THE HISTORY

This film is inspired by Joseph Ellis’s Founding Brothers.

In his Pulitzer Prize winner, Ellis details The Quaker Petitions of 1790 that invoke the First Congress of the United States to abolish slavery. The country almost erupts in civil war. Ellis credits Madison’s unseen hand with strangling the abolition movement.

The essence of style was indirection. Madison was its master, so deft behind the scenes and in unrecorded conversations that his most significant political achievements …remain forever hidden…

— Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers