The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America

Gerald Horne

Apr 2014 · NYU Press

About this ebook

How the preservation of slavery was a motivating factor for the Revolutionary War: “Meticulous, thorough, fascinating, and thought-provoking.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt.
 
Prior to 1776, anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain and in the Caribbean, and rebellious Africans were in revolt. For European colonists in America, the major threat to their security was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. It was a real and threatening possibility that London would impose abolition throughout the colonies—a possibility the founding fathers feared would bring slave rebellions to their shores. To forestall it, they went to war.
 
The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 brings us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States.
 
“Eminently readable, this is a book that should be on any undergraduate reading list and deserves to be taken very seriously in the ongoing discussion as to the American republic’s origins.”―The American Historical Review

Ratings and reviews

The author engaged in extensive research for this book. It is regrettable that he is given to rather aggravating repetition of several points. We are told no fewer than ten times that the Royal Africa Company was burdened by the cost of maintaining forts, while independent slave traders were not. Finally, all readers will know how the book turns out: there was no slave resistance of any magnitude in the British North American colonies, Tory or otherwise.

Essential reading for anyone who wants history straight from the mouths of the corrupt slaveowners. A must read for anyone desperate for the truth.

About the author

Gerald Horne is Moores Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, and has published three dozen books including, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the USA and Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire.