Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson is much disputed. The children could have been fathered by any of eight different father, all related.
Runaway apprentices were also whipped. So were schoolkids. That was then.
Look, slavery was bad. But Jefferson made the best of a bad deal and worked all his political life to end slavery.
So your position is that runaway slaves were treated the same as white schoolchildren in the 17 and 1800s? That’s an interesting position, and one I’ve never heard. Probably because it’s utterly fatuous, ahistorical nonsense.
No, he didn’t make the best of a bad deal. Making the best of a bad deal would have meant no torture, no brutalization, and no rape. You don’t have to defend torture, brutalization, and rape. You should make a different choice. It doesn’t mean Jefferson was history’s worst monster. It means that it’s a fact that he ordered the torture and brutalization of humans for doing nothing morally wrong, and it’s likely that he committed and abetted rape on multiple occasions, and it’s okay to acknowledge these facts and likelihoods, and it’s not necessary to defend them.
Adams never (that I’m aware of) ordered torture, brutalization, or rape. If Franklin ever did, he repudiated and stopped doing it and worked against it. Jefferson made decisions to continue torture and brutalization (and likely rape), when he didn’t have to – he could have let the slaves escape, he could have gradually manumitted them, he could have made a whole lot of decisions that would have resulted in less torture, brutalization, and rape of human beings, and it’s fair to point this out and include this in our evaluation of his morality and decency.
Jefferson could have done what Cassius Marcellus Clay did:
Jefferson could have freed his slaves, paid them a wage, and had a slightly less profitable plantation. He made a different choice, and it’s fair to judge him for those choices.
How?
(emphasis mine)
Yes, the main picture of the traitors should be surrounded with bas-relief carvings of characters from Kirby, Street Fighter, Murder She Wrote, X-men, Dragonball Z, Barney and Friends, 227, Sailor Moon, and the members of the band Queen.
I have an ancestor who was one of those early “lone wolf” abolitionists and he sent some of his pamphlets to Jefferson.
He got this response, which I always felt was apologist BS and certainly less strong that that paragraph from an early draft of the Declaration of Independence quoted in post 134. Which was, of course, a deleted paragraph.
Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, would also beg to disagree:
You could have an equivalent carving of Hitler, Goering and Himmler done on the other side, and then put up a sign over the Confederate white supremacists: “You think these guys were bad, you should see what’s on the other side of the mountain!”
First of all, slavery was evil in Washington and Jefferson’s time, even if people at the time didn’t think so. Second, there were a very large number of people who considered it evil, starting with most of the slaves themselves. Third, are those goal posts getting heavy? You started by claiming that nobody considered it evil, then changed that to saying that only a few folks did, then changed it again to lots of folks considered it evil, but weren’t organized, and finally admit that even Jefferson himself considered it evil.
*Ended international slave trade
In 1806, Jefferson denounced the international slave trade and called for a law to make it a crime. He told Congress in his 1806 annual message, such a law was needed to “withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights … which the morality, the reputation, and the best of our country have long been eager to proscribe.” Congress complied and on March 2, 1807, Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves into law; it took effect 1 January 1808 and made it a federal crime to import or export slaves from abroad.[71] No such legislation could have taken effect prior to January 1, 1808, on account of the provisions of Article I, Section 9, Clause 1, of the United States Constitution. By its Slave Trade Act 1807, Great Britain prohibited the slave trade in its colonies. The nations cooperated in enforcing interdiction of the slave trade on open seas.
By 1808, every state but South Carolina had followed Virginia’s lead from the 1780s in banning importation of slaves. By 1808, with the growth of the domestic slave population enabling development of a large internal slave trade, slaveholders did not mount much resistance to the new law, presumably because the authority of Congress to enact such legislation was expressly authorized by the Constitution,[72] and was fully anticipated during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Jefferson did not lead the campaign to prohibit the importation of slaves.[73] Historian John Chester Miller rated Jefferson’s two major presidential achievements as the Louisiana Purchase and the abolition of the slave trade*
Oh, and Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings is pretty thoroughly beyond dispute. The genetic evidence leaves any of several men possible… but Thomas is the only one of those several who was within a hundred miles of Hemmings at the time of the conception of her children. And heck, even without the genetic evidence, the case was already pretty strong.
Actually that is not true.
In what year was slavery in the Empire made illegal?
No, that wasn’t the position. It reflects poorly on you to make such an assertion: and the insult that follows merely reinforces the impression.
Obviously, there was overlap between the way escaped apprentices and escaped slaves were treated, because their condition overlapped, and their punishments overlapped. Obviously, there was an overlap between the way children were treated and the way slaves were treated, because their condition overlapped, and punishments were from the common range of accepted punishments.
Understanding that apprentices were occasionally beaten to death by their masters helps us to understand the kind of conditions slaves were held under, and the value of not being a slave. Understanding that officially sanctioned violent beatings could happen to unprotected white children as young as 8, gives white children as young as 8 an insight into the kind of violent unconstrained society slaves lived in.
Do you also insist that Jefferson shouldn’t be criticized for his treatment of slaves?
The idea that slaves, which were subject to terrorization and torture as a continuous threat to prevent escape and rebellion, and children, which were not, were treated similarly in America, is nonsense. And it’s reasonable to criticize those who ordered and oversaw this terror and torture.
I never said nobody considered it evil. Hell, back in the days of the Israel Kingdoms, the Greeks, the Romans there were those that thought slavery was evil. what I said was “*which wasnt considered evil back then.”
*
By that I meant that it wasnt generally considered evil. I showed that by the history of abolitionist movements and laws.
It was known to be evil by enough that it’s fair to judge Jefferson and Washington for not meeting the standards of Adams and Franklin (among others, like Cassius Marcellus Clay who inherited dozens of slaves and freed them all). It’s also fair to judge Jefferson for ordering brutalization and torture, in addition to owning slaves.
Adams never owned slaves and lived in Mass, where owning a slave was unfashionable. Instead you had indentured servants.
Again, Franklin inherited a handful of house slaves, and wasnt rich enuf to keep them, so freed them.
Had Jefferson freed his slaves he would have lost his farm, his home, everything.
Clay wasnt even *born *until **1810. **
Note that about 2/3rds of the Signers of the Declaration owned slaves. it was very common.