PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
T. Cole Jones is Associate Professor of History at Purdue University.
Captives of Liberty shines brilliant new light on the question of just how brutal the American Revolutionary War really was. Based on extensive archival research, author T. Cole Jones presents overwhelming evidence that prisoners of war regularly endured retaliatory privation and horrible suffering and death. Along the way, Jones helps shatter long standing images of a restrained, almost civilized military conflict. Beautifully written, Captives is a magisterial work. -James Kirby Martin, author of Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered An impressive treatment of the subject of prisoners of war in the American Revolution and an antidote to nostalgia, Captives of Liberty reminds us that the American Revolution was a brutal conflict in which the atrocities were not exclusive to the southern theater nor to any one side. It is a significant contribution to the historiography of the Revolution. - Andrew O'Shaughnessy, author of The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire Cole Jones challenges perceptions of a 'civilized' American Revolution by skillfully showing how the management of prisoners, whether inadvertently dire due to provisioning problems or deliberately grim as a political weapon, tracks a course of escalation from proportional retaliation to bloody revenge in the War for Independence. It was not only a war for but also between hearts and minds when the treatment of Captives of Liberty put popular sentiments, political decisions, and military custom at odds, and as people struggled to reconcile emotions and vengeance with law, order, and honor. -Holly Mayer, author of Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the American Revolution
