Rough Crossings is the astonishing story of the struggle to freedom by thousands of African-American slaves who fled the plantations to fight behind British lines in the American War of Independence. With gripping, powerfully vivid story-telling, Simon Schama follows the escaped blacks into the fires of the war, and into freezing, inhospitable Nova Scotia where many who had served the Crown were betrayed in their promises to receive land at the war's end. Their fate became entwined with British abolitionists: inspirational figures such as Granville Sharp, the flute-playing father-figure of slave freedom, and John Clarkson, the 'Moses' of this great exodus, who accompanied the blacks on their final rough crossing to Africa, where they hoped that freedom would finally greet them.

The Age of Revolutions has been celebrated for the momentous transition from absolute monarchies to representative governments and the creation of nation-states in the Atlantic world. Much less recognized than the spread of democratic ideals was the period's growing traffic of goods, capital, and people across imperial borders and reforming states' attempts to control this mobility. Analyzing the American, French, and Haitian revolutions in an interconnected narrative, Manuel Covo centers imperial trade as a driving force, arguing that commercial factors preceded and conditioned political change across the revolutionary Atlantic. At the heart of these transformations was the "entrepot," the island known as the "Pearl of the Caribbean," whose economy grew dramatically as a direct consequence of the American Revolution and the French-American alliance. Saint-Domingue was the single most profitable colony in the Americas in the second half of the eighteenth century, with its staggering production of sugar and coffee and the unpaid labor of enslaved people. The colony was so focused on its lucrative exports that it needed to import food and timber from North America, which generated enormous debate in France about the nature of its sovereignty over Saint-Domingue. At the same time, the newly independent United States had to come to terms with contradictory interests between the imperial ambitions of European powers, its connections with the Caribbean, and its own domestic debates over the future of slavery. This work sheds light on the three-way struggle among France, the United States, and Haiti to assert, define, and maintain "commercial" sovereignty. Drawing on a wealth of archives in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Entrepot of Revolutions offers an innovative perspective on the primacy of economic factors in this era, as politicians and theorists, planters and merchants, ship captains, smugglers, and the formerly enslaved all attempted to transform capitalism in the Atlantic world.

Born into one of the wealthiest families in Philadelphia and raised and educated in that vital center of eighteenth-century American Quakerism, Anne Emlen Mifflin was a progressive force in early America. This detailed and engaging biography, which features Anne's collected writings and selected correspondence, revives her legacy. Anne grew up directly across the street from the Pennsylvania statehouse, where the Continental Congress was leading the War of Independence. A Quaker minister whose busy pen, agile mind, and untiring moral energy produced an extensive corpus of writings, Anne was an ardent abolitionist and social reformer decades before the establishment of women's anti-slavery societies. And at a time when most Americans never ventured beyond their own village, hamlet, or farm, Anne journeyed thousands of miles. She traveled to settlements of Friends on the frontier and met with Native Americans in the rough country of northwestern Pennsylvania, New York, and Canada. Our Beloved Friend provides a unique window onto the lives of Quakers during the pre-Revolutionary era, the establishment of the New Republic, and the War of 1812.

The first biography of George Washington's extraordinary nephew, who inherited Mount Vernon and was Chief Justice John Marshall's right-hand man on the Supreme Court for nearly thirty years. George Washington's nephew and heir was a Supreme Court Justice for over thirty years and left an indelible mark on American law. Despite his remarkable life and notable lineage, he is unknown to most Americans because he cared more about establishing the rule of law than about personal glory. In Washington's Heir, Gerard N. Magliocca gives us the first published biography of Bushrod Washington, one of the most underrated Founding Fathers. Born in 1762, Justice Washington fought in the Revolutionary War, served in Virginia's ratifying convention for the Constitution, and was Chief Justice John Marshall's partner in establishing the authority of the Supreme Court. Though he could only see from one eye, Justice Washington wrote many landmark decisions defining the fundamental rights of citizens and the structure of the Constitution, including Corfield v. Coryell-an influential source for the Congress that proposed the Fourteenth Amendment. As George Washington's personal heir, Bushrod inherited both Mount Vernon and the family legacy of owning other people, one of whom was almost certainly his half-brother or nephew. Yet Justice Washington alone among the Founders was criticized by journalists for selling enslaved people and, in turn, issued a public defence of his actions that laid bare the hypocrisy and cruelty of slavery. An in-depth look at Justice Washington's extraordinary story that gives insight into his personal thoughts through his own secret journal, Washington's Heir sheds new light not only on George Washington, John Marshall, and the Constitution, but also on America's ongoing struggle to become a more perfect union.

