The role of the African American Populations in the American Revolution.
The African-American Soldier by
[PRINT] - During the Revolutionary War, five thousand African Americans fought for America's freedom - During the Civil War, more than 200,000 black men rallied to preserve the Union and earn their place as free men - In the Indian Wars, four regiments of "Buffalo Soldiers" made the frontier safe for settlers - When called upon in the Spanish-American War, black soldiers battled side by side with white soldiers as they took back Cuba's San Juan Hill and Kettle Hill Chronicling the role African Americans played in the military history of the United States, The African-American Soldier portrays, war by war, the struggles of the courageous men and women who secured the right of black Americans to fight in the army, navy, marines, and air force for their country -- a country that provided them with nearly two centuries of discrimination and racism, barely acknowledging their human rights as citizens. While they had resoundingly defeated foreign enemies before World War I erupted, African Americans had yet to conquer racism at home, which kept them in segregated units and the lowest ranks. More than 400,000 blacks volunteered to serve; yet only about ten percent of those saw combat -- because they were not welcome on the field as equals. Throughout World War II and the Korean conflict, blacks had to protest at home before they were allowed to defend their country abroad. It was not until after the Vietnam War that they finally tasted the fruits of racial victory when the armed forces implemented and enforced its "equal opportunity plans", providing fair and equal training for all service members. By the time of Desert Storm, black soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines served in everyposition and every rank, including chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This account
Black Profiles in Courage by
Notes: From Revolutionary War heroes such as Crispus Attucks to antislavery activist Frederick Douglass to scientist Lewis Latimer and musical artist Duke Ellington, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar examines the lives of heroic African-Americans and offers their stories as positive role models. "-LINCC Catalog
The Real History of the American Revolution by
Ask most Americans why their forefathers started the Revolution, and they’ll likely mention "no taxation without representation” or the belief in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as inalienable rights. But that’s just the start of the story, as historian Alan Axelrod so brilliantly shows in this eye-opening book. Axelrod offers a fascinating examination of what really caused the breach across the Atlantic and how the revolutionary movement began. The American Revolution brought something unique to the world: an entirely new kind of nation, founded on a set of ideas. In engrossing, conversational prose, Axelrod brings the birth of America to life by digging beneath the classically taught history to explore everything from little-known facts to alternate realities, along with the eyewitness testimony, pop culture, and art of the period. From the seeds of dissent through the long fight to glorious victory, the astonishing story of America’s revolution finally comes fully to light.
Voices of the American Revolution by
Riveting accounts of real people tell the story of the American Revolution from diverse characters and viewpoints-from men, women, children, Patriots, Tories, pacifists, African-American slaves, Native Americans, Hessian mercenaries, and more. All major political, social, economic, and military viewpoints are represented. Political debates, military battles and maneuvering, the struggles of civilians, the role of children, and the fates of Tories and Continental soldiers at the end of the war are just some of the themes covered. With each story, Haven includes a variety of learning extensions-objective questions, research projects, hands-on learning activities, and open-ended "points to ponder" for discussion and debate. A bibliography of resources for further study completes the work. Packed with information, this engaging collection is a wonderful supplement to American History units, a great resource for read-alouds and student reports.
Red, White and Black by
Intended for courses in Colonial and Revolutionary American History. This text presents an interpretive account of the interactions between Native Americans, African Americans, and Euroamericans during the colonial and revolutionary eras. It reveals the crucial interconnections between North America's many peoples.
The Common Cause by
When the Revolutionary War began, the odds of a united, continental effort to resist the British seemed nearly impossible. Few on either side of the Atlantic expected thirteen colonies to stick together in a war against their cultural cousins. In this pathbreaking book, Robert Parkinson argues that to unify the patriot side, political and communications leaders linked British tyranny to colonial prejudices, stereotypes, and fears about insurrectionary slaves and violent Indians. Manipulating newspaper networks, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and their fellow agitators broadcast stories of British agents inciting African Americans and Indians to take up arms against the American rebellion. Using rhetoric like "domestic insurrectionists" and "merciless savages," the founding fathers rallied the people around a common enemy and made racial prejudice a cornerstone of the new Republic. In a fresh reading of the founding moment, Parkinson demonstrates the dual projection of the "common cause." Patriots through both an ideological appeal to popular rights and a wartime movement against a host of British-recruited slaves and Indians forged a racialized, exclusionary model of American citizenship.
