New Jersey–The gradual abolition law passed by New Jersey in 1804 contained plenty of loopholes. By 1830, more than half of the remaining slaves in the North lived in New Jersey. The last eighteen enslaved people in the state were freed in 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution became law.
New York–The 1790 federal census showed twenty thousand enslaved people in New York State. There was tremendous tension between the state’s abolitionists and those who supported slavery, but by 1799 the state passed a very gradual emancipation bill. In 1817 that was amended to free all enslaved people by July 4, 1827. The 1830 census showed seventy-five enslaved people in the state. The 1840 census showed none.
Pennsylvania–The state passed a gradual abolition act that freed children born to enslaved mothers after 1780, though those children were required to work as indentured servants until they were twenty-eight years old. Historians believe that there were no slaves in Pennsylvania after 1847.
Rhode Island–A gradual emancipation was passed by Rhode Island in 1784. All enslaved boys who were born after March 1 of that year were freed when they turned twenty-one years old. Girls would be freed when they turned eighteen years old.
Virginia–The state made it easier for enslaved people to be manumitted in 1782, but slavery did not end until 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment became law.
Vermont–Though technically not one of the original thirteen states, Vermont was created out of New York State in 1777. The state constitution written that year declared all slaves free without any payment to the people who owned them. This ruling only applied to women older than eighteen and men older than twenty-one. Loopholes in the law allowed the continued slavery of children, and the kidnapping of free black Vermonters so they could be sold out of state. Those loopholes were closed and penalties enforced for kidnapping blacks and holding people in slavery in 1806.
Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, and North and South Carolina–Slavery did not end until 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which ended slavery throughout America, became law.
Read more:
Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank, Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery.
Harvey Amani Whitfield, The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont, 1777–1810.
Website: Slavery in the North, http://slavenorth.com/
9. Was Florida controlled by Spain during the Revolution? Which side of the war did the Spanish King Carlos III support?
At the time of the American Revolution, the area we now call Florida and other parts of the Gulf Coast region were claimed by two European countries: Great Britain and Spain. Great Britain, Spain, and France had been battling for territory in the Americas and Caribbean for years, destroying the lives of countless Indigenous peoples and robbing them of their land.
During the Revolution, both France and Spain sided with the young United States against Great Britain. France contributed money, guns, soldiers, and her navy to the American cause. Spain’s contributions are not as well known, but were equally important.
Spain declared war against Great Britain in 1779, forcing the British to fight not only the United States, but the Spanish military in the Gulf Coast region, the Mississippi River Valley, and Central America. The British army had to divide its forces, which weakened it. In April 1781, Spanish forces, including Spain’s Irish Hibernia Regiment as well as free Afro-Cubans, battled the British in Pensacola and won possession of West Florida. Then the wealthy families of Havana, Cuba, loaned an enormous amount of money to French Admiral de Grasse, which allowed the French navy to sail North to the Chesapeake region and assist Washington at the Siege of Yorktown.
Read more:
Thomas E. Chávez, Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift.
Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution.
Allan J. Kuethe, Cuba, 1753–1815: Crown, Military, and Society.
10. Was there really a Baker General at the Yorktown encampment?
Indeed! Christopher Ludwig (or Ludwick) was born in Germany in 1720. After working as a soldier and a ship’s baker, he immigrated to Philadelphia with fancy gingerbread molds and European baking recipes and skills. With his wife, he established a popular bakery that specialized in common gingerbread loaves, cookies, and elegant pastries. He was a founding member of the German Society of Pennsylvania, which offered English language classes to German-speaking immigrants. His business prospered.
At the beginning of the American Revolution, Ludwig collected, stored, and transported gunpowder for Washington’s troops. In 1776, at age 56, he volunteered for the Continental Army, where he served as a spy and worked to convince captured Hessians (mercenary German soldiers who fought for the British) to change sides. Congress later appointed Ludwig the “director of baking” for the army. He and his company of seventy bakers worked at the Valley Forge winter encampment but struggled to find enough flour to feed the men. Ludwig, now affectionately known as the “Baker General,” and his company of bakers also supplied bread (and perhaps gingerbread) to the troops at the Siege of Yorktown.
Read more:
“Christopher Ludwig (1720–1801)” on Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies (http://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entry.php?rec=175)
William Ward Condit, “Christopher Ludwick, Patriotic Gingerbread Baker,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, October 1957.
11. Why didn’t the Patriots kidnap Prince William Henry in New York City?
They almost did.
Prince William Henry of Great Britain, third son of King George III, arrived in British-held New York in September 1781, just before the Patriot Army left Williamsburg and marched to Yorktown. The sixteen-year-old midshipman was the first member of the royal family to visit America. During the winter of 1781–82, Prince William spent time with high-ranking British officials but also made sure to enjoy himself. He liked sitting in a chair being pushed around a frozen lake, among other things.
