What is the relation between the Founders and the Underground Railroad?

History is an interesting thing. If a journalist doesn't want you to hear about it, they simply don't have to report it. Well what happens if a historian omitted facts in the same manner?

What if, let's say for example, the Underground Railroad consisted of slaves escaping from a state deep in the throws of slavery northward to a different state and that state had abolished slavery? Well of course the historian wants you to focus on the slave continuing their journey up to Canada, but the reality is that not all continued on their course.

What if many slaves stayed in northern states where slavery had been abolished? Well, they did.

Well who did that? Who abolished slavery in those northern states, or who wrote that Northwest Ordinance which secured to places such as Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and many others, would be states born as free states?

Who was it in, say, New York, who wrote those abolitionist laws? Pennsylvania and Vermont and pick any of those states you want. It was the founding generation in general and the Founding Fathers in particular. That's who did that.

Let's explore it from the opposite side, because that's really where the truth will become apparent.

What if the Founders didn't push for abolition in those northern states? Or in Indiana and other states that were formed after the Northwest Ordinance, or in Connecticut or any of the others. What if the Northwest Ordinance would never have been written, would there have ever been an Underground Railroad, or at least would it have been as we know it today?

If these states hadn't become free states, then where would the runaway slaves have run? Well, the simple answer is to Canada but this isn't so simple. The fact is that many fleeing to freedom did stay and make homes in free states and the Founders DID engage in this abolitionist activity and DID pass abolitionist laws once they didn't have the king vetoing these laws.

Isn't it then fair to say that the Underground Railroad came into being _because_ of the Founders, and not despite them?

No, progressivism is not in the lineage of the abolitionists

One of the larger myths of progressivism is that they are heralds of liberalism. In order to justify this, they have had to do two things: (both of which, sadly, have been successful)

1) Paint the picture of Enlightenment > Founders(Liberals) > Abolitionists > Feminists > Progressives

2) The hijacking of the word liberal

In order to justify their own existence, progressives have sent out their historians over the last several decades to manufacture this concept of progress and tie it all together in a very disorderly and quite frankly, convoluted way.

#1 is really the big meme, and the meme goes a little like this. As everybody is making progress(centered in Europe), and we have this great Renaissance which leads to the Age of Enlightement, that in turn leads to the realization that Monarchism is nonsense and freedom is far, far superior. But this then in turn leads to the entire Western world turning against slavery, and the women who helped out the slaves become free realized that they themselves had more potential and that abolitionism minus slavery around a bunch of activist women equals feminism. And see, everybody knows that the early Feminists were progressives.

Except, no. First, Christianity is omitted from this. That's what makes the whole thing a fraud.

Secondly, there is a lot of truth mixed in with that lie, otherwise it wouldn't stand basic entry-level tests. And it's the entry-level tests that progressives rely on. They can't afford deep examinations.

Now for one, Monarchism really is garbage and it would be better to be dead than to live under a dictatorial king. The Founders were correct on that one. Life under a monarch isn't worth living. But more than that, large portions of the timeline do have their relations. It was in fact women who helped the slaves toward emancipation, and at least in part that did lead to a realization among women that some in part wanted a different course through history for themselves. The Renaissance does in fact precede and lead to the Enlightenment, and the American Founding is in fact a product of the Enlightenment. Thinkers like Adam Smith, Puffendorf, Locke, Montesquieu, these are all heavyweight champions of light and reason - and Christianity. You see, there's that bugaboo. And there were other amazing thinkers too, but I digress.

Of course also, there is the direct link between the Founding Fathers and the abolition of slavery - which is the one that the progressives really don't want you remembering but it's a hard link not to make since so many of the Founding generation were outspoken against slavery even if their work has been downplayed by hardcore activist "historians".

That brings us to feminism and progressivism. The problem is that in most stages before, the foundational requirement is small government because big government hurts people. At every step, there is a reluctance to grow government once the enlightened made that connection. There's also the mix of Christianity, which provides the foundation at every stage and in particular, the "Laws of Nature and Nature's God".

Have you ever read the works of the early abolitionists? You should, this would leave no doubts. Even many of the abolitionists on the British side who had no intention of leaving the side of the monarch, they were well versed in the fact that Liberty is the gift of God to all of God's men, not just the white men. Reading the works of Granville Sharp for one makes this blindingly clear. It is terribly easy to go around quoting Sharp, not mentioning who the quote is from, and I swear to you you would be convinced that what you just read was from a Founder. You would swear it up and down, left and right. Founder, founder, founder. Because from an American context, "that way of speaking" is how the Founders spoke and wrote and that's what we mainly know. But the abolitionists they all wrote and believed that same thing. Liberty is the gift directly from God to all of man and men.

