One of the hotly debated questions surrounding “The 1619 Project,” the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of essays is whether race and slavery played a role in the American Revolution. Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote that Southern slave owners supported the Revolution to protect their property (slaves) and to ward off the influence of British abolitionism. Some of her critics argued that this claim was untrue and that it slandered our Founding Fathers.
Now comes an essay in TIME magazine by historian Robert G. Parkinson of Binghamton University, who argues that it is impossible to understand what happened in 1776 without recognizing the importance of race and slavery.
He begins:
Slavery and arguments about race were not only at the heart of the American founding; it was what united the states in the first place. We have been reluctant to admit just how thoroughly the Founding Fathers thought about, talked about, and wrote about race at the moment of American independence...
Recently, a controversy over “critical race theory” has ignited public debate about the centrality of race to American history. As a part of that debate, which has been ongoing since the publication of the 1619 Project, the nation’s founding has come under the most scrutiny. How much did 1776 have to do with race and slavery? The answer is: you can’t tell the story without it. We have given the founding fathers passes when it comes to race. Although we have sometimes condemned an individual founder like Jefferson as a hypocrite, we have explained it away, either by citing the language in the opening paragraphs of the Declaration, or the emancipation efforts of some northern states, or by saying, well, it was the eighteenth century, what can you expect? Yet you only have to look at the very moment of Revolution to see how deeply race was embedded in the patriot cause.
Please read the entire essay. It is enlightening.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I was just watching Ken Burn’s “Jefferson” & he wanted to add language about freeing the slaves into the Declaration of Independence but the southern (& some of the northern) delegates would not allow it. He deleted these passages so that the entire Declaration would be passed.
Freeing his slaves was something he wanted to do but without legislation, he feared that these people would be worse off in freedom than they would be in slavery (which is debatable & shows his patriarchal bent). Still, he wanted ALL people to live in freedom.
Quite frankly we don’t know what Jefferson wanted since his life and actions contradict his writings.
Without writings from an historical person no one can “know” what some historical person was thinking. We can guess and speculate all we want be we will never be able to know with certainty. It’s an example of why history is a social study and not a social science.
Not that social sciences are any better than social studies.
There is reason to believe that significant parts of the Declaration of Independence were not written by Jefferson. Particularly, that the words “All men are created equal” actually came from Thomas Paine, anonymous author of Common Sense, which preceded the Declaration of Independence.
https://www.crookedlakereview.com/articles/67_100/76july1994/76williams.html
It makes perfect logical sense to believe that Paine authored those most famous of words since he (quite unlike Jefferson) was an outspoken abolitionist.
And, actually, the idea that a slave holder like Jefferson, a man who actually considered his slaves not only as a source of free labor but as breeding stock producing a 4% annual increase in value through procreation, would not only write that “all men are created equal” but that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” stretches the outer limits of credulity.
Interesting article. Thanks for the share!
Science Envy
Science Envy
Rules the roost
Every body
Wants the boost
“Scientific”
Is their claim
Most terrific
In their name
Thomas Paine
Thomas was the name
Who really lit the spark
But Thomas took great Paine
To keep us in the dark
Um, other than that minor little fact that he RAPED HIS SLAVES. But other than that, he was really a great guy.
Let’s talk about today’s sins.
The Russian government deliberately exploited the vulnerability of American Blacks and used its puppet, Trump, to stoke racial divide.
Employing a favorite tactic of authoritarian messaging, “What aboutism”-
Stalin, Hitler, Assad, Putin, Koch… where would they rank based on cost of depravity vs. societal benefit?
was something he wanted to do
Hardly. He was a hypocrite. On his death, he didn’t even free the enslaved persons who were his own children, derived from his rape of people whom he “owned.”
It’s really past time to stop giving this hypocrite a pass, time to stop making excuses for him.
He also considered his slaves breeding stock to produce an annual 4% increase in property value.
With regard to the Declaration of Independence, it’s not only possible but quite plausible that Jefferson was basically an “editor/publisher” tasked with putting together arguments made by Thomas Paine and others for breaking away from Great Britain. That would go a long way toward explaining the glaring contradictions.
The fact that others rather than Jefferson might have been the source of substantive parts of the Declaration does not detract from the meaning and value of the document. On the contrary, it makes it greater, knowing that there were people like Thomas Paine who actually wholeheartedly believed the words.