In March of 1782, five months after the Yorktown victory, New Jersey Colonel Matthias Ogden developed plans to sneak into New York with forty men and capture the prince and British Admiral Robert Digby. It was a bold and dangerous plan. Washington approved it, but before Ogden could strike, the British greatly increased security around the prince and Digby Ogden’s kidnapping plans were canceled. By August, news of peace negotiations between the Americans and the British became public.
Prince William Henry didn’t become King of England until 1830, when he was sixty-four years old. When he died seven years later, he was succeeded by his niece, Victoria. In other words, Queen Victoria, who ruled Great Britain from 1837 to 1901, was the granddaughter of King George III, who saw his American colonies declare, fight for, and win their independence.
Read more:
Janice Hadlow, A Royal Experiment: The Private Life of King George III.
Judith L. Van Buskirk, Generous Enemies: Patriots and Loyalists in Revolutionary New York.
12. Did the Patriot victory at Yorktown end the American Revolution?
Both sides of the conflict recognized Washington’s win at Yorktown as an important victory, but it did not end the war right away. The armies fought minor skirmishes as the politicians pondered what the end of the war should look like. In March 1782, the British people voted a new Parliament into office. In 1783, both countries signed the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended the war.
The Revolution was only the first step on the road to build a new country. America’s leaders had to structure the government and stabilize the economy, so they got to work writing the Constitution, which laid out the foundation of the United States.
Slavery became a central topic of debate during the Constitutional Convention. Delegates from the Northern states, whose economies were not as dependent on slave labor, argued to end the institution of slavery and gradually free all people held in slavery
. The Southern states disagreed. “South Carolina and Georgia cannot do without slaves,” said South Carolina delegate, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. There was talk of the two states seceding and rejoining Great Britain if the Constitution outlawed slavery.
The final draft of the Constitution was filled with compromises that ensured that millions of Americans would be held in slavery for the next seventy-eight years, until the Union’s victory in the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution set all people free.
The struggle for total equality of rights and opportunity for all Americans has continued ever since.
Read more:
Thomas Fleming, The Perils of Peace: America’s Struggle for Survival After Yorktown.
Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation.
Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution.
VOCABULARY WORDS
addlepated: foolish or silly
bairn: child
balderdash: nonsense
barmy: crazy
befuddled: confused
betwixt: between
blatherskite: person who talks on and on without making any sense
bloody flux: dysentery, a deadly infection that causes bloody diarrhea
breeches: Colonial-era pants that ended just below the knee, where they were fastened with a string, buttons, or buckles
buffoon: ridiculous person, clown
clodpate: blockhead, fool
confab: conversation
consarned: confounded, darned
caterwauled: complaining
frippery: frivolous thing
gob: mouth
gollumpus: big clumsy person, oaf
haint: ghost
hexed: magically enchanted
hullabaloo: commotion
lackwit: fool
lobsterback: British soldier
looby: awkward person who does dumb things
lout: mean person who is up to no good
muzzy-headed: confused
mutton-headed: foolish
niff-naffy nincompoop: lazy fool
odsbodikins: a mild curse word
pate: skull, head
pestilent: dangerous, harmful
poppet: affectionate nickname for a child
poultice: cloth soaked in medication, often heated, that is placed on the skin to reduce inflammation
pox on you: a mild curse that shows anger or disgust
rogue: dishonest person, scoundrel
queue: short ponytail worn by many boys and men during the Revolution
slubberdegullion: slobbering or worthless person
sluggard: a lazy person
sutler: someone who sells things to soldiers
totty-headed: confused, ridiculous
varlet: a dishonest person
vex, vexation: irritating, frustrating
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve been working on the Seeds of America trilogy for nearly half of my career. It has been an incredible journey, both as a writer and as an American. You can find a bibliography of the sources I used for the trilogy on my website, but I’d like to thank the people who were particularly helpful in the creation of Ashes here.
Historian, professor, and researcher Ray Raphael, author of groundbreaking books about the American Revolution such as A People’s History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence and Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past, and his wife, author Marie Raphael, generously read and commented on the book. They helped me sort through some confusing contradictions and verified important details. I used many of Ray’s books in the research for the entire trilogy and am grateful beyond words for the help and enthusiastic encouragement of him and Marie.
Martha Katz-Hyman, curator of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, specialist on African-American material culture of the eighteenth century, and co-editor (with Kym S. Rice) of World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States, kindly combed the manuscript for errors in my description of the lives led by the heroes of Ashes. Her attention is very much appreciated.
Three leaders in the field of education read Ashes with an eye toward the representation of the African American children in the book:
Dr. Marcelle Haddix, chair of Reading and Language Arts, dean’s associate professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University, and author of Cultivating Racial and Linguistic Diversity in Literacy Teacher Education: Teachers Like Me is an acclaimed scholar on the experiences of students of color in literacy, English teaching, and teacher education.
