I don't want to sound ungrateful, but we can deal with quotes here.
Somewhere I have a collection of Founders' quotes to refer to when an occasion calls for them.
Naturally, I'm interested to learn if there are others I didn't know that could prove helpful in various discussions.
So, if you have a point to make and want to post quotes supporting you point, we'll take a look at them and see what we think of them, beginning with: are they genuine and do they fit with what else we know about that particular founder?
Sure, that's reasonable. I know that not everybody wants nor cares for audio books, and this one in particular which while I think the quality of all the readers is very good, it's not one solo reader throughout. Still. 90% of something is clearly better than 100% of nothing, and I'm not aware of very many books like this one that exist just to serve this very topic.
Some of the quotes you've already seen in days gone by by J. Adams, G.W. Jefferson, and others in regard to the ills of slavery. That's nothing new, people use them. Here is John Jay, author (1/3) of the Federalist:
In 1785, Mr. Jay wrote : — "It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honor of the States, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused." — Idem, vol. i. p. 231.
Of course, Governor John Jay happily signed New York's emancipation bill a decade later. Here is Dr. Franklin:
In a letter to Dean Woodward, dated London, April 10th, 1773, Dr. Franklin says, — ..." I have since had the satisfaction to learn that a disposition to abolish slavery prevails in North America; that many of the Pennsylvanians have set their slaves at liberty; and that even the Virginia Assembly have petitioned the king for permission to make a law for preventing the importation of more into that Colony. This request, however, will probably not be granted, as their former laws of that kind have always been repealed, and as the interest of a few merchants here has more weight with Government than that of thousands at a distance." — Sparks's Franklin, vol. viii. p. 42.
I quote Franklin in part because Franklin's words on abolitionism, as well as his deeds, seem to never get mentioned or at least I've never seen them. These quotes are not go-to which is strange to me in light of NYT 1619. They ought to be first in line. IMHO there are also times where I get a sense that there is an aggressive mission on the part of some to act like abolitionism never existed - until the 1840's/civil war era - and that Americans copied British abolitionism, which makes it an alien concept unrelated to the founding. Some people seem to need this to be true and I do not know why.
I think the more interesting one from this book is the mention of Art. 4 of the original Articles of Confederation. After quoting the article itself, Livermore notes:
It was not by accident or oversight that negroes were included in the phrase "free inhabitants"; for, when this article was under consideration, the delegates from South Carolina moved to amend, by inserting between the words "free" and "inhabitants" the word "white." The proposed amendment was lost; only two States voting in the affirmative.
What Livermore did (or at least indicates that he did) was go digging through debate notes and historical vote counts to highlight what Art. 4 actually means or at least, how far it goes toward inclusion.
My point here is that I do not believe I have ever seen anybody anywhere ever quote the Articles of Confederation in discussion and I think that in the context of NYT 1619, why shouldn't we quote from the Articles? It does show that even then the Founders did have equality in mind, it just wasn't all 13 colonial members who agreed on it.
Our country did not fail on race, not during the founding. That was forced on us prior to independence and gained new life thanks to Eli Whitney.