Showing results for "The African Americans" in Revolution & Founding

At first, neither George Washington nor the Continental Congress approved of enlisting African Americans in the new army. Nevertheless, Black men—both slave and free—filled the ranks and served in all of the early battles. Black sailors also saw action in every major naval battle of the Revolution, including members of John Paul Jones's crew aboard the Bonhomme Richard. At least thirteen Black Americans served in the newly formed US Marine Corps during the war.

On October 3, 1807, Thomas Jefferson was contacted by an unknown traveler urgently pleading for a private "interview" with the president, promising to disclose "a matter of momentous importance". By the next day, Jefferson held in his hands two astonishing manuscripts whose history has been lost for over two centuries. Authored by Muslims fleeing captivity in rural Kentucky, these documents delivered to the president in 1807 were penned by literate African slaves, and written entirely in Arabic.

In Inhuman Bondage, David Brion Davis sums up a lifetime of insight. He looks at slavery in the American South; the rise of the Cotton Kingdom; the daily life of slaves; the destructive internal long-distance slave trade; the sexual exploitation of slaves; the emergence of an African-American culture; and much more. A definitive history by a writer deeply immersed in the subject, Inhuman Bondage links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism.

Published in 1855, this history book by William Cooper Nell has an introduction by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It focuses on African American soldiers during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. It is considered by some to be the first history book by and about African Americans which is based on written documentation.

FINALIST FOR THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BOOK PRIZE The true story of a Founding Father: a new, brash, and unexpected view of the president we thought we knew, from the bestselling author of Astoria. “Lively, well-researched . . . . A discerning history of pre-Revolutionary America and the man who...

This searing story of slavery and freedom in the Chesapeake reveals the pivot in the nation’s path between the founding and civil war. Frederick Douglass recalled that slaves living along Chesapeake Bay longingly viewed sailing ships as "freedom’s swift-winged angels." In 1813 those angels appeared in the bay as British warships coming to punish the Americans for declaring war on the empire. Drawn from new sources, Alan Taylor's riveting narrative re-creates the events that inspired black Virginians, haunted slaveholders, and set the nation on a new and dangerous course.

This riveting biography of a Massachusetts slave boy who fought in the Revolutionary War illuminates race relations in the Northern colonies, early battles of the revolution, and the experiences of Black soldiers on both sides of the conflict.