In January 1785, a young African American woman named Elizabeth (Liss) was put on board the Lucretia in New York Harbor, bound for Charleston, where she would be sold to her fifth enslaver in just twenty-two years. Leaving behind a small child she had little hope of ever seeing again, Elizabeth was faced with the stark reality of being sold south to a life quite different from any she had known before. She had no idea that Robert Townsend, a son of the first family she was enslaved by, would locate her, safeguard her child, and return her to New York—nor that Robert, one of George Washington's most trusted spies, had joined an anti-slavery movement. As Robert and Elizabeth’s story unfolds, prominent Revolutionary figures cross their path, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Jupiter Hammon, John André, and John Adams, as well as participants in the Boston Massacre, the Sons of Liberty, the Battle of Long Island, Franklin’s Paris negotiations, and the Benedict Arnold treason plot. Elizabeth's journey brings a new perspective to America's founding—that of an enslaved Black woman seeking personal liberty in a country fighting for its own. The 2023 paperback edition includes a new chapter highlighting recent discoveries about Elizabeth's freedom and later life.

"In You Choose format, explores the Revolutionary War from the perspectives of spies on both the British and American sides"--

Offering a day-by-day chronology of the people and events important to the American Revolution, this title provides a look at this historic time. It covers people, battles, and other details, and includes more than 130 maps, photographs, and illustrations pair with an index, a bibliography, cross-references, and a chronology.

Haiti A "Spy" Guide - Strategic Information and Developments

Explores intelligence and espionage during the Revolutionary War, and the key role this information played in the colonies gaining their independence.

Transatlantic Revolutionary Cultures, 1789-1861 argues that the revolutionary era constituted a coherent chapter in transatlantic history and that individual revolutions were connected to a broader, transatlantic and transnational frame. As a composite, the essays place instances of political upheaval during the long nineteenth century in Europe and the Americas in a common narrative and offer a new interpretation on their seeming asynchrony. In the age of revolutions the formation of political communities and cultural interactions were closely connected over time and space. Reciprocal connections arose from discussions on the nature of history, deliberations about constitutional models, as well as the reception of revolutions in popular culture. These various levels of cultural and intellectual interchange we term “transatlantic revolutionary cultures.” Contributors are: Ulrike Bock, Anne Bruch, Peter Fischer, Mischa Honeck, Raphael Hörmann, Charlotte A. Lerg, Marc H. Lerner, Michael L. Miller, Timothy Mason Roberts, and Heléna Tóth.

Most treatments of slavery, politics, and expansion in the early American republic focus narrowly on congressional debates and the inaction of elite "founding fathers" such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West, John Craig Hammond looks beyond elite leadership and examines how the demands of western settlers, the potential of western disunion, and local, popular politics determined the fate of slavery and freedom in the West between 1790 and 1820. By shifting focus away from high politics in Philadelphia and Washington, Hammond demonstrates that local political contests and geopolitical realities were more responsible for determining slavery’s fate in the West than were the clashing proslavery and antislavery proclivities of Founding Fathers and politicians in the East. When efforts to prohibit slavery revived in 1819 with the Missouri Controversy it was not because of a sudden awakening to the problem on the part of northern Republicans, but because the threat of western secession no longer seemed credible. Including detailed studies of popular political contests in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri that shed light on the western and popular character of conflicts over slavery, Hammond also provides a thorough analysis of the Missouri Controversy, revealing how the problem of slavery expansion shifted from a local and western problem to a sectional and national dilemma that would ultimately lead to disunion and civil war.

Although African Americans and Native Americans faced racism, unequal treatment, and even slavery in the colonial period, minority soldiers fought bravely for both the British and the Americans in the Revolutionary War. This book looks at the contributions of Native American and African American soldiers and spies, contextualizing their experiences before and after the war. The book also provides information about the war itself and two case studies that trace minority soldiers’ heroism in detail.

Historical Dictionary of U.S. Diplomacy from the Revolution to Secession covers the period from 1776, when the nation declared its independence from Great Britain, through 1861, when the Civil War presented the biggest challenge to the continuation of the “republican experiment.” Probably the most common misconception about the diplomatic history of this period is that American leaders tried to stay isolated from world events, when in fact the early United States was part of “one grand, interwoven tapestry” of nations. The Historical Dictionary of U.S. Diplomacy from the Revolution to Secession relates the events of this crucial period in American history through a chronology, an introductory essay, and several hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries on key persons, places, events, institutions, and organizations. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about American diplomacy.

Originally published in 1961, this classic work remains the most comprehensive history of the many and important roles played by African Americans during the American Revolution. With this book, Benjamin Quarles added a new dimension to the military history of the Revolution and addressed for the first time the diplomatic repercussions created by the British evacuation of African Americans at the close of the war. The compelling narrative brings the Revolution to life by portraying those tumultuous years as experienced by Americans at all levels of society. In an introduction, Gary B. Nash traces the evolution of scholarship on African Americans in the American Revolution from its early roots with William C. Nell to this groundbreaking study. Quarles's work not only reshaped our thinking about the black revolutionary experience but also invigorated the study of black history as we know it today. Thad W. Tate, in a foreword, pays tribute to the importance of this work and explains its continuing relevance.