4 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fights for Personal Freedom., January 13, 2006
This review is from: Fight for Freedom: The American Revolutionary War (Hardcover)
Before the national issue in America in the middle 1800s concerning owning African slaves, a century earlier England had 15,000 of their own slaves from the West Indies. An application to Parliament in 1766 concerning their 'property' or 'commodity' was of great commercial conern to the slave owners who, no doubt, being British called them servants. On June 22, 1772, nearly a century before the slaves were freed in America, a British judge, with a single decision, brought about the conditions that would end slavery in England. His decision would have monumental consequences in the American colonies, leading up to the American Revolution, the Civil War, and beyond.
Because of this ruling, history would be forever changed. This book is about that decision and the role of slavery in the founding of the United States. In 1749, a nine-year-old boy growing up in a West African village was kidnapped and transported 'via the infamous Middle Passage' to America where he was bought by Charles Stewart of Norfolk, Virginia. He was a young Scottish-born merchant who was drawn to the tobacco industry and trained him as his own personal servant and business assistant, always at his side as a young man. After twenty years of co-dependence, Charles Stewart sailed to England with Somerset to help raise his sister's children after the death of her husband. The servant had never known such freedom as an adult and insinuated himself into a black community of thousands of former slaves and free persons, mainly from the British West Indian colonies.
After two years in London, he left Stewart's home and refused to return. Since leaving his master, he had "insulted his person," caught and set to be deported to Jamaica to be sold as the slave he'd been for 23 years. Some London blacks were free. Some, like Somerset, were slaves to colonials living in London. Some had been freed by their masters. Some worked; some were beggars known as the St. Giles Blackbirds. Some were popular artists and singers. Some were seamen or servants. Some had been runaways whose owners had given up looking for them. Lord Mansfield, the chief justice of the Court of King's Bench, ruled in favor of Somerset who then became a free man. Stewart's lawyer had argued that freeing the fourteen or fifteen thousand slaves in England would produce profound disruption and that the owners would suffer a loss of 700,000 lire or an average of 50 lire per slave. It is documented that Mansfield was biased when he decided that a slave could not be held captive by his master. This, he said, would effectively abolish slavery in England.
In the end, James Somerset merged into the black community of London, but his case lived on. Somerset never knew that his private quest for freedom was the spark that helped start the American Revolution and that has haunted the nation down to the present day. Thus, the American Revolution when the southern states joined the northern colonies, to rebel against England's domination and the First Continental Congress was formed in 1774 by John Adams. Thomas Jefferson supported the end of international slave trade as distinct from slavery itself. By 1776, we had a United States Constitution which encompassed ten new states in the Northwest Territory, half slave, half free, hardly a republic anyone could call united. The Articles of Confederation were adopted in November, 1777.
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9 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Racism and highly dubious claims., May 22, 2006
This review is from: Fight for Freedom: The American Revolutionary War (Hardcover)
The author, a PhD from Columbia, states on page 62 that "Even though Native Americans were skilled fighters who knew how to move quickly and silently through the wilderness, they were not helpful allies. The warriors were hard to control once the fighting began, and would sometimes attack and kill not only armed soldiers, but also women and children."
Interesting. If this was true we would expect few Native Americans in the two armies by the end of the conflict, as the generals would learn quickly. It could be disaster in this time to have a part of your armies line not where it was supposed to be.
Instead we see this, "August 19, 1782, the Battle of Blue Licks, in the Appalachian west, the British and their Indian allies, the Wyandot, Ottawa, Ojibwa, Shawnee, Mingo, and Delaware inflict heavy casualties and force the retreat of Daniel Boone and the Kentucky militia. In response, George Rogers Clark leads Kentucky militia on an expedition against the British into Ohio country. These are often considered the last formal engagements of the Revolutionary War." So, the forces of six major tribes were still fighting with the British in this particular army seven years after the start of hostilities. Would the British have kept them around if they "were not helpful?" It just seems highly dubious.
