1783 at Rockingham

Black Refugees and the Crisis of American Freedom

A lecture by historian Timothy Messer-Kruse, moderated by Mary Tsaltas-Ottomanelli

When

Saturday, October 24, 2026
2:00 p.m.

Where

Franklin Township Public Library
485 DeMott Lane, Somerset, NJ 08873

Admission

Free and open to the public.
Seating is limited.

Book Sale & Signing
Slavery's Fugitives and the Making of the United States Constitution
Available for purchase and signing after the lecture.

Presented in partnership with Franklin 250 and the Franklin Township Public Library.

The Revolution did not end at Yorktown. In the extraordinary months of 1783, the Confederation Congress met at Nassau Hall in Princeton, the definitive Treaty of Paris was signed, and George Washington kept his final wartime headquarters at Rockingham, the Berrien farm overlooking the Millstone River Valley in Franklin Township. That same treaty carried Article VII, which barred the departing British from "carrying away any Negroes or other Property," and forced the new nation to confront whether Black men, women, and children were persons entitled to liberty or property subject to return. Tens of thousands had already claimed their own freedom by crossing into British lines during the war, and Britain refused to return them. Historian Timothy Messer-Kruse argues that the constitutional crisis that followed became one of the forces that led the founders to abandon the Articles of Confederation and draft a stronger federal Constitution. The conversation begun in the autumn of 1783 is one America has never finished having.