Why Does It Have to Be Slaveholders That We Unite Around?
About this episode
Klein asks historian Woody Holton why Americans treat slaveholding founders as the heroes of emancipation rather than the enslaved people and abolitionists who actually fought for freedom. Holton, author of the bottom-up Revolutionary history 'Liberty Is Sweet,' argues the founders' achievements happened despite their slaveholding, discusses Native Americans' decisive but overlooked role in the Revolution, and draws parallels between his project and the 1619 Project. The conversation broadens into how history should be taught: whether facts or narratives matter more, how students' prior knowledge shapes what they absorb, the difference between memorializing and understanding, and why Holton believes 'history is argument without end' — a living debate Americans should join rather than a settled story to revere.