Comments on: Thomas Jefferson, enthusiastic, brutal slaver

By: Roger Tipping II

Roger Tipping II — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 20:32:00 +0000

Not even close. The Emancipation proclamation freed precisely zero slaves, nor was it intended to.

By: Johnny Lemuria

Johnny Lemuria — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:36:00 +0000

Although, everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve been told that area had the worst drivers, by fellow residents. From Alabama to Pennsylvania, everywhere I lived was seen to have the worst drivers. Either there is some serious unconscious bias going on there, or I’ve been real unlucky.

By: Johnny Lemuria

Johnny Lemuria — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:25:00 +0000

There are two different arguments here- one for emancipation, and one for opposing secession. One can favor Emancipation, even overriding ‘State’s Rights’ (because seriously, while there is some validity to the ‘laboratories of democracy’ argument, basic equal human rights shouldn’t be up for debate), while still opposing a war to prevent secession.

By: Johnny Lemuria

Johnny Lemuria — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:19:00 +0000

I honestly think Lincoln was more racist than who shall remain nameless (I love calling him that, and that some people fear him like Voldermort.)

By: Johnny Lemuria

Johnny Lemuria — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:17:00 +0000

A different ruling in the Dredd Scott case would have effectively ended it, too. The only reason slavery existed is because the law allowed some people to be kept as slaves. It is popular to think libertarians worship the free market, and to be honest, we really do like it a lot. But libertarianism is more than just the free market, it’s also about free people. And that means government can’t say that people can be slaves.

By: wysinwyg

wysinwyg — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 17:06:00 +0000

Always has elaborate fantasies that they know exactly what other people think. Believes whatever they do is justified or self defense.

Hmmm, sounds a whole lot like a certain threadjacker I could name…

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 17:03:00 +0000

Even the Founders themselves recognized that it had inherent shortcomings, which is why they included the amendment process.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:52:00 +0000

read Jefferson’s own words

That looks to me like your cherry-pickings of his words paired with your interpretations thereof.

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:26:00 +0000

Most Libertarians I know and have read think slavery is the grossest, basest violation of individual rights this country has engaged in.

…but the Free Market would have ended it soon anyway if it hadn’t been for the War of Northern Aggression, right?

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:23:00 +0000

…if he owned slaves he believed that those slaves were not the same as his white counterparts. How else could one human being be able to “own” another? Only by thinking of those others as essentially non-human.

Many of those slaves, Sally Hemings included, were more white than black. Her children were noted for their resemblance to Jefferson. So it seems to me that he Jefferson either:
1. Recognized his slaves’ basic humanity and chose to deny them their freedom anyway, or
2. Was really into bestiality.

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:16:00 +0000

Like the author argues, there were plenty of people in Jefferson’s time who did acknowledge both the immorality of slavery as an institution and of Jefferson’s personal role in that institution. He wasn’t the most evil person of his age but he was a long, long, long way from being a saint.

At the very least I think we have to stop the practice of using Jefferson quotes in political arguments as if they fell from the tongue of an unimpeachable god.

By: Mike Fischer

Mike Fischer — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 19:03:00 +0000

Here’s what it comes down to: each and every person who has ever existed is/was flawed. TJefferson, MLK Jr, JFK, Reagan… In addition to their personal failings, most also bore the failings of their times. Some overcame one or more of these failings and are, therefore, of special interest to us as we struggle to overcome our own failings and those of our times. Would we have been able to succeed in overcoming the failings which they overcame? Would we be able to overcome the failings of their times, if we’d lived in their times? Would they have overcome the failings of our times, where we have failed to? And if we did succeed in overcoming all of these failings, would we be able to avoid becoming self-righteous jackasses who believe they are the first beings to have ever achieved the ‘enlightened karmic perfection’?

By: Mike Fischer

Mike Fischer — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 18:47:00 +0000

This is not at all what I heard at Monticello.

By: Funk Daddy

Funk Daddy — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 16:53:00 +0000

The way Jefferson’s family probably did? (does?)

I will explain slavery to my children when they ask as slavery, without without qualifiers of kind or cruel, for neither exist in the context of any treatment between slave and they which could free the slave.

No, I would not take the word of one 4 generations removed of the act(s) in question, especially given (as discussed elsewhere in this thread) the prominent number of slave-owning families that were “kind” to their slaves when others were “cruel”, that prominence equal to the number of families asked.

