In his lecture Uncle Sam’s Slaves: Enslaved Military Servants and the United States Army, 1776-1876, Yoav Hamdani presented insights from his ongoing research project. His work investigates the overlooked phenomenon of slavery within the ranks of the U.S. Army, revealing how the federal government sanctioned and subsidized military servitude. Hamdani demonstrated how enslaved servants became integral to the early national army, providing critical labor as the military expanded and protected an emerging empire. Using a combination of quantitative and digital methods, including a database of nearly 15,000 pay vouchers, he illustrated the scope of military slavery and proposed innovative approaches to uncovering the lived experiences of enslaved individuals. Situating the U.S. Army within the broader context of the “slaveholding republic,” his lecture underscored the army’s complicity in sustaining slavery as a national institution.