ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book could not have happened without the generous support of countless friends and colleagues. I’d like to thank, particularly: Liz Bicknell, my editor; Sherry Fatla, the designer; Hannah Mahoney, the copy editor; Caroline Lawrence, the jacket designer; the Sales and Marketing Department at Candlewick, who were confronted by a book that had missed its audience by two centuries; my parents and sister; Nicole, for reading drafts; my friends and colleagues at Vermont College, for their encouragement. And for their tremendous assistance on a variety of topics: Laura Murphy; J. L. Bell; Peter J. Wrike; Dr. Dana Sutton of the University of California, Irvine; Josh Graml of the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia; Myles McConnon, Volunteer at Minute Man National Historical Park; Ken Wells of St. Mark’s School, Southborough; Robert Howard, former Curator of Technology at the Hagley Museum; Dr. Carmen Giunta, Professor of Chemistry, Le Moyne College; and, as always, the staff of the Boston Athenæum.

I would also like to mention in particular my indebtedness to the two historical studies that cover most fully the actions of Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment, both of which were invaluable: Ivor Noël Hume’s 1775: Another Part of the Field (Knopf, 1966) and Peter J. Wrike’s The Governor’s Island: Gwynn’s Island, Virginia, During the Revolution (BrandyLane, The Gwynn’s Island Museum, 1993). Other important information came from Percy Burdelle Caley’s Dunmore: Colonial Governor of New York and Virginia, 1770–1782 (PhD Thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 1939).

I am indebted to Brooks Haxton for permission to quote this (in slightly adapted form) from his gorgeous Heraclitus translation, entitled Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus (Viking, 2001). The quotations on this page and this page are taken from Philip Wheelwright, The Presocratics (Macmillan, 1966). The quotation on this page is taken from Sophocles’ “Ajax” in Sophocles II (University of Chicago Press, 1957). The fragment on this page is taken whole from Blaise Pascal, Pensées (translated by W. F. Trotter. Modern Library, 1941).

Several of the items in this book are transcriptions of real eighteenth-century documents (slightly edited for length and clarity). These include documents 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The originals are available in a variety of sources, most notably Peter Force’s American Archives, Series IV, Volumes 3–6 (Washington: 1837–1853).