Fort Mosé by
In this one-of-a-kind historical picture book, author Glennette Tilley Turner tells the story of Fort Mose, which was founded in St. Augustine, Florida, and was the first free African settlement to legally exist in what later became the United States. Fort Mose was not only the first free black settlement, but it was also the most southern link of the Underground Railroad as a haven of refuge, just as cities in Canada were the northern most link.nbsp; Beginning with the story of Francisco Menendez, the Captain of the Black Militia of St. Augustine, FORT MOSE follows the history of slavery from West Africa to America, recounts what daily life was like, and describes the founding of the Spanish colony’s Fort Mose. Established in 1738, Fort Mose gave sanctuary to escaped Africans, challenging slavery in the English colonies. Approximately one hundred Africans lived together, creating a frontier community that drew on a range of African backgrounds, blending them with those of Spanish, Native American, and English people and cultural traditions.nbsp; The book includes more than forty archival images, an afterword about uncovering Fort Mose (which is now part of the National Parks), a glossary, an author’s note, a bibliography, and an index. Praise for Fort Mose Starred Review: "Turner’s graceful account clearly distinguishes between fact and supposition. The paragraphs discussing the transport of slaves and their treatment at the “pest” house on Sullivan’s Island are particularly vivid and informative. Brightening every page of this large, handsome book are deep-green borders of tropical leaves. A significant addition to African American history collections for young people. –Booklist, starred reviewnbsp; "This is a useful addition to libraries with strong African-American history collections, and for teachers and librarians looking for unique stories about colonial America." –School Library Journal "This handsomely designed book offers an eye-opening look at a hitherto little-known community and a notable figure in Colonial American history." –Kirkus Reviewsnbsp;
Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad by
This enlightening study employs the tools of archaeology to uncover a new historical perspective on the Underground Railroad. Unlike previous histories of the Underground Railroad, which have focused on frightened fugitive slaves and their benevolent abolitionist accomplices, Cheryl LaRoche focuses instead on free African American communities, the crucial help they provided to individuals fleeing slavery, and the terrain where those flights to freedom occurred. This study foregrounds several small, rural hamlets on the treacherous southern edge of the free North in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. LaRoche demonstrates how landscape features such as waterways, iron forges, and caves played a key role in the conduct and effectiveness of the Underground Railroad. Rich in oral histories, maps, memoirs, and archaeological investigations, this examination of the "geography of resistance" tells the new powerful and inspiring story of African Americans ensuring their own liberation in the midst of oppression.
Blue Coat or Powdered Wig by
By the late 1700s, half the free population of Saint Domingue was black. The French Caribbean colony offered a high degree of social, economic, and physical mobility to free people of color. Covering the period 1776-1791, this study offers the most comprehensive portrait to date of Saint Domingue’s free black elites on the eve of the colony's transformation into the republic of Haiti. Stewart R. King identifies two distinctive groups that shared Saint Domingue’s free black upper stratum, one consisting of planters and merchants and the other of members of the army and police forces. With the aid of individual and family case studies, King documents how the two groups used different strategies to pursue the common goal of economic and social advancement. Among other aspects, King looks at the rural or urban bases of these groups’ networks, their relationships with whites and free blacks of lesser means, and their attitudes toward the acquisition, use, and sale of land, slaves, and other property. King’s main source is the notarial archives of Saint Domingue, whose holdings offer an especially rich glimpse of free black elite life. Because elites were keenly aware of how a bureaucratic paper trail could help cement their status, the archives divulge a wealth of details on personal and public matters. Blue Coat or Powdered Wig is a vivid portrayal of race relations far from the European centers of colonial power, where the interactions of free blacks and whites were governed as much by practicalities and shared concerns as by the law.
