Tony Small and Lord Edward Fitzgerald: Creative nonfiction of black and white brotherhood in struggles for freedom during the American Revolutionary War and Irish Uprising of 1796-98

"...a fascinating and well-told story of the American Revolution in South Carolina-and of its ramifications across racial and national boundaries." -Walter Edgar, author of South Carolina: A History

"The author brings to life the challenges and opportunities that the American Revolution brought to African Americans in the South in this engaging account of a free black man's wartime experience and postwar friendship with a British officer he rescued from the battlefield." -Jim Piecuch, author of Three Peoples, One King: Loyalists, Indians, and Slaves in the Revolutionary South

Until publication of this book, virtually nothing was known about Tony Small, the African American from South Carolina who helped further an existing revolutionary spirit of liberty in Ireland as much as Lafayette did in France. For the first time, Robert Black brings Small to life in a work of creative nonfiction that includes his influence upon Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the military commander in the United Irishmen's revolution against British rule in Dublin between 1796-1798, whose life Small saved at the Battle of Eutaw Springs in 1781.

Tony Small is a real person, the main character in the book. Everyone else when named in the book is also a real person, and most are black. The book records the names of over two hundred documented African Americans and creates a fictional narrative for many of them. Their voices and Small's in Part I give fictional context to moral, social, and revolutionary realities during America's first civil war. The appendices, notes, maps, and exhibits in Part II firmly anchor fictional detail to historically recorded facts.

By bringing to light the story of remarkable figures in eighteenth-century American, Irish, Canadian, English, and French history, the book is unequaled as a record of mutual respect and devotion between two men that begins on the level battle ground at Eutaw Springs. It also creates an account of African Americans not as mere slaves or free black men and women who do manual labor, but as soldiers and patriots of the highest order to help establish the new republic.

For nearly forty years, Robert Ray Black lived in Charleston, South Carolina, where he taught English, practiced law and taught at the Charleston School of Law. He now lives in Bozeman, Montana, where he writes, skis, hikes, and camps with Cooper, his Labrador retriever, in the Rocky Mountains. He is the author of a law book, the coeditor of a medieval text, and a contributor to a book of poetry and several scholarly journals. He holds a B.A. degree from Sewanee: The University of the South, M.A. degrees from Vanderbilt and Oxford Universities, a Ph.D. from Princeton, and a J.D. from The University of South Carolina. He taught at several universities. With a direct commission in military intelligence and the infantry, he served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army in Korea and Germany during the Vietnam era. He is a former Inspector General of the Society for the Descendants of Washington's Army at Valley Forge. He is a past member of the General William Moultrie chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution and has participated in many local historical association meetings throughout the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Robert Black has two sons. Web site: RobertRayBlack.com.