Reagan said, Hey, guys, but guess what?

We've got a chance.

He was my fraternity circle of about 200 people.

Hospice communities of healthy environments.

Trust me, she lived in Traficant for four years.

I really felt for a lot of reasons I felt, but I didn't have the guts Kathleen Duvall is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and noted historian.

She has authored numerous books, including the Pulitzer Prize winning Native Nations a millennium in North America, Foundation of American Democracy, The Native Ground, and Independence Lost Lives on the edge of the American Revolution.

With the release of the Ken Burns PBS documentary The American Revolution, Independence Lost is getting a bit of a rebirth.

The book takes a non-typical look at the American Revolution, concentrating on how the war played out along the Gulf Coast, focusing on characters who may not necessarily be household names, but played a critical role in the independence of America.

In addition to being an award winning author, Kathleen is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

We welcome Kathleen Duvall to conversations.

Thank you so very much for being here.

Oh, thank you.

I'm delighted to be here.

I'm going to spend a good bit of our interview talking about independence loss, because it kind of hits close to home, obviously, because we take this program in Pensacola, Florida.

But before I get to that, tell me a little bit about yourself.

When did you become a history buff?

Yeah.

So I majored in history and politics in college, and I thought I was going to go into politics, and I spent a few years working for a state legislature and decided that was a little too rough for me and that I was safer off in the past where things were a little slower.

And so I went to graduate school in history, and I was in graduate school in California, and I was thinking about what a topic in early American history might be.

And I had grown up in Arkansas.

And Arkansas, like many parts of the country, is not really that much involved in the way we learn about American history.

And so I decided to start to investigate.

Is there anything in colonial Arkansas I could write about?

Is that a place that had a colonial history?

And it turns out it did.

There were French and Spanish, and eventually British and U.S.

troops and commanders who went into Arkansas and, negotiated with and traded with all kinds of different native peoples.

And so I found this whole history that I hadn't known about growing up at all.

And that pretty much nobody knew about.

And that sort of started me on the road, not only of history, but of wanting to write about places and people that, that we didn't know that much about.

And when we talk about the book Independence Lost again, as I mentioned, the intro is kind of a different look at the American Revolution.

What sparked you to take that view as opposed to what everyone else.

And, yeah.

So I was writing my first book was about Colonial Arkansas, and I kept reading these accounts by Spanish officials where they talked about the American Revolution.

And the thing they said over and over about the American Revolution was that they, Spain, had won the American Revolution.

I thought, that doesn't make any sense.

That doesn't that does not fit with anything I know about the American Revolution.

And so I the more I learned about that, and the more I learned about why they thought that and the battles that Spain fought in the American Revolution at Pensacola and Baton Rouge and Mobile and other places that I had no idea there were revolutionary battles at.

I realized that's that's my next story.

I want to tell that story.

I want to learn more about it myself.

And then I want that to be part of what Americans learn about the American Revolution.

Was it hard to find the information?

So it actually wasn't.

It turns out the Spanish and British archives, not so much the US archives, but the Spanish and British archives are full of information about the American Revolution and to both Spanish officials and British officials, this was a war between them, between Britain on the one side and France and Spain on the other.

And one of the things I realized as I was reading these long letters and reports, military reports, diplomatic reports, official reports of various kinds, was that they kind of fought the revolution that I thought was the real revolution.

And I know I still think it's a very, very important part of the revolution was just a sideshow.

That the war that they cared about was an imperial war, and it was over North America who was going to get parts of North America?

But this little republic that had created itself on the Atlantic seaboard, they didn't think was going to last or if it did, it wasn't going to be very important.

What mattered were France and Spain and Britain.

Interesting.

So once you start delving into it, what most surprised you?

Oh, that's a good question.

I think I, I think it was the end of the war.

And it gets back to what I was saying before about Spain thinking they had won the war.

If you look at a Spanish map of North America or the Americas after the revolution, not only does it say Spanish colonies across all of South America, Central America, Mexico, California, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana swore it, so which at the time is Mississippi, Alabama and our Florida.

And then it shows as belonging to Spain.

Almost all of the lands between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.

So basically, the United States is as small as possible, you know, basically from New England to Georgia, but smaller than those states are today, for the most part, just hugging the the ocean.

And almost all of North America.

Spain thinks is Spanish theirs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

So once you start writing the book, there's some interesting characters that that are in the book.

Take me through kind of the I guess it's 6 or 7 that are kind of primary focus, focused on take me through who was you?

Well, first of all, let me ask you this.

Who was your favorite?

Yeah.

So I think my favorite is a woman named Margaret O'Brien Pollock.

She is an Irish woman.

She is.

Her father objected to British takeover of Ireland.

They're Catholic.

And so he decides to leave Ireland and fight for France.

So fight for Catholic France against Protestant Britain in hopes of someday getting Ireland back and making Ireland independent again.

