TY - BOOK AU - Schama,Simon TI - Rough crossings: Britain, the slaves, and the American Revolution SN - 9780563487098 U1 - 326.097309033 SCH PY - 2005/// CY - London PB - BBC Books KW - Slavery KW - United States KW - Blacks KW - England KW - History KW - 18th century KW - Revolution, 1775-1783 KW - African Americans KW - Social aspects N1 - Gratis; Includes bibliographical references (p. [423]-451) and index; British freedom's promise -- Part one: Greeny -- Part two: John -- Endings, beginnings N2 - 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.̓ UR - http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1308/2005049504-b.html ER -