America 250-The End of Revolution Was the Start of Abolition

When did the movement to abolish slavery begin in earnest?

For over 20 plus years, I’ve studied the first 50 years of American history. I chose it as a writing topic because, at the time, history was a uniting force among Americans. When I was the White House webmaster in 2001 and part of the team running Whitehouse.gov, I discovered that the most popular section of the White House website was the history section, namely the biographies of the presidents. In this way history was not partisan but appealed to all political parties.

However, over the past 10 years, American history has been attacked by leftist, even communist, voices. Americans deserve better. Americans are hungry to feel proud of their country again, to celebrate America's principles and heroic events while putting controversies and failures into a healthy perspective so that every American can look with hope to their own future and the nation’s future.

Earlier this week, I watched the The American Miracle’s music video performed by Nicole C Mullen, a well-known and talented contemporary Christian artist. She sang an amazing song called Freedom, which is featured in the movie. I cried because my entire 20-year writing career was encapsulated in 4 minutes of beautiful singing about freedom juxtaposed against reenactments of those who fought for liberty. This video captures the spirit of liberty and the cry for all men and women to be free. It captures the belief that we are all created in the image of God and have equal value because our natural rights come from God.

In addition to revealing the movie’s main plot -- the numerous miracles from the American Revolution -- the film and this video show the participation and positive contributions of black Americans during the founding of our country. This fact is often unknown. For example in 2023, California's Concord High School canceled their mascot, the Revolutionary War’s minutemen, because they didn't think minority students could relate to the minutemen. As I have shared in other videos, 5,000 black men fought in the American Revolution and one of them was a minute man named Peter Salem, who is portrayed in The American Miracle movie. The logic on the left is often lacking.

The more I’ve studied American history, the more I have come to realize that the end of the American Revolution was the beginning of the movement to abolish slavery. In this video I explain when and where slavery was first abolished in the United States.

Although the first pamphlet calling for the abolition of slavery was published in 1700 in Massachusetts, public policy didn’t change until the Declaration of Independence motivated slaves in Boston to sue for their freedom. They won in 1783, when a Massachusetts judge declared that slavery was unconstitutional in Massachusetts based on the Massachusetts constitution, which was written by John Adams. When Vermont came into the USA as the 14th state, it did so as a free state with its Constitution outlawing slavery. This was the start of a very slow domino effect with different Northern and Western states abolishing slavery in their states until the Civil War, which ended with slavery abolished in all of the states.

The fact that abolition began at the end of the American Revolution is important because it shows the start of the American belief that all men and women have rights that come from God, not government. Independence was not complete because of the revolution. It was just getting started.

Freedom was a seed that was planted in the United States in 1776. That seed grew despite thorns, extreme heat, extreme frost, overwhelming floods, and desert-like droughts. That seed has matured and blossomed over the past 250 years. That is a reason to celebrate. My hope is that the spirit of 1776 will be alive in 2026 as America turns 250 years old. Movies like The American Miracle have the potential to heal and unite the nation, which is something to sing about.