Oil on canvas; 12' x 18' (144 in × 216 in). U.S. Capitol Rotunda, Washington, DC.
The first of four paintings completed by Trumbull following a commission by Congress. Trumbull exhibited it to large crowds in Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore before it went to Washington. It was his greatest popular success.
By attacking slavery more fiercely than ever before, Revolutionary Americans freed tens of thousands of slaves. But the Revolution’s libertarian and egalitarian message had perverse consequences. It forced those Southerners who chose to retain slavery to fall back on the alleged racial deficiencies of blacks as a justification for an institution that hitherto they had taken for granted and had never before needed to justify. The anti-slavery movement that arose out of the Revolution inadvertently produced racism in America.