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Ronald Angelo Johnson, "Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution" (Cornell UP, 2025)
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- [00:00]
Marshall Po
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
Sullivan Sommer
On Friday the 20th of January, 1758, at five o' clock in the afternoon, a black man in Sandoming, later Haiti, named McCandel became a martyr for freedom in the Atlantic world. No one in British North America later, the United States realized it. At the time, largely because of their preoccupation with the Seven Years War, newspapers across Europe and the imperial colonies ran stories centered on the war's third year, including troop movements, skirmishes, casualties, and epic sea battles. The Caribbean Sea served as a major theater of maritime warfare. On the day of McCandel's martyrdom, newspaper subscribers in Portsmouth, a major Atlantic port city in New Hampshire, learned that the commanding British admiral in the Caribbean theater had blocked Martinique in Guadeloupe, he ordered the taking of ships to any of the French islands of what nation soever. That day's print edition offered details about other sea skirmishes between British and French men of War. Throughout 1758, as colonial Britons remained focused on North American battles at Lewisburg and Ticonderoga, Africans in Saint Domingue's Limbe Valley, forcibly taken away from their families thousands of miles to the east, came together to create diaspora communities that affirmed the humanity of black individuality in the face of their demeaning treatment by the plantation owners who enslaved them. And their children. Thus begins Entangled Alliances, Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy during the American Revolution by the Ralph and Bessie Mae Lin Endowed Chair of History and Associate professor at Baylor University, Ronald Angelo Johnson. Ron, welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:57]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
Thank you so much for having me. Sullivan. I'm so excited to talk to you today.
- [03:01]
Sullivan Sommer
I am too. You know, we can tell listeners that you and I, we got pretty excited before I sat, before I started and press record. So I feel like this is going to be a lively conversation.
- [03:12]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
I know, right? I just, you can tell like when you just meet somebody for the first time and you're chatting and you're connecting. So I'm really looking forward as we dive into the book and see where this conversation takes us.
- [03:21]
Sullivan Sommer
Absolutely. And you know, I, I did tell you this ahead of time. I think now at this point between the time I started the book and this conversation, I think I have now recommended this book four times at four different cocktail parties, which I said to you in an email, it tells you what kind of ruckus events that I attend that I am recommending, recommending revolutionary era stories at cocktail parties.
- [03:48]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
I mean, I have to admit, when I read when you told me, I was like, man, what kind of parties is she going to? But then I just couldn't help but just be so gratified and I tell what it lifted my ego a bit to know that in these swanky, you know, cocktail parties and you know that my book is being discussed over cocktail. That was pretty exciting. Thank you for sharing that.
- [04:10]
Sullivan Sommer
Well, and you know, and this will, to this, I promise listeners, this is going to take us right into our first question. When I think about, they're not particularly swanky parties, but the breadth of the people who, when I told about this book, were interested in it from, from people that, that are, you know, lovers of US History, they will sort of pick up whatever the next, you know, book is that that shows up in the front of the bookstore for US History to younger people. You know, I was at a, I was at a writer's gathering of drinks in Brooklyn and this is like Gen Z poet type people who, we were talking about this and she was like, oh my God, when does it come out? I need to write, I need to write that down and like put it in. So you call this book a reinterpretation of the American Revolution. Talk about that.
- [05:03]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
And so first of all, you actually started that conversation with the paragraph that you chose to open the show with. Because until you actually read that, I really didn't Realize that in that opening paragraph, I began to do on the first, in the first words, what I'm trying to do over the course of the book, and that is to get my readers and to help my readers see the American Revolution beyond a North American, a U.S. focus event. And in that opening paragraph that you. That you read, we go from New Hampshire to Ticonderoga to Cape Francais, in Saint Domingue and in Haiti, we talk about sailors, we talk about white colonials, we talk about black people. And throughout the book, that is the way I want my readers to begin to see the American Revolution as these exchanges between people in different places from different backgrounds, but all living through this reality that we now call the American Revolution. And I do see it. I do see what I'm trying to do in this book as a reinterpretation, because all throughout 2025 and 2026, there are going to be all of these conversations around America 250, right, celebrating and rightfully celebrating the semi quincentennial. I've worked on that word.
- [06:25]
Sullivan Sommer
That's a word.
- [06:26]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
It is an exact word. I looked it up. It is a real word. Semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. And what I'm finding and what I think will continue is that throughout, across the United States, in small towns, big towns, people are talking about the American Revolution. Now, one of the things that I'm very happy about is that the scholarly community, right, we are discussing different ideas around Dunmore's proclamation, what the impact of the Revolution on slavery and so many issues. But in the public arena, in the public arena across this country, what is being focused on are battles, small and large. And I think that is a very important thing to do. But I think try to point out in this book that the American Revolution was different from the US War of Independence. The Revolutionary War was an important part of the American Revolution, but it was different. Now, to all of my colleagues in local history and on battlefields, I understand why it is important for us to talk about battles, whether it's Lexington and Concord, whether it's Saratoga, whether it's Yorktown, because one, you can give people a visual. People can go to a place, watch reenactors, put on costumes and reenact these events right before their eyes. That is appealing, that has incredible visual effects for people as we talk about the American Revolution. But I want to read something to make the point that I'm making. I want to read something from John Adams in the book. And this is the way John Adams thought about the American Revolution. And he says it's on. It's in the introduction. It's on page 17. And he and John Adams speaking after the Revolution. He says the Revolution was affected before the war commenced. The Revolution was affected in the minds and hearts of the people. And what I really like about that statement, what I really like about John Adams understanding of the American Revolution was that Adams and others even at the time understood that revolution is a mindset. Revolution is a change in governmental and societal perspectives. The Revolutionary War was a means by which to implement those revolutionary changes. And again, I want to be very clear to our listeners who are really engaged in American revolutionary battles. Again, they were important. The lives of those veterans, those patriots, those militiamen, black and white, are important to who we are today. But Americans today and those of us who live in this country and care about our neighbors, we are bequeath, we inherit the ideals of the American Revolution, not the battles. Lexington has already been won. Saratoga has already been won. Yorktown has already been won, but the revolutionary promise that all men, all people are created equal. We, right now in the present, are still working. And every generation that has come before us has worked to make that more and more of a reality. And so a major, A major reorientation that I hope Entangled Alliances does for my readers is that it sets out to reposition the American Revolution. And by putting. One of the things I do in the book is I place the American Revolution within a timeframe between these two treaties, the Treaty of Paris in 1763 and the Treaty of Paris in 1783. And by doing that, it empowers me and hopefully my readers to view the American Revolution as a proliferation of ideals of freedom, liberty and equality that were, yes, occurring in North America, but at the same time, those same ideals were burning in the hearts of black people in the Caribbean and around the Atlantic world.
