Also: the slavery practiced in other areas was not especially evil, in my understanding. From the little I know of medieval Arabic slavery, it was often a pretty decent life; slaves had significant rights and privileges in some cases. Slavery among some Native American groups merged so much with family ties that it became difficult to tell where one began and the other ended.
These weren’t utopian institutions by any means, but they were nowhere near as horrific as American chattel slavery was, in my understanding. I think ywtf’s analogy was apt.
Generally, I am also in the former camp. However, as I said earlier, none of us can say what our “enlightened” views would have been if we had lived in such a different age. I also believe that it is more appropriate to refer to a society in general as morally deficient, rather than any particular individual in that society, who will be more or less in agreement with society as a whole. The truly great individuals will buck the system altogether, but not everyone is made up of that kind of stuff…either they don’t have the vision necessary, or they don’t have the guts. That’s why such people are called heroes. The example given of the type of slaveowner that George Washington was is a good one…he clearly was more enlightened than most slaveowners, although not up to the standards of our day. Perhaps as the “father of our country” he should have done more, but none of us will ever know exactly what he was up against.
It is certainly useful, but again, I think that you have to see it in context.
One thousand years ago, it was accepted by nearly all learned Europeans that illness was the result of an imbalance of the body’s humors. An excess of phlegm, a lack of bile, these could cause any disease.
Questions:
Was everyone who believed this incorrect?
Was everyone who believed this stupid?
When it’s suggested that a 17th century person is evil for owning slaves, is it by analogy closer to calling them incorrect or stupid?
I see it as closer to calling them incorrect, although it’s somewhere between the two. I think a lot of y’all see it as closer to calling them stupid. This is probably part of the disconnect.
You might want to double check Arabic slavery. I don’t know how it was in medeival times, but it was pretty damn bad in the 18th and 19th century, and I know that they used galley slaves before then. There are quite a few good accounts of American sailors who were enslaved in north Africa in the first half of the 1800’s, and it was pretty awful for them, including starvation rations, beatings, etc.
Well, sure, but I think you need to see it in the full context, which not only includes the other slave owners, but also includes the people who were murdered on the ships coming over, the whips used to torture slaves into submission, the casual and pervasive rapes, and so on. The context also includes the obvious struggles that slaveowners had with the atrocities that underpinned their system, and the context also includes their contemporaries (e.g., Quakers) who refused to own slaves even though legally they could.
Actually it’s brought up in most of the literature on her. What’s odd is that so many people still rabidly deny Jefferson’s paternity in spite of the overwhelming (while DNA proved only that one of Sally’s children was fathered by a male Jefferson, the combination of oral history/circumstantial evidence/probability and the lack of any evidence for other Jeffeson men being regular visitors to Monticello at the time of Sally’s conceptions along with the fact that for more than a century the embarassed Jefferson family pointed their fingers at his sister’s sons who were exonerated [at least of Eston’s paternity] by the DNA, would get her child support in almost any court); however, the same people will accept as granted Sally Hemings’s paternity by John Wayles even though there’s never been genetic testing done and only oral history to say she was. (I have no problem believing she was, I just think the dichotomy’s interesting.)
Again, look at how I qualified what I said. Mentioning awful circumstances for some 19th century Arabic slaves in no way contradicts what I said about conditions for some medieval Arabic slaves. I did not claim that conditions were great one hundred years later, or that conditions were great for all medieval slaves, or even that conditions were great for any medieval slaves–only that for some medieval slaves, conditions were much better than for American chattel slaves.
Actually, most practicing western doctors believed this until the mid-19th Century. Galileo presumably believed in it. Should we discount his theories of a heliocentric planetary system because he was primitive enough to believe in the 4 bodily humours? Of course not. Likewise, slaveholders in a culture where slaveholding was not yet condemned get consideration.
No one denies that he had slaves and few people (no one on these boards, AFAIK) doubt that he fathered children by Sally Hemmings. My contention is that this behavior, painful though it is to modern eyes, has to be seen in the context of his times. Convince me that he flogged slaves recreationally, and I’ll back off this point.
By modern standards, the heroes of the Book of Genesis were all depraved monsters. In context, they were rough men in rough times hewing to virtue as they understood it. Whatever enlightenment we hold today, we get from standing on the shoulders of the flawed-but-virtuous men who discovered it by degrees.
Well, of course, the full context is what I meant. And there were people who refused to own slaves. These people were on the far end of “goodness,” IMO. There were people who risked their own lives to free slaves, too. These people are beyond “goodness,” treading into “hero” realm. That’s my point…the society was corrupt in this regard, and individuals had different levels of culpability.
I get the feeling you’re not following the analogy. You’re suggesting that slaveowning is equivalent to incorrect but not stupid, right? Which is exactly what I said.
Sure, we shouldn’t discount Galileo’s theories because of his belief in the bodily humors. Nor, however, should we say, “Well, given how great he was, his belief in the bodily humors must have been great, too.” Nor should we say, “His belief in bodily humors was correct at the time; it’s only since then that bacteria and viruses have started causing disease.”
Galileo was right about some things and terribly wrong about some things. Jefferson was great about some things and terribly evil about some things.
