The Natchez District and the American Revolution
The Natchez District and the American Revolution

Author: Robert V. Haynes

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2011-04-13

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1617032395

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In 1775, when the American Revolution broke out, the Natchez District was a small isolated outpost in British West Florida. During the early stages of the rebellion, the population of the district more than doubled as hundreds of loyalists settled along the western banks of the Mississippi River between Walnut Hills (modern Vicksburg) and Manchac. Although most inhabitants were loyal to England or preferred to remain neutral during the conflict, James Willing, a young adventurer and a former resident of the district, brought the war to their doorstep in early 1778 when he led a raiding party which forced the inhabitants of Natchez to take an oath of allegiance and which plundered the property of several well-known Tories south of the town. When Willing and his men reached New Orleans, they were allowed to dispose of their plunder at public auction. Although Willing's Raid exposed British weakness in the Southwest, the governor of West Florida dispatched enough military assistance to regain control over the Natchez district and to prevent Willing from ascending the Mississippi River with provisions for the American army. Spain's entry into the war in June of 1779 upset the precarious balance in the Southwest. In a series of brilliant campaigns, Governor Bernardo de Galvez captured the British settlements along the Mississippi, then seized Mobile, and eventually forced the British to surrender Pensacola. While Pensacola was falling to a superior Spanish force, the inhabitants of Natchez momentarily regained control of the district and threw out the Spaniards. As soon as they learned of the fall of Pensacola, however, they resubmitted to Spanish rule, which proved milder than many had anticipated. The end of the American Revolution found Spain in possession of the lower Mississippi Valley. This account is the first complete, scholarly study of what took place in the Natchez district during the American Revolution. Professor Haynes not only brings new material to light, but he also captures the drama of life in Mississippi during the period of the American Revolution.

Fourteenth Colony
Fourteenth Colony

Author: Mike Bunn

Publisher: NewSouth Books

Published: 2020-11-03

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1588384144

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The British colony of West Florida—which once stretched from the mighty Mississippi to the shallow bends of the Apalachicola and portions of what are now the states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana—is the forgotten fourteenth colony of America's Revolutionary era. The colony's eventful years as a part of the British Empire form an important and compelling interlude in Gulf Coast history that has for too long been overlooked. For a host of reasons, including the fact that West Florida did not rebel against the British Government, the colony has long been dismissed as a loyal but inconsequential fringe outpost, if considered at all. But the colony's history showcases a tumultuous political scene featuring a halting attempt at instituting representative government; a host of bold and colorful characters; a compelling saga of struggle and perseverance in the pursuit of financial stability; and a dramatic series of battles on land and water which brought about the end of its days under the Union Jack. In Fourteenth Colony, historian Mike Bunn offers the first comprehensive history of the colony, introducing readers to the Gulf Coast's remarkable British period and putting West Florida back in its rightful place on the map of Colonial America.

Joining Places
Joining Places

Author: Anthony E. Kaye

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2009-01-05

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0807877603

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In this new interpretation of antebellum slavery, Anthony Kaye offers a vivid portrait of slaves transforming adjoining plantations into slave neighborhoods. He describes men and women opening paths from their owners' plantations to adjacent farms to go courting and take spouses, to work, to run away, and to otherwise contend with owners and their agents. In the course of cultivating family ties, forging alliances, working, socializing, and storytelling, slaves fashioned their neighborhoods into the locus of slave society. Joining Places is the first book about slavery to use the pension files of former soldiers in the Union army, a vast source of rich testimony by ex-slaves. From these detailed accounts, Kaye tells the stories of men and women in love, "sweethearting," "taking up," "living together," and marrying across plantation lines; striving to get right with God; carving out neighborhoods as a terrain of struggle; and working to overthrow the slaveholders' regime. Kaye's depiction of slaves' sense of place in the Natchez District of Mississippi reveals a slave society that comprised not a single, monolithic community but an archipelago of many neighborhoods. Demonstrating that such neighborhoods prevailed across the South, he reformulates ideas about slave marriage, resistance, independent production, paternalism, autonomy, and the slave community that have defined decades of scholarship.

