At 2:59 PM -0500 4/13/01, Paul Finkelman wrote:
>Quick response.  First, Morrison was a professor at Harvard, in history, for
>about 50 years.  It Churchill that good a historian, or merely a good writer?

I wasn't thinking of Morrison's academic career, but his pioneering
work as a public historian in government. Sorry I didn't take the
time to frame that much better.

As for Churchill the historian: If you measure success in books sold,
he certainly stands above most of us.  If you measure success in a
book's influence on the course of history, he's right up there with
Gibbon and Beard and Turner. The English-Speaking Peoples was not
only brilliant synthesis (my opinion) but it probably had major
effect on public opinion in the British sphere of influence,
including the U. S. and the pink bits scattered all over the world
map, at a critical moment.


>But, to the major point.  Certain TJ as an architect may not be a
>reflection of
>his status as slaveowner, although his ability to build and rebuild
>his home was
>a function of that.  But, for his public career, his actions, such
>as his early
>embargo against Haiti, he annexation of Lousiana despite his constitutional
>doubts, his refusal to endorse manumisison programs, are all a function of his
>status as a slaveowner.  Indeed, in TJ's case more than many other
>leaders, the
>personal did dicatate the policies quite often.

Of course, slave ownership was part of the man's makeup, and we all
act based on the various component parts of our personalities.  But
there were lots and lots of other factors that led to his decisions.


>His science, such as it was, at least as set out in NOTES ON THE STATE OF
>VIRGINIA was racist and designed in fact to support slavery, thus his
>"scientific" judgments about the abilities of blacks.

In retrospect, perhaps, the Notes on the State of Virginia probably
are racist. But you can't judge racism, or any other -ism, outside
the context of its time. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. But imagine
Jefferson sitting around a table with his peers.  In that context,
would he be a racist, or merely reflecting one aspect of mainstream
culture?  There were abolitionists who believed that blacks were
inferior, but they weren't racists.



>On religious freedom, he certainly did not seem willing to extend
>that freedom to
>slaves or even free blacks.  One might argue, in fact, that his desire for
>religious freedom was a function of his need to have a united front for all
>whites, and eliminate all disharmony among whites, to protect against blacks.


Again, the Civil Rights Act hadn't been passed when Jefferson was
alive.  Freedom comes incrementally in our society. There was a time
when you had to be a forty-shilling male white freeholder over 21 (or
the son of such a freeholder) in order to vote, and you had to cast
your vote in the presence of the rest of the electorate.

About a hundred years ago, some real radical liberals wanted to
institute secret ballots. Imagine not knowing how a person voted!
Why, it would undermine democracy and destroy our freedoms!

Then there were the yankee radicals from the "free love and free
school states of the north" who wanted just anybody's son in Virginia
to be allowed to go to school. Just anybody going to school without
paying a fee? The end of civilization.

Remove the property requirement for voting? Let the rabble rule? This
isn't the Paris streets, you know.

Each generation's radicalism pushes back injustice a little tiny bit.
The only way you can determine if  Jefferson was a "racist" is to
compare him to a sample of his contemporaries and social peers. The
term "racism" wasn't in popular circulation in those circles.

Jefferson never voted in an election that was open to all citizens,
black and white, rich and poor, male and female. Yet he wrote many of
the documents upon which we base so much of our ideas of liberty.
It's preposterous to suggest condemning him merely for the "crime" of
being born a couple of centuries too soon.
--

****************************************

About 1607, residents of the
Atlantic seaboard discovered Europeans.
The Europeans behaved like savages,
and many of the local people moved away.

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