Can a Slaveholder Ever Be Considered a Good Person?

Great Debates
161

The really really short version: There were two Minervas who represent the facets of Jefferson’s life. The first was the Roman goddess of wisdom. She is referenced several times in Jefferson’s letters.
In 1815, after the Capitol and its library were burned, Jefferson proposed the new Library of Congress and seeded it with the bulk of his personal library which he sent to D.C. (11 wagon loads containing 6,800 books) and for which he was paid $23,950 (some of those things that require cites in a paper). This nearly killed him, but in addition to believing that there’s no subject Congress shouldn’t have information on (lengthy quote) he desperately needed the money. (An irony is that in the LoC gift shop there are all sorts of decorations and souveniers with Jefferson’s quote “I cannot live without books”, which always makes me snort just a tad as apparently he could or the LoC wouldn’t be there.) Also included in the purchase were Jefferson’s (ingenious if no longer possible) cataloging/classification system and a few doo-dads, including a bust of Minerva he had purchased in France.

Another Minerva was born around 1765-1770 on Jefferson’s mother’s plantation at Tuckahoe (now available for weddings- though where Minerva would have lived in a part that looked more like the images on this page where a wedding wouldn’t be so romantic. She was very possibly named by Jefferson himself (masters often named their slaves). She married Bagwell, the phrase “Till death or distance do we part” probably appearing in their vows. She and Bagwell had many children, 7 of whom survived to adulthood. We know that in October 1799 she and her husband and their then 5 kids received “16 dried herring, seven pecks of cornmeal and two pounds of beef” as their monthly ration. She would also have received rice (which was plentiful) but to put off hunger she and her husband would have relied on their own vegetable garden and chickens (which slaves at Monticello kept), which they would have tended to in their abundant free time.
Minerva’s weekly schedule: Monday through Saturday: wake before dawn, prepare breakfast for her family, then go to the fields (indigo/rice/tobacco depending on the year and time of year). Two hour break at high noon during the hottest period of the year, then return to the field and work until sundown. In other words, she put in a 14 hour day in very hot weather doing physically demanding work before coming home to tend to her husband and their many children and going to bed to get up at dawn and do the whole thing over again. Sundays she was off and probably spent the time getting facials and eating bon-bons— or tending to her own garden and chickens that kept the family from starvation and mending/laundering clothes (few slaves at Monticello had more than one set of clothing and those that did were exceptionally proud of them).

Minerva’s home was 20 x 12 with a loft and probably looked like this (a drawing based on archaeological digs at M’cello). It was located on Mulberry Row and probably had a small loft and a crude storage pit. If she had prize possessions they were probably decorations made of African shells, which have been found in profusion in the cabins of M’cello and other Virginia plantations and are something of a mystery. So, she and her family (up to 9 people) lived in 240 square feet (which I will say only this in Jefferson’s defense- a free white family of modest means would not have lived much better, but then they were free and white) and for the 7 of them in 1799 they had 2 lbs. of beef per month to eat anyway they pleased. (Jefferson’s wine bill along exceeded $100 per month and he is known to have spent $50 on groceries for his own dinner more than a few times.)

Back to Minerva 1: Most of the books Jefferson sold Congress were destroyed in a fire, but the idea of the ultimate library at least survived (with much opposition). Finally in the 1880s after a big battle funds were approved for a suitable housing- The Thomas Jefferson Building (beautiful close-up, you can’t see the details in that pic). Much of the building was inspired by Jefferson’s notes: the front doors are Imagination & Memory (based on the 2 main components of his classification system) and through them you enter the corridors where the white marble and explosions of color begin. On the second floor, after passing numerous little “hidden winks” in the architecture and gorgeous marble and artwork everywhere (you could go there everyday for a month and not take it all in) you come to the grand staircase and at the top of it is the mosaic of Minerva, based on Jefferson’s own words. (At the top of these stairs you can overlook the Main . Reading. Room, which no photos can do justice. It’s a temple of knowledge that makes you feel what the Athenians must have felt when they saw the statue of Pallas in the Parthenon.