We would also expect few Native Americans in total, in the armies of the British in particular which were world famous for their emphasis on discipline, if they were "hard to control once the fighting began." This seems to be the opposite of what we find. As we see from this quote found on Wikipedia ---
"Most American Indians east of the Mississippi River were affected by the war, with many communities dividing over the question of how to respond to the conflict. Most Native Americans who joined the fight fought against the United States, since native lands were threatened by expanding American settlement. An estimated 13,000 warriors fought on the British side; the largest group, the Iroquois Confederacy, fielded about 1,500 men.Total number of warriors: James H. Merrell, ("Indians and the New Republic" in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, p. 393. Number of Iroquois warriors: Boatner, p. 545.)"
So the British had a full 13,000, approximately, Native Americans fight on their side, and to give some idea of how large a number that is, they only had 36,000 men under arms worldwide at the beginning of the conflict and only 30,000 Hessians over the course of the war. This large a number would certainly be enough to be a huge problem for military operations if the author's assertions were true. We see at Yorktown that the British forces were only 8,700 strong, another indication that the Native American forces were quite a significant component of their armies.
Then there is the question of which side was really killing women and children. "While (the Cherokee were)initially successful in striking numerous devastating blows to the frontier settlements, large expeditions of Colonial forces began to destroy Cherokee towns. Reports of the expeditions said that practically every Cherokee man or woman encountered was either killed and scalped or sold into slavery. Over 50 towns were burned and all crops and livestock taken or destroyed. A peace treaty was signed in 1777 which ceded nearly all of South Carolina to the colonists and much of north and eastern Tennessee." (http://cherokeehistory.com/1700thro.html)
"George Washington's War on Native Americans" seems to have a different take on it...I will have to read it, but the blurb states that, "Throughout the war, the unwavering goal of the Revolutionary Army, under George Washington, and their associated settler militias was to break the power of the Iroquois League, which had successfully held off invasion for the preceding two centuries, and the newly formed Ohio Union. To destroy the Natives in the way of land seizure, Washington authorized a series of rampages intended to destroy the League and the Union by starvation. Food, livestock, homes, and trees were destroyed, first in the New York breadbaskets, then in the Ohio granaries--spreading famine across Native lands. Uncounted thousands of Natives perished from New York to Pennsylvania to Ohio. This book tells how, in the wake of the massive assaults, the Natives held back the American onslaught."
This seems like a lot of effort to go to while facing the mighty British Empire. If the Native Americans were not a significant force, then it just makes no sense at all.
Another source provides this, "In 1779, George Washington instructed Major General John Sullivan to attack Iroquois people. Washington stated, "lay waste all the settlements around...that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed". In the course of the carnage and annihilation of Indian people, Washington also instructed his general not "listen to any overture of peace before the total ruin of their settlements is effected". (Stannard, David E. AMERICAN HOLOCAUST. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. pp. 118-121.)"
At the same time we see that Congress in 1777 directed that "That the said commissioners be directed to cultivate the friendship of the Shawanese and Delawares, and prevent our people from committing any outrages against them:
That they be empowered to engage as many of the Delaware and Shawanese warriors in the service of the United States as they judge convenient:"
This effort clearly failed as we saw above that in 1782 both the Shawnee and Delaware were fighting on the side of the British.
Really no part of the author's statement stands up to scrutiny in any way. It cannot be based on historical documents, since every source one finds contradicts it. What then is this view of the Native Americans as wild uncontrollable savages who rampaged and killed women and children without provokation based on? Simple racism seems the only available answer.
In fact, the adoption of Native inspired military tactics, hit-and-run, guerrilla style warfare, by the colonists is often cited as a key advantage they had over the British. One does not typically adopt the tactics of others if those using them are found to be "not helpful."
I would think that this book would be unsuitable for any children who are not being raised by members of the Aryan Nation or some such. These kinds of statements are highly offensive and just unacceptable in this day and age.
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