Just a slightly different take on Doug:  I think we can legitimately condemn those who knew slavery wrong, had power, and did little or nothing to either stop it, end it, or even free their own slaves.  Jefferson's lifelong political support of slavery, his condemntation of those like Edward Coles who free their own slvaes, and his refusal to ever take a public stand against it after he returned from France deserves public condemnation.  All his friends all over the world were in anit-slavery societies, he was not.

Paul FInkelman

>From: Douglas Deal 
>Reply-To: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history         
>      
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Madison's slaves (and black descendants?)
>Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:18:33 -0400
>
>This question of the "good" or "moral" slaveowner is a familiar one to 
>those of us who teach the history of slavery. To condemn the institution 
>and all owners as immoral is a perfect example of "presentism"--i.e., 
>imposing our own values and beliefs on the past, or, more specifically, 
>judging one group or another for its failure to think and act as we suppose 
>we would have in their place.
>
>Before explaining why this leads to bad history, I want to make it clear 
>that  we always define or judge our own values and beliefs with reference 
>to "benchmarks" in the past. There is, after all, nothing else to use as a 
>standard than that which has already happened. So, using the past to arrive 
>at judgments about ourselves is perfectly appropriate. But reversing the 
>procedure--judging the past by the standards of the present--is not. It is 
>rather like trying to speak to the past from the present: we won't be heard 
>and nothing will change.
>
>If this quick portrait of presentism does not seem clear enough, consider 
>another: what would we think about historians 100 or 200 years from now 
>lambasting capitalism and all employers as immoral because they exploit 
>workers, degrade work, and so forth? By the enlightened standards of 2100 
>or 2200, capitalism may well seem crude, even evil. Does that mean that our 
>historians of the future would be correct in judging the institution and 
>its leading "players" (capitalists) using their  standards, not ours today? 
>We would probably think the argument is wrong-headed. Well, we might reply, 
>some capitalists or employers are real bastards, others are pretty 
>enlightened, at least by today's standards. Not all work is equally 
>degrading in our capitalist economy, Sure, some people oppose the 
>institution even now, but like the abolitionists of the 19th century, the 
>anti-capitalists of today are a minority.
>
>Back to our historical issue: We would want to give slaveowners of the 19th 
>century the same open-minded examination that we know our 21st-century 
>capitalists deserve. Sizing up each group, we might conclude that in terms 
>of personality and character, both slaveowners and capitalist employers run 
>the gamut from the most evil and vicious to the most charitable and good. 
>Human nature allows for (determines?) this sort of variation along a 
>spectrum or in some multi-dimensional field of possibilities. One of the 
>most interesting questions is how an "institution" (which, in the end, is 
>just a collection of people and the ideas, values, and practices they have 
>installed as norms) shapes and challenges the qualities of individuals 
>inside it. Similar, albeit rephrased, questions should also be asked about 
>slaves and wage workers under the two systems. It makes no more sense to 
>describe all slaveowners as evil or immoral than it would to describe all 
>slaves as morally upright or good.; ditto for employers and workers today.
>
>The point of historical investigation is not to demonstrate the progress we 
>have made since the "bad old days." It is, rather, to appreciate the 
>"otherness" of people and their actions in the past, while acknowledging 
>their humanity, and thus the diversity and complexity of the human 
>condition in general.
>
>Doug Deal
>History/SUNY Oswego

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Paul Finkelman
President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law
     and Public Policy
Albany Law School
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