Your query on the antipathy to Jefferson among many slave study academics
should elicit some interesting responses. In the posts, much is made of
Washington freeing his slaves. All credit to what he did, but what he did
was provide for their manumission after the death of his wife. He benefited
from the system during his entire life and intended that Martha also retain
the slaves until her death. As it turned out, she emancipated them early,
possibly as one post notes, because of the fear that she would be
assassinated. It should also be noted that this did not include the dower
slaves Martha brought to the marriage, who were passed to the heirs of her
first husband and continued in slavery. Not that Washington could have done
anything to prevent that, but during his life, he was largely silent on
slavery, while Jefferson was vocal on the evils of the system, contrary to
one post that essentially claimed Jefferson did nothing during his life to
reject this institution. None of the founding fathers in the slaves states
freed their slaves. There is anecdotal evidence that some planters did, but
because Jefferson did not, he alone is branded as immoral. Under Virginia
law, slaves were personal property, and no slaves could be freed unless
released by the creditors of the owner. Jefferson, continuously in debt
from the time he left the presidency, could never have secured release of
the slaves as collateral for his debts. Again, under Virginia law, the
owner was responsible for the upkeep of the freed slave for one year when
the slave could remain in Virginia, a financial obligation Jefferson could
not meet. One post asserted that Washington waived this requirement that
the slave leave Virginia after one year, which Washington had no authority
to do. Jefferson was condemned in one post for sitting on the mountain at
Monticello, spending his money on wine rather than arranging his finances
to free his slaves. Possibly, he could have been a better money manager.
Maybe this poster has done research not yet made public, but the depression
in Virginia in 1819 made all planters land poor and locked into the chattel
slavery system. And to further batter the Jefferson image, he is depicted
as the father of children by his slave Sally Hemings, all of whom he kept
in slavery without acknowledgment or favor. This on evidence so thin that
no contemporary observer has ever surfaced to testify, even though two of
the children were born after the claim by Callender in the press, while
Jefferson was president, and in the public eye. Jefferson was worse than
that however. One poster claims that “no one disputes” that Hemings was the
half-sister to Martha Jefferson. Well, there is absolutely no proof of
this, but this provides another basis for condemnation, because if
Jefferson is not the father, but another Jefferson is, the children are his
nieces and nephews and he holds them as slaves. An so on.

Richard E. Dixon
Attorney at Law
4122 Leonard Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030
703-691-0770
fax 703-691-0978


> [Original Message]
> From: Bland Whitley <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 12/6/2005 12:32:29 PM
> Subject: Re: "common-sense Jeffersonian conservative principles"
>
>
> Apropos to this current debate over the relative sins/merits of
> Jefferson and Washington: what accounts for the central importance
> members of this list have placed on the personal character of these
> founders? The argument that seems to be developing places Jefferson at
> one end of the political and cultural spectrum of Revolutionary-era
> Virginia and Washington at the other. Whereas Jefferson becomes the
> original sinner, the source of scientific racism, parochial
> states-rights ideology, and opportunistic governance, Washington shines
> forth as the far-sighted, anti-racist model for a fair-minded republic.
> Are there not more complicated, incisive ways of analyzing this
> material? Or does the health of our republic and our view of history
> depend on knocking down one straw man and elevating another?
>
> I ask these questions not in defense of Jefferson. As most of his recent
> biographers have shown, he grows more personally repellant the closer
> one gets to him. But the recent campaigns against him seem to adopt an
> attitude that America will suddenly be sanitized by expunging his
> influence over our political culture. If only we follow in the footsteps
> of those with sterling character (like Adams and Washington), the
> argument goes, we can finally overcome the knotty contradictions that
> bedevil us. Well, sorry, I don't buy it. I may find inspiration in the
> leadership and character of Washington and in the words and ideals of
> Jefferson (some of them anyway), but it seems folly to reduce our study
> of the past to a search for appropriate models.
>
> Washington, as Henry Wiencek has shown, did in some respects transcend
> the political culture that produced him, while Jefferson seems to have
> been consumed by it, but both ultimately shared more similarities than
> differences. Somewhere in there may lie a more fruitful discussion. Or
> maybe not.
>
> Bland Whitley
>
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