Ken Burns

There are about 20% of the population of two and a half to three million people included in the colonies, excluding native peoples, are enslaved and free black people, and they've got decisions to make.

Many, we think 20,000 fought, 15,000 for the British, who had cynically promised freedom for those slaves of rebelling

people, not of slaves of loyalists.

They had to remain slaves.

The man who issued this proclamation, Dunmore himself, owned other human beings and didn't think that that was inconsistent.

And many black Americans flooded there and had a taste of freedom for the first time and fought alongside British regiments.

The remaining 5,000 were patriots who fought

No, except in Rhode Island and a few other northern states, particularly Rhode Island, in which those black regiments that were made up of both free and enslaved were promised their freedom, but it was also indicated that Rhode Island would compensate the owners for the loss of their

All the time.

It's going on.

Abigail Adams, during the revolution, Abigail Adams is saying...

We have this phrase that comes down to us and we leave it.

Remember the ladies, it sounds dainty and we leave it alone.

But she says all husbands would be tyrants if they want to.

And then goes on to say that if we don't get some sort of representation, we're likely to foment a rebellion.

And so there are people who are already patently anti-slavery speaking about this at the time.

And by the time the Constitutional Convention is over and our government is starting, Benjamin Franklin himself, who had owned human beings in his own household, a handful of people, is submitting to Congress a bill that goes, of course, nowhere.

to end slavery in the United States.

But there are people arguing for the rights of Native Americans.

There are people arguing for women's rights.