It’s Juneteenth, So I Wrote a Novel About the 1778 Emancipation of Slaves
And the rise of a great African nation on the East Coast
Well, actually, I didn’t just sit and write it today. It took me two years of research and and another two of writing and editing to invent a world in which the British defeat the colonials in the Revolutionary War and emancipate the slaves in 1778. The result is a novel called Restive Souls.
It is a Juneteenth coincidence that I am refueling my attempts to find an agent to represent it. It’s currently in the hands of a couple of publishers, but I’ve been lax getting it in front of more.
Now, you might think, why would the British do such a thing as emancipate the slaves in 1778? And, what are you smoking, Charles?
I’m smoking alternative history buds, those sweet-smelling herbs that allow me to create metaphors for our troubled times.
The novel’s premise is not as preposterous as you might think. There is some historical evidence that it could have happened if history had taken a slight detour left instead of a hard right.
Some of this evidence is somewhat new. Historians have discovered that there was a significant communications platform among slaves through non-English languages, impromptu church services, and songs that encouraged slave revolts.
In Restive Souls, a turn of events in Trenton thanks to an unlikely pair, a Haitian man and a British double agent, sends George Washington’s famous trip across the Delaware River to disaster.
In real history, Washington was already on the run after losing New York to the British, thus giving the British a reliable port of entry for reinforcements and supplies. The Continental Army was in tatters. The terms of service for many Continental soldiers were about to end at the time of the Battle of Trenton. They were poorly fed and clothed. Morale was abysmal.
If you can imagine carrying a musket across the Delaware while wearing a poorly fitted jacket and a bad pair of athletic socks instead of a North Face jacket and a nice pair of boots, you’ll have an idea of conditions on the eve of the battle.
Washington had been in full retreat through New York and New Jersey. He was desperate for a victory, any victory.
In Restive Souls, he doesn’t get it, and slaves respond to Lord Dunmore’s 1775 proclamation in earnest.
That real-life proclamation, issued by John Dunmore, the 4th Earl of Dunmore and the governor of Virginia at the time, offered freedom to any slaves or indentured servants who were willing to escape their American masters and join the British cause.1
We don’t hear much about it in school history books, but the proclamation made colonial landowners livid. Landowners and mercantilists who had been on the fence over the revolutionary cause joined it with gusto after Dunmore’s Proclamation. According to the article linked by the footnote:
Some estimates claim that as many as 80,000 to 100,000 slaves throughout the thirteen states escaped to the British lines.
A modern metaphor might be if Trump finally took away everyone’s TikTok.
The proclamation turned the tide of sentiment away from a shrug on behalf of many colonials into a full-throttled revolution.
Lost to history: the likelihood that the Revolutionary War was America’s first civil war over slavery.
In our timeline, the slave response was already substantial. In Restive Souls, it is more so, and after the British victory, slaves decide to take matters into their own hands and not rely on the British to fulfill any promises to emancipate. They overrun and capture key ports and plantations and quickly build congregational militias to defend their newly gained turf.
Slaves already were a majority in real life, not just in the South, but in some northeastern states, as well. They built the plantations and worked the ports. They were the majority demographic in Charleston, the eventual capital of one of the new autonomous regions created by the British in Restive Souls.
They were the engine of the economy, beaten and worn as they were.
Slaves accomplished many feats that have been buried by history (one of the great bridge builders of the early 19th century, as just one example, was a freed slave2).
Read William Spivey’s History Channel here on Substack on just about any given day to discover more examples of forgotten Black history.
After the British victory in Restive Souls, the secret communications among slaves issue forth a cha’age. This is a signal, understood by most slaves, that it is an appropriate time to revolt (I made that word up, but it’s loosely based on the Gullah3 language). They take the ports, and the British, seeing the writing on the wall, emancipate the slaves in 1778.
Part of the British motive for emancipation in Restive Souls is to punish the colonials for their rebellion. The British carve out three regions in North America, giving them nominal independence and autonomy, somewhat like Canada before it gained full independence in our timeline.