In this penetrating biography of Thomas Bradbury Chandler, S. Scott Rohrer takes readers deep into the intellectual world of a leading loyalist who defended monarchy, rejected rebellion and democracy, and opposed the American Revolution. Talented, hardworking, and erudite, this Anglican minister from New Jersey possessed one of the Church of England's most outstanding minds. Chandler was an Anglican leader in the 1760s and a key strategist in the effort to strengthen the American church in the years preceding the Revolution. He headed the campaign to create an Anglican bishopric in America-a cause that helped inflame tensions with American radicals unhappy with British policies. And, in the 1770s, his writings provided some of the most trenchant criticisms of the American revolutionary movement, raising fundamental questions about obedience, subordination, and rebellion that undercut Whig assertions about republicanism and popular control. Working from Chandler's library catalog and other primary sources, Rohrer digs into Chandler's political and religious beliefs, exploring their origins and the events in British history that shaped them. An intriguing and thoughtful reappraisal of a consequential figure in early American history, this biography will captivate students, scholars, and lay readers interested in politics and religion in Revolutionary-era America.

In his celebrated account of the origins of American unity, John Adams described July 1776 as the moment when thirteen clocks managed to strike at the same time. So how did these American colonies overcome long odds to create a durable union capable of declaring independence from Britain? In this powerful new history of the fifteen tense months that culminated in the Declaration of Independence, Robert G. Parkinson provides a troubling answer: racial fear. Tracing the circulation of information in the colonial news systems that linked patriot leaders and average colonists, Parkinson reveals how the system's participants constructed a compelling drama featuring virtuous men who suddenly found themselves threatened by ruthless Indians and defiant slaves acting on behalf of the king. Parkinson argues that patriot leaders used racial prejudices to persuade Americans to declare independence. Between the Revolutionary War's start at Lexington and the Declaration, they broadcast any news they could find about Native Americans, enslaved Blacks, and Hessian mercenaries working with their British enemies. American independence thus owed less to the love of liberty than to the exploitation of colonial fears about race. Thirteen Clocks offers an accessible history of the Revolution that uncovers the uncomfortable origins of the republic even as it speaks to our own moment.

In The Letters of Mary Penry, Scott Paul Gordon provides unprecedented access to the intimate world of a Moravian single sister. This vast collection of letters-compiled, transcribed, and annotated by Gordon-introduces readers to an unmarried woman who worked, worshiped, and wrote about her experience living in Moravian religious communities at the time of the American Revolution and early republic. Penry, a Welsh immigrant and a convert to the Moravian faith, was well connected in both the international Moravian community and the state of Pennsylvania. She counted among her acquaintances Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker and Hannah Callender Sansom, two American women whose writings have also been preserved, in addition to members of some of the most prominent families in Philadelphia, such as the Shippens, the Franklins, and the Rushes. This collection brings together more than seventy of Penry's letters, few of which have been previously published. Gordon's introduction provides a useful context for understanding the letters and the unique woman who wrote them. This collection of Penry's letters broadens perspectives on early America and the eighteenth-century Moravian Church by providing a sustained look at the spiritual and social life of a single woman at a time when singleness was extraordinarily rare. It also makes an important contribution to the recovery of women's voices in early America, amplifying views on politics, religion, and social networks from a time when few women's perspectives on these subjects have been preserved.