Many people seem to be obsessed with celebration of individuals like Jefferson, rather than of the worthy goals of the documents themselves.
Should statues of Jefferson come down?
Hmmm. Let’s see. Would removing statues of slave owner and rapist Thomas Jefferson increase the incidence of cancer? of hunger? of low-birth-weight babies? Trying to imagine the negative effects of this.
Oh, sorry. I am speaking ill of the mythologized! Reeducation camp for me!!!
Surely life in a post-jingoistic-nationalizing state wouldn’t be possible! What other excuse could we come up with for setting off fireworks and poisoning waterways for miles around for months thereafter? for blubbering about being the best ever?
My view about Thomas Jefferson and other great leaders of the founding generation: All of them did terrible things as seen from 2021. Very likely, all were racists and sexists. Some, like TJ, fathered children with slave women (TJ apparently had a long-time relationship with Sally Hemmings, whose descendants are now recognized as part of the Jefferson family).
BUT, TJ and other founders did not wage war on their country. Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and other leaders of the Confederacy waged a war against their country to preserve slavery. They were traitors. None of them should be honored.
Statue worship is bizarre, as far as I am concerned.
But I’m not going to tell others whether they can worship them.
Ah, I see, SomeDAM. You do have a point about not interfering with people’s statue worship.
Isn’t that included in the freedom of religion clause of the First Amendment? freedom to worship statues
Bloke Worship
The one thing that is clear
Is not to interfere
With worship by the folks
Of statues of the blokes
FLERP!,
If you believe statues of Jefferson should not come down, why do you believe that?
I read interesting replies to your question, and was wondering what your own view was – beyond a “yes” or “no” answer.
I was struck by how people gave you the courtesy of explaining their view of whether statues should come down. So why not share and explanation of your own view? Presumably, if you believe statues of Jefferson should or should not come down, you have a reason for that view, just like the people who replied to your question do.
FLERP, I don’t find your question an easy one, but I think I’m a ‘no’ on the Founders. Lines can be drawn more easily through Confederate figures, as Diane notes: why laud an effort to secede from country in order to preserve slavery? There are at least a few international figures deserving statu-ectomy too, like Belgium’s King Leopold “crimes against humanity” II– or anyone whose primary (or sole) claim to fame was brutality and slaughter on a massive scale.
Still I think it’s not an easy question. Much easier if we’d always just had historical museums, and never got into venerating historical figures with prominent statuary as though they were religious icons. The habit itself contributes to conflating patriotism with religious awe. I have been chastened by recent reading of USSR/ Russian history, where the political whims of the powerful led to nearly a century of venerating then drumming out founders and their successors, along with serial changes in statuary and names of cities and streets.
Bethree, thank you for a wise comment. Human beings are complicated. They are not deities. History teaching must be honest and accurate. We must confront both the good and the evil that sometimes co-exist and not engage in delusional thinking.
I agree, bethree. I would probably feel otherwise if i believed that black Americans viewed statues of Jefferson like how ordinary residents of Soviet satellite states viewed statues of Stalin. I don’t think they do.
Americans are waking up to their own history. This is a necessary step out of our blubbering infancy.
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
1 Corinthians 13:11 KJV
Besides the veneration/ worship issue… There’s the unfortunate implication that these statues ‘represent our culture.’ I can live with that as far as Founders go– the aspirational goals outlined in the documents they wrote/ signed/ fought for.
But the confederate statues represent a culture that had ceased to exist when they were erected. I get that there must have been a feeling among white Southerners post-defeat that their whole culture was being erased. In actuality, they already had a burgeoning culture that was a wild mix of Euro-aristocrats, African freed slaves, ‘mountain men,’ Arcadians, and more – the music was already reflecting that. But the statues—an atrocious nod to Jim Crow laws decades after Civil War— characterized the ‘new’ culture as a permanent state of white supremacist rebellion.
A similar thing happens with veneration of Columbus. I don’t have a serious problem with honoring any of the explorers who ‘discovered’ this continent in some way– street or city names. But somehow he became a representative of the Italian culture (at least in the metro-NYC area). Thus a discussion of whether his on-the-ground actions justify, say, a national holiday, get all mixed up with disrespecting Italo-Americans.
culture that had ceased to exist when they were erected
to some degree, but Jim Crow in the South had brought a lot of it back to life. I know, I spent part of my childhood there and saw it firsthand.
