that. So for everybody out there listening, you probably, many of you have not heard of the AMAC book club.

So go ahead and check it out on amac. us. You’ll see it there on our homepage listed under AMAC member benefits as well. The URL is right here. Check out this book, the last battle of the revolution. Really riveting book. It offers such a fresh and gripping perspective on the fight for the Kentucky frontier.

And I know all of you out there are going to love it. So for those who want to be learn more, be sure to check out Jeff’s book, follow his work. And as always, if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave us a review and share it with a fellow history enthusiast. Jeff, thanks again for joining us.

It’s been a pleasure having you with me.

Jeff Winstead: Thank you, Rebecca. I appreciate it.

Rebecca Weber: Excellent. To all of you out there, thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you back again with us soon next time. Have a great day, everyone.