The United States was born of liberty and slavery. Sparked by denunciations of British designs to enslave Americans, the Revolutionary movement was led by men who themselves owned enslaved Blacks. The widely noted contradictions played out from the early protests of 1765, through independence and the Revolutionary War, and on into the Constitutional Convention and the first administration of a slave-owning president.


Edward J. Larson’s beautifully written, deeply researched narrative captures the historical significance and personal poignance of these major events. He engages questions that have entered public debate, such as whether the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery, and was the Constitution adopted by northern and southern states already dividing over slavery fatally compromised? Washington emerges as a military liberator who was especially insistent on the capture of his fugitives, whose voices join those of other Black Americans as the most convincing of all on the urgency of liberty.