A US senator has sparked outrage by describing slavery as ‘a necessary evil’.

The comments by Arkansas senator Tom Cotton came in a damning criticism of The New York Times’ 1619 Project which seeks to re-frame US history around 1619, when slaves were first brought to the country. Cotton has recently proposed legislation that stops the funding for the project.

He told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: “The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project … is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable,

“I reject that root and branch. America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it.”

“We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. 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 [Abraham] Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”

The 1619 project was launched by The Times last year to mark 400 years since slaves were brought to the US.

It examines how slavery shaped and continues to permeate all aspects of American society by expanding on early accounts that are largely left out of the historical narrative taught in most schools. 

Among those enraged by the senator’s comments was Nikole Hannah-Jones who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for an essay on the 1619 Project.

She tweeted: "If chattel slavery – heritable, generational, permanent, race-based slavery where it was legal to rape, torture, and sell human beings for profit – were a ‘necessary evil’ as Tom Cotton says, it’s hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end.

“Imagine thinking a non-divisive curriculum is one that tells black children the buying and selling of their ancestors, the rape, torture, and forced labor of their ancestors for PROFIT, was just a ‘necessary evil’ for the creation of the ‘noblest’ country the world has ever seen. 

“So, was slavery foundational to the Union on which it was built, or nah? You heard it from Tom Cotton himself.”

Cotton responded: “More lies from the debunked 1619 Project. Describing the views of the Founders and how they put the evil institution on a path to extinction, a point frequently made by Lincoln, is not endorsing or justifying slavery. No surprise that the 1619 Project can’t get facts right.”

Cotton and The Times came to blows earlier this year after the paper said an article they published by the politician entitled ‘Send in the Troops’ fell short of their editorial standards.

The senator, backed by US president Donald Trump, chastised the publication for backtracking on the article and the subsequent resignation of their editorial page director James Bennet.