Henry Laurens rose from a Charleston Huguenot merchant family to become president of the Continental Congress, yet his fortune was built on Austin and Laurens, the largest slave-trading house in North America. This episode examines how a cautious colonial conservative became a leading face of the American rebellion and one of history’s most contradictory founders.

We follow Laurens through his failed diplomatic mission to the Dutch Republic, when a bag of secret papers he tossed overboard failed to sink and gave Britain a reason to declare war on the Dutch. Imprisoned in the Tower of London for treason, he was eventually exchanged for General Cornwallis with help from his old mentor Richard Oswald, a British slave-trading magnate. We also explore his refusal to heed his son John’s pleas to free enslaved people, and his unusual final wish to be cremated.

• How the Laurens firm handled the sale of more than 8,000 enslaved Africans in the 1750s
• Why Laurens initially favored reconciliation with Britain before turning to the rebellion
• The botched disposal of a draft U.S.-Dutch treaty that helped trigger the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War
• His recurring ties to Richard Oswald, from London apprenticeship to the Treaty of Paris
• His fear of being buried alive, his cremation, and Mepkin’s later life as a Trappist abbey