James Selkirk's Revolutionary War

A Significant Personal Account by a Continental Soldier, in Print for the First Time

In the twilight years of his life, James Selkirk (1757–1820), a modest tailor and Revolutionary War veteran residing in Bethlehem, New York, composed a memoir about his wartime experiences in the Continental Army. Selkirk’s memoir tells the story of a young Scottish immigrant who served well and faithfully as a non-commissioned officer in three different corps from April 1776 through June 1783. During this period, Selkirk fought in several engagementsthat ranged from the wilderness of northern New York to the waters of Chesapeake Bay. In addition to chronicling his participation in these campaigns, the memoir contains Selkirk’s personal observations and anecdotes about the daily rigors and duties common to an enlisted soldier in Continental service. James Selkirk’s Revolutionary War, edited by historian Robb K. Haberman, discusses how Selkirk endured over seven years of soldiering with the Continental Army. It also explores 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 memoir ranks among the earliest known writings that reveal unique and personal assessments of a common soldier’s existence during the American Revolution, from slogging on the march and performing duties in camp to facing the terrors of the battlefield.