An Ethnographic Overview of the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park
Griffith D. 2015. An Ethnographic Overview of the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. Ethnographic Overview and Assessment. NPS: Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. Greensboro, North Carolina
The Battle of Guilford Courthouse was among the more ironic of the Southern campaigns of the American Revolution. Although the American troops technically lost the battle to the British, the heavy losses suffered by the British during the battle led historians to cast the defeat as, ultimately, an American victory. This interpretation is based in part on the famous, politically-motivated quote by Charles James Fox, leader of the opposition party in the British House of Commons, who said, “Another such victory would ruin the British Army” (Baker 2005:8), which provided the title to a book, Another Such Victory, written by Thomas Baker, a former employee of Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. This report constitutes the first ethnographic overview of the Park. It is based on interviews with Park personnel, Guilford County residents from various ethnic, religious, gender, professional, and other backgrounds, and observations in and around Guilford County and the Park. As such, it contains a range of comments, observations, and perceptions that in many instances may conflict with the historical record, interpretive planning materials, and actual activities undertaken by Park personnel as part of their professional duties or under their supervision and oversight. The authors stress that this ethnographic overview is an account, in part, of the perceptions of Park visitors and observers about the Park, as well as a synthesis of materials from archives, investigator observations (which are also fallible) and other written sources.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Griffith, David
- Date of Issue
- 2015-01-28
- Publisher
- NPS: Guilford Courthouse National Military Park
- Units
- GUCO
- Keywords
- African Americans, American Revolution, Black, British, Church, DAR, Daughters of the American Revolution, Greensboro, GUCO, Guilford Courthouse, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, Lutheran, National Park Service, NMP, North Carolina, NPS, Oral History, Presbyterian, Quaker, Reenactment, Religion, Slavery, Social Memory, Southern Campaign, Triad