Oil on canvas; 255.3 × 182.9 cm (100.5 × 72 in). Royal Collection Trust, London, England.
George III is in military uniform — with Lord Jeffrey Amherst and the marquess of Lothian leading a detachment of the 15th Light Dragoons in the background.
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.