A one-of-a-kind book, a miracle to be grateful for and to treasure. Fox gives us a new and altogether more disturbing Revolution than we have been accustomed to reckon with. Sweet Land of Liberty may forever change the way we think of our national origins.”
—Michael Zuckerman,University of Pennsylvania
“To come once again at the question of the morality of the American Revolution but from [the] unfamiliar perspective . . . of the Northampton residents, whose story Francis Fox opens up for the first time in his path-breaking book—is to be reminded of the moral complexities that extraordinary times brought to the lives of ordinary people.”
—Mark Noll Books and Culture: A Christian Review
“For their beliefs, Moravians and Mennonites forfeited the right to vote, suffered harassment and beatings from neighbors and militiamen, faced draconian fines for their religious objections, and finally, watched as the judicial system confiscated their property and sold it at auction. In relating these moments, Fox artfully captures the pain and hypocrisy that existed on the darker side of liberty’s war.”
—Terry Bouton William and Mary Quarterly
“The American Revolution in back country Pennsylvania comes alive and is personified in this history of the American Revolution as real men and women lived it. Using biographies of 18 ‘obscure’ men and women, Fox has given voice to the previously unheard. . . . It is good history and a good read with vivid word pictures drawn by Fox’s use of language.”
—G.W. Franz Choice
“Sweet Land of Liberty brings together biographical sketches of thirteen men and five women whose diverse experiences have been reconstructed on the basis of impressive archival research.”
—Charles G. Steffen Journal of American History
“The book helps us, nevertheless, to understand the extraordinarily factionalized nature of Pennsylvania’s Revolution outside of Philadelphia and allows us to see that those conflicts were as often about petty grudges and self-interest as about the Revolution’s formally stated aims; Sweet Land of Liberty recalls that all too human dimension with compassion.”
—Liam Riordan Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
“Francis Fox writes an engaging and highly personalized account of the American Revolution in the Pennsylvania interior. And as his work makes clear, the Revolution was first and foremost a war—not about ideas—but about people, their personalities and ambitions, as well as their fears, resentments, and even hatreds.”
—Judith Ridner Pennsylvania History
