Yet, Fox, politico and resurgent all refuted what the fake news said: As he correctly noted, the Founding Fathers, not Cotton, viewed slavery as a necessary evil that would have to be dealt with after independence from Great Britain. His precise quote was, “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.” "