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.html?src
=recg&_r=0 ?
Ron Roizen
Wallace, Idaho
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