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Richard Jernigan -> RE: Thomas Jefferson: slavery vs. equality (Jul. 13 2020 22:44:20)
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ORIGINAL: mark indigo
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an interview on Christiane Amanpour's news program about Thomas Jefferson. Walter Isaacson intervews Annette Gordon Reed, a Harvard history professor, and Jon Meacham, another historian, on the subject, "How Could a Slaveholder Write, 'All men are created equal'? "
Thanks for posting that video, which i found interesting. The issue of statues is relevant in the UK too.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a white descendant of Jefferson, published an editorial in the New York Times on July 6 advocating removal of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. It is one of the most prominent in a city of many memorials. In Truscott's opinion, Monticello, Jefferson's home outside Charlottesville, Virginia, is the appropriate memorial. It has been updated in recent years to more fully display the roles enslaved people played in supporting Jefferson's country gentleman lifestyle.
Interestingly enough, the black Harvard professor Annette Gordon-Reed joins Meacham in pointing out that Jefferson was far more than just a country gentleman. When we lived in Washington DC during my high school years, I knew nothing about Jefferson's slave ownership. I found his quotations on the walls of the Memorial to be inspiring. I wonder whether the Memorial is offensive to many black people? Maybe I'll ask Sally Hemmings' great-great-many times-great-grandaughter if I see her again in the next year or so.
Once I had my driver's license I was the tour guide for the many visitors we had in DC. One of my favorite stops was Mount Vernon. Even in the 1950s Mount Vernon clearly showed how Washington's life style was supported by more than 200 enslaved people. Washington also profited greatly from investments in land in the developing western parts of the country.
Half of the Mount Vernon people were part of the dowry of Washington's wife, Martha Custis. Washington provided in his will for the others to be freed when he died. His will provided that Marha's people should be freed upon her death. In fact she freed them only a few years after Washington's death. Washington set up training courses to teach trades to able bodied men, and a trust to provide pensions for the elderly. Washington wrote and spoke far less less of the evils of slavery than Jefferson did, but did more about it.
Another tour stop was the church in Old Town Alexandria, which Washington attended every Sunday when he was at Mount Vernon. He always left before communion. As far as I know he never publicly stated that he was not a Christian. Jefferson made a point of it.
Sally Hemmings was no doubt far lighter skinned than my friend, her descendant. She had three white grandparents, and was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, who died at an early age, before he took up with Hemmings. She had at most 1/8th African ancestry.
Jefferson took Hemmings with him when he went to France as U.S. Ambassador. She was only 17. More than one French writer commented on her beauty and refinement. Since slavery was not legal in France both Hemmings and her brother James, Jefferson's chef were automatically freed upon their arrival.
Jefferson arranged for James Hemmings to be trained in French cuisine, no doubt incurring some expense. When Jefferson returned to America, James opted to remain in France as a free man.
Sally returned with Jefferson to Virginia, reportedly on the condition that their children should be freed at adulthood, a promise that Jefferson kept. Sally had no clear means of supporting herself in France, but perhaps she might have relied upon her brother, who found employment in Paris?
Many, if not most white Southern admirers of Jefferson stoutly denied his relationship with Hemmings until just a few years ago, when DNA evidence definitively settled the issue.
RNJ
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