"Now this point has been made ten thousand times before, so there’s no reason to belabor it. But basically, all the southern leaders of the American Revolution were slaveholders. And they weren’t conservative fence-sitters either. I mean, we’re talking about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason, James Madison. These were the guys who defined American liberty, fought a war to protect American liberty, and then built a new government to preserve American liberty. And they all owned slaves. It’s ridiculous. Now had these guys followed through on the logic of their own argument to its conclusion, that is that all men are created equal, and like, freed their slaves, that is, had George Washington issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the American Revolution would have been the greatest historical event in world history, simultaneously tossing off the archaic bonds of monarchy and the evil chains of slavery. But they simply couldn’t see a way out of the economic implications of emancipation. So the legacy of the Revolution remains forever tarnished."
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Mike Duncan, Revolutions, ep. 2.1 - February 14, 2014
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Southern_United_States
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Southern United States
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