Slavery is used as a reason to condemn the founders, a black mark on their stellar lives. It has been used for decades to denounce the founders and prove we should not glorify them or their views. The secular historians "rewrote" history to promote a liberal ideology. Today we hear of lawsuits and groups wanting to "outlaw" Independence Day and Memorial Day. Students are taught to ignore the founders and their outdated, cruel, hypocritical thinking.
The sad truth is both Jefferson and Washington both had slaves. Even Benjamin Franklin sold and traded slaves.
Yet Jefferson wrote while drafting the Declaration of Independence "He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." Unfortunately, this paragraph was dropped from the final draft because it was offensive to the delegates from Georgia and South Carolina.
Washington wrote in 1786 ""there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of [slavery]."
Benjamin Rush and Benjamin Franklin (both signers of the Declaration of Independence) founded the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery in 1774. Rush went on to head a national abolition movement.
Alexander Hamilton said, their [blacks] natural faculties are probably as good as ours. . . . The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks, makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience."
John Adams said, "Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States . . . . I have, through my whole life, held the practice of slavery in . . . abhorrence."
James Madison in his speech before the Constitutional Convention said, "We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man."
In fact Pennsylvania, with Ben Franklin as it's Governor, passed a law in 1774 to end slavery. King George vetoed it.