It’s not theory, I have kids, and there are in shoots of my lineage slave-owners. There is more historical evidence that the largest portion of slaves were slaves than were not slaves, thus were their owners engaged in evil, reprehensible conduct, whether they knew it or not. No qualifiers of “kind” or “cruel” change that or serve any purpose but to relieve guilt that is needless in the face of acknowledgement of history.

By: petertrepan

petertrepan — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 15:40:00 +0000

Sigh. Well, no more quoting Jefferson. It’s enough to make me give up political argument and lose myself in the sole faculty of making money.

By: jandrese

jandrese — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 15:15:00 +0000

Amusingly, that very argument is debunked by the original article on this very discussion. Jefferson pointed out that simply owning the slaves meant a 4% return year over year, before you even account for the labor they provided, simply from the cost of selling the babies like cattle. If free market conditions had prevailed we would still have slavery.

By: Jonathan Badger

Jonathan Badger — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 10:51:00 +0000

I’m pretty sure Adams’ views on race and gender wouldn’t be acceptable to 21st century standards either. Yes, being a Founding Father who didn’t own slaves certainly improves his reputation to modern society compared to Washington and Jefferson — but how much of that is really because he was so morally superior rather than simply having been born a New Englander rather than an Virginian?

By: Gatto

Gatto — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:11:00 +0000

The difference b/t Thomas Jefferson and you is that he could have emancipated his slaves, and yet he chose not to. I hope if you had that sort of power, you would transform the american-chinese economic power dynamic, not to mention the worker-owner power dynamic in general, but I suspect you do not.

By: talktothechair

talktothechair — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 02:25:00 +0000

So, are the people who eat the food grown by slaves as guilty as the slave owners? Do we think the same about those who used the nails produced at Jefferson’s factory as we do about the slave owner and the overseer? Because that’s what your analogy suggests.

By: talktothechair

talktothechair — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 02:24:00 +0000

oops.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:59:00 +0000

Yeah, I knew people who remembered the Civil War. Whippersnappers.

By: Roy Edward Truax

Roy Edward Truax — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:32:00 +0000

I heard some of the guys at Stormfront also enjoy pizza.

- @ Preston Sturges

By: Festus

Festus — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:23:00 +0000

Getting better all the time. I heard a good presentation, including straight talk about slavery (including kids – nails) OUTSIDE in the garden tour this spring. However, inside the house–straight up hagiography and evil eye and sharp tongue when I brought up recent work showing the slaveholder Jefferson.

Consider Monticello a work in progress.

By: Festus

Festus — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:18:00 +0000

One key difference. KEY! Being white or a girl wasn’t a sentence to slavery. Being black in most of the pre-Civil War US (see the laws, dating to Virginia’s “children follow the status of their mother” law in the 17th century) was in fact a sentence to slavery.

By: Festus

Festus — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:15:00 +0000

And, hey–turnabout is fair play. Jefferson would be disgusted by our nation. Women voting? Brown people voting? Poor white men voting? None of this was true in his Virginia and none of it was imagined by the framers.

By: Festus

Festus — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:12:00 +0000

Visit Monticello. You’ll find out that Jefferson really wanted to free all his slaves, and eventually did. That is what they will tell you.

We have to be honest about these people.

By: Festus

Festus — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:11:00 +0000

The trouble with that argument, of course, is history. History tells us that in fact slavery was adapting beautifully to the changing conditions of industrial work. Check out how slaveowners in places like Richmond and Birmingham were “renting” their slaves out to factories, charging a fee for their labor and essentially avoiding the cost of maintaining their slaves.

Bottom line: Slavery was EXPANDING in the 1850s, adapting nicely to the changing world of industrial work. That is why free labor advocates like the Republican party were so terrified of slavery. It was WINNING.

By: strangefriend

strangefriend — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 23:03:00 +0000

You mean Lincoln, don’t you?

By: Charlie B

Charlie B — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 22:47:00 +0000

Do you mean that if your father told you that his father told him great-grandpappy was kind to his slaves, you’d tell your children something bdifferent? Think about it from a less theoretical stance, and remember foolishness is a primary trait of humans.

By: Charlie B

Charlie B — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 22:42:00 +0000

My grandfather was born in the 19th century, so perhaps I can be excused for my turn of phrase.