Fly Away by
The Great Migration-the mass exodus of blacks from the rural South to the urban North and West in the twentieth century-shaped American culture and life in ways still evident today. In Fly Away, Peter M. Rutkoff and William B. Scott trace the ideas that inspired African Americans to abandon the South for freedom and opportunity elsewhere. Black southerners fled the Low Country of South Carolina, the mines and mills of Birmingham, Alabama, the farms of the Mississippi Delta, and the urban wards of Houston, Texas, for new opportunities in New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Los Angeles. They took with them the South's rich traditions of religion, language, music, and art, recreating and preserving their southern identity in the churches, newspapers, jazz clubs, and neighborhoods of America's largest cities. Rutkoff and Scott's sweeping study explores the development and adaptation of African American culture, from its West African roots to its profound and lasting impact on mainstream America. Broad in scope and original in its interpretation, Fly Away illuminates the origins, development, and transformation of national culture during an important chapter in twentieth-century American history.
Balancing Evils Judiciously by
[PRINT] "Kingsley's place in southern history and America's endless debate over race, to say nothing of his astonishing life, is only now beginning to be appreciated and explored. . . . Dr. Stowell's opening essay constitutes a splendid biographical and analytical introduction to the man and his work, and his editorial work in presenting these fascinating documents places professional historians and the general public deep in his debt."--From the foreword by Eugene D. Genovese "Oddly proslavery and antiracist in his views, Zephaniah Kingsley of Florida produced a critical contemporary analysis of the Old South's slaveholding society. Daniel W. Stowell's edition of Kingsley's writings makes that critique readily available to scholars."--Stanley Harrold, South Carolina State University For the first time, all the proslavery--but also pro-black--writings of Zephaniah Kingsley (1765-1843) appear together in one volume. Kingsley was a slave trader and the owner of a large plantation near Jacksonville in what was then Spanish East Florida. He married one of his slaves and had children with several others. While Kingsley eventually emancipated all of his children and their mothers, he became alarmed at the deteriorating status of free blacks after Florida became a territory in 1821. His unusual protest of their treatment, "A Treatise on the Patriarchal System of Society," called for a three-caste society that separated race and class. He envisioned a buffer caste of free people of color between whites and enslaved blacks, but united with whites by economic interests. The treatise simultaneously upheld the legitimacy and necessity of slavery yet assaulted the white southern premise of abject black inferiority. Daniel Stowell carefully assembles all of Kingsley's writings on race and slavery to illuminate the evolution of his thought. The intriguing hybrid text of the four editions of the treatise clearly identifies both subtle and substantial differences among the editions. Other extensively annotated documents show how Kingsley's interracial family and his experiences in various slaveholding societies in the Caribbean and South America influenced his thinking on race, class, and slavery. In despair of ever changing the slaveholding patterns of Florida, Kingsley finally settled his mixed-race children and several of his slaves in Haiti; however, he left behind more than 80 of his slaves to work his plantations in Florida. When he died, these African Americans remained in bondage, unfortunate victims of hardening American racial attitudes and of Kingsley's effort to "balance evils judiciously."
Freedom's Delay by
The Declaration of Independence proclaimed freedom for Americans from the domination of Great Britain, yet for millions of African Americas caught up in a brutal system of racially based slavery, freedom would be denied for ninety additional years until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Freedom's Delay: America's Struggle for Emancipation, 1776-1865 probes the slow, painful, yet ultimately successful crusade to end slavery throughout the nation, North and South. This work fills an important gap in the literature of slavery's demise. Unlike other authors who focus largely on specific time periods or regional areas, Allen Carden presents a thematically structured national synthesis of emancipation. Freedom's Delay offers a comprehensive and unique overview of the process of manumission commencing in 1776 when slavery was a national institution, not just the southern experience known historically by most Americans. In this volume, the entire country is examined, and major emancipatory efforts--political, literary, legal, moral, and social--made by black and white, free and enslaved individuals are documented over the years from independence through the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Freedom's Delay dispels many of the myths about slavery and abolition, including that racial servitude was of little consequence in the North, and, where it did exist, it ended quickly and easily; that abolition was a white man's cause and blacks were passive recipients of liberty; that the South seceded primarily to protect states' rights, not slavery; and that the North fought the Civil War primarily to end the subjugation of African Americans. By putting these misunderstandings aside, this book reveals what actually transpired in the fight for human rights during this critical era. Carden's inclusion of a cogent preface and epilogue assures that Freedom's Delay will find a significant place in the literature of American slavery and freedom. With a compelling preface and epilogue, notes, illustrations and tables, and a detailed bibliography, this volume will be of great value not only in courses on American history and African American history but also to the general reading public. Allen Carden is professor of history at Fresno Pacific University in Fresno, California. He is the author of Puritan Christianity in America: Religion and Life in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts.
