Bret Stephens writes about the 1619 Project Actually, he focuses on only a few sentences of it, but the sentences have become controversial. In a nutshell, the original writeup in the Times said two things: the Revolution was fought to preserve slavery and the nation was born with the arrival of slaves in 1619. The writeup has been changed and softened since its original publication. IMHO the Revolution was well underway in the hearts and minds of Americans well before 1775 and had little to do with slavery. It's true that slaveowners were alarmed by British attempts to woe slaves to support the Loyalist cause, but that was late in the process. If the preservation of slavery in the face of the Somerset decision in the UK had been a major factor, one would have expected the British sugar colonies in the Caribbean to have joined the 13 colonies because they were even more dependent on slavery than were the mainland colonies.
The question I really want to consider is: what constitutes the "birth" of a country, a nation? How do we know? Was Canada born with the French in the the 17th century or when the British conquered it in the 18th century, or with the 1867 Act? When was the UK born, and did it die with the loss of Eire, or will it die if Scotland secedes?
Was France born with the First Republic, or the Second, Third, Fourth or Fifth? Was Germany born before Bismarck?
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