34. Benjamin Rush Had Some… Eccentric Views
Benjamin Rush is not one of the more famous Founding Fathers. He was not even the most famous Benjamin in that bunch. However, in his day, Rush was famous enough. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Rush was a politician, doctor, humanitarian, social reformer, educator, and the founder of Dickinson College. During the Revolutionary War, he served as Surgeon General of the Continental Army.
He was also an antislavery activist, and by the standards of his day, Rush was as liberal and progressive as it gets. However, his quest for racial justice took him down some weird paths. Among other things, his argument that blacks deserved freedom and equality rested on the belief that blacks were actually white people – just ones suffering from a weird form of leprosy.