"We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates."
The speaker was Edmund Burke, statesman and passionate orator of eighteenth-century Britain. "This fierce people" were the British colonists in North America who, in less than two hundred years, had progressed from a starving, disease-ridden, despondent settlement into a group of hardy, vigorous, self-confident—and rebellious—colonies.
Blood of Freedom is their story, told in their thoughts and their words. Mr. Miers traces with imagination and sensitivity a heroic epic unsurpassed in American history—from the cold winter day at a Blackwall dock in December, 1606, through the "starving time" at Jamestown and the massacre on Good Friday of 1622; to the flowering of Williamsburg as capital of His Majesty's largest and most populous colony and as birthplace of political masterpieces which were to have profound effect on nations of the world through generations to come; to the battlefield at Yorktown where the royal yoke was lifted in a brilliant military triumph.
No better vignette can be drawn of events of such magnitude than through the eyes and ears of the men who endured the suffering and privation, who rose to magnificent heights in their search for right and justice, and who survived the holocaust. Mr. Miers chooses his materials well, and the story of the historic triangle of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown emerges with the immediacy of today's current events.
Blood of Freedom joins Seat of Empire, by Carl Bridenbaugh, and Virginians at Home, by Edmund S. Morgan, in the distinguished "Williamsburg in America Series" of popular histories of Williamsburg and Tidewater Virginia in the eighteenth century.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
EARL SCHENCK MIERS was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1910. He was educated in the public schools of New York and New Jersey and was graduated from Rutgers University in 1933. He was the first director of the Rutgers University Press and has been an editor for Alfred A Knopf, Inc., and the World Publishing Company.
During recent years, Mr. Miers has earned admiration and stature as a historian of the Civil War, author of excellent books for children, and author and editor of outstanding books for adults.
Mr. Miers is the author of Rebel's Roost, a stirring tale of "young Williamsburg... full of life, vigor and enthusiasm" published by Colonial Williamsburg; The Rainbow Book of American History; Mark Twain on the Mississippi; The Web of Victory; Robert E. Lee (A Great-Life-in-Brief); The Living Lincoln (in collaboration with Paul Angle); The American Story; the inspiring Why Did This Have to Happen and The Great Rebellion.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
RICHARD J. STINELY was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He was educated in the public schools of Pennsylvania and was graduated from Cooper Union in 1947. A typo- graphic designer and art director for the Macmillan Company for many years, he is now Assistant Director of Publications for Colonial Williamsburg.
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