A great question came up in HST 346 (American Revolution) this week: Why weren't the Founding Fathers more laudable? Many of them owned slaves, none of them thought women should have the vote, and most of them opposed much enlarging the franchise to include more white males. A good number of them made a lot of money from the Revolution by speculating in land or currencies.
Students made two excellent point in response to this concern. First, the Founding Fathers simply didn't share our assumptions about human equality--Jefferson's stirring words in the Declaration of Independence's preamble notwithstanding. So we can't much fault them for not believing what we do. Second, their movement toward equality, the establishment of a republic, provided the framework for progress in all of the above areas--well, except that people still make a lot of money from speculating in land and other commodities.
I'd add a third point. I think that we have become so idealistic that we have unrealistic expectations for all of our public figures, past and present. We greatly underestimate how powerful self-interest and evil are in the world, not to mention sheer inertia, our reflexive conservatism with it comes to change. It is much easier to accomplish technological or scientific advances than moral or social or political ones. Even the best of us are flawed, both in our characters and in our knowledge. The Founders knew that. We have forgotten it and are therefore often surprised by human frailties.
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