the difference I suppose is that level of detail. Saying you were owned by someone; or who your parents were, is pretty likely to be remembered. Giving micro details of life as some of the narratives do, is more complicated. In any event, I did not say the slave narratives cannot be used, only that they require some care. I cannot remember how old Madison H. was when he gave the interview. That also affects the level of memory. My mother, in her late 80s, is good on who her parents and children were, where she grew up, and stuff like that, but not good on micro details
----
Paul Finkelman
President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law
Albany Law School
80 New Scotland Avenue
Albany, NY 12208
518-445-3386 (p)
518-445-3363 (f)
[log in to unmask]
www.paulfinkelman.com
________________________________
From: Herbert Barger <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, December 5, 2012 3:47 PM
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] "The Monster of Monticello"
Paul,
Would not the Pike Co article by Madison Hemings not fall into this
category? His article was used by the Monticello DNA Study by Chairman,
Dianne Swann-Wright and Annette Gordon-Reed who accepted it as fact. All of
it was not fact as we well know.
Herb Barger
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Finkelman, Paul
<[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2012 5:27 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] "The Monster of Monticello"
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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