The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832

by Alan Taylor

Frederick Douglass recalled that slaves living along Chesapeake Bay longingly viewed sailing ships as "freedom’s swift-winged angels." In 1813 those angels appeared in the bay as British warships coming to punish the Americans for declaring war on the empire. Over many nights, hundreds of slaves paddled out to the warships seeking protection for their families from the ravages of slavery. The runaways pressured the British admirals into becoming liberators. As guides, pilots, sailors, and marines, the former slaves used their intimate knowledge of the countryside to transform the war. They enabled the British to escalate their onshore attacks and to capture and burn Washington, D.C. Tidewater masters had long dreaded their slaves as "an internal enemy." By mobilizing that enemy, the war ignited the deepest fears of Chesapeake slaveholders. It also alienated Virginians from a national government that had neglected their defense. Instead they turned south, their interests aligning more and more with their section.
In 1820 Thomas Jefferson observed of sectionalism: "Like a firebell in the night [it] awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the knell of the union." The notes of alarm in Jefferson's comment speak of the fear aroused by the recent crisis over slavery in his home state. His vision of a cataclysm to come proved prescient. Jefferson's startling observation registered a turn in the nation’s course, a pivot from the national purpose of the founding toward the threat of disunion. Drawn from new sources, Alan Taylor's riveting narrative re-creates the events that inspired black Virginians, haunted slaveholders, and set the nation on a new and dangerous course.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, War, Race, American Revolution, Politics

605 pages, Hardcover

First published September 9, 2013

About the author

Alan Shaw Taylor is a historian specializing in early American history. He is the author of a number of books about colonial America, the American Revolution, and the Early American Republic. He has won a Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize for his work.

Taylor graduated from Colby College, in Waterville, Maine, in 1977 and earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1986. Currently a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, he will join the faculty of the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia in 2014.

Reviews

[Scott Rhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A leisurely summer stroll through the beautifully-maintained restored buildings and grounds of Colonial Williamsburg is a wonderful excursion back in time to an era on the cusp of revolution. Touring the Governor’s Palace, the Courthouse, and the taverns and churches that lined the main streets of the old village that was, at one point, our capital city is a glorious reminder of how far we have come as a nation.

Yet, even as we see the birth of our nation’s independence and the beginnings of the American Experiment based on the principles of inalienable rights and the equality of Man in those Virginia fields and forests and towns and homes, our view is incomplete. Because as we celebrate the early colonial era and its importance in the formation of our United States of America, we are gently reminded by history that a significant segment of our population felt none of the effects of independence and liberty.

Even after our Forefathers signed the Declaration of Independence and penned the Constitution---two of the greatest documents ever written---the reality of the institution of slavery was an inconvenient truth that would forever taint the reputations of otherwise decent and intelligent men. For some, it was an inspiration to work toward abolition, starting with the freeing of their own slaves. For others, like Thomas Jefferson, their racism would inevitably lead to the blood and strife of the American Civil War. “Patriotic” historians tend to whitewash the racist views of people like Jefferson, but Taylor chooses a more honest and objective approach: We can still honor and appreciate our Forefathers while acknowledging that they were, like us, very imperfect people with views and beliefs that are, by today’s standards and knowledge, clearly wrong.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor examines the history of slavery in America by focusing on the state of Virginia during the decades between 1772 and 1832 in his book “The Internal Enemy”. In doing so, he also examines, to an extent, the history of racism in this country; a racism that made hypocrites of many of our famous Forefathers.


Hypocrisy and Contradictions

The title of Taylor’s book refers to the term that many Virginians called black slaves. It almost seems oddly contradictory that many Virginians---indeed, many Americans at the time---considered slaves a valuable and even integral part of their economy while simultaneously considering them a time bomb waiting to blow.

Taylor writes, “On the one hand, masters often felt secure with, and even protective of, particular slaves well known to them. But when thinking of all slaves collectively, the Virginians imagined a dreaded “internal enemy” who might, at any moment, rebel in a midnight massacre to butcher white men, women, and children in their beds." (p 7)

This fear was palpable enough among white slaveholders that discussions of how to safeguard themselves and their families were a commonly held occurrence during church and government meetings throughout the states. The most common---or, at the very least, the most powerful---view among Virginians was to keep blacks enslaved. To free all the slaves at once almost ensured a vengeful bloodbath perpetrated by the ex-slaves.

Even Thomas Jefferson---one of the key architects of the Declaration of Independence and our third president---felt that freeing the slaves was a bad idea in part because he “denied that different races could learn to live together as equals. He dreamed of gradually emancipating Virginia’s slaves over two generations, but only if they could be deported across the Atlantic as colonists to Africa. (p.8)” Mass deportation was, however, extremely cost-prohibitive, so Jefferson’s plan was repeatedly shot down by Congress.

Of course, there were some on the other side of the argument who felt that the fears of a slave uprising were ridiculous and based on very little evidence. In fact, according to those who favored ending slavery, “[t]he pervasive dread ignored the considerable evidence that black people wanted equality and opportunity rather than revenge." (p. 9)

Not that slaves weren’t being freed.

Manumission was the term given to the legal process of freeing slaves. It enabled masters the right to voluntarily free their slaves, with the consent of the legislature. In 1782, the law was changed so that legislative consent was no longer a requirement, perhaps due to a subtly shifting view against slavery and an increasing sense of guilt and hypocrisy among some slave-masters. Regardless of the reasons why, the number of manumissions dramatically increased after 1782, from 2,000 in 1782 to 20,000 in 1800.

Granted, this was only a small percentage of the overall number of black people still enslaved.

It is difficult to believe that a country founded on freedom and liberty could be so callous and unsympathetic to a large group of people within its borders. It is perhaps even more difficult due to the fact that many white people today probably, statistically, had great-grandparents who owned slaves. It is a thought hard to digest, and yet, “[s]lavery could not have endured without the support of attentive husbands, good fathers, pious church-goers, and conscientious citizens... Otherwise honorable men sustained an exploitative and encompassing economic system dedicated to property in humans, the pursuit of profit, the rights of creditors, and interests of heirs." (p.83)

Taylor writes, “One master confessed, “Surely, the Virginians are not barbarians. Habit may make them forget the situation of these poor wretches, who tremble under their hands, and even reconcile them, in spite of themselves, to the daily horrors which pass under their eyes.”"(p.83)

In passing judgment on our ancestors, Taylor says, there is a danger in forgetting that we as contemporary Americans are just as imperfect: “It is too easy for modern readers to feel superior by blaming slavery on the “bad people” of another time and region. Slavery reveals how anyone, now as well as then, can come to accept, perpetuate, and justify an exploitative system that seems essential and immutable. After all, we live with our own monsters." (p.83)

A glance through our daily news feed---the homophobic backlash against same-sex marriages; trigger-happy police officers who seem to target black people; crazed shooters with automatic weapons killing randomly in schools, theaters, and malls; science-denying parents who put their own children and everyone else’s children at risk by choosing not to vaccinate; ignorant politicians making decisions about the environment based on economic rather than scientific reasons; a steadily widening wealth gap in which the super-wealthy find better and more efficient ways to exploit and vilify the poor---will attest to the rightness of Taylor’s statement.


A Setback for Abolitionists

There is a pervasive lie still being told (hopefully by a dying minority) regarding the history of slavery in this country. The lie is that slavery wasn’t that bad. Tied into that lie is another lie: most slaves were happy with their lot in life.

These ridiculous beliefs stem from a residual racist notion that black people are somehow less than human, incapable of free will, and prone to violent behavior if left to their own devices. It is this notion that bolstered the institution of slavery, and it is also a notion that, in some cases, remains active in our society.

During Jefferson’s days, these notions of black inferiority were so prevalent as to be common knowledge among the majority.

When Jefferson became president in 1800, his fellow Republicans controlled Congress. The opposing party of the time, the Federalists, had suffered a defeat with Jefferson’s inauguration. Former President John Adams was a bit too anti-slavery and had engaged in a bit too much governmental over-reach for a majority of voters, especially Southern ones.

