"The story of Black Sal is no farce -- That he cohabits with her and has a number of children by her is a sacred truth -- and the worst of it is, he keeps the same children slaves -- an unnatural crime which is very common in these parts -- This conduct may receive a little palliation when we consider that such proceedings are so common that they cease here to be disgraceful."
Meacham observed that Jefferson "was apparently able to consign his children with Sally Hemings to a separate sphere of life in his mind even as they grew up in his midst."
"It was, to say the least, an odd way to live, but Jefferson was a creature of his culture. "The enjoyment of a negro or mulatto woman is spoken of as quite a common thing: no reluctance, delicacy or shame is made about the matter,' Josiah Quincy Jr. of Massachusetts wrote after a visit to the Carolinas. This was daily reality at Monticello."
This "daily reality" was also a troubling concern among Jefferson's white family though the Great Man would never comment.
"Frigid indifference forms a useful shield for a public character against his political enemies, but Jefferson deployed it against his own daughter Martha, who was deeply upset by the sexual allegations against her father and wanted a straight answer -- Yes or no? -- an answer he would not deign to give," wrote Wiencek.
Before his death, Jefferson did free several of Sally Hemings's children or let them run away -- presumably fulfilling his commitment made in Paris before Hemings agreed to return to Monticello. "Jefferson went to his grave without giving his family any denial of the Hemings charges," Wiencek wrote.
Though it is an uncomfortable point to make -- and may be impossible to prove -- the historical record increasingly makes Jefferson out to be something of a rapist, exploiting at least one and possibly more girls who were trapped on his property, who indeed were his property, and thus had little choice but to tolerate his sexual advances.
Monetizing People
But Jefferson's apparent sexual predations are only part of the story. His plantation records show clearly that he viewed fertile female slaves as exceptionally valuable because their offspring would increase his assets and thus enable him to incur more debt. He ordered his plantation manager to take special care of these "breeding" women.
"A child raised every 2. years is of more profit than the crop of the best laboring man," Jefferson wrote. "[I]n this, as in all other cases, providence has made our duties and our interests coincide perfectly."
According to Wiencek...
"The enslaved people were yielding him a bonanza, a perpetual human dividend at compound interest. Jefferson wrote, "I allow nothing for losses by death, but, on the contrary, shall presently take credit four per cent. per annum, for their increase over and above keeping up their own numbers.' His plantation was producing inexhaustible human assets. The percentage was predictable."
To justify his perpetuation of slavery -- a repudiation of his declared anti-slavery views as a young man -- Jefferson claimed that he was merely acting in accordance with "Providence," which in Jefferson's peculiar view of religion always happened to endorse whatever action Jefferson wanted to take.
Yet, while Jefferson's rationalizations for slavery were repugnant, his twisting of the Founding Narrative may have been more significant and long-lasting, carrying to the present day with the Tea Party's claims that states are "sovereign" and that actions by the federal government to promote the general welfare are "unconstitutional."
The reason the Tea Partiers get away with presenting themselves as "constitutionalists" is that Thomas Jefferson engineered a revisionist interpretation of the actual document, which -- as written by the Federalists and ratified by the states -- created a federal government that could do almost anything that Congress and the President agreed was necessary for the country.
That was the view of both the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists who mounted a fierce though unsuccessful campaign to defeat the Constitution. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "The Right's Made-up "Constitution.'"]
Southern Anti-Federalists, such as Patrick Henry and George Mason, argued that the Constitution, though it implicitly accepted slavery, would eventually be used by the North to free the slaves. Or, as Patrick Henry colorfully told Virginia's ratifying convention in 1788, "they'll free your niggers!"
Though the Constitution eked through to passage, the fear of Southern plantation owners that they would lose their huge investment in human chattel did not disappear. Indeed, the fear intensified as it became clear that many leading Federalists, including the new government's chief architect Alexander Hamilton, were abolitionists.
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