David Barton and The Jefferson Lies
Posted on 09/22/2012 6:47:35 AM PDT by Renfield
...“One cannot question the genuineness of Jefferson’s liberal dreams,” writes historian David Brion Davis. “He was one of the first statesmen in any part of the world to advocate concrete measures for restricting and eradicating Negro slavery.”
But in the 1790s, Davis continues, “the most remarkable thing about Jefferson’s stand on slavery is his immense silence.” And later, Davis finds, Jefferson’s emancipation efforts “virtually ceased.”
Somewhere in a short span of years during the 1780s and into the early 1790s, a transformation came over Jefferson.
The very existence of slavery in the era of the American Revolution presents a paradox, and we have largely been content to leave it at that, since a paradox can offer a comforting state of moral suspended animation. Jefferson animates the paradox. And by looking closely at Monticello, we can see the process by which he rationalized an abomination to the point where an absolute moral reversal was reached and he made slavery fit into America’s national enterprise....
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
that was not much chance as a rule X, average lifespan in 1830 was less than 40
As for your description of the safety net in the old days, I basically agree with you. Jefferson explains how well it worked in his Notes On The State Of Virginia, 1782. (I quote it in Reality.)
It is always better to solve local problems--and what could be more "local" than the needs of an individual--where you can maximize individual responsibility.
William Flax
True. In an area with cheap/free land, large farming operations cannot exist without either slavery/serfdom or machinery.
No single family could have put all that land to the plow.
True, but so what? The same land would have been plowed by the same people, but organized as independent farming families instead of as aristocrat/slaves. That sounds like a better approach to me.
Untrue, if you mean blacks would have outvoted whites on the issue.
Blacks were a majority only in MS and SC.
However, you are right in that if blacks had been allowed to vote, they wouldn't have been slaves, and without slavery there would have been no incentive to secede.
That recent bio of Adams lionized him, and he was a paranoid nut.
You are right, but only 1% of Southern slaveowners owned more slaves than William Ellison.
“Ellison raised mostly cotton, with a small acreage set aside for cultivating foodstuffs to feed his family and slaves. In 1840 he owned 30 slaves, and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property, owned an additional nine slaves. They were trained as gin makers by their father (8). They had spent time in Canada, where many wealthy American Negroes of the period sent their children for advanced formal education. Ellison’s sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston, bringing them to the Ellison plantation to live.
In 1860 Ellison greatly underestimated his worth to tax assessors at $65,000. Even using this falsely stated figure, this man who had been a slave 44 years earlier had achieved great financial success. His wealth outdistanced 90 percent of his white neighbors in Sumter District. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much real estate as Ellison. His wealth was 15 times greater than that of the state’s average for whites. And Ellison owned more slaves than 99 percent of the South’s slaveholders”
http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm
“Jefferson left behind thousands of letters. Perhaps you should read those if you want to know the man. “
That’s a fair comment and a good suggestion. I will.
David Barton and The Jefferson Lies
The Conscience of Kansas radio program | 08-21-12 | Dr. Paul A. Ibbetson
Posted on 08/22/2012 8:04:48 AM PDT by 1pitech
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2921510/posts
“that was not much chance as a rule X, average lifespan in 1830 was less than 40”
My grandmother’s grandparents.. born around 1810, both lived into their 80s. Her paternal grandfather would have lived longer but he was hit by a locomotive. He was deaf, walking near the tracks and didn’t hear the locomotive approaching him from behind. His death resulted in a court case that is still cited in Mississippi law.
Excellent post.
I suggest we start with members of Congress and see how that works out. ;~))
Mississippi people are just better but I didn’t want to say that.
Washington freed his slaves. After that, Virginia and other states forbade freeing slaves. Jefferson submitted several bills to correct that. Non passed during his lifetime.
Jefferson, faced with it being illegal to free his slaves, paid them a salary. That is why he was always in debt.
I believe there was a little more to it than that.
Lincoln thought so, that's why he distinguished in the Emancipation Proclamation.
I agree with your post. The brainwashing is complete. All someone has to do is read original documents to see the history has been totally distorted.
Most Freedmen farmed the same land they did as slaves, only they were now sharecroppers. Most freed slaves had zero animosity towards the former slave owners.
They lost the war in 1865, thus they are not a country.
By the 1830s, many of the 'black' slave owners were previously freed slaves who became prosperous enough to 'purchase' family members. But with changes in the laws in those Deep-south states, they were no longer allowed to free them. Therefor, they remained classified as slaves albeit owned by freed blacks.
I seriously doubt they were lashed for every transgression or their wives were raped on demand or their children were sold at auction when ever 'Master' damn well felt like it.
It is such hypocrisy that the Lost Cause zealots can somehow defend human slavery by constantly screaming that 'blacks owned slaves' too. So what's their point? Maybe 1/100 of 1%. That somehow makes it all better?
That is no justification for slavery, and a perverse twisting of the majority of the experience of black slave ownership which was overwhelmingly acts of compassion and family unity.
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