Between Slavery and Freedom by
In Between Slavery and Freedom, Julie Winch explores the complex world of those people of African birth or descent who occupied the borderlands between slavery and freedom in the 350 years from the founding of the first European colonies in what is today the United States to the start of the Civil War. However they had navigated their way out of bondage through flight, through military service, through self-purchase, through the working of the law in different times and in different places, or because they were the offspring of parents who were themselves free they were determined to enjoy the same rights and liberties that white people enjoyed. In a concise narrative and selected primary documents, noted historian Julie Winch shows the struggle of black people to gain and maintain their liberty and lay claim to freedom in its fullest sense. Refusing to be relegated to the margins of American society and languish in poverty and ignorance, they repeatedly challenged their white neighbors to live up to the promises of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Winch s accessible, concise, and jargon-free book, including primary sources and the latest scholarship, will benefit undergraduate students of American history and general readers alike by allowing them to judge the evidence for themselves and evaluate the authors conclusions."
Black Townsmen by
This book is an innovative comparative study of persons of African origin and descent in two urban environments of the early modern Atlantic world. The author follows these men and women illustrating how their choices and actions placed them at the foreground of the development of Atlantic urban slavery and emancipation.
Denmark Vesey by
On July 2, 1822, Denmark Vesey and five co-conspirators were hanged in a desolate marsh outside of Charleston, South Carolina. They had been betrayed by black informers during their attempt to set in motion the largest slave rebellion in the history of the United States--an effort astonishing in its level of organization and support. Nine thousand armed slaves and free blacks were to converge on Charleston, set the city aflame, seize the government arsenal, and then murder the entire white population of the city, sparing only the ship captains who would carry Vesey and his followers to Haiti or Africa. The attempted revolt was a significant episode in American history, yet it, and its leader, have been all but forgotten. In this balanced and gracefully written biography of Vesey--the first in many decades--David Robertson gives us a profile of this extraordinary man. He shows how, by preaching a doctrine of negritude combined with various religious elements, Vesey was able to attract large numbers of blacks to a messianic crusade for freedom. Robertson details the aftermath of the failed revolt, analyzes its social and political consequences, and articulates the essential, disturbing questions it poses to a racially and ethnically pluralistic society today.
Nat Turner by
Nat Turner's name rings through American history with a force all its own. Leader of the most important slave rebellion on these shores, variously viewed as a murderer of unarmed women and children, an inspired religious leader, a fanatic--this puzzling figure represents all the terrible complexities of American slavery. And yet we do not know what he looked like, where he is buried, or even whether Nat Turner was his real name. In Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory, Kenneth S. Greenberg gathers twelve distinguished scholars to offer provocative new insight into the man, his rebellion, and his time, and his place in history. The historians here explore Turner's slave community, discussing the support for his uprising as well as the religious and literary context of his movement. They examine the place of women in his insurrection, and its far-reaching consequences (including an extraordinary 1832 Virginia debate about ridding the state of slavery). Here are discussions of Turner's religious visions--the instructions he received from God to kill all of his white oppressors. Louis Masur places him against the backdrop of the nation's sectional crisis, and Douglas Egerton puts his revolt in the context of rebellions across the Americas. We trace Turner's passage through American memory through fascinating interviews with William Styron on his landmark novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and with Dr. Alvin Poussaint, one of the "ten black writers" of the 1960s who bitterly attacked Styron's vision of Turner. Finally, we follow Nat Turner into the world of Hollywood. Nat Turner has always been controversial, an emblem of the searing wound of slavery in American life. This book offers a clear-eyed look at one of the best known and least understood figures in our history.