President Jefferson, hoping to maintain the good relationship with the Southern states that helped get him elected, “refused... to meddle with slavery, reasoning “that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.” In 1805, he noted having “long since given up the expectation of any early provision for the extinguishment of slavery among us.” He helped to defeat a proposal in Congress to restrict slavery in the new territories of the Louisiana Purchase. His administration also sought to isolate and impoverish the new republic of Haiti (the renamed Saint-Domingue), which he dreaded as a dangerous example to American slaves: “The existence of a negro people in arms, occupying a country which it has soiled by the most criminal acts, is a horrible spectacle for all white nations.” "(p. 103)

Jefferson’s, and the majority of American’s, fears of the internal enemy were too great, and the anti-abolitionists’ protests too powerless, to make any headway in eradicating the institution of slavery and providing more humane and civilized treatment of black people.

Indeed, the abolition movement came to a virtual standstill during Jefferson’s presidency, due in large part to an outspoken Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals, St. George Tucker. The irony is that, during the 1790s, Tucker was a notable voice among the abolitionists. By the early 1800s, however, Tucker had reversed himself on nearly every issue regarding slavery and race issues. Being an inspirational orator, his views unfortunately helped to shape opinions of others.

Tucker believed that “blacks were incapable of freedom and happiest under the benign rule of paternalistic masters... Slavery also restrained them from “falling into vicious habits, which emancipated blacks appear too prone to contract.” "(p.107)

Tucker was also one of many people during this time to fall under the sway of a popular pseudo-science based on the premise that clear and definite biological features---such as flat noses or natty hair---could determine whether a person had African ancestry and, thusly, no rights as a free citizen.

Like many others at this time, Tucker was less interested in the natural rights of blacks and more interested in the socio-economic benefits awarded whites thanks to the institution of slavery. After all, slaveholders tended to be rich and politically powerful. Abolitionists, on the other hand, tended to be neither.

Tucker’s views “helped to redefine slavery in more purely racial terms. Along with Jefferson, Tucker retreated from the revolutionary flirtation with universal human rights. Ultimately, both men converted the scientific reasoning of the Enlightenment from a philosophical call for equality into a biological mandate for inequality." (p. 110)

The Civil War of 1812

An international incident off the coast of Chesapeake Bay on June 22, 1807 sparked a chain reaction of events that eventually led to the Civil War of 1812.

When a British frigate, HMS Leopard, detained an American frigate, USS Chesapeake, in order to find British Royal Navy deserters on board, the captain of the Chesapeake refused to let the British on board. TheLeopard fired off cannon rounds at close range, crippling the American ship, killing three sailors, and wounding many others.

To understand the circumstances leading up to this incident, one must know that, at the time, the British were fighting the French under Napolean. The Royal Navy was roughly 100,000 men strong, but the King wanted more. Under British law, no man born anywhere within the empire (this included the colonies, pre-Revolution) could ever renounce his British citizenship. If captured by the British, anyone British by birth could be sent back to England. At the time, almost 40% of the 50,000 sailors on American merchant ships were British by birth.

Led by a belief that people from other countries could be “naturalized” as citizens of the United States, the Republicans in power protested the actions of the Royal Navy. Obviously, the British were not pleased. When war was ultimately declared, the American military was not totally up to par, as it had been gutted for financial reasons by Jefferson and the Republicans. Jefferson ordered immediate repairs of existing warships and directed state governors to prepare 100,000 militiamen for war.

That America would so vehemently stand up to the British over what was perceived as a violation of human rights for Navy deserters while ignoring the plight of black people in its own country was an irony not lost upon the British.

To the British, Jefferson’s and the Republican’s protests were nothing more than hypocritical rhetoric and bluster. Captain William Stanhope Lovell of the Royal Navy: “Republicans are certainly the most cruel masters, and the greatest tyrants in the world towards their fellow men. They are urged by the most selfish motives to reduce every one to a level with, or even below themselves, and to grind and degrade those under them to the lowest stage of human wretchedness. But American liberty consists in oppressing the blacks beyond what other nations do, enacting laws to prevent their receiving instruction and working them worse than a donkey." (p. 140)

There was also the fact that, compared to the British, the American military was woefully unprepared. As one American Congressman at the time noted, the Virginia militia was “very badly equipped, worse disciplined, and still worse commanded." (p. 150)

When five British warships entered Chesapeake Bay on February 4, 1813, militiamen from the different states were ordered to Norfolk. This led to a problem in the minds of many militiamen: leaving their wives and children alone on the farms and plantations with their slaves. The conditions, they feared, were ripe for bloody insurrection.

The Mayor of Richmond stated that he feared “our worst enemy”, a reference NOT to the British but to the slaves of Virginia. He claimed to have proof “that the Slaves of this City, probably in conjunction with free persons of colour, have conspired and are conspiring to burn the City, possess themselves of the public arms, and probably to murder the white Inhabitants indiscriminately." (p. 155)

Escape to freedom

Not surprisingly, many slaves took the opportunity to escape their masters afforded by chaos created by war.

Many of these slaves escaped to one place they figured they would be safest: British warships. Literally hundreds of slaves, in stolen boats and canoes, sought refuge among the British.

The British, whose numbers continued to diminish from deserters, decided to capitalize on these slaves by recruiting them into the British military.

Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn believed it to be a win-win situation to replace missing white marines with black recruits. He said, “[Blacks] are stronger Men and more trust worthy for we are sure they will not desert whereas I am sorry to say we have Many Instances of our [white] Marines walking over to the Enemy." (p. 200)

Indeed, the new black marines continued to prove themselves and so impressed Cockburn that he initiated a campaign to send the message to all slaves in the United States that safety and, above all, liberty would be waiting for men, women, and children if they could escape to the British warships.

By most accounts, nearly 3,400 slaves escaped to the British.

Cockburn organized the black runaways into a special unit of Colonial Marines, under the command of a white drill sergeant, William Hammond. They were put to the test on May 29, 1814 at the mouth of Pungoteague Creek in Accomack County to attack a militia stronghold. A single Colonial Marine, Michael Harding, was killed, but his actions helped to save the other British soldiers. Captain Charles B.H. Ross, who led the raid, later praised the black soldiers: “Their Conduct was marked by great Spirit and Vivacity and perfect obedience." (p. 284)

As the numbers of runaways grew, so too did the numbers of Colonial Marines. By July 17, there were 120. Their performance in battle continued to garner praises.

The War’s End

Peace arrived on December 24, 1814, when a treaty was signed between British and American negotiators. In the months that followed, as the news spread throughout the states, a mix of emotions was felt.

White Americans celebrated, mainly because many knew (although refused to acknowledge or admit) that they would not have been able to win the war. Sickness, famine, and incompetence had brought the American forces to its knees, and, had it not been for the peace treaty, many would have ultimately starved or surrendered.

Black Americans lamented the peace treaty. As Taylor writes, “One man’s freedom was another’s slavery in Virginia, so the peace that saved the republic also shut down a war that had freed thousands of slaves. While Virginians loudly celebrated, many of their slaves privately mourned the passing of an opportunity." (p. 334)

For the most part, the British were good on their word of providing safety and liberty for the slave runaways that chose to stay with the British. (Amazingly, while the numbers were small, some slaves actually chose to return to their masters in the U.S., mostly because they had left family members behind.)

After the war, most refugees settled in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, or Trinidad. A small percentage settled in various places throughout the global British Empire.

Despite the peace, however, many white Americans---especially slave-holders---knew that a day of reckoning would eventually come for their sins. For many, the fears of a bloody slave rebellion still racked their imaginations. Very few could imagine it would come many years later in the form of a bloody civil war between the states.

But that is another book.

[Kidada · Rating 4 out of 5]

White Virginians lived in fear that the people they enslaved would turn on them. They had reason to be afraid, not only of a violent uprising but also of the determination of enslaved people to escape bondage any way they could. Taylor opens a window onto enslaved people's resistance in Virginia during the War of 1812 and shows the processes by which several thousand enslaved people gained their freedom by siding with the British.

[Porter Broyles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alan Taylor is, for me, so hit or miss.

This book was a miss.

I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't read other books that cover the period and subject in great detail.

I might have enjoyed it more if I had read this book rather than listened to it.

The narrator put me to sleep.

[Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

If your mental map of American history is like mine, it may jump rather directly from 1776 and 1787, Declaration and Constitution... to 1860 and the Civil War. The early 19th century sits there like a vast vague blob of things you and I should have remembered from high school... but probably don't.

What the heck really happened in America in the first half of the 19th century. Let's see. Uh. Westward Expansion? The Second Great Religious Awakening? A Bunch of Obscure Presidents? Bloody Kansas? Harper's Ferry? And then it's 1860 and time for The Civil War! Now we're back in familiar territory.

