Jeff is right on the slave narratives, but they are tricky to use since most were interviews done in the 1920s and 1930s when the people being interviewed were very old, if they had grown up in slavery, or they were still quite old but had only been very young children in slavery. As anyone knows who does an interview with someone years and years after the event, the memory is not always the best
*************************
Paul Finkelman
John Hope Franklin Visiting Professor of American Legal History
Duke University School of Law
210 Science Drive
Box 90360
Durham, NC 27708-0360
919-613-7038 (o)
518-605-0296 (c)
[log in to unmask]
www.paulfinkelman.com
********************
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jeff Southmayd
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2012 5:13 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] "The Monster of Monticello"
As I love to interject in these slavery debates, the "Slave Narratives" should be carefully studied for what they seem to disclose about the experience during and after slavery of many of the actualy "participants."
Jeff Southmayd
SOUTHMAYD & MILLER
4 OCEAN RIDGE BOULEVARD SOUTH
PALM COAST, FLORIDA 32137
386.445.9156
888.557.3686 FAX
[log in to unmask]
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> Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2012 16:50:19 -0500
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: "The Monster of Monticello"
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Mr. Barger,
> Paul Finkelman is indeed a "slavery expert:" a careful scholar and clear and cogent writer of history on this subject.
> I for one did not read the "Monster" essay as particularly pursuing the argument about Jefferson's possible paternity of the Hemings children but rather the "monstrosity" of Jefferson's thorough embrace of this inhumane practice. As Professor Finkelman has argued over the years, this is an indictment springing not from present day concerns, but from Jefferson's own day and from his own contemporaries. Jefferson early on decided that he enjoyed the lifestyle that slavery afforded him and he never seriously reconsidered that position. Others --- and others surely of less intellectual and philosophical bent than Jefferson -- saw the wrong in slavery and acted; Jefferson claimed to see that wrong but wouldn't act.
> Dragging up arguments about the suggestion that Jefferson may have fathered children by Sally Hemings -- and the DNA study no more disproves that possibility than it proves it -- strikes me as a red herring when compared to the fact that the man bought, sold, and owned human beings. That we as a nation -- and including even teachers of history -- perpetuate myths about kindness and paternalism of masters or supply relativistic rationalizations of the practice of slavery is the true disgrace.
> So I thank Professor Finkelman for his brutal honesty in addressing this past.
>
> David Kiracofe
> History
> Tidewater Community College
> Chesapeake, Virginia
> ________________________________________
> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
> [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Herbert Barger
> [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, December 03, 2012 2:09 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: "The Monster of Monticello"
>
> Finkelman is another of those "slavery experts" including Monticello,
> Peter Onuf (financed by Monticello),(Finkelman studied under him at
> UVA I believe). Onuf edited the Oct 92 edition of Jeffersonian
> Legacies of which Finkelman was a chapter author. The aim of this
> group (writers were Onuf, Finkelman Monticello President, Dan Jordan,
> Jan Lewis, Lucia Stanton, Monticello Chief Researcher, Gordon Wood,
> Scot French, Edward Ayers and
> others) is according to a Prof. Richard Rorty on page 280, "setting
> aside questions of HISTORICAL ACCURACY AND PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION
> (my caps), in order to sustain the present-day cause of international human rights."
>
> Now do we understand why Monticello would remove "Memorial" from their
> title, associate with such people as Onuf and Paul Finkelman and
> continue to "instruct" other historians at the Smith Thomas Jefferson
> Research Center at Monticello on the slavery issue and the mishandling
> of the DNA Study that DID NOT prove that Thomas Jefferson fathered any slave child.
>
> That NYT Prof. Paul Finkelman article is a disgrace to Mr Jefferson
> and Monticello.
>
> Herb Barger
> Founder, Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society www.tjheritage.org
> www.jeffersondnastudy.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ron Roizen
> Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2012 12:05 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [VA-HIST] "The Monster of Monticello"
>
> In the great tradition of "Let's you and him fight," what did list
> members think of Paul Finkelman's NY Times opinion piece:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/opinion/the-real-thomas-jefferson.ht
> ml?src
> =recg&_r=0 ?
>
> Ron Roizen
> Wallace, Idaho
>
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