Well, the same globalist billionaire that funded the woke transformation of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate has done the same at James Madison’s Montpelier plantation home.
The primary focus in both cases is highlighting above everything else that they were slaveholders.
I suppose if one wants to replace America’s founding narrative and meaning, there’s no better place to start than the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
The New York Post reported, “No American flags fly at Montpelier, Madison’s plantation home in rural Virginia, and not a single display focuses on the life and accomplishments of America’s foremost political philosopher, who created our three-branch federal system of government, wrote the Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers and served two terms as president.”
“Instead, blindsided tourists are hammered by high-tech exhibits about Madison’s slaves and current racial conflicts, thanks to a $10 million grant from left-leaning philanthropist David M. Rubenstein,” the news outlet added.
After visiting Montpelier a few weeks ago, Greg Hancock wrote in a review on Google Maps that the tour included two short films, “but they really miss the mark on talking about the Constitution and the role of Madison in authoring it. It is touched on, but more energy and the apparent focus they want to on slavery which was the way of life then.”
Hancock continued, “That was educational, but we left disappointed not having learned more about the history of the creation of the Constitution.”
“A one hour Critical Race Theory experience disguised as a tour,” grumbled Mike Lapolla of Tulsa, Oklahoma, after visiting last July in a review on Trip Advisor titled, “Tone Deaf Operation.”
As a group from the Post entered Montpelier on a tour, the guide said the Founder’s estate “made Madison the philosopher, farmer, statesman and enslaver that he was.”
She repeated the line at the end of her spiel, too, the paper’s reporters noted.
“The only in-depth material about the Constitution itself appears in a display that pushes the claim, championed by the controversial 1619 Project, that racism was the driving force behind the entire American political system,” according to the Post.
How incredibly sad.
The U.S. Constitution is the oldest written national constitution still in use today, so Madison and company clearly got something right.
As to hammering Madison for being a slave holder, they should have given him credit for the early blows he helped strike against the institution.
Slavery had existed on all the inhabited continents throughout all of recorded history.
The native inhabitants of America fought wars and enslaved each other long before the Europeans arrived.
Slavery was practiced in the British American colonies 150 years before the U.S. was founded.
Great Britain would not abolish slavery in its worldwide empire until 1833, over 50 years after the colonies declared their independence.
The first place the emancipation movement took hold in the world was the U.S. during and immediately following the Revolutionary War era.
By 1804, all the northern states had passed legislation ending slavery.
Madison went to great pains in drafting the Constitution not to mention “slaves” or “slavery” in it, because he, like Jefferson, wanted to see the institution’s ultimate demise, according to James Madison Museum historian Kenneth Clark.
The Constitution specifically authorized the federal government to ban the importation of slaves in 1808 (approximately 20 years from the date the document was ratified).
Madison recognized the southern states would never agree to an immediate ban, so the 20-year period was the compromise reached.
Congress, in fact, passed the legislation in 1807 because lawmakers wanted the ban to take effect at the soonest possible date, Jan. 1, 1808. President Jefferson signed the bill into law.
Madison also helped shepherd the three-fifth’s compromise in terms of counting the slave populations through the Constitutional Convention.
The southern states wanted to count their entire slave populations for representation purposes in the U.S. House of Representatives, but the northern states would not allow it.
The impact was to lessen the number of votes slave-holding interests held in the chamber.
Madison had a hand in both these anti-slavery provisions in the Constitution.
The left’s endgame in thrashing Madison, Jefferson and Washington, for that matter, is clearly to try to discredit the founding of the nation and the whole American experiment in liberty.
And replace it with what? Some Marxist, globalist utopia? No thank you.
By all means tell the truth: Madison and Jefferson were slaveholders.
But tell the whole truth: They took steps to end the institution, and they are responsible for helping establishing a form of government that led to the greatest outbreak of human freedom in the history of the world.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
