Benjamin Quarles's
The Negro in the American Revolution

Description

Originally published in 1961, Benjamin Quarles’s The Negro in the American Revolution remains one of the most comprehensive histories of the presence and politics of Black people in the colonies and their complicated participation in the American Revolution. Enduringly innovative in its source base and subsequent analysis, Quarles’s landmark work continues to serve as a cornerstone for scholars across disciplines. In addition to the original text, this critical edition includes an introduction by the editors and five new essays by historians and literary scholars that bring together methodological insights drawn from Quarles’s original work with the latest innovations in archival research, revealing how gender, geographic location, and placemaking shaped the wartime experiences of Black people.

Contributors include Leslie Alexander, Tara Bynum, Michael Dickinson, Vanessa Holden, Adam McNeil, Tamika Nunley, and Derrick Spires.

About The Author

Benjamin Quarles was professor of history at Morgan State University. His many authored or edited books include The Negro in the Civil War and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

Tamika Y. Nunley is the William & Sue Gross Professor of History at Duke University.

Derrick R. Spires is associate professor of English at the University of Delaware.

Reviews

“Building on Quarles’s enduring insight that African Americans declared their ‘loyalty . . . not to a place nor to a people, but to a principle,’ these essays show unequivocally that enslaved Americans were the ones who turned the War of Independence into a revolution.”—Woody Holton, author of Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution