Reply to You wake up in bed next to one of the first five U.S. Presidents tomorrow morning …

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thomas Jefferson. 
Only choice, But this did cause me to google their heights which I had not know before (other than Jefferson)[/quote]

Jefferson enslaved his kids with his slave girlfriend. Read the book Jefferson’s sons, a fictionalized account of his history, it made me nauseous.[/quote]

Fictionalized is the key word[/quote]

There's plenty of non-fiction books that point out the horror of a 40 year old man impregnating his 14 year old slave and making them work as slaves until he died.  [/quote]

I don’t like Jefferson and don’t think he was a good guy, but you’re not making the right case here.  There’s no proof that his sexual relationship with Hemings started before she was 16, and while that’s young, it wasn’t weirdly young in the 18th century especially among the landed class.  And she and her kids didn’t really work as slaves.  The entire plantation was set up in a tiered system with the Hemings family in a privileged position.  Sally lived as essentially a concubine and probably had more luxury than most married women of the era.  She was herself 7/8 European in ancestry.  Her children were educated and freed once they reached adult hood.  (Freeing them as children might have chased some logistical/legal issues. I believe the ones that could not or did not pass a white left the state after emancipation to avoid the risks inherent to being a free black in the south.). 
Also note  Sally was essentially free in France and could have remained there.  Also note that tsailly’s brother Marti no was the Butler at Monticello and protected  the Jefferson property when the British marched through (Jefferson of course fled in advance of the British).  It’s pretty certain he could have self emancipated by telling the British where Jefferson had gone, or even giving them the Jefferson silver which Martin had hidden, but his loyalty was to Jefferson.

My take on Jefferson is that he was a good looking, silver tongued, charismatic guy that a lot of people liked and as many people felt was kind of smarmy.  He was idealistic in his youth but really really liked the finer things in life and his idealism crumbled in front of his desire to live a comfortable life with good wine and nice things and nice clothes.  He got so in debt he was unable to free his slaves as he had said he would.  He is one of the few founding fathers that saw no action in the revolutionary war, always retreating before the British arrived and managing to always maintain pretty comfortable circumstances while people like Washington were literally starving and freezing and seeing their friends fall to dust early, gangrene and gut wounds.

In short for purposes of this thread — Jefferson was probably a good one night stand but was not a good guy.  Washington is a much better pick—but unclear if he has any game as he was not known as a lady’s man at all.
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I think Sally negotiated the emancipation of her children as a condition of not staying in France. Definitely some agency there. [/quote]

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