Benjamin Hoffmann's Posthumous America examines the literary idealization of a lost American past in the works of French writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For writers such as John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur and Claude-Francois de Lezay-Marnesia, America was never more potent as a driving ideal than in its loss. Examining the paradoxical American paradise depicted in Crevecoeur's Lettres d'un cultivateur americain (1784); the "uchronotopia"-the imaginary perfect society set in America and based on what France might have become without the Revolution-of Lezay-Marnesia's Lettres ecrites des rives de l'Ohio (1792); and the political and nationalistic motivations behind Francois-Rene Chateaubriand's idealization of America in Voyage en Amerique (1827) and Memoires d'outre-tombe (1850), Hoffmann shows how the authors' liberties with the truth helped create the idealized and nostalgic representation of America that dominated the collective European consciousness of their times. From a historical perspective, Posthumous America works to determine when exactly these writers stopped transcribing what they actually observed in America and started giving imaginary accounts of their experiences. A vital contribution to transatlantic studies, this detailed exploration of French perspectives on the colonial era, the War of Independence, and the birth of the American Republic sheds new light on the French fascination with America. Posthumous America will be invaluable for historians, political scientists, and specialists of literature whose scholarship looks at America through European eyes.

Home to the so-called big five publishers as well as hundreds of smaller presses, renowned literary agents, a vigorous arts scene, and an uncountable number of aspiring and established writers alike, New York City is widely perceived as the publishing capital of the United States and the world. This book traces the origins and early evolution of the city's rise to literary preeminence. Through five case studies, Steven Carl Smith examines publishing in New York from the post-Revolutionary War period through the Jacksonian era. He discusses the gradual development of local, regional, and national distribution networks, assesses the economic relationships and shared social and cultural practices that connected printers, booksellers, and their customers, and explores the uncharacteristically modern approaches taken by the city's preindustrial printers and distributors. If the cultural matrix of printed texts served as the primary legitimating vehicle for political debate and literary expression, Smith argues, then deeper understanding of the economic interests and political affiliations of the people who produced these texts gives necessary insight into the emergence of a major American industry. Those involved in New York's book trade imagined for themselves, like their counterparts in other major seaport cities, a robust business that could satisfy the new nation's desire for print, and many fulfilled their ambition by cultivating networks that crossed regional boundaries, delivering books to the masses. A fresh interpretation of the market economy in early America, An Empire of Print reveals how New York started on the road to becoming the publishing powerhouse it is today.

Freedom of speech was restricted during the Revolutionary War. In the struggle for independence, those who remained loyal to the British crown were persecuted with loss of employment, eviction from their homes, heavy taxation, confiscation of property and imprisonment. Loyalist Americans from all walks of life were branded as traitors and enemies of the people. By the end of the war, 80,000 had fled their homeland to face a dismal exile from which few returned-outcasts of a new republic based on democratic values of liberty, equality and justice.

The clash of modernity and an Amish buggy might be the first image that comes to one's mind when imagining Lancaster, Pennsylvania, today. But in the early to mid-eighteenth century, Lancaster stood apart as an active and religiously diverse, ethnically complex, and bustling city. On the eve of the American Revolution, Lancaster's population had risen to nearly three thousand inhabitants; it stood as a center of commerce, industry, and trade. While the German-speaking population-Anabaptists as well as German Lutherans, Moravians, and German Calvinists-made up the majority, about one-third were English-speaking Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Quakers, Calvinists, and other Christian groups. A small group of Jewish families also lived in Lancaster, though they had no synagogue. Carefully mining historical records and documents, from tax records to church membership rolls, Mark Haberlein confirms that religion in Lancaster was neither on the decline nor rapidly changing; rather, steady and deliberate growth marked a diverse religious population.

Although American independence was no miracle, the timing of the country's independence and its huge scope, both political and territorial, do seem miraculous. In The Miracle of American Independence Jonathan R. Dull reconstructs significant events before, during, and after the Revolutionary War that had dramatic consequences for the future as the colonies sought independence from Great Britain. Without these surprising and unexpected results, Dull maintains, the country would have turned out quite differently. The Miracle of American Independence reimagines how the British might have averted or overcome American independence, and how the fledgling country itself could have lost its independence. Drawing on his nearly fifty years of research and a lively imagination, Dull puts readers in a position to consider the American Revolution from the perspective of the European states and their monarchs. This alternative history provides a stimulating reintroduction to one of the most exciting periods in American and European history, proving that sometimes reality is even stranger and more miraculous than fiction.

