Dorwart details how the earliest European settlers radically changed the local Native American culture and introduced black slavery. In the Revolutionary War, the countys location directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia placed it at the crossroads of the American Revolution. Dorwart examines the countys conflicted roles during the Civil War, when the older agrarian population, which held traditional social and economic ties to the slave-owing South, clashed with the increasingly industrialized interests of the urban waterfront, which showed strong Unionist tendencies. He explores the changing demographics of the area as waves of European immigrants came to work in the factories. He surveys the rise and fall of first Camden City, then of the suburbs, as both areas experienced population ebbs and flows. Finally, Dorwart looks at the revitalization efforts of 2000 when Camden County began efforts to reinvent the riverfront community where it all began.

Jeffery M. Dorwart is a professor of history and former chair of the history department at Rutgers University, Camden. He has written a number of books including Cape May County, New Jersey: The Making of an American Resort (Rutgers University Press) and, most recently, The Philadelphia Navy Yard: From the Birth of the U.S. Navy to the Nuclear Age.

From Camden County, New Jersey

"While acknowledging the imprint of Anglo-American Protestant values and institutions on Camden County, a multicultural approach to its history recognizes the countys rich diversity. The concept of a metropolitan county composed of different cultural and ethnic groups can be a valuable method with which to analyze the American historical experience in local community building. More important, it enables the people of Camden County to begin the new millennium with a better understanding of how their individual cultures contributed to the formation of the place where they make their lives today."from Camden County, New Jersey: The Making of a Metropolitan Community, 16262000