Please get the quotes right. And, for the record, I too am a descendant of slaves.
Do you think history is irrelevant in understanding injustice and how it can be changed?
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No, I think one needs to be wary of applying today’s standards to make value judgments about yesterday’s actions. (Honestly, I’d expect you to be saying this to me.)
And I don’t think that “moral outrage” is what historians do.
Pelosi may not be a good choice, but Compromise-everywhere Chuck is horrible, and yet he was unopposed for minority leader and no one has said a peep.
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But my point was that people at the time opposed new world chattel slavery and the brutality of western colonialism in the new world, almost from the very beginning.
Yes. We never ever have opinions informed my our ethical and moral values about our subject matter. That would be rather beyond the pale, quite. /s
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Do we not study the past to better ourselves and our world? And is that not a moral enterprise?
Do not mistake the disinfecting light of unabashed hindsight for merely the emotion of outrage it sometimes justifiably provokes. The critical moral examination of our history is an eminently rational undertaking.
We should not want historians of cold calculation. Our common good is better served by historians with passion. Yes, they need an ability to step outside their time and place, but they need not and should not leave their moral compass behind.
So yeah, I want historians that get morally outraged, and I think doing so is every bit the prerogative of historians such as @anon61221983, who after all are rather more qualified and situated to know what historians do and do not do than you or I.
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– Zinn
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one might argue, with the filibuster gone, it simply doesn’t matter who’s minority leader
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Yes, as I pointed out in my post prior to yours.
opinions informed my our ethical and moral values
So do you consider the suffragettes to be “monstrous” because of their racist and colonialist views? Or strong people of good intention embedded in the moral ecosystem of the day and place (as I do)?
To be clear, I posted in direct response to @Wanderfound saying plainly that “the Founders were monstrous.” I don’t disagree with any of the posts that they were morally flawed, even by the standards of the time.
And while @Wanderfound might want Howard Zinn to be on his side, he wasn’t, at least not in the People’s History. While discussing Jefferson’s inability to address Benjamin Bannecker’s direct calls on him, Zinn too says that the behavior needs to be viewed through the lens of the time:
Jefferson tried his best, as an enlightened, thoughtful individual might. But the structure of American society, the power of the cotton plantation, the slave trade, the politics of unity between northern and southern elites, and the long culture of race prejudice in the colonies, as well as his own weaknesses-that combination of practical need and ideological fixation-kept Jefferson a slaveowner throughout his life.
Enlightened, thoughtful individual. Not monster.
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Nope. A dublititous monster.
4-18-08
Why We Should All Regret Jefferson’s Broken Promise to Kościuszko
by Gary B. Nash and Graham Russell Gao Hodges
Nash and Hodges are the co-authors of Friends of Liberty: A Tale of Three Patriots, Two Revolutions, and the Betrayal that Divided a Nation: Thomas Jefferson, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and Agrippa Hull (Basic Books, April 2008).
In March 1798, Tadeuz Kościuszko, a hero of the American and Polish revolutions, and Thomas Jefferson, Vice President of the United States, huddled in a cramped second-story room in Philadelphia to make a pact of honor centered on the Pole’s sizable American estate. Kościuszko, who had returned to the United States to a hero’s welcome less than a year before, anxiously wanted to leave for Paris to avoid entrapment by the Alien and Sedition acts. (Jefferson, estranged from President John Adams and hoping to use Kosciuszko’s prestige on a secret mission to convince the French not to wage war with the United States, prepared a fake passport for Kosciusko.) Before the Pole departed, he and Jefferson constructed a will to dispose of $15,000 (Kosciuszko’s Revolutionary pay) after his death. The two men labored together to produce a document with the potential to alter American history.
Kościuszko’s first version deserves quotation. Though the spelling and syntax are eye-straining, the crude yet eloquent prose convey how passionately the romantic Polish revolutionary had embraced abolitionism.
I beg Mr. Jefferson that in the case I should die without will or testament he should bye out of my money So many Negroes and free them, that the restante [remaining] sums should be Sufficient to give them aducation and provide for thier maintenance, that . . . each should know before, the duty of a Cytyzen in the free Government, that he must defend his country against foreign as well as internal Enemies who would wish to change the Constitution for the worst to inslave them by degree afterwards, to have good and human heart Sensible for the Sufferings of others, each must be married and have 100 Ackres of land, wyth instruments, Cattle for tillage and know how to manage and Gouvern it well as well to know [how to] behave to neyboughs [neighbors], always wyth Kindnes and ready to help them . . . . T. Kościuszko.