- [10:55]
Sullivan Sommer
So there are. You just talked about John Adams. There's a lot of people, people in the book that will be very familiar to readers. There are also people in the book that may be not, not as familiar to readers. And I want to talk about one of them because it's someone that you both begin and end the book with, and that is McCandle. Talk a little bit about McCandle. And also, why start with McCandle?
- [11:23]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
Yes, and I, first of all, I really want to thank you for that question because I think when people, when readers pick up a book about the American Revolution and the first thing they read is about a gentleman, they've Never. Most of them, never heard of. And many people, it's McCandel or McAndall, depending on where you are and when they're referring. You know, when we're talking about the prologue. And again, you opened up the show with this, with that, with that paragraph from the prologue. I want to, from the very beginning, I wanted to, from the very beginning, open with Mackindal and the people in Haiti, because I wanted to reorientate the reader from the very outset, and I wanted to help the reader to begin to understand that the ideals of freedom did not begin and were not unique to North America or the United States before these proud English colonists. The John Adams, the Benjamin Franklins, the George Washingtons, the Alexander Hamilton, the Mercy Otis Warrens, the Abigail Adams, before these people that we count are becoming more and more familiar with, before they began to write about and to protest about freedom from an imperial government that was beginning to overburden them with taxes. There were enslaved people across the Caribbean who were already. And who for decades before shot was fired in anger in North America, were already pondering and pursuing the ideals about freedom. And they were not waiting around for enlightenment writers like Voltaire and Rousseau and Montesquieu to tell them that they deserved freedom. They knew it, and they were doing things to pursue that. And Mackindal, I just want to share a little bit about him because he is such a fascinating character of a subject. Mackinac, he was born in Africa, and he was brought to Haiti as an enslaved Black man around eight years after. And that was in the 1720s. And within about eight years, he escaped. He knew he did not deserve to be enslaved. He knew he did not belong to another person, and he left. He was a fugitive freedom seeker, and he left and he found refuge among other fugitive black people who had escaped slavery. And we call these maroon communities where people run, where they run away from the plantation, they run away from their slavers, and they build a community amongst themselves of free people. And that in itself is an act of resistance. It is an act of black personhood and people understanding, this is who I am in this world, regardless of what the law or regardless what any other man tries to tell me that I am. And so he did that. But the wonderful thing about Mackindal is that he was not just concerned about his own freedom. He was concerned about the freedom of his people. And so he would leave the Maroon, the safety of the Maroon community, and he would make a circuit through the Limbe Valley in North North Haiti, and he would preach and Teach the people about what it meant to be black, about what it meant to be African. And there is a passage, and I'm going to find it really, really quickly here for our readers, for our listeners, because I think it really sums up what the power of MacIntoff was and what he was able to do. Because what he did was he reminded people. He reminded enslaved people that they did not deserve slavery, that who they were, who they had always been. And it's in the prologue, and I'm going to read it here. Mackindal played an important role in rallying descendants of Africa to recall principles instilled within them by families, friends, and communities whom they would never see again. Mackindal's Circuit Sullivan reminds me a lot of the theme in the 1970s that black is beautiful. In 1750s, he was telling enslaved people, being African is beautiful, being African is valuable. What. Who you are in this world is meaningful. And the proponents of slavery, they learned about what he was doing, and they saw this as an insurrection, teaching people to be proud to be black, teaching people to be proud to be African. For the proponents and the guarantors of slavery, they saw that as violence. They saw this as an insurrection, as a breakdown in the system of subjugation that they have masterfully created and maintained. And so in 1758, they executed him. And what I'm so inspired by, and I got more and more inspired by as I wrote the book, was that though he was executed in 1758, his life, his principles, and his spirit lived on through the American revolution, through the 1780s, in the minds and hearts of black people in Haiti. And in some ways, his life, his mission, and his death were inspirations to what we are going to later call in the 1790s, the Haitian Revolution.
- [17:01]
Sullivan Sommer
So we're going to get more into those threads that you thread through the book. Before we go there, I want to spend like a couple more minutes on this, sort of the intro, the prologue, before we get into the meat and potatoes, which is. You write in the book. Um, and. And so much of the writing the book is very cinematic, and I think people can probably get that now from listening to you talk, that I think what's makes this book so fun is, yes, it's history, and yes, we're learning new things, but so much of it is told so cinematically in a way that's just really compelling. And it's a fast. It's a. It's a. It's a page. It's a page turner. It's a. It's a page turner, which is what I really loved about the book. But when you, when you open it, open you, you, you open with a story of, of being on St. Croix and looking out into the Caribbean Sea and like being inspired to write this book. And then you say it is my story to tell. So talk about the impetus of this book and really what I'm also interested in. Like why you, why is this your story to tell?
- [18:12]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
Well, no, first of all, I, your, your listeners can't see this, but I am literally blushing and gushing to think that for somebody as, who is so well read as yourself, Sullivan, to, to consider this book a page turner. I do want to say I worked really hard to make this book accessible. I wanted people to get to know these folks. I felt it. I felt, and I'm getting to your a little bit to your question here. I felt it my duty, these lives that I am sharing with your, with the readers and with our listeners here, I owe it to them. They had so much trauma inflicted upon them, so much injustice inflicted upon them. I felt it. And I'm actually getting goosebumps now. And I talk about this. I felt it my duty not just to grab their work from bits and pieces of the archives and records and put them on a page to make some analytical point. I felt it my duty as an inheritor of the freedoms that they fought for, the freedom to be proud of being black in this world in way that they could not without great harm and threat to their own personhood. I felt it my duty to introduce my readers to these, to these subjects in ways that they could relate to, in ways that they could see what they were going through. I feel like at some level, we in the 21st century owe a debt to those of the 18th century, both black and white, for the world in which we inhabit. Because in some ways, the American patriots and the, the rebels and Haiti, they were envisioning a world that did not yet exist. And they fought and gave the last full measures of devotion, if I can use Lincoln's language there for a second. They gave all that they had to create a world that had never existed. And we inherit that world. And as a historian who is, who is permitted to go into the archives to delve into their lives, I felt it my duty to do my very best. And there's much more that could have been done, but to do my best to introduce my readers to people in a way that showed them these are not just enslaved people. They were someone's son or daughter. They were someone's wife or husband, they were someone's cousin. They were loved and valued by other people, despite what some people wrote down as laws governing their lives. And so this book, and like I said, the genesis of this book, this book in particular, came about on the island of St. Croix. And another surprise that many readers are going to get is that they're going to learn a lot more about St. Croix than they ever had before. Because when people think of St. Croix or the American Virgin, the US Virgin Islands, they're thinking of a vacation, and that's fine. I do not want to. I am not in any way trying to damage the touristic economies of those places. But they were Also, in the 18th century, sites of struggles for freedom that come out. And being in St. Croix is a special story. And I'll try to make this quick. But in part, this book really began in earnest. I began writing this book in earnest when I got a generous grant from the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities from the University of Edinburgh. And it allowed me space and time to begin to write this book. But I received the grant in the midst of COVID And the idea was I would go to the University of Edinburgh, write the book within a community of scholars, workshop the work, get advice, and help me work through the manuscript. But Covid happened, and because of quarantine and travel restrictions, I couldn't go to Edinburgh. And so I went to St. Croix. I decided to redirect my research to St. Croix. I don't know. I know. See, your readers. Readers can't see this, but you're.
