We owe a lot to Dan, so does Monticello.
My sense is that some people on this list do not really appreciate
"scholarship" and intellectual inquiry, but are only interested in
hagiography.
Henry is right that we must "judge" and evaluate people from the past
because we have inherited what they created. But even if we only judge
Jefferson by the standards of his own time, he does not come off very
well. He was in the position, many times in his life, to take a stand on
slavery; he never did.
Some on this list want to see him as a secret opponent of slavery, who
would have freed his slaves if only he had not been bankrupt; but that
"if" goes to his character. Throughout his life he spent money he did
not have and sold human beings to pay his debts. In the 1780s and 1790s
he sold at least 85 people -- sold them away from their friends, their
family, the world they knew, so that he could buy his wine, his art, his
toys and rebuild his house over and over again. It is hardly an
admirable legacy.
When his neighbor Edward Coles resolved to free his own slaves and asked
TJ to endorse that act -- and to take a stand against slavery; TJ
refused.
When people asked him to simply oppose the spread of slavery in 1820 he
flat out refused.
When chair of the committee to revise the laws of VA he proposed
horribly draconian laws against blacks and against white women who had
children with free blacks -- so extreme that the Va. legislature would
not pass them.
Judge him by his own standards -- his claims that we are all "created
equal" -- and he is a miserable failure. What did he do to make sure
to bring "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to the slaves he
owned and to those owned by so many other Virginians?
Paul Finkelman
President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law
and Public Policy
Albany Law School
80 New Scotland Avenue
Albany, New York 12208-3494
518-445-3386
[log in to unmask]
>>> [log in to unmask] 05/01/08 9:13 PM >>>
At the risk of making my good friend Deane Mills scream, I'll say that
we
SHOULD be judging the people of the past. We live under their laws,
their
Constitution, their customs, so we have a right to inquire about the
character of those people who made the world we live in. When we write
books
that heap praise on the Founders, that's a judgement too.
Lyle Browning asks for a succinct summary of this Hemings question. You
could look at the Monticello report on their website, which is very
clearly
presented, and then look at Herb's website for another view.
Jon Kukla said what I have been thinking of saying but haven't gotten
around
to -- the personal attacks on Dan Jordan of Monticello are way, way out
of
line. He is a superb scholar, committed to a full and frank discussion
of
the Jeffersonian legacy. He presided over the creation of the
magnificent
International Center for Jefferson Studies, where scores of scholars
come
from around the world to study, discuss, and advance Jefferson studies
in an
open and impartial atmosphere. We owe Dan a lot.
Henry Wiencek
Charlottesville
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