I’m delighted that Alan Taylor has picked up his second Pulitzer Prize, this time for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832. As in his other, gulp, six books, he presents his arguments beautifully and convincingly. The research is top-notch (Alan does not rest on his laurels–the archival detective work is exquisite) and his findings are significant on numerous fronts. I’d encourage non-specialists to read it.

I finished it last month and have been pushing it on my grad students (as well as many of his other works). The story of how slaves aligned with the British in an attempt to shake off the horrors of slavery is fascinating, the characters vivid. This is not the case of all too many studies of “resistance” in which the ethnography or personal stories never come into focus and the individuals and groups aren’t much more than paradigms or models, sometimes rather flimsy ones. It’s rich social history.

Alan Taylor
(Photo Credit: Davis Enterprise)

But what most strikes me about this book, where I take off my hat as an historian, is the ability to show how 1812 and the slaves’ efforts both illuminate and reshaped the regional political struggles that so marked the United States in the nineteenth century and beyond. I understood the Civil War much more after reading this book. Historians who study a particular incident or period always assert that it was important (infinite turning points and watersheds) and that it marked as well as shaped society. They often don’t succeed in pulling this off. In this case, however, I now understand the changing nature of the tensions between the north and south and Virginia’s important role. All of this and much more told from the perspectives of slaves trying to shape their own destinies. History at its best.

Next up–Ari Kelman’s A Misplaced Massacre. Good friends keep writing award-winning books.