- [22:32]
Sullivan Sommer
I have to laugh out loud now.
- [22:34]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
Was it winter for everybody? It's a tough sell, okay? It is a tough sale to say I went to St. Croix to work. And that was a hard shift, okay? And listeners, I totally get that. I totally receive that, okay? But. But I. I went to St. Croix and, you know, quarantine, social distancing was still in place. And so because of that, instead of having this community of scholars to bounce ideas off, I wrote this book in. I began to write this book in solitude. I spent long hours alone writing the book and wrestling with what I was uncovering. And in St. Croix, what I was uncovering was a story of St. Croix, of slavery in St. Croix, of fugitive freedom seekers in St. Croix. That was linking up to what was going on in Haiti, that was linking up to what was going on in what we now call the United States. And what came out of that was a book that I could never imagine. And so the hardship of not being Able to go to Edinburgh and shop this book with other scholars and having to wrestle alone with this produced a book that I had not yet imagined. The book I was going to write was a different book. But what I learned, what I. What I found in Saint Croix, there's a story here of connections between enslaved people looking for freedom in St. Croix and in Haiti that connects with white colonials seeking freedom and liberty in North America. And so it became my story to tell as I wrestled with what I had. And then I buckled down on commitment to do this through the lens of diplomacy. And for some people, diplomatic history is not that exciting. And I'm going to tell. I'm going to. When I went. When I was. When I was on the job market years ago and trying to get a job. I am a unabashedly unashamed diplomatic historian who uses lenses of race and diaspora to tell my stories of diplomacy. Okay? When I was trying to get a job and I said, I'm a diplomatic historian, I'm not kidding, somebody in the audience raised their hand and said, is there still. Is that still a thing? Do people still do that? And I said, you're looking at somebody who does it. Now I will say, I got the job. Okay, I did get the job, and I'm very happy about that. But when people hear diplomatic history, sometimes it doesn't come across as exciting, because I do understand. A previous generation would talk about rich men in Vienna or Paris, Philadelphia, Washington, huddling in a room and hashing out treaties. And that is a part of it. But one of the things that both my training, but also my career background as a former U.S. diplomat. I served as a U.S. diplomat in Italy, in Luxembourg, and in Gabon in Central Africa, which is actually where I learned French. And in doing so, I understood that diplomacy is not about the paper. It's not about the resulting treaties, which are important, and they're important to my book. But diplomacy at its core is about people. It's about people from different cultures, different backgrounds, coming to a discussion with different understandings and finding compromise, conceding. And I wanted the reader. I was committed to this. Lynn Sullivan, because I want readers to understand in one way that the American Revolution was a compromise. It was concessions. There is no way, and this is a heel. I'm willing to stake my claim and let anybody come at me who wants to come at me. The American Revolution could not have been won. The U.S. war of Independence could not have been won without American patriots, American leaders, being willing to compromise, being willing to give on certain Issues being willing to enlist help from other people. And as we move through the 21st century, I really want us to view the United States less as this hegemonic, go it alone entity that goes around telling others what to do. And remember that from our, from our birth, from, in our DNA is compromise. Understanding the needs of others and realizing that we need our neighbors, we need immigrants, we need people who are unlike us to be the best country that we can be.
- [27:40]
Sullivan Sommer
I think what you're describing is one of the big aha. Moments I had even reading the book, even the early pages of the book, because, you know, I am, I am not a diplomatic historian at all. And, but, you know, so I, I, I grew up in northern New England. I actually grew up. I grew up right outside of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
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Ronald Angelo Johnson
That.
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Sullivan Sommer
Oh, in your opening paragraph. So you got Portsmouth in there. I was very excited to flip to the endnotes to see, like, you know, what you were citing from Portsmouth, because that's where I grew up. And so I gre, you know, we started learning revolutionary history, you know, in the first grade, because that was like, that's our local history, you know, very proud of it. And it did not occur to me until I read your book, you know, I vague. I sort of vaguely remember, you know, the Stamp act. And, you know, we're, you know, we're being, you know, taxed, you know, in the colonies. And that's not fair. I don't think I ever once asked, like, why are they taxing us other than money? Right? Taxes are for money. So I got it. It's for money. I don't think I ever thought about till I read your book. Like, but money for what? Other than money for rich guys? But there was actually a very, you know, a reason why that wasn't simply about more money, more money for rich guys. And that to me was like, oh, and okay, I'm glad I know that now. And why on earth did it take me more than almost five decades of my life to even think about that question?
