“We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact in the development of our country because otherwise we cannot understand our country. As the founding fathers said, it was the necessary evil on which the union was built, but the The union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the path to its final extinction, “Cotton told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in an article that was published Sunday.
Cotton’s comments to the newspaper sparked a backlash on social media, prompting the senator to try to distance himself from them in a series of tweets in which he claimed he cited the views of America’s founding fathers, rather than the his.
Cotton’s comments came after he introduced legislation that would prevent federal funds and professional development grants from being awarded to schools that teach Project 1619, which launched last year and has since become educational resources and curricula for use by teachers. It seems unlikely that the bill will gain significant traction in the Senate.
Last week, Cotton called Project 1619 “a racially divisive and revisionist account of history that denies the noble principles of liberty and equality on which our nation was founded. Not a single penny of federal funds should go into indoctrinating youth. Americans with this left. ” to garbage. “
Although the founding fathers were divided on the issue of slavery, and some of them had slaves and others opposed it, there does not appear to be a record of any of them arguing that slavery in the United States was a “necessary evil.” “
When asked to point to a founding father who used the phrase “evil necessary” to describe the existence of slavery at the founding of the nation, James Arnold, a spokesman for Cotton, referred to a passage from an Abrahamic debate Lincoln-Stephen Douglas in 1858, but provided no evidence that a founding father made that claim.
Lincoln believed that the founding fathers put the institution of slavery in the United States on the path to “final extinction,” a position he often publicly stated.
The phrase Cotton uses is “really a shorthand way to describe the complex set of attitudes of the founding generation and it’s not really accurate,” said Adam Rothman, a professor of history at Georgetown University who teaches slavery in the United States. . Rothman added that it is “strange to back it up in hindsight.”
Cotton later claimed on Twitter that he himself did not endorse the idea that slavery was a “necessary evil,” but instead quoted the founders’ alleged views, a defense that the Times writer behind Project 1619 quickly rejected. .
“You said, quote:” As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil on which the union was built. “That ‘as’ denotes agreement. Furthermore, if by way of extinction you mean increasing slavery (population) of 500k to 4 million in the Civil War, a war fought for slavery, then, okay, “Nikole Hannah-Jones, a writer for the Times, wrote in response to Cotton’s tweet.
Cotton defended his defense during an appearance on Fox News on Monday, repeating his claim that he himself was not endorsing the position.
“Of course, slavery is an evil institution in all its forms, at all times in America’s past or around the world today,” he said.
CNN’s Clare Foran and Leah Asmelash contributed to this report.
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