And penned by a conservative? Shocking.

You know who else said that he wanted to make things better for people?

And no, I am not putting the word rape in air quotes.

Seriously? Sex with a person you keep as slave is STATUTORY rape. Even if the person consents.

Then we must consider that the majority of marriages from the 18th to mid-19th century US culminated in rape as women were effectively owned by their fathers then husbands, were barred the right to own property, has limited legal rights and could be legally beat in most states. They held a legal status equivalent to children and criminals.

I dismiss the idea that any union between two people of vastly different amounts of power is always rape. That seems too simplistic. We would have to consider every King having raped his Queen and every lord having raped their wives throughout history. To extend rape this far seems to devalue what rape is. Rape requires force and certainly, implied force that can exist, but it doesn’t mean that it does exist in every single case.

Thomas Jefferson was certainly a hypocrite, his holding of slaves was disgusting and he very well may have taken advantage of the young girl. But calling him a rapist without evidence seems unfair.

No, maybe that you have no empathy, and wasn’t abused as a child/adult.

Slave owner is not just a “position of power”.

You make it sound like they were a teacher and a co-ed in love…

“”"Was it mentioned that while this woman was in Paris she legally could have left him and became free?”"”

Yes, because the guy have had no power over her and her relatives. A black person in Paris in the 18th century, yes, she would have gotten very far… NOT.

No, it doesn’t matter if she could love him.

Would you care if a 12-year old said it “loves” some 40 year old pedophile?

Slave and master is even worse.

Seriously? Sex with a person you keep as slave is STATUTORY rape. Even if the person consents.

Also, take note: “agreed to return with Jefferson to the US after he promised to free her children”. 

Disgusting.

Yes, but with much, and evident, hypocrisy.

Like those bible-belt “Christians” touting Old Testament quotes, when the whole idea behind Christianism is that it brought a ***New*** Testament.

I know that people have romanticized the relationship with Sally Hemmings, but it seems that Jefferson was sharing the love. I wonder if this changes people’s views of their relationship.

Here’s the link to the podcast with text:

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/18/163025651/master-jefferson-defender-of-liberty-then-slavery

Here is the quote about Jefferson’s fathering lots of children by slaves:

“Many of those slaves were related to each other; some were related — by marriage and blood — to Jefferson himself. Jefferson’s wife had six half-siblings who were enslaved at Monticello. To add to the Gothic weirdness, Jefferson’s own grandson, Jeff Randolph, recalled a number of mixed-race slaves at Monticello who looked astonishingly like his grandfather, one man “so close, that at some distance or in the dusk the slave, dressed in the same way, might be mistaken for Mr. Jefferson.” According to this grandson, Sally Hemings was only one of the women who gave birth to these Jeffersonian doubles.”

You forgot the part that even AT THAT TIME, and actually much earlier, both in America and in other countries, people found slavery abhorrent, and fought against it.

Not to mention that he already had something called the “New Testament”, that, even lacking of anything else, would be all the justification one would need to condemn slavery.

It’s not a mere “different age, different ethics” thing.

Yes, being a rich guy in power enables him to be a “complex man”.

Whereas, if somebody poor (and/or black) did the same sort of things, he would be labelled a “monster” or a “criminal”…

It’s not as if he was some kind of monster.

I don’t even know how serious I’m being any more.

*edit*
Oh, but look, he’s long gone now. It would almost seem that his only purpose was to try to cast doubt on the ugliness of slavery and the suffering of people under the *ownership* of white heroes like Jefferson. And *poof* they’re gone…….

It should just be “Thomas Jefferson: slaver.”

Got it.

It’s a strong critique, until the final, weirdly harsh and personal jab she makes at the end, where she seems to say that it’s actually Wiencek who’s the evil racist, just to further take him down. Sure, I have no idea whether Wiencek’s assumption that slaves would have stolen nicer clothing, etc. from another slave is correct, but I also have no idea that Gordon-Reed’s assumption that they wouldn’t is correct, because neither provide any evidence. But the suggestion that poor, uneducated people might covet the items of others doesn’t seem that insane, so it seems a little unfair for GR to twist Wiencek’s point around and present it as evidence that he’s the one who’s mistreating Monticello’s slaves – not to mention an example of exactly the sort of flimsy inference she’s just trashed. Yeesh, academia can be an ugly business.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

JEFFERSON COMPARES WHITES AND BLACKS

“Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of color in the white race, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black that covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, and their own judgment in favor of the whites, declared by the preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Orangutan for the black women over those of his own species. The circumstance of superior beauty is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs and other domestic animals; why not in that of man? . . .

“They secrete less by the kidneys and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odor. They seem to require less sleep. . .. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. In general their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labor. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to whites; in reason, much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless and anomalous. . . . The Indians will astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, and their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration. . . .

“In music, they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time. . . . I believe that disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man, in whose favor no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of others. . . Notwithstanding these considerations which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity. The opinion that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations . . . where our conclusion would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them.”
–From Notes on Virginia, 1785

To be fair though, most criminals that are good at their jobs (I know, weird way to put it) tend to be people that are well liked outside of the crimes they commit.  This is more obvious with scammer since part of their “job” is to sell themselves to their victim so their victim trusts them.