EPIC JOURNEYS OF FREEDOM

During the American Revolution, thousands of slaves fled their masters to find freedom with the British. Having emancipated themselves—and with the rhetoric about the inalienable rights of free men ringing in their ears—these men and women struggled tenaciously to make liberty a reality in their own lives.

This alternative narrative of freedom fought for and won traces the stories of dozens of individuals—including Harry, one of George Washington’s slaves—who left America and forged difficult new lives in far-flung corners of the British Empire. The challenges these newly freed black people faced in London in the 1780s have been virtually unrecognized by history, as has the path that some individuals were forced to take in two bizarre colonial experiments in 1787 in Sierra Leone, Africa, and Botany Bay, Australia. This pathbreaking work, engagingly written in the best tradition of history from the bottom up, will alter how you think about the American Revolution.

“Just amazing. What a gripping narrative. Epic Journeys of Freedom is a truly heroic story of the exodus of runaway slaves that covers four continents: North America, England, Africa, and Australia. And Pybus has such command of the sources. An awesome achievement.” —Alfred F. Young, author of The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution