Portland Public Library

Rough crossings, Britain, the slaves, and the American Revolution, Simon Schama

eng

Includes bibliographical references (p. [423]-451) and index

mapsplatesillustrations

index present

non fiction

Rough crossings

bibliography

61652611

Simon Schama

Britain, the slaves, and the American Revolution

In response to a declaration by the last royal governor of Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the King would be emancipated, tens of thousands of slaves--Americans who clung to the sentimental notion of British freedom--escaped from farms, plantations and cities to try to reach the British camp. This mass movement lasted as long as the war did, and a military strategy originally designed to break the plantations of the American South had unleashed one of the great exoduses in American history. Schama details the odyssey of the escaped blacks through the fires of war and the terror of potential recapture at the war's end, into inhospitable Nova Scotia, where thousands who had served the Crown were betrayed and, in a little-known hegira of the slave epic, sent across the broad, stormy ocean to Sierra Leone.--From publisher description̓

British freedom's promise -- Part one: Greeny -- Part two: John -- Endings, beginnings