Thomas Jefferson - How do people feel about him today?
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Anonymous
I thought the latest research is she agreed to leave France and return to Virginia based on conditions? |
Anonymous
IOW, she had slightly fewer options than his wife. But she wasn't powerless, she had options and made decisions. |
Anonymous
Any relative power she had was granted by him. She was powerless. She had no rights. |
Anonymous
I’m glad you read the article, it’s so well done. So what Sally traded for was the freedom of her future children. I think it was a complicated decision because to stay in France was also to permanently lose her entire family, and her ability to influence their fates. As far as tracing enslaved persons and their descendants, we’ve come a long way, but it’s still very difficult. One of the ways that descendants can break through the wall of 1870 (enslaved persons were recorded as hashmarks on the census until then), is through the DNA they share with their European enslavers. This leads to an area to search, and the possibility of discovering wills and other documents that name the enslaved ancestor. To the PP who said George Washington was unable to free his enslaved people, you are incorrect. He could not free the people that “belonged” to the Custis Estate, those people were entailed and the property of Martha Custis Washington for her lifetime and then to be distributed to other Curtis heirs. Those enslaved persons that were Washington’s property were freed. |
Anonymous
I mean the “full stop” is silly. Your descriptors make him sound like my Uncle Ted (if he had owned slaves). My Uncle Ted is pretty unremarkable, and Thomas Jefferson contributed 100x more to our great nation than anything my Uncke Ted ever did. Just—-the full stop omits essentially everything about Thomas Jefferson that explains WHY we even know who he is, much less why we celebrate him! (Hint: it’s not for his whiteness or cis-ness or his death or his maleness. Nor is it for the fact that he owned slaves. It’s for his visionary brilliance and commitment to the ideals of what a nation could be if people began to claim their rights were bestowed on them by their creator rather than through edict from a benevolent king or queen. This was literally a revolutionary concept of its time. And this is why we celebrate him.) |
Anonymous
She was powerless. If she stayed in France she would never see her mother or other siblings again. She was 16 at the time. She traded her future children’s freedom to return as a slave where she lived in a room under the porch. Jefferson wanted her back with him so he could keep having sex with her. He didn’t love her. He never freed her. Not in France, manipulated her with a false choice to come back, she had 6 more kids with him, she slept under the porch, until HE died. She was 75% white. She was a child. Didn’t matter. Jefferson was vile. |
Anonymous
She had choices which means she had power. More than most other enslaved people (and more than some white women). When you dismiss that, you are denying her agency. (And Jefferson was also restricted in how he could treat her, as well. He was not free from the rules of society either.) |
Anonymous
It’s not that long ago. My grandmother had to drop out of school at 13 to work in a factory. People keep saying 14 but there’s no evidence he was having sex with her at 14. 16, yes, but that was the normal age even for well to do white women. That doesn’t excuse his major complicity in the slave system and the fact that he explicitly saw reproduction of enslaved people are a capitalist endeavor — but he wasn’t a pedophile and people acting like he was are just historically inaccurate. He did enough sh!tty things—we don’t need to make up extra things. It’s also somewhat interesting that it appears Sally was the only person he was sleeping with, and apparently the only enslaved person he slept with (unlike some slave holders). Clearly in his mind he viewed himself as different from (better than) other slave holders. We’ll never know if Sally thought he had any redeemable qualities at all — her ovoice has been totally erased. Her descendants knew they were descended from him, so we know she thought it was important for them to know that, although there are clearly a lot of complicated reasons why they might be the case. We also know that Jefferson’s legitimate children seemed to know Sally’s status, which is a little unusual. |
Anonymous
You mean like the Declaration of Independence? Will the UK even have us back? |
Anonymous
He did write the Declaration of Independence. What have you done? None of the Founding fathers or early presidents be judged by 2024 standards. You keep posting ridiculous questions. Find a new hobby |
Anonymous
I feel this deeply, PP. The man did horrible things to prolong people being enslaved in our country. |
Anonymous
This |
Anonymous
She didn’t truly have choices or rights. She was 100% at his mercy. |
Anonymous
That's a really important thing to mention. I'm not a vegetarian/vegan and eating meat is part of human evolution (slavery is not) and I am a low-level consumer--partly because I don't have the money but also I've never had much interest in buying stuff--but pretty much every one of us is participating in actions that have terrible effects on other humans and future humans. |
Anonymous
The stuff about marrying young is actually not accurate. Scholars suggest slightly different ages but 20-22 would be much more likely. Yes, women could be married when extremely young but that really was not the prevailing pattern.The traditions is western Europe were also for marriage well into women's 20s going back to the 1500s when the practice of keeping records in parish churches really got established. |