Here the founders’ reliance on the ancients was at odds with their other great influence, the thinkers of the Enlightenment. Montesquieu and Locke had both questioned slavery, but more in puzzlement than in flat-out denunciation, though Montesquieu came close when he wrote sarcastically that “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men, because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow, that we ourselves are not Christians.”31