And so she ends up sort of touring around different places with him and ends up in New Orleans, and she's in New Orleans during the American Revolution.

And through her story, I was able to say, well, what's it like to be a woman in war who who has political opinions, who cares about this war?

But also so her husband, Oliver Pollock, ends up loaning a huge amount of money to the American war effort.

So they're on the American side, and she ends up losing her house.

She ends up having to.

She's pregnant and thrown out of the house with her small children while her husband is off in Virginia, trying to get the Virginians to repay him the money he's lent them.

And, I think those are the kind of stories we don't hear that much about the revolution.

You know, the revolution is so many different experiences for so many different people.

And she gave me a window into a, I really, you know, an unusual one of somebody who's on the right side of the revolution, right?

Her side wins.

But her, her family, her family's finances just get destroyed because of the revolution.

Yeah, it's amazing the amount of sacrifice it takes, places.

And when you really think about that.

That's right, that's right.

Yeah.

And I am not sure.

No.

In fact, I know that not everybody who decided on this revolution knew at the beginning of it how much it would cost them.

Yeah, yeah.

Talk, talk a little bit about some of the other ones that we should know about.

Yeah, yeah.

So there's a, a man named Alexander McGillivray, and he sounds Scottish.

Right.

And his father indeed was Scottish, but his mother was a Muskogee Creek.

And so he was both he was both Scottish and Muskogee Creek.

And he was on the other side of Margaret, of the revolution for Margaret O'Brien.

Pollock.

He ends up on the British side.

He strongly supports the British.

His father is a Scottish merchant who gets kicked out of the Carolinas for being a loyalist.

So he hates the rebels, and he goes back to his mother's home country, to Muskogee Creek country, in what is now Alabama.

For the most part.

And he tries to encourage all Muskogee Creek warriors to fight for Spain.

I'm sorry, fight for Britain against Spain and against the rebels because he wants them to fight on the side of Britain.

And, says Creek independence, our future as a nation, as a native nation, depends on the British winning this.

And in fact, the British keeping the colonists from coming on to our lands, because it's the colonies that are growing, the British colonies that are growing so fast, that settlers are coming onto creek land and other native land.

And, so he rallies Creek warriors to fight in the revolution.

Interesting.

And as I was going through James and, and Isabella, Bruce told me about.

Yeah.

So they, come to Pensacola.

They're both from Scotland.

They, James Bruce is a veteran of the Seven Years War, the French and Indian War, the for the war right before the American Revolution.

And he gets a land grant from the British for his service.

A land grant doesn't mean you get to go back to Scotland and have landed a state.

Right?

It means basically you have a piece of paper and it says you can go to a British colony and get some land.

Most of the British colonies don't have land available at this point.

But West Florida, which Pensacola was the capital of at the time, British West Florida had land available.

So he comes here.

He eventually, goes back to Scotland and marries, Isabella Bruce and they want to make a go of it here in this really for the British.

Quite new colonies, of course, a very old Spanish colony.

But it become British at the end of the Seven Years War, the French and Indian War.

And they come here, they buy some.

They establish themselves on the lands that, with his land certificate, they buy some more lands, they establish plantations, they're growing indigo and other crops.

They're enslaved people are growing indigo and other crops for export out of Pensacola, into the British market.

And so when the revolution comes, their lives, their livelihoods, their fortunes that they're building, their hopes for their children, those all rests on the British Empire.

So in great contrast to, say, rebels in Virginia who decide that their best fortune, the best thing for their sons and daughters will be to rebel against the British, maybe to establish their own country, the Bruces here in Pensacola.

Think why on earth would we ever want to get rid of the empire that protects us, protects us from from slave uprisings, protects us from native attacks?

And that with its ships, takes the goods that we're growing all over the world and brings us imported goods back.

Why would we ever want to mess with that?

So they are diehard loyalists, and they strongly support the British, holding on to West Florida.

Holding on to Pensacola.

You mentioned Pensacola was the capital of West Florida.

Now, from a geographical standpoint, what did West Florida at that time encompass?

Yeah.

So at the end of the Seven Years War, French in any war, Britain had gotten the Floridas, so they split into two.

These two places that they call West Florida and East Florida.

East Florida is basically the peninsula of Florida today, and then West Florida is the panhandle of Florida, plus Alabama and Mississippi.

So it includes, not so Pensacola mobile, but even Baton Rouge.

So the parts of Louisiana that are on the other side of the Mississippi from, most of what's now the state of Louisiana.

So not New Orleans, but the other parts that are so a quite large area, a quite large area.

Right, right.

And, and a colony that had been Spanish and French before.

Okay.

And the primary economic drivers in those days.

So nothing at first.

Right.

The Spanish and the French had really not managed to come up with anything that made much money.

And so but the British and people like the Bruces are determined to turn that around.

