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The report’s authors denounce the charge that the American founders were hypocrites who preached equality even as they codified slavery in the Constitution and held slaves themselves.

“This charge is untrue, and has done enormous damage, especially in recent years, with a devastating effect on our civic unity and social fabric,” they write. Men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, while they owned hundreds of enslaved people, abhorred slavery, the report contends.

“The White House 1776 Report seems to regard calling the Founders hypocritical about slavery as worse for the country than actual slavery,” Seth Masket, a professor of political science at the University of Denver, wrote on Twitter.

And in a line that drew particular fire from historians, the report calls John C. Calhoun “perhaps the leading forerunner” of identity politics.

“Like modern-day proponents of identity politics,” it claims, “Calhoun believed that achieving unity through rational deliberation and political compromise was impossible; majority groups would only use the political process to oppress minority groups.”

The commission is led by Larry Arnn, a Trump ally and the president of the conservative Hillsdale College. Its co-chairwoman is Carol Swain, a prominent Black conservative and former Vanderbilt University law professor. Other members include Mississippi’s Republican former governor Phil Bryant; the conservative activist Ned Ryan; Mr. Trump’s former domestic policy adviser Brooke Rollins; and Charles Kesler, the editor of the influential conservative publication The Claremont Review of Books.

The commission and its report are in part a rebuke to The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, which reframes American history around the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans. The report denounces the project, as did Mr. Trump in his September speech announcing the commission.