On a pretty meaningful
kind of revisionism—and an even more valuable one.
I’m entering
dangerous territory here, with this last post in my non-favorites series. As I’ve
written
about before—and as I’ll return to in another series two weeks hence—I grew
up in Charlottesville,
Virginia, a town that is very thoroughly defined by the presence
of Thomas Jefferson. Granted, I grew up in a house on Jefferson Park
Avenue, with a Dad who taught at Mr.
Jefferson’s University, so maybe I’m biased. But I don’t think so; I think
Charlottesville is and always will be centrally connected to the man who drafted
our Declaration
of Independence, was our third president, and (as Mount Rushmore again
demonstrates) became and remains one of our most
beloved national leaders and figures. Yet as a son of Charlottesville, a
University of Virginia brat, a Virginia-born AmericanStudier, I (virtually) stand
here before you and tell you that I’m not such a big fan of TJ.
I hope it goes
without saying that I’m not dismissing Jefferson’s incredible and frequently
inspiring contributions to our founding, framing,
and Early
Republic periods. But I do think that there are multiple, significant arguments
for revising the Jefferson mythos. That revision has of course been underway
for some time now, thanks to the Sally
Hemings debate. And while I agree with those who push
back a bit, noting that the evidence is far from conclusive that Jefferson
fathered children with Hemings, DNA
evidence seems to clearly indicate that a member of the Jefferson family (perhaps
Thomas, perhaps someone else) did indeed father at least some of those children.
Moreover, the broader takeaway from that debate is not, to my mind, whether
Jefferson specifically fathered children with a slave or not—it’s the way in
which the very question forces us to revise the mythos, to remember that
Jefferson ran a slave
plantation for much of his adult life. So did many other Americans, of
course—but most of them aren’t celebrated in the ways that Jefferson has been.
So that’s an
important kind of revision, and one that, Sally Hemings notwithstanding, I don’t
know if we’ve collectively engaged with yet. But there’s also another level
beyond it, and it involves how I would respond to the argument that Jefferson’s
flaws are simply inevitable aspects of his time period (such as the legality and
prevalence of slavery in that period). There’s validity to that argument, to be
sure. But it’s also the case that in Jefferson’s era—as in every era—there were
individuals who pushed back against those kinds of realities, who argued for alternatives
to even the most dominant trends of their period. In the early period of
Jefferson’s life, on issues such as slavery and race, John
Woolman represented one such individual; in his final years, on the same
(and many other) issues, Lydia
Maria Child comprised another. Am I saying that we should revise the
concept of the “Founding Fathers” (or rather Parents) to include Woolman and
Child in addition to—and even in some ways in place of—Jefferson and Washington
(another slaveowner)? Yeah, I guess I am.
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So last
chance—gripes and critiques you’d share for the weekend post?
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