Source: Law & Liberty
by Kevin Gutzman
“Popular historian Joseph J. Ellis’s latest book, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding, examines the persistence of slavery in the wake of the American Founding and the American Revolution’s impact on American Indians. Expulsion of the British from the Thirteen Colonies and John Jay’s diplomatic masterstroke yielding the Mississippi River rather than the Appalachian Mountains as America’s western boundary would have effects on blacks, Indians and ultimately the American Union that no one could have foreseen. This is what Ellis considers ‘the tragic side of the American Founding.’ What is new about Ellis’s telling of this tale is that he apportions responsibility differently than has become customary in recent years.” (01/22/26)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/heroes-and-tragedy-at-the-american-founding/