Sadly, this was my basic mental map of American History in the first half of the 19th century. Alan Taylor's The Internal Enemy is a marvelous corrective to my ignorance. There was a war in there of course, the war of 1812 (and another one in 1846 against Mexico too!) But it was in 1814 that the bombs were a bursting in air over Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor, while the British raided plantations and settlements up and down the Chesapeake bay, and burned Washington DC. As they did so, thousands of slaves fled to freedom on British warships, and provided invaluable assistance to British raiding parties as they guided them back through hidden forest paths to their former masters' estates and stores of food. Slaves had always been owners of the night, and they put their knowledge to good use.

Taylor highlights the fear of slave rebellion in Virginia as a driving force in American history. Thousands of slaves fled plantations for the freedom offered by British warships. Taylor brings us these thrilling narratives of freedom. He highlights the mingled bonds of hatred and affection between slaves and masters, documenting scenes on British warships in which slaves refused their masters' pleas to return to slavery. He describes the lives of slaves after obtaining freedom in Halifax, Trinidad and elsewhere. We read letters from former slaves, written years afterwards, proudly describing their successes as free men to the men who once owned them as property. This is a glorious American history. It does us well to remember that in the scheme of things the British recognized the dignity of enslaved persons when Americans would not.

Taylor also describes how the success of the British in organizing a unit of Black Marines from American refugee slaves struck terror in the hearts of southerners and confirmed their deepest fears about the military potential of organized Blacks. Taylor documents the extensive planning for suppressing a slave rebellion that was always part of Virginia's White culture, but which intensified during the war and after it.

Taylor sees the war of 1812 as a key moment in the hardening of the Southern commitment to slavery, as various schemes to manumit (free) individual slaves, or to resettle them in Liberia, all increasingly came to be seen as likely to inspire thoughts of freedom among those who must be owned and oppressed lest they rebel and kill. British manipulation of southern fears of slave rebellion hardened resolve across the south to never let go of slavery.

An interesting counter-factual historical question is raised. Taylor wonders aloud what might have happened had the British not agreed to peace in 1815, but instead continued to raid with their own troops and Black Marines comprised of organized runaways. The Americans were enormously weak, and the pace of runaways was increasing. But the British had other concerns and chose to end the war, with the Treaty of Ghent.

There is so much rich history of American and southern attitudes and actions here. There are African American heroes here, Red Coat wearing predecessors to the Blue Coat wearing Black units of the Civil War, and even the ordinary heroes whose heroism consisted of simply finding the strength to steal a canoe and paddle toward the rumor of freedom on a British warship anchored in the Chesapeake Bay. I cannot recommend this highly enough. You will know America in a new way when you read this.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alan Taylor won his second Pulitzer Prize for The Internal Enemy, which unfortunately is one of his weaker books. The book starts with an intriguing topic - the fraught relationship between Virginians and their slaves, exploited by the British in America's early conflicts - and manages to muff it with a rambling narrative that often ignores, elides or even minimizes its ostensible subject. Much of the book provides a narrative of British campaigns in the Chesapeake during the War of 1812 (similar to his much better Civil War of 1812)...not necessarily an uninteresting subject, but the slaves become an afterthought. Taylor does show how the British armed, or threatened to arm, both slaves and freed black men during the Revolution and the 1812 conflict, which panicked the Virginian elite, and how it hardened pro-slavery sentiments in the antebellum South. But the book is too loosely organized and indifferently argued to really cohere. What could have been an excellent look at an overlooked topic is sadly freighted by sloppy writing, lack of focus and an overall inability to cohere.

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Taylor has found an incredible archive that tells an incredible story. During the War of 1812, almost 5,000 slaves escaped to the British side and to freedom, almost half of whom came from Virginia. The Treaty of Ghent that ended the war, however, promised British compensation to the slaveholders who lost their "property." After an arbitration by Czar Alexander I, and an international commission, the British handed over $1.2 million, that the Americans then had to distribute with their own commission. As a result, thousands of slaveholders submitted documentation and letters about their escaped slaves, as well as letters from those escaped slaves themselves. Those documents offer an unparalleled look at slavery in Virginia during one of its weakest moments.

The best part of the book by far concerns the travails of the Corotaman plantation in Lancaster County in Virginia's Northern Neck. St. George Tucker had inherited management of the estate through his marriage to Leila Carter, widow of the fabulously wealthy Carter family, who technically owned it with her children through the widows' "dower." Ironically, Tucker had once proposed a gradual slave emancipation plan to the Legislature in 1796, and attacked the horrors of slavery and the threat to the future of the state. Those horrors were demonstrated by the case of his mentor and law professor at William and Mary, George Wythe, who had emancipated his own slaves, only to see an enraged white man murder him for his advocacy. Yet as new Chief Judge of the Virginia Court of Appeals, succeeding Wythe, Tucker in 1806 narrowed Wythe's anti-slavery rulings by stating that the assumption for any black person in Virginia should not be freedom, it should be slavery. He later had to defend slavery to his emancipationist son-in-law, and convince him to keep his slaves to "protect" them. During the War of 1812, his and Leila's Corotoman estate lost over 70 slaves to the British, the most of any estate in the war, which almost ruined it. Another of son-in-law, and former law student, George Cabell, successfully got compensation from the commission for $18,000, saving the estate, and, ironically, therefore keeping the slave families together.

Much of the book shows how important families were to the slaves. Many escapees came back to get the rest of their family, the few who refused to flee did so often because of their connections to their families. The 9 blacks, out of the 5,000 who fled, who agreed to willingly return to slavery did so mainly because they couldn't bear to be separated from their wives, parents, siblings, and children. As Taylor shows, the end of the "entail" in Virginia meant that estates in Virginia tended to get divided, mortgaged, and sold more easily, and this tended to break apart many families, which soon became one of their biggest complaints about the injustice of the slave system. Rightfully so.

The story gets bogged down in excessive recounting of slave escapes, repeated again and again with little variation over hundreds of pages, and Taylor has an obnoxious habit of ending every paragraph with a pithy moralizing summary of the paragraph's contents, but the story and research is worth it. I might have not awarded the book the Pulitzer Prize it got (Taylor's second), but it does warrant celebration.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Taylor still undefeated.

[Zack Whitley · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an extraordinary book! The research and knowledge on display in this book is truly amazing. Talk about depth! Taylor goes deep on issues of slavery and provides documentation to back up his claims. He also goes deep on the war of 1812 as it was fought in Virginia and the Chesapeake bay. Taylor tells many stories to back up his assertions, and he embraces nuance and gray areas. He tells us that some slave owners freed slaves for what we might consider liberal progressive reasons, others for sincerely held Christian beliefs. But of course most owners did not manumit their slaves. They were trapped in the system.

What really stands out is the cruelty of the slave owners (which the author shrewdly points out, would probably happen to any of us if put in their shoes) and their delusion and contradictions. The mental gymnastics required of a slave owner to justify their practices must have been exhausting. And the constant worry and concern of slave uprisings makes you wonder why these people couldn’t see their errors and free their slaves? I mean, I know why they couldn’t: economic self interest. What a horrible existence for all involved. And certainly we still live with the legacy of slavery today. A great book for anyone to read. I learned so much!

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for History is an extensively researched and wonderfully readable history of slavery in Virginia focusing on the impact that slavery had in Virginia on events during the War of 1812. Slavery in Virginia was a two-edged sword. It provided needed labor for the cash crops upon which the Virginia economy was based while also creating both fear and loathing on every side. Taylor describes slave owners as living in a "cocoon of dread" for the day when their slaves--the internal enemy--would openly act against them. That day came in 1813 when British warships entered the Chesapeake Bay and were surprised by the hundreds of slaves who rowed out to the warships under cover of darkness beseeching the British for protection and liberation. Ultimately the British recruited the runaway slaves to serve in their army and navy and also utilized slaves as guides and spies. Because of their knowledge of the area that these slaves possessed the British were able to successfully broaden their onshore attacks culminating in the capture and burning of Washington, D.C.