Sharecropping, btw, was just slavery by another name
Or, perhaps we should begin to look at Jefferson as a complex mixture of civilization and barbarian. The seeds of things we consider civilization seem to have found root in very strange places. Throughout history, reason and logic have resided in people who acted perfectly barbaric.
The Europeans came to view the American Indian as the noble Savage even as they participated in his demise, perhaps the first act of modern barbarism. Societies are filled with people who are at once kind and cruel. Red Cloud was so admirable in so many ways, and yet he was very cruel as well.
Man Is a mass of contradictions.
All these apologetics–people are complicated; well, those were the times; etc.–ignore the facts that a) there were plenty of people in those times who were appalled and did not participate and actively worked against these evils and b) the perpetrators of these evils often themselves left statements that revealed their dishonesty and awareness of what was right.
Roy,
The barbarism inflicted on the indigenous people of what is now the United States was certainly not the first act of modern barbarism. In the 16th century, Bartholome de Las Casas wrote about the brutal treatment of native populations in the Indies by the Spanish, who massacred them, enslaved them, and for amusement, roasted some over open fire pits. The “civilized” Spaniards treated the indigenous people as if they were animals. I read his book, “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies”. It was painful reading. Of course, there were many more horrible massacres in history, but I was not sure what you meant by “modern barbarism.”
When it comes to slavery , there was little or no practical difference between Confederates like Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jefferson. In fact, Lee actually owned far fewer slaves than Jefferson.
And while some people may object to the Confederate statues because the people they memorialize were traitors, the main reason most have objected — especially in recent times — is undoubtedly because they were fighting to preserve slavery.
I suspect that few people would even care about the statues if the Confederate states had not had slavery and had seceded for some other reason.
Spot on, SomeDAM
A statue of Robert E. Lee or any other Confederate leader is a tribute to the cause of white supremacy.
A statue of Thomas Jefferson honors him as the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.
If they had simply not had slavery.
Roy
Jefferson is only a complex contradiction if one assumes be was the source of the most famous phrase that is attributed to him: All men are created equal.
The simplest explanation is that he was not.
Jefferson owned some 600 people. He employed notoriously cruel overseers who administered with his full knowledge, brutal floggings of both men and children. Yes. Floggings, of children, as in, lashings of bare skin, leaving deep gashes, as if cut by knives. Jefferson had children at his plantation’s nail factory lashed for not showing up to work precisely on time or working hard enough. Jefferson split up families by selling some of them off. He calculated that reproduction of enslaved black bodies on his plantation gave him a steady 4 percent per year in profit and evangelized about this to others, including George Washington. He forced black children, boys and girls, whom he had bred and owned into hard, full-time labor, spinning, making cloth, and making nails. And Sally Hemmings was not the only enslaved person whom he abused sexually. Abused? Strong language? No. The consensus seems to be that Jefferson was 44 or 45 when he started abusing Sally, who was 14 or 14.
All so he could live like a king and libertine, lavishly entertaining his white guests.
A wealthy friend left Jefferson a huge amount of money in a will, for the purpose of enabling Jefferson to free the people whom he enslaved. But Jefferson did a calculation, which survives, and decided that he would make more money if he didn’t do this. So, he had the opportunity to stop being a user of others’ flesh, but he refused to take it.
But, hey, that’s not the mythical Jeff whose statues people want to keep worshiping.
Not incidentally, taking down memorials to Jefferson would be no small feat (or feet in the case of the Jefferson Memorial).
And no small head in the case of Mount Rushmore.
Then again, I have always thought Jefferson on Rushmore looked more like Martha Washington anyway, so maybe they could just add a faux granite bonnet instead of nuking the head.
Martha actually freed her dead husband’s slaves early (they were supposed to be freed only after she died), although that was mainly out of fear that they might kill her to fulfill the requirements of George Washington’s will.
I made no suggestion, one way or the other, about the dispensation of the Jefferson memorials and monuments. Here’s what I really care about: that actual history, not fascist/nationalist/white supremacist mythology, be taught in schools.
