Actually, slavery was a bitter dividing line among the founders of the USA. It is intellectually lazy to ascribe slavery to all of the founders of the USA. It also insults those who were vocally and politically against slavery, from the very earliest days. You can find many examples with any effort at all.
Like, doesn't the sheer magnitude of the inhumanity that actually existed in these times kind of overshadow whatever armchair-enlightment some guys voiced?
How could you be aware of what they did in those times even the slightest bit, and yet still be concerned that one might "insult" guys who have been dead 200 years? How can that even make sense?
(None of us are fully independent but gain and suffer inertia from history and society at large.)
Still, we can learn from Ancient Greece, American Founders, as well as folks today.
The point is that it happened. It was determined and sustained by countless totally mechanical and impersonal conditions and tendencies. Just as the operative ideologies in play in the minds of all our fave founding fathers can only be viewed from our purview as some composite of factors, not as some collection of good guys and bad guys. To point out that maybe they should not be a moral compass to us today is not scapegoating them in some grand moral court of human existence! Its just making a point, and urging historical context as a tool to maybe be a little more rational about our world today. There is nothing at stake but that.
Feel free to downvote because I’m not gonna accept your revisionist history.
$googlesearch "how many signers of the US Constitution were slave owners?"
25 Of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention, about 25 owned slaves. Many of the framers harbored moral qualms about slavery.
Historical Context: The Constitution and Slavery
Was it good? No, it was a bad idea. But that's something we say comfortably from our homes in a large, powerful country. In 1787... this was a remote and weak place. If you wanted the slave-dependent colonies to join, you had to either buy their slaves from them or allow it to continue. And there wasn't enough money to buy them.