- [29:20]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
Well, first of all, I really love that question, and it allows me to really dive a little deeper into what a diplomatic historical lens allows me to do. Because in our telling of the American Revolution, we don't really talk about the treaty of 1763, out of which I argue that the revolution came like it sprung from reactions that both imperial governments and their colonial subjects were having to that treaty. And just for a minute, that treaty, the treaty of 1763, you know, ended the Seven Years War. And what we generally do Is we talk about in the run up to the Stamp act, there is this war that cost a lot of money, and then there was debts, and then there was the Stamp act and so on and so forth. But there's this treaty in the middle of that that is a bridge between the Seven Years War and the American Revolution. Because that treaty in Paris, between the belligerent and in the book, I treated Britain and France. Spain and Portugal were signees, but they were not the major players in that treaty. And so Britain and France came together in 1763 and hashed out this treaty. And that treaty was a huge deal. I mean, we don't really talk about it, but I try to give the reader an understanding of just how important. I mean, that treaty ended a world war. For seven years there had been suffering across the globe, from South Asia to Africa to the Caribbean, North America, there had been war that was raging. And this treaty, this piece of paper hashed out by diplomats ended that warfare. And it was celebrated. I opened the book with this play, right? It was such a big deal that a French playwright wrote a play around it, trying to remind people that peace was the goal. Peace was what was aimed at. And it was so important, it was so popular, that people in Britain and Ireland actually brought the play over and stays it there. People wanted peace after seven years of war. And that's what they believed. That's what they believed the treaty of 1763 would offer them. However, the treaty of 1763 enlarged the British Empire because it was the victor in the war. It enlarged the British Empire, but by one enlarging the British Empire. That meant the British Empire had to spend more money to put military troops in places that used to belong to France. That costs money. And so in addition to the debt that the British government racked up during the war, they were also raking up more debt as they may, as they put military personnel in these places. And so the only way they could come up with how to raise that money was to implement those taxes because they had to repay those creditors. And so they began to tax. And for my American readers here, they weren't just taxing the North America, they were taxing people in London. They were taxing people in South Asia like they were taxing the entire empire to try to raise that money. But the Americans were really offended by it for a whole host of reasons that some of my other colleagues have treated. But it was that treaty, it was trying to live out the mandates of that treaty that they really were continuing to tax their People. And in a similar vein, France, who lost the war, France, who lost that war and by that treaty had to give up territories in North America. Well, for an empire, one of the ways they get money is by taking riches from other areas to enrich the imperial coffers. Well, now France had less area which they could pull riches from, and so it made greater demands on their holdings, their colonies in the Caribbean, one of which was Haiti. And in a slave labor colony, the only way you make money, or one of the major ways you make money, is by producing more crops. And the way you produce more crops is by enslaving more people. And so in North America, we see higher rates of taxes and different kinds of taxes as a result of the treaty of 1763. In Haiti, as a result, as an immediate result of the treaty of 1763, we see an increase and a doubling down on the commitment to enslave black people from Africa to grow sugar, indigo, coffee and cotton. And the death rates in particular in sugar making incredibly high. And so that meant more and more and more ships are going to go and rob and kidnap humans from Africa to increase the imperial coffers in Paris. And so it is this confluence of different reactions by imperial governments that are going to lead to reactions in North America and in Haiti that are going to result in this revolutionary period that exists in my book from 1763 to 1783.
- [34:52]
Sullivan Sommer
So earlier we talked about Mackindal as being a person that is threaded throughout the entire narrative. You have two. You have a friendship that's also threaded through the entire narrative. One half of that friendship will again be very familiar to listeners. His name was Alexander Hamilton, but he had a friend named Edward Stevens that was also a name. Edward Stevens was a name that was new to me. Talk about Hamilton and Stevens.
- [35:24]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
Oh, man. No, thank you for that question. And that really goes to. For all my listeners who, when I said I was on St. Croix, saw me on the beach. Okay, again, yes, I know. I found I sound a little defensive.
- [35:39]
Marshall Po
Okay.
- [35:40]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
But I'm still trying to make the argument that I went there to work at research.
- [35:43]
Sullivan Sommer
So.
- [35:47]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
But both of these young. These young boys, and you're introduced to them in my book as young boys because they were in 1750s, 1760s. They're young boys growing up on the streets of Christiansted St. Croix, and me being there, walking those same streets, the city is laid out today the way it was laid out in the 18th century. And so I'm literally walking the directions and the streets that they walked when they were young boys together and Edward Stevens is a huge, has a huge impact on Alexander Hamilton. As young as young they lived a block, they lived on one street over from each other. Matter of fact, Edward Stevens's father was the landlord of Alexander Hamilton's mother. And the boys were best friends, they became best friends and they played together, they grew up together. And one of the things that I try to, you know, on this, this, on this, on this, these streets of Christians said But the other thing that they saw on a regular basis because Christianstad was a slave port, all the enslaved people that came to a minute, most of the slave people that came to St. Croix came through the port of Christianstead which you can see the port from about where Alexander Hamilton and Edward Stevens lived. Like it's that small of a place. And so when my being there they realized I need to make more, I need to tell my readers more about these men as boys who become revolutionaries. Because it's Edward Stevens who first leaves the island. He leaves the island to go to New York City. He goes to New York City and he goes to King's College which is now Columbia University. Well his best friend follows him as an example. Edward Stevens set an example for Alexander Hamilton of how to become a man, how to become what you want to in this world. And so one of the things that I try to do with this friendship is not just tell the stories of them, you know, coming together, knowing each other, playing on the streets of Christian state, but it's to show that across the Caribbean one of the ways that men, both black, young boys, black and white, would become leaders in their communities is by leaving the islands. And so Edward Stevens, Alexander Hamilton were part of an exodus that happened all the time in 18th century Caribbean. And they, so Edward Stevens goes to Columbia first and then Alexander Hamilton goes to Columbia, which we learn about in the song, one of the songs in the Hamilton Bank Kings College. And so they go there, right? But at the same time they're leaving young boys of color in Haiti, Andre Rigaud, Vincent O.J. they're leaving Haiti and they're going to Paris or they're going to Bordeaux in France to learn trades and skills. And so what I, what I'm trying to introduce to my readers is that during this area, during this era of revolution, these young boys from the Caribbean are leaving and they're young men, they're teens, they're 17, 18, they leave the island and they're being exposed to these revolutionary ideals. And in each of those cases Alexander Hamilton is going to become A revolutionary. And Edward Stevens, he's going to choose a different path. He went to Edinburgh. This is why I wanted to go to Edinburgh, because he went and trained in Edinburgh and became a doctor. And while he is not going to become a revolutionary during the American Revolution later on, and this is for, this is for another book. But later on he's going to be. When John Adams becomes president, it is going to be Edward Stevens who John Adams sends to Haiti to be his emissary to Toussaint Louverture during the Haitian Revolution. And John Edward Stevens was anti slavery. He did not own any enslaved people. And he's going to relate to black people. A white man, a white doctor, a man of privilege and status, is going to go to a predominantly black island and country and communicate and exist among black people not as an equal, but as a subordinate to a black man. Both of these men are special. Both of these men do things that are not, in some ways are not replicable. Right. But I tie that to their backgrounds coming out of the Caribbean. And as both these white young men are going to come leaders and influencers in their respective places, those black boys, those black young men that leave are also going to become leaders in the Haitian Revolution. And so the revolution that is occurring in North America is, Has connections to the Caribbean and are going to have reverberations for decades to come.
