"In Judith Van Buskirk's Standing in Their Own Light, black soldiers wage their own American revolution. They liberated themselves and helped to start slavery's long and difficult destruction, only to be scorned, forgotten, and excluded from the new republic's blessings. This thoughtful, deeply researched, well-written book makes a big contribution to understanding the Revolution in its liberating but tragic ambiguity."–Edward Countryman, author of Enjoy the Same Liberty: Black Americans and the Revolutionary Era