Providing an in-depth examination of the bloody battle of Brandywine and other military engagements that resulted in the British capture of Philadelphia, McGuire weaves surviving first-hand accounts into the compelling story of the fight for the Continental capital. Covering all sides, from the soldiers in the battlefields to civilian witnesses, McGuire's account of the campaign for Philadelphia is a must-read for military history and Revolutionary War scholars. "The Philadelphia Campaign is first-rate, an absorbing work of tenacious research and close scholarship. Thomas J. McGuire knows the time of the American Revolution and has been over the ground in and about Philadelphia in a way few writers ever have. But it is his empathy for the human reality of war and the great variety of people caught up in it, whether in the service of the king or the Glorious Cause of America, that makes this book especially alive and memorable."--David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of John Adams and 1776

Some Pennsylvania Women During the War of the Revolution, first published in 1898 by the Harrisburg Publishing Company, presents biographical sketches of almost seventy women who supported the American Revolution and the soldiers at Valley Forge, noting their lives, family history, character, and the particulars of their roles in the revolutionary effort, including providing food, clothing, shelter, and support for the patriots. As the author writes in his prefatory note, this book aims to bring to light "the patriotism, sufferings, and self-denials" of the women of the American Revolution in Pennsylvania, whom he calls "the Matrons of the Declaration." The book examines the lives of women at the end of the eighteenth century and shows the value of their contributions to the war. "The saviors of our country at Valley Forge, in their raggedness and misery, would have starved," Egle writes, "had it not been for that devoted band of true-hearted loving women whose homes were on or lying near the frontiers of our grand old Commonwealth." This book provides a fitting tribute to these women and their roles in the state's, and nation's, history.

The loss of America in 1781 has traditionally been blamed on incompetent British military commanders and political leaders whose arrogant confidence and out-dated tactics were no match for the innovative and determined Americans. But this is far from the truth. Weaving together the personal stories of ten prominent characters, including King George III, Prime Minister Lord North, General Burgoyne, and the Earl of Sandwich, Andrew O'Shaughnessy demolishes the myths, emerging with a very different and much richer account of the conflict - one driven by able and even brilliant leadership.

Every war has refugees; every revolution has exiles. Most of the refugees of the French Revolution mourned the demise of the monarchy. Lessons from America examines an unusual group who did not. Doina Pasca Harsanyi looks at the American experience of a group of French liberal aristocrats, early participants in the French Revolution, who took shelter in Philadelphia during the Reign of Terror. The book traces their path from enlightened salons to revolutionary activism to subsequent exile in America and, finally, back to government posts in France--illuminating the ways in which the French experiment in democracy was informed by the American experience.

In the summer of 1814 a squadron of Royal Navy ships attacked the tiny Connecticut seaport of Stonington, and declared its intention of destroying the town. Over the next four days the British barraged the nearly defenseless civilian population with some fifty tons of explosives, before mysteriously upping anchor and sailing away, leaving Stonington largely intact. Though a mere footnote in America's early naval history, the Battle of Stonington has remained a source of curiosity for two hundred years. Why did the British single out Stonington and then fail so miserably at their goal? To solve the mystery of this curious battle, and explain Britain's failure to level the town, the author takes the reader back some forty years to the Revolution to unfold a surprisingly complex set of circumstances involving people on both sides of the Atlantic and across America. Drawing on contemporary news accounts, secret Royal Navy correspondence, and other primary sources, he investigates events leading up to the puzzling attack and then recounts the exciting details of the battle itself. It is a memorable, masterly told story of brave and honorable people, divided loyalties, and new ideas fighting traditional, old-world values. As the book develops, James Tertius de Kay introduces a fascinating cast of characters that ranks with the best of fiction: Thomas Hardy, the hero of Trafalgar who led the British attack; Jeremiah Holmes, an American merchant captain who led the defense of Stonington; Stephen Decatur and Robert Fulton, two well-known American patriots; and a number of enterprising smugglers and spies. At the same time de Kay pays tribute to the significant roles played by new naval weapons--American submarine vessels and torpedoes, British rockets and bombs--that revolutionized the art of war. The Battle of Stonington brings all these elements into brilliant focus to provide a lively narrative history not just of the events at Stonington but of the entire period. It is a compelling, often humorous story.

