Symmetry wrote:I don't see how a 14 year old can freely consent, especially not to a 46 year old man. I don't see how a slave could freely consent. A 14 year old slave?
I have very little respect for the "as long as it's not against the law, it's acceptable" line of thinking.
That is not the question, but to judge the past by our times using terms that were not considered the same back then is wrong.
Would it be acceptable today, 50 years ago? Absolutely not! A hundred years ago? More debatable.
But go back to Jefferson and the real issue is how she was treated versus how other women of the day were treated, and the answer to that is not badly, by comparison.
To claim that you have the right to judge Jefferson is to claim that, given HIS circumstances, you would have acted differently. AND, to say that acting differently would have created a better result. In this case, the idea of taking a 14 year old black girl and treating her as a girl today would be.... was just not thinkable. To pretend that you would do differently means you think you can live then as we do today. No one has that luxury.
It is good to examine the past, to celebrate our advances. However to go back and claim that anyone who did anything good must be ignored if they did not live fully by our standards today is hypocritical at best, at worst plain ignorant (lacking knowledge) becuase you are claiming you would act differently and, in truth you almost certainly would not have, could not have.