[Stan Prager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of: The Internal Enemy: Slavery and the War in Virginia 1772-1832, by Alan Taylor
by Stan Prager (2-9-16)


Every now and again I read a nonfiction book that fits neatly into the geography of multiple areas of scholarship that I have been pursuing, reinforcing previous ground covered, rounding out the sharp edges of probes made into unexplored territory, while bringing an original and entirely new perspective to certain corners of the terrain. Such is the case for the superlative Pulitzer prize winning volume, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and the War in Virginia 1772-1832, by noted scholar Alan Taylor, whom I consider one of the greatest living historians of early American history. While The Internal Enemy focuses on the experience of the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake, it actually surveys a much wider arena – an especial talent of Taylor as a historian – which is why I found that it touches upon so many areas that I have been studying.
The “internal enemy” of the book’s title is the slave population that the planter aristocracy of the early Republic somewhat uncomfortably but stubbornly considered essential to their way of life, even while often privately confessing their revulsion for the “peculiar institution.” Their descendants would sometimes come to deny the humanity of their human property, and argue on spurious religious and moral grounds that the master-slave relationship was beneficially enshrined in the natural order of things, but at this stage justifications are clumsy at best, and perhaps best summarized by Jefferson’s much cited “wolf by the ear” agonized cop-out. (“But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”)
Despite contemporary accusations by some that we are applying unfair “political correctness” when judging the founding generation, Taylor reminds us that these guys knew that they had their arms wrapped around a great evil and nevertheless chose to abide it. The planter St. George Tucker, central to this narrative, acknowledges the incongruity of the ideals of the American Revolution and the institution of slavery, noting that “we were imposing upon our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions.” No less a patriot than Patrick Henry “conceded that the system was as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the bible, and destructive to liberty.’ But Henry never freed his own slaves due to ‘the general inconveniency of living without them.’ Slaves comprised so much property in Virginia that they could not be freed without impoverishing white men and ruining their creditors.” [p35-36] This portion of the narrative recalls for me the fine book I read last year, Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison & the Decline of Virginia, by Susan Dunn [reviewed by me here: https://regarp.com/2015/02/09/review-...], which explores the failure of the founding generation of planters to solve the problem of human chattel slavery and how that led to the decline of Virginia in the antebellum era. Taylor adds further nuance and complexity to the subject and thus deftly rebuts any attempt to give a pass to those whose soaring rhetoric on liberty failed to address their deep complicity in its antithesis, which was the foundation of their economic life.
Alan Taylor tends to personalize history, and as in his previous works The Internal Enemy carefully studies not only individuals but entire families. Despite his misgivings, it turns out that St. George Tucker ultimately reconciled himself to plantation slavery, but in a great twist of irony his stepson Charles Carter was of an abolitionist bent, and pronounced his desire to free his share of their mutual human property. Carter was thus ever after viewed by the rest of his clan with the kind of suspicion and disdain that a family today might direct towards a son and heir who was a thief or a heroin addict. [p229-30] Taylor aptly translates this into unsettling contemporary terms: “Seeing no other choice, most Virginians maintained slavery as their duty
. . . It is too easy for modern readers to feel superior by blaming slavery on the ‘bad people’ of another time and region. Slavery reveals how anyone, now as well as then, can come to accept, perpetuate, and jus¬tify an exploitative system that seems essential and immutable. After all, we live with our own monsters.” [p83]
As a historian, Taylor often shines by forcing the reader to view something we think we know very well through a completely different lens, and he does not disappoint in The Internal Enemy. For example, Jefferson was proud of his achievements in the early Republic of overturning time-honored traditions of primogeniture and entail, which formerly had granted title to the eldest son and required estates to be passed down intact. Historians have often credited the Jefferson “revolution” in this regard because it led to a greater economic democratization over time. But Taylor neatly highlights the unintended consequences. One of the cruelest aspects of American slavery was the arbitrary separation of families when members were sold away to other plantations, sometimes at great distance; the end of entail made that far more common: “Entails often had attached slaves to their estates, which barred the owners from selling them. Although certainly not meant to benefit the slaves, that feudal restriction inhibited the breaking up of their families by sale. Under the reformed laws, the division of estates tedded to divide enslaved families among multiple heirs. The changes benefited younger sons, entrepreneurs, and creditors, but not the enslaved people treated as liquid capital.” [p46]
Taylor’s previous outstanding work, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies [reviewed by me here: https://regarp.com/2015/10/01/review-...] treats the largely disastrous American attempts to take Canada during the war. The Internal Enemy showcases British revenge for Canada through their punishing attacks on the Chesapeake, which the Virginia planter class felt most painfully. Just as the centrality of slavery undeniably defines the later Civil War, it is the centrality of slavery that determines Virginia’s response to the British assault. Already deeply suspicious of a central government with too much authority, and despite the fact that it was the most prominent scions of their planter class – first Jefferson and now Madison – serving as the new nation’s Chief Executives – Virginia prized its sovereignty along with its slaves. And these slaves also already inspired great fears among their owners. In fact, throughout the antebellum era across the vast southern geography where slavery thrived, slave rebellions were extremely rare, but the exaggerated possibilities ever overshadowed the jittery planters. Just as ancient Spartan armies hesitated to venture far from home for long periods lest their helots rise up, so too elite Virginians were less willing to invest manpower in armies to protect them from British incursions than in militias to protect them from imaginary slave uprisings. At the same time, they were loath to draw upon the vast human resources in their slave population to buttress their defensive posture against the invaders, although blacks had served with some distinction in the Revolutionary War. Already there was the root of the feeble claim that later echoed in the Civil War a half century later that blacks by virtue of their race were incapable of successful military service. Despite experience and common sense, enlistment of blacks, slave or free, was stubbornly resisted.
The British put a lie to this ungrounded theory by upping the ante. Not only did they vigorously encourage and abet slaves to run away to British ships, but they soon put them to impressive use as marines against their former masters. The greatest fears of the planters – that the invaders would incite slave rebellions – never came to pass, not only due to moral objections to such tactics (despite generalized British antipathy for slavery) but also because of self-interest: slaves still served as the chief labor force in often grueling conditions in British colonies in the West Indies. But there was little reluctance to the undermining of the wealthy Virginia aristocracy by encouraging slaves to flee and then helping them to return to aid the escape of family members. Racism led many British officers to doubt the capabilities of black soldiers, but this was soon overcome as the former slaves, wearing British uniforms over their lash-scarred backs, proved brave and able in combat.
Slavery could be cruel and barbaric, but conditions varied just as human beings vary. Not all planters mistreated their chattel property, but yet many slaves that lived relatively well in servitude did not hesitate to flee when the opportunity arose, to the sometimes great puzzlement of their former masters who had become conditioned by their own delusional propaganda to be surprised that few would choose slavery – even when benign – over freedom. They coped with such rejection by persuading themselves that the Brits were resorting to compulsion to force loyal servants to abscond. The British responded by summoning such masters to visit their ships and invite their former slaves back into bondage. Unsurprisingly, there were not many takers.
There is far more to this excellent book than any review could properly encapsulate. If Taylor can reasonably be faulted, it is that sometimes his books are too long and too pregnant with detail. In the case of The Internal Enemy, the concluding chapters, which serve as a bridge to the next phase of the antebellum era, could perhaps have been attenuated. Still, that hardly detracts from the well-written compelling narrative that relates a truly fascinating and little-known chapter of a little-known war – one that came to presage events that led to another much more familiar war some several decades hence. I would highly recommend this book to all students of American history.


My review of: The Internal Enemy: Slavery and the War in Virginia 1772-1832, by Alan Taylor is live on my book blog http://wp.me/p5Hb6f-6p

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review title: Remembering the importance of the forgotten war

What we learned about the War of 1812 in school was overshadowed by the Revolution a few decades before and the Civil War a few decades after and focused mostly on the British burning the White House and Andrew Jackson getting revenge in the Battle of New Orleans after the sides had already come to the bargaining table to end the war. But Taylor provides a deeper and more nuanced account of this forgotten war that elevates it to its proper perspective in American history.

The Internal Enemy of the title were the slaves on the Virginia Tidewater and Piedmont plantations along the many streams and bays along the Virginia coast. Slave holders always viewed their human property through opposite but negative lenses: as a group they were smart conspirators always plotting a murderous revolt against their owners, but on individual plantations they were lazy and ignorant idlers susceptible to enticement by coastal British raiding parties to run away to a life of indolence at the expense of the British Navy. Either way, while the national story then and the history later was about the actual British military power with which the United States were at war, to the Virginian politics, culture and economy the slaves were always the internal enemy.

