Synopses & Reviews
Rough Crossings turns on a single huge question: if you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, whom would you want to win? In response to a declaration by the last governor of Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the King would be emancipated, tens of thousands of slaves Americans who clung to the sentimental notion of British freedom escaped from farms, plantations and cities to try to reach the British camp. This mass movement lasted as long as the war did, and a military strategy originally designed to break the plantations of the American South had unleashed one of the great exoduses in American history.
With powerfully vivid storytelling, Schama details the odyssey of the escaped blacks through the fires of war and the terror of potential recapture at the war's end, into inhospitable Nova Scotia, where thousands who had served the Crown were betrayed and, in a little-known hegira of the slave epic, sent across the broad, stormy ocean to Sierra Leone.
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"Simon Schama offers an impassioned account of the war waged by black Americans against their former masters, and, in the aftermath of defeat, their long struggle to obtain justice." New York Times
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"Rough Crossings makes a powerful statement it offers a panoramic vision of how a brand-new antislavery movement did battle with stubborn, violent racism across three decades and two continents." Chicago Sun-Times
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"Apart from Schama's excessive enthusiasm to paint America's founders as hypocrites, Rough Crossings is well worth reading. Written in engaging prose, it tells an inspiring set of stories that illuminate neglected aspects of American, British, and African history." Portland Oregonian
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"Schama tells this complex story through a series of encounters with richly drawn, idiosyncratic individuals, from musical bureaucrats to rebellious slaves." San Diego Union-Tribune
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"In his excellent new book, Simon Schama traces the tension between the British anti-slavery movement and pro-slavery forces in the American colonies and the Caribbean during and after the American Revolution.... Rough Crossings is a well-told history." Rocky Mountain News
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"For those looking for something more acerbic than yet another hagiography about the Founding Fathers, Schama offers an impressive and challenging alternative." USA Today
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"This important book reveals the interplay between American and British ideals and hypocritical practices in impacting the plight of black Americans' freedom quest." Booklist
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"An important contribution to the history of the Revolution, and of slavery in America." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
In his book Rough Crossings, Simon Schama poses a challenging question: if you were a black person living in America during the Revolutionary War, who would you want to win?
During the war, the last British governor of Virginia issued a declaration that any rebel-owned slave who served the King would be emancipated. In response, tens of thousands of black Americans escaped from farms, plantations, and cities. But the people who put their fates in the hands of the British would find their hopes cruelly dashed, in a tragic saga that takes the reader from Virginia to Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone. Rough Crossings is a powerful story of hope and betrayal, and a heartbreaking reminder that even during its struggle for independence, not every American was allowed to be free.
Simon Schama studied history at Cambridge University, where he was also a fellow of Christ's College. He has taught at Brasenose College, Oxford and Harvard University. He is the author of Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813; Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel; The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Cultures in the Golden Age; Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, for which he received the NCR Award for non-fiction; and the historical novel Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations). As a writer and presenter, his television work includes The Art of the Western World; Rembrandt: The Public Eye and the Private Gaze; and "Envy" for The Seven Deadly Sins.
"At the end of this immaculately controlled, brave and important work, only the most callous of readers could fail to shed a tear." -- The Guardian (London)
Synopsis
“The most dramatic account so far of the extraordinary expeience of slaves in and after the American Revolution. . . . Schama's gift for plunging us into the very center of the action makes reading an exhilarating and often moving experience.”--Daily Telegraph
If you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, whom would you want to win? In response to a declaration by the last governor of Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the King would be emancpated, tens of thousands of blacks voted with feet, escaping to fight beside the British. Originally designed to break the plantations of the American South, this military strategy instead unleashed one of the great exoduses in American history.
Told in the voices of the slaves and the white abolitionists who aided them, Simon Schama vividly details the odyssey of these escaped blacks, shedding light on an extraordinary chapter in America's birth.
About the Author
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 A History of Britain and he is currently making an eight-part series, The Power of Art, for PBS. He has been art critic and cultural essayist 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.