Book chapter
Viewpoint: Liberating Penn’s Woods across the Early Republic
The Cambridge History of the American Revolution: Continuities, Changes, and Legacies: Volume III, pp.325-340
Cambridge University Press
2026
DOI: 10.1017/9781009628181.018
Abstract
Summary
This chapter grapples with the meaning of the American Revolution by tracing the tangled lives of an unfree Black family, their Pennsylvania and Mississippi enslavers, and several of their neighbors forward into the early republic. It situates gradual abolition in the context of an expanding United States empire and enquires into the limitations of Northern freedom and Southern slavery as stable analytical categories. The experiences of the Wood, Gustine, Duncan, and other families reveal how independence was not an event, but rather an ongoing negotiation. Promises of liberation made in one jurisdiction did not guarantee their enforcement in another. Ultimately, it was Black Americans who transformed the American Revolution into a national freedom struggle.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Viewpoint: Liberating Penn’s Woods across the Early Republic
- Creators
- Cory James Young - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- The Cambridge History of the American Revolution: Continuities, Changes, and Legacies: Volume III, pp.325-340
- DOI
- 10.1017/9781009628181.018
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press; Cambridge
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2026
- Academic Unit
- History
- Record Identifier
- 9985153533602771
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