And the British military leaders knew it, so as Taylor documents they successfully exploited the fear and hatred of the slave owners by first relying on the coastal slaves to direct the navy to needed sources of food and other supplies, then to alert the ships to the location of Virginia militia, and finally to actually run away to British ships. This both weakened the plantation economy at a time when many whites were needed to staff the militia, and strengthened the British military which was chronically short on shipboard labor at the time it was fighting the bigger war against Napoleon in Europe. And, with some runaways trained, uniformed and organized into fighting units that served well in combat, it provided ammunition to refute their former owners claim that slaves were naturally ignorant and lazy and to support their new employer's distain for the hypocrisy and weakness of the American arguments for democracy and liberty.

Slaves freed by the British invaders refused to return to their previous owners after the war because they were getting paid for their labor now and "They also remembered their hardships as slaves in Dixie, the land of cotton where old times were not forgotten." (p. 361). To the world, slave owners and Southern governments repeated the pro-slavery myth of the "stupidity, docility, and happiness of slaves protected by their paternalistic and superior owners" (p. 391), but to themselves they wrote and stressed the fear of their insurrection or desertion to the British. One result of this two-faced political stance was the establishment and strengthening of Virginia patriotism centered on the state, not the nation, which would culminate in Virginia's sons like Robert R. Lee following the state into secession in 1861.

Taylor has deeply researched his history at the local level, providing data and accounts of individual enslaved people and individual plaantations and owners. He uses the data to make valid statistical arguments at the micro level and then transitions to the national and global level to show the impact of these local accounts on the big picture of the war. In fact I docked a star from my rating because in writing his account he is sometimes repetitive as he refers to his source data, a defect which is also partially due to the narrative structure which takes him back to repeated access to his sources at different points in the narrative.

But this doesn't take away from the value and validity of Internal Enemy. By hammering his points home with thorough documentation and irrefutable analysis Taylor shows how slavery and America's dependence on it weakened the country politically and militarily during the War of 1812, and forces the reader to look seriously at the engrained moral faults and economic failure of American slavery as a black stain on American history for all time.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect book. Great writing, impressive research, and original. Taylor, a truly great American historian, won a Pulitzer for this book. I liked it because it focused on the most important issue of American history (slavery) and with a particular focus on my state (Virginia) and a period of time that doesn't get much focus (War of 1812). Simply put, slavery sucked and when given the chance, lots of slaves tried to break free. Britain's arrival on the eastern US coast provided lots of opportunities to enslaved blacks, who did all they could to get them and their families out of Virginia, and often then took up arms for the Brits and against the US. This was probably the first book I read that so ably showed that my beloved country was on the wrong side of history, and Britain was fighting the more moral war (on the issue of slavery anyway). Britain was not perfect, to be clear, but it was just weird to read and root for freedom and more moral war leaders, and to realize that MY COUNTRY OPPOSED THOSE THINGS. Sure, I know all about slavery, but I haven't confronted it as part of a war, much less the War of 1812. This was a masterpiece.

[Carol Storm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great history of the War of 1812 from the point of view of enslaved Americans who escaped and joined the British army. Wish there could be a movie about these forgotten heroes!

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall I enjoyed reading this book. I’m not sure that others interested in history for purely entertainment/leisure would find this a gripping read. Some parts of Taylor’s prose become extremely tedious as he dissects the generational inheritances of a plantation and the evolution of discipline and correction on that plantation (Corrottoman). Despite its title about 350 of 435 pages focus on the War of 1812, with an introductory and conclusion that brings in the period 1776-1812 and 1815-1832. He advances a fairly accessible argument that Virginians long feared that the enslaved presented an “internal enemy” that could, at any time, given their numerical superiority take up arms against a defunct militia system and overthrow the slavery regime. Because the Federal government could not muster adequate national forces to defend slavery against British raiding during the War of 1812 many Virginian elites and pundits began advocating ultra-local, states-rights nationalism that expressed a profound distrust for the Union. The British strategy of liberating slaves, training them as Colonial Marines, and using them as guides and soldiers against Virginians prefigured how Union armies during the American Civil War would attack slavery and use freedmen to topple the Confederate regime.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book could have been a bit dense, were it not for the fact that the author used the personal history of a specific family in Virginia to illustrate the points of the bigger picture. So that, plus the fact that the bigger picture seems to me to be a really important (and, to my knowledge, overlooked) part of the story of the early years of the US, makes it a book well worth reading. The story of the black slaves of Virginia and their role in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 is fascinating, and the author tells it well. I'd also recommend this book to people interested in the Civil War, as it illuminates the beginnings of the antipathy between the North and the South--basically, I finished the book astonished that the nation held together as long as it did before the fighting began. I'm so glad that new research is always being done, so that our understanding of the past deepens.

[wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very well written and researched book about slavery in Virginia between 1772 and 1832. The thesis is that during both the American Revolution and the War of 1812 our country was fighting not just the British but also had a secondary war going on with the slave population who were using the wars to escape to freedom and then generally helping the British during this period. Though written specifically about Virginia where the author lives and teaches I feel his findings are representative of many other colonies especially in the South. I teach history at a junior college and this will be a great class aid.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Jefferson deemed "a woman who brings a child every two years more valuable than the best man on the farm. What she produces is an addition to capital, while his labor disappears in mere consumption."

[Robert Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Internal Enemy” is a masterful exploration of slavery’s evolving implications on the social, political and racial attitudes of Virginians in the sixty years following the Revolutionary War. At the time of the Revolution slavery was generally seen by the founding generation as a moribund practice with a limited economic future - a “necessary evil” whose existence was in irreconcilable conflict with the Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality that inspired the revolution. Over the course of the six decades following the Revolution, however, slavery came to be ensconced in a self-reinforcing cocoon of super-regional status that changed not only how Southern planters saw the institution itself, but also, how they saw themselves within the context of the new Union.

Notwithstanding the ideological agony slavery caused many of the founding fathers, few were sufficiently moved by its resulting inner conflict to incline them to actually free their slaves. The reason, of course, was economics – slaves constituted a significant portion of a southern gentleman’s material wealth and, for many, to manumit slaves was tantamount to economic suicide. The economic incentives grew even stronger with the Revolutionary era abolition of primogeniture and entail – English concepts of inheritance familiar to any Dowton Abbey fan that were designed to keep family fortunes in tact by requiring that estates be passed down to first-born sons and placing severe restrictions on an heir’s ability to break up properties. While the impetus behind these changes was to further democratic institutions by redistributing property (the essence, per Jefferson, of personal independence) among many rather than only one heir, the change in inheritance laws created of these estates marketable assets that were far more liquid. This increased liquidity made them attractive security to lenders, thus facilitating previously unimaginable debt encumbrances. During seasons of poor crop yields or in cases of over-leverage (which were common) the debts got called, necessitating the lenders to liquidate their real and human property, with the consequence that slave families which had been held together for generations on large plantations got split up and sold. In other words, slavery became integral to the short term capital needs of the rich and wanna-be rich in such a way as to make the abandonment of slavery simply unthinkable from an economic standpoint.

Moreover, the predominant cash crop in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina was tobacco which, due to stresses the weed’s cultivation inflicted on soil, had essentially worn the land out while, at the same time, slave populations were growing due to natural increase. The proliferation of underutilized slaves was concerning not only from an economic standpoint, but from a safety perspective as well. Slaveholders could see the demographic shifts in their region and recognized all too well that in many parts of the South enslaved blacks outnumbered their white oppressors by significant margins. This sense of slowly being outnumbered by people being held to forced labor under brutally coercive conditions led to a mounting sense of planter paranoia. This fear of the internal enemy was only accelerated by the violent 1791 slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue and later, in 1800 slave, a failed slave revolt led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond.

The War of 1812 brought with it new sources of anxiety to the plantation South. The British, still contemptuous of the American experiment in democracy and annoyed with even having to fight a war in North America as in Europe England battled against Napoleon for its very existence, waged a war of painful attrition against their hapless American opponents. British warships under the command of Rear Admiral George Cockburn sought to strangle the American economy by blockading the American commercial harbors in the Chesapeake Bay. In 1813 the British, in part peeved by the tendency of British seamen to defect to America, began accepting slave runaways as informants, scouts and, to a lesser degree, as active soldiers. By 1814 what had begun as a tentative and reluctant experiment with runaway slaves blossomed into official British wartime policy. In that year thousands of tidewater slaves escaped from their masters and made their way to the British warships where they (and their families) received sanctuary and, if they wanted, an opportunity to enlist as British Marines. Over the course of the war as many as six thousand blacks were thus liberated from slavery by the British. The policy, of course, was fiercely resented by the Virginians and only added fuel to the fire of internal enemy fears which had, since the Revolution, increasingly gripped Virginians.

