We are now living in a country our founding fathers fought to escape

One of the reasons, yeah. Enlightenment thinkers were straight horny for the classical and merchant republics.

Now if you look at those republics from a modern lens you go "Oh, that's where the damage came from" but compared to divine right monarchies mid-colonization the Founding Fathers were woke af.

That all said, all slave owners in history were objectively evil. There is not a single one that didn't know it too.