Context Matters - Thomas Jefferson and slavery

[Patented Phil 823]

Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence.  Interesting historical context here.  He blames England for the advent of slavery in the America’s and its continued existence.  He cites it as one of the key grievances against the King...
 

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html

“he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.“

 

[Patented Phil 823]

Fact is - Jefferson objected to slavery his whole life.  Why didn’t he stop it?  He couldn’t - the laws in place didn’t allow it, and the country was too divided on the issue at the time.

A common criticism of Jefferson is that, unlike Washington, he didn’t free his slaves.  Here again context matters.  There were laws in place in Virginia that made it very costly to free your slaves.  You basically had to support economically any slave you freed.  Jefferson barely scraped by at the time of his death and couldn’t pay the money required to free all his slaves.  And he didn’t want to break up families.  So he freed a few - the ones he could.

Anyone wanting to take down Jefferson statues is an idiot of history.

[Patented Phil 823]

From a letter written by Jefferson in 1825, the year before his death:

” At the age of 82, with one foot in the grave and the other uplifted to follow it, I do not permit myself to take part in any new enterprises, even for bettering the condition of man, not even in the great one which is the subject of your letter and which has been through life that of my greatest anxieties. The march of events has not been such as to render it’s completion practicable with the limits of the time allotted to me; and I leave its accomplishment as the work of another generation. And I am cheered when I see that on which it is devolved, taking it up with so much good will and such minds engaged in its encouragement.  The abolition of the evil is not impossible; it ought never therefore to be despaired of.  Every plan should be adopted, every experiment tried, which may do something towards the ultimate object.”

[Patented Phil 823]

Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826 on the 50th anniversary of the issuance of the Declaration of Independence.

[KSB2424 3,082]

But he’s old and white

[FlyinHeadlock 459]

Anybody's life could be cherry picked with and electron microscope to find bad things. Even Mother Teresa, the Dali Lama and MLK. Go ahead and do that though. Humanity will be left with nothing but hatred, bitterness and tyrants. 

[Patented Phil 823]

1 hour ago, KSB2424 said:

But he’s old and white

And male.

[avoiding injuries 1,220]

1 hour ago, Patented Phil said:

And male.

And American. 

[Utilit99 4,099]

And straight.

[TommyGavin 788]

14 hours ago, Utilit99 said:

And straight.

Except that one time he was banging his slave maid cook In the kitchen and the BBC entered the picture  - look it up on pronhub