Prologue : "proud of my country" -- "Fire, fire, scorch, scorch" : enslaved Africans in the colonial world -- "The same principle lives in us" : Black colonial people and the revolutionary crisis -- "The fruition of those blessings" : Black people in the emerging republic -- "Now our mother country ": Black Americans and the unfinished revolution -- Epilogue : "you may rejoice, I must mourn" : slaves, free Americans, and the Fourth of July -- Documents -- Bibliographical essay.