Binary to the maximus

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexuality_of_Abraham_Lincoln

The writer notes that FRSO describes the U.S. Revolution as a great step forward for human freedom and democracy (my words). Instead, the writer says it involved the expansion of colonial-settlering, genocide of the Indigenous people, and African slavery. My only argument is this: why can't they *both* be true? It was both an establishment of settler-slaveowning-capitalism and, at the same time, an expansion of democracy (within the limitations of capitalism of course, which were the limits of the time).