And so it really is Indigo.

There's some effort at growing sugar.

There are, there's cattle raising outside of Pensacola and Mobile.

People are are trying to build an economy.

But if you think about it, at the time, in the 1760s, the Atlantic seaboard, British colonies, Jamaica, the most of the British West Indies colonies, those are the people.

Those are pretty well established people established their plantations in those places.

They've established their economies.

There's not, it's not easy for people to get a hold in West Florida.

Is is a place of opportunity for colonists who who want to sort of find their, their piece of the empire.

And what role did the ports play?

I mean, the water access.

Yes.

Everything right?

Yes.

So, these colonies won't exist at all if it weren't for the ports of Pensacola and Mobile.

And then for the Spanish New Orleans.

And you mentioned earlier you were talking about the Creek Indian tribe.

And so you talk a lot about the Creek Indians, the Cherokees and the Chickasaw.

You're right.

That's right.

So tell me a little bit about those three and how they the role they play, number one.

And then number two, how are they different.

Yeah.

Okay.

Great.

So this is you know, what's so important?

If we had a map, I would show you sort of there's the colonies are really there on the coast and a little bit up the Mississippi River.

Right.

So the vast interior of North America is native nations, the land, the control.

The population is mostly native, but as you say, they're different from one another.

They're not the same peoples.

Right.

So it's many native nations out there.

So the Cherokees and the creeks and the Choctaws and the Chickasaws, they're all people who have in various conglomeration, fought against each other in the past.

But the Seven Years War kicks France out of the region.

And so there are some people within those nations in those years between the 1760s and 1770s, when the revolution starts, who are trying to decide, well, okay, what's next?

What what should our future be?

And some of them think native nations should ally with one another, that that native nations that have been enemies in the past should stay out of European wars and and work together more than they had in the past.

And so when this revolution breaks out, this really this sort of squabble between some colonists and their empire, there are some natives, and particularly one of the characters I follow in here is, is a Chickasaw leader and diplomat named Pio Makaha, he says, and he and he goes around and has these huge diplomatic meetings with other southeastern tribes and says, we need to stop fighting each other.

We need to let this work itself out, because the last thing we want to do, as he says, is get between a father and his children, and we need to, be good diplomats, be good allies with one another, and not fight in this war.

Now, the British before this point have thought the Chickasaws are going to be their greatest native ally in this war.

The, the Chickasaws had long fought against the French and on the same side as the British.

Pirates.

He says, let's not do that.

And so the British actually expect the Chickasaws to show up in huge numbers to the battles of mobile, Pensacola.

And they don't, pi matata starts to convince not only Chickasaw, but people within some of the other tribes to let's not fight on the British side.

Let's just see what happens.

And particularly he says, let's not fight against Spain.

Let's not even our enemy, and so it's interesting to sort of think about what might have happened if, say, the Chickasaws and the Choctaws.

And the creeks had fought on the British side.

It might have the British might have won a lot more battles around here, but, but they didn't.

Interesting.

Tell me about the Battle of Pensacola.

How important was that?

Tremendously important.

So at this point, by the time of the Battle of Pensacola in 1781, Spanish general and Louisiana Governor Bernardo the Galvez has, won several battles along the Gulf Coast.

He has, won battles at Baton Rouge at Mobile, taken both of those places.

And now he has amassed an even larger force to attack Pensacola.

In the spring of 1781, militia troops from Louisiana, and then Spanish troops from many parts of the empire, including most of them coming from Havana and Spanish ships, of course, Pensacola, support and friendships as well.

So Bernard de Galvez brings all these forces to Pensacola Bay.

His, the captain of the lead ships.

As we can't get in that bay.

It's it's too shallow.

We can't get in practical.

This basically says you're just a big sissy.

And he at least the way the story goes, leads the main ship through Pensacola Bay.

He gets the captain of one of the ships to just charge on through, and he shows like this large ship could get through.

Everybody can get through.

They come into Pensacola Bay.

There's a, fairly prolonged siege, and, and they take the port.

And one of the things.

So I say a couple of things that are tremendously significant about this Spanish victory at Pensacola over the British.

First, it is West Florida is the very first British colony that Britain loses.

That wasn't in rebellion.

That's not good.

Right.

And then the Spanish and the French go from there.

The Spanish go and take the Bahamas.

So they start to take, valuable colonies.

Massachusetts makes no money for the Empire.

Bahamas, Jamaica, these places make money.

And Spain is Galvez is just about to attack Jamaica.

That's going to be the next Spanish target.

At the same time, the French fleet leaves after the Battle of Pensacola and goes to Yorktown and helps to win a great victory there in the fall of 1781.

And all of this encircles the British, leads to the British deciding to end this stupid war before it gets even worse and giving us American independence.

So Galvez is a pretty popular guy in this area.