- [41:06]
Sullivan Sommer
So I want to touch now is maybe take a side step and talk a little bit about your sources and your research because you write the tightening entanglements between French and American colonists, as well as French Caribbean colonists, were strengthened not only by diplomatic overtures, but also by print culture. Talk about the print culture and then how you used it in putting this book together.
- [41:41]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
No, I. That was. Some of. That was, that was a surprise. That was one of those surprises. Anyone who writes, you know, 200 pages or so, there are parts of. If you, if somebody tells me they knew from page one where they were going to end up on page 250 or what have you, I, first of all, I'm not going to believe it. Let me just be honest. Okay, but. But I think in doing so, one would miss the journey that the writer goes on in the process. And the print culture really surprised me. And what I mean about that, in terms of the American Revolution, there is a really solid historical literature about the impact of print culture and newspapers in the American Revolution. And in fact, that is how people come to know John Adams for the first time. He, I mean, he. In 1765, after the stamp act, is Passed. He is an unknown. He is a lawyer around people in Braintree, obviously, because Braintree and Quincy are very small areas. Some people in Boston know him because he's on the Boston circuit of lawyers. But it is in the newspaper where he announces himself, where he writes an op ed, we would call an op ed in protest of that. And then, of course, that op ed or that opinion gets picked up by other newspapers. It get carried across the colonies. But what entangled alliances does. And what I was so surprised by was that there is a newspaper in Saint Domingue called La Filche American, and it's written completely in French. And it started in 1765. And between Lafriche Americaine and newspapers in Boston, newspapers in Philadelphia, there is. There was an exchange of news between North America, between what becomes the United States and Haiti. So that people, black and white. And I want to just remind my listeners, our listeners here, that in Saint Domingue, there are black people, There are people of color who are more educated and more affluent and on more land than the majority of white people in British North America. And so when I say that both black people and white people are reading this newspaper in French, I mean that literally, not just a handful, that they were very interested in what was happening in Philadelphia. So as the Stamp act began to the Stamp act protest, the Townshend act, protests began to take off those stories. The stories of those are being picked up in Saint Domingue in Haiti and being read by people in Haiti at the same time. And here's why. I want to introduce our listeners and my readers to something that was happening in Haiti that I've never seen anybody write about in a US History of the American Revolution is that black and white people were also protesting and reacting against the French government in Paris at the same time. At the same time, John Adams is writing about how bad the British government is. You have black and white rebels in Saint domingue in the 1760s writing about how bad the French government is. And before American patriots pick up muskets and battle the. The British army, in 1769, a rebellion breaks out in Haiti led by a man of color, Jacques Delaunay. He had a. He had a. A white French father and a African mother. And so he is a man of color, a free man of color. And he commands the respect, the loyalty of both black and white patriots. Rebels who attack the French army. They are defeated, and he is summarily executed in an incredibly awful way that I try not to go in too much graphic. But French culture French executions were very different than English executions. And that revolt was being read about by Americans who only a year after that are going to attack British soldiers on the streets of Boston. I am not saying I want to be very clear to the readers and I'm very clear in the book. I am not saying that American patriots read about the violence in Haiti and said we're going to do that. But they did know at the time that there were people fighting an imperial army about complaints against that army and against that government that are not going to be. That were not unlike the ones they were lodging against their own imperial government.
- [46:54]
Sullivan Sommer
So as we move through the book, you know, another thing that I learned about as a very young child was of course, the Boston Massacre. Less so about Christmas Attucks. Again, not surprising mainstream public school system, early 80s for me. But you talk about Christmas Attucks in the book and you also have an illustration of the Boston Massacre. And since we were talking about print culture, I would love for you to talk about the story of that illustration, which was probably one of my. I had a lot of favorite parts of the book, but that was one of my favorite parts.
- [47:41]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
I first of all, thank you for that, son. That means a lot to me because that was one of my favorite parts to write. It really was. It took a lot for me to write it. I had to pull on a lot of different sources to get the story as correct as I could. But I wanted to tell this integrated story of Christopher Savage in a way that I had not seen done in histories of the revolution. And I wanted you start. So the massacre, the mass, okay. As Americans call it a massacre. People from Britain called it the riot on the riot on King Street. And there are. We're not people are now debating whether there's a riot, whether the massacre. And I'm perfectly fine with that. I have no dog in that particular fight. But at the time, the people in in Boston and across the country called it a massacre. So I call it a massacre. And so that happened on the night of March 5, 1770. And the only reason I'm not a big dates in places name. Right. Because students really hate it when they have to remember a particular date. Right. And it's hard to remember like that particular date. Right. But the date I'm throwing that date out now because March 5th is when it happened. And within days of that so five so four men were killed that night. Christmas addicts was one of them. And then another one died a day or so later from it from the injuries. I Know, it was actually a little bit after that of his injuries. And so after that, the massacre makes the newspapers. People are writing about it in the newspapers and there's a public funeral. And some of you, some of your listeners may have seen there's these four. There's a picture of four caskets. That's not the picture we're talking about, but I'm bringing that up because everyone in Boston knew that Christmas attucks was not white. 1. They saw it, right? They were there. So they saw that he was not. They were. That he was not white. They didn't care at the time whether he was not white. He was funeralized right along with the other three white men that were killed. His casket was carried through the streets of Boston just like the other white men's caskets were carried through the streets of Boston. And I see all that. And when it made the newspapers, one of the things about that print culture, again, when a story was printed in Boston in a Boston newspaper, it would get picked up and copied verbatim most of the time going all the way across. And so in an expiration of newspapers from Boston to Portsmouth, I did look at the Portsmouth paper all the way down to Savannah, Crispus Addicts was identified in the newspaper as a biracial, non white man. There's a term that is used for that in the 18th century that I don't like to repeat. But everyone knew reading about it that he was not white. But here's what I found fascinating. There is a difference between print as far as words and images. And Paul Revere understood the power of an image because while people may forget words, images seem to stick longer in our minds and they make a deeper impression by what. What we can visualize. And so shortly after the, shortly after the, the massacre, the event, a. A gentleman named Henry Pelham drew a picture of. And people have seen it, right? It's the picture of just trying to describe it. It's the picture of on the right you have a line of redcoats, a line of British soldiers with their muskets pointing toward the left, which is a line of. Of differently clad Bostonians or people in Boston. And you see the, the shots and the fire and the, and the muzzle flashes and the smoke coming out, and you see several men lying on the ground. And again, so there's a whole, there's a whole literature around Paul Revere and his scrupulous or non scrupulous efforts of taking people's work and pawning them off on their own. And I'm Not. I don't make any judgment on that. But he took Henry Pelham's work and he did a. He was a. He was a, you know, a copper plate. And so he did a copy plate of it and that got reprinted in different publications across the United States. And it actually made its way over to Britain in that depiction. In that depiction, though, everyone seemed to know that Crispus Attucks was black or not white. In that image, all the victims on the ground were white. And I call this a distortion in the book. And a scholar, Farrah Peterson, has also done this work on this, and I thank her for her work. But it's a distortion because there's a story that's being told and in any, in any war, any type of movement, there's a level of propaganda that is. That is embraced. And for whatever the reasons were Paul Revere and the others who are going to print this, this image, they embraced a propaganda that the American Revolution was a white movement. It was a movement of white people and white people were banding together against an imperial government. And the only thing I can think of, and I'm kind of pondering here along with you, right, that's what happens in a conversation, right? Something pops in your head and you think about. I'm thinking that the image, I'm not justifying it, but I've been trying to think of why they would do this. Right? And in that picture, the man in the front, the most visible victim of the massacre, is right up front. And it would have been a black man. And I think I kept wondering, that would throw off the narrative. I mean, that the man in the front laying on the ground and who by every account was the first person shot, known today as the first martyr of the American Revolution, was a black man. And in a. In a na. In a burgeoning, In a merging nation that embraced slavery, that embraced white supremacy, that embraced the subjugation of even free black people, the idea that a black man was right out front in their image would have caused questions that Paul Revere didn't want to have any part of. And it was just the easiest story to tell and to sell. Remember, they're trying to sell papers, they're trying to sell public aid. This is a for profit business that he's in. And I get the sense that he felt it would sell better if everybody was in, it was white. And there were no lingering questions about why is this black man right at the front of everything.