David Zeisberger (1721-1808) was the head of a group of Moravian missionaries that settled in the Upper Ohio Valley in 1772 to minister to the Delaware Nation. For the next ten years, Zeisberger lived among the Delaware, becoming a trusted adviser and involving himself not only in religious activities but also in political and social affairs. During this time he kept diaries in which he recorded the full range of his activities. Published in English for the first time, The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger offers an unparalleled insider's view of Indian society during times of both war and peace.

Zeisberger's diaries, today housed at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, present a detailed picture of the effect of the American Revolution on one Indian nation--not only on political issues but also in terms of its economy, culture, and demographic structure. A later portion of the diaries, covering the post-Revolutionary War years, was translated and published in the nineteenth century, but the 1772-81 diaries have never been published in English translation. This translation is based on the full scholarly edition of the diaries, which Wellenreuther and Wessel published in Germany in 1995. Publication of this volume will forever change the way we see the impact of the American Revolution on Indian life and on the Ohio country.

During the era of the American Revolution and long after, the name Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson was well known in Philadelphia, recognized as belonging to one of British North America's most illustrious women of letters. One admirer dubbed her "the most learned woman in America." In this, the first full-length biography of Fergusson, Anne M. Ousterhout brilliantly captures the life and times of America's first great female savant.

Born in 1737 to a wealthy family, Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson excelled from an early age. Although women in her day were denied higher education, Fergusson read widely, educating herself in literature, history, and languages, even reading classical literature in the original tongues, an unusual ability for a colonial woman. She wrote prolifically--often until midnight or later, spending but a few hours sleeping--and published her poetry. Her journals of a trip to England and Scotland circulated widely among admiring Philadelphians. During the 1770s she hosted a Saturday evening salon at her home that was unrivaled in the colonies for its brilliance.

Yet despite her achievements, Fergusson's life was fraught with financial woes, bad romances, and treasonous plots that hounded her throughout her life. After her father forbade her marriage to Benjamin Franklin's illegitimate son, she secretly married Henry Hugh Fergusson, a British Loyalist who left her before the Revolution. Henry's actions, together with Elizabeth's own political indiscretions, earned her potent enemies, leading to the confiscation of her family estate, Graeme Park. Although she eventually succeeded in reclaiming her property, her reputation was tarnished in the process. Her efforts to justify her actions were tireless, alienating friends and making the last fifteen years of her life miserable.

The Most Learned Woman in America masterfully narrates Fergusson's efforts to live an appropriately genteel life, even as she struggled against the limits that her society placed on its women. In the process, we can begin to understand the conflicts--internal and external--that women of the Revolutionary generation faced.

The first complete biography of a little-known but fascinating figure in the history of espionage and the American Revolution A man of as many names as motives, Edward Bancroft is a singular figure in the history of Revolutionary America. Born in Massachusetts in 1745, Bancroft moved to England as a young man in the 1760s and began building a respectable resume as both a scientist and a man of letters. In recognition of his works in natural history, Bancroft was unanimously elected to the Royal Society, and while working to secure French aid for the American Revolution, he became a close associate of such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and John Adams. Though lauded in his time as a staunch American patriot, when the British diplomatic archives were opened in the late nineteenth century, it was revealed that Bancroft led a secret life as a British agent acting against French and American interests. In this book, the first complete biography of Bancroft, historian Thomas J. Schaeper reveals the full extent of the agent's deception during the crucial years of the American Revolution. Operating under aliases, working in ciphers, and leaving coded messages in the trees of Paris's Tuileries Gardens, Bancroft filtered information from unsuspecting figures including Franklin and Deane back to his contacts in Britain, navigating a complicated web of political allegiances. Through Schaeper's keen analysis of Bancroft's correspondence and diplomatic records, this biography reveals whether Bancroft should ultimately be considered a traitor to America or a patriot to Britain.

