Democratic Rep. Cori Bush from Missouri took to Twitter on Independence Day to denounce and skew the Founders as slaveholders worthy of no admiration.
Bush posted a tweet, stating the authors of the Declaration of Independence were slaveholders and failed to acknowledge the humanity of black individuals. She then uses her historical fallacy to demand reparations for slavery.
Initially, a committee of five members was appointed to write a declaration against British authority, but only three individuals would significantly impact its outcome.
A cohort consisting of John Adams from Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson from Virginia, Robert Livingston from New Jersey, and Roger Sherman from Connecticut were tasked with drafting the Declaration of Independence.
Jefferson, the primary author of the first draft of the document, had his original work undergo edits by Adams and Franklin.
Adams was a stanch abolitionist, calling slavery an evil derived from human nature.
In a letter to abolitionists in 1801, Adams expressed his desire to alleviate the suffering of our fellow human beings (a reference to enslaved black Americans). He was prepared to collaborate with them to the best of his abilities to see their emancipation.
Sherman, like Adams, was in the abolitionist camp, seeing slavery as paradoxical to man being made in the image of God.
Franklin enslaved people early on in his life. Still, he began shifting towards abolitionism by the eve of the American Revolution, later becoming president of a Pennsylvania anti-slavery society. He even ended up petitioning Congress to end the practice.
Finally, Jefferson did own enslaved people, but his overall opinions were negative of the practice. Even attempting to abolish slavery in Virginia while failing gradually, he still called the bondage of humans evil in his Notes on the State of Virginia.
During his term as president, Jefferson banned the importation of slaves in 1807; he also predicted armed conflict would arise if it were not ended.