As I mentioned earlier, we're taping this program in West Florida, in Northwest Florida.

Okay.

And you may have seen the statue of what kind of guy was he?

So he is a bold man of his era.

So to understand him, you have to understand he is completely a man of the Spanish Empire.

He wants the Spanish Empire to expand.

He's not a revolutionary.

But at the same time, he understands people.

And he is so good at get at getting people on his side in New Orleans.

He's he's made the governor of Louisiana.

He goes to New Orleans.

He speaks French.

He marries a French woman.

He brings French people onto his side when they thought Spanish rule was was not what they wanted at all.

He then as he moves into West Florida, he convinces many of the British settlers that actually their prosperity will be served just as well by the Spanish as it was by the British.

He just must have been incredibly magnetic.

And his troops talk about him like they would do anything for him.

And I heard you say somewhere he was a very positive guy.

Yeah, that's right.

A hurricane hits New Orleans right before he's going to leave to attack, on his first, first expedition to attack West Florida.

And he rallies the troops.

He rallies the people of New Orleans.

He says we can survive this.

We got to march out and and do what we were going to do anyway.

And yeah, he just seems always to think everything's possible, and.

And he wins.

And wins.

How cool.

Fascinating story.

The name of the book independent lost.

And it is being rereleased in conjunction with the Ken Burns documentary so people can, I'm sure, pick it up at the usual outlets for books.

But before we end the program, I have to talk to you about something that is a big deal.

You're a Pulitzer Prize winning author, so tell me a little bit about that book.

Make sure I got the title right.

Native Nations right.

So what's it about?

Yeah, I mean, obviously I know what to do.

It's real.

So it's called.

Yeah, it's called Native Nations.

A millennium in North America.

And what it does is it tries to tell, something of the last thousand years of native history.

It starts before Europeans got to North America.

It shows not only how native nations were, before Europeans came, but also change over time that they weren't just, here, just sort of sitting around for Europeans to come and start history.

Right?

That lots of things happened before Europeans came.

And then it shows that for hundreds of years, even after 1492, native nations stayed powerful.

They stayed in control of most of the continent as we were talking about it, even by the time of the revolution, the late 18th century.

And then it shows how native nations survived through some of the hardest times.

Indian removal, and and sort of efforts really to, to destroy them as nations, to assimilate native people.

So sort of one of the threads of the story is, is native nations surviving not just as Native Americans, not just that they're descendants of native nations still here today, but that there's still over 600 federally and state recognized tribes even within the United States.

And so, sort of one of the points of the book is that they somehow survived, all these centuries, and then they're still around.

Fascinating.

As you look at your entire body of work, what if you could talk to leaders today?

And I'm not political, but from both parties, what what have you learned from that body of work that you would love to pass on to them?

I think what drew me to this is, is people who are very different from one another coming together.

Right?

That's colonial America.

That's revolutionary America.

And things worked best for most people.

If they listen to each other, if they work together, if they tried to understand one another's perspectives and the times when things went the worst is when we forgot how to do that, when we forgot that people on other sides of issues also are human beings, also have motivations, that they have issues that we could put ourselves into, even if we totally don't agree with them.

Listening and understanding them leads us to better answers, better futures than than when we stopped doing that.

Your professor, are you and see what are the young people talking about today?

So I got to say I mostly see them in my classes.

But I will tell you, one of the things that I've really noticed over the last couple of years is that as I've taught the American Revolution for 20 years at USC, and I used to teach it, and they were interested in the revolution.

But it was about the 18th century, right?

Today, students, whatever their politics are, I know that there is something in the founding of our country that is essential that they want to know about, and that it has something to do with their lives today and their futures.

So they're realizing how important history really is.

I think they, that's a good that's a that's very good.

I have about one minute left.

Anything else exciting that you're working on?

I've, been working on this Ken Burns documentary.

It's, been such a pleasure to work on that with, with the people who who made that documentary.

Just shows me what, what, story can be told beyond a book.

I think books are great, but a documentary can really, really bring history to life.

So we should look for you on camera.

That's right.

On the On the Burns documentary, Kathleen Duvall, thank you so very much.

I wish you all the very best.

One of the books that we were talking about, it's called Independence Lost Lives on the edge of the American Revolution, and it talks an awful lot about, the Gulf Coast and, some very fascinating characters that were, influential in the outcome of the American Revolution.

And then in addition to that, the Pulitzer Prize for Native Nations.

So historian, author, Pulitzer Prize winner Kathleen Duvall in the Ken Burns documentary American Revolution.

So a lot of good stuff on the resume.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Oh.

Thank you.

Wishing you all the very best, by the way.

You can catch this and many more of our conversations at the PBS video app, as well as on YouTube.

I'm Jeff Weeks.

I hope you enjoyed our program.

Thank you very much for watching.

Take wonderful care of yourself.

We'll see you soon.