Tidewater masters had long dreaded their slaves as "an internal enemy." By mobilizing that enemy, the war ignited the deepest fears of Chesapeake slaveholders. They enabled the British to escalate their onshore attacks and to capture and burn Washington, D.C. As guides, pilots, sailors, and marines, the former slaves used their intimate knowledge of the countryside to transform the war. The runaways pressured the British admirals into becoming liberators. Over many nights, hundreds of slaves paddled out to the warships seeking protection for their families from the ravages of slavery. This searing story of slavery and freedom in the Chesapeake by a Pulitzer Prizewinning historian reveals the pivot in the nation's path between the founding and civil war.įrederick Douglass recalled that slaves living along Chesapeake Bay longingly viewed sailing ships as "freedom's swift-winged angels." In 1813 those angels appeared in the bay as British warships coming to punish the Americans for declaring war on the empire.
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