Thomas Jefferson - How do people feel about him today?

[Anonymous]

To be clear, while a PP wrote about other contemporaries freeing their slaves, manumission was a very difficult process, legally as well as financially. George Washington did not succeed in freeing his slaves, during his life or on his deathbed, although he wanted to. It was too difficult. And very few slaveowners ever did, not because they were evil people but because the system was designed to prevent it. Many people thought it was an evil thing and would have done so, which was why the system was designed to prevent it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:America is the most racist it’s ever been, and the most horrible country on the planet.

DCUM is just another playground for Russian and Chinese trolls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just revisited Monticello in September. I had not been there in over 30 years.

I came away not liking him. He was a spoiled rich boy who had a flair for writing. While he definitely talked the talk, he never walked the walk. He cared more about himself and his books than anything.

YES. When you take the tour and see the tiny, cramped dark space upstairs that he specially designed for his daughters to live in (because it was more aesthetically pleasing from the outside looking in), versus his lovely spacious bedroom with the "ingenious" dual-exit bed...you see that he was a terrible person. On so many levels. By the way, his daughters ran his entire estate, he did f-all nothing except coming up with ridiculous plans that other people actually fulfilled and jaunting off to europe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What’s to know?

He’s a dead, white, male, cisgender, slave-owner. Full stop.

Your history.

Perhaps judging people of the past by today's standards is the wrong lens in which to view history.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jefferson started sleeping with Hemmings when she was 14. I can't even with these "he was a complicated man" posters. FOURTEEN.

In Shakespeare's time people were married at 14. FOURTEEN. Yeah, imagining time used to be different is difficult for some people. My great grandfather used to work at 7. SEVEN - and that's why this country implemented labor laws. Geez, times were different. Did you know women used to be treated like property? I know history is crazy. In the future we will be the crazy ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To be clear, while a PP wrote about other contemporaries freeing their slaves, manumission was a very difficult process, legally as well as financially. George Washington did not succeed in freeing his slaves, during his life or on his deathbed, although he wanted to. It was too difficult. And very few slaveowners ever did, not because they were evil people but because the system was designed to prevent it. Many people thought it was an evil thing and would have done so, which was why the system was designed to prevent it.

I agree it was made difficult to institutionalize the system … but there were still a lot of people who did it, especially after the revolution. It wasn’t a possibility for someone like Jefferson because he repeatedly did things oke mortgage his enslaved people to build a bigger house—if he had lived more frugally, he could have done it. There was a great finding your root episode where one of the guests had their lineage traced back to Virginia and a town that was filled with enslaved people freed after the revolution — I think maybe on the eastern shore?. There were a fair number of people that took the ideals of liberty to heart and didn’t think slavery was compatible with the new America. I think Dickinson, who wrote the famous letters from a farmer, was one of them. So it’s a cop out to say “that’s just the way it was.”

Jefferson strikes me like so many people who had ideals in their youth. And as they age and realize what those ideals would mean to their life, they make all sorts of rationalizations for why their ideals are not practical. He probably had a string of rationalizations in his head. If you read the Smithsonian article posted above it’s clear he thought he was a “good” slave owner but then endorsed all sorts of awful things that were in no way benevolent.

I went down a rabbit hole last night and researched the Black man featured in the Smithsonian article who Jefferson freed but who had to watch his teen children auctioned off because Jefferson did not free them. He was reunited with at least two of them, and one of his great-grandchildren helped found the NAACP.

[Anonymous]

He's lucky he even has a popular sitcom from the 1970s named after him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He's lucky he even has a popular sitcom from the 1970s named after him.

Most kids in the US who grew up in Northern cities had absolutely no idea that black people were descendants of slaves. I grew up watching this show. I had no idea or understanding that Jefferson was originally a slave holder sur name passed on to people literally stolen from the African continent and brought to the US in chains.

I was in my early 20s before I learned the shocking truth. Yes, I was taught about slavery in school. However I honestly never made the connection that my black friends were the descendants of slaves. And no they weren't newly arrived immigrants. I just thought they were from the same city I was from. Technically they were.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jefferson started sleeping with Hemmings when she was 14. I can't even with these "he was a complicated man" posters. FOURTEEN.

In Shakespeare's time people were married at 14. FOURTEEN. Yeah, imagining time used to be different is difficult for some people. My great grandfather used to work at 7. SEVEN - and that's why this country implemented labor laws. Geez, times were different. Did you know women used to be treated like property? I know history is crazy. In the future we will be the crazy ones.

She was his slave, his wife's slave (and half sister) that he inherited when his wife died. I don't care if it was 1787 BC, all of it is disgusting and the Jefferson worship is awful.

Do you think you're witty, downplaying this crap?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jefferson started sleeping with Hemmings when she was 14. I can't even with these "he was a complicated man" posters. FOURTEEN.

In Shakespeare's time people were married at 14. FOURTEEN. Yeah, imagining time used to be different is difficult for some people. My great grandfather used to work at 7. SEVEN - and that's why this country implemented labor laws. Geez, times were different. Did you know women used to be treated like property? I know history is crazy. In the future we will be the crazy ones.

She was his slave, his wife's slave (and half sister) that he inherited when his wife died. I don't care if it was 1787 BC, all of it is disgusting and the Jefferson worship is awful.

Do you think you're witty, downplaying this crap?

Put that way, it sounds almost biblical.

We have had words for these relationships forever, which means these relationships have been around forever. Mistress, leman, affair partner, less charitably adulteress. Consort, concubine, placee. Etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jefferson started sleeping with Hemmings when she was 14. I can't even with these "he was a complicated man" posters. FOURTEEN.