- [54:33]
Sullivan Sommer
Yeah, there's. Yeah, there was so much to think about. In that story. And again, I wish we had time to go into it. We don't have. People will have to just read the book. But you do such a tremendous job of telling Christus Attucks not just the story of the massacre, but of his background and who he was. And, yeah, I felt like it was the first time I had ever read it, honestly.
- [54:58]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
And another one of those can I. In a very short amount of time. I do want. Because one of the things I want the reader to come away with is that Crispus Attucks had a life before March 5, 1770. And it takes a lot of digging, and I think other scholars who've done some of that work, but I thought it very important to tell the story of a man that was born into slavery, that had to leave the United States or leave Massachusetts, colonial Massachusetts, to gain his freedom, and lived for 20 years, two full decades as a free man. And then when he was back In Boston, about 20 miles from where he had been enslaved, that is where he lost his life. And Solomon, for the life of me, I still cannot understand what made Crispus Attucks leave that tavern and risk and give up the life that he had crafted as a free black man to confront soldiers who were not attacking his freedom, but who were seen as attacking the freedom and the honor of the people of Boston. And yet the first person killed in that struggle was a man who actually gave up his own freedom for the sake of the freedom for others. And I. And I. I asked that question throughout the book. And maybe my readers and these, our listeners will give me an answer. And I love to. But part of the. Part of sometimes in writing a history is that we have to be uncomfortable. We have to be. We come comfortable with the things that we cannot explain. And I often think posing a question or being left with a question is as much of a treat and a outcome of a book as trying to answer all the questions.
- [56:43]
Sullivan Sommer
Yeah. So. So, Speed, speaking of questions, I want to read you a quote, a quote from your book, and it's largely a quote by John Adams in your book. And. And it's a little bit. It's. It's a little bit lengthy, but I'm going to read this, and I want. I want you to talk about it. And so. So here's the. The quote. Revolutions are no trifles. They are never to be undertaken rashly, nor without deliberate consideration and sober reflection, nor without solid, immutable, eternal foundation of justice and humanity, nor without a people possessed of intelligence, fortitude, and integrity sufficient to carry with care, to carry them with steadiness, patience and perseverance through all the vicissitudes of fortune, the fiery trials and melancholy disasters that they may encounter once revolutions begin, he asked, when and where are they to cease?
- [57:48]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
First of all, I thought that you identified that quote. And again, Sullivan, what, what I, what I just enjoyed about our conversation, about all of our interactions is just what a wonderful reader you are and what a credit you are to the educational system out of which you've come and those that you've pursued on your own. And it is just such a one. I mean, I, and I want to apologize to readers. I tried to edit that, right? I tried to find a way to shorten it, but at the end of the day I thought, no, I owe it to John Adams to, to say this whole thing, because John Adams was an incredibly complex person. The thing. So in chapter two, before we get to this, before we get to this particular quote, John Adams, I'm going back to the Boston Massacre, right? And then at the end of chapter two, I end chapter two with John Adams actually defending the British soldiers who shot down those patriots on the street in Boston. And he does so, he does so by using Crispa's addicts and his blackness as an instigator of the entire event. But then he gets them on. He acquits them by using the trope of the angry black man. All those men acquitted. And one, well, a couple of them got this really light sentence, a couple of straps or whatever. But anyway, it's very light. It was very, it was. He used a very effective defensive strategy. But then in the very next, the very next year, he's using the name of Crispus Annex as a revolutionary device. And so I say that to point out this is why I could not, I could not find a way to shorten this particular text because it speaks to the complexity of John Adams. John Adams was not anti revolutionary, but he had a understanding of revolutionary, that it should be done in a particular way. And the reader should probably know. I don't see it in the prose, but in the footnotes. This quote was given by John Adams in the year 1818. And that's significant because one, he's looking back on the American Revolution, but he is also looking back on the Haitian Revolution. And all around Latin America are revolutions of non white peoples, in Uruguay, in Venezuela, in Chile, in all these places. And he's commenting on revolution. And so in some ways, revolutions should only be understood in terms of a quote, unquote, civilized in my Language, racialized way that people of a certain ilk know how to do revolution and others do not. And it is not, it is not coincidental that he is speaking this language when all around him, non black people, non white people, enslaved people, colonialized people of Europe, you know, across Latin America are gaining their freedoms. And by 1825, by 1825, many of the countries of Latin America we know today, that is when they're gained, that is when they are gaining their independence. And I look, I think about this and I think to myself, I'm not going to use the word hypocrite, right? I'm not going to do that. But I do put that in there to remind John Adams, who I cannot speak to today, but I want to remind the readers that what was happening in 1760 in Haiti, what was happening in 1770s in North America, what's going to happen again in haiti in the 1790s, has reverberations, consequences, you know, impacts that outlive all of them. And again, going back to that, why do I open this book with Mackindal? Because the spirit of Mackindal, the spirit of revolution, the spirit of freedom outlives all of these events. And the way John Adams say where, he says, you know, when a revolution starts, where and when do they cease? Well, the problem with a revolution, no matter how well intentioned or how intellectual it is, when it's in the hands of the people, the people decide when it begins and when it ends. And while that was okay for John Adams in the 1770s, he did not see it okay for Latin Americans in the 1810s and the 1820s.
