American Sanctuary
  • Published: 15 November 2018
  • ISBN: 9780525563631
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $38.00

American Sanctuary

Mutiny, Martyrdom, and National Identity in the Age of Revolution

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Masterful storytelling of a little-known defining moment of American history centering on a mutiny and its repercussions in American politics and law.

In 1797 the bloodiest mutiny ever suffered by the Royal Navy took place on the British frigate HMS Hermione off the coast of Puerto Rico. Jonathan Robbins, a reputed American sailor who had been impressed into service, made his way to American shores. President John Adams bowed to Britain’s request for his extradition. Convicted of murder and piracy by a court-martial in Jamaica, Robbins was hanged. Adams’s catastrophic miscalculation ignited a political firestorm, only to be fanned by Robbins’s failure to receive his constitutional rights of due process and trial by jury by an American court.
 
American Sanctuary brilliantly lays out in riveting detail the story of how the Robbins affair, amid the turbulent  presidential campaign of 1800, inflamed the new nation and set in motion a constitutional crisis, resulting in Adams’s defeat and Thomas Jefferson’s election as the third president of the United States. Robbins’s martyrdom led directly to the country’s historic decision to grant political asylum to foreign refugees—a major achievement in fulfilling the promise of American independence.
  • Published: 15 November 2018
  • ISBN: 9780525563631
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $38.00
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Praise for American Sanctuary

  • "A dramatic tale. . . . A good, readable story in the mode of Nathaniel Philbrick's nautical histories. . . . Impressive." --Thomas E. Ricks, The New York Times Book Review

  • "Deeply researched and elegantly written. . . . Gripping and timely. . . . Ekirch is such a masterful storyteller that American Sanctuary reads like a mystery. . . . The most surprising of this book's many insights is that, after the acrimony of the election of 1800, Americans returned to--and even broadened--a common definition of American citizenship rooted in the concept of liberty." --Kathleen DuVal, The Wall Street Journal

  • "One of the most important--and enjoyable--books I have read in many years. . . . An extraordinary journey. Ekirch's gripping narrative brings a largely forgotten episode to life, illuminating its immediate impact on party politics in a polarized, revolutionary age and on the new nation's enduring identity as an asylum of liberty. Ekirch's brilliant reconstruction is a triumph of historical research and analysis." --Peter S. Onuf, professor of history at the University of Virginia