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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 323.322509033
EAN: 9780807055144
Edition: 1
ISBN: 080705514X
Label: Beacon Press
Manufacturer: Beacon Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 281
Publication Date: February 01, 2006
Publisher: Beacon Press
Studio: Beacon Press

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
During the American Revolution, thousands of slaves fled their masters to find freedom with the British. Having emancipated themselves—and with the rhetoric about the inalienable rights of free men ringing in their ears—these men and women struggled tenaciously to make liberty a reality in their own lives.

This alternative narrative of freedom fought for and won traces the stories of dozens of individuals—including Harry, one of George Washington's slaves—who left America and forged difficult new lives in far-flung corners of the British Empire. The challenges these newly freed black people faced in London in the 1780s have been virtually unrecognized by history, as has the path that some individuals were forced to take in two bizarre colonial experiments in 1787 in Sierra Leone, Africa, and Botany Bay, Australia. This pathbreaking work, engagingly written in the best tradition of history from the bottom up, will alter how you think about the American Revolution.

"Just amazing. What a gripping narrative. Epic Journeys of Freedom is a truly heroic story of the exodus of runaway slaves that covers four continents: North America, England, Africa, and Australia. And Pybus has such command of the sources. An awesome achievement."
—Alfred F. Young, author of The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution




Rating: - A Most Amazing Book
The first three "official" reviews of this book fail to convey the sheer original, revealing, even emotional nature of this book. Many Americans now accept that their patriotic Revolutionary ancestors--including the Founding Fathers--owned slaves. Some Americans are aware that many of these slaves fled to the British controlled areas and cities under the promise of gaining freedom. A few Americans may then know of what happened to these former slaves--how many were take off to Nova Scotia with ... Read More

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Rating: - A side of the American Revolution little known until now
While most American schoolchildren in the U.S. are taught of the American Revolution as a glorious struggle of backwoods colonials fighting for their freedom and independence against the world's most powerful empire, few, if any, are taught of the great tragedy experienced by African-Americans, many of them former slaves, who fought with or sided with the British in the hopes that they would secure their individual freedoms. I was one of those many schoolchildren inculcated in the myth of the Revolution, ... Read More

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