ping
Citations please.
In another communication from the early 1790s, Jefferson takes the 4 percent formula further and quite bluntly advances the notion that slavery presented an investment strategy for the future. He writes that an acquaintance who had suffered financial reverses “should have been invested in negroes.” He advises that if the friend’s family had any cash left, “every farthing of it [should be] laid out in land and negroes, which besides a present support bring a silent profit of from 5. to 10. per cent in this country by the increase in their value.”
The irony is that Jefferson sent his 4 percent formula to George Washington, who freed his slaves, precisely because slavery had made human beings into money, like “Cattle in the market,” and this disgusted him. Yet Jefferson was right, prescient, about the investment value of slaves. A startling statistic emerged in the 1970s, when economists taking a hardheaded look at slavery found that on the eve of the Civil War, enslaved black people, in the aggregate, formed the second most valuable capital asset in the United States. David Brion Davis sums up their findings: “In 1860, the value of Southern slaves was about three times the amount invested in manufacturing or railroads nationwide.” The only asset more valuable than the black people was the land itself. The formula Jefferson had stumbled upon became the engine not only of Monticello but of the entire slaveholding South and the Northern industries, shippers, banks, insurers and investors who weighed risk against returns and bet on slavery. The words Jefferson used—“their increase”—became magic words.
He met the paradox of what he knew should be (end of slavery) and how to maintain his estate and the economy of the south (keeping slavery). The solution came when the cotton gin (engine) was created, that lessended the need for slaves in the cotton growning areas. It was industrialization that permitted the eradication of slavery due to what were seen as economic requirements/justifications.
He didn't own Monticello when he died. He didn't own his slaves either, which is why he couldn't free them.
I’m scared to know what you think about after your first cup of coffee.
Two comments:
1) Read THE JEFFERSON LIES by David Barton
2) The Smithsonian Magazine is quite PC
Mrs. Esopman
Everyone is a product of their time and culture. A Jewish friend told me that, were he in the position of a German citizen in circa 1939, he would never have done the things that the German citizens did to the Jews. I told him that if he had been raised on a diet of Germanic superiority in a subservient Progressive culture he would have believed and done exactly what they did. He denied that. He somehow felt that his twenty-first century liberal (in the Founder’s sense) view was universal and the only and obvious way to see the world.
I can easily imagine myself in the shoes of somebody raised differently. I would be the product of that upbringing; not the product I am now at all. This failure to see life as others might see it is a huge liberal (as in Progressive/Socialist) failing on the part of Democrats in general.
Finally got a chance to visit Monticello a few years ago. Was surpirsed how by cramped it looked on the inside. After taking the tour, seeing his gadgets, and learning about how he lived day to day, I went away convinced that he was a bit of a crackpot.
Like Jefferson, I’m sure obama struggles with the contradictions of enslaving the majority of Americans with massive debt.
Then again, probably not.
Stopped my subscription to Smithsonian some time ago!! Could no longer take their lift wing slant on all of the articles!!
Jefferson was a Democrat. Republicans have an annual Lincoln (who freed the slaves) Day dinner; and the Democrats have an annual Jefferson (who owned slaves) dinner.
The Democrats still have black slaves kept in their place by the house negroes like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Charlie Rangle, et al.
IMHO, one of the most amazing things to observe in history is that within 100 years of penning the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, slavery is basically history....throughout the entire world. the best testament to the integrity of those documents.
Which really is all that needs saying...about the legitimacy of those documents, and the puerile idiocy of those, passing themselves off as “scholars” , who try to classify those documents as “slaveholders writings”.
As with all liberals, that which they openly accuse of, is generally that which they themselves are desperately attempting to practice covertly.
Funny how we are allowed to know the “dark side” of a 200-year old President, but we are NOT allowed to know the dark side of our current occupant.
The more one learns about TJ, the better General Washington looks. Jefferson resented Washington and started hurtful (to GW) rumors about him during Washington's second term in office.
Ye olde RevWar/Colonial History/General Washington Ping list
Bkmrk
In fact I could care less and who owned them and who didn't
Who owned slaves is 99.9% of the time not a reflection of their views but rather whether they needed them or not...all the way until our little war here.
Slavery became a political issue with which to gain votes and inflame the base on both sides until the issue (expansion of to be precise) broke up the parties into 4 oddly enough and one fella managed to pull together around 39.8% of the vote and we know the rest
The thing to learn about slavery besides learning to resist that irresistible urge to preen self righteously over ones position over it today is that we are once again embarked on an eerily similar path with much the same ingredients tossed in the soup
and I for one think we will go to war once again to divide this country because the issues are too strongly felt to compromise or because that compromise would kill us.
Slavery to me is just a footnote of the human condition.
Applying fancy self aggrandizing moral posturing on it now far removed from when it mattered is a silly indulgence and makes about as much sense as Arab Springs and Peace with Honour.
Folks here who smear Jefferson are fools playing the enemy's game for them.
Am I the only freeper on this forum who feels like White Christian America is under a full throttle attack from our culture today and this administration in particular?
if so...then why in the hell would I care about an institution practiced forever and in which those brought here actually lived longer than where they came from and had more food and shelter and at least temporarily adopted some semblance of family structure both during and after said institution and other Christian and civilizing mores..why on earth do we fret over who brought them here or owned them 200 years ago...to make excuses for how too many of them behave today I suppose.
the issue has always been how to get so many of them up to speed with the rest of us?
you tell me...how has that turned out.. those here who have experience like I do in tropical African culture know this has not worked but declined markedly..whitelandia freepers have fantasies they formed from the Cosby show
why on earth worry about all that crap instead of focusing on the utter dissolution of their culture they once had here is simply an incredible indulgence of misplaced guilt