I visited Grant’s Farm near St Louis. Got tired of hearing about slavery in the presentation. I realize the guide has to read what they are told.
Grant didn’t like slavery. The slaves on his farm belonged to his father in law. And grant worked along side them.
Kind of hard to make him a slave holding jerk.
Jefferson was born into a family that owned slaves. He owned slaves until he died. Some of his slaves were sold to pay off his estate’s debt.
He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, which has the immortal words that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Some see a contradiction between those words and his owning slavery. Some of his slaves were able to read and write; Jefferson and they communicated with each other by letters. Virginia had a law making it illegal to teach the Negro how to read and write.
He was a man of his times and era, a great man, a significant founder of this country. Slavery should be part of Jefferson’s story at Monticello and Poplar Forest. It needs to be told, honestly but not through the lens of a woke culture - which is nothing but anti-America disease ... a new strain of communism, tyranny and slavery. Learning from Jefferson truthfully may be necessary to thwart our current challenges.