Robb K. Haberman has edited for publication a little-known Revolutionary War memoir written by James Selkirk (1757-1820), a Scottish immigrant who came to New York and served over seven years in the Continental Army. James Selkirk’s Revolutionary War: The Memoir of a Continental Sergeant describes Selkirk’s participation in military engagements that ranged from the the wilderness of northern New York to the waters of Chesapeake Bay and contains his personal observations on the daily rigors and duties common to an enlisted soldier in Continental service.
The published work also examines how Selkirk’s decision to write his memoir occurred as politicians and citizens debated whether the federal government should enact a pension program in support of the nation’s aged and mostly impoverished community of Revolutionary-era veterans. Through his writing, Selkirk weighed in on this issue, drawing attention to the deserved rights and recognition due to his surviving brothers in arms. Just as he had taken up a musket in earlier decades in the struggle for national independence, Selkirk now wielded a pen on behalf of the aging cohort of American veterans who were experiencing hardship in the era of the early republic. Selkirk planned to share his recollections of the war with a broader audience, but his death in December 1820 precluded the publication of the manuscript memoir as a printed book until now.
James Selkirk’s Revolutionary War is available through Westholme Publishing. https://www.westholmepublishing.com/book/james-selkirk-haberman/
