Saying “all the slaveowners” shows what an unserious comment this is. Do not “the slaveowners” include many of the men considered to be truly great Americans, even if maybe not all were great as Presidents. Washington, Jefferson, Jackson (others? I’m not a scholar of the presidency). To reduce these men to “slaveowners” is just intellectually embarrassing. It’s a remark worthy of a mediocre middle schooler.
It ignores the fact that many of the “slaveowners” wrestled with the morality of the “peculiar institution.” Slavery had been an integral part of human history that predates to dawn of civilization.
Once our founding fathers began to wrestle with the concepts of liberty, they had to confront the contradictions between those ideals and slavery In the real world. Washington was able to free his slaves, Jefferson could not, he was too deep in debt. It took decades and a bloody war to resolve the contradiction.
Frum also ignores the naked bigotry of “progressive” Woodrow Wilson.