In school and in later independent reading I never learned much about the War of 1812 which was fought by the US against the United Kingdom (and allies) to re-determine the boundaries and fishing rights and trade agreements. The UK promised the Blacks freedom from slavery and the US was allied with the Natives for trade agreements and hunting rights. Slaves were always an issue but not one the Colonies wanted to deal with for reals.   The Loyalists, pro-British colonists, usually moved back to Britain or maybe to Florida or Canada. There’s virtually nothing in the book about them.

The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832. 
By Alan Taylor
2014 / 624 pages
Read by Alan Taylor 15h 27m 
Rating; 9.5  / US history
https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/alan-taylor-0

By 1812 about 30 years had passed since the Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolution. The UK was annoyed and wanted to embarrass, defeat and get revenge on the Yankees, especially Virginia.  Many enslaved Blacks wanted to join the British side to gain their freedom (as kind of promised) or to plunder the holdings of the slave-owners who were mostly in the South. The French, Natives and Americans were just mainly trying to save their own skins and get the best trading deals they could, although some of the Brits were genuinely concerned for the slaves.  

The War of 1812 was a gap in my studies of US history, although I knew some of the details (like Francis Scott Key’s song). I got the book on sale at Amazon and/or Audible maybe 6 months ago. Seeing it there on my shelf started to bug me so I got both the Kindle and the Audible versions and listened as I read. I get totally immersed in the material when I do that.

And a few years ago, in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, I finally got to read Rhys Isaac’s The Transformation of Virginia which won the Pulitzer in History back in its own year, 1983.  Isaac’s book, is about Virginia’s colonial experience starting in about 1740 and going only 50 years, to 1790. That’s the time period  usually referred  as The Great Awakening and is really the basis for the bulk of Isaac’s book. Tha time of Virginia’s huge transformation (see title) from old-world English hierarchies to new world’s independent and self-made-progeny. 

It wasn’t until the War of 1812 that the United States was changing enough to remove the English and those “stable” old, Anglican/Tory and political ways from the scene.  The diocese (Anglican) system still functioned, but there were fewer bishops for the new Congregationalists and other functionaries, bureaucratic departments.) And the Tories had left for friendlier places.

What would happen is that a few local families and ministers would hold a revival and some of them would start up a church and that was that – no need for a lot of pomp and circumstance, symbolic ritual or ancient rites. The growth was organic and in keeping with the environment.  (See The Transformation of Virginia.)

The Paris Peace Treaty of 1783 (ending the Revolution) hadn’t got it all right and also things relaxed and then a few years after that, the US charged the Brits with selling runaway slaves! The plantations were awash with gossip and fears of slave revolts. The Brits would promise the slaves one thing and the French something else.  The English took many of them to Nova Scotia, but there were little British enclaves (military, Black and other) off the coasts of Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia and/or Florida.  Some runaways were taken to Jamaica or Barbados.  Some wanted to return home to their plantations because that’s where their families (wives, husbands, children etc) were. Many owners wanted their slaves back.

The Internal Enemy seems to focus mostly on slavery, but it does follow a chronological ordering of the events after the actual War of 1812 fighting..  Neither the War of Independence nor the War of 1812 touched much on the question of slavery, although it seemed to in a couple of cases.  Slavery was permitted throughout the colonies until after the Civil War.  

 I’ve not given this book one whit of what it’s due. It’s a brilliant book.  Fwiw, Taylor specializes in the time between the Revolution and probably the Missouri Compomise.