All Theories of History Have to Ignore Historical Events

or: Jejune Mr. Rutledge and the Bad Faith

Here’s to Edward Rutledge! Our most important founding father, who —

No. Not really.

And yet if you’ve been following the public debate on the Times’s 1619 Project, you may know of Rutledge, a delegate of South Carolina to the Continental Congress, formerly seen as a fairly minor signer of the Declaration of Independence but now, nearly 250 years on, no…