Urgent and controversial, The Patriots' Dilemma confronts longstanding interpretations of US history by challenging the heroic view that America's creation myth hinged on a fundamental conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery interests. The founders were hypocrites, where men like Thomas Jefferson wrote profoundly about liberty and equality and yet refused to grant these ideals to the hundreds of people who were his chattel. As Timothy Messer-Kruse argues, their real motivations have been misinterpreted for more than 200 years. The Framers were primarily concerned with the protection and betterment of the white community - not the liberation of enslaved Black people. The great conundrum was that slavery had to end because it created what they saw as a dangerous, disloyal and dependent population, but it couldn't be abolished without endangering their (white) republic. Ultimately, efforts to ethnically cleanse the emerging US polity of Black people failed due to the resistance of the Black community itself. For all these reasons, clear and accurate historical understanding requires that the antislavery movement be understood not only for the evils it perceived and fought but for the racialized frameworks, motivations, and aspirations underlying the crusade

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