Dr. Detra Price-Dennis, assistant professor of Elementary and Inclusive Education at Teachers College at Columbia University, explores culturally relevant literacy pedagogy with her teaching, service, and scholarship that includes the examination of race, equity, and social justice, multicultural literature, and critical literacies in teacher education.
Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, assistant professor in the Reading/Writing/Literacy Division of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, focuses her research and writing on the teaching of African-American literature, history, and culture in K–12 classrooms as well as the roles that race, class, and gender play in the classroom. She is the co-editor (with Shanesha R. F. Brooks-Tatum), of Reading African American Experiences in the Obama Era: Theory, Advocacy, Activism.
My cup overflows with gratitude for these scholars. In the midst of their very busy professional lives, they all made the time to review Ashes and question me about culture references that I might not have otherwise considered. Those of us who write for children have a special responsibility to hold ourselves to the highest standards of research and craft, especially when we are writing outside of our cultural experience. Ashes is a better book for the thoughtful assistance of these three women.
Many thanks also to Dr. Gregory J. W. Urwin, expert in military history and professor of history at Temple University, for sharing his thoughts about the number of enslaved Virginians who fled to the British army, how many of those people were captured at Yorktown after the surrender, and the treatment they then suffered at the hands of the Continental army. Katherine Ludwig, the wonderful librarian at the David Library of the American Revolution, kindly facilitated my correspondence with Dr. Urwin.
A tip of my researcher’s hat to Dr. John Bezís-Selfa, Associate Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Wheaton College. Reading his article “A Tale of Two Ironworks: Slavery, Free Labor, Work, and Resistance in the Early Republic,” published in The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, October 1999, opened my understanding of the aftermath of the Revolution for enslaved Americans, and led to other research critical for the writing of this book. A second tip of my tricorn to the good people at JSTOR (jstor.org), a digital archive of thousands of academic journals, books, and primary sources. A few years ago JSTOR began making much of their content available to individual subscribers instead of limiting access to researchers affiliated with institutions. The opportunity to use the journals on JSTOR made a significant difference to the quality of my work.
There are other treasure-filled digital resources that deserve a round of applause: The George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress (memory.loc.gov/ammem/gwhtml/gwhome.html), Letters of Delegates to Congress at the Library of Congress (memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwdg.html), Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive at the Massachusetts Historical Society (masshist.org/digitaladams/archive), and The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (gilderlehrman.org). Thanks to the archivists, administration, donors, and taxpayers who support these institutions and make these Founding-Era documents available to everyone.
I also frequented plenty of brick-and-mortar institutions. My thanks to the Cornell University Library, the Bird Library of Syracuse University, Penfield Library of the State University of New York at Oswego, and the wonderful lending capability of the New York
North Country Library System, which I use in my hometown book heaven, the Mexico, NY Public Library. Special thanks go to Mary Jo Fairchild, Senior Archivist at the South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, SC, and Katherine Ludwig of the David Library of the American Revolution, Washington, DC, for putting up with me requesting a ridiculous amount of material for days on end.
I was fortunate to have two young beta-readers who saw this book in manuscript form and gave me some much needed support: Elise Simon of Washington, DC, and Martha Laramore-Josey of Michigan. Thank you so much! A round of gingerbread for you both! Thanks also to my friend, Jason Reynolds, who read the story with a keen eye and kind heart and said exactly the right things. Thanks also to the members of my writer’s group, TOG, for listening, laughing, crying, and cheering.
The incredible people at Simon & Schuster have been patient and steadfast while waiting for the completion of Ashes. Since I turned in the manuscript, they have had the fifes playing and drums beating as they prepare to share the entire trilogy with the world. A hearty huzzah of thanks must go to Jon Anderson, President of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing; Justin Chanda, VP and Publisher of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers; Anne Zafian, VP and Deputy Publisher; Lucille Rettino, Director of Marketing; Michelle Leo, VP and Director of Education and Library Marketing; Candace Greene-McManus, Senior Marketing Manager; Chrissy Noh, Marketing Director; Andrea Cruise, Education and Library department; Katy Hershberger, my miracle-working publicist; Clare McGlade, copy editor (sorry for my comma issues, Clare); Debra Sfetsios-Conover, designer; Elizabeth Blake-Linn, production genius; and the entire heroic sales and marketing team. Special thanks goes to the talented artist Christopher Silas Neal, who has illustrated every cover in the trilogy. I feel very lucky to have my stories graced by his art.
Caitlyn Dlouhy, VP and Editorial Director of Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, is so incredible that they named an imprint after her. She is the editor of my dreams. She has been patient and supportive as I navigated the family and health issues that led to several delays of this book, she read my drafts with compassion and integrity, and she set off celebratory fireworks when Isabel finally brought the story to its conclusion. More than being just an editor, she is a visionary American and I am proud to call her my friend. Thank you, Caitlyn. You and I are heart-kin.