The British in Restive Souls aren’t being altruistic. They believe that giving slaves their freedom will hamper the progress of the colonies and keep them at the mercy of British rule.
But the opposite happens. All that talent, craftsmanship, and intelligence that had been stifled under the whip is let loose in an explosion of creative and intellectual energy, resulting in what historians would describe as a renaissance.
As bleak as things look today, I believe we are on the verge of a renaissance on the part of Black America in our timeline. We are seeing it in television and film and literature and music. We’ve seen it in the dominance of African Americans in American sports. It’s only a matter of time before it reaches more fully into the sciences and industry, as it should have a long time ago if people in my demographic hadn’t been so hell-bent on stopping it.
Spend a couple of months in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, or Philadelphia if you don’t believe me.
It could be that the reason we are currently experiencing such a wild backlash of white nationalism is that some whites are afraid of the moment that is before them. But rather than be afraid of it, they will have to embrace it or be run over by it. It is something to be celebrated, not feared.
Even though a white nationalist president took office in 2024 (under increasingly questionable circumstances4), it will be a short-term, last-gasp victory.
If you’re a caucasian supporter of the cause, let’s not assume it’s all over. Blacks have survived hundreds of years of white nationalism. Progressive caucasians should be able to get through a decade or so of its last, desperate gasp.
My motivation for writing Restive Souls was simply, “What if such a renaissance had happened two hundred years earlier?”
Would I have been replaced? Who knows? It’s a stupid, idiotic fear in our modern times, but in the world of Restive Souls, maybe we’d all have a somewhat browner skin tone, like in this alternative history short story based on the novel:
I don’t know about you, my fellow northern Eurofolks, but my skin could use some extra melanin and fewer age freckles.
One of the biggest challenges of writing this was trying to look at things from a Black or Native American perspective (there is no genocide or ethnic cleansing in Restive Souls).
In my novel MagicLand, I had to try to look at things from a female perspective. I’m not a woman. So I’m used to the challenge. One of the main characters in Restive Souls is a Black high priestess who becomes the soul of the nation. How am I, as an old white guy, supposed to be able to write about a character like that?
But that’s the challenge in any writing. We can’t restrict our writing to stories about people of our own background unless we want very uninteresting results (an obvious exception is an author writing about her under-represented people).
I also had to write from the perspective of a villainous white nationalist from the Restive Souls timeline. I may be caucasian, but it was not as easy as you might think.
Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is the very essence of writing. Luckily, it comes somewhat easy for me. My characters take over the story and do things I don’t expect to the point where I say, “Why did you do that? Oh well! Carry on!”
The novel tries to stay true to the culture and people of its time. So I’ll be looking more formally for “technical” editors and a regular editor soon.
Restive Souls is the first of what I hope to be a series. It takes place in the years 1776–1823.
If you’ve read this far, thanks for the read, and happy Juneteenth!! If you’re in my demographic, here is a brief primer on DEI and critical race theory:
I will post occasional free excerpts of the novel here on the Ruminato Substack, but they will typically disappear within a few weeks. Here is one:
The novel is always in a stage of final edits, and will be until it finds a publishing home.
I probably have more than a hundred versions of the novel on my laptop already. I’m hoping there aren’t a hundred more before it sees the light of day.
Notes
Long-term subscribers are probably wondering if this thing will ever see the light of day. It will, but these things take time.
Thanks for reading!
Footnotes
“Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation, 1775 | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.” 2025. Gilderlehrman.org. 2025. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/lord-dunmores-proclamation-1775.
Bastille, Charles. 2025. “A White Man’s Journey through Black History Month.” Ruminato.com. Ruminato. February 2025. https://www.ruminato.com/p/a-white-mans-journey-through-black.
“Discovering Legacy of African Cultures.” 2025. Gullahgeecheecorridor.org. 2025. https://gullahgeecheecorridor.org/.
Substack. 2021. “She Won, Part III: The Devil Is in the Data.” Substack.com. 2021. https://substack.com/home/post/p-166186703.