jhu72 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 09, 2020 1:35 am
DocBarrister wrote: ↑Thu Jul 09, 2020 1:13 am
jhu72 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 09, 2020 12:51 am
DocBarrister wrote: ↑Thu Jul 09, 2020 12:12 am
Cooter wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 11:19 pm
DocBarrister wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 11:13 pm
Cooter wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 11:11 pm
DocBarrister wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 11:05 pm
Cooter wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 11:00 pm
DocBarrister wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 10:18 pm
jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:29 pm
DocBarrister wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:17 pm
Peter Brown wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 5:07 pm
I believe previously you claimed Jefferson "raped" Hemmings.
I claimed.
And HE did.
A teenaged female slave cannot in any way “consent” to sexual relations with her owner.
DocBarrister
… such activity however was not prohibited by law in Virginia of 1790 and certainly not Paris in the same era. If it occurred today, it would certainly be rape in a number of (perhaps all) states. He was also ~40 years older than her at the time. Certainly well outside societal norms except for the elites of the time.
That is not relevant. Rape is
malum in se (evil in itself), not
malum prohibitum (wrong only because it is prohibited). Rape is a morally criminal act whether or not it is prohibited by law.
There is also no defense in asserting Jefferson was merely a man of his time. There were plenty of his peers who supported the abolishment of slavery. John Adams for one. Ben Franklin once owned slaves, but eventually freed them and urged the banning of slavery in America. About half of the people of the United States opposed slavery during Jefferson’s lifetime.
Thomas Jefferson was a rapist. There’s no reason we can’t acknowledge that undeniable fact while considering the entirety of Jefferson’s legacy as a slave owner and Founding Father of this nation.
DocBarrister
You seem to be talking about statutory rape, in a time when there was perhaps no statute.
No.
I am talking about sex without consent.
Rape.
DocBarrister
You are just playing with words.
No.
I am discussing Thomas Jefferson’s rape of his slave, Sally Hemmings.
DocBarrister
The problem with using the word "rape" is it tends to imply forcible rape and I don't not know that there is any evidence of that.
Your understanding of the term “rape” is embarrassingly out of date.
Besides, if the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson was truly consensual, then why did he never free her, as he had freed other members of her family? Indeed, Hemings was only freed by his daughter after Jefferson had died.
He did not free her because it would have broke the family up. She would have had to leave Virginia under force of law. Her and the children were all freed in his will. The daughter carried out his wishes. While he was alive, a couple of the older children were freed and moved out of state. He also freed members of Hemings extended family while alive and in his will. While slaves they were all "given their time".
There is no debating he was a slave owner. I really don't think it is debatable that he had a special relationship with Hemings that went beyond sexual. The children felt he was cold. But he treated them as well as any Virginia land owner treated second legitimate sons during the period - this is documented. He gave them the best opportunities he could under the circumstances, which included training in trades against the day they were freed. The children generally did well after being freed. He also in his will petitioned the State of Virginia to repeal the law requiring freed slaves to leave the state. Apparently the State of Virginia did as he asked. There is no evidence of which I am aware that he did or did not petition the state earlier.
He was a large slave holder, but I really think the evidence that he raped Sally Hemings is non-existent. She was his ex-wife's half sister and there was a resemblance.
—jhu72
Not true.
There is NO documentation of Jefferson freeing Sally Hemings in his will. NONE.
Also, as a practical matter, Hemings would not have had to leave Virginia, despite the statute requiring freed slaves to leave the state. Proof? She died in Charlottesville, many years after being freed by Jefferson’s daughter.
What you don’t seem to appreciate is that Jefferson died deeply in debt and essentially bankrupt. It is the primary reason he did not free the vast majority of his slaves in his will. He gave Monticello to his legitimate daughter, and he intended the slaves to be auctioned off to pay his estate’s debts, with the hope his daughter could continue to live at Monticello.
Whom did Jefferson free? Sally Hemings’s children ... HIS children.
But Sally herself? No ... he didn’t free her during his life. He did not free her in his will.
Thomas Jefferson didn’t free Sally Hemings because she wasn’t a child of his or his “lover” ... she was his property.
Thomas Jefferson didn’t free Sally Hemings in his will because he intended to give his heirs the option of auctioning her off to help pay off the estate’s debts ... like the furniture, slaves, and other property he left to his legitimate descendants.
That isn’t love.
DocBarrister
"Thomas Jefferson did not free Sally Hemings. She was permitted to leave Monticello by his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph not long after Jefferson's death in 1826, and went to live with her sons Madison and Eston in Charlottesville." According to the Hemings display at Montecello.
Freed in Will, allowed to leave to Charlottesville shortly after his death by the daughter.
Huge difference.
You don't seem to recall the Petition made in the Will to allow freed slaves to remain in Virginia.
YOU ARE GRASPING AT STRAWS and playing the lawyer game searching for an alternative explanation. There is zero evidence he was planning on selling her!!
She remained with him, after a chance for freedom in Paris. She clearly had some affection for him.
You have presented no evidence, NONE for any of your assertions.
The ignorance of that view is truly shocking, especially from you.
You think staying in France, a foreign nation with a foreign language and foreign customs, and away from her family forever at Monticello, was a realistic option for a pregnant 16 year old girl born into slavery?
The myth (reportedly spread by even her own children) is that this 16 year old girl somehow “negotiated” a deal with perhaps the leading statesman of his generation and agreed to return to Virginia as his slave and concubine in exchange for “extraordinary” promises. This myth is even posted on the Monticello website:
https://www.monticello.org/sallyhemings/
Let’s assume this is true. There’s nothing particularly “affectionate” about impregnating a 16 year old girl born in slavery and turning her into a concubine ... a polite term for an enslaved prostitute.
It is known that Sally Hemings became pregnant in Paris. It would have been hard for Hemings to support herself in 18th century Paris. Anyone here really think Hemings thought she could support a child, too?
Does anyone really believe Sally Hemings had any choice in returning as a pregnant teenage slave girl to Virginia? The caretaker folks at Monticello would like us to think so, but it took them the better part of two centuries to even acknowledge the sexual relationship between Hemings and Jefferson.
Again, there are three key facts to remember here.
(1) As a slave (and as the Monticello website acknowledges), slaves like Hemings had no legal standing to give consent to a sexual relationship.
(2) Jefferson never freed Sally Hemings. Never. He freed two of his children with Hemings before he died (1822). He freed two more of his children with Hemings in his will (1826). But never Sally.
(3) Jefferson was deep in debt at the time of his death. Slaves who had not been freed by Jefferson (including Sally’s brother, Peter) were intended to be sold off to pay off the estate’s debts.
https://www.monticello.org/slaveauction/
Jefferson had to know that would leave Sally Hemings vulnerable to being auctioned off. He could have prevented any auctioning by freeing her in his will, like he did for two of their children. But he didn’t (the Monticello website confirms that).
Is that consistent with Jefferson viewing Hemings as property? Yes.
Is that consistent with a slightly more charitable view that she was his “negotiated” concubine (enslaved prostitute)? Yes.
Is that consistent with some irrational fantasy that Jefferson and Hemings were consensual lovers? No.
That last notion is a cousin of the racist myth that some slaves were happy in bondage.
Really? We’re entertaining that idea in the 21st century?
DocBarrister
