Education

• Ph.D., Georgetown University - History
• M.A., Georgetown University - History
• M.A., Marquette University - History
• B.A., University of Wisconsin Oshkosh - History and English

Background

I have been teaching at WLC since 2005. Previously, I lived in Washington, D.C., for five years while attending graduate school at Georgetown and working at the American Studies Association. I am originally from Appleton, Wis., where I attended St. Matthew Lutheran School, Fox Valley Lutheran High School, and Appleton West High School. I currently reside in West Allis and am a member of Nain Evangelical Lutheran Church. In my free time, I enjoy golfing, computers, movies, collecting books, reading, hiking, and travel.

Teaching

• HIS 101 American History 1, 1492-1865
• HIS 102 American History 2, 1866-1945
• HIS 211 Modern Europe, 1850-Present
• HIS 322 French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789-1815
• HIS 342 Colonial Latin America
• HIS 379 Witchcraft and Culture in the Atlantic World
• HIS 380 Colonial British America, 1480-1763
• HIS 381 American Revolution and Early Republic, 1763-1815

Research Interests

My research interests involve the early modern Atlantic world, particularly the political history of the eighteenth-century British Empire, especially the southern colonies.

My first book, A Rule of Law: Elite Political Authority and the Coming of the Revolution in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1763-1776 (Brill, 2014), offers a fresh examination of how South Carolina planters and merchants - the wealthiest in the thirteen colonies - held an iron grip on political power in the province. Their authority, rooted in control of the colonial legislature's power to make law, extended into local government, courts, plantations, and the Church of England, areas that previous political studies have not thoroughly considered. These elite planters and merchants, who were conservative by nature and fiercely guarded their control of provincial government, led the province into the American Revolution in defense of the order they had established in the colonial period.

Future projects include a new study of Charleston, South Carolina, during the British occupation of 1780-1782; a study of the royal governors in the southern colonies; and further development of the Lutheran philosophy of history.

Scholarly Works

Selected Publications

James Waring McCrady and C.L. Bragg, "Patriots in Exile: Charleston Rebels in St. Augustine during the American Revolution," Journal of Southern History, forthcoming 2021.

Huw David, "Trade, Politics, and Revolution: South Carolina and Britain’s Atlantic Commerce, 1730-1790," English Historical Review, ceaa276, http://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceaa276, December 25, 2020.

Glenn A. Moots and Phillip Hamilton, eds, "Justifying Revolution: Law and Virtue in the American War of Independence," Journal of American History, forthcoming 2019-2020.

Jim Stempel, "American Hannibal: The Extraordinary Account of Revolutionary War Hero Daniel Morgan at the Battle of Cowpens," Journal of Southern History, 85.1, February 2019.

Robert Dunkerly and Irene Boland, "Eutaw Springs: The Final Battle of the American Revolution’s Southern Campaign," The Journal of Southern History, LXXXIV, No. 3, August 2018.

C.L. Bragg, "Martyr of the American Revolution: The Execution of Isaac Hayne, South Carolinian," Journal of Military History, 81.1, January 2018.

“An Empire of Liberty’s Evil Necessity: Naval Impressment and the Nature of the Eighteenth-Century British Empire,” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 58:2 (Summer 2017).

“The Man Unmasked: Henry Laurens, Egerton Leigh, and the Making of a South Carolina Revolutionary,” Journal of the American Revolution, May 17, 2017. 

"A Rule of Law: Elite Political Authority and the Coming of the Revolution in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1763-1776." Leiden: Brill, 2014. (Volume 3 in the Brill Early American History Series)

"An Extension of Power: Criminal Justice, Law Enforcement, and Elite Rule in South Carolina on the Eve of the American Revolution," The Journal of Early American History, vol. 1, no. 3 (December 2011).

Conference Papers

"An Extension of Power: Criminal Justice, Law Enforcement, and Elite Rule in South Carolina on the Eve of the American Revolution." International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, Harvard University, August 2010.

"Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor: Imperialist and Colonial Identity Among Governing Elites in South Carolina, Maryland, Barbados and Jamaica, 1763-1783," American Studies Association Annual Meeting, November 14-17, 2002, Houston, Texas.

"I Have Done More than You Deserved: The 1775 Duel Between Henry Laurens and John Faucheraud Grimke." Missouri Valley History Conference, March 2008, Omaha, Nebraska.

"Crimes of the Most Heinous Nature:  Crime and Punishment in South Carolina, 1763-1776." Missouri Valley History Conference, March 2010, Omaha, Nebraska.

"The Man Unmasked: Henry Laurens, Egerton Leigh, and the Making of a South Carolina Revolutionary." Northern Great Plains History Conference, September 2013, Hudson, Wisconsin.

Service

• WLC Assessment Committee, 2007-2013
• Chair, WLC Faculty Affairs Committee, 2013-2015; General Education Committee, 2019; Curriculum Committee, 2019-2020
• Chair, WLC Faculty Senate, 2015-2017
• Chair, WLC School of Humanities 
• WLC Department Head, History
• Church Council / Board of Elders, Nain Lutheran Church, West Allis

Membership in Professional Societies

• American Historical Association
• South Carolina Historical Society
• Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture