The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding
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Background
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.
Historical Context: Early American Abolitionism and Anthony Benezet
Joseph J. Ellis’s The Great Contradiction examines the Founders’ inaction on slavery against the historical context of a robust, pre-revolutionary abolitionist movement. A central figure in this movement was the Quaker educator and activist Anthony Benezet, whose work demonstrated that powerful moral and intellectual arguments against slavery were already circulating before the Revolution.
Benezet, a French-born immigrant, dedicated his life to the antislavery cause in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He published influential pamphlets that detailed the horrors of the Middle Passage and argued for the full humanity of Africans. His work was instrumental in ending what Ellis calls the “Great Silence” on slavery. As Ellis notes, “More than any other American writer, Benezet ended the Great Silence for an American audience” (10), making it increasingly difficult for his contemporaries to ignore the institution’s brutality. In 1775, Benezet helped establish the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage in Philadelphia. His tireless efforts, alongside other Quaker and evangelical leaders, created an organized opposition that directly challenged slavery at a time when revolutionary ideals of liberty were gaining prominence. However, the existence of organized antislavery thought didn’t mean that abolition or racial equality had broad support among white Americans. Ellis emphasizes that even many white Americans who contemplated emancipation couldn’t envision a post-emancipation society based on racial equality. Benezet’s activism therefore demonstrates that the Founders encountered contemporary moral arguments against slavery even as deeply entrenched racial assumptions, political interests, and concerns about the stability of the new republic limited their willingness to act on them.
Historical Context: Alexander McGillivray and the Treaty of New York
The second tragedy explored in The Great Contradiction is the Founders’ failure to establish what George Washington envisioned as a just policy for Indigenous peoples, a failure epitomized by their dealings with the Creek Nation and its leader Alexander McGillivray. Understanding McGillivray’s diplomatic skill and the subsequent failure to enforce the Treaty of New York (1790) reveals the deep conflict between the new republic’s ideals and its expansionist ambitions.
McGillivray was a prominent biracial (Scottish Creek) leader who skillfully centralized Creek power and navigated complex alliances with Spain and the United States to protect his nation’s sovereignty. Ellis describes him as “the Talleyrand of the southern frontier” (147), a formidable diplomat who forced the Washington administration to formally negotiate with Creek leaders over their territorial claims. The resulting Treaty of New York was an effort by Secretary of War Henry Knox and President Washington to create a new federal Indigenous policy that recognized and promised protection for Creek territory while also promoting the assimilation of Creek people into Euro-American agricultural practices. The treaty confirmed Creek rights to lands within its defined boundaries, but the federal government was unable to prevent American settlers from encroaching on those protected lands (“George Washington and Native American Policy.” George Washington’s Mount Vernon). However, the federal government proved unable to enforce its terms against the relentless pressure of white expansion. Washington himself lamented that “scarcely anything short of a Chinese wall will restrain the Land jobbers and the encroachment of settlers upon the Indian Country” (166). This failure illustrates a core argument of Ellis’s book: Washington and Knox’s efforts to protect Creek territory could not overcome settler expansion and the limited enforcement capacity of the early federal government. Ellis therefore presents the tragedy of Indigenous removal as an almost inevitable result of American expansion.
Cultural Context: The America250 Semiquincentennial
Ellis’s The Great Contradiction was published in 2025 as the United States approached its 250th anniversary in 2026. This commemoration, known as “America250” or the semiquincentennial, provides a broader cultural context for renewed discussion of the nation’s founding and its legacy.
The America250 initiative encouraged Americans to reflect on the nation’s past, honor the contributions of Americans, and consider its future. Other organizations preparing for the semiquincentennial emphasized critical engagement with the nation’s history alongside commemoration. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, for example, argued that the anniversary should involve both celebrating national achievements and a “reckoning with mistakes and failures” as part of a more comprehensive account of the American past (“Reckon, Celebrate, and Imagine.” American Academy of Arts and Sciences). The Great Contradiction engages with similar questions about how the American founding should be interpreted. In his Foreword, Ellis asks whether the Founders’ failures constitute a “Greek tragedy, meaning inevitable,” or a “Shakespearean tragedy, meaning avoidable, the product of inadequate leadership rooted in moral blindness” (xi). He also rejects polarized interpretations that treat the Founders as either “demigods” or “devils,” instead examining their achievements alongside the failures to end slavery and prevent Indigenous removal. Published in the period leading up to the semiquincentennial, the book therefore contributes to a wider contemporary discussion about how the US should understand the achievements and unresolved contradictions of its founding.
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