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Rough Typo
As Lucy would say: "Arrrrrrrrrgh!"
"Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University and a bestselling, prizewinning author, critic and broadcaster. His books include The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, Landscape and Memory and Rembrandt's Eyes. His television work includes the Emmy-nominated fifteen part History of Britain, and he is currently making an eight part series, The Power of Art, for PBS. He has been an essayist and art critic for the New Yorker since 1994, and his writing has appeared regularly in the New Republic, the Guardian, and the New York Review of Books."
So says the back flap of my new hardcover, First Edition of ROUGH CROSSINGS: Britain, The Slaves and the American Revolution (Ecco, ISBN-10: 006053916X, ISBN-13: 9780060539160) . Tragically, the first page of the tome begins:
"DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Henry Washington, escaped slave of George Washinton, freed by British, later settler in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone.
..."
Question: How does a famous British historian have a typo in George Washington's name on the first page of his book about the American Revolution ?!?
Great read on American slavery
Loved the book. I am a big fan of 18th and early 19th century American history. Recently I have been reading books on slavery during this time period.
I would have loved to have read a little more about Robert Carter III of Westmoreland County, VA other then the one sentence on page 77. This man, a founding father,freed nearly 500 slaves with his Deed Of Gift during his lifetime. With the one sentence on Carter the authour disrespects this founding father by failing to give a brief outline of Carter and the manumission of his slaves.
If you enjoyed Rough Crossings and thirst for knowledge of slavery in colonial America and then later during the early years of the US you should check out The First Emancipator: The Forgotten Story of Robert Carter, the Founding Father who freed his slaves by Andrew Levy. This is a excellant book and it does a great service to the forgotten story of Carter and his life.
The Long Journey Back to Africa
For those readers who enjoyed last year's best seller, David McCullough's "1776," the present volume by Simon Schama will show the events of that same period in a whole new light. Once you thought you had the definitive story, a book such as this comes along and turns the story upside down. In this book, Schama writes of the promise of freedom offered by the British Monarchy to the American slaves who were willing to serve on the side of the crown. The offer of course was not entirely altruistic; King George had much to gain from depriving the ungrateful colonists of their workforce. But for the slaves this was an offer they couldn't refuse, and they were willing to risk life and limb to cross over to the British side.
Much has been said about the Founding Fathers and the fact that they were slaveholders; Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin had all anguished over the morality of it. Yet not only did they retain their slaves, they acquiesced to the southern slaveholding states to allow it in order to get the constitution ratified. This poisoned the republic from the beginning and festered until it erupted with the Civil War many years later. It was one of the tragic ironies of the American Revolution; for all their high-minded ideals of independence and freedom, they could not let go of the institution of slavery which had given them their prosperity.
Schama's wonderfully written account of this little-mentioned struggle is very engaging and sorrowful. Those slaves who found themselves under British rule after 1787 were shipped either to Nova Scotia, the Carribean, or London, where they encountered new hardships and a sense of betrayal. To a great extent the British, having lost their struggle to control the colonists, were looking for places to unload their new subjects. In this sordid affair, Schama finds some heroic characters. One of these characters was Thomas Peter, who was one of the ex-slaves shipped off to the barren and chilly Nova Scotia, where the land they had been promised was virtually uninhabitable. In 1971, Peters went to London representing 202 families to plead with the British government to ship them back to Africa. As Schama tells it, Peters was the first genuine African-American political leader.
The other unsung heroes were the abolitionists Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, both of whom relentlessly challenged the institution of slavery through the courts. There was also John Clarkson, Thomas's younger brother and Royal Navy captain, who was responsible for resettling thousands of ex-slaves from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone.
The promised land of Sierra Leone turned out initially to be another tragedy. Not only were their high expectations of freedom not met, they encountered lingering slavery, disease, and death. Yet with the persistence of the ex-slaves and the abolitionists, Freetown became by the end of the 1790's a thriving community. Schama has done a magnificent job of telling the story of this struggle and giving a voice to those who ultimately made it succeed.
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