The Great Contradiction

A major new history from our most trusted voice on the Revolutionary era, the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Founding Brothers and the National Book Award winner American Sphinx: an astounding look at how America’s founders—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Adams—regarded the issue of slavery as they drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. A daring and important work that ultimately reckons with the two great failures of America’s founding: the failure to end slavery and the failure to avoid Indian removal.

“How does it appear in the sight-of-heaven,” wrote Samuel Hopkins of Newport, “that these States, who have been fighting for liberty, cannot agree in any political constitution unless it indulge and authorize them to enslave their fellow men.”

On the eve of… Keep Reading