John Laurens was born in 1754 into one of the wealthiest slave-trading families in colonial America, yet he spent his short life pushing a radical plan to free and arm enslaved men to fight in the American Revolution. This episode is a narrative biography of a young idealist who fought on two fronts: against the British and against his own social class.

We trace Laurens from his European education in Geneva and London to his role as an aide-de-camp to George Washington, his reckless courage at Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth, and his duel with General Charles Lee. We also look at his diplomatic mission to France, his part at Yorktown, his intense bond with Alexander Hamilton, his estranged wife and daughter, and his death at 27 in a pointless skirmish on the Combahee River.

• Laurens’s proposal to enlist 3,000 Black soldiers in exchange for freedom, and why South Carolina rejected it three times
• His wounding while trying to burn the door of the Chew House at the Battle of Germantown
• How a reluctant diplomat secured French naval support and silver that helped enable Yorktown
• The historical debate over the nature of his relationship with Alexander Hamilton
• Why his early death leaves a haunting what-if for the Constitutional Convention