They may be gone by the time you read this, the internet is a fluid and beautiful thing.
1. “As long as he lived, Jefferson expressed opposition to slavery, yet owned hundreds of slaves and freed only a few of them.”
2. “Several times Jefferson purchased slaves in order to unite families.”
3. “Jefferson’s views on slavery and African slaves were complex, maintaining that the institution of slavery was harmful to both slave and master while working many slaves for his own profit.”
4. “Some researchers suggest Jefferson’s slave ownership contradicted his philosophy of ‘all men are created equal’.”
5. “In the 1790s, Jefferson opened his own nail manufactory where slaves from ten to sixteen years old worked to manufacture nails.”
6. “Jefferson did not allow his slaves to be overworked and gave them Sundays, Christmas, and Easter off.”
7. “According to a former Monticello slave, slaves were seldom punished except for stealing or fighting or other extreme offenses, though there were some cases of excessive whippings at the hand of overseers.”
8. “As president, he made a deal with elected officials of the state of Georgia: if Georgia would release its legal claims to “discovery” in lands to its west, the U.S. military would help expel the Cherokee people from Georgia.”
9. “Jefferson believed that Natives should give up their own cultures, religions, and lifestyles to assimilate to western European culture and a European-style agriculture, which was more efficient.”
10. “In a letter to James Madison on January 30, 1787, Jefferson wrote, “A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. … It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
11. “Jefferson refused to diplomatically recognize Haiti, founded in 1804 as the second republic in the world, after its successful slave revolution in the French colony of Saint-Domingue.”
Tags: history, humor, no reason, thomas jefferson
Related Posts
Unconvincing Hymns of the Temperance Army
Nobody Knows What Old Newspapers Were Going On About
Dirtbag Louis XIV
Significant Historical Figures And Where I Believe They Would Fall On The “Subs Versus Dubs” Argument
That Gay Mount Everest Mail
“The woman who had already learned to love him fell at once into the snare”: Harriet Beecher Stowe Stuck It To Lord Byron But Good
Well yes. But Thomas Jefferson also once broke his wrist trying to woo a married woman with his physical prowess, so.
No, no, I guess that doesn’t forgive the slavery.
Physical prowess involving the wrist. Hmm.
I thought it was his elbow, which he injured jumping over a fence trying to impress her? Note: Never read his love letters, including a nice meaty ten-pager where his head and his heart argue incessantly over this lady who was probably just trying to enjoy her afternoon before weirdo TJ decided to spill all his feelings at her.
I read that he broke his wrist vaulting over said fence. ~~~The truth may be lost to history.~~~
dumb motherfucker can’t even vault over a fence and we’re supposed to idolize him as a FOUNDING FATHER smdh
Like that time when William the Conqueror jumped over that fence and King Harold was all “Whoa, sweet jump, bro! England is yours!”
Confusingly, in scheming while grumpy, I misread that he “punched” slaves in order to unite families, so this comment made me double-take.
That seems like a perfectly understandable mistake, given all those beatings and whippings — but only the BAD slaves got them, and you know it hurt TJ as much as it hurt them! (Except, y’know, insofar as it didn’t affect him at all, but that’s just wishy-washy communist semantics, amirite?)
Christmas AND Easter off? Some people are just beyond generous.
Seriously. This is why we need Scott Walker.
“Tell you what, in addition to Sundays off, I’ll give you two extra holidays, Christmas and Easter.”
“But Easter is always a Sunday…”
“Yes sirree, two whole extra holidays. Gosh, I’m generous.”
Like, not even the 4th of July, TJ? That’s some bullshit.
Someone had to cook and clean and empty chamberpots on Sundays. I bet the indoor staff didn’t get a day off.
Ohhh. Good Point! I was think that the only reason they got Sundays off was so the overseers could be off. I mean they were good Christians you know!
You know, I fully understand and agree that Thomas Jefferson was a humongous douchebag who was also a hypocrite and a dick to pretty much everyone who wasn’t a white man. But it’s still hard to break out of the entrenched TJ-love that was instilled in me as a native Virginian/WM alum. He’s pretty much worshiped there (although not as much as at UVA).
Still, one of my favorite things ever is how he’s portrayed in Hamilton because it’s the best and Daveed Diggs is amazing and he laughed when my friend told him I was from Virginia but wasn’t mad about TJ being a dick in the show.
“What’d I Miss” is classic TJ.
I found the following on the TJ’s Wiki page:
Jefferson made a natural-law argument, “everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person and using it at his own will … This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because it is necessary for his own sustenance.” This was Jefferson’s first known public comment on the idea of natural law—an idea that he would later use in the Declaration of Independence. At this point the judge hearing the case abruptly cut him off and Jefferson lost the case. As a consolation Jefferson gave Howell some money, presumably used to help him when he ran away shortly thereafter.
Oi.
“some researchers suggest”
“Some researchers suggest Jefferson’s slave ownership contradicted his philosophy of ‘all men are created equal’.”
Perfectly consistent, all men are created equal, and then I made them unequal. You know, for money.