Abe Lincoln is also much prettier on Rushmore than in real life, but to be fair to Gutsom Borglum, he probably didn’t want to put an ugly duckling like Lincoln with his moles, pick marks and assymetries next to a handsome lad like Teddy Roosevelt.
On a tangential note, not sure how serious it is, but I heard there is a move to put Trump’s ass on the back side of Rushmore, although I’m not sure how people would know whether the likeness was any good.
Gosh, SomeDAM, I thought that’s what we had been looking at all this time, his ass with yellow troll-doll hair plastered to it.
Good point, Bob
Hadn’t considered that.
And if they did put Trump on the backside, they could open up a new monument called ” Mount Flushmore”
Efficient Use of a Mountain
Rushmore and Flushmore
The front and the back
The frontdoor and backdoor
The face and the crack
What I meant to imply by my comments above was not so much apologetics as recognition of the developing nature of what we define as civilization. I used the word barbarism because I have few words to describe the horrendous in history. I am, of course, familiar with Las Cassas, as well as his expose of the Spanish atrocities.
My general point is that forces promoting harmony and peace are always and are still pushing against the dark forces of dominance and subjugation. Sometimes these forces oppose each other within the divided mind of single individuals. This I tend to concur with sentiments expressed above that refrain from making too much of an individual.
Roy,
You remind of a quote from a letter of Flanders O’Connor, and I paraphrase:
“You have to push back against the world as hard as it pushes against you.”
From the experts who run Montecello, Jefferson’s home:
“Jefferson wrote that he wished to ameliorate the conditions of slavery and treat people less harshly than other violent slaveholders, but he still forced people to labor for the wealth and luxury of his white family. This force was upheld through violence, the threat of violence, family separation, and emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse.”
Bob-
Another Floridian is in the news- an advisor to Turning Point USA published an essay for his personal newsletter. It bore the logo of Turning Point. The letter’s content confirms the worst of the racism that exists among the right wing. Talking Points Memo has the details.
Yikes. Sp. Monticello
Founding fathers, founding slave owners (many of them) and the slaughter/forced removal of the indigenous first peoples. I love the country but I can’t be blind to the founding sins.
Why do you love America, if you don’t mind my asking?
I was born and raised here, the country has been very good to me and it has done many great and wonderful things. And yet it has committed some horrible crimes in the recent and distant past. Not everyone in this country is a racist bigot, there are many decent, caring folks who are humane, caring and progressive. FDR was a great president and yet the interning of Japanese-Americans into prison camps happened under his watch. It’s a conundrum. The country has been good to me and my family but I can’t be blind to the fact that the US engaged in chemical warfare against the Vietnamese, for example. We sprayed millions of gallons of agent orange on Vietnam, laced with toxins that last in the soil and water for generations. Children are being born now with horrific deformities and neurological disabilities; these children are so disabled that the parents can’t care for them on their own. It is possible to love your country in spite of all its sins and crimes because we do have redeeming qualities, we are still a free country capable of self-criticism. It’s not all negative but it’s not all honey and butterflies either.
We need history taught honestly, warts and all. Human beings have done terrible things to other human beings, which at the time were not seen as terrible by most people. A century from now, people might look at us with revulsion because we ate meat, had zoos, ignored climate change, smoked tobacco. Who knows how we will be judged in the future?
Thx, Joe.
That’s a question that perhaps all of us should answer. It’s sort of like asking why you love your spouse or even why you love your parents or your children.
It’s nearly impossible to encapsulate what “love” means in a few sentences, but it means a lot more than “because it (or they) are perfect”. Sometimes it’s easier just to list some of the reasons.
I love America because a blog like this exists, where like minded people can express their opinions without fear of being locked up. I love America because it has the capacity and means to be better, and those who want it to be better (Bernie Sanders, AOC) can speak. But like love for anything, you can recognize what they gave you and their good, while also seeing where they might have done wrong.
It is a lie that “love” requires a belief that the person or thing you love is perfect. “My country, right or wrong” is the road to fascism. We love our children, but that does not mean we approve of everything they do. And when they are young and our responsibility, we try to make them better instead of spoiling them or enabling their worst actions. On the other hand, the way each person parents is extremely individual. There is no clear right and wrong. One just has to try to muddle on and hope that they aren’t doing more harm than good. But you still love them.