- [62:46]
Sullivan Sommer
So I, I want to move us toward the end. And it's hard because really, I think we could speak for four more hours about this book. I will say, you know, we've talked about a lot of people throughout and, and, and it's worth repeating. You do such a tremendous job of bringing all, you know, many people that are unknown to, would be unknown to most readers to the, to the fore. There is a ton of opportunity for people that get really excited or inspired perhaps by a person they don't know a lot about to, to sort of go down rabbit holes and as well. And so I just wanted you to know that my own personal rabbit hole has been Alexandre Dumas, who I really didn't know anything about. And so now I'm reading the, Is it the Tom Weiss biography from, from 2012? Yeah. The black Count.
- [63:39]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
Yeah.
- [63:40]
Sullivan Sommer
Right now that was the rabbit hole I chose to go down. I, I already, I'VE I've exhausted Phyllis Wheatley and Lemuel Haynes. That's a conversation. You and I can have it another time. Those rabbit holes. But those people are also. And those are people I feel very deeply about, the two of them. And so they are here as well for people who they will be new to. But we come through the revolution, and you talked before about, you know, we tend to learn about the revolution in battles. But I do want you to talk about one battle in particular that you do have in the book, and that is the Siege of Savannah. Talk about the Siege of Savannah and then also why you put the Siege of Savannah. Of all the battles in the book.
- [64:34]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
No, I had this whole rant at the beginning of the show about. It's not about battles. It's not about battles. Except six.
- [64:41]
Sullivan Sommer
Yeah, yeah.
- [64:42]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
Chapter six is all about a battle. Right. Thank you for calling and calling me out on that, Sullivan. I appreciate it. But I talk about the seeds of Savannah, and there are so many people actually listening, and when they read the book, I mean, they may have heard of the Siege of Savannah. They may not. But many people may have not heard of it at all because it was a defeat. There is. I mean, militarily, there's very little about it in terms of prestige and honor. It is an outright British victory. It is a American allied defeat by any stretch of your imagination. And so that is one. It's hard to get into this triumphant American revolutionary story and fit this thing in there. Right? So I understand why people don't know about it, but the reason I want our listeners and the readers of the book to learn more about it is because there's more said on that battlefield than about the number of bullets and muskets and the tactics and the formations. What happens. The Siege of Savannah occurs in 1779. And I. I want to. I want to confess here that I. I'm gonna. I'm gonna resist any question ever on about my favorite part of the book. Right? Because, you know, I love All My children. Right. And things like that. Right. You got. You know, but. But this part right here meant a lot to me. I could not end this book until I wrote this. And it was. It was one of the harder parts to write because of the intricacies of it, because it took. It took a. I mean, there's. There's French and there's French and English language sources throughout the book, but here, I could not have written this part of the book without the French sources. I mean, they. They were absolutely necessary to do What I did here, and there's a reason other people have not written it, because of the reliance on the French sources. The siege of Samana takes place in September and October of 1779. And the British by then, for those who know American revolutionary history, the British had a stronghold, their stronghold, you know. Well, we're making strides in New York. We're making strides in Philadelphia and parts of the Northeast. The British stronghold was really in the south, Savannah, Charleston. Like, they had that area locked up. And so this is. The Americans are going to go to the French. And I said early on in this book, in our conversation, that the United States could not have won the American Revolutionary War without the French. And I, again, I stand on that. Well, one of the first major engagements, not the first, but a major engagement of the French on the US Side was at Savannah. And so a French admiral named Charles d' Estaing leaves France, and before he gets to Savannah, he's going to lead this armada, this expeditionary force to Savannah. But before he goes, he goes to Haiti. Not as a byway. He goes there on purpose to recruit Haitian soldiers, and he builds an army there out of, you know, he adds to his army there in Haiti. And 500 over. No. Well, let me. They do a call. I mean, they literally use the newspaper, French culture again. So they put a call in the newspaper calling for enlistments, and white Frenchmen don't sign up. I mean, they want no part of what's going on in the United States. And so they have to send out multiple things to the white community to sign up on the first call. Over a thousand black men sign up. I mean, rich, poor, some enslaved, like they. They sign again. Some of them are richer than any white man in the United States or most white men in the United States. And they sign up to go fight in this. In this. In this. In this war. They can't even take them all. So they only take 550 of black men. So they had more black men sign up than they could actually take and so on. You know, in. In September, in September, they. They. They sail their amount of sales from Haiti to Savannah. They off board. And I won't go into the detail. I went into the book. But I really want your listeners to see this image. Right when we talk about black people coming off ships in the 18th century, almost everyone listening to me is thinking about black men, women and children clad in cloth and potato sacks in chains. I want to reorientate an image in your head of 550 black men in A matching military uniform with a musket and ball and powder, armed, coming onto the shore of Georgia, which was a huge slave society. That is an image that had never been seen or even conjured in the minds of Americans in the 18th century. And some people in the 21st still have problems seeing that that actually happened, but it did. And so I'll move along the story to the night of 23, 24 September, 1779, because I want to confess here, between you and me, Solomon, don't tell anybody, but I wrote this section with a bit of purpose, because the historical literature, and I'm not a historian that goes around trying to pick fights with other historians and say they were wrong and this and that, but the story around. And this group is called Le Chasseur. Chasseur Volontaire is their name. It's the name of the battalion, this black battalion from Haiti, the Chasseur Volontaire. But we'll just call them the Haitian Battalion for the purposes of our conversation here. They've been written about like I didn't discover them, right? It wasn't like they've been. Particularly since the 70s, they've been written about. And they've been written about in this way that describes them. And I say I wrote this with purpose. They've been described as ditch diggers, that somehow these men who own some of them who own plantations in Haiti came to Georgia to dig ditches. Now, that mindset has little to do with the reality on the ground, as opposed to some of the visions of people. That's what they see the value of black people, that that is what we want. And it's a trope that has crossed when you. When you write about. When people write about black soldiers in America, they dug ditches in the American Revolution, they dug ditches In World War II, they dug ditches. Like, isn't black men cannot fight. They are. They are cowards. Right? And it feeds into that. So there's a lot that. That I didn't go into this to. To intentionally just prove that, but it made no sense to me that rich, educated black men from Haiti will come all the way to Savannah to dig ditches and risk their life digging a ditch. And so I want to be that I'm confessing that to you. Don't tell anybody, okay? But so as I read through this, I began to see on the. They were more than that. They did more than. And their commanders valued them for more than that. And on the night of the 23rd of September, going into the morning