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Summary
Summary
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. Over many nights, hundreds of slaves paddled out to the warships seeking protection for their families from the ravages of slavery. The runaways pressured the British admirals into becoming liberators. As guides, pilots, sailors, and marines, the former slaves used their intimate knowledge of the countryside to transform the war. They enabled the British to escalate their onshore attacks and to capture and burn Washington, D.C. Tidewater masters had long dreaded their slaves as "an internal enemy." By mobilizing that enemy, the war ignited the deepest fears of Chesapeake slaveholders. It also alienated Virginians from a national government that had neglected their defense. Instead they turned south, their interests aligning more and more with their section. In 1820 Thomas Jefferson observed of sectionalism: "Like a firebell in the night [it] awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the knell of the union." The notes of alarm in Jefferson's comment speak of the fear aroused by the recent crisis over slavery in his home state. His vision of a cataclysm to come proved prescient. Jefferson's startling observation registered a turn in the nation's course, a pivot from the national purpose of the founding toward the threat of disunion. 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.
Author Notes
Alan Shaw Taylor was born in 1955 in Portland, Maine. He graduated from Colby College in Waterville, Maine in 1977. He went on to earn his PhD. from Brandeis University in 1986. He has become a professor of history at the University of California.
Taylor is best known for his contributions to microhistory which he demonstrated in his Pulitzer Prize winning history of William Cooper and the settlement of Cooperstown, New York. In this work, Alan Taylor uses court records, land records, letters and diaries to reconstruct the economic, political and socila history of New England and the settlement of New York. He is also a regular contributor of book reviews and essays to The New Republic. His books include William Cooper's Town: Power & Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic, which won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for history and the Bancroft Prize in American History. In 2014, he once again won the Pulitzer Prize for History in his title: The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Kirkus Review
Exemplary work of history by Pulitzer and Bancroft winner Taylor (History/Univ. of Virginia; Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction, 2012, etc.), who continues his deep-searching studies of American society on either side of the Revolution. The world the slaves made was one of fear and loathing--on the part of the masters, that is, who indeed waited in a "cocoon of dread" for the day when their "internal enemy" would finally pounce. That day first came with a series of events that form the heart of the book: namely, the arrival of the War of 1812 in Virginia, a conflict that itself was a source of conflict, inasmuch as most Virginians were sooner inclined to fight New Englanders than Englanders. When the British arrived, though, they recruited male slaves to join their army and navy as free men, and they relied on them for their "intimate, nocturnal knowledge of the byways and waterways of Virginia." The keyword is "nocturnal," for the conflict between master and slave was so great, Taylor asserts, that they contested ownership of the night, when slaves would travel more or less freely to attend dances and other social events, sleeping it off during the day, even as the masters demanded ever more work from them precisely in order to tire them enough to keep them from going abroad at night. One of the great ironies of Jefferson's ideal of white liberty, notes Taylor, was that as it expanded the middle class and with it the number of Tidewater slaveholders, it also broadened support for slavery itself. One of the ironies of the war, which would eventually produce just the uprising of the internal enemy the Virginians dreaded, was that, so inept was the federal response, it advanced the cause of states' rights, which would lead to the broader Civil War two decades after Nat Turner's revolt. Full of implication, an expertly woven narrative that forces a new look at "the peculiar institution" in a particular time and place.]]]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Escape from slavery in the antebellum South evokes images of secretive flight on the Underground Railroad or bizarre efforts like that of Box Brown, who hid in a small shipping crate sent north. Taylor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, teaches at the University of California, Davis. In this revealing and engrossing study, he illustrates that a great factor in the liberation of thousands of slaves was the policy and intervention of the British government and military. Taylor concentrates on the six decades between the American Revolution and the slave revolt of Nat Turner, and he focuses on the Chesapeake region of Virginia. The area is dotted with numerous rivers flowing to the bay, and here hundreds of slaves paddled out to British warships, especially during the War of 1812. British naval officers, through a combination of military practicality and, in some cases, antislavery sentiments, encouraged and facilitated their flight. This, of course, served to reinforce the slaveholders to view their slaves as internal enemies. This is a well-written and scrupulously researched examination of an important aspect of the struggle against American slavery.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
Taylor's acclaimed The Civil War of 1812 (CH, Apr'11, 48-4685) depicted the war along the US-Canadian border as a conflict between immigrant groups, with Native Americans in the middle. His new work presents the southern sector as equally politicized and riddled with internal conflicts, but more significantly as an explosive segment in the long struggle between Chesapeake slaves and their owners. In the mid-1800s, England stationed ships along Virginia's shoreline, and slaves knew that the British Navy might provide refuge. After war erupted, British officers found the escapees useful partners: most were young men who led troops through the swamps at night back to their plantations to free relatives. Taylor (Univ. of California-Davis) emphasizes that the English decision in late 1813 to recruit freedmen as soldiers as well as guides made their 1814 campaign far more effective, culminating in the burning of Washington, DC, and the siege of Baltimore. In the end, thousands of freedmen found freedom in Canada or the Indies, and Virginians continued to fear the slaves who remained. Taylor adds the War of 1812 to the American Revolution in the long effort of slaves to escape the "land of the free." Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. D. R. Mandell Truman State University
Library Journal Review
In this well-written and engaging history, Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winner Taylor (history, Univ. of California, Davis) zeros in on slavery in Virginia, particularly during the War of 1812, in the process revealing both the glaring hypocrisy of the Founders' views on slavery and the lengths to which they went to ensure control of the enslaved population. In engaging prose, Taylor presents the dynamic, cogent argument that for Southerners, their chattel represented a dangerous "fifth column" that, given the opportunity, would carry their "networks and nocturnal expertise" to invaders "enhancing their capacity to wage war in the Chesapeake." During the War of 1812, an alarming number of the "internal enemy" flocked to British camps, allowing the British to conduct raids deep into the Southern countryside. Verdict This is an accessible narrative of great scholarship that, similar to Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles, takes a new and distinct look at a topic of persistent attention. Writing with an understanding of his subject that is stunning to behold, Taylor again shows why he is the dean of early American history. A great work for early American history buffs and anyone interested in the evolution of slavery in America.-Brian Odom, Birmingham, AL (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| List of Illustrations and Maps | p. xiii |
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| 1 Revolution | p. 13 |
| 2 Night and Day | p. 55 |
| 3 Blood | p. 85 |
| 4 Warships | p. 113 |
| 5 Invasion | p. 145 |
| 6 Lessons | p. 175 |
| 7 Plantation | p. 215 |
| 8 Flight | p. 245 |
| 9 Fight | p. 275 |
| 10 Crisis | p. 317 |
| 11 Agents | p. 351 |
| 12 Fire Bell | p. 389 |
| Epilogue | p. 419 |
| Appendix A Corotoman Enslaved Families, 1814 | p. 437 |
| Appendix B Numbers | p. 441 |
| Note | p. 443 |
| Bibliography | p. 557 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 585 |
| Index | p. 591 |