The current Internet discussion rule among liberals and conservatives alike is that any mention of Jefferson must point out the hypocrisy of his owning slaves, and choosing a black woman to mother his late life children. Er, excuse me, I have that meme wrong, he fucked a slave woman.
Never mind that politically, culturally and economically it would have been impossible and possibly immoral to free his slaves, according to present day standards he was a hypocrite.
Not the least of his problems was that he inherited via his first wife, 135 slaves and a large debt ridden estate. The sensible thing to do would be to sell off the slaves and the land separately, as the package without a resident manager would not have paid the debt. So as an honorable, socially responsible slave owner he had to pay off the debts and maintain the business as a slave employing plantation.
Even the usually thoughtful and liberal The Weekly Sift devotes a short paragraph in an otherwise excellent post to trashing the founding fathers for owning slaves and includes the "Fact" that a sizeable chunk of Jefferson's surviving children were "fathered on a slave."
Any person serving in the public sphere as a politician, entertainer, author, or even a blogger deserves the respect of not being trashed on some aspect of herm private life that you disagree with. Herm public service actions and publications should stand alone as herm public reputation. Private actions should be dealt with in the private sector, and kept there even if private actions become public through public records as in criminal convictions. Many public servants have private indescretions resulting in a legal record, that are largely ignored. Gossip about private activities are even less deserving of public airing to besmirch the reputation of our public figures.
Context
22 hours ago
1 comment:
We've read about slaves in history books but what stands out most to us are the movies we've seen, starting with Roots.I believe that at first the idea was to be an indentured servant out of one's own choice, but owing to man's nature things did go very wrong. By the time people were being kidnapped from the Ivory Coast and brought to America, those were warlike with gun powder weapons being used, which the Africans did not have. They couldn't protect themselves. Speaking of Jefferson, he was too refined a man to work the Africans to death or beat them. Giving them up to another slave owner could mean their death and so he kept them on. We can only speculate about his relationship between Sally and himself. She did leave the plantation and took a home in the town later in life. She was not treated like a slave. She was free to go.
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