Pussycat had to visit five different battle sites in the area for a history class. Most were just a berm where a fort used to be, until the historic battle and courageous surrender when they burned down their own shit.
But one place was some plantation. We had the guided tour through the house - here’s where the food was stored, here’s the parlor where the ladies played cards, here’s the room where General Pigfucker McHeeHaw watched Nashville burn on the glorious night of his historic surrender, etc.
Then back outside it was “and that’s the slave quarters exhibit over there, you can go in if you want to but the tour’s over” and the guide left.
We went in. I lasted about ten minutes before I had to go collapse on a bench outside and fucking weep. I’m crying now trying to type this.
It’s not “Historic Preservation” to omit or gloss over the goddamn slavery. As usual the ones crying “erasing history” over Confederate monuments are doing the real erasing.
I used to live in Lees Summit, and looked it up when I moved there. Supposedly it was named after someone else named Dr. Pleasant John Graves Lea, but the name was spelled with two ee’s by mistake.
I don’t know if that is the truth or not.
In November 1868, the town’s name was changed to the “Town of Lee’s Summit”, most likely to honor early settler Dr. Pleasant John Graves Lea,[12] who had moved to Jackson County in 1849 from Bradley County, Tennessee.[10] Lea was listed as the postmaster of nearby Big Cedar in the 1855 United States Official Postal Guide.[13][14] Dr. Lea was killed in August 1862 by Kansas Jayhawkers (or Redlegs).[15][16]
When the surveyors for the Missouri Pacific Railroad came through, the local people and the railroad wanted to name the town in Dr. Lea’s honor. He had a farm on the highest point and near the path of the tracks, and his murder had taken place near the site of the proposed depot. So they chose the name of “Lea’s Summit”, the “summit” portion to reflect its highest elevation on the Missouri Pacific Railroad between St. Louis and Kansas City.[12] But they misspelled the name “Lees Summit” (with two “e’s”; “Lee” instead of “Lea”; and leaving out the apostrophe) on a boxcar that was serving as a station and donated by the Missouri Pacific, then a sign next to the tracks, and finally in the printed time schedule for the railroad.[1][10] It may be that this misspelling stuck and the name has remained “Lee’s Summit” ever since.
Since the name was already being circulated and published with two “e’s”, the town petitioned the state legislature and incorporated its name in 1868 as: “Town of Lee’s Summit”.[12]
Pretty sure I’ve seen that argument (sort of) used for Thomas Jefferson…
Mind you I can’t find that letter he wrote to Washington (last I looked) where he convinced himself of the stupidity of ending slavery as “if I do nothing my capital increases 4% per year” on top of what its labour produces…
They appear to be here but I’m sure you aren’t labelling all amateur historians that way. We are endebted in particular to amateur historians for surfacing local atrocities all around the world. People who know where the bodies are buried. Literally.
That is a popular right-wing narrative now - that slavery provided useful job training for enslaved people, for when they became free. They even have reams of weird, random nonsense they point to as proof.
What it should be, primarily, are historians, who work in the field, if possible on local history of that time period, and who are not pushing a false historical narrative… pretty much all other factors should be secondary, if you ask me.
But historical memory is not just driven by what actually happened (that we can prove with the primary sources), but is often a debate over the past, and how it is to be remembered… hence, where we are now, where some plantations do have more diverse, representative voices in their tours, and others are essentially little more than Lost Cause glorification of white supremacy and hate.
My feelings are always outraged when I hear [ministers] speak of “kind masters,”- - “Christian masters,”- - “the mildest form of slavery,”- - well fed and clothed slaves," as extenuations of slavery; I am satisfied they either mean to pervert the truth, or they do not know what they say. The being of slavery, its soul and body, lives and moves in the chattel principle, the property principle, the bill of sale principle; the cart- whip, starvation, and nakedness, are its inevitable consequences to a greater or less extent, warring with the dispositions of men…
[…]
Another evil of slavery that I felt severely about this time, was the tyranny and abuse of the overseers. These men seem to look with an evil eye upon children. I was once visiting a menagerie, and being struck with the fact, that the lion was comparatively indifferent to every one around his cage, while he eyed with peculiar keenness a little boy I had; the keeper informed me that such was always the case. Such is true of those human beings in the slave states, called overseers. They seem to take pleasure in torturing the children of slaves, long before they are large enough to be put at the hoe, and consequently under the whip
[…]
The slaveholders in that state [Maryland] often hire the children of their slaves out to non- slaveholders, not only because they save themselves the expense of taking care of them, but in this way they get among their slaves useful trades. They put a bright slave- boy with a tradesman, until he gets such a knowledge of the trade as to be able to do his own work, and then he takes him home. I remained with the stonemason until I was eleven years of age: at this time I was taken home. This was another serious period in my childhood; I was separated from my older brother, of whom I was much attached; he continued at his place, and not only learned the trade to great perfection, but finally became the property of the man with whom he lived, so that our separation was permanent, as we never lived nearer after, than six miles.
