Speaker 1: In one sentence, Thomas Jefferson not only laid the foundation
Speaker 1: stone for a new nation, he also set that new nation,
Speaker 1: the United States of America, on a path we still
Speaker 1: follow today. His affirmation in the Declaration of Independence that
Speaker 1: quote all men are created equal and endowed by their
Speaker 1: Creator with certain unalienable rights, may be the most influential
Speaker 1: words ever written this side of the Bible. The US Constitution,
Speaker 1: ratified a little more than a decade later, was guided
Speaker 1: by those words. Subsequent amendments, including the Fourteenth Amendment passed
Speaker 1: after the Civil War, granting quote equal rights under the
Speaker 1: law seem for all their grandeur to be restatements of
Speaker 1: the equality principle and Jefferson's original declaration. Yet, Jefferson is
Speaker 1: controversial today because he embodies the contradictions of the founders. Indeed,
Speaker 1: progressive scholars say he was the worst of them, the
Speaker 1: most hypocritical, because the very man who insisted that all
Speaker 1: men are created equal not only permitted slavery, but himself
Speaker 1: owned slaves. To Jefferson not see the glaring contradiction between
Speaker 1: his principles and his practices, between the principles and practices
Speaker 1: of the infant American nation. According to Chief Justice Roger Tawny,
Speaker 1: who authored the notorious eighteen fifty seven dread Scott decision
Speaker 1: affirming slavery in the territories, neither Jefferson nor the other
Speaker 1: founders could have seriously meant that all men are created equal.
Speaker 1: They didn't act on the principle, so they couldn't have
Speaker 1: believed it. Modern progressive jurists such as Thurgood Marshall, as
Speaker 1: well as historians like John Hope Franklin, have, again, with
Speaker 1: an irony that should not go unnoticed, adopted the Tawny view.
Speaker 1: In Franklin's words, the founders quote betrayed the ideals to
Speaker 1: which they gave lip service. They wrote, quote eloquently at
Speaker 1: one moment for the brotherhood of man, and in the
Speaker 1: next moment denied it to their black brothers. No defense
Speaker 1: of Jefferson or the American Founding is possible that agrees
Speaker 1: with this assessment. How then, can Jefferson and the Founding
Speaker 1: itself be vindicated against this most serious charge. For the answer,
Speaker 1: let's look again at the declaration and what comes immediately
Speaker 1: after the statement all men are created equal. That governments
Speaker 1: derived their legitimacy from the quote consent of the governed
Speaker 1: end quote. This is the democracy principle, and it is
Speaker 1: no less important, no less foundational, than the equality principle.
Speaker 1: With this in mind, let's turn to the practical choice
Speaker 1: space by the founders. Progressive say they should have outlawed
Speaker 1: slavery in the original Constitution. Yet slavery was legal in
Speaker 1: all the states that sent representatives to Philadelphia in seventeen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. How could these representatives outlaw slavery without the
Speaker 1: consent of the people in their states. Were they expected
Speaker 1: to do so by overriding popular consent. In that case,
Speaker 1: they would be overthrowing democracy itself before it was even
Speaker 1: introduced as the bedrock of the new constitution. Furthermore, as
Speaker 1: everyone in Philadelphia knew at the time, many states would
Speaker 1: not have joined a union that forbad slavery at the outset.
Speaker 1: Perhaps a few would have done so, but no more.
Speaker 1: Had those who opposed slavery held firm on the issue,
Speaker 1: the union would have consisted of a handful of states,
Speaker 1: or it would have remained a utopian idea affirm by
Speaker 1: a group of high minded founders. But they would be
Speaker 1: founders of nothing. As Jefferson himself said about the slavery issue, quote,
Speaker 1: we have the wolf by the ear, and we can
Speaker 1: neither hold him nor safely let him go. It is
Speaker 1: not reasonable, in fact, it is downright obtuse to ask
Speaker 1: of statesmen to do what they manifestly cannot do. It
Speaker 1: is only reasonable to ask them to make the best
Speaker 1: choices available to them, under the circumstances, to hold the wolf,
Speaker 1: in Jefferson's own terms, until he can safely be let go.
Speaker 1: In Abraham Lincoln's view, the American Founders did just that.
Speaker 1: They temporarily allowed slavery in practice while constructing a framework
Speaker 1: based on anti slavery principles and Lincoln's words. The founders
Speaker 1: quote declared the right so that enforcement of it might
Speaker 1: follow as fast as circumstances would permit. Lincoln's interpretation of
Speaker 1: Jefferson and the Founding was echoed by runaway slave and
Speaker 1: brilliant abolitionist leader Frederick Douglas. Slavery, Douglas said, was merely
Speaker 1: the scaffolding for the new Constitution, allowed provisionally by Jefferson
Speaker 1: and the other Founders, but with the clear objective that
Speaker 1: it would be taken down once the edifice no longer
Speaker 1: needed it. Martin Luther King echoed these same sentiments in
Speaker 1: his famous I Have a Dream speech. That Jefferson didn't
Speaker 1: live up to his highest values is not in dispute,
Speaker 1: but to deny his greatness and his indispensable role in
Speaker 1: the creation of the nation is both narrow minded and foolish.
Speaker 1: His declaration undergirded the Civil War and the Civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: and to this day it remains the anchor of our
Speaker 1: rights and our democracy. Lincoln, Douglas, and King all understood
Speaker 1: that Jefferson created the pathway for America to become a
Speaker 1: better country than it was at the start, a country
Speaker 1: in which the glorious idea that all men are created
Speaker 1: equal is closer to reality than anywhere else in the world.
Speaker 1: He