On July 28, RealClearPolitics posted an article about some new signs the National Park Service hung at the President’s House Site in Independence Park, where George Washington lived as president while Philadelphia was the nation’s capital.

The article reports:

The site’s previous exhibit, opened during the Obama administration, was spurred by leftist activists like the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition. As ATAC (pronounced “attack”) said in an amicus brief filed in federal court, it “embedded” itself in the site’s “development.” ATAC has sponsored “Anti-July Fourth Day” events, while its founder, Michael Coard, says that “July Fourth is a celebration of … rapes, castrations, lynchings, and enslavement,” and those who celebrate it are “traitors” who “embrace whiteness” and “the 1776 birth of the racist American nation.”

…The new signs suffer under no such illusions. Instead, in the words of Third Circuit Court Judge Thomas Hardiman, “These new panels are full of historical context.” 

But Americans should judge for themselves.

The old signs described Washington’s actions as “deplorable,” “profoundly disturbing,” and as having “mocked the nation’s pretense to be a beacon of liberty.” The new signs observe that Washington “often expressed discomfort” with slavery and “a desire to see it abolished,” yet “as a Virginia plantation owner, his wealth and livelihood were deeply tied to it.” They note that he “signed legislation that both upheld and limited slavery,” including banning it in the Northwest Territory (the current Midwest). They highlight that he “helped draft the Fairfax Resolves at Mount Vernon,” calling for putting “an entire Stop” to the “wicked” slave trade. They observe, “Among all of the Founders, Washington carried out the largest manumission of enslaved people” through his will.

The old signs essentially ignored the Civil War’s existence, even omitting it from a “Slavery Timeline.” As the new signs note, Abraham Lincoln said that most Americans, like the founders, viewed slavery as “a vast moral evil.” But it “took Lincoln and a bloody Civil War to finish the work that the Founders had begun and end slavery in the United States once and for all.”

The article concludes:

No one can reasonably say that the new signs neglect slavery, or lack nuance. For example, the signs note that slaves living there were at times “able to explore the city and sometimes even attend the theater, with Washington buying the tickets.” ATAC’s Coard finds this claim particularly objectionable, yet it’s true: Washington biographer Ron Chernow writes in “Washington: A Life” that slaves at the house enjoyed “a modicum of freedom to roam the city,” citing financial records: “Household accounts for June 1792 disclose expense money doled out for ‘Austin, Hercules & Oney to go to the play.’” 

In truth, it is the woke left that eschews complexity in its telling of America’s history. By embracing nuance and accuracy at the President’s House Site, the Trump administration has done the American public – and George Washington – a great service.

Yes, slavery is part of America’s past as it was part of most nations at that time. Yes, slavery is wrong, and it would have been nice for the U.S. Constitution to have outlawed it, but that would have prevented the U.S. Constitution from ever becoming the law of the land. Our past is not perfect, but we need to work toward a more perfect future.