On December 16, 1773, an estimated seven dozen men dumped roughly GBP10,000 worth of tea in Boston Harbor. This symbolic act unleashed a social, political, and economic firestorm throughout the colonies. Combining stellar scholarship with action-packed history, American Tempest reveals the truth behind the legendary event and examines its lasting consequence- the birth of an independent America.

This remarkable memoir is one of the most celebrated documents to emerge from the tumult of America s Revolutionary War. The ordinary and yet exceptional experiences of a young soldier in Washington s army are given a new life in this fourth edition, sensitively edited for a modern readership. * Classic primary source on the Revolutionary War * Edited by a leading US authority on the period * Now with extra maps and a more extensive bibliography * Includes a new Afterword by Karen Guenther on film portrayals of the continental soldier

Published by the Pennsylvania German Society in 1908, this volume is one among many compiled to help illuminate the achievements of the Pennsylvania Germans during our nation's early years. In the pre-World War I era, such works were written to dismiss the common belief that "the German element of this country has been practically a non-entity in its development" and to lift the "curtain of ignorance" on the subject. In this volume, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg Richards takes on this task by examining the role played by Pennsylvania Germans during the American Revolution.

In eighteen chapters, Richards details the involvement of Pennsylvania Germans in every aspect of the war, from the raising of battalions to the battles in which they fought. He recounts their activities on the home front, in public life, and on the frontier, and he also writes about prisoners and the noncombatant pacifists who contributed to the war effort. Richards pays significant attention to the Pennsylvania German contribution to Pennsylvania's battalions and line, reproducing regimental rosters and profiling prominent men both in and outside of military service during the war. This name-heavy volume also includes substantial surname and general indexes.

Between 1775 and 1783, some 200,000 Americans took up arms against the British Crown. Just over 6,800 of those men died in battle. About 25,000 became prisoners of war, most of them confined in New York City under conditions so atrocious that they perished by the thousands. Evidence suggests that at least 17,500 Americans may have died in these prisons,more than twice the number to die on the battlefield. It was in New York, not Boston or Philadelphia, where most Americans gave their lives for the cause of independence. New York City became the jailhouse of the American Revolution because it was the principal base of the Crown's military operations. Beginning with the bumper crop of American captives taken during the 1776 invasion of New York, captured Americans were stuffed into a hastily assembled collection of public buildings, sugar houses, and prison ships. The prisoners were shockingly overcrowded and chronically underfed,those who escaped alive told of comrades so hungry they ate their own clothes and shoes. Despite the extraordinary number of lives lost, Forgotten Patriots is the first-ever account of what took place in these hell-holes. The result is a unique perspective on the Revolutionary War as well as a sobering commentary on how Americans have remembered our struggle for independence,and how much we have forgotten.

The culture wars have distorted the dramatic story of how Americans came to worship freely. Many activists on the right maintain that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation." Many on the left contend that the First Amendment was designed to boldly separate church and state. Neither of these claims is true, argues Beliefnet.com editor in chief Steven Waldman. With refreshing objectivity, Waldman narrates the real story of how our nation's Founders forged a new approach to religious liberty.
"Founding Faith "vividly describes the religious development of five Founders. Benjamin Franklin melded the Puritan theology of his youth and the Enlightenment philosophy of his adulthood. John Adams's pungent views on religion stoked his revolutionary fervor and shaped his political strategy. George Washington came to view religious tolerance as a military necessity. Thomas Jefferson pursued a dramatic quest to "rescue" Jesus, in part by editing the Bible. Finally, it was James Madison who crafted an integrated vision of how to prevent tyranny while encouraging religious vibrancy.
The spiritual custody battle over the Founding Fathers and the role of religion in America continues today. Waldman at last sets the record straight, revealing the real history of religious freedom to be dramatic, unexpected, paradoxical, and inspiring.