alt Hacker NewsWalter, you sort of gave the game away with this last post when you wrote 'It is wrong that Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington kept slaves.' It was wrong, but by whose standards exactly? Not the standards of the time as half the colonies, by your own account, thought it was fine. So you're judging them by a fixed standard that sits above the mores of 1787 and is the exact thing you spent the entire thread insisting people shouldn't do.
Not only that, but you just did it again when you said that they 'rose above the accepted norm' by abolishing nobility and the dominance of religious institutions because 'rose above' only means something if there's a fixed height to measure against. You can't say "they rose above the norm" and 'don't judge them against anything but the norm' in the same paragraph. So I wouldn't say that the position you're taking is one of historical relativism but more of a universalist with a conspicuous discontinuity on at least this specific issue.
As someone who is fond of American history but is relatively unknowledgeable about the pre-civil war era this thread and previous conversations that we have had on George Washington have piqued my interest, so I did some digging.
Even if we provide the most charitable interpretation of your argument that the American founding fathers were a 'product of their time' that kind of defense only works when someone is blind to a wrong because nobody around them has conceived of or articulated an objection to slavery but that certainly isn't something that can be said in this situation. So, let's use the examples of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington to see why that isn't the case.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Thomas Jefferson enslaved roughly 600 people over his lifetime, holding about 130 at any given moment across his numerous properties. He initially inherited his slaves from his father and in far greater numbers from his father-in-law. Despite being an owner of hundreds of slaves throughout his lifetime Jefferson was critical of the practice and advocated for restrictions on the practice.
His draft of the Declaration of Independence contained a passage [0] criticizing King George III over the British slave trade which was struck by the Congress. The passage read as follows:
"he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce..."
At the time he wrote this Thomas Jefferson was thirty-three and he owned about 175 people.
Somewhere between 1781-1785 (I'm seeing a lot of different publishing dates for this and I'll leave it to someone else to pin down the exact date if they're interested) in Notes on the State of Virginia Jefferson wrote of slavery: "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other"[1] and argued that it corrupted the slaveholders' own children, who learned tyranny by imitation. Jefferson even wrote "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever."[1]
The Virginian abolitionist Edward Coles[2] who in his youth had been neighbours with Jefferson wrote to him in 1814 asking him to lead an emancipation movement. Jefferson replied that he was too old to do so and he counseled Coles to stay in Virginia and keep his slaves rather than free them. Coles ignored him, moved to Illinois and freed his.
So what motivated Jefferson to hold these incompatible views and maintain his abhorrent practices while counselling others to do the same? Why the thing which you value most Walter -- money.[3] Thomas Jefferson lived beyond his means his entire adult life and died owing more than $100,000.[4] The people that he enslaved were his collateral and capital. In an 1820 letter to his son-in-law John Wayles Epps Jefferson wrote, "having scruples about selling negroes but for delinquency, or on their own request. but your proposition gets me over these scruples as it is in fact to keep them in the family." and went on to tell Eppes, "I know no error more consuming to an estate than that of stocking farms with men almost exclusively. I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption."[5] Keep in mind that Jefferson wrote this six years after he told Coles that he was too old to lead an emancipation movement.
This doesn't read like a man who was oblivious to the consequences of his actions or his financial motivations. This reads like a man who knew what he was doing was abhorrent but wasn't willing to stop because it would have led to his financial ruin and suffering.
[0] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0...
[1] https://archive.org/details/notesonstateofvi1787jeff/page/27...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coles
[3] https://youtu.be/5V6GHnxEJjg?t=108
[4] https://www.monticello.org/encyclopedia/debt
[5] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/ Jefferson/03-16-02-0052
(My full comment was too large so I have had to split it into two comments)
GEORGE WASHINGTON
The first President of the United States of America, George Washington, was also a wealthy Virginian plantation owner with 8000 acres of land and the people that he forced to work on it. Washington started with ten slaves inherited from his father and aggressively scaled up his operation as a young man with most of the growth happening largely through birth -- 293 child slaves were born at the Mount Vernon plantation between 1750 and 1799.[6]
In 1799, the year that Washington died, the census was taken at Mount Vernon and it records 317 enslaved people at Mount Vernon with 123 of them being outright owned by Washington, 153 as dower property from the estate of his wife's previously husband and 40 rented from a neighbour.
Over the years that George Washington brutally enslaved human beings some of his contemporaries tried to convince Washington to end slavery on his plantation and free his slaves. Some personally reached out to Washington imploring him to do so while others went ahead and did it to serve as an example to people like Washington and Jefferson.
