Historian Cassandra Pybus traces the lives and adventures of the runaway slaves who absorbed the dreams of liberty from their masters during the American Revolution and fled to the British to find freedom.
Where did these hopeful and courageous idealists go? And what kind of lives did they make for themselves?
Cassandra Pybus spoke at Cambridge Forum in 2006 about her groundbreaking research into the history of the American Revolution when thousands of slaves fled their masters to find freedom with the British. Her book, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty is the astounding story of these runaways and the lives they made on four continents. Having emancipated themselves, with the rhetoric about the inalienable rights of free men ringing in their ears, these men and women struggled to make liberty a reality in their own lives.
Cassandra Jean Pybus is an Australian historian and writer. She is a professor of history at the University of Sydney, and has published extensively on Australian and American history.