And of course that’s just the men. Female slaves are A-ok, according to natural law! Women being, of course, naturally submissive and needing a caretaker, etc.
well yeah how else a guy gonna get a date, I guess
in the 21st century, jefferson loses every rap battle and sums up his revolutionary war experience with:
i was in paris meeting lots of different kinds of ladies / i guess i basically missed the late 80s
LIKE, IT’S A START TO RECONCILING THE ICONOGRAPHY TO THE EXPLOITATIVE DEHUMANIZING DICK
AGHHH I want to see Hamilton so badly
It’s SOOOO GOOD YO
GOD BLESS LIN AND DAVEED AND EVERYONE IN THAT GODDAMN SHOW I NEED THE CAST ALBUM NOOOOW
Also here, have a video of Lin and Daveed switching roles to perform the first rap battle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihfj-KcMskI
That is an excellent video!! I really wish I could see Hamilton but I will probably have to settle just for the cast recording.
YAAAAAAS.
Don’t hate me folks: I’m seeing the Wednesday matinee. And I already saw it at the Public.
“According to a former Monticello slave, slaves were seldom punished except for stealing or fighting or other extreme offenses, though there were some cases of excessive whippings at the hand of overseers.”
The cases of non-excessive whippings are, for some reason, categorized as something other than “punishment.”
Ah yes, the elusive non-excessive whipping, so rarely glimpsed except in the writing of the COMPLETELY MORALLY BANKRUPT.
The writing comes from Jefferson’s escaped and freed slaves. It is the AUDIENCE that is morally bankrupt.
I think the phrase “excessive whippings” is a Wikipedian coinage rather than a direct quote from an escaped/freed slave.
Hmm. I read some interviews with Madison and Eston Hemings a while ago, and they clearly had some dissonance about their father – they knew what he had done, and that it was unconscionable, but they still wanted to think of him as a great man and also to not be lynched. I thought maybe that quote came from their interviews, because it would be… similar to things they said there.
But it appears to instead be paraphrased from John Chester Miller’s book “Wolf By the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and slavery”. (There is a children’s book called ‘Wolf by the Ears’ about Harriet Hemings; this is a different book.) There, two of his overseers who managed other farms are characterized as “peevish & too ready to strike” and “tyrannical” and “whipping James Hemings three times in a single day, even when he was too sick to raise his head”. Also that Jefferson “brandished a small whip” but did not hit anyone. (Riiiight. ) “Excessive” is not a good way to convey that behavior.
tl:dr, you are entirely correct. I was wrong about my sources. Sorry!
Thanks for the gracious reply! Pretty sure this dialogue just canceled out at least one Youtube comment thread.
Nicole– Your Thomas Jefferson #TruthBombs are one of my favorite things about you & your interests. Keep it going!!!
“Jefferson’s views on slavery and African slaves were complex, maintaining that the institution of slavery was harmful to both slave and master while working many slaves for his own profit.”
….I really don’t think “complex” is the word you’re looking for here, mystery Wikipedia editor.
“splendidly incoherent” or “hella disappointing” would both work
it’s got most of the same letters as “personally convenient”, anyway
“regrettably personally convenient”. it’s kind of like when your toddler wants to give you something, but then realizes that if he gives it, he won’t have it, so he just…doesn’t. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened with Jefferson’s slaves, and that’s what makes it so damn sad. The ones who thought it was okay, at least you can say they were all the way wrong in their head, but Jefferson understood that he was wrong, but it was so *nice* that he didn’t have to pay for work.
I think the only thing that was complicated was that when he was younger, he made a small effort to argue against slavery, and the only thing that came of it were some laws that made it even harder to free your slaves in Virginia. I think it was like, if you free your slave, they have to leave the state or something. Oh well, he tried. it’s not like he was ever in a powerful position or anything later on.
That’s funny, I wonder if his Wikipedia editors found copies of tours given at Monticello and UVA. “Buildings built by slaves? At this university? Let’s just, um, didn’t Jefferson say that education was the light of democracy? Let’s go look somewhere else.”
didn’t Jefferson say that education was the light of democracy
And Jefferson was, like, really into democracy, so–
In the 1790s, Jefferson opened his own nail manufactory where slaves from ten to sixteen years old worked to manufacture nails.
the profound hypocrisy of Jefferson was not news to me, but I don’t think I realized that “factory” was a shortened version of “manufactory” until the second sentence you quoted. so I learned a thing today!
Well I head he once dipped an opponent’s wife’s hand…in jar of acid….at a party. But I might be remembering the wrong founding father.
Did the party host just have this standing around for some reason? Or did TJ bring a jar of acid with him for the purpose?
back in the day new world trade and climate control were both pretty underdeveloped so supervillains couldn’t rely on the classic piranha pit yet
http://youtu.be/l7iVsdRbhnc
Not safe for work!
I heard that motherfucker had, like, thirty goddamn dicks.
Ate opponents brains…and invented cocaine…
okay, do any of you watch China, IL? because if not, you’re doing yourselves a profound disservice.
(also, on a different presidential tip–“even though I’m better than you, I am not.”)
1776 is literally the worst movie I’ve ever seen.
HERETIC
FIGHT ME
Kinda hard to count slaves under “all men are created equal” when you don’t believe black people are people.