The Turn of the Screw
A century from now
We might be in a zoo
Of robot or a cow
The turning of the screw
Or might be someone’s meat
On someone else’s tables
A meal for some to eat
In House of Seven Gables
The Week reported about a SPLC survey that showed 92% of high school students don’t know that slavery was a major cause of the Civil War.
!!!!!!!
Even with all the Critical Race Theory they have been incessantly exposed to? (LOL)
“We can guess and speculate all we want be we will never be able to know with certainty.” AMEN
Unless you believe, you shall not understand.
Doctrine of faith as a cognitive source…
Unless you believe the (fill in) have access to the truth
that others fail to discern, you might question their
conjuring up the thoughts of the dead, and telling you
what they knew or meant, their phenomena of clairvoyance.
Reducing the conflict to a “bicker of historians” issue,
smacks of endless debate, a BOURGEOIS trap, that
gets us NOWHERE.
“I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm, What she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.” –Thomas Jefferson on the value to him of enslaved women, 1820
That’s Jefferson’s “4% theory” in a nutshell.
“Fondling Father”
Thomas was
A Fondling Father
Not because
He wanted daughter
But because
He did enjoy
Fondling those
In his “employ”
yup
you wonder if he could also say “a woman who has no choice in my use of her” — surely Hemmings was not his only sexual property
Indeed. And he started the abuse of Hemmings when she was just a child and he was on the verge of old age.
I spelled her name wrong. It is Hemings. They had six children together, of whom only four survived. More about this in a future post.
Yeah, me too. My apologies.
It was Sally’s mother whose name was spelling Hemmings, I see on doing a little sleuthing, and she was herself the daughter of a black mother, Elizabeth Hemmings, and the person who “owned” Elizabeth, John Wayles.
So both spellings are correct. Monticello museum uses one M.
I used to live just below Monticello. My visitors would always make me take them. I have done that tour many, many times. It’s a fascinating (and horrifying) place.
Jefferson’s slaves all lived “below Monticello” too, both figuratively and literally.
The Jefferson Fraud
His slaves lived down below
Behind the front facade
Should not be seen, you know
By folks who think you’re God
Reading these comments show how much fun it is to study history and the other social sciences, or studies, who cares. There is information, data if you will, subject to all the varied interpretations we enjoy arguing about. It’s fun and it is no different than the “hard” sciences like the current interpretations of whether I, a Johnson and Johnson, vaccine recipient should get a dose of one of the mRNA vaccines. We try to be as objective as possible, and are willing to alter our interpretations, that is being “scientific.” The reactions of the readers of Diane’s blog have great discussions. By the way, this is why I advocate for the use of Public Forum debate in the classroom. Students are forced to defend a side they might or might not agree with, a lot of fun as well as a great intellectual exercise.
Thank you, I keep the blog going for two reasons: 1) I love to communicate ideas; 2) I enjoy the readers’s comment and learn from them
Yet many people seem to be obsessed with the veneer of
worthy goals, of the Simon Sez document, enacted by slave
owners and merchants, as if the proof of this strategy
has yet to be revealed in the results.
If it ain’t the repubs, it’s the dinos, or the Parliamentarian, or the unwashed voters, or the hackers,
or the rooskies, or the what-abouters, or the anything
under the sun BUT the institutional mechanisms
established by the ptb that DOESN’T
hobble their powers.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this:
If you have been captured by the bambozzle…
Again and again in the Time article, conservatives asserted that it was the left which bears the responsibility of increasing divisiveness in our country regarding race. This is a conscious attempt on the part of the Right Wing to blame racism on anyone but the racists.
Their line is that great men like MLK solved the problem of racism in 1964. After that, peace reigned until the election of Obama, who fanned the embers of race to get elected. Recall that this group also believed there was widespread fraud in Trump’s defeat in 2020, and many of them accept outlandish conspiracy theories about everything from drugs to forest fires.
The issues surrounding when a student is capable of shedding the veil of sugar-coated history pales by comparison to when an adult should cease to believe that there are lasers in outer space causing fires.