Back to a Minerva less grandly attired: she labored in Jefferson’s fields until 1827. She was in her late 50s by then, the mother of 7 children, grandmother and great-grandmother to many more, her husband now infirm as well. Minerva if she was like other slaves was probably nearly hunchbacked from her years in the rice and whatever shade her skin was at birth she would have been black as coffee (a commodity she wouldn’t have had very often if at all) from the sun.
Jefferson was dead a year. His lavish lifestyle (including constant OCD rebuilding of Monticello and his getaway mansionette), bad harvests, lavish lifestyle, really bad investments, supporting his huge family when his son-in-law went mad, metrosexual accoutrement of all kind, co-signing for friends who defaulted, and other factors (but the lavish living most definitely did not help and probably pushed him over the edge) resulted in his dying bankrupt with debts far exceeding his assets. For a year the slaves at Monticello (minus the 5 he freed in his will and Sally Hemings, who was probably informally manumitted in a gentleman’s agreement) must have awaited the sword of Damocles as they knew what was coming, and it did. Creditors came and they met every one of the slaves remaining- about 130 of them- to appraise them.

Minerva’s value was listed as nothing. $0.00

A relative of Jefferson’s did her a kindness- he bought her off of the block at the first auction for $20. He also bought her husband, who went for $50 because in spite of his age he was in better condition and had a skill. He essentially put them out to pasture- he gave them a cabin on his plantation and only the lightest work. That was half of her retirement package.

The other half was seeing all 7 of her children and all of her grandchildren and all of her great-grandchildren sold at one of the three auctions between 1827 and 1831. They had lived around her their entire life and most of them she never saw again. The same with her brothers and sisters and their families. For that matter, all of Sally’s surviving sisters and all but one of her surviving brothers and most of their families- sold away. Joe Fossett, Sally’s nephew, was freed in Jefferson’s will- his wife and 10 children were not and they were sold to several different masters.

It’s impossible to imagine exactly what had to have gone through the minds of Minerva and Bagwell and Fossett, so let’s just focus on one thing. Imagine the thought of seeing your most attractive daughter sold, and you have absolutely no idea who bought her or what awaits her, and if what awaits her is nightly rape by her new owner, or his son, or his overseer, or other slaves, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it and any court in the world would at best laugh at you and show you the door.*

In any case, I first heard the story of Black Minerva at M’cello while on a tour of Mulberry Row waiting for my appointed time to tour the mansion. By the time I got to the mansion I hated Jefferson and saw in every marble bust and every portrait and every set of silk bedclothes and every clock and every gold or silver shoe buckle the whole Oskar Schindler thing of "They’d have given you a slave for that buckle… at least a child, they’d surely have given you a child- an Italian artisan worked for months on that bust, you could have bought Minerva’s youngest son or grandchild for what you paid him for a fucking decoration at one of your two mansions! THAT OTHER MANSION WOULD HAVE LIBERATED DOZENS OF THESE PEOPLE FROM THEIR FATES!

Anyway, that has none of the emotional wallop I can pack into the lecture and slideshow nor does it teach MLA, but it’s why I hate TJ. And the other Minerva is why I like him (I usually go into more detail on her and his intellectual achievements). He was living proof that you can be a great man without being a good man.

*My first wake-up call re slavery was my twin great-aunts, born in 1889, recalling a cheese and sausage maker they loved as a child called “Aunt Pig”. She was so-called because as a child she had been a very attractive light skinned slave, and her mother cut off her nose with a butcher knife, giving her a pig-like expression. It was an act of love because, to quote the aunts, “men wasn’t always kind towards colored women in those days”.

162

I was just trying to protect the good name of Jefferson.

Marc

163

Beautiful post with a wonderful ending. Thanks for making it; I wish I could hear the lecture sometime.

Daniel

164

I think this impression comes from the idea that most slaves in the American South lived on huge 100+ slave plantations. In reality the majority of slaves in the south lived on small farms with only 1 or 2 slaves. You don’t think that in at least some of those situations the slaves were treated pretty well?

