...impressively researched and beautifully crafted ... [Taylor's] main focus here is the War of 1812, but he admirably contextualizes it with a brilliant account of slavery in Virginia during and after the Revolution ... If The Internal Enemy makes Virginia's Founding Fathers look appallingly self-absorbed, it also makes them look distinctly human.
...[a] remarkable new book ... It’s an extraordinary story, and The Internal Enemy tells it in vivid prose and compelling, deeply researched detail. But Taylor never gets lost in details. He has important things to say — about slavery, about war and about America ... Indeed, it’s hard not to be dazzled by the ease with which Taylor moves from the lives of individual slaves, to the history of a large planter family, to the fault lines of Virginia politics, to the national debate over slavery in the western territories, out into the Atlantic world to the history of the British Empire.
Exemplary work of history ... Full of implication, an expertly woven narrative that forces a new look at 'the peculiar institution' in a particular time and place.
In this revealing and engrossing study, [Taylor] illustrates that a great factor in the liberation of thousands of slaves was the policy and intervention of the British government and military ... This is a well-written and scrupulously researched examination of an important aspect of the struggle against American slavery.