This too was what the original feminists fought for in their day. The early feminists were in large part all pro-life. They weren't on board with the abortion mantra. That right there really helps separate the mindset of what feminists started as, to what they became.

This also happens to be the rub.

Progressives far and wide have written and written it from day one. The Declaration sucks. The Founders suck. We gotta stop worshipping the word.(The Constitution) We need more activist government, we need more social control, we need more assaults on the markets, we need more regulation.

It's a direct break from everything that preceded it in its own evolutionary way since the progressives abhor revolution. Here. Here's a quote from Granville Sharp, just because I'm quite certain that it's something you have never ever seen before.

Writing in "A Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature, Sharp wrote:

And as all British subjects, whether in Great-Britain, Ireland, or the Colonies, are equally free by the law of Nature, they certainly are equally entitled to the same Natural Rights that are essential for their own preservation; because this privilege of "having a share in the legislation” is not merely a British Right, peculiar to this island, but it is also a Natural Right, which cannot, without the most flagrant and stimulating injustice, be withdrawn from any part of the British Empire by any worldly authority whatsoever; because, “by the Natural Law, whereunto he [ALMIGHTY GOD] hath made all subject,” (says the learned Hooker,) (2) “the lawful power of making laws, to command whole politic societies of men, belongeth so properly unto the same entire societies, that for any Prince or Potentate, of what kind forever upon earth, to exercise the same of himself," [or themselves,] “and not either by express Commission immediately and personally received from God, or else by authority derived at the first from their consent upon whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny ! Laws they are not, therefore, which public Approbation hath not made so." Agreeable to the same just principles of natural Equity is that maxim of the English Constitution, that "Law to bind all, must be assented to by all;” (Principia Leg. et AEquit. p. 56.) and there can be no legal appearance of Assent without some degree of Representation.

Amazing, isn't it? Beautiful, isn't it? Sounds a lot like a Founding Father, doesn't it? Yes, it does. The abolitionists knew exactly the same thing that the Founders knew - that is that man must be free and freedom requires equality before the law.

As we speak, the progressives have taken off one of their last masks - that is, the "equality" mask. Progressives have never ever actually truely cared about equality. They have always cared about equity. Even at the beginning of the progressive era, hooligans like Theodore Roosevelt were out there preaching the gospel of Social Justice and Herbert Croly was out there whining about the improper maldistribution of wealth. This is foundational in progressivism 101.

Everything must be equal in everybody's house. If you make $5 and the other guy makes $6 well government must come about and make sure both of you get $5.50.

That's just who these progressives are. They're control freaks. They're lunatics. They think they know better than you do and they're ready to tell you all about it. Which reminds me, I didn't yet write about #2 yet. The hijacking of the word "liberal".

No progressives are ever "liberal". Most of the time and for the entirety of your life (unless you're in a very advanced age of your life) you've known progressives under their banner name (more like camoflage) that they hold out of "liberal". The Founding Fathers were liberals. Bill Clinton is not and never was a liberal. That was just camoflage. Jimmy Carter is not and never was a liberal. FDR spent most of his time on the history books as a liberal, which makes sense, he's the guy who hijacked the word. However, activist "historians" have done their work to re-frame him back as a progressive hero in the last decade.

Which, as a side note, if we had a large body of conservative citizen historians we could do significant damage to progressivism on this liberal-FDR progressive-FDR cognitive dissonance, but as of yet there is far too much trust by conservatives of the historian class to mount a significant external challenge.

Pick any one of the progressives you want during any time of your life you want (unless of course you were in your 20's during the election of 1932 when the word "liberal" was hijacked and you remember it!) and all of them - ALL of them, are progressives. Not liberals. They're not liberals. But that's what completes the circle. By hijacking the word, they hijacked the entire history behind it.

They don't deserve that word "liberal". They didn't earn it. They stole it. Like a cheap two-bit thief. They stole it.

Only conservative historians can fix this mess.