165

It sort of seems like what you’re saying is that you don’t think slavery in itself is bad. You think American slavery was bad, because American slaves were treated badly, but in a culture where slaves were treated well, like your example of the medieval Arab world (where I’m not sure slaves were treated as well as you think, but…), slavery isn’t bad.

166

The majority of slave owners were owners of one or two slaves, but I believe the majority of slaves lived on the big plantations. That was, at least, the case in North Carolina, which had relatively fewer big plantations than its neighbors to the north and south.

If that math seems wonky, imagine three slave owners. The first owns one slave; the second owns two slaves; the third owns three hundred slaves. In this scenario, most slave owners own one or two; most slaves live on a big plantation.

At any rate, I actually don’t think that in at least some of those situations the salves were treated as well as the top tier of medieval Arabic slaves, which is the goalpost I set. That’s because those medieval Arabic slaves had more legal rights and sometimes had positions that were equivalent to upper-class, one step below royalty. They were sometimes highly educated and personally owned a great deal of wealth.

Again, the reason I raised the point about Arabic slaves was to explain why I want to limit my discussion to American chattel slavery, because it’s a phenomenon distinct from other forms and deserves discussion by itself.

Daniel

167

This page gives an interesting introduction to slavery in the Ottoman Empire (which now that I think about it may not be precisely “medieval”–does that term have a definition outside of Europe?). Note that such slavery included prostitution, murder of slaves, child slavery, and other evils. BUT it also included things like the appointment of slaves to top government positions, the manumission of slaves after a set number of years, the diversion of an enemy’s children into government bureaucracies in order to assimilate them into the culture, and so forth.

That’s what I’m talking about when I say that Arabic medieval (more properly Ottoman, I suppose) slavery was not always as bad as American chattel slavery.

Daniel

168

Another reason I believe it’s appropriate to focus the discussion on American slavery between the 17th and 18th century is because I rarely hear people idolizing historical figures from the distant past. We talk about the philosophies of Socrates and the discoveries of Galileo, but rarely do I see anyone talking about how “good” these people were. We are able to separate their accomplishments from their character.

Jefferson and friends, in contrast, are frequently treated like moral heros. We are pressured to see them as “the good guys” because of what they accomplished. So we are more apt to turn a blind eye to things that detract from this image, instead of being objective about.

169

On the contrary: Objectivity about Jefferson’s slave-owning is the only thing I’m asking from you. An historical whitewash would be denial that he owned slaves, and a refutation that Sampiro’s Two Minervas story ever happened.

It happened.

But if this were the heaviest ammunition that later Abolitionists had–if Jefferson’s shortcomings as a visionary for the black race were the worst of it–I really suspect that American slavery would have hung on well into the 20th Century.

Jefferson didn’t have the perspective to see blacks as full human beings. The evidence was there, but he wasn’t culturally able to process it. And the people who did so later largely did it from a foundation that Jefferson had a strong hand in forming. Jefferson, for all his accomplishments, didn’t have the inclination to be the savior and emancipator of the black race. His admirers look instead to the good things he did do.

There are issues of social justice that Gandhi and King could have taken up, in addition to the ones that we remember them for. Are those moral shortcomings, or just causes they couldn’t get around to in one lifetime? Jefferson played the hand he was dealt very, very well. Sorry he didn’t break the bank for you.

170

So do you think we should be calling him a “good person”?

171

What do you mean? Racism was an after-the-fact development of Jefferson’s era to explain the differences in development of different cultures. It wasn’t some default state-of-mind that existed throughout history until recently. The idea that blacks were also fully human wasn’t a non-existent concept - in fact that’s the reason Jefferson debated the idea with himself in his writings (if he took that for granted, he would never have questioned it).

172

I do see what you’re saying. To take it one step further the Malmukes who wound up ruling Egypt were actually a class of slave/soldiers.

