The librarian and director of the American Philosophical Society Library in Philadelphia explores the little-known story of the "Black Boys," who fomented a 1765 rebellion on the American frontier against Native Americans that sparked the American Revolution.
In his gripping new book...historian Patrick Spero reveals how differing hopes for North America’s future led to different views of peace and war ... Mr. Spero, the director of the American Philosophical Society Library, has produced an excellent and important explication of frontier tensions and their world-shaking consequences. His new book does what the best histories do: It places readers at the scene—whether with grumbling frontiersmen in Cunningham’s Tavern who rise in anger as a party of traders walks in, or amid a large gathering of Native leaders at Fort Chartres singing a war song to threaten a British envoy—and makes us wonder what will happen next.
Frontier Rebels makes for a good read, a lost bit of American history in a greater colonial epic in need of telling. It would work better sticking to its story as an example of a lost history of the Revolutionary War frontier. The book has well prepared maps and a useful glossary of 'Cast of Characters and Important Places.'
Spero argues effectively ... For professional and casual historians of early American government, military, and citizen protest movements, this well-researched and concisely written monograph takes a timely look back at the history and spirit of dissent.
