Are you perhaps confusing “shocking” with “surprising”?
As in, it is not “surprising” that many slaveowners made sexual use of their slaves, just as it is not “surprising” that many slaveowners treated slaves with gruesome brutality: sadly, human nature being what it is, give someone absolute power over others and you will get both happening. And any historian of the period will tell you (as you know) that both happened - a lot.
Individual examples of either are still, however, “shocking”. At least they are (or should be) to people who believe in the inherent dignity and worth of humanity, and so of individual humans. Which are principles, it need hardly be remarked, that Jefferson expressed.
No, I mean “shocking”. I don’t get how a slaveowner having sex with his slave could ever be described as shocking when the practice virtually went hand in hand with the institution. And Sally Hemmings was a damn near white woman. When you factor that in the equation, it would be more shocking if he hadn’t had sex with her.
Not really. I say this as someone who has done a lot of reading about slavery.
In a weird way, you actually seem to be making my point. Sex is why we pay attention to Sally. There are plenty of other examples of Jefferson’s hypocrisy, but we latch on to this one because it’s like a dramatic made-for-TV movie. The irony is that people in the past used to find the idea of Jefferson sleeping with Sally too “shocking” to be believed. Now even though people believe it, they still find it “shocking”.
But the truth is that it’s about as shocking as bear shit in the woods, and it’s shocking that anyone could ever be shocked by it.
Well, I guess I will have to be counted as at least as naive as Malthus, or perhaps as having unconscious prurient interest in the story, because I do find Jefferson’s exploitation of Sally Hemings quite shocking. It’s already been said, but Jefferson’s writing about “self-evident” equality of all humans and “inalienable” rights (among the most important phrases ever written about and in favor of human rights) contrasts with his actions as to all his slaves in a shocking way; increasing his wealth by sexually exploiting a woman he owned (i.e. causing her to give birth to children who added to his net worth in human property) is more shocking to me still.
Again it seems like you mean “surprising”. Something can be fully expected and yet still “shocking”.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on this. To me, things like rape, brutality and sexual slavery are “shocking” even though you can read about it in every history book (and for that matter, they still happen all the time in various ways right now). They are “shocking” because they shock the concience, not because I can’t believe they happened.
This seems to have been one of the few times that question was formally posed in a legal way regarding slavery. Miscegenation was punishable, but outside of 17th century Virginia I can’t think of an example where a white man was punished for forcing himself on a black woman (there was a case in Virginia, but I don’t remember the details- I think he was lashed).
It was punishable to kill a slave if he/she did not belong to you- the insane Confederate general Braxton Bragg’s mother went to jail for shooting somebody else’s slave- but the Lalauries in New Orleans are the only people I know of really held accountable for abuse and killing of slaves, this having to do with laws specific to Louisiana and the :eek::eek: horrors of what the Lalauries were doing.
Is anybody familiar with another case where the issue of the legality of slave rape was brought up? (Bueller? Bueller?)
Not Bueller and did not find any discussion of legality of raping a save, but there seem to have been several court martial proceedings against union soldiers who raped ensaved women. One case in which there was a conviction is that of Perry Pierson, who raped Harriet McKiney and was sentenced to a year of hard labor (much less than soldiers charged with raping white women had to serve).
Of course, Pierson did not own McKinley, but it seems this is considered a very unusual and significant case just because a white man was punished for raping a slave.
I have also read(do not recall where) justifications from the pre-civil war period for rape of slaves along the lines of, even though it’s wrong for white men to defile themselves by having sex with black women, it protected white women from being raped by them. The justification was that white women were pure by nature (even though white women were seen as without rights in many respects) but black women were not so raping them was not a crime.
There was clearly some stigma about raping your slaves, at least in some times and places: in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs relates how she was able to keep her sexually predatory master at bay for some years by being careful not to be alone with him. He went to fairly extraordinary lengths to coerce her to “voluntarily” submit: presumably they could be discrete enough if she were compliant. But she also makes it clear that slave women on the plantations have absolutely no protection. Furthermore, she made it clear that in her experience men did not take any sort of care of the children they fathered: they were often sold far away as quickly as possible.
Like most white men of the day, Jefferson did not consider blacks to be human. Once you allow that the man profited from slave labor and all the daily brutality that comes with that, it really isn’t all that jaw dropping (at least to me) to know, oh yeah, by the way, he also had sex with a slave. It also isn’t shocking that children came out of this sex, given the absence of birth control. It isn’t shocking that he cheated on his wife.
