Tom Cotton Introduces Bill to Prohibit Federal Funding for Schools Using ‘1619 Project’ Curriculum

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My feeling about this is we don’t need yet ANOTHER distorted version of history as it pertains to the institution of slavery. We already have had a much-too-rosy perspective of the colonists and the Founding Fathers hoisted on children in the 1950’s and before. Now we have a far-left version that gets many details wrong (intentionally) to focus on the evils of America from its earliest days. The truth of the matter lies somewhere in-between both extremist accounts, and that’s the way the story should be told without eschewing the good, the bad, or the ugly.
 
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slavery adherents were pure capitalists (with the implication that slavery is a consequence of capitalism)
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Not sure it’s worth talking about “pure or unpure” capitalists (whatever that means), but it’s certainly true that early colonialism and therefore slavery were essential for the development of capitalism. Europe was undergoing a bullion shortage in the 1400s and without importing lots of gold from the New World and Africa it might never have been possible to develop stable currencies based off of precious metals.

I think whether or not overall this is bad probably depends on the level of education that it’s being taught in. Children in secondary school (middle school/high school) should be taught to engage with a number of perspectives and argue against and in favour of them, and be taught to engage with a wide range of historiography. Still, it would probably be better to get these arguments from a real historian rather than a NYT project.

For what it’s worth I don’t think the 1619 project is correct. The American revolution definitely had a huge influence on the French and therefore the Haitian revolution, which in turn had a big impact on the abolition of slavery. Slavery was only abolished in the British Empire about 30 years before the American civil war too, so it seems difficult to imagine that the continued existence of a British colony in North America would have led to the end of slavery much quicker.
 
" Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a newspaper interview that the Founding Fathers of the United States viewed slavery as “the necessary evil upon which the union was built,” as he sought to promote a bill he has introduced that would defund schools that teach The New York Times ’ controversial 1619 Project, about American slavery history."

www.forbes.com

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton Says Slavery Was A ‘Necessary Evil,’ Cites Founding Fathers

Cotton, a Republican, is running for reelection without a Democratic challenger.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com

You realize, of course, that Tom Cotton is a direct descendant of slave owners?
 
I think Cotton is spot on in his assessment. Accepting slavery for the sake of the Union, take measures to limit and contain it. Compared to the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution was much tougher on slavery.

In any case, you cannot really control who you descended from. Using that as an argument allows things to get ugly real fast.
 
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