Rough crossings : Britain, the slaves, and the American Revolution / Simon Schama.

By:

Schama, Simon

Material type: Text

TextPublication details: London BBC Books 2005Edition: 1st U.S. edDescription: 447 p ill. (some col.), map ; 24 cmISBN:

9780563487098

Subject(s):

DDC classification:

326.097309033 SCH

Online resources:

Contributor biographical information

Contents:

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

Summary: 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 description.̓

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Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Books	H.T. Parekh Library	SIAS Collection	326.097309033 SCH (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available		K1966

Gratis

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

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

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 description.̓

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