The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood by
On the evening of August 21, 1831, Nat Turner and six men launched their infamous rebellion against slaveholders. The rebels swept through Southampton County, Virginia, recruiting slaves to their ranks and killing nearly five dozen whites - more than had ever been killed in any slave revoltin American history. Although a hastily assembled group of whites soon suppressed the violence, its repercussions had far-reaching consequences.In The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood, historian Patrick H. Breen uses the dramatic events in Southampton to explore the terrible choices faced by members of the local black community as they considered joining the rebels, a choice that would likely cost them their lives, supporting their masters,or somehow avoiding taking sides. Combining fast-paced narrative with rigorous analysis, Breen shows how, as whites regained control, slaveholders created an account of the revolt that saved their slaves from white retribution, the most dangerous threat facing the slaveholders' human property. Byprobing the stories slaveholders told that allowed them to get non-slaveholders to protect slave property, The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood reveals something surprising about both the fragility and power of slavery.
Slavery and the Making of America by
The history of slavery is central to understanding the history of the United States. Slavery and the Making of America offers a richly illustrated, vividly written history that illuminates the human side of this inhumane institution, presenting it largely through stories of the slaves themselves. Readers will discover a wide ranging and sharply nuanced look at American slavery, from the first Africans brought to British colonies in the early seventeenth century to the end of Reconstruction. The authors document the horrors of slavery, particularly in the deep South, and describe the slaves' valiant struggles to free themselves from bondage. There are dramatic tales of escape by slaves such as William and Ellen Craft and Dred Scott's doomed attempt to win his freedom through the Supreme Court. We see how slavery engendered violence in our nation, from bloody confrontations that broke out in American cities over fugitive slaves, to the cataclysm of the Civil War. The book is also filled with stories of remarkable African Americans like Sergeant William H. Carney, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery at the crucial assault on Fort Wagner during the Civil War, and Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, a former slave who led freed African Americans to a new life on the American frontier. Filled with absorbing and inspirational accounts highlighted by more than one hundred pictures and illustrations, Slavery and the Making of America is a gripping account of the struggles of African Americans against the iniquity of slavery.
Slave Country - American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South by
Slave Country tells the tragic story of the expansion of slavery in the new United States. In the wake of the American Revolution, slavery gradually disappeared from the northern states and the importation of captive Africans was prohibited. Yet, at the same time, the country's slave population grew, new plantation crops appeared, and several new slave states joined the Union. Adam Rothman explores how slavery flourished in a new nation dedicated to the principle of equality among free men, and reveals the enormous consequences of U.S. expansion into the region that became the Deep South. Rothman maps the combination of transatlantic capitalism and American nationalism that provoked a massive forced migration of slaves into Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. He tells the fascinating story of collaboration and conflict among the diverse European, African, and indigenous peoples who inhabited the Deep South during the Jeffersonian era, and who turned the region into the most dynamic slave system of the Atlantic world. war, Rothman exposes the terrible violence that haunted the Jeffersonian vision of republican expansion across the American continent. Slave Country combines political, economic, military, and social history in an elegant narrative that illuminates the perilous relation between freedom and slavery in the early United States. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in an honest look at America's troubled past.
Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics by
Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics challenges the way historians interpret the causes of the American Civil War. Using Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas's famed rivalry as a prism, Robert E. May shows that when Lincoln and fellow Republicans opposed slavery in the West, they did so partly from evidence that slaveholders, with Douglas's assistance, planned to follow up successes in Kansas by bringing Cuba, Mexico, and Central America into the Union as slave states. A skeptic about 'Manifest Destiny', Lincoln opposed the war with Mexico, condemned Americans invading Latin America, and warned that Douglas's 'popular sovereignty' doctrine would unleash US slaveholders throughout Latin America. This book internationalizes America's showdown over slavery, shedding new light on the Lincoln-Douglas rivalry and Lincoln's Civil War scheme to resettle freed slaves in the tropics.