Do we know for a fact that he did all this to add more slaves to his plantation? That level of greed would strike me as shocking, because I know of no evidence that this was a widespread practice. While I have no doubt Jefferson treated his children as less than second class citizens, I have no reason to think he was that hard up for labor that he would need to sire his own servants and field hands. The simplest explanation is that he liked having sex with the light-skinned black woman living under his roof and he wasn’t that troubled by her getting pregnant.
We don’t know if Sally was “brutally raped” by TJ. All we know if that they had a sexual relationship that lasted many years and led to multiple births. These bare bone facts are not shocking to me in the slightest, no matter how you want to define the word.
I don’t think there is evidence that TJ fathered children with Sally with the intention of getting more labor for his efforts, and I didn’t say there was. However, Jefferson wrote about what a superior investment slaves were, in that they produced income while also “increasing” by 4% each year. It is absolutely clear from the context that he meant by this that slaves had children who were also slaves and obviously the property of the mother’s owner. He even advised other white men to put their money in slaves for this reason.
So whether it was a conscious motive or not, Jefferson increased his net worth by having children with Sally. And as to whether he was “hard up” for labor, slave labor was his livelihood. He bragged about the fact that putting young boys to work in a nail factory at Monticello paid his grocery bills, which were large for the time.
And you haven’t convinced me not to be shocked that a man who could write that all men are created equal, with inalienable rights to life, liberty and happiness could father children with an enslaved woman, and hold his own children as slaves.
Since he ended up giving them all their freedom, this is not true. They were house servants. They were not out in the fields harvesting crops like all the other slaves he had that, as quiet as it is kept, he very much exploited to increase his net worth.
It is true, though; you’re forgetting that a slave was an asset just as a valuable horse or a factory would be.
Even though he gave his children with Sally their freedom when they came of age, during all theyears he owned them they increased his net worth (and his ability to get credit, which was important to him). Jefferson’s assets were land and slaves. He was very conscious of the value of slaves and what a good investment they were, in part because slaves would have children who would be Jefferson’s property too and cost him nothing.
And yes, it was better to be a house servant than a fieldhand, but for a man of Jefferson’s time and class house servants were a necessity; and young, healthy slaves trained and able to serve in the house were valuable property.
Nah, I’m not forgetting that. I just think relative to all the other shit on Jefferson’s hands (he owed multiple plantations, owned more than 200 people, employed notoriously cruel overseers, allowed runaways to be beaten viciously), the fact that his bastard children might have raised his credit score a few extra points ultimately rates as pretty minor on the atrocity scale, and it does not justify the amount of attention we give to the whole Hemings thing. We just like hearing stories about our president fucking around in a taboo kind of way. This is an American tradition. That his relationship with Hemings became a controversy in the first place only underscores this point.
huck, in case you don’t know my background, I’m black and my view towards slavery is about as critical as they come. I’m not a defender of Jefferson, I just dont feel it is necessary to read extra sordidness, inhumanity, and immorality into his relationship with Sally than is evident in the record. If you disagree with my perspective that’s fine. I just wanted to make it clear where I’m coming from.
You with the face, I can see that nothing I say will convince you that abyone could be interested in Sally Hemings except as salacious gossip, so I will give up the effort.
But a couple of points–one, it wasn’t a “credit rating” in the modern sense; Tj even more than most of his type and class lived on credit. His landholdings were considerable but he could not have kept his land, or borrowed money to keep up his lifestyle and position, without owning slaves. Two, I haven’t added anything to the record of TJ7ks evil deeds. It’s all documented, mostly by him. He knew slavery was wrong and, for ecomic and political reasons. Decided to live off it anyway.
That he would sexually exploit his slave, and hold his children with her as slaves, demonstrates how completely he was able to divorce his actions from ideals.
If you read what I wrote, you will see I was not in fact claiming Sally was “brutally raped”. What I was saying, is that certain things - like rape, brutality and sexual slavery [note: separate categories!] - are “shocking” per se. This does not mean that in my view all sexual slavery involves brutal rape. It very clearly does not. What it means is that things can be “shocking” (to most people at least) even if we know all about them.
I seem to have slipped into Monty Python’s “argument room”, where every sentance I write is going to be misconstrued.
In any event, if sexual slavery does not shock you, that’s fine. I merely suggest that it shocks most people who hear about it, and your reaction isn’t, perhaps, the majority view, and so isn’t a very reliable guide to why people find the story interesting.
:eek: horrors of what the Lalauries were doing.