The War was a turning point in American attitudes about not only their slaves, but also, about the nature of American Federalism. When the British arrived, military help from the Federal government was virtually non-existent, leaving the understandably bitter Virginians to fight the British on their own. This sense of abandonment in the face of national crisis was to have an ominous effect on American cohesion that would last until the last days of the Civil War. More pressing, however, was the humiliation felt by the Virginians at having their own slaves turned against them in battle. In addition to the British policy being an obvious and deliberate insult to the rude and uncivilized Americans, the effective use of slaves essentially disproved virtually everything the Virginians had come to tell themselves about the character of their victims. Far from being stupid, lazy and cowardly in battle, the British (and the Virginians) quickly found the new black marines to be consistently clever, resourceful, courageous and, unlike many of the British seamen who seemed more interested in becoming Americans than fighting Americans, utterly focused and motivated to help the British achieve military victory.

With these historical events as backdrop, Taylor explores the evolution in racial attitudes of at least two groups throughout the period. The first of these are the planter elite, represented by the Virginia planter, St. George Tucker and his family and the second, by the British naval officers and sailors who fought against the United States in the War of 1812.

In Taylor’s work, Tucker comes to represent the founding generation – the men who, in principal, found slavery abhorrent and yet were loath to abandon it because the thought of a free black population was socially disquieting and, more importantly, the slaves they owned constituted a substantial portion of their own personal financial fortunes. As a young man, Tucker’s distaste for slavery actually inspired him to formulate a plan of gradual emancipation that would have freed the slaves slowly over a period of several years, after which they would be deported from the region under a plan of colonization. Over the intervening years, however, Tucker’s lukewarm idealism, if that, indeed, is what it was, was eroded by the irksome realities of having to manage slaves over multiple, poorly producing tobacco plantations in order to maintain his estate for himself and his heirs. By the 1820’s, under the cumulative stresses of potential slave rebellions, disillusionment with unionism provoked by the War of 1812, the “betrayal” of slaves who escaped from their bondage to join the hated British and the perpetual petty annoyance of being bound to a business with untenable moral as well as economic fundamentals brought Tucker’s family, along with many other families of the south, to reject the idealism of the Revolution and instead, come to see slavery as a positive good rather than a necessary evil.

If the Tucker family illustrated the morally corrosive cost of slave ownership, the British naval officers who came to welcome American slaves as useful allies in the War of 1812 illustrated the morally elevating effect of decency. Seen initially as merely a way of jamming their thumbs into the eye of the detested American democrats, British naval officers slowly embraced a policy of welcoming the slaves and their families who escaped bondage and fled to the British ships that arrived during the war to contain the Chesapeake. The initial contempt that these officers and their crew had for black refugees slowly evolved into respect and admiration for the resilience, resourcefulness, intelligence and bravery that the blacks consistently demonstrated while in British service. By the end of the war, these officers had not only come to be deeply committed to their black allies, but also, to proudly embrace their own roles as liberators. As an American reader, I found it interesting how I came to cheer for the British – arrogantly contemptuous though they remained of their American enemy to the end – as what had started out for them as a cynical wartime strategy caused them, almost in spite of themselves, to stumble across and ultimately embrace the better angels of their own natures.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific contribution to American history, particularly when examining the lives of slaves. The book has a particular point of view, which I have greatly come to appreciate as I read more history. The author takes every opportunity to expose Thomas Jefferson’s racism in action, while he mostly acquits George Washington (even contextualizing his grandson’s financial/social inability to free his slave). Conversely, the author also takes every opportunity to state that the slaves were almost universally concerned with living free and being welcome in the country into which they were born and which they helped build. If there was any desire for violent retribution, it involved individual slaves wanting revenge against individual masters/overseers for particular crimes against humanity.
Jefferson hoped to gradually phase out slavery over two generations, but only if the blacks could be deported back to a colony in Africa. Most slaves by this time were third or fourth generation americans and felt no kinship with Africa, which was a great unknown compared to the land of their birth. Great planters like Jefferson could not believe that slaves did not want revenge on their masters, a paranoia which probably says more about the slaveowners’ awareness of their inhuman treatment of others than any supposed subhuman qualities of the enslaved. On the contrary, the slaves wanted the rights of full citizenship and were willing to fight for their country whenever given a chance.

Jefferson ruled out a black colony, one which might have acted as a buffer between the U.S. and the British in the future Canada, and could also have included relocated Native Americans, because the land was ultimately coveted by white Americans, and because Jefferson envisioned a white nation spanning the continent completely. But the young nation could not afford the expense of shipping freed slaves back to Africa or to the West Indies, and the notion became too inconvenient – it was easier to enact greater social control through curfews, whipping, and threats of sale to the deep south. Prior to this, there had been some nascent movements to try educating select slaves with the eventual intention on preparing a greater number of slaves for emancipation. By the end of Jefferson’s presidency, however, this movement had evaporated. Laws grew tighter on manumission as well, requiring freed slaves to leave Virginia within a year or become enslaved again – this despite the idea that the gentry should have the liberty to do as he wishes with his property. Because families were often dispersed among several estates, leaving Virginia (much bigger then than now) was unattractive to most freedmen, who would have gone into exile from their communities.

Slaves were too numerous and valuable that they couldn’t be freed without extreme ruin to most slaveholders. If freed, the law stated that they must also have money to relocate outside the state. 1778 Virginia barred the importation of slaves to appease early abolitionists, which then had the unexpected side effect that the slaves’ monetary value increased. Many of the great planters started to run into financial problems around the time of the American Revolution for a variety of reasons, and the consequence for slaves was that there became little incentive to manumit the slaves instead of selling them south.

The author writes of slave life in great detail, avoiding the slavemasters’ behavior that was dehumanizing and focusing on daily life and the slaves’ humanity. By day they were slaves, but at night men often felt like they were no longer a slave, as they were allowed to travel by night to visit family or girlfriends or wives. Because of this, they knew the land and felt more attached to it than the whitefolk. Tidewater Virginia in many ways belonged to the Africans more than the whites, who would pick up and leave at little notice for the western frontier.

It was generally acknowledged by even the slaveholders that men married to women on the same estate worked better by day because they did not desire to travel by night to meet a wife or girlfriend. Jefferson rewarded slaves for marrying within, but not for marrying outside the plantation, and he would sell anyone if they fell below his expectations, regardless of their family ties. Sundays often provided a release of pressure, a break from unendurable rigor, and holidays often provided a sense of community between the races.

Running away was often an attempt to gain leverage among the remaining, so they could appeal for better conditions, especially if there was a new overseer with harsh methods. If there was a mass bolt to freedom it generally happened in two stages: first, one or two men would escape and make contact with the British, and then would return to liberate kin, hopefully with some kind of assurances made by the British. When escaping, men often kept plots secret from the women to prevent them from divulging the secret to a close master or mistress. Slaves often had complicated relationships with their masters, vacillating between feeling protective, emotionally dependent, and resentful – all of which were usually reciprocated in some manner. A great example is John Randolph of Roanoke and his slave John, whom Randolph called “never a truer friend,” but was also a possible lover. A continually fraught relationship, when Randolph was serving in U.S. Congress John ran away, was jailed, (left for three days by Randolph) and when returned was consigned to 3 years’ field labor by Randolph himself.

In the West Indies, the British, fighting the French and Spanish, clamored for more black than British troops because they impressed the commanders so much with their courage in battle…and thereby weakened the justification for slavery by treating black soldiers as equal. In the War of 1812, the British tried to merely hint at, rather than promise, freedom to blacks who escaped to join the cause against the States, but so many black men escaped that it escalated the war in the short term. In the long term, it proved the planters’ fear that the slaves intended to do their masters harm if given half a chance. However, it should also be noted that the common white man (particularly on the western frontier of Virginia) also resented the expectation that they protect the planters from slave revolt, and were just as likely to defect to the British or give aid to runaway slaves.

The British did not necessarily want slaves to revolt in VA because didn’t want to set precedent for West Indies slaves. After the war, the British were compelled to return the slaves to their owners, but as the British no longer considered them as property, they were in the unenviable position of trying to coerce their wards to go back into slavery of their own volition by extolling the virtues of family, community, and trying to convince them that their former owners wouldn’t be too harsh if they returned. Many former slaves went to Nova Scotia, some went to the Caribbean, and a few eventually went to Africa, but a large amount went back into slavery, either right away or after a long period of freedom before being tracked down. The planters used the slaves’ defection to the British as further proof that blacks were not to be trusted, although many poorer whites fought with the slaves against the planters, and often tried to intervene on behalf of the slaves.

