Rhode Island’s “Black Regiment” of the American Revolutionary War is fairly well-known to students of American History. Most published histories of the small colored battalion from Rhode Island are clearly biased in favor of the “regiment” and tend to interpret it as an elite military unit. However, a detailed study and analysis of Rhode Island’s segregated Continental Line by the author reveals a “military experiment” that was beset with difficulties from its start and ultimately failed as a segregated unit in 1780. In this work, many of the popular stories of Rhode Island’s “Black Regiment” are proven to be myths. Follow the accurate historical stories of the colored and white soldiers of Rhode Island’s Continental Line whose courage and sacrifices helped create an independent nation.

Bruce A. Kimball attacks the widely held assumption that the idea of American "professionalism" arose from the proliferation of urban professional positions during the late nineteenth century. This first paperback edition of The "True Professional Ideal" in America argues that the professional ideal can be traced back to the colonial period. This comprehensive intellectual history illuminates the profound relationships between the idea of a "professional" and broader changes in American social, cultural, and political history.