National Book Award Finalist
Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for History
This searing story of slavery and freedom in the Chesapeake by a
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian 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. 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.
