Welcome to Revolutionary Talk on WREV 760AM. It is October 8, 1775, and General Washington has called a council of war in Cambridge to decide the future of the Continental Army. The debate over numbers and enlistments has turned into a debate over principle. Today, the army ruled that no Black man, free or enslaved, may serve in the ranks.

The decision is said to preserve order among the colonies, but it has drawn a line that liberty itself may not cross. From Norwich to Philadelphia, men are asking what freedom truly means if it does not belong to everyone.

Tonight, we will look inside that council chamber, where maps and muskets shared the table with fear and compromise. We will hear from those who defend the choice and from those who call it what it is, a betrayal of the very cause we claim to serve.