Member-only story
Should We Judge George Washington by Today’s Standards?
After all, it was a different time
It’s commonplace for defenders of America and her forefathers to ask that we not judge our founders by the same moral standards we have today.
I grew up with school curricula that excuse the behavior of the people who shaped America’s systems by talking about how they lived in a different time.
“You have to understand the context of society,” so-called scholars argue.
“Back then, almost everyone had slaves,” they say.
“We know better today,” they explain. “We’ve learned.”
So what if Thomas Jefferson had sex with a former slave a third his age? So what that our first president and his wife Martha owned hundreds of enslaved people, some of whom escaped — since life under George wasn’t exactly wonderful.
James Madison, James Monroe and Andrew Jackson. All slave owners. In fact, most of our first 18 presidents enslaved people. Some even had their slaves beaten.
Northerner James Wilson wrote the 1787 constitutional clause naming each Black person as three-fifths of a human.
Can we confidently say, though, that there were different ethical standards back then?