Lincoln Looks West by
This first-ever volume to comprehensively explore President Abraham Lincoln’s ties to the American West brings together a variety of scholars and experts who offer a fascinating look at the sixteenth president’s lasting legacy in the territory beyond the Mississippi River. Editor Richard W. Etulain’s extensive introductory essay treats these western connections from Lincoln’s early reactions to Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War in the 1840s, through the 1850s, and during his presidency, providing a framework for the nine essays that follow. Each of these essays offers compelling insight into the many facets of Lincoln’s often complex interactions with the American West. Included in this collection are a provocative examination of Lincoln’s opposition to the Mexican War; a discussion of the president’s antislavery politics as applied to the new arena of the West; new perspectives on Lincoln’s views regarding the Thirteenth Amendment and his reluctance regarding the admission of Nevada to the Union; a fresh look at the impact of the Radical Republicans on Lincoln’s patronage and appointments in the West; and discussion of Lincoln’s favorable treatment of New Mexico and Arizona, primarily Southern and Democratic areas, in an effort to garner their loyalty to the Union. Also analyzed is “The Tribe of Abraham”—Lincoln’s less-than-competent appointments in Washington Territory made on the basis of political friendship—and the ways in which Lincoln’s political friends in the Western Territories influenced his western policies. Other essays look at Lincoln’s dealings with the Mormons of Utah, who supported the president in exchange for his tolerance, and American Indians, whose relations with the government suffered as the president’s attention was consumed by the crisis of the Civil War. In addition to these illuminating discussions, Etulain includes a detailed bibliographical essay, complete with examinations of previous interpretations and topics needing further research, as well as an extensive list of resources for more information on Lincoln's ties west of the Mississippi. Loaded with a wealth of information and fresh historical perspectives, Lincoln Looks West explores yet another intriguing dimension to this dynamic leader and to the history of the American West. Contributors: Richard W. Etulain Michael S. Green Robert W. Johannsen Deren Earl Kellogg Mark E. Neely Jr. David A. Nichols Earl S. Pomeroy Larry Schweikart Vincent G. Tegeder Paul M. Zall
Securing the West by
Few issues defined the period between American independence and the Mexican War more sharply than westward settlement and the role of the federal government in that expansion. In Securing the West, John R. Van Atta examines the visions of the founding generation and the increasing influence of ideological differences in the years after the peace of 1815. Americans expected the country to grow westward, but on the details of that growth they held strongly different opinions. What part should Congress play in this development? How much should public land cost? What of the families and businesses left behind, and how would society's institutions be established in the West? What of the premature settlers, the "squatters" who challenged the rule of law while epitomizing democratic daring? Taking a broad approach, Van Atta addresses three interrelated queries: First, how did competing economic beliefs and divergent cultural mandates influence the various outcomes of this broad debate over the means, timing, and purposes of settling the trans-Appalachian West? Second, what alternative visions of western society lay behind the battles among policy makers within the government and the interested parties who would sway them? Third, why did settlement of the West take such a different course in the end from that which the earliest leaders of the republic intended? This story explores dimensions of the federal lands question that other historians have minimized or left out entirely. Van Atta draws upon a range of sources known to have influenced the public discourse, including congressional debates, committee reports, and correspondence; editorial writings by the famous and unknown; and news coverage in various widely circulated newspapers and magazines of the period. Much of the attention focuses on Congress-the elected leaders who advocated divergent plans about western lands. In Congress, more than any other place, public leaders articulated basic concerns about the character, structure, direction, and destiny of society in the early United States. By 1830, many other important national concerns had become critically entangled with land disposition, creating points of ideological tension among rival regions, parties, and interests in the early years of the republic-particularly in Jacksonian America.