One topic that I have come to find incredibly interesting in the years since the publication of the 1619 Project is just how wrong it is. The gall it takes to revise American history and mangle it into such an unrecognizable state is truly impressive.
When the project first came out, I started researching the actual events of the Founding and its relation to slavery, as well as the events that erased that awful stain on American history. I am quite passionate about the subject, and I wrote multiple pieces about America’s majesty for the Fourth of July.
To my delight, retired Hillsdale College history professor Burt Folsom spoke about that very subject at Young America’s Foundation’s National Conservative Student Conference, which I am covering. I had an experience common to pretty much anyone who listens to a lecture from Folsom: I learned quite a lot!
For example, in one of my Fourth of July pieces I wrote about Pennsylvania’s and Massachusetts’s efforts to abolish slavery in the period of the early Republic, both of which directly cited the greatness of America’s Founding as inspiration.
I thought that these two were the extent of it. But did you know that New York’s 1797 act to abolish slavery took effect on the Fourth of July? And that New York was one of eight states that abolished slavery in the first 15 years of America’s existence? I didn’t.
These states recognized “that the independence of the slave is connected with American independence,” Folsom said. “Freedom is a right.”
The main thesis of his speech was that the greatest times in American history were when black and white people worked together to make the country a better place in the areas that were not living up to its ideals.
One such instance was in the Underground Railroad, where people of both races risked their lives to bring innocents out of the shackles of slavery. Perhaps the most famous person to be involved with the effort was Harriet Tubman, who was both a beneficiary and a benefactor.
Her last stop on the railroad was at the house of a Quaker named Thomas Garrett, who was known to give a pair of shoes to every fugitive slave who passed through. Tubman arrived at Garrett’s stop, received the shoes, and made her way to freedom.
But there was something missing: her family. She missed them so much that she went back the way she came and brought her family members out of slavery, with the exception of her former husband, who took a new wife and refused to leave. After freeing her relatives, she delivered countless others to Garrett’s house.
For Garrett’s part, his efforts were eventually discovered, and he lost everything for the sake of the cause in which he involved himself. When the sheriff said he hoped Garrett would not undermine the institution of slavery again, Garrett replied: “Friend, I haven’t a dollar in the world, but if thee knows a fugitive anywhere on the face the earth who needs a breakfast, send him to me.”
These acts of courage, Folsom said, are integral to improving race relations in America: “It was black and white working together to fulfill the goals of the Declaration of Independence.”
During the speech, I had this thought: How great it is that this is what the conservative movement is teaching its future. It is in stark contrast to the left-wing orthodoxy of critical race theory, which poisons our discourse.
People who understand what Folsom is saying will be the ones to heal our nation’s wounds along racial lines, and we should all wait with bated breath to see what they accomplish.