Who was the coolest Founding Father?

@gertiestn You made me throw up, a little.

@elimanningface Owning slaves was common among early US presidents. Of the first twelve, only John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams, never owned slaves.

@MrsPavlov yeah...the 'everyone else was doing it so it's okay' defense might be fine in your book but it isn't in mine.

@elimanningface It isn't fine my book; I simply said it was common.

@elimanningface Thanks for mentioning this. I know not everyone thinks about this stuff, but I can promise you weren't alone in feeling some kind of way about this list.

@elimanningface "The past is another country. They do things differently there."

@elimanningface You speak as if everyone back then knew better but did it anyway. They didn't. At that time it was a commonly held belief that "the negro," as they were called, were inferior intellectually to whites and that they were inherently lazy and lacked ambition and purpose. Slavery was given as a justification for providing that purpose and was even championed by some as improving the lives of those enslaved.

Men like John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson came to realize that this was a faulty assumption and they worked to try and end slavery as an institution in the United States.

Ben Franklin became a vocal abolitionist later in life. Adams always opposed slavery and never owned a slave. Jefferson included a paragraph in the first draft of the U.S. Declaration of Independence that a) condemned King George III (the reigning British monarch at the time) for bringing slaves to the colonies and b) would have likely ended slavery as an institution in the United States from the outset.

Link: Jefferson's draft of Declaration The paragraph that begins "he has waged cruel war..."

Unfortunately, that paragraph was removed by pro slavery delegates before the final draft was ratified.

This link reveals through their own letters and papers the clearly abolitionist opinions of the Founding Fathers. While many did practice it, remember that they were brought up with the institution, surrounded by it each day and were taught its many "virtues" by family, friends, teachers and peers. Each, however, learned in their own time that slavery was wrong and began to oppose it in their own way.

We tend to act like slavery is a uniquely American experience but it is not. Slavery has existed for many centuries, long before the United States or even Great Britain ever existed. Empires were sometimes measured, to some degree, by how many nations they conquered and how many slaves they held. Slavery was a respected institution throughout the world for several millennia and has been practiced by every race and nearly every religion known to man.

African natives also practiced it. Tribes would frequently wage war against neighboring African tribes. The conquerors would take the conquered as slaves (if they didn't kill them outright). Later they began selling their captives to buyers from the West. Yes, you read that right. Africans (not white, but black Africans) kept and/or sold other Africans into slavery. (This flies in the face of current dogma that would have us believe that only white men can be slave owners.)

When Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and the other Founding Fathers opposed slavery they weren't fighting a recent development. They were fighting against the implacable tide of a revered global institution that was thousands of years old and viewed as a sacred right by the millions around the world who practiced it way back in 18th and 19th centuries.

@TheTexasTwister tl;dr.

Thank you, though! The effort you put into writing it has not gone unnoticed.

@elimanningface XD

Okay, okay, here is the short version.

@SilentMaxx FTFY