The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding

Joseph J. Ellis examines how America's founders—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Adams—addressed slavery while drafting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The book explores what Ellis calls the "great contradiction": how a government founded on principles of consent and the pursuit of happiness institutionalized slavery and enabled the displacement of Native Americans. On the eve of the American Revolution, half a million enslaved African Americans lived in North America, and the slave trade was flourishing even as the thirteen colonies fought against being governed without consent. Ellis traces the first debates on slavery and Native American treatment from the Constitutional Convention through the Treaty of New York, examining the thinking behind revisions to the Articles of Confederation by figures including Jay, Hamilton, and Madison. He also discusses the roles of Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet and Creek chief Alexander McGillivray. Ellis presents the founding as a story of coexisting grandeur and failure, brilliance and blindness, addressing the two great failures of America's founding: the failure to end slavery and the failure to avoid Indian removal.