American Inheritance Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765-1795

Edward J. Larson, David de Vries

eAudio - 2023

From a Pulitzer Prize winner, a powerful history that reveals how the twin strands of liberty and slavery were joined in the nation's founding. "Gut-wrenching. . . . While acknowledging that the study of liberty and slavery in the Revolutionary era remains a 'partisan minefield,' Mr. Larson plunges in, sparing none of the era's most prominent revolutionaries from scrutiny." -Harold Holzer, Wall Street Journal New attention from historians and journalists is raising pointed questions about the founding period: was the American revolution waged to preserve slavery, and was the Constitution a pact with slavery or a landmark in the antislavery movement? Leaders of the founding who called for American liberty are sc...rutinized for enslaving Black people themselves: George Washington consistently refused to recognize the freedom of those who escaped his Mount Vernon plantation. And we have long needed a history of the founding that fully includes Black Americans in the revolutionary... more