I’m not Osiris. I’m not weighing Jefferson’s soul against a feather. I’m using what he did to examine moral issues. And I can accept that he did good things and bad things.
Slight hijack, but- much is written about the 50,000+ Irish slaves sent to the Caribbean by Cromwell (including a quite good Flogging Molly song) as well as thousands of Scots and occasionally English folk sold into slavery in the Caribbean and Virginia by Cromwell. However, it’s rarely in great depth and just rehashes the same facts: it happened, many if not most died in the Caribbean from heat and disease, etc… Many of them were owned by the Anglican Church and worked on the plantations the church owned, but were others treated as chattel slaves or more as indentured servants or an underclass? Was the practice of “white slavery” (not as in prostitution but as in literaly white Europeans enslaved) ended all at once?
(Little known I’ve found is that in Virginia during the 17th century when the rules weren’t all made, many African slaves were treated as indentured servants and freed after 7 years, and many African women married [not cohabited with, but married white men [though I believe a law prohibited white woman/black man marriage], though all this ended long before the turn of the 17th/18th century.)
In many parts of the country during those days, recreational flogging of slaves was no big deal. Rape wasn’t either. Neither was siring a child and then selling him/her off to another person, never to be seen again. So it seems rather arbitrary to require that Jefferson be physically abusive before you judge him as immoral.
Not just risked, many were killed. When I was a kid I rode to school every morning past the site of Alabama’s first penitentiary- a dilapidated old ruin built ca. 1840 [that the state would NOT restore and just let fall down in spite of it’s incredible historical value]. The first man ever imprisoned there was sentenced to 20 years at hard labor for the crime of teaching slaves to read and helping them escape. He was a slaveowner. (Perfect disguise, neh? One of Harriet Tubman’s conductors was also a slaveowner who kept her 2 slaves as camouflage- an open abolitionist is going to be the first suspected in helping slaves escape while a slaveowner would likely not be.)
He did not serve the full time because, like George Bluth in Mexico, he found “a loophole in the local judicial system”- he gave the guards money and they didn’t notice when he escaped.
The real shame about the white southerners who worked on the Underground Railroad is that most of their names are completely lost to history. They never “came out” during their own lives because even after the Civil War they would have been hated and there would likely have been retaliation.
Perhaps my post came off as too confrontational. What I should have said is that things were bad for slaves in North Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries, who’s accounts I’ve happend to have read. I did say that I didn’t know about the medeival period. I was simply observing that just because some slaves in the medeival Muslim world were treated well, it may not mean that slavery there was any more gentle; and based on accounts I’ve read from a few hundred years later that involve the same galley slavery which existed during the medeival period, it wasn’t. We could easily find examples of slaves in the US who were treated well. But that isn’t necessarily illustrative of the nature of the institution.
The practice was eventually codified in the Transportation Act of 1718, which provided for the sale of criminals to the West Indies and America, and then, after the loss of America, to Australia. Transport to Australia continued until 1857, and was formally abolished in 1868.
Actually, I’m not sure you could find examples of slaves in the US who were treated as well as the top tier of slaves in the medieval Arab world were treated, which was my point behind bringing those guys up.
On the subject of Jefferson and flogging slaves, he personally did not nor did he tolerate “recreational flogging”, but he is known to have kept an overseer who he himself acknowledges used the whip too much because he was otherwise a good overseer who made Monticello profitable. The other bad things I’ve read of him as a slaveowner involve:
*A young male slave who was a habitual runaway irked Jefferson’s patience so much that upon his last recovery from an escape Jefferson (who was absent from M’cello) gave explicit instructions to the farm managers to remove the slave from his cabin at night and [I’m paraphrasing because I don’t have the source in front of me] “make it look to all as if he simply vanished and was killed” and to answer no questions about what had become of him. (In fact the slave was taken away and sold to slavetraders, who were considered the lowest of the low on southern society [hypocritical? yes- but not only true, it’s one of the reasons selfmade millionaire and slave-trader Nathan Bedford Forrest was not advanced more during the Civil War].)
*He did order the flogging of at least one slave- the slave failed to rub down Jefferson’s favorite horse and the horse caught chill, then the slave lied about it and infuriated Jefferson.
*When one of his daughters was attacked by a dog that belonged to a slave Jefferson (who was a cat-person, not a dog person) ordered every dog on the place rounded up and killed. (To a dog lover like me that’s an atrocity.)
Not enough is known about his affair with Sally to make a judgment as to whether it began as rape, mutual attraction, or a long-term matter of mutual convenience (the one I think most probable). However, the undeniable truth of the matter is that if it did begin as rape, Sally would have had absolutely no say or recourse in the matter.
In a 2 hour course I teach on writing research papers and what is and isn’t primary or secondary or popular or scholarly source material I give a 15 minute presentation called “TJ and the Two Minervas”. Pity I can’t upload the PPT as I’m quite proud of it (though if you’re interested in how it’s relevant, after the presentation I go back through and as a class assignment we pick out what quotes and facts would need citing, which are primary/secondary and scholarly/popular, etc.). I say with some pride I’ve made grown students gasp and wipe their eyes with this, and it gives both sides of Jefferson.