Judith L. Van Buskirk's Books

Standing in Their Own Light

African American Patriots in the American Revolution

By: Judith L. Van Buskirk

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Standing in Their Own Light

African American Patriots in the American Revolution

By: Judith L. Van Buskirk

The Revolutionary War encompassed at least two struggles: one for freedom from British rule, and another, quieter but no less significant fight for the liberty of African Americans, thousands of whom fought in the Continental Army. Because these veterans left few letters or diaries, their story has remained largely untold, and the significance of their service largely unappreciated. Standing in Their Own Light restores these African American patriots to their rightful place in the historical struggle for independence and the end of racial oppression. Revolutionary era African Americans began their lives in a world that hardly questioned slavery; they finished their days in a world that increasingly contested the existence of the institution. Judith L. Van Buskirk traces this shift to the wartime experiences of African Americans. Mining firsthand sources that include black veterans’ pension files, Van Buskirk examines how the struggle for independence moved from the battlefield to the courthouse—and how personal conflicts contributed to the larger struggle against slavery and legal inequality. Black veterans claimed an American identity based on their willing sacrifice on behalf of American independence. And abolitionists, citing the contributions of black soldiers, adopted the tactics and rhetoric of revolution, personal autonomy, and freedom. Van Buskirk deftly places her findings in the changing context of the time. She notes the varied conditions of slavery before the war, the different degrees of racial integration across the Continental Army, and the war’s divergent effects on both northern and southern states. Her efforts retrieve black patriots’ experiences from historical obscurity and reveal their importance in the fight for equal rights—even though it would take another war to end slavery in the United States.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

313

Publisher

University of Oklahoma Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0806158905

ISBN 13

9780806158907

Generous Enemies

Patriots and Loyalists in Revolutionary New York

By: Judith L. Van Buskirk

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Generous Enemies

Patriots and Loyalists in Revolutionary New York

By: Judith L. Van Buskirk

In July 1776, the final group of more than 130 ships of the Royal Navy sailed into the waters surrounding New York City, marking the start of seven years of British occupation that spanned the American Revolution. What military and political leaders characterized as an impenetrable "Fortress Britannia"—a bastion of solid opposition to the American cause—was actually very different. As Judith L. Van Buskirk reveals, the military standoff produced civilian communities that were forced to operate in close, sustained proximity, each testing the limits of political and military authority. Conflicting loyalties blurred relationships between the two sides: John Jay, a delegate to the Continental Congresses, had a brother whose political loyalties leaned toward the Crown, while one of the daughters of Continental Army general William Alexander lived in occupied New York City with her husband, a prominent Loyalist. Indeed, the texture of everyday life during the Revolution was much more complex than historians have recognized. Generous Enemies challenges many long-held assumptions about wartime experience during the American Revolution by demonstrating that communities conventionally depicted as hostile opponents were, in fact, in frequent contact. Living in two clearly delineated zones of military occupation—the British occupying the islands of New York Bay and the Americans in the surrounding countryside—the people of the New York City region often reached across military lines to help friends and family members, pay social calls, conduct business, or pursue a better life. Examining the movement of Loyalist and rebel families, British and American soldiers, free blacks, slaves, and businessmen, Van Buskirk shows how personal concerns often triumphed over political ideology. Making use of family letters, diaries, memoirs, soldier pensions, Loyalist claims, committee and church records, and newspapers, this compelling social history tells the story of the American Revolution with a richness of human detail.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

271

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812218221

ISBN 13

9780812218220

A Town In-Between

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the Early Mid-Atlantic Interior

By: Judith Ridner

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A Town In-Between

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the Early Mid-Atlantic Interior

By: Judith Ridner

In A Town In-Between, Judith Ridner reveals the influential, turbulent past of a modest, quiet American community. Today Carlisle, Pennsylvania, nestled in the Susquehanna Valley, is far from the nation's political and financial centers. In the eighteenth century, however, Carlisle and its residents stood not only at a geographical crossroads but also at the fulcrum of early American controversies. Located between East Coast settlement and the western frontier, Carlisle quickly became a mid-Atlantic hub, serving as a migration gateway to the southern and western interiors, a commercial way station in the colonial fur trade, a military staging and supply ground during the Seven Years' War, American Revolution, and Whiskey Rebellion, and home to one of the first colleges in the United States, Dickinson. A Town In-Between reconsiders the role early American towns and townspeople played in the development of the country's interior. Focusing on the lives of the ambitious group of Scots-Irish colonists who built Carlisle, Judith Ridner reasserts that the early American west was won by traders, merchants, artisans, and laborers—many of them Irish immigrants—and not just farmers. Founded by proprietor Thomas Penn, the rapidly growing town was the site of repeated uprisings, jailbreaks, and one of the most publicized Anti-Federalist riots during constitutional ratification. These conflicts had dramatic consequences for many Scots-Irish Presbyterian residents who found themselves a people in-between, mediating among the competing ethnoreligious, cultural, class, and political interests that separated them from their fellow Quaker and Anglican colonists of the Delaware Valley and their myriad Native American trading partners of the Ohio country. In this thoroughly researched and highly readable study, Ridner argues that interior towns were not so much spearheads of a progressive and westward-moving Euro-American civilization, but volatile places situated in the middle of a culturally diverse, economically dynamic, and politically evolving early America.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

298

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812205391

ISBN 13

9780812205398

Generous Enemies

Patriots and Loyalists in Revolutionary New York

By: Judith L. Van Buskirk

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Generous Enemies

Patriots and Loyalists in Revolutionary New York

By: Judith L. Van Buskirk

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

271

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812218221

ISBN 13

9780812218220

Book's by Judith L. Van Buskirk

Standing in Their Own Light

Standing in Their Own Light

Generous Enemies

Generous Enemies

A Town In-Between

A Town In-Between

Generous Enemies

Generous Enemies

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email