In this recovered history from timeline Delta-7, slavery never takes root in the British colonies. A single storm in 1619 sets Reverend Thomas Gatlin on a course that will alter the fate of millions. His fiery moral rebuke—The Edict of the Thistle—spreads from Barbados to Parliament, igniting a movement that leads King James I to outlaw chattel slavery in all English territories.

This episode traces the sweeping consequences of that early decision: no plantation aristocracy, no Civil War, no Jim Crow. Instead, the United States emerges as a flawed but freer republic—one where racial caste never becomes law, and the American Revolution speaks with unbroken moral clarity.

From tobacco fields without chains to Caribbean colonies powered by indentured Europeans, we follow the ripple effects of a world where the Atlantic slave trade is condemned from the beginning.

What if the United States had been founded without its original sin?

This is Not This Time.