If you cannot admit that history can be objectively known, then you cannot
believe that history bears any certainty of knowledge.
JDS
In a message dated 5/16/2008 8:23:49 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
As I was pondering all of these goings on today.... I thought about how it
seems to be "kosher" to come down hard on someone like, say,
Jefferson....and let's face it, he gets pretty badly beaten up on this List,
occasionally having been called everything from a rapist to whoremongering
dirty, old man...but when one unkind word is written against Sally Heming
some of us flip out completely!
I wish that this awful judging of both the quick and the dead would just
stop and we would try to stick to facts and ideas and try to do so with a
bit of civility. Please. And I am speaking to myself here, as well.
Your friend,
Deane Ferguson Mills
York County, VA
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Kiracofe" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 7:23 PM
Subject: Re: Language
I think what is upsetting here for some folks is that while Sally Hemings
may loom larger in the imagination -- even to the point of being
"semi-fictional" as you say -- than the hard historical record warrants,
there was, in fact, such a living person: she lived as a slave at
Monticello, a woman, and apparently had a number of children, she was a
mother. We know little about her beyond that that everyone on the list
could agree on, but I for one consider it uncharitable and ill-mannered to
describe someone who I don't know with such perjorative and even cruel
terminology.
David Kiracofe
David Kiracofe
History
Tidewater Community College
Chesapeake Campus
1428 Cedar Road
Chesapeake, Virginia 23322
757-822-5136
>>> "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]> 05/15/08
>>> 10:49 PM >>>
What I find intriguing is how anyone can get upset over an opinion about a
semi-fictional character such as Sally Hemings. We have those who can no
longer bear to risk further shocking language and they abandon the list.
We have other self-appointed censors who secretly call the ListManager and
encourage him to bounce the offender. If this list had a rule that
everyone had to know what they were talking about before they contributed a
post, that could cause serious deletion.
Richard E. Dixon
Editor, Jefferson Notes
Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
4122 Leonard Drive
Fairfax, Va 22030
703-691-0770 fax 703-691-0978
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