Enjoy the Same Liberty - Black Americans and the Revolutionary Era

"What to the slave is the Fourth of July?," asked Frederick Douglass in 1852. In Enjoy the Same Liberty, Edward Countryman addresses Douglass's question. He shows how the American Revolution began the world-wide destruction of slavery, how black Americans who seized their chances for freedom during the Revolution changed both themselves and their epoch, and how their heirs, including Douglass, pondered what the Revolution meant for them. Thanks in good part to black people, what began as colonial tax protests became something of far greater significance. But this book also shows how that same Revolution led to an immensely powerful slave society in the South, so strong that destroying it required the cataclysm of the Civil War.

List of contents

Chronology
Prologue: "Proud of My Country"
Chapter One: "Fire, Fire, Scorch, Scorch": Enslaved Africans in the Colonial World
Chapter Two: "The Same Principle Lives in Us": Black Colonial People and the Revolutionary Crisis
Chapter Three: "The Fruition of Those Blessings": Black People in the Emerging Republic
Chapter Four: "Now Our Mother Country": Black Americans and the Unfinished Revolution
Epilogue: "You May Rejoice, I Must Mourn": Slaves, Free Americans, and the Fourth of July
Documents
Bibliographical Essay
Index
About the Author

About the author

Edward Countryman is the University Distinguished Professor of American History at Southern Methodist University. He has written numerous books on the social and political consequences of cultural clashes in early America, including A People in Revolution, which won the Bancroft Prize in 1981. He is also the author of The American Revolution, which is assigned in college courses across the country.

Product details

• Authors: Edward Countryman
• Assisted by: Nina Mjagkij (Editor), Jacqueline Moore (Editor), Jacqueline M Moore (Editor), Jacqueline M. Moore (Editor)
• Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 23.03.2014
• EAN: 9781442232815
• ISBN: 978-1-4422-3281-5
• No. of pages: 208
• Series: The African American History Series; African American History (Rowm; The African American Experience Series; The African American Experience Series; African American History (Rowm; African American Experience
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous