Chains

George Washington said to his troops in August of 1776, “Remember, officers and soldiers, that you are free men, fighting for the blessings of liberty […] that slavery will be your portion […] if you do not acquit yourselves like men.” From the early kindling of the revolutionary fires, the idea of freedom for the colonies was bound up to the idea of slavery. The colonists rebelled to fight off the perceived slavery of the British Empire; the irony ist hat, while so doing, they maintained their own self-serving institution of chatel slavery. Though many founding fathers recognized the immorality of the practice of owning other humans, they believed their need to find autonomy from the crown was more pressing. The Continental Congress grappled with addressing slavery in the Declaration of Independence but ultimately decided to table it, seeing the new nation as too fragile to endure the protests from Southern states.

Anderson sets her novel in the early days of the revolution where the colonies are preparing to fight for their freedom from the tyranny of Britain; this allows her to draw a counterintuitive parallel between the colonists and those they enslave: The release from oppressive taxes and land management leads the colonies to revolt, yet Isabel fights to secure the right to be seen as a full human being.