These are the same people who hounded and denigrated MLK when he was alive. Pretend that racism all went away way back then while ratcheting it up. Liars, fully aware that they are lying, and so con artists. Creeps. White supremacists keeping their Klan robes hidden and maintaining plausible deniability. “Nobody is loved more by the blacks than Trump.” Just like the kid in class who pushes books off a desk or throws spitballs while the teacher’s back is turned. “What? I didn’t do nothin.'”
The right wing’s headline written by a father of 8 in Alaska, “CNN publishes hit piece on Kelly Tshibaka’s faith, Christian beliefs.”
Tshibaka is Trump’s pick for Murkowski’s seat.
Hypocrites.
The religious politic for policies that the majority of Americans don’t want but, they invoke the tribe when that politicking is called out for the anathema it is, in a nation where separation of church and state is the law of the land.
No surprise, legacy-admission Harvard grad, Tshibaka, wants to deny freedom to others.
Evidently, there’s no room in the GOP for a pro-choice Republican Catholic (Murkowski) when Trump prefers the hard right, anti-abortion, “Christian”, Kelly Tshibaka.
There are political leaders who scream loudly against abortion because it has been created as the only issue. These same leaders would roast babies and sell the rendered lard if it would made them a dime. Catch them at it and they get elected anyway.
Case in point: representative Scott Dejarlais of my district in Tennessee was outed a decade ago for urging his girlfriend to abort the unfortunate result of their extramarital affair. The electorate put him right back in there, rejecting a person of impeccable conservatism in the primary. When it came to running against a Democrat in the general election there was no contest. The abortionist won by double digits. The anti-abortion Democrat was way behind.
And we all know why.
You are right- the abortion issue is a pretense at fake respectability for people who want a nation run by authoritarian bullies. Many if not most of them are racists and sexists.
“Some of her critics argued that this claim was untrue and that it slandered our Founding Fathers.”
Those critics are as willingly ignorant as Traitor Trump.
Many of the major Founding Fathers owned numerous slaves, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Others owned only a few slaves, such as Benjamin Franklin. Of the first 12 U.S. presidents, eight were slave owners.
The only Founding Fathers that never owned slaves were John Adams, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Paine.
The Claremont Institute’s honorary fellows include James O’Keefe (Daily Beast article this week), Christopher Rufo (New Yorker article about CRT), Jack Posobiec (controversial right winger described by Wikipedia), the editor-in-chief of the Daily Caller News Foundation (an organization with links to Tucker Carlson), faculty from 3 universities (all 3 Catholic), the Executive Director of the Kansas Catholic Conference, a columnist for the Catholic Herald, lots of employees of Koch’s Heritage Foundation, Cato, AFP and ALEC, a Breitbart employee, a chief of staff to Nigel Farge, two from the American Principles Project (an organization with links to Robert P. George) and, a 2021 Fellow, Jack Murphy, among others.
A “Jack Murphy” was exec. director of 2 Wash. D.C. charter schools. He was the subject of the WAMU, 1-24-2018 article, “D.C. Charter School Board Investigating Senior Employee for Alleged Alt-Right Links”. Think Progress posted Murphy’s disgusting public writings- the most vile attacks against women I’ve ever read.
The Claremont Institute posted photos of almost 100 Lincoln Fellows since 2015. The array appears to show only one Black person, who was inducted back in 2015.
Jefferson no more believed that blacks and whites were created equal than I believe that Donald Trump wrote the Oxford English Dictionary. Anyone who harbors such a delusion should check out Jeff’s interaction with Benjamin Banneker.
Agreed. Jefferson did not believe that blacks and whites were equal. His own children by Hemings were enslaved on his estate.
Trump wrote the Shocksword English Dictionary
Some may postulate that Jefferson’s impregnation of black women who were held in slavery made him a worse man than his slave ownership. He allowed himself ownership of black people based on rhetorical excuses. Coupling with women, both white and black, meant he understood both to be human.
When this started, she was not only owned by him, but she was also a child–14 or 15 years old. He was 44 or 45.
The age of consent in Virginia in 1780 was an appalling 10 years old. This was raised to an appalling 12 years old in 1820. Nonetheless, enslaved persons could not refuse those legally recognized as their owners, so it was impossible for Sally to consent. She was too young, and she wasn’t free to make her own choices in such matters.
But certainly he sat, literally, for decades, atop of mountain of degradation, exploitation, and cruelty from which he benefited on a quotidian basis. Exploitation of others based on their being inferior to him was his everyday reality. He was a hypocrite who preached democracy and lived like the most cruel and exploitative of monarchs.
