Off the subject... but on the subject of Jefferson...
Do any of you listen to "The Jefferson Hour" on public radio?
In Richmond, it's on WRIR every Tuesday from 11 am to noon.
There is also a web site:  http://www.jeffersonhour.org/
I apologize if this is just too un-academic; but I find it delightful as I'm driving in my car.
Lately, the talk has been much about John Adams (and his family) and their ups and downs.
-Melinda

--
Melinda C. P. Skinner
Richmond, VA


 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Kevin Gutzman <[log in to unmask]>
> In response to Kevin Hardwick, I note that it was not Jefferson who
> discovered a way to reconcile slavery with Lockean liberalism, but the May
> Convention of 1776 -- that interim ruling body of revolutionary Virginia.
> It was that body that decided, in debating George Mason's draft Declaration
> of Rights, not to come out and flatly claim that all men were born free and
> equal and that government was to protect their rights, but instead
> interlineated Edmund Pendleton's phrase "when they enter into a state of
> society" (or some such).  As a result, Virginia from its birth was a
> society in which the blacks had not been parties to the social compact;
> they had not "entered into a state of society," but had been kept as a
> captive nation.  *Before* republican Virginia was established, its leaders
> made this decision to have *both* a Lockean social compact *and* slavery.
> 
> I detail this development in chapter one of _Virginia's American
> Revolution:  From Dominion to Republic, 1776-1840_ (Lexington Books, 2007).
> 
> For Jefferson, the commitment to Lockean rights could only be squared with
> the decision to keep blacks outside Virginia's social compact through
> colonization.  I examine this issue in "Lincoln as Jeffersonian:  The
> Colonization Chimera," in _Lincoln Emancipated:  The President and the
> Politics of Race_, ed. Brian Dirck (Northern Illinois University Press,
> 2007).
> 
> Kevin Gutzman
> 
> Kevin R. C. Gutzman, J.D., Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of History
> Western Connecticut State University
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