By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com

ALBANY, New York – History is not meant to comfort us.

Contemplation of the past informs us about how we got to where we are and, thus, who we are. That means it often will prod us to confront truths – hard truths – that pain, rather than comfort, us.

But that’s the path to maturity – to understanding the world as it is and the conflicted nature of human beings.

Albany is having such a moment now.

Amid the national protests over the death of George Floyd and the accompanying emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Albany’s mayor, Kathy Sheehan, announced a few weeks ago that a statue of Philip Schuyler would be removed.

Outside of the New York Capital Region, Schuyler now is remembered primarily as the father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton – thanks, of course, to the explosive success of the musical “Hamilton.”

But here in the Empire State, Schuyler is something more. He was a genuine Revolutionary War hero, a member of both the Continental Congress and the first U.S. Congress, a man of great means and significant influence. He was one of the figures who helped transform a collection of sparsely populated colonies into a nation.

But he was also a slaveholder.

In fact, he enslaved more human beings than anyone else in New York.

The decision to remove Schuyler’s statue from outside Albany City Hall and place it instead in a museum has provoked fierce debate here.

Some argue that removing the statue dishonors those who risked much to create the nation Abraham Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth.” Others contend that honoring a man who subjugated other human beings for profit and denied them the blessings of liberty insults the enslaved, their descendants and the idea of freedom itself.

It’s a complicated question – part, obviously, of a much larger debate about how we Americans should view our homeland’s tortured history regarding race.

Schuyler is the local stand-in for America’s founding generation.

Few, if any, of our founders have legacies untainted by attitudes and actions regarding members of other races that we find abhorrent today. An alarming number of the men – a collection of demigods, Thomas Jefferson called them – who gathered to draft our Constitution were slaveholders.

And the others were willing to craft a deal – the notorious three-fifths compromise – that not only denied slaves the vote but made them unwilling collaborators with their own oppression.

But, if the founders hadn’t struck that bargain, we likely wouldn’t have had either a Constitution or a country.

We built our nation, which Jefferson called “an empire of liberty,” on the backs of human beings who were denied freedom.

There must be a reckoning for that.

That reckoning also must be more than either a simple-minded celebration of the Founders’ achievements and virtues or a blanket condemnation of the betrayals of their avowed sacred principles and their fellow human beings. To see our country as it is, we must see the contradictions that have plagued it – and us – from the beginning.

Jefferson is a prime example.

Only Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. are his peers in eloquently articulating America’s fundamental promise, that of the blessings of liberty. Yet, he enslaved other human beings, bought and sold them as if they were tools or pieces of furniture.

Among his slaves were the mother of his children – she was the half-sister of his late (White) wife – and some of his children.

His story is the story of America in microcosm, a tale of high-minded yearnings to preserve and advance the human spirit and base, mean-spirited transgressions against decency and human dignity.

Am I grateful that Jefferson gave voice to and labored to bring about humanity’s fondest aspiration, to live unshackled and free?

Yes.

Am I appalled that he enslaved and degraded other human beings, including those who should have had the greatest claims on his respect and consideration – his mate and his children?

Again, yes.

But that’s the way it is with history. It is as conflicted and contradictory as human nature itself.

History isn’t meant to reassure us. It’s meant to teach us about how we got to where we are.

And it’s our job to learn from the experience.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

The City-County Observer posted this letter without opinion, bias, or editing.