This has been an interesting comment thread.
Hello,
I wonder if those who are willing to condemn others for their flaws would be able and willing to discuss their own moral and personal failings, challenges and struggles?? I guess as I get older I try to see the times in which people lived and accept that there is a range of what can be called “good” and “bad” in everyone. It’s the nature of human beings. We can all sit on our high horses and condemn others but how many times have we enslaved ourselves, betrayed ourselves, lied to ourselves, been deceitful, harmed ourselves and others, etc. And yet, how many times have we loved unconditionally, sacrificed something for another person, been kind? As a wise person once said, “Nothing human is alien to me.” We are an evolving species. We don’t have to “worship” people like Jefferson but we can learn about him and think about him in human terms and recognize the positive and negative aspects of him and the time in which he lived. There is much we will never know. To see people as they are, with no worship and projections, I think, is a hallmark of a mature and wise person.
Those are good points. I don’t think anyone here is saying not to teach the positive and negative aspects.
I think the statue debate probably reflects “worship” and the failure of the teaching of history. LBJ did some good things and also some bad things. History generally recognizes that and there aren’t statues and memorials to him. Truman and FDR aren’t worshipped the way the founding fathers were. Even JFK, cut down young, is now perceived with flaws. But somehow the old perceptions of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and other founding fathers seem to be sacrosanct.
I notice Trump-worship is similar to sacrosanct worship of some of the founding fathers. It’s not surprising his fans believe Trump should be on Mount Rushmore. It’s not surprising his enablers want the teaching of history to keep the idealized image of the founding fathers and Lincoln sacrosanct.
From up here on my own high horse, it appears to me that with the words “All Men are created equal”, Jefferson effectively begged to be judged according to a very high standard.
If Jefferson had said “Some men are created equal but others are bound to be slaves” he would not have been called a hypocrite but he also would never have achieved the towering reputation he did (undeservedly, in my opinion) as a proponent of the equality and inalienable rights of ALL human beings. He would just have been another politician with self serving policies.
Have we all made idealistic statements and then refused to live up to them in reality?
You mean like saying ” all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” and then proceeding to keep hundreds of human beings as your slaves to satisfy your every need and desire?
No, we have not all done that.
Jefferson tansgressions of his ideal statements went far far beyond anything that I (and I expect you and most other people ) are guilty of.
Because everyone is guilty of some amount of transgression does not mean that everyone is guilty to the same degree.
And degree matters a great deal.
Hello SomeDAMPoet,
So, should those words NOT have been written in the founding document of this country? No matter who wrote them, it wasn’t going to be the reality of the country. So what should have been written?
That the words not be written is certainly not what I have suggested.
There is no problem at all with the words as written.
I take issue only with the continued veneration and seeming apologetics of a man who unequivocally did not believe the words.
Why should any American have any respect for (to say nothing of veneration of) a man who not only did not believe but openly flouted the principles upon which America is founded?
You make an interesting point, SDP. TJ articulated the principles by which we now judge him.
Unlike the Texas founding documents that say “this is a white man’s country.” Gov Abbott adheres to those principles almost 200 years later.
From the Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson (Smithsonian Magazine)
“We can be forgiven if we interrogate Jefferson posthumously about slavery. It is not judging him by today’s standards to do so. Many people of his own time, taking Jefferson at his word and seeing him as the embodiment of the country’s highest ideals, appealed to him. When he evaded and rationalized, his admirers were frustrated and mystified; it felt like praying to a stone. The Virginia abolitionist Moncure Conway, noting Jefferson’s enduring reputation as a would-be emancipator, remarked scornfully,“Never did a man achieve more fame for what he did not do.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/
My thoughts exactly.
Mamie, thanks for a wise statement. All of us are flawed. All of us have done things, said things that we are ashamed of now. Slavery is abhorrent. But at the time that the U.S. became a nation, several of our venerated Founders owned slaves. I don’t approve of TJ’s relationship with Hemings, which was abusive in the extreme. I’m glad that his secret, if it ever was a secret, is now widely acknowledged. It might reduce our national habit of turning past heroes into deities. All of them were mortal and had clay feet.
