In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the first president's life, his work, and his engagement with slavery. Born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people, Washington and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man, he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts. Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington's attitudes began to change. The revelatory narrative documents for the first time the moral transformation that led to his decision to emancipate his own slaves. Washington's heroic stature as Father of Our Country is upheld in this superb portrait: now we see him in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.
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