New England Puritans from the former New Haven Colony settled Newark in 1666. Their fierce determination to establish scripture-based government in a close-knit township, with community control over admitting new inhabitants, often put them in direct conflict with New Jersey's proprietary government. Newark's egalitarian system for allocating land diverged sharply from the proprietors' headright approach, adapted from the West Indies and Carolina, that rewarded settler use of indentured servants and enslaved labor with larger distributions of land. 

This study provides a fresh interpretation of the founding and settlement of Newark as a self-contained New England community, including their negotiations with Native Americans, formation of godly self-government, gradual allocation of township land, and introduction of slavery. To implement their New England way, Newarkers resisted the proprietary government to the point of rebellion, bringing into stark relief the inherent conflict between two sources of authority, one scriptural and community-based and the other royal and proprietary, and two systems of land distribution.

The First Comprehensive Investigation into the First Uprising Against Slavery in North America 
At 2 a.m. on April 7, 1712, a fire broke out in New York City’s North Ward. Unbeknown to the residents who roused themselves to combat the flames, the blaze had been started with murderous intent. A group of at least twenty-four enslaved West African men and women, mostly Akan from modern-day Ghana, had long plotted this moment. Armed with guns, daggers, swords, axes, and clubs, they fell upon their enslavers. In the next few frantic moments, eight Europeans were killed and seven were wounded. The perpetrators were rounded up, jailed, and put on public trial. Twenty enslaved men and one woman were executed or transported for carrying out the plot. As the first event of its kind to take place in the North American colonies, this revolt was the progenitor of those that followed—it inspired, the Stono Rebellion of 1739, the New York Conspiracy of 1741, and Nat Turner’s 1831 insurrection. 
    When I Die, I Shall Return to My Own Land: The 1712 New York City Slave Revolt is the first comprehensive investigation into this major event in the history of slavery in North America. Consulting court records, correspondence, and the minutes of the various colonial councils, as well as a wide range of sources related to eighteenth-century slavery, historian Ben Hughes vividly recreates early colonial New York, the lives of its enslaved inhabitants, the factionalism among the city’s Dutch and English elites, and their precarious hold on Manhattan Island in the face of French and Native American threats. Hughes traces the origins of the New York rebels, details how they came to be enslaved, and recreates the shadowy dealings that took place between African polities, European and American slavers, and New York merchants. The forerunners of a movement which continues to this day, the deeds of these original African American rebels have now been all but forgotten. Here, Hughes attempts to redress this imbalance by recovering their story. 

When news reached Parliament of the Boston radicals’ destruction of the Royal East India Company’s tea, it passed the Coercive Acts, a collection of punitive measures designed to rein in that insubordinate seaport town. The Coercive Acts unleashed a political firestorm as communities from Massachusetts to Georgia drafted resistance resolutions condemning Parliament’s perceived encroachment upon American liberty. Local leaders also directed colonists to refrain from purchasing British merchandise and forego theater, horse racing, and other perceived debauched traditions. Local activists next convened the Continental Congress to coordinate a pancolonial resistance movement to pressure Parliament into repealing the Coercive Acts and settling American rights on a constitutional foundation. Once convened, Congress deftly drafted the Articles of Association. Traditionally understood as primarily an economic response by the colonies to Parliament’s actions, the Continental Association called for public demonstrations of commercial and cultural restraint, conduct delegates hoped would both heal the empire and restore colonial virtue. 
Historian Shawn McGhee offers a fresh perspective on the origins of American political identity. No Longer Subjects of the British King: The Political Transformation of Royal Subjects to Republican Citizens, 1774-1776reveals the crucial process by which the Continental Association organized American towns and counties into a protonational community of suffering to protect political identities they felt under threat. This work further demonstrates how those sacrificing for the common cause severed their bonds of allegiance to the British king and separated from the broader imperial nation. In this crucible of austerity, they formed an American political community, completing the political transformation from subject to citizen.