By freeing his slaves, Washington accomplished something more glorious than any battlefield victory as a general or legislative act as a president. He did what no other founding father dared to do, although all proclaimed a theoretical revulsion at slavery. He brought the American experience that much closer to the ideals of the American Revolution and brought his own behavior in line with his troubled conscience. On slave plantations, the death of a master usually unleashed a mood of terror as slaves contemplated being sold to other masters or possibly severed from their families. Now
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