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I’m reporting you for treason against
big brotherfounding father!Freedom is slavery and slavery is freedom double plus good!
Jefferson was a huge piece of shit who knew how to write well.
James Hubbard was an enslaved worker in [Jefferson’s] nailery who ran away on two occasions. The first time Jefferson did not have him whipped, but on the second Jefferson reportedly ordered him severely flogged. Hubbard was likely sold after spending time in jail. Stanton says children suffered physical violence. When a 17-year-old James was sick, one overseer reportedly whipped him “three times in one day”. Violence was commonplace on plantations, including Jefferson’s. Henry Wiencek cited within a Smithsonian Magazine article several reports of Jefferson ordering the whipping or selling of slaves as punishments for misbehavior (for example, 10-year old boys being late for work) or escape.
While it’s vile in today’s lens, it sounds pretty average for the time amongst slavers. Iirc the “kind slaver” was actually fairly uncommon.
Was he doing anything that went above and beyond even what other slavers were doing?
All slavers were huge pieces of shit. There’s nothing inherently different about the past, humans are humans. If a human can cause the cries and screams of other humans and not feel their pain and fear, they’re a huge piece of shit, no matter their environment or upbringing.
No. Even his contemporaries called him on his bullshit. Jefferson’s was hugely influential to the French revolution, and a lot of his French buddies constantly asked him how he could write about the equality of all men, etc. and still keep slaves. He used the same excuses that you’re using. Besides that, there was a reasonably broad social awareness that slavery was wrong and it was a point of contention from the outset. People were calling out racism and white supremacy centuries ago and Jefferson was aware. That alone makes what you’re saying a moot point, let alone the numerous times he’s had to directly confront that reality.
He was a fully cognizant hypocrital dirt bag who knew how to write good. He also kept a teenager as a sex slave, which even back then was incredibly fucked up.
I don’t understand why we would grade on a curve like that when it’s clear that he understood that slavery was wrong based on his writing, yet he did it anyway.
Wouldn’t it be better to ask the people he enslaved rather than his peers?
There were plenty of abolitionists at the time, it’s not exactly a hard moral question to answer; he just wanted to exploit and debase people for money. It was a horrible and vile institution all by itself; I don’t see why he would need to be worse than his contemporaries to qualify as a genuine piece of shit.
This makes sense when you consider that Jefferson did not consider slaves “men”. They were objects to people like him.
He also “courted” a 14 year old slave girl he owned, who he married when she was 16… He was in his 40s.
He didn’t marry her, that wouldn’t have even been legal in their lifetimes. But otherwise yes.
Well they counted slaves as cattle back then. I recall they compromised at 3/5 of person.
Specifically for the sake of giving southern states a higher population count and therefore more seats in the House of Representatives.
Black lives dont matter unless it benefits us.
The US is an amoral shithole and always has been.
I’ma compel him to include women in the sequel.
They called them boys, not men
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