How should we remember George Washington’s entanglement in slavery? Americans have argued over that question for nearly 250 years. More than any other Founding Father, Washington’s ties to slavery have vexed us. He enslaved more people than any of his fellow founders, yet he was the only one of them to emancipate the people he held in bondage. Since his death, Americans have grappled with this contradiction, shaping and reshaping our collective memory of Washington and slavery—along with our understanding of the nation. In  Thy Will Be Done , historian John Garrison Marks tells the story of Americans’ long, fraught struggle to come to terms with Washington’s legacy of slavery. He traces how politicians, abolitionists, educators, activists, Washington’s former slaves and their descendants, and others have remembered, forgotten, and manipulated slavery’s place in Washington’s story, and how they have wielded versions of that story in the political and cultural fights of their time. Marks shows how generational struggles over our collective memory of Washington and slavery have always been part of a bigger conversation about defining the United States and its people. As debates about the founders’ participation in the system of slavery continue to roil public discourse, Marks shows with new clarity that Americans have never collectively reconciled Washington’s conflicted legacy. By truly grappling with Washington’s role as enslaver and emancipator we may come to better understand the nation and ourselves. “Marks paints a nuanced, three-dimensional picture of George Washington. He helps us understand him as both revolutionary and enslaver, as president and as captor, as a man who was troubled by the institution even as he continued to participate in it. Thy Will Be Done is an exceptional book. This is how George Washington should be taught. This is how history should be done.”—Clint Smith, New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America “John Garrison Marks has written an unsparing audit of our inherited memory—proving that the real revolution is in who gets to tell the story. He reveals how the nation’s first act of self-deception became its longest-running tradition.”—Alexis Coe, American history columnist at the New York times and New York Times bestselling author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington “Impressive in chronological scope, range of sources, and methodology. Few historians work as skillfully as John Garrison Marks does in his sensitive, primarily archival reconstruction of the early history of the people freed through Washington’s will and the primarily oral history of contemporary interpretation of enslavement at Mount Vernon.”—Andrew M. Schocket, author of Fighting over the Founders: How We Remember the American Revolution “An engaging and nuanced chronicle of the legacy of George Washington and slavery over the past 250 years. Given increasingly polarized debates about how to interpret our country’s history, Thy Will Be Done is a vital contribution to understanding our national history and memory.”—Cassandra A. Good, author of First Family: George Washington’s Heirs and the Making of America The ongoing struggle over Washington’s legacy as enslaver and emancipator John Garrison Marks is a historian, writer, and author of  Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery .