“All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the USA.
The United States may have been founded on the idea that all men are created equal, but during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, slaveholding was common among the statesmen who served as president. All told, at least 12 chief executives, over a quarter of all American presidents, enslaved people during their lifetimes. Of these, eight held enslaved people while in office.
It is indeed shocking to consider that American presidents and founding fathers, who fought for American independence in the name of freedom, did not believe that black people deserved the same freedom.
The “peculiar institution” loomed large over the first few decades of American presidential history. Not only did enslaved laborers help build the White House, all of the earliest presidents (except for John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams) owned enslaved people. George Washington, the first president of the United States was not left out. In fact, he was a notorious slave owner, which he used to increase his wealth through the Mount Vernon plantation. Thomas Jefferson, despite once calling slavery an “assemblage of horrors”, was a part of this unspeakable evil. Many more presidents would prefer to keep black people in bondage while promoting white superiority.
These are men are praised in the history books as the founding fathers of the United States. Men that are talked about in every conversation in schools, political offices, and just about anyone the history of the United States comes up.
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Sources:
https://millercenter.org/us-presidents-and-slavery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_who_owned_slaves
https://www.history.com/news/how-many-u-s-presidents-owned-slaves
https://www.history.com/news/how-many-u-s-presidents-owned-slaves
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