West Defence of Founding Fathers

The Founding Fathers were put on constant criticism over the past several decades by textbooks and scholars which claimed that Founders were hypocrites in case of slavery. There are also scholars which were respect the founding as great and notable. One of them was born in 1945 professor of politics - Thomas G. West. He wrote very controversial book “Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class and Justice in the Origins of America“ where he defended Founding Fathers from accusation of sexism, racism and prejudice against poor.   In the first chapter of his book, he was trying to prove that opinions about Founders are falsehood. By using writings and legislative efforts author described views of the Founders. For him they had some defect of course but they had good idea and they were doing the best they could to made it happen. As he claimed himself he tried to “recover the truth about the founding, to discern its strengths, to acknowledge its defects, and to pass that knowledge along to future generations”. (West, 179). He tried to get to the maids of Founders and understood what they really mind by doing what they do. In my opinion he was very successful in convincing that Founders honestly and truly believed in idea of universal human rights and in their commitment to democracy and opposition to slavery.
      For the beginning he showed three major charges that scholars put against the Founders with examples and later he tried to overthrow them. First   two charges which was   that: “Founders never really believed that all men are created equal” and “the Founders believed that all men are created equal, but they did not know what that meant” (West 1) where very easy to obey for West. He very easily show that Founders believed that “all men are created equal even the black ones because everyone has natural human rights. He provided that historian as Samuel Eliot Morison or Gordon Wood were wrong saying that Founders thought that only white man are equal. To support...