We have got to stop saying of the Founders "they were a product of their time"

An interesting thing recently happened, Planned Parenthood has come out and all but said quite plainly that Margaret Sanger was racist. Writing in the Slimes,

we must fully take responsibility for the harm that Sanger caused to generations of people with disabilities and Black, Latino, Asian-American, and Indigenous people.

and

We will no longer make excuses or apologize for Margaret Sanger’s actions. But we can’t simply call her racist, scrub her from our history, and move on. We must examine how we have perpetuated her harms over the last century — as an organization, an institution, and as individuals.

Sanger harms every minority that could be named, but no no, not racist. Whatever. It's still shameless apologism. But you know, that's not the most important part of the confession. It's this:

We have defended Sanger as a protector of bodily autonomy and self-determination, while excusing her association with white supremacist groups and eugenics as an unfortunate “product of her time.”

Have you ever defended the Founding Fathers on the issue of slavery on the basis of "oh well it was just a different time in human history" or "things were just different back then" or "they were products of their time"? There are dozens of other ways as well that this can be constructed.

If you have ever made these arguments, please stop. The reality is that there is no equivalency between Margaret Sanger and the Founding Fathers. The Founders were abolitionists and were ahead of their time. Their thought was unusual for the day. Progressive historians have done so much damage, and have taken this away from our Founders when it is rightfully theirs.

Could you imagine a situation where everybody says "Yeah, Vern Mikkelsen is a basketball player" but look at how good Michael Jordan is. Vern Mikkelsen isn't a basketball player anymore. "Yeah, Michael Jordan is a basketball player" but look at how good LeBron is. Michael Jordan isn't a basketball player anymore. Maybe its not the greatest analogy, but that's what the historians have in fact done! The notion that they have successfully sold in their historical narratives is basically "a better abolitionist came along later" so therefore what it does is "invalidates any abolitionist action prior". It's plain insanity.

Nobody on earth would accept sliding-scale basketball, but yet somehow we've been beaten into submission and acceptance on sliding-scale history. Only that which is on the very end of the sliding scale where the historians deem it valid is said to be, but everything else is invalid.

These lying historians! They have lied, they have cheated, and they have stolen - and the worst part is the stealing. Like a thief in the night, our pockets have been picked clean of any facts and reason regarding the reality of the country's founding. Our Founders, and there were many of them, did things such as the creation/founding of abolitionist societies(B. Franklin), passed actual abolitionist laws(J. Jay) and through the course of the recognition of what America stood for in the revolution - where they previously owned slaves because the king wanted it that way they freed their slaves against the king's will because it was the better way to go(W. Whipple). Is any of this a "product of the time"? What the historians have left us with is all just so insulting.

Look at this. Benjamin Wade was one of the more prominent people in the move for abolitionism in the era just prior to the Civil War and the ending of slavery. Wade said the following in a speech in congress:

But let me say to my northern Democratic friends, who are Jeffersonian Democrats, who make that their boast on every stump from Maine to Chicago, that no boast could be more glorious, for no one, in my judgment, be more glorious has ever breathed the breath of life, even among that great galaxy of worthies of revolutionary memory. I have always admired him. I have endeavored to imitate him; and now, if I have Abolitionism about me more than is due, I have come very honestly by it, for he taught me. He told me all about it, as he has told those Jefferson Democrats and Abolition men so often.( source )

Have you ever seen any of these toxic historians ever talk about this? Heck no! To admit this would be proof positive in itself that the Founders were ahead of their time and not products of the time. Thieves, the whole lot of them! Imagine how many progressive historians would be putting themselves out of business if they were to admit in the exact same sentence, that the very same Jefferson who they consider racist was considered abolitionist by some of the guys on the front lines at the time in the mid 1800s. The two don't mix! So the history has to be erased. And Wade wasn't the only one who looked at Jefferson this way. Compared to journalists, historians are far, far more dangerous. It's always the enemy you don't see who does the most damage in their sabotage.

You must, must stop saying the phrase or any of its derivatives or synonyms "product of their time" to the Founders. I know you mean well. The reality is though, that when you do this you turn the Founders into Margaret Sanger, and they deserve so much better than to be associated with filth like that.

There's no need to be an apologist for the Founders. They were on the correct side of history. We need to be BOLD for the Founders because that's what they left us and from our perspective that's what they deserve.

The king is the one. The king is who it is was a "product of his time", it's him, he is the one. Read the Declaration, he was behind on the times. And if you don't want to read it, listen to it.