I also think that it IS important to note that slaves in the US system were as bad or worse off as slaves in most other systems, being denied personhood and legal rights and all.

Still, I think that in practice for most slaves in the South things weren’t as bad as they legally could be. In the case of all slave owners, whether small farmers or plantations, a large portion of the owners wealth was tied up in the slaves. It doesn’t make much practical sense to destroy your own investment. As someone else noted, it would be like trashing your car. Still, we know from history that there were many instances of slaves being treated very poorly. But again, that also happened in the Ottoman system that you mentioned; and likely in any other slave system that has existed.

173

Yeah, I do. Objectivity isn’t an absence of value judgments; it’s a step back to see the bigger picture.

174

And again, I ask, why is it okay to call Jefferson a “good person” but it’s wrong to call him a “bad one”? If you’re all for objectivity, you’d leave the moralizing of his character at the door and just appraise his accomplishments (and failings) for what they are.

175

Sampiro, I’ve enjoyed reading your posts. Being born and raised in Virginia you always visit Monticello and Mount Vernon on class field trips and I can remember being in awe. As I got older, I was still in awe of Monticello and Jefferson, but came to realize more and more that he was forever tainted to some extent. Yes, the grounds of Monticello are spectacular. Yes, Jefferson’s quirk of building up and tearing down willy-nilly is endearing. Unfortunately, the grounds were cleared, planted, maintained, and the buildings built up and torn down, by slave labor. He was great in so many ways, but so flawed.

BTW, I don’t suspect they grew rice or indigo at Monticello. The Piedmont Mountains of central VA don’t lend themselves to their cultivation. IIRC from my many trips (Dan Jordan was a history professor of mine), wheat and tobacco were the staples. Corn and sillage to a lesser extent. Oddly enough, Jefferson fought for years and years to get olives to grow, thinking olive oil production would work in the US.

176

Sure, things in the South weren’t generally as bad as they legally could be; after all, they legally could be wretched indeed. Sometimes things were worse than they legally could be as well. Under the best of circumstances, though, slaves lived under constant threat of the whip: the work they were doing was generally very difficult, and they got little or no profit from the work, and it was intimidation and physical pain that kept them doing them work. And their children were born into slavery, and could be sold away from them at any time.

I know I’m not telling you anything new, but comparing the tools of intimidation used to keep slaves in line to how you keep your car running is weird; and comparing the treatment of a slave to the longterm treatment of a car is similarly weird. Sure, tearing your car or slave apart makes no sense, but there’s a big difference between deliberately destroying property and treating property with anything approaching human dignity.

Daniel

177

I’m all for seeing the larger, balanced picture. If I were to check my “moralizing of his character” at the door, as you recommend, that wouldn’t leave any means to “appraise his accomplishments (and failings),” now would it?

178

I think you can judge his actions and philosphies on their own merit, based on whatever criteria of good and bad you have. So you can say Jefferson did good things and you can also say he did bad things. You’re judging his actions, without bothering with his character. You have evidence of actions and you can appraise that evidence in an objective matter. Were his ideas revolutionary? Yes. Did he play a pivotal role in history? Yes. Did he make personal sacrifices for principles that he really really believed in? Yes. Was he intelligent? Yes.

Does that mean he’s a “good person”? Not necessarily.

And I still believe if your position is that its wrong to label a historical figure as bad because of time, then calling him good is just as problematic. Unlike Bricker, my view is that the burden of proof is equal for both charges.

179

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not prepared to defend my idea on that issue tooth-and-nail.

180

MichaelQReilly, since you live in Connecticut, what about the slaves in the North? Were they generally limited to small households and farmsteads? Did wealthy Boston and Hartford families have large numbers of slaves? (Since slavery went on in the North generally for a much longer time, the patterns may have shifted over the two hundred year period.)

Asking if Jefferson could be good is similar to asking if your grandfather could be good while denying that your grandmother should have full rights as a citizen. And we are not very far removed from that frame of mind.

Can you be good if you’ve ever been cruel?