Sir, – Ira Stoll asks us to "Never forget the God on which US and July 4th are founded" (Rite & Reason, July 4th). But Mr Stoll forgot that the founders' God believed in white supremacy. Their God was invoked in a beautiful document signed by men who bought, sold and whipped their fellow human beings.
As Frederick Douglass wrote: “... your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages”.
The founders were brave and intelligent men.
But the United States cannott move forward as a country unless we recognise its true history, the beautiful and the ugly. – Yours, etc,
HELEN HARNETT,
River Forest,
Illinois.