For me, the best way to understand our Founders is to recognize the soaring and sometimes utopian language they often used allows us to also critique their hypocrisies and limitations. We should always be wanting to move forward with the best values and ideas they expressed, but always recognize how far we have had to go to overcome enslavement institutions and the genocide of First Americans they enabled and developed. And in that vein, recognize how far we still have to go at present.
Unlike right wingers at Hillsdale College, or throughout Republican political rhetoric, I don't fear or loathe critiques of Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Adams, Washington, or the like. I do say sometimes, particularly in academia, I see an overstatement of loathing of Jefferson in particular, or an ahistorical attempt to describe the Revolution from England as predominantly motivated by a desire to develop enslavement institutions. With Jefferson, Sally Hemings was the half sister of his dead wife, who Jefferson revered, and while the relationship was inherently coercive, we just don't fully know if that was the case. And Jefferson has not been shown to have indulged his lust with other enslaved women, unlike so, so many others in his position. I have seen academic writings where the historian writes describes Jefferson as a "rapist" of women. I find that so over the top and insulting, as even Annette Gordon-Reed, the Harvard historian most knowledgeable about the Jefferson-Hemings relationship, can tell us.
The second overstatement is wrong for two main reasons: First, England was not even close to abolishing enslavement institutions, and in fact there was more anti-slavery agitation in the northern US colonies than in England. Second, Lord Dunmore's proclamation for freedom for enslaved people was proclaimed from a boat almost five months after he was overthrown by Washington, Henry, Lee, and Jefferson, among others in Virginia. And such an overstatement of the Dunmore proclamation obscures the many northern free Blacks who fought with the rebels against England.
The sad thing for me about the 1619 Project is the bad history summarized above obscures its essential correctness, which is how British racist-justified enslavement theories and practices were largely a departure from previous enslavement institutions, and led to the horrible racism that still permeates much of our society today. The ironic thing is the 1619 Project obscures what I call the 1492 Project, which is the wholesale genocide of First Americans by the Spanish and British, and a bit by the French--and then the US government. For the main thing the US Founders (Massachusetts and Virginia alike) appeared to agree upon was the replacement, removal, and murder of First Americans. If one wanted to make a materialist argument for the Revolution apart from proclamations of liberty and autonomy, it is the anger the colony men had toward England for not letting them settle and remove First Americans in the Ohio Valley.
But let's not get into what Black Marxian historian, Adolph Reed, Jr., calls the "victim's Olympics." Both genocide and enslavement form a predominating basis for US political, economic, and military development, and we cannot simply elide that because it undermines the pretty words that our Founders used. What gets obscured in modern times is how the American Revolution influenced future revolutionaries. It remains a fact that revolutionaries from Bolivar to Ho Chi Minh and even Sub-commander Marcos would quote from parts of the Declaration or were inspired by the example of the largely white colonial rebels against the English.
My overall point is we should celebrate the Fourth tomorrow as we may have done in our youth. We should also give our current youngsters a chance to feel some pride in our nation's ideals. For me, there is a poignancy beneath the celebrations separate and apart from the vulgar and corrupt Trump being our president. I feel a poignancy toward commemoration because tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and James Monroe, who died 192 years ago tomorrow. I remember I first learned this fact when scouring through a book of "facts" of our nation's Presidents, and noted the three men's death dates. My ten year old self said to my Dad, "Did you know this?"--and he, though he taught Middle School History, said he had not known about Monroe.
I don't go in for "numerology" connections in life. I am too much the materialist. However, I do enjoy feeling something mystical when contemplating how numbers can seemingly corralate to historical events. Yes, it is odd to realize Jefferson and Adams, the two men most responsible for the crafting of the Declaration (with Jefferson even more so), died fifty years to the day the Declaration was already being celebrated. However, ever the historian type, I must note the first signatures on the Declaration were on July 2, 1776, and John Adams wrote to his wife that July 2 would go down in History as a day for celebration and fireworks. I admit I never ventured too deeply how the Fourth of July became the day for celebration, though I am sure there is scholarship out there on the topic.
Anyway, I think it is important not to let the right wing and business interests completely hijack tomorrow's commemorations and celebrations. I think there is much to respect in the political philosophies of our Founders and to treat them as philosopher-statesmen. We know the contradictions, hypocrisies, and limitations of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Thoreau, Marx, Gandhi, and Russell, among others, and yet we still respect them (well, in the US discourse, we demonize Marx unfortunately). I continue to maintain there is no good reason to simply dismiss our Founders, either. Our Founders' writings, whether their public statements or what is contained in diaries and letters, continue to resonate, and both inspire and influence, our thinking two hundred to two hundred and fifty years later. That is worth remembering and continuing to hold in our thoughts and hearts.