The slaves were invaluable to the British, as their knowledge of the land (gained from nighttime sojourns) aided undetectable travel and their knowledge of systemic weaknesses helped the British to divide and conquer large estates. This was also the birth of the notion that black Americans trying to fight an oppressive system, the very bedrock of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, were traitorous for attempting to gain a stronger foothold in this nation…an accusation that dogged Martin Luther King, Jr. and persists to this day. The war traumatized the white upper class, now knowing that Native Americans and blacks could be used against white people, causing further racial entrenchment in the U.S. that is still felt. The extent that non-white races were utilized, however, was greatly exaggerated.

There was a lot of history covered here that I was already aware of, namely the slaves’ role in the war of 1812. So that section, nearly the second half of the book, dragged for me. However, there was greater detail than I had previously encountered. I also feel that the time period supposedly covered in the title, going as far as 1832, was a bit of a misnomer because the story peters out shortly after the blacks’ relocation to Nova Scotia, the Caribbean, and Sierra Leone after the War of 1812. However, because of the detailed account of slave life, which captures the contradictions as well as the humanity, I have to give the book five stars. Also, the early attempts at manumission and the accumulation of laws that made it increasingly unattractive when combined with changing market forces, make the first half of the book endlessly fascinating.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is evidence of what a diligent researcher and excellent story teller can do with primary documents. Often, one learns more from a micro viewpoint of history than from a broad brush treatment of a subject. Taylor focuses on a 50+ year segment of the history of slavery in Virginia with a focus on the Northern Neck, that peninsula that has shoreline on Chesapeake Bay. He spends most of his time on the years before and after the War of 1812 which ought to be called The War That Started in 1812 because it went on for a few years. British warships cruised into the Bay and slaves took advantage of the situation and borrowed boats and escaped. Thousands of slaves escaped to British ships during the War of 1812. Many were recruited into companies of marines and were used to fight against the Virginia militia. Others served as guides to lead Royal Marines to plantations where they could burn buildings and collect booty (called prizes by the Brits). Using letters, plantation records, public records and other source material we get a detailed picture of slave and plantation life. The Internal Enemy of the title are the slaves themselves. Slave owners feared their slaves, feared uprisings, feared insubordination and often relied on hard overseers to keep the slaves in line and working. The economy of Virginia had soured by the early 19th century. The action was moving to the deep south. Virginia had the most slaves and had become the basis of wealth for most Virginia slave holders. Even though some felt slavery was wrong economic need trumped their charitable feelings and to keep money coming in the slaveholders would break up families selling them off. Slaves brought a higher price in the deep south. The slaves knew the score and didn't want their families destroyed so when the British arrived and encouraged them, they fled to the ships. Many ended up in Canada where they often did well. Some did well enough to write to their former masters to crow a bit about their success. Their former masters used these letters as the basis for compensation for lost slaves from the State of Virginia. One slaveholder who is featured in the book lost 79 slaves and was awarded compensation of $20,000 which would be worth around a million dollars today. That is the only reason these letters survive. They proved that he had lost his slaves. The letters were saved in the archives. This book, even though covering only a few years of the history of slavery in America, provides much information that helps us understand the course of our own history. The root causes of the Civil War can be seen in the politics of the War of 1812. Letters from that time frame demonstrate the capacity of people to rationalize just about any wrong if their personal finances are affected. This book doesn't corroborate the happy slave meme. And, one of the final facts stated in the epilogue blew my mind. 200,000 ex-slaves fought for the Union against the South. I thought it was just that regiment from the movie "Glory." This was the audio version. Excellent reader.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listen, is this my kind of book? No. It's very well written and pretty easy to follow. I feel like I learned a lot. I enjoyed it. But these kinds of books are often about 100 pages longer than I personally want. I'm glad I read it, though. It's unreal to read about the moral gymnastics of slave owners and apologists. I enjoyed learning more about real enslaved people rather than the pop culture caricatures that abound. The book gives many accounts written by formerly enslaved people or accounts of their fidelity to family in their escapes. I can't find the words strong enough to condemn what was done to enslaved people. It wasn't just working without pay, though that's terrible on its own. It was the tearing apart of loving families through sale, harsh beatings, squalid living conditions, death penalties for minor infractions, and so much more. The book left me thinking for a brief minute that the British, who freed many enslaved people during the war of 1812, were the most clear eyed about human rights. The letters of British naval commanders are passionately anti-slavery and pro human rights. They came around to human rights quicker than the United States did, but they pretty much started the modern slave trade and colonialism, so no. I coincidentally picked up this book during a reread (via audiobook) of Persuasion. Super interesting companion volume because the love interest, Captain Wentworth, fought in the war of 1812. The talk of Captain Wentworth winning prizes and building his fortune in the war make so much more sense reading about the British plundering and pillaging of the Chesapeake Bay area. If you're up for a fairly dense history book this is definitely a good one.

Favorite Quote:

"The Tidewater [in Chesapeake Bay] slaves could seize a new and rare opportunity to escape together to nearby warships. The powerful bonds of marriage and kinship shaped the decisions by slaves to stay or go. Few would bolt without a good prospect of retrieving their closest kin, particularly wives and children. Despite longing for freedom, even in the Tidewater most slaves stayed put through the war rather than leave behind spouses, parents, children, and grandparents. Where escapes as groups became possible, however, runaways could reunite families sundered or threatened by the rental or sale of relatives. In parts of the Tidewater, the British helped the slaves to reverse the threat posed to their families by the triumph of market relations in the wake of the American Revolution."

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having little clear understanding of the War of 1812, this book came highly recommended to me by a friend. Alan Taylor's diligent research and easily readable style helped to clear up some of my questions about this largely forgotten and misunderstood period of American history.

There are many aspects and perspectives to the War of 1812; the British, the slaves, the Federalists, the Republicans, naval warfare, militias, Bermuda, Nova Scotia, Africa, the Southern states, the Northern states, climate, agriculture, economics, disease, fear, money, social appearances, politics, ethics, morality, and much more. No single volume by one author is capable of competently enlightening readers on such a wide frontier of interconnected subjects.

From the first page, Taylor's Pulitzer Prize winning gifts of research and writing style open the doors of clarity and understanding to the reader. After laying a foundation about the premises for the war, the author then draws us in by focusing on Virginia as the center of action regarding the British Navy, the politics of the era, and the slaves. All of this brought out using many quotes from public records, diaries, testimonies, and private letters from a group of people intimately involved in the activities of the times.

This book helped to broaden my perspective on the complexities of early America. It gives us a look into how the people of that time thought, why they did what they did. And in my opinion, one of Taylor's gifts to us is that he lets the reader decide for themselves how they feel about these highly complex ideas and personal interrelationships. He works hard at not interjecting his opinions and biases into the readers contemplation of the history.

Did "The Internal Enemy" give something of value worth the time spent reading it. Yes, without a doubt! Did the book provide me everything I had hoped to learn about the War of 1812? Absolutely not. However, this read built an exceptional foundation of understanding. Moreover, Taylor's notes and bibliography are stunning resources to "mine" for further enlightenment and comprehension.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Taylor demonstrates why he is considered one of our finest historians of the early American republic with this detailed investigation into the impact of war, and especially the War of 1812, on slavery in Virginia. Don't be fooled by the subtitle into thinking that this is a local history. Taylor skillfully links the particular stories of individual slaves and slaveholders with broader state, national and international developments. The reader comes away with a richer understanding of those developments. I learned, for example, how it came to pass that the Jeffersonian Republicans abandoned the nationalism that had sparked their enthusiasm for the War of 1812 in favor of the sectionalism that would characterize politics (particularly among Southern Democrats) in the decades leading up to the Civil War. I also revised my understanding of slave rebellions, which I had long seen as almost uniformly unsuccessful. The escape of thousands of slaves, and the participation of hundreds of them in the units organized by the British military during both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 proves that slaves could take good advantage of opportunities to strike back against their enslavers. This is a fine account of a period in American history that usually doesn't receive the attention it deserves.