of 24, there were two companies of black Haitian soldiers, two companies of white Haitian soldiers, white soldiers from Haiti, and about 300 white American soldiers all together. And what they were doing was digging a trench like they were digging trenches, but in me. So there were white men in the ditches, there were black men in the ditches, and there were black men with primed muskets to defend them, and there were white men. So you see, right, just in that alone, I'm trying to reorient what was happening in that moment. And what we find out is that these men are working together. And these black Georgians, and they would have been Georgia militiamen, had never been that close to a free black man in their life. And some of them have probably never spoken to a free black man. Some of them probably can't even conjure the idea of a free black man holding an armed musket in their life. But yet there they are working together within the context of the American Revolution. And their work is so successful that they get so close to the British lines that by morning the British see what they're doing and they begin to fire on them for the artillery. And then the British are going to charge them, and these armed black men to defend white Americans are going to charge white British soldiers, and they're going to not only be at musket length, but then it's going to become hand to hand and bayonets. And so right there on the morning of the 24th of September, you're going to have white Georgians and black Haitians falling in battle together and falling literally next to each other on the end of soil of Savannah, Georgia, a place that is known horrible slavery and segregation and discrimination and inhumane treatment of black people. But yet in that moment, the American Revolution created an opportunity and a space for white Georgians, white men from Haiti and black men from Haiti to give up their lives protecting one another and for the sake of the freedom of the United States of America. And I just thought that was such a worthy story to tell. And to. For the readers who were saying, well, you know, you said earlier you were very intent on selling this, and so maybe you move the. Move the story around and say what you wanted to say. I read through American newspapers, I read the French language documents from the. The archives and Exxon Provence, where Admiral d' Estaing commented on the valiant service of those black soldiers, where the battalion commander, a white man, actually a white slave owner in Haiti, he was the commander and he wrote glowing, multiple glowing reports to the French government about the bravery of his men, the courage of his men. And he would not in any way let anybody demean their service in their own time. And so I thought it my. My professional duty to put his words and not let anybody demean them in our own time. And that French newspaper back in Haiti that I talked about, the Officia Marquin, these men were heroes, and they even met the French king after the battle, even though the battle was a defeat. Some of them get to go back to France, go to Paris, and they meet the French king and he talks about their service. And so the hometown newspaper, written all in French, wrote glory reviews about their soldiers returning in valiant. And so it was those French sources that some of my previous American historical colleagues had not consulted that allowed me to tell a fuller story of their service. And I think it says at the end of it, it wasn't so much about the battle for me, but it was about men who came to that battlefield with incredible differences, incredibly divergent worldviews. But in that moment, they gave up their lives and they risked their lives for something larger than themselves. And I think that is a story worth telling.
- [77:03]
Sullivan Sommer
So you are a diplomatic historian, as you said, we talk about Mackindal. And so I want to bring us full circle now. We end the book as we began it with a treaty, a Paris treaty and Mackindal. So talk about sort of where you left us in the book.
- [77:24]
Ronald Angelo Johnson
Yes, I. And I. And I did that on purpose. Right. There were. There were some larger questions that after six chapters, I still could not fully enter. And that's the beautiful thing about an epilogue. And the publisher gives. Gives authors a great deal of leeway in the epilogue. But I really thought, I really, I thought I was basing some of those questions and some of those kind of leanings in a different direction on some solid work that I'd done in the previous six chapters. And one of the. And the way I end it is after this, after that treaty of 1783, an incredible significant treaty. One treaty, 1763, ended the Seven Years War. The treaty of 1783 ended the US War for Independence. And it helped to create and solidify the existence of a United States of America. And the fanfare around the treaty of 1783 was similar to 1763. And that play that I mentioned that occurred 20 years earlier was not only put on in France and Britain, it was also recreated re put on in Haiti, because that's how important that treaty was. But coming out of that treaty, where I try to leave the reader is that 10 years after that failed siege in 1789, over that 10 year period, you're going to, we're going to see a resurgence of the spirit of Mackindal across Haiti. His death, his martyrdom is going to take on a new importance as men of color begin to demand their own freedom and equality in Haiti. And part of that, even though they had been asking and protesting for freedom and equality while the Americans were doing the same thing following their combat service in the effort to help the United States get its freedom, they're going to return to Haiti and embrace the spirit of Mackindal and embrace their own wartime service to be more demanding of their own freedom. And so in some ways, the American Revolution informed the leadership of what we're going to, was going to become known as the Haitian revolution. And a 19th century Haitian historian described the American Revolution as a school of liberty for the men who are going to begin to execute, to lead and gain success in the Haitian Revolution. And what I want the readers to come away with is that what happened to Mackindal in 1758, the treaty of 1763, and the reverberations of that across the 1760s, the blood of Crispus Attucks in 1770, this great speech that John Adams gives to help bring about the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Allied Transracial Military Action of 1779, and the Treaty of 1783 creating and affirming the United States of America is go. All of that is going to continue to live on in the minds, in the hearts of the people. Using John Adams's language about the way revolutionaries start, revolutions start, it's going to live on in the mind. All that's going to live on in the minds and hearts of the people of Haiti, of Venezuela, of Mexico, of Uruguay, of Chile, of Argentina, and what happens in those 20 years is going to have sweeping, massive effects for people for whom the American Revolution could never have imagined being influenced by their action. What happened in North America did not stay in North America. It is going to infect the globe with a contagion of liberty that to John Adams credit, he was right. Once it starts, it cannot be turned off. And I want to just say from that, as I begin, we are still in an act of revolution, of trying to make a reality. In 2025 and 2026, as we celebrate the semi quincentennial, we are see. I see. I found a way to throw that word back in there. As we continue to live through this and commemorate this, we are still living out that revolutionary promise that all people are created equal and have a right to live in this country and around the world, enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It started in Haiti, it started in North America, but it is still going on today.
- [82:25]
Sullivan Sommer
The book is Entangled Alliances, Racialized Freedom, and Atlantic Diplomacy during the American Revolution by the Ralph and Bessie Mae Lin Endowed Chair of History and Associate professor at Baylor University, Ronald Angelo Johnson. You can find Ron at the Baylor University website. And I am your host, Sullivan Sommer. You can find me online at SullivanSummer.com on Instagram at the SullivanSummer and over on Substack at SullivanSummer, where Ron and I are headed right now to continue our conversation. Thank you for listening to the.