America's Flawed Founding

This past April, an undated photo of two slave children was found accompanied by a document detailing the sale of “John” for $1,150 in 1854. The two forlorn children in the photo who stare back at us are the ghosts of an ugly national past.

This past April, an undated photo of two slave children was found at a moving sale in Charlotte, North Carolina, accompanied by a document detailing the sale of  “John” for $1,150 in 1854.  (John is presumably one of the children).  The two forlorn children in this photo who stare back at us are the ghosts of an ugly national past.

There will be those on the left who will predictably use the upcoming Independence Day holiday to highlight the hypocrisy of the Declaration we celebrate.  They will mock the document of a slave state that had the brazenness to announce to the world our vision of a better nation founded in respect for such basic human rights as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But these cynics will miss the point.

The American experiment had to start somewhere.  And without that incredibly courageous initial push of the flywheel, the great events that followed which would lead to the emancipation of hundreds of millions from slavery and tyranny, not just on this continent but throughout the world where our American presence has been felt, would never have happened. The American Revolution which broke our allegiance to the British Crown was unique in that it was led by learned, wealthy men who would have the most to lose should their treason be squashed.  Ours was not a revolution aimed at toppling class structures or wealth redistribution, but rather to advance the idea that a citizenry does not owe its servitude to a crown but rather to ourselves and each other.

As the haunting photograph of the two slave children reminds us, our revolution of 1776 was incomplete and fatally flawed in that “all men are created equal” only applied to Caucasians.  For the three million blacks living in slavery in the United States before Appomattox, it was “all midnight forever.”  Yet this does not diminish our American exceptionalism as hundreds of millions live in liberty today as direct beneficiaries of the ideals that our Founding Fathers so confidently announced to the world as truths. Still, we are obligated to remember those two slave children who have long since passed into history.  This is not out of any sense of contrition for the sins committed long ago by those unrelated to any of us alive today save an occasional family tree. And as any visitor to Gettysburg will attest, this country already paid a steep price to wash away our original sin.  We should instead view their image as a stark reminder of what can happen to our nation should we ever abandon those values that made us the great country we are today.

Undated photo of slave children found at moving sale in North Carolina

Letter documenting sale of slave named "John"