Complexion of Empire in Natchez
Complexion of Empire in Natchez

Author: Christian Pinnen

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2021-02-01

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0820358517

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In Complexion of Empire in Natchez, Christian Pinnen examines slavery in the colonial South, using a variety of legal records and archival documents to investigate how bound labor contributed to the establishment and subsequent control of imperial outposts in colonial North America. He examines the dynamic and multifaceted development of slavery in the colonial South and reconstructs the relationships among aspiring enslavers, natives, struggling colonial administrators, and African laborers, as well as the links between slavery and the westward expansion of the American Republic. By placing Natchez at the focal point, this book reveals the unexplored tensions among the enslaved, enslavers, and empires across the plantation complex. Most important, Complexion of Empire in Natchez highlights the effect that different conceptions of racial complexions had on the establishment of plantations and how competing ideas about race strongly influenced the governance of plantation colonies. The location of the Natchez District enables a unique study of British, Spanish, and American legal systems, how enslaved people and natives navigated them, and the consequences of imperial shifts in a small liminal space. The differing—and competing—conceptions of racial complexion in the lower Mississippi Valley would strongly influence the governance of plantation colonies and the hierarchies of race in colonial Natchez. Complexion of Empire in Natchez thus broadens the historical discourse on slavery’s development by including the lower Mississippi Valley as a site of inquiry.

Naval Documents of the American Revolution Volume 12, American Theater, April 1, 1778-May 31, 1778; European Theater, April 1, 1778- May 31, 1778
Naval Documents of the American Revolution Volume 12, American Theater, April 1, 1778-May 31, 1778; European Theater, April 1, 1778- May 31, 1778

Author: Naval History & Heritage Command (U.S.)

Publisher: Government Printing Office

Published: 2014-07-14

Total Pages: 1034

ISBN-13: 9780945274728

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With a foreword by President Barack Obama, the twelfth volume in the Naval History and Heritage Command’s Naval Documents of the American Revolution series tells the story of the Revolutionary War on the water during the period of April to June 1778. In the tradition of the preceding volumes—the first of which was published in 1964—this work synthesizes edited documents, including correspondence, ship logs, muster rolls, orders, and newspaper accounts, that provide a comprehensive understanding of the war at sea in the spring of 1778. The editors organize this wide array of texts chronologically by theater and incorporate French, Italian, and Spanish transcriptions with English translations throughout. Volume 12 presents the essential primary sources on a crucial time in the young republic’s naval history—as the British consolidate their strength in the Mid-Atlantic, and the Americans threaten British shipping in European waters and gain a powerful ally as France prepares to enter the war.

Historical Dictionary of the American Revolution
Historical Dictionary of the American Revolution

Author: Terry M. Mays

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-02-08

Total Pages: 675

ISBN-13: 1538119722

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The American Revolution pitted 13 loosely united colonies in a military, political, and economic struggle against Great Britain: the "mother country" and arguably the most powerful state in the world during the late 18th century. The independent spirit that led many individuals to leave homes in Europe and settle in the New World during the 17th and 18th centuries evolved into the drive that persuaded these same settlers and their descendants to challenge the colonial economic and taxation policies of Great Britain, which lead to the armed conflict that resulted in a declaration of independence. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of the American Revolution contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1,000 cross-referenced entries on the politics, battles, weaponry, and major personalities of the war. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the American Revolution.

Empire of Commerce
Empire of Commerce

Author: Susan Gaunt Stearns

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2024-05-28

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0813951259

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A groundbreaking study situating the Mississippi River valley at the heart of the early American republic’s political economy Shortly after the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789, twenty-two-year-old Andrew Jackson pledged his allegiance to the king of Spain. Prior to the Louisiana Purchase, imperial control of the North American continent remained an open question. Spain controlled the Mississippi River, closing it to American trade in 1784, and western men on the make like Jackson had to navigate the overlapping economic and political forces at work with ruthless pragmatism. In Empire of Commerce, Susan Gaunt Stearns takes readers back to a time when there was nothing inevitable about the United States’ untrammeled westward expansion. Her work demonstrates the centrality of trade on and along the Mississippi River to the complex development of the political and economic structures that shaped the nascent American republic. Stearns’s perspective-shifting book reconfigures our understanding of key postrevolutionary moments—the writing of the Constitution, the outbreak of the Whiskey Rebellion, and the Louisiana Purchase—and demonstrates how the transatlantic cotton trade finally set the stage for transforming an imagined west into something real.