It features such characters as Hell-fire Dick, a hardhearted, foul-mouthed looter under Tory protection. Simms hoped his readers would find this book "a bold, brave, masculine story; frank, ardent, vigorous; faithful to humanity.

These volumes treated such subjects as Americanism in literature and the American Revolution in South Carolina. Yet, as part two of Selected Reviews demonstrates, Simms ranged much more widely in the intellectual milieu.