[Jefferson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Mostly Absorbing, Moving, and Harrowing History

The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia 1772-1832 (2013) by Alan Taylor focuses on "the social complexities of slavery" during the War of 1812 in Virginia, setting its historical narrative in a larger context ranging throughout the USA and British empire and from just before the American Revolution to Nat Turner's 1831 uprising. Taylor quotes many letters, diaries, and "war related or war generated documents" to bring to life the personalities involved: slaves, slave owners, officers, politicians, merchants, etc. One of the strong points of the book is how Taylor captures the different views of the British and Americans regarding slavery and America and the British Empire and so on. And his depiction of the lives, plights, hopes, hearts, and deeds of slaves is uplifting, harrowing, and moving.

Without being familiar with the field, I suspect that most histories of the war of 1812 do not pay so much attention to slaves running away to freedom with the British or remaining in slavery with the Americans, becoming in the minds of white Virginians savages bent on vengeful pillage, arson, rapine, and murder, whether as bogeymen British colonial marines or internal enemy vipers in the paternal plantation bosom. Despite being American, I found myself rooting for the British to win the war and cause and or force an end to slavery back then, even at the cost of dissolving the union.

Although I wish Taylor had done a little more with the battle for New Orleans and with Nat Turner's so-called rebellion, he is not writing a WAR history of the War of 1812, but a cultural history focusing on slaves and owners. Sometimes Taylor repeats information from one section in another (e.g., saying more than once that Jonathan was a derogatory British name for Americans, that white Virginians feared the fire bell as signaling slave insurrection, and that lone slaves often ran away and returned to rescue family members), but mostly he tells a compelling history. Here are some highlights.

--When challenged with the fact of American slavery, owners blamed the British for having imposed slavery on the colonies to start with, defended slavery as a paternal system looking out for the best interests of the black "children," imagined their slaves as sub-human brutes incapable of appreciating freedom or feeling love, and decided that slavery could not be abolished without destroying the economy and culture of the south. (American heroes like Washington, Jefferson--my namesake--Madison, and Jackson are not cast in glowing lights.)
--The American Revolution increased equality and liberty for white Americans while capitalizing the slave system into greater inhumanity.
--Republicans used the issue of British impressing American sailors to declare war in 1812 partly to prove the merits of their government.
--At night when their masters slept, slaves could almost feel free, dancing, hunting, wandering, "stealing," and visiting spouses on other farms.
--By traveling about at night, slaves gained an intimate knowledge of their forests and swamps etc., and became more attached to the land than their white masters (another reason why they dreaded being sold far away and were conflicted about escaping to freedom with the British).
--While the British were encouraging slaves to escape from slavery in America to freedom on their warships, the Americans were encouraging British sailors to escape from service on their ships to freedom in America, and the War of 1812 was largely a war of persuasion.
--Propaganda, spin, and the rewriting of history were richly present before, during, and after the War of 1812, employing dodgy witnesses, sensationalizing incidents, demonizing enemies, and glorifying stalemates.

Taylor is particularly effective in covering the following things:

--why some slaves ran away and some did not.
--why escaped slaves took the family names of their former masters.
--how 40% of the slaves who escaped were mulatto children of overseers or owners, while only 44% of slave couples lived together on the same farm.
--how slave owners blamed the "perversity" of slaves running away on their inability to appreciate their "good" plantation life and on British deceit or force.
--how former masters visited British warships to try to persuade their escaped slaves to return.
--how the British colonists of Nova Scotia did not welcome the ex-slave refugees sent to settle with them.
--how the fortunes of the Tucker/Randolph/Carter slave-holding elite Virginia family rose and fell.

And Taylor turns a neat phrase:

--Jefferson et al "converted the scientific reasoning of the enlightenment from a philosophical call for equality into a biological mandate for inequality."
--"Used to dominating others, slave holders rarely took disappointment well."
--"In fact, nothing could better ignite squabbling among Americans than a scramble for $1,204,960 cast into their midst."

Reading about the appalling slave system (including incidents like a mother drowning her three children to spare them lives of slavery), it is easy to forget what Taylor reminds us of at one point: "It is too easy for modern readers to blame slavery on the 'bad people' of another time and region. Slavery reveals how anyone, now as well as then, can come to accept, perpetuate, and justify an exploitative system that seems essential and immutable. After all, we live with our own monsters."

Bronson Pinchot reads the audiobook fine, but at times he might use his fantasy action novel manner, as when he says, "He gave up the union as" and pauses a bit too long before finishing with a bit too much dread import, "utterly lost." Illustrations, maps, appendices, notes, and, of course, the bibliography, are missing from the audiobook, so readers wanting to study this subject should probably read the physical book.

Finally, anyone interested in American history in general or the slave era and the War of 1812 in particular should appreciate this book.

[Zo · Rating 4 out of 5]

An innovative telling of one of those topics that I think it is hard to ever read too much about. Taylor deftly moves between the macro-telling of events with specific case examples and info on more minute lives to create a sense of the atmosphere around slavery in Virginia during this time. This is a great book for facing the horror of slavery, and for trying to come understand the convoluted psychology people had to adopt to defend it. There are many parallels one could draw with today’s society in how people could trapped in certain realities/expectations (guns is one I thought about most). Also a good book for thinking about class dynamics and ingroup/outgroup stuff more broadly with how it tells the relations between Brits, Northerners, VA Slaveowners, VA Federalists, VA Westerners, and slaves themselves. A lot of other good specific historical information throughout. I learned a lot about the War of 1812 which is such a weird war to look back on. Though I enjoyed a bunch I’m not quite sure why it is *so* acclaimed, is it more for mode of telling or unearthing new info? But maybe after I read more history books I will have greater appreciation.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most Americans remember two things about the War of 1812: Francis Scott Key memorialized the Battle of Ft. McHenry in the Star Spangled Banner, and the British burned down the White House.

This strange war ranged up and down the mid-Atlantic coast, and served to destabilize the slavery-based economy while exposing its innate corruption. The British Marines dangled the possibility of freedom in front of enslaved Blacks, and consequently reaped a valuable adjunct fighting force of scouts and soldiers who knew every corner of the territory. The recruits were used to traveling at night, so were especially valuable to the British.

White Virginians were caught in a vise: fighting the British while they feared slave uprisings back on their farms and plantations. The rumor of an uprising at home might catch them mid-battle; they would abandon the skirmish and rush home to defend their ‘property.’

Many Black American families secured their freedom by enlisting in this war - in some cases retreating to Canada afterwards to maintain their status.

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a casual student of history , I have always felt that the War of 1812 was not fully detailed to my satisfaction. After reading this somewhat lengthy book, I can understand some of the reasons.

The "Internal Enemy" of the title were the slaves that toiled in the tidewater area of the Chesapeake. During the war U.S. citizens had to contend not only with the British troops raiding and attacking their lands, the "Internal Enemy" were busy joining and aiding the British in order to escape harsh slavery. They fled their masters in substantial numbers securing freedom for themselves by joining the "External Enemies " military forces.. They were successful in leading many attacks on their former enslavers. The region takes on added significance for me having been born there and familiar with the areas where most of the action takes place.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps lacking in overall narrative momentum--Taylor is too much a researcher for that, I think, this is still a terrifically insightful work of history. Taylor's great skill at archival work allows him to fully flesh out the political and social circumstances which led white Virginians to nearly destroy themselves in the War of 1812 because they were so blind to the evils of slavery. The tautologies they enforce and mythologies they spin to justify their abhorrent institution leads Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe (three massive blunderers) to the very precipice of dissolving the Union and throwing away the gains of the Revolution and Constitution because they could not ever admit the injustice of slavery.

[Anthony Rainey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book because, while reading the 1619 Project, it was referenced in one of the essays. While overall the book was not exactly what I was expecting, it was a quite a revealing account of early American history while focusing on Virginia, Slavery in Virginia and the War of 1812 and the British liberating enslaved people's. I learned a lot of things I didn't know, acquired better understanding of things I thought I knew about World history, American history and the irrational relationships between races, masters and the people who they enslaved, politicians of the Northern and the Southern states. Glad I picked it up. Not an easy read, the author restates facts often , but overall enlightening.

[Kristine Wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of history not a history book is how I would describe this book by UVA professor of history, Alan Taylor. For a lover of the pre and post revolutionary period in Virginia, this book provided me with new information. I'm a proud American and Virginian but I found myself almost cheering (ok, not almost) for the British. I can say any means enslaved people found their way to freedom. I hope more books like this will be written. I love the tails of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson but in the end they were slave owners. I want more stories about these heros who's bravery has gone unmentioned.