In Shakespeare's time people were married at 14. FOURTEEN. Yeah, imagining time used to be different is difficult for some people. My great grandfather used to work at 7. SEVEN - and that's why this country implemented labor laws. Geez, times were different. Did you know women used to be treated like property? I know history is crazy. In the future we will be the crazy ones.

She was his slave, his wife's slave (and half sister) that he inherited when his wife died. I don't care if it was 1787 BC, all of it is disgusting and the Jefferson worship is awful.

Do you think you're witty, downplaying this crap?

Put that way, it sounds almost biblical.

We have had words for these relationships forever, which means these relationships have been around forever. Mistress, leman, affair partner, less charitably adulteress. Consort, concubine, placee. Etc.

Here’s the word you’re missing: slave. She was his slave. She was his 14 year old slave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jefferson started sleeping with Hemmings when she was 14. I can't even with these "he was a complicated man" posters. FOURTEEN.

In Shakespeare's time people were married at 14. FOURTEEN. Yeah, imagining time used to be different is difficult for some people. My great grandfather used to work at 7. SEVEN - and that's why this country implemented labor laws. Geez, times were different. Did you know women used to be treated like property? I know history is crazy. In the future we will be the crazy ones.

She was his slave, his wife's slave (and half sister) that he inherited when his wife died. I don't care if it was 1787 BC, all of it is disgusting and the Jefferson worship is awful.

Do you think you're witty, downplaying this crap?

Put that way, it sounds almost biblical.

We have had words for these relationships forever, which means these relationships have been around forever. Mistress, leman, affair partner, less charitably adulteress. Consort, concubine, placee. Etc.

Here’s the word you’re missing: slave. She was his slave. She was his 14 year old slave.

She had a relationship very similar to a placee, although not as formal. You can erase that, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jefferson started sleeping with Hemmings when she was 14. I can't even with these "he was a complicated man" posters. FOURTEEN.

In Shakespeare's time people were married at 14. FOURTEEN. Yeah, imagining time used to be different is difficult for some people. My great grandfather used to work at 7. SEVEN - and that's why this country implemented labor laws. Geez, times were different. Did you know women used to be treated like property? I know history is crazy. In the future we will be the crazy ones.

She was his slave, his wife's slave (and half sister) that he inherited when his wife died. I don't care if it was 1787 BC, all of it is disgusting and the Jefferson worship is awful.

Do you think you're witty, downplaying this crap?

Put that way, it sounds almost biblical.

We have had words for these relationships forever, which means these relationships have been around forever. Mistress, leman, affair partner, less charitably adulteress. Consort, concubine, placee. Etc.

Here’s the word you’re missing: slave. She was his slave. She was his 14 year old slave.

She had a relationship very similar to a placee, although not as formal. You can erase that, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

She was not a free woman. He literally owned her, as if she were livestock.

Nothing in her life was truly her own choice, including her sexual relationships. Or pregnancies.

[Anonymous]

Aren't we just saying he is "complex"? Isn't that what we say about horrible people who do things we still want to admire? To make ourselves feel better about continuing to admire them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jefferson started sleeping with Hemmings when she was 14. I can't even with these "he was a complicated man" posters. FOURTEEN.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. She went to Paris to watch his children when she was 14. But she wasn’t pregnant with his first child until she was 16, which would have been a pretty normal age for a girl to be married and pregnant in the 18th century. If he started sleeping with her at 14, she probably would have been pregnant almost immediately. It’s all creepy but hard to judge how creepy it is. In the 1&th century, married women (even white) had no legal personage under the system of coverture — their husban owned all their property, they could not sue in their own name, it was legally impossible for a husband to rape his wife because her body was his property. So it wasn’t nearly as bad as slavery, but it wasn’t exactly what we’d consider a relationship of equals in which the women could consent to sex. Arguably, nearly all sex in the 18th century was coercive and non-consensual. Sally actually could have freed herself in Paris, under the laws of France at the time. She negotiated for freedom for her future children as a condition of returning to America with Jefferson. So she definitely had some agency in the relationship.

Another thing many people don’t know about Jefferson—his initial draft of the Declaration included an indictment of transnational slave trade — basically saying how terrible it was that England had saddled America with this awful system. He would have abolished the slave trade immediately. Other members, who had a lot of money in the slave trade, forced him to take it out.

My take on Jefferson is that he was a very very smart person with a high degree of cognitive dissonance that allowed him to live a very comfortable lifestyle under a system that he found to be abhorrent, on a cognitive level. It’s a good reminder to all of us to think about all the places where we compromise our values in order to live comfortable lives where we get along well with our social circles.

Id also say that the argument that slavery was widely accepted , so we should give him a pass on that, is bunk. Sam Adam’ was an abolitionist. So was Thomas Paine. A lot of the founding fathers were. John Dickinson freed his enslaved people after the revolution, and there were many others that did as well. (I watched a great Finding Your Roots where one person traced the lineage back to a community in Virginia of enslaved people freed after the revolution.). Jefferson himself wrote about the evils of slavery, but then somehow managed to convince himself that it was okay for him to keep people enslaved, and even on his death I think he only ended up freeing his own children. Does that make him worse, because he knew it was wrong and did it anyway? Arguably yes.

Personally, I don’t think there’s value in canceling him. There’s more value in discussing all the complexity of him. I think it’s olay to remember the good things he brought to this country, while also acknowledging he was no saint and did some terrible things.

Unlike someone like stonewall jackson or Jefferson Davis — I’m fine just canceling them.

Agree. The lack of imagination by people is disappointing. There are tons of things we are doing now that future generations will likely look down on us for: our destruction of the environment (if you aren’t farming off the grid and living in a sod house then you are a part of the problem), eating animals and factory farming, buying products made by de facto slaves in developing nations, the objectification of women… I could go on and on. I think TJ was about as decent a man as a man in the South in his time could be.

Hmmm. I think it is you showing a lack of imagination here...