This argument, if carried to its conclusion, would suggest that we should completely eliminate punishment for crimes. Those judges, sitting on their high horses and condemning others for rape, murder, genocide, enslavement–don’t they realize that we all have our little peccadilloes?
High Horse Judgement
Judges sit on horses
High above the crowd
Using legal forces
To say what us allowed
Is allowed
Autocorrects sit on horses
High above the crowd
Using browser forces
To say what us allowed
I’ve been writing little poems for friends based on autocorrect errors in texts. Good fun. Here, “sourdough bread” was changed to “spurned bread.” So, a haiku:
The bread I left her
In the cornflower basket?
It goes uneaten.
and “making biscuits tomorrow” was corrected to “making biscuits timorous.” So, a free verse lyric:
Bow down and lick my boots
Ye galley slaves,
For I am queen of the kitchen!
Lo, even the biscuits are timorous!
is allowed.
Damned high horses
“don’t they realize that we all have our little peccadilloes?”
Palominos too
I don’t think that’s the logical conclusion, Bob. It’s easy to condemn others and make excuses for ourselves. A bit more self-reflection is always a good thing. At least in my case!
But as I indicated above, I don’t even believe Jefferson was the true author of the words All Men Are Created Equal — to say nothing of that he actually believed them (which he certainly did not,)
I believe Thomas Paine was the much more likely author, so I actually find the focus on Jefferson to be misplaced.
Why can’t we view Thomas Jefferson the way we view LBJ? LBJ’s Great Society programs were praiseworthy. His willingness to address civil rights was praiseworthy. Other things were not, including Vietnam. We view FDR and Truman the same way – both good and bad. Truman, who dropped atomic bombs on civilians, also fought for Medicare.
The founding fathers seem to be placed on a pedestal, when there is no reason to do so.
“All Men Are Created Equal”
They’re equal in creation —
Except the ones who ain’t.
The blacks on my plantation
Were born to pick and paint
Slaves on my plantation ”
Would be better.
Well, I was wrong about one thing, above. Jefferson did, on his death, free his children by Hemings. Whether these were his only children by the women he enslaved is unknown.
So he freed his own children from slavery after he had exploited them for years.
What a magnanimous mensch.
And only after he died, to make sure he got that last bit of profit out if the.
A veritable supermensch!
yup
I bet Jefferson not only had children on his own plantation but on other plantations he visited as well.
Think about it. If you were a slaveowner trying to get into Jefferson’s good graces what “gift” could you give to such a man of great wealth that would most please him?
All
Men$lave$ are Created EqualThomas mocked
His Declaration
People talked
Of slave plantation:
All created
Equally
$lave equated
With a fee
Giving up mythologies is difficult. Many people react to inconvenient realities that might force them to do so by RATIONALIZING, often mightily. When a very popular mythology is crumbling under the weight of evidence, one typically ends up with hundreds, even thousands of rationalizations. But, ofc, rationalization shouldn’t be confused with being rational.
Others, ofc, react by attempting to enact the mythology–to make belief in and teaching of it mandatory. That’s fascist, of course, and it’s precisely what the right-wing is attempting to do right now–to take over K-12 school curricula to preserve their mythologies. I really worry about where this might lead in the next couple years.
“Traitor: person who betrays a friend, country, principle, etc.”
Fits Jefferson to a T.
Jefferson betrayed the very principles upon which the nation was founded.
Principles that he himself (supposedly) articulated in the Declaration of Independence.
Traitor Thomas
Jefferson was a traitor
A human being trader
Emancipation hater
And principle evader
If students had been taught the truth that Jefferson didn’t live by his words, it’s possible that the abuses of the 1920’s and, the reckonings of the late 1960’s and 2016-2021 could have been avoided. Instead, the nation’s past 100 years could have reflected a nation striving for and achieving fairness.
Imagine what it must be like for a young African American when they learn that the man and his supposed high minded principles were a complete fraud.
We don’t even have to imagine
Left coast teacher describes that very experience for one of their own students
https://dianeravitch.net/2021/07/13/the-life-of-sally-hemings-an-exhibit-at-monticello/#comment-3270211
BTW, I find the apologetics for Jefferson puzzling when they come from people who know the history.
I can at least understand it when people do not know anything other than the myths they have been endlessly exposed to.