In a message dated 4/2/2002 9:11:21 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

> the paternity of
>  Heming's children is a distraction from the larger moral issue.  So I am
>  curious why you keep injecting it into the conversation-
Professor Hardwick:
The paucity of proof normally required for any such allegation as the
paternity of the Hemings children does not deter a wide swath of those today
immersed in "slave studies." In fact, it defines them, and raises questions
about their "imagining the past," to borrow Professor Fordyce's revealing
phrase. For reasons obscure, it opens the door for the movement to "take
(Jefferson) down off his pedestal."

    So, you are correct that I considered the paternity allegation the focus
of the string and not the "larger moral issue" that you are intent on
exploring that Jefferson was "morally weak." However, I did not ignore your
assertion that "Jefferson could not have been Jefferson without slavery." I
denied it. The intellectual thought of the 17th and 18th centuries that was
realized in the concept that government is a compact of the people, that
power flows up, not down, was accepted by Adams, Otis, Dickinson and many
throughout the colonies that did not own slaves. Indeed, in Morgan's seminal
treatment, it is the paradox of colonial Virginia that the beliefs of liberty
and equality were the same among both the slave owners and those throughout
the colonies who opposed slavery. Morgan even defends the moral stature of
Jefferson, Washington and Madison. Slavery, while an uncomfortable issue in
the 1787 Convention, was not a defining issue in pre-Revolutionary thought.

    The point not to be lost here is that Jefferson's thought was his legacy.
There is no basis for asserting that Jefferson's thought would have been
different if he never owned a slave. In fact, he opposed the concept of
slavery, he did not defend it, and so, Jefferson's vision was unclouded by
the economic reality of colonial Virginia.
____________________________________________________________________
Richard E. Dixon
Attorney at Law
4122 Leonard Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030
703-691-0770 fax 703-691-0978
____________________________________________________________________

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