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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][img][quote=Anonymous]https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/

This is a great article that demonstrates how very intentionally brutal and financially motivated Jefferson was. I highly recommend reading it. The disillusion meant surrounding Jefferson really came to ahead when his descendants finally had to admit that Sally Hemings was in fact, the mother of multiple children fathered by Jefferson.

Sally was an enslaved person; consent does not even enter the conversation. She did not wish to leave France and only did so to secure freedom for some of her family. And who were her family? They were Jeffersons family as well. Not only did he enslave Sally, but Sally was his dead wives, half sister. The Hemings family related in multiple way to Jefferson and his wife, yet, Jefferson subjected them to the same wicked punishments and sold them off as well. His flesh and blood.

Well, it may not be fair to compare Jefferson to somebody living today. It’s certainly fair to compare him to George Washington and other of their contemporaries who recognized the evils of slavery. Washington wanted to end slavery and freed his own slaves. He recognized the dependence of the southern economy on slaves and believed the best way to end slavery was to reform the southern economy.

If you go to the library of Virginia and comb through documents of their contemporaries, you will find many, many manumission documents and wills devising freedom, and they cite the evil inherent in slavery.

Jefferson wrote beautifully about beautiful ideals. Ideals that would only be available to white men. Ideals that he did not live. Now, more than ever it is important to understand the truth about our history and development as a nation. [/quote]

That is a great article — I couldn’t stop reading!  So sad to think about those boys and the missing nail stock, or tje father watching his teen daughters being sold away from him and never find them.   I would sort of love A Finding Your Roots genealogy study that manages to find the descendants of that man’s daughters.  I wonder if that could be done.

It’s a small issue but I think you have the chronology wrong on Hemings and France.  Her children were not born  at that point so she wasn’t forced to return to America to obtain the freedom of enslaved family members.  She certainly had enslaved siblings at that point but I don’t think she got their freedom — only that of her unborn children.  From today’s perspective it’s a weird choice to make but I guess choosing between being a free but penniless person in 18tj century France (which almost certainly meant prostitution) was less attractive than having enslaved children who would occupy a privileged position and ultimately be free, with one of the most famous men in America.   She was very savvy to use the negotiating power she did have, since ultimately he was such an A$$ about freeing other enslaved people that he supposedly valued.  [/quote]
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.

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