Sure he did. But, for legal purposes, it was much more lucrative for a guy in his position to define them as officially farm equipment regardless. You don’t get your face carved on a whole lot of rocks without your priorities being in order
Well, he did believe they were people, just 3/5 of a person. Own 15 slaves and you have 9 registered voters.
That might be a potential out, but it wasn’t one that he took. He wrote outright about how slavery was bad for all the same reasons you’d want him to believe that, because of natural rights and universal equality and everything else predicated on all humans being people, and then he just couldn’t bring himself to apply those beliefs to himself. It was a pretty huge, glaringly obvious hypocrisy all the time it was going on.
‘Excessive whipping” is like the football penalty “unnecessary roughness”. Both imply that there is an amount of whipping and roughness that is perfectly normal and necessary.
I am cynical enough to suspect that these sentences were not really selected randomly at all.
“As long as he lived, Jefferson expressed opposition to slavery, yet owned hundreds of slaves and freed only a few of them.”
How about that, Jefferson’s philosophy of human rights is basically the same as my approach to personal fitness.
This is an amazing statement.
So people keep trying to argue that, while Jefferson owned slaves, his views on the importance of liberty, and hatred of the institution of slavery, somehow make his slave-owning less bad. But seriously? If you write pages and pages on the ways in which slavery is a corrupt institution abhorrent to nature and reason, and then you own slaves, that actually makes it way, way worse. Because it proves that you know, you absolutely understand, the hatefulness of what you’re doing. If you describe slavery as degrading to the human spirit, but then participate in the institution, you’re declaring to the entire world that you are, with full consideration of the immorality of your behavior, placing your own comfort above the dignity, comfort, and basic humanity of hundreds of people. Doing the wrong thing isn’t justified or excused by the fact that you know it’s wrong while you’re doing it, or that you thought very carefully about the consequences of your actions beforehand.
Amen to that. It’s bad enough to do bad things when you’re too stupid to realize they are bad. Knowing how evil it is and doing the evil things anyway ups the evil level. People who know better are held to a higher standard starting in, like, preschool. Why would this not be the case for someone in charge of a whole country?
Sally Hemmings just called you a dog, Thomas Jefferson!
CLICK BOOM
<3
OH SNAP
“Jefferson believed that Natives should give up their own cultures, religions, and lifestyles to assimilate to western European culture and a European-style agriculture, which was more efficient.”
Because that worked out so well for the Natives who tried to assimilate western European culture. They were totally accepted by European-Americans, who definitely treated the Natives like equals, and everyone lived happily ever after.
also relevant, both from the “jefferson was a dick” perspective and the “museums are cool” perspective.
This is exactly why we should never refer to them as Founding Fathers, with capital letters. They had their goals and agenda. It is not ours today.
I’ve found that using, “Well I’d like to believe that Jefferson romanced his slaves before fucking them, but I don’t,” tends to shut down a lot of arguments regarding Constitutional Originalism.
Also related: this really really excellent article on how the architecture and arrangement of Monticello and its grounds are a reflection of Jefferson’s increasing disinterest in emancipation, based on the Palladian idea that, “We must contrive a building in such a manner that the finest and most noble parts of it be the most exposed to public view, and the less agreeable disposed in by places, and removed from sight as much as possible.”
The article also features the following sick burn delivered by the Virginian abolitionist, Moncure Conway, on the subject of Jefferson’s reputation as a would-be emancipator: “Never did a man achieve more fame for what he did not do.”
I just <3 Smithsonian Magazine so much you guys.
I got a free temporary subscription to it, magically, while I was in Paris last year. It was like, finally, a reward for agreeing to things in French when I don’t speak French and have no idea what’s going on. Smithsonian Magazine is fucking awesome.
Generally speaking, the Smithsonian as an institution has to keep to exhibits that do not alarm the most alarmist amongst Americans, thus causing them to immediately call their representatives and express outrage over the content of an exhibit they likely will not see anyhow.
Smithsonian Magazine, being subscription-based, is decidedly more salty.
I hope everybody here has read TA-NEHISI COATES’ writings on Jefferson; they delve deep into this.
This is just beautiful, beautiful writing reflecting a clarity of thought and understanding that I have rarely encountered in Jefferson’s contemporaries, or beyond, writing about the problem of slavery. (Frederick Douglass is my go to. But he had the “advantage” of being a slave.) When people say Jefferson was merely a “man of his times” they sell him short. I don’t mean this as some sort of rhetorical jiu-jitsu. I find myself quoting these words when trying to explain slavery’s problems. What Jefferson, the man, did doesn’t make these words any less meaningful.
At some point we are going to have to develop something beyond an infantile desire to know whether Daddy was a “good guy” or a “bad guy.” In fact, Daddy was an avowed white supremacist, whose words help inspire the black freedom movement. Daddy was an American slave-holder to the end, who brilliantly elucidated the moral and practical problem of American slavery. Daddy railed against miscegenation, while practicing it.
The whole thing, and what Jefferson had to say about slavery to elicit the praise, is well worth the read. And everything else Coates says on the subject.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/…