Paul, I think you have made a very concise and accurate statement of
the situation. I talked with Dumas Malone many years ago and Thomas
Jefferson as an asexual being was clearly his perspective, just as he
cast a soft fog around Jefferson's views on slavery.
-- Stephan
On 2 May 2008, at 09:28, Paul Finkelman wrote:
> I think the problem is that most biographers of TJ before the 1990s
> considered him a saint and wrote dishonest or misleading
> biographies of
> him. I detail a great deal of this in my book SLAVERY AND THE
> FOUNDERS:
> RACE AND lLIBERTY IN THE AGE OF JEFFERSON. Many of these
> biographers
> did say he was antislavery and wanted to free his slaves; Dumas Malone
> vastly exaggerated his interest in freeing slaves through careful and
> very misleading language. Thus, when modern scholars have come along
> and questions this, they are attacked for "tearing down" Jefferson. He
> was smart, a great writer, and was wonderful on things like religious
> freedom; on slavery and race he was worse than almost every one of his
> major contemporaries. And his personal life with Sally Hemings and
> her
> children -- his children (or his nieces and nephews) was very
> problematic. Many of the people on this list just do not want to
> think
> about all this.
>
> Paul Finkelman
> President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law
> and Public Policy
> Albany Law School
> 80 New Scotland Avenue
> Albany, New York 12208-3494
>
> 518-445-3386
> [log in to unmask]
>>>> [log in to unmask] 05/02/08 8:45 AM >>>
> Jefferson was an elitist-- which explains a lot of his crummy
> behavior,
> and there's no reason to believe he ever considered freeing his
> slaves.
> That being said, the man was brilliant and did some extraordinary
> thinking and
> important things. I don't think anyone wants to excuse the bad/
> wrong he
> did.
> The defensive reaction comes when it sounds as if some want to tear
> him
> down,
> dismiss his accomplishments, and destroy the respect in which he is
> held... because he wasn't a saint.
> None of the so-called founding fathers was perfect. I find it
> fascinating to learn more about all of them
> (as well as some of the "little people" of the time). Why is there so
> much vitriol here about TJ?
>
> --
> Melinda C. P. Skinner
> Richmond, VA
>
>
> -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: Paul Finkelman <[log in to unmask]>
>> We owe a lot to Dan, so does Monticello.
>> My sense is that some people on this list do not really appreciate
>> "scholarship" and intellectual inquiry, but are only interested in
>> hagiography.
>> Henry is right that we must "judge" and evaluate people from the past
>> because we have inherited what they created. But even if we only
> judge
>> Jefferson by the standards of his own time, he does not come off very
>> well. He was in the position, many times in his life, to take a stand
> on
>> slavery; he never did.
>> Some on this list want to see him as a secret opponent of slavery,
>> who
>> would have freed his slaves if only he had not been bankrupt; but
>> that
>> "if" goes to his character. Throughout his life he spent money he
>> did
>> not have and sold human beings to pay his debts. In the 1780s and
> 1790s
>> he sold at least 85 people -- sold them away from their friends,
>> their
>> family, the world they knew, so that he could buy his wine, his art,
> his
>> toys and rebuild his house over and over again. It is hardly an
>> admirable legacy.
>> When his neighbor Edward Coles resolved to free his own slaves and
> asked
>> TJ to endorse that act -- and to take a stand against slavery; TJ
>> refused.
>> When people asked him to simply oppose the spread of slavery in 1820
> he
>> flat out refused.
>> When chair of the committee to revise the laws of VA he proposed
>> horribly draconian laws against blacks and against white women who
>> had
>> children with free blacks -- so extreme that the Va. legislature
>> would
>> not pass them.
>> Judge him by his own standards -- his claims that we are all "created
>> equal" -- and he is a miserable failure. What did he do to make
>> sure
>> to bring "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to the slaves he
>> owned and to those owned by so many other Virginians?
>>
>> Paul Finkelman
>> President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law
>> and Public Policy
>> Albany Law School
>> 80 New Scotland Avenue
>> Albany, New York 12208-3494
>>
>> 518-445-3386
>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>> [log in to unmask] 05/01/08 9:13 PM >>>
>> At the risk of making my good friend Deane Mills scream, I'll say
>> that
>> we
>> SHOULD be judging the people of the past. We live under their laws,
>> their
>> Constitution, their customs, so we have a right to inquire about the
>> character of those people who made the world we live in. When we
>> write
>> books
>> that heap praise on the Founders, that's a judgement too.
>>
>> Lyle Browning asks for a succinct summary of this Hemings question.
> You
>> could look at the Monticello report on their website, which is very
>> clearly
>> presented, and then look at Herb's website for another view.
>>
>> Jon Kukla said what I have been thinking of saying but haven't gotten
>> around
>> to -- the personal attacks on Dan Jordan of Monticello are way, way
> out
>> of
>> line. He is a superb scholar, committed to a full and frank
>> discussion
>> of
>> the Jeffersonian legacy. He presided over the creation of the
>> magnificent
>> International Center for Jefferson Studies, where scores of scholars
>> come
>> from around the world to study, discuss, and advance Jefferson
>> studies
>> in an
>> open and impartial atmosphere. We owe Dan a lot.
>>
>> Henry Wiencek
>> Charlottesville
>>
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