For me, at least, this excuse, for the founders' course of actions, doesn't wash.
One might as well exonerate the jacobins, Marat and Robespierre, on these grounds.
They knew what they had wrought, especially the early Republican, Jefferson.
AT LEAST ALAN TAYLOR MOSTLY TELLS THE TRUTH FOR A CHANGE ABOUT THE FOUNDING FATHERS :
"...One obvious error, actually in the larger scheme of things an enormous error given his topic, he today accuses Hamilton of having recklessly associated Jefferson with the bloody jacobins of the French Revolution.That is exactly what Jefferson was; Hamilton was hardly reckless, in fact the opposite, to have said so, and it is easy to show that it was quite, and obviously, true.
See Palmer, Struggle, p. 267, and references cited...."
Most Americans deride Jefferson's memory because he kept his slaves and had children with Hemings.
That is not my objection to Jefferson at all. In these things he was somewhat typical.
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