The Founding Fathers - Slave-holders All!

By Michael The Libertarian

Racists, every last one of 'em. Worthless slave-holders that did nothing to advance the plight of the “negro” in America.

If they ever uttered a word about slavery that didn't fit the narrative (even if it's the narrative of today), nothing they did is worthy of recognition. Right?

That would seem to me to be a fairly extreme position. Not “extreme” in the political sense, necessarily, but one that seems awfully absolute and immovable to me. I frequently remind people that “only the Sith deal in absolutes”.

Obviously, I am not of that opinion. I believe there are some people that are “better” than some of the missteps they might have had, when viewed through our present-day prism.

Moreover, the obvious ignorance of our history bugs the snot out of me.

Recently, some people have been howling at the moon about how anyone that ever owned a slave is not worthy of any positive attention nor should anything else they've done be given any credence. Another fairly absolutist idea.

Let's start with one of my favorites, shall we? President Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson is credited with authoring the Declaration of Independence. I'm sure he had some help with it (I'd bet Adams' hand was in there, somewhere), but he is considered to be its author. Period.

In that document, Jefferson famously wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal ...”. Very specific wording (and I'd have to look, but I believe that he emboldened the word “all” in his manuscript) and chosen for what I believe to be a purpose.

Jefferson was laying groundwork for the end of slavery. As incredible as it may seem, Jefferson was a slave owner who hated slave traders. He was determined to wipe them off the face of the planet. Does anyone doubt that Jefferson was smart enough to know that if you put all slave traders out of business, slavery would end?

There is historical evidence that Jefferson included wording in an early draft of the declaration that denounced slavery and set forth the new nation's official position as being anti-slavery. He had to remove that passage because the Georgia and South Carolina delegations refused to sign the DoI with those words in it. One colony/state (Massachusetts) included Jefferson's words about slavery, thereby ending slavery in their state, immediately.

For their part, the southern states changed the word to “free men”.

Had the passage stayed in the DoI and all the delegations ratified and signed it, it would have necessitated an anti-slavery Article/Section/Clause in the constitution.

But Jefferson wasn't finished yet.

For those that aren't familiar with the so-called “3/5 Compromise”, the southern states refused to sign the constitution until their slaves were counted for purposes of representation in the house.

Jefferson argued the southern delegations could not argue that slaves weren't men on the one hand and then, argue they wanted them counted as men, on the other. He had a hand in crafting the “3/5 Compromise” which was part of the approved and signed constitution, making it the law of the land.

This made every slave “worth” more than half of a free man (or “man” for purposes of law). That was forward thinking for the day and it established yet another “baby step” toward ending slavery.

Any decent lawyer (even back then) could have made a reasonable case that three out of every five slaves was, “a man”. It would stink on ice to be other two and who would know how to assign “man” and “slave” labels, but again, this was another step on the path.

So, where did that path lead us? Well, to a civil war, but also to the 13^th and 14^th Amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

You would have to be a moron and a denier of known history to believe that Jefferson didn't know exactly what he was doing.

So why does he get such a bum reputation?

Another person you may want to consider is Ulysses S. Grant. He owned one slave whom he freed in 1859, long before he led the Union troops which defeated the Confederate States in the Civil War.

Should we negate Grant's contribution to that effort? Should we deny the outcome of the war since the leader of the victorious troops once owned a slave?

I thought not.

- Michael