Attacks Against Our Founders Are a False Witness

Several years ago, I was in Washington, DC, with my friend David Barton of WallBuilders. David occasionally leads tours of the Capitol and Statuary Hall, and he shared how many of our Founders were men who loved God. They pledged their lives and fortunes to a cause few believed would succeed. Many of them lost their homes, businesses, wealth, families, and even their lives so we could be free today. It was powerful!

I believe we have as much at stake now as we did during the American Revolution when we fought for the independence of this nation. In some ways, I believe it’s even more serious now because the attacks are more subtle. People aren’t using guns or hand-to-hand combat against us. It’s an ideology that we’re fighting.

These days, the “woke” mob has come out against our Founders. Specifically, they are targeting George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because they owned slaves.

A few years ago, a statue of Jefferson was removed from the New York City Council Chamber. According to a council member, the statue was one of many “disturbing images of divisiveness and racism.” In 2023, officials in New York City considered taking down statues and monuments to George Washington because of connections to slavery or alleged “crimes against humanity.” That’s just terrible!

These people, who claim to be so tolerant, want Washington’s and Jefferson’s statues removed from public places because they say this nation was systemically racist. That’s what the Bible calls (Ex. 20:16) a false witness! We need to learn and share the truth about our Founding Fathers.

Did you know that George Washington actually petitioned the king of Britain to end slavery in the 1760s? At that time, the monarchy owned an interest in the slave trade. They were profiting from it, so they wouldn’t let the colonists end slavery. 

It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence. In one of the original drafts, the longest grievance listed against King George III had to do with the evils of slavery.  Jefferson wrote that slavery was wrong, and he criticized the king for trafficking in the souls of men:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.

But two of the colonies—Georgia and South Carolina—objected to this grievance being included. That is really important.

You see, when the Founders were planning to declare independence, they were fighting against the mightiest nation on the planet at that time. So, they figured if the colonies didn’t stick together in the fight against Britain, they didn’t have a chance of winning. So, when only eleven of the thirteen colonies agreed to obliterate slavery, as a compromise, they took that part out. 

The Founders agreed it would be better to establish a free nation and plant the seeds of freedom rather than refuse to do anything. Because of that, the Americans were able to fight against the British as a united force and gain their independence. As a matter of fact, the United States was the first nation that passed a law ending the slave trade and even fought the Civil War to end slavery altogether.

When people take isolated things against George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and don’t look at their whole lives, that’s a false witness. It’s true Washington and Jefferson owned slaves, but because of the laws, they just couldn’t free them on the spot. It was against the law in the colony of Virginia. And even after the United States gained its independence, they still couldn’t free all of them.

I interviewed David Barton and his son, Tim, about these things for a series we called Systemically Anti-Racist. We talked about the New York Times’ “1619 Project” which claims that the true founding of America was in the year 1619, supposedly when the first boatload of African “slaves” arrived at the English colony of Jamestown. What the New York Times didn’t say is that the Africans on that boat were treated as indentured servants by the colonists and were able to work for their freedom.

Indentured servitude—working off the debt incurred by traveling to the New World—was the accepted practice for black and white people in the colonies for many years. It wasn’t until 1660 when a man named Anthony Johnson petitioned a judge to make one of his indentured men, John Casor, a perpetual servant because he wasn’t putting in enough work to pay off his debts. What’s more, Johnson and Casor were both black men!

That means the first true African slave in the English colonies was owned by another man of African heritage. That’s a detail a lot of liberals leave out when they are trying to indoctrinate people into thinking this nation came about because of slavery and racism (or what is called critical race theory). That’s just another instance of bearing false witness. 

Through people who don’t know the Word of God and don’t know history, Satan is misrepresenting things; people are bearing false witness. Sad to say, even many Christians don’t know enough of the Word or history to be able to counter it. It’s up to us to learn the true history of our nation and stand for that truth against a false witness.

Learn More

Explore the Truth & Liberty website, subscribe to receive regular updates, and visit our Research Center for great practical resources. Also learn how you can become a Truth & Liberty member and join us in standing for truth in the public square.