re: Planned Parenthood tweets using #BlackLivesMatter

quote:

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Nothing complex about a pig like Jefferson who continued to rape his 13 year old slave girl (and others) & hold people in bondage until he died several decades later.

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Of course it's complex - Sally Hemings could have remained in France and petitioned for emancipation. As it is, laws against slavery ended up having Jefferson pay her wages while they were in France. She, more or less, voluntarily returned with Jefferson, reportedly based on a promise (completely unenforceable) he made to free her child (and presumably, any additional children they had) - and he ultimately freed all of the Hemings children, and she was de facto living as a free person with them. The children themselves were 7/8 European in ancestry and 3 out of the 4 of them lived as free whites in the North (or D.C.) after manumission. If Thomas Jefferson was, indeed, the father of Madison Hemings (consensus, but not the unanimous opinion), then Jefferson himself was the grandfather of at least 2 Union soldiers, one who served in a colored regiment, and another as a white man in the regular U.S. Army.


We have so much compassion for drug addicts today - why can't we at least try to understand this was very, very complicated. Slavery was very much akin to the South being addicted to heroin. It was not all "12 Years a Slave" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (although that portrayal was accurate for heavy cotton plantations in the deep south, no question about it, and a moral depravity across the board) - it was a moral depravity and it ate at the soul of the slaveholders.

But is it not possible that the widower, Thomas Jefferson, might have had genuine affection for this girl (yes his property) and she might have returned it? The institution itself was utterly corrupt - no question, but the problem with dismissing all of this is that these were real people living real lives the best they knew how. Reading Jefferson's writings on liberty, government, even slavery betrays the fact he was deeply conflicted and not the amoral monster than modern historical revisionists try to make him out to be.

Washington, perhaps our greatest leader, was also affected by the stain of slavery. Many prominent confederates also felt both disgusted and trapped by the peculiar institution. I don't try to sweep it under the rug, but "slavery" was not the only thing that happened during that period.

Likewise, generations of slaves existed, fell in love, had children, raised and loved their children (and, yes the institution fricked that up quite a bit, too), laughed, cried, suffered, celebrated and lived - the best they could - just as humans do.

The real world is incredibly complex. Sometimes these partisan issues try to make it as simple as black and white - but it just isn't that simple. Almost nothing is.

Take abortion for example...