WFU prof to explore slavery during Revolution in Asheboro library talk

Dr. Jake Ruddiman

ASHEBORO – What did slavery look like to combatants in the Revolutionary War — white, Black, American and European — as they traveled between regions?

Join Wake Forest University History professor Dr. Jake Ruddiman for “Is This the Land of Liberty? Soldiers and Slavery in the War of American Independence,” 6:30 p.m. Monday, September 30, at the Asheboro Public Library. 

The talk, supported by the Friends of the Library, is free and the public is invited.

Ruddiman will discuss his research into the travel writing of soldiers during the war. The campaigns of the American Revolution carried troops far from their homes and exposed them to unfamiliar enslaved societies. What did these military outsiders see and what did they record?

The war profoundly disrupted the institution of slavery, spreading charged rhetoric about liberty, levying new demand with mobilization and opening opportunities for freedom-seekers. What did Black Americans encountering soldiers traveling with the armies see? What new relationships could they make?

How did these observations and relationships then shape the course of the war? What were the relationships between wartime experiences and new streams of pro- and anti-slavery arguments in the Revolutionary states?

The answers, Ruddiman contends, connect the War of Independence with the generational transformation of the Revolution.

Ruddiman, who received his Ph.D. from Yale, is an associate professor of History at Wake Forest. His first book, Becoming Men of Some Consequence: Youth and Military Service in the Revolutionary War, explores the lives of young men in the Continental Army.

That project led to research into other aspects of the Revolutionary experience, including “Is This the Land of Liberty.” Across his research, Ruddiman’s work as a historian of Revolutionary America explores how people built their lives, reshaped their communities and constructed meaning for themselves and for posterity.

The library is located at 201 Worth Street. For further information, call 336-318-6803.