Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Tza's avatar

Yep. His admin was utterly awful for the Indigenous. However, in regards to slavery he's a genuinely complicated case, as opposed to say, Thomas Jefferson who utterly understood his keeping slaves was at odds with the ideals of freedom he espoused, but never stopped being a slaveholder because he couldn't maintain his rank and status and farm without enslaved labor (and even WITH unpaid labor managed to go near-broke many times). Something that simply must be acknowledge about him is that his ideal of a nation of "gentleman farmers" practically REQUIRED slave labor to exist as the only way a "farmer" is going to have enough free time to become a well-educated gentleman by TJ's standards would be to to have both the capital and the free time to study that in the south pretty much required being a slave owner (a handful of the New England colonies had figured it out by then, but even good lawyer and not so great guy John Adams pretty much had to let his wife run their farm while he was lawyering and politicking). Many as we called them "Renaissance/Well-Learned Men" required a LOT of unpaid or underpaid labor to support them so they had the time to study and become the men they became.

Incidentally TJ often referred to taking up arms to secure liberty when he himself did not battle in the Revolution (he was the envoy to France). Dude may have been a great writer, but that came with the ability to make it look like he understood more of certain subjects than he did. Like farming.

Expand full comment
Tza's avatar

He also had a habit of appointing corrupt people leading to a ton of profiteering from his administration. Unlike some I could mention, this appears to have been more from incompetence than any criminality on his part, but still.

Expand full comment
130 more comments...

No posts