itution is wonderful because you know what will happen later. People living back in 1787 didn't know what would happen later, so as a historian, you need to try to think as they did in order to write about them successfully. History could very easily have happened quite differently than it did. For example, during the Battle of the Monongahela in 1755 during the French and Indian War, General Braddock was killed. George Washington, however, had four bullet holes through his coat, had his hat shot from his head, had two horses shot out from under him and killed, and one horse wounded and he still survived. What would have happened if he had been killed? What would have happened if he had been given a commission in the British army, like he wanted? Perhaps he might have been the one captured at Yorktown instead of Cornwallis. What would have happened in 1783 if Madison had left Congress and fell off his horse and drowned in the Delware River? As a historian, you have to remind yourself not to write from the perspective of the present. In keeping with his explanation that the founders were real men that were flawed, Professor Kaminski explained that both Madison and Thomas Jefferson, although they opposed slavery, both believed that blacks were inferior to whites. They supported a three part system for eliminating slavery. First, they wanted gradual and compensated emancipation. Secondly, they wanted colonization. Madison and Jefferson believed that blacks would never forgive whites for what they did, so it would be better to send blacks back to Africa or create black colonies in the West Indies. Most of the African Americans in slavery at the time had been born in America and would have never seen Africa. So to people today, sending African Americans back to Africa and dropping them off to start a colony would be immoral, inhumane, and wrong. Jefferson and Madison, however, knew that whites would continue to expand west, and thought that blacks would be better off living free, but living separately from whites. The third part of their strategy would be to replace the slave labor with immigrant labor, such as Protestant Germans. A good historian will include information like this in a biography of Madison or Jefferson because to hide the flaws of these men would be to create an inaccurate historical picture of their lives and character. I also learned something interesting about George Washington from Professor Kaminski's lecture. George Washington was the only founding father to free all his slaves. He freed some of them while he was alive and freed the rest of them in his will. However, he couldn't actually free all his slaves because his slaves and his wife Martha's slaves had intermarried. So in his will, Washington (who believed he would die before Martha) declared that after she died, all his slaves would be freed. The slaves knew about this and hence, their freedom depended on Martha's death. Professor Kaminski said that "she knew it too" -- that the slaves were eagerly looking forward to her death. So Martha Washington freed all the slaves in 1801 (while she was still alive). There is also a record of her writing "I am working to prepare the children to be independent." In other words, she was having the children learn a trade so that when freed, they would be able to earn a living. Another interesting thing I learned was some additional examples of how the meaning of our language has changed since 1787. For example, when Jefferson writes in the Declaration of Independence, "To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world," he had a different understanding of the word "candid." Today, when someone says "can I be candid with you," they mean, "let me be perfectly clear but really what I want to do is give you my very biased and honest opinion of what I think." In 1776, "candid" meant "a blank slate." So a "candid world" would not have made any predetermined judgment on what to think. Jefferson wanted "the facts" to be presented to a world that had not yet passed judgment -- to an unbiased world. Hence, the wor