M. The S. W. Media.

I'm going to be talking with the author of Somerset, Dr. Philip Goodrich.

I hope you enjoy it.

Hey, everybody. Welcome. I'm happy today to be joined by a historian and author, Dr.

Philip Goodrich. Dr. Philip Goodrich, how are you today, sir?

I'm doing just fine. Thanks, are you?

I'm great. I'm great. Thank you. I'm really excited to have you because you had a book

called Somerset that is now an award-winning audio original. Could you tell me what Somerset

is about and how you stumbled upon the story? Somerset really relates the background, Benjamin

Franklin and why Benjamin Franklin would have been motivated in the first place to want

to pursue separation of the American colonies from the British Empire after getting not

a warm welcome from either Parliament or the crown on this endeavor. He ultimately reached

a point where he realized that he was going to have to involve all 13 colonies in this

effort. And the only way that he was going to get the Southern colonies involved in this

was if he could direct a reason for them to believe that slavery was going to be abolished

in the British Empire. And it was then that he hit upon this effort by Lord Mansfield and

Grandville Sharp to identify a case that would allow for the manumission of a single African-American

slave. And that case was Somerset versus Stewart. And that was indicated by the British version

of the Supreme Court in June of 1772. I stumbled into this story completely in one of these

anthologies. You pick up at the Barnes and Noble Closeout desk on little stories of the American

Revolution or stories you never heard of the American Revolution or whatever. And they were

alluding to this case of Somerset versus Stewart as a possible causation of the American Revolution.

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