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The Great Paradox The Tragic Side of the Founding of the United States An important new history from our most trusted voice on the era of the American Revolution, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers and the National Book Award-winning American Sphinx, featured in the film "The American Revolution," directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, on PBS. The book offers a fascinating look at how America's founders—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Adams—dealt with the issue of slavery as they drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. A bold and important work that ultimately addresses the two major failures of America's founding: the failure to end slavery and the failure to avoid the displacement of indigenous peoples. On the eve of the American Revolution, half a million enslaved African Americans were an integral part of the North American population. The slave trade was thriving, even as the Thirteen Colonies armed themselves to defend themselves against the idea of ​​being ruled without their consent. This paradox has led to what one of our most prominent historians, Joseph J. Ellis, “The Great Contradiction”: How could a government founded on the principles of the Declaration of Independence entrench slavery? How could it allow a massive wave of westward migration by settlers who understood the phrase “the pursuit of happiness” as the pursuit of indigenous lands? With elegant narrative style and a deft use of irony and irony, Ellis tackles questions at America's complex roots—questions that turned even the brightest minds of the Revolutionary generation into intellectual manipulators. Ellis discusses the earliest debates over slavery and the treatment of indigenous peoples, from the Constitutional Convention to the New York Treaty, revealing the thinking and justifications behind Jay, Hamilton, and Madison's revisions of the Articles of Confederation, and highlighting the pivotal role of figures such as Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet and Creek leader Alexander MacGilvray. Ellis writes with candor and skill, his voice resounding above contemporary historians and fanatics eager to turn the Founders into spoils in the ongoing culture wars. Instead, Ellis tells a story rooted in the coexistence of greatness and failure, brilliance and blindness, grace and sin.