Friday on the RCP Podcast, Andrew Walworth spoke to economic historian Phillip W. Magness about his new book: “The 1619 Project Myth” “They claim American economic development in the 19th century was fueled by capitalism infused by the cotton industry and slavery — America gets rich and wealthy by exploiting the labor of enslaved Africans. While that sounds horrific, and it is, but the empirical data doesn’t support this claim. In fact, it was the free states in the North that powered industrial growth-not the stagnant, backwater agrarian economy of the South,” he explains. “It’s a modern political narrative that uses the past for present-day goals,” Magness says. “The 1619 Project evolved from a magazine issue to a book and a Hulu series, and it’s become more openly Marxist as it progressed. By the time you get to the Hulu series, they devote an entire episode to portraying capitalism as evil.” “Slavery is a central part of American history. It was the major political issue from the founding through the Civil War, and its effects extended into the civil rights era,” Magness argues. “But slavery is not the entirety of the American story. In 1776, the Founding Fathers introduced a reconciliation of the philosophical principles of liberty that conflicted with slavery and caused many to question it.” “There was a flurry of abolition societies founded in the 1780s-especially in Pennsylvania. Almost all of the former northern colonies abolished slavery. Vermont, which entered as its own state-the first beyond the original 13-wrote into its constitution that slavery is not permitted,” he explained. “And it’s all based in this philosophical spirit of liberty that came out of the American founding. That’s as much a part of the story as the barbarous relic of slavery that was carried over.” “That’s part of how I view this issue, and part of what I think should be tackled in the American 250th,” he continued. “The 1619 Project goes off the rails because they enlist the past for political purposes in the present and let scholarly rigor slide. They cut corners. They make factually erroneous claims.” “That’s where I see part of our role in discussing the 250th-to get the evidence right, to get the facts right, but also to engage seriously with issues like slavery in a substantive way.”
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