My book: Trying Liberty The Quiet Revolution on Long Island is now published & available

 "Trying Liberty" is now available

My book has been published: 

Trying Liberty -  THE QUIET REVOLUTION ON LONG ISLAND 

 By A.Charity Higgins Johnson 

Phebe Willets married Adam Mott the Younger and raised their children on Long Island, NY.  While a wife and mother, she was a recognized by the Quakers as a preacher and took journeys as a traveling preacher for the early Quakers—as far as England. And from the day her second husband (Tristam Dodge) willed her his slave Rachel, Phebe has tried to free her. Phebe thinks she has finally persuaded Rachel to accept her own freedom. 

It is 1775, and the British are eyeing her homeland as a launching pad for their invasion on the City of New York, and the winds of liberty puts everyone in mind of their own status. When a kinsman remarks “until all people in the New York Colony are free, then no one is free,” it strikes a chord in Phebe, igniting in her a determination only not to free her slave Rachel, but also to have all slaves on Long Island freed. 

 She is facing powerful and long-established systems in New York, both inside and outside her Quaker community. These are systems which resist her cause, supporting the continuance of slavery. But the Revolutionary war’s conflicts leave a massive trail of turbulence which upends the quiet complacency of Long Islander Quakers. Phebe hopes the drawn-out crisis will soften local sentiment, and at the same time stir up consciences of New Yorkers. 

But by seizing the opportunity created by the crisis, Phebe risks the safety of  Rachel, puts her livelihood on shaky ground, and may lose standing in the community. 

Can an old Quaker widow and a black female slave hope to change the mood and tenor of Long Islanders’ attitudes towards slavery? Can they affect change even as British troops demand more and more of the Islanders lives and livelihood? Will they persuade New Yorkers to free the people who are enslaved at the same time they are sacrificing so much already in the chaos of the war? 

The book includes an extensive bibliography 

Available from 

the author (acharityjohnson@gmail.com); Amazon; Market Block Books in Troy NY; The Book House, Albany, NY; Friar Tuck Newstand, Albany-Rensselaer Train Station, Rensselaer, NY; shoptbmbooks.com Troy Bookmakers