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

A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceA Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2023"A welcome addition to a public conversation…that has largely produced more heat than light." —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book ReviewFrom a Pulitzer Prize winner, a powerful history that reveals how the twin strands of liberty and slavery were joined in the nation’s founding. 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 scrutinized 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 protests, the war, and the debates over slavery and free