It should come as a surprise to nobody that America has a troubled relationship with its past when it comes to race relations.

It may come as surprise to you that our Founding Fathers had a complex relationship with their present when it comes to race relations. Yes, many of them owned slaves, but a significant percentage of those men had committed to freeing them at some point.

The problem was, that point was rather nebulous. And there was a lot of ambiguity when it came to the question of how to deal with both slaves and free Blacks at that time. As we noted a couple of days ago, Lord Dunmore had a pretty good idea to free any Blacks who chose to fight on the British side. Unfortunately it was rather poorly executed and soldiers were killed, died of smallpox, or returned to their masters. Very few of them remained free. It also never occurred to Dunmore that women and children might be interested in the deal, too.

The idea crossed George Washington’s mind, too. Until it un-crossed it, then crossed it again.

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