Thank you, Professor Hardwick.  I could not have put it more
clearly nor as eloquently as you have.
  All I would add here is that since slaves were conceived to serve
their "masters," contemporary propriety about what may be
discussed in public, should not disincline us from speculating on
all of the "services" slaves were coerced into performing in earlier
centuries.  We could all benefit by rereading Winthrop Jordan
magisterial White Over Black, where he examines the newspaper
discussions of interracial sexuality in colonial South Carolina to
make the point that Charleston society appeared similar to that of
the British Caribbean.  That the Richmond papers did not jest in
quite this way, does not convince that Virginia slaveowners were
fundamentally different than their aristocratic peers in Carolina.
  Of course, slavery is a fact.  But it is not a fact like tulips bloom
in April (in CT., but in March in VA) or hammers usually have iron
or steel heads.  It is a fact like the French Revolution or the great
Influenza epidemic of 1918-1919:  a fact with immense and far
reaching consequences.

Harold S. Forsythe

Date sent:              Thu, 28 Mar 2002 19:58:23 -0500
From:                   Kevin Hardwick <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:                Jefferson's Pillow
To:                     [log in to unmask]
Send reply to:          Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
        <[log in to unmask]>

> Well, my intention really was to comment on the larger issue of Thomas
> Jefferson and slavery, which I think risks being obscured by what I find
> as the (relatively speaking) uninteresting question of whether or not
> Jefferson had sex with one of his slaves.  The sensationalism of the
> allegations distracts from the larger issue, which was that Jefferson
> lived his entire life as a master of slaves, a position which he
> eloquently and accurately characterized as inducing "the most unremitting
> despotism" in the "manners" of the slave owner.  Jefferson, the man who
> condemned slavery because it made tyrants out of slave owners, and hence
> corrupted the public life of the American republic, made no serious effort
> to live by his own principles.  He did not even have the honesty to
> acknowledge, as did Patrick Henry, that "however culpable my conduct, I
> will so far pray my devoir to virtue, as to own the excellence and
> rectitude of her precepts, and lament my want of conformity to them."
>
> Jefferson's record as a slaveowner, as Lucia Stanton, Jack Rakove, Jan
> Lewis, Rhys Isaac, and numerous others have documented, was fairly typical
> of his generation.  It most definitely did include the use of coercive
> force to keep his "people" at their work.  Jefferson built and rebuilt his
> mansion, lived a life of eight course dinners and fine wine, all the while
> sinking deeper and deeper in debt.  He knew full well (and if he did not
> know, it was only by the most heraculean efforts of self deception) that
> when he died his slaves would have to be sold, and the plantation "family"
> he paternalistically conceived as being under his care and protection
> would be separated, in order to cover his extravagent debts.  Contrast
> Jefferson's irresponsibility with Washington's frugality, and consequent
> ability to free his slaves, and tell me who you think was the more humane
> and principled man.  Jefferson was by far the greater writer and
> rhetoritician, and left a larger, in the best possible sense, ideological
> legacy.  But as a man, Washington was the more admirable of the two.
>
> Roger Wilkens has written a truly fine meditition on the meaning of the
> founding and its compromise with slavery in his book JEFFERSON'S PILLOW,
> which I think gets at the larger issues in a more meaningful and useful
> fashion than the narrow literature regarding Jefferson and Hemings.  I
> would hope that no one here would want to go so far today as William Lloyd
> Garrison did a century and a half ago, and suggest that the values of the
> founding are irrevocably corrupted by the fact that a good many of the
> founders owned slaves.  For Wilkens, it is precisely the values of the
> Virginia founders which provide the intellectual armature for the public
> principles to which he has devoted his life work.  While some here might
> (possibly) disagree with Wilken's means, I rather doubt that many will
> quarrel with his quite Jeffersonian goals.  And yet, as a 69 year old
> black man, Wilkens has lived through a period of American history in which
> some Americans, including a good many Virginians, denied his capacity to
> act as a responsible citizen because of the color of his skin.
>
> I am really at a loss to know how to respond to anyone who dismisses these
> issues as "foolery."  They strike me as going right to the heart of
> Virginia's contribution to the ideals which define public life in our
> country today.  They strike me as important and worthy of discussion,
> precisely because, as Edmund Morgan noted almost thirty years ago, the
> development of "liberty and equality in America had been accompanied by
> the rise of slavery."  As Morgan wrote, "the paradox is American, and it
> behooves Americans to understand it if they would understand themselves."
> I don't think we have seen the end of that discussion, by any means.  But
> I do think Wilkens takes us a step in the right direction, and I do hope
> we will continue to discuss these issues, as historians, as Virginians,
> and as Americans.
>
> Best,
> Kevin
>
> --On Thursday, March 28, 2002 5:05 PM -0500 Ray Bonis <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > Enough of this foolery!  Please no more of Sally and Thomas.  We've
> > heard enough. ~~~ Ray Bonis Special Collections and Archives James
> > Branch Cabell Library 901 Park Ave. VCU Box 842033 Richmond, VA
> > 23284-2033
> >
> > Phone: (804) 828-1108
> > Email: [log in to unmask]
> > Web:   www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/speccoll.html
> > ~~~~
> >
> > To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the
> > instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
>
>
>
> --
> Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of History, MSC 2001
> James Madison University
> Harrisonburg VA 22807
> Phone:  540/568-6306
> Email:  [log in to unmask]
>
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
> at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html


Harold S. Forsythe
Assistant Professor History
Director:  Black Studies
Fairfield University
Fairfield, CT 06430-5195
(203) 254-4000  x2379

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