Progress is a myth (or illusion, if you prefer) that forces reductive narratives. This is a fantastic example of that: the land-owning white man now has legitimate rights. However, one of those hard-won rights was the right to own your fellow man. That seems less like progress than marginal changes that improve life for a few, written in blood.

To see something that most would agree as progress, you’d have to consider a much larger time period, over a much wider demographic than the founding fathers managed to consider.