CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – The Presidents we honor today are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Thomas Jefferson should be honored too, as the primary author of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Two of the three were slavers. Washington inherited most of his slaves from his wife’s family – more than 300. Jefferson, a gentleman planter, owned 600. These are still great men who should not be besmirched by our modern revisionism. If everyone in society told you, from birth to grave, that blacks were subhuman – you would take it as dogma. The rare people in white society, the radicals, were those who saw slaves as fully human.
Even those whose ancestors were in bondage have much to be thankful for from our Founding Fathers. After the American Revolution, George Washington could have been king of the United States. Instead he staunchly refused anything that looked like a monarchy. He refused to live in the first executive mansion in New York because it seemed too much like a castle. He lived in a rented room as President instead. That the descendants of slaves now serve in thousands of elected positions across the nation is because of George Washington. He believed that common American people were capable of choosing their own leaders and governing themselves. Without Washington we would have a king and a court.
Thomas Jefferson showed the world the power of words. The rest of the world had little interest in the fates of Bristish colonies around the world until our Declaration with the radical idea that rights came from God, not a king. Other British colonies, Canada, Barbados, India, South Africa had no Jeffersons, and would wait decades or centuries for their independence.
Abraham Lincoln is the most exceptional of our presidents. As a frontiersman, and as someone who came of age during the growing abolitionist movement, Lincoln almost certainly saw blacks a fully human. He spoke of two passing events from his early life that probably shaped his thinking. Lincoln believed that his father, a poor farmer in Kentucky, took part in killing a neighboring black farmer’s mule. Lincoln also talked about working on the Mississippi River, and seeing a shipment of slaves bound for New Orleans. He could not convince himself that they were cattle or commodities. Lincoln, before the 13th Amendment that would end slavery, invited blacks to the White House, where they were allowed to enter through the front door and where the President shook their hands.
None of our founding fathers were perfect men. Who is? And the country they created for us also has flaws. But remember, what they promised us was “a more perfect union.”
Happy Presidents Day.
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