On Jun 12, 2007, at 7:47 AM, Henry Wiencek wrote:
> We like to think that "they didn't know any better; we can't judge
> them." But if you look at what
> Washington did and contended against, you find that he was not fighting
> against ignorance and indifference, but against profit. The modern
> analogy I
> use is: getting Thomas Jefferson to give up slavery is like getting
> Dick
> Cheney to quit pumping oil.
Henry, forgive me for not remembering more clearly, as it has been
awhile since I read your book, but did Washington's (unquestionably
admirable) freeing of his slaves in his will actually affect his own
profits, or those of his wife?
On the broader point, I am not an economic historian, but it has always
been difficult for me to imagine how slavery could have been abolished
on a large scale, voluntarily or involuntarily, without causing
personal economic collapse for most slaveholding Virginians without any
clear remedy (which is why so many of them who freed their slaves did
so post mortem). The rare emancipations by major slaveholders
underscore this point: Washington understandably deferred his
emancipations until both he and his wife were dead, and had no children
whose needs were sacrificed to those of his slaves; Robert Carter
willingly (and wonderfully) sacrificed his own well-being during his
lifetime, but went to great lengths not to exact a comparable sacrifice
from his children. The de facto quasi-serfdom that followed the Civil
War for so many African Americans, cruel and oppressive in its own
right, seems to me further evidence of the problem: erstwhile
slaveholders were only too happy to save themselves from impoverishment
at the expense of their former slaves, but that fact should not obscure
the related fact that they were driven by economic no less than racist
motives.
As for the assumption among many historians that the 1780s were a
pivotal moment when white Virginians might have been induced to give up
slavery had their politicians led them aright: the most detailed study
of the evidence to date concludes otherwise. See Eva Sheppard Wolf,
Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the
Revolution to Nat Turner's Rebellion (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 2006), which is likely to be the starting-point for
all further scholarship on this subject among historians of Virginia.
If I see Virginia's persistence in slavery as tragically complex rather
than simply evil, then, it's because I cannot see any large-scale
alternative, once slavery had been established as the region's economic
foundation, that would not have required slaveholders to put themselves
and their families in dire economic jeopardy. Should they have done
so? Of course. In the aftermath of the Revolution, most of the
societies they knew came to recognize that slavery was an intolerable
abomination, and white Southerners' determination to disagree required
one of the most willful acts of collective self-delusion on record.
But that they did not do so? That, surely, should not surprise us.
These issues may well be all too relevant to us today. Assuming that
the world is, in fact, at an environmental crossroads--global climate
change--that will require Americans to sacrifice materially and
painfully in order to save millions in places such as South Asia from
devastating suffering, let us hope that we present-day Virginians will
defy the slaveholders' example and summon the sacrificial selflessness
they refused.
--Jurretta Heckscher
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