In this unconventional but emotion-packed will, Kościuszko expressed the convictions and commitments that made him such an admirable man for black Americans. Drawing on his long-standing belief that the downtrodden could prosper–peasants, as well as slaves–if given their freedom under favorable conditions, he tried to promote universal liberty and give Jefferson the opportunity to lead Southerners in a quest to remove the stain of slavery from the new nation.
A second revised will, entirely in Kościuszko’s hand like the first, included a change of immense significance. Rather than the vague reference in the original version to use Kościuszko’s legacy to free “so many Negroes,” the rewritten will specified that “I do hereby declare and direct that should I make no other testamentary disposition of my property in the United States I hereby authorize my friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole thereof in purchasing Negroes from among his own or any others.” Kościuszko surely made this crucial change with Jefferson’s consent, for Jefferson agreed to be the executor, as well as the beneficiary, of the will. Was Jefferson thinking of Sally Hemings, her daughter Harriet who was now not quite three, and the newborn Beverley, born just ten days before Jefferson witnessed Kościuszko’s signing of the will?
-stop quote-
The article is well worth our time. But the thumbnail is that Jefferson did not honor this will as executor- and didn’t free his slaves even when provided the money to do so and remain well off himself.
Yeah - that’s a monster.
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First of all, no historian would frame a question in that way. None. It’s not that simple. The problem has been in entirely ignoring the fact that many white suffragettes were in fact using race to further their cause. And once again, PEOPLE AT THE TIME NOTED THIS, such as Ida B. Wells and Dubois. They were part of their time, yes, but it’s not like their lack of solidarity went unnoticed at the time, just by white historians later (and by more popular histories now). That is what the revisionist agenda was about - reminding people that while suffragists agitated for their own rights, black women were left out often times. That’s not moralizing so much as it is setting the record straight.
Additionally, plenty of historians do indeed call historical figures monsters and most of us have no qualms about that - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Osama Bin Laden, etc. Not so much with folks like Winston Churchill, even if his policies led to the death of millions. And what about Johnson or Kissinger and their role in the Vietnam? So why does Churchill, Johnson, or Kissinger get a pass, but Hitler or Stalin are monstrous?
But since you know my field better than I do, I’ll bow out.
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Seriously; that sentence was loaded a/f, like Amazon delivery trucks at Xmas time…
O_o
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Ooooh, I know this one!! “The winners write the histories.” What do I win?
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Well, good, because the point I originally raised, and which is the point where you decided to attack me when I wasn’t even talking to you, was that the same question w/r to another historical figure was not simple.
Additionally, plenty of historians do indeed call historical figures monsters and most of us have no qualms about that - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Osama Bin Laden, etc.
We’re not talking about Hitler, sheesh. We’re talking about Jefferson.
But since you know my field better than I do
Is that what I said?
Dude… you need to check yourself.
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Jefferson wrote at length about the evils of slavery, calling it a “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot.”
Then he fucked a 14-year-old slave for years, fathering five children who subsequently lived in slavery.
Then he knowingly, willingly sold children away from their parents and wives away from their husbands.
Are you suggesting it’s unfair to judge the man by his own standards?
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C- for employing cliches to talk about history? 
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No, we’re talking about moral judgements about the past. Why does Jefferson, a slave owner who committed what is pretty much the equivalent of rape, not to mention adultery and generally benefited from slave labor while espousing freedom for all get to benefit from a sanitized image, while Hitler doesn’t?
You said:
I’m pointing out that historians make ethical and moral judgements about the past all the time. It’s entirely within the realm of the field, not some fringe radicals. I think there are plenty of cases where you’d have no problems with making moral judgements about the past, so why is Jefferson outside of those moral judgements?
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All i did was post a link to a recent article by a philosopher regarding characterizations of past figures. When I saw the article it struck me as an interesting counterpoint to some statements here. When I posted the link people started to jump all the fuck over me. If BB has decided that it is OK to turn regulars into punching bags for good-faith posting of links like that, well, for me at least that’s something to consider.
Meanwhile, in the spirit of reverting this thread into a discussion of the elections, and the monsters of this day, I will not engage any more in the thread derail about Jefferson, Washington, Pol Pot, and the other founding fathers.
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