Neville, Gabriel The Last Men Standing

The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution

Volume 147 of the series From Reason to Revolution 1721-1815. The strong survived. In 1776, nearly 800 men followed the famous fighting pastor Colonel Peter Muhlenberg into the Continental Army. Only a few of them remained until the end of the war. Carefully researched and precisely told, this is the story of the Last Men Standing. During the colonial era, thousands of German and Irish immigrants settled in western Virginia. The 8th Virginia Regiment was formed to recruit them. Men from Pittsburgh to Tennessee were assembled into ten rifle companies and sent on some of the war's toughest missions. Few remained until the final victory at Yorktown. Historians once said that The Last Men Standing could not be written. Neville was challenged by a librarian at the David Library of the American Revolution to uncover the story. It's out there, the librarian said. You just have to find it. This book is the result of years of research in distant archives, small museums, private collections and other sources. Neville compares the project to a puzzle or a treasure hunt. The Last Men Standing traces the lives of immigrant children from the horrors of the French and Indian War through the Revolution to the settlement of the American frontier. Historians will appreciate Neville's use of little-known sources, his attention to neglected events, and his reinterpretation of important events on Sullivan's Island, Germantown, and Monmouth.