Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas recently introduced a bill to prevent federal dollars from being used to teach the New York Times’s 1619 Project in schools. In a subsequent interview, Cotton sought to clarify the nature of our country’s founding but instead made something of a concession to the inaccurate notions of history within that project.

“As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.” His characterization may be considered approximately true — but only if a number of important qualifications are made first.