In 1783 Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, a man who even named his own son George Washington Lafayette wrote a letter to Washington proposing that they buy an estate and settle it with formerly enslaved people as tenant farmers as a demonstration that emancipation could work. Washington answered warmly but did nothing. Lafayette went ahead and did it alone and in 1785 bought plantations in French Guiana and placed roughly seventy people on them with instructions that no one was to be sold or physically punished, that they be schooled and paid wages, and that they be moved gradually toward freedom. It ultimately went badly as the local government confiscated his property in 1794 and Napoleon eventually reinstated slavery in French colonies in 1802, but it serves as an example of Washington's contemporaries trying to free slaves.
Another example of this was Robert Carter III, a Virginia plantation owner who performed the largest manumission in America prior to the war when he freed 450 people. This is a man who was shunned for his actions and resisted by his family and neighbours but went ahead with freeing people and paying them for their work anyways.[7]
Though in his later years Washington came to regret his participation in the practice of slavery he paid little mind to his contemporaries who opposed it and during his career as a human slaver there were too many illustrative examples of Washington's absolute wickedness to his slaves to list here but these two caught my eye:
In a 1766 letter[8] reminiscent of the Epstein emails on jmail.world Washington wrote to the Captain of a schooner Swift Joseph Thompson, which opens with the following: "With this Letter comes a Negro (Tom) which I beg the favour of you to sell, in any of the Islands you may go to, for whatever he will fetch, & bring me in return for him" Washington goes on to provide what reads like a shopping list for a 2am run to 7-11 munchies to get booze and snacks to keep the party going:
One Hhd of best Molasses One Ditto of best Rum One Barrl of Lymes—if good & Cheap One Pot of Tamarinds—contg about 10 lbs. Two small Do of mixed Sweetmeats—abt 5 lb. each And the residue, much or little, in good old Spirits
What prompted Washington to sell Tom? Why Tom tried to run away of course. Tom's crime was merely wanting what every human being is entitled to -- his freedom and George Washington punished him for that. How was selling Tom a punishment you ask? The working conditions and treatment of slaves in the Caribbean were utterly brutal. While slave populations in America grew 20% decade over decade they declined at the same rate in the Caribbean. And Virginian slave owners like George Washington knew this. They knew this and they held the threat over the heads of their slaves. Work hard and don't try and run away or I'll punish you by having you worked to death, even faster than you'll die here.
Another fascinating instance of Washington's involves Ona Judge, Martha Washington's dower maid, who escaped from the presidential household in Philadelphia in 1796. Washington paid for newspaper ads calling for her return and pursued her through federal officials and family connections for years, including an attempt to have her seized in New Hampshire. Despite George Washington's best efforts to have her returned to his brutal subjugation Ona Judge Staines died in as all human beings should, as a free person in New Hampshire in 1848.[9]
Something interesting that I learned during reading up on this is that Pennsylvania's 1780 gradual abolition act freed any enslaved person who were kept in the state for more than six months and this is relevant because during this period Philadelphia served as the US capital. Washington, not wanting to lose out on the forced labour of human beings rotated his household staff in and out of Philadelphia to reset the clock. His written instruction to his secretary Tobias Lear was that the rotation be accomplished under a pretext that would deceive both the enslaved and the public. In other words, George Washington, the first President of the United States deliberately evaded a state emancipation statute.[10]
"… in case it shall be found that any of my slaves may… attempt their freedom at the expiration of six months, it is my wish and desire that you send the whole or part of them as Mrs. Washington may not chose to keep… although I do not think that they would be benefit by the change, yet the idea of freedom might be too great of a temptation for them to resist… it behoves me to prevent the emancipation of them, otherwise I should not only lose the use of them, but may have them to pay for. [If] it is found expedient to send them back to Virginia, I wish to have it accomplished under pretext that may deceive both them and the public – and none I think would effectually do this as Mrs. Washington coming to Virginia next month."
Those aren't the actions of a man whose hands are tied. Those are the actions of a man driven to keep people subjugated in terrible conditions so that he could live opulently on his 8000 acres with his every whim served by slaves.
Somehow you managed to pick as your examples of men too embedded in their era to know better, men who wrote about knowing better! Men who knew well enough to dodge the laws and keep people in bondage! Your suggestion that some slavers were products of their time and should be absolved of their heinous actions by history may hold for some slaveowners, but it doesn't hold for this bunch.
The 'product of their time' argument that you present falls apart Walter not because of modern people imposing 21st century morality on the American Founding Fathers but because these men wrote plainly that the understood the moral hazard but continued anyway for reasons that they also wrote down. Both had contemporaries who either directly advocated the practice of manumission to them or lead by example and did it themselves to prove that it was possible and just.
I'm not quite sure why you are so insistent about this subject Walter. You could just as easily say that these were men who did great things that people around the world still benefit from, and who also subjugated human beings for profit. Both things are true and the truth is what we should aspire to tell, especially when it's uncomfortable or complicated.
[6] https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/the-gr...
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Carter_III#Manumission
[8] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-07-02-...
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ona_Judge
[10] https://revolutionarywarjournal.com/george-washington-slaver...