Was Thomas Jefferson a rapist?

[BigBallinStalin]

I'm glad he wanted more of the good, children, but how about a clear and relevant answer?

So, a person enslaved is considered as "goods" by the owner; however,
that good is still a conscious, decision-making entity, so
how does that change the circumstances for you?

You'll have to tell me what circumstances you mean.

Circumstance = the interaction between a slave and the owner.

[BigBallinStalin]

While the age of consent is now set between 16 and 18 in all U.S. states, the age of consent has widely varied across the country in the past. In 1880, the age of consent was 10 in most states but ranged from 7 in Delaware to 12 across nine states and the District of Columbia.[42]

I'm guessing that anyone in Delaware, the Nine States, and the District of Columbia were all rapists to him.

He would add the "if a slave" conditional to his ambiguous argument.

[stahrgazer]

Sorry, doesn't hold water, even the "if a slave" part.

After all, in those days, a wife was also her husband's "property" and she was to "obey" and could, herself, be physically punished if she did not obey (including whipped.) aka: a slave in all but legalese.

So, under those strictures, ANY "wife" must by Symmetry's argument, have been "raped" because she did NOT have the "freedom" to tell him "no" without punishment as he deemed fit.

Or would it only have been "rape" if she would have said no if she could? If that's the case then, as I've stated repeatedly, it's only rape of the "legal slave" if the "legal slave" would not have said "yes" if she didn't have to call him "Master."

Especially the 7-12 year old "wives" right?

[BigBallinStalin]

Sorry, doesn't hold water, even the "if a slave" part.

After all, in those days, a wife was also her husband's "property" and she was to "obey" and could, herself, be physically punished if she did not obey (including whipped.) aka: a slave in all but legalese.

Therefore....

[stahrgazer]

Sorry, doesn't hold water, even the "if a slave" part.

After all, in those days, a wife was also her husband's "property" and she was to "obey" and could, herself, be physically punished if she did not obey (including whipped.) aka: a slave in all but legalese.

Therefore....

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA

[Symmetry]

While the age of consent is now set between 16 and 18 in all U.S. states, the age of consent has widely varied across the country in the past. In 1880, the age of consent was 10 in most states but ranged from 7 in Delaware to 12 across nine states and the District of Columbia.]

I'm guessing that anyone in Delaware, the Nine States, and the District of Columbia were all rapists to Symmetry, since by default, in any one of those places a 40 y.o. man very well COULD have had sex with girls as young as 7 to 12 (OMG, 2 years YOUNGER than Jefferson's black mistress.)

And the argument that he considered his children by his black mistress, "goods" does not hold water.
Just because "society" considered them "goods" does not mean HE considered them goods.
After all, he freed him as soon as it was viable to do so (when they had attained an age that it mattered.)
If he'd truly sired them because he wanted more "goods" then surely he'd have made sure to profit by them by selling them or keeping them for labor on his own estates, rather than free them like he did when they became of age.

A lot of guesses.

If he truly wanted them to be free, he would have freed them.

[stahrgazer]

If he truly wanted them to be free, he would have freed them.

Ah, see, you can finally agree on logic.

HE DID!

Even though he was deeply in debt, Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings' children: Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston, as they came of age.

(There's hope for him yet, folks!)

[stahrgazer]

Perhaps more facts would help Symmetry.

Here is the Virginia law that existed when Jefferson's and his mistress, Sally's, children were CHILDREN:

1806 manumission law

"If any slave hereafter emancipated shall remain within this commonwealth more than twelve months after his or her right to freedom shall have accrued, he or she shall forfeit all such right, and may be apprehended and sold by the overseers of the poor of any county or corporation in which he or she shall be found, for the benefit of the poor of such county or corporation." [Shepherd, Statutes at Large, III, 252; passed January 25, 1806; in effect May 1, 1806.]

So, should he have freed them and shipped them up north to make sure they got to remain free (thus physically forcibly separating them from their mother,) or should he wait till the laws were changed or the children were of age to leave home anyway?

[Symmetry]

If he truly wanted them to be free, he would have freed them.

Ah, see, you can finally agree on logic.

HE DID!

Even though he was deeply in debt, Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings' children: Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston, as they came of age.

(There's hope for him yet, folks!)

Although opposed to the international slave trade, Jefferson sometimes bought slaves and often sold them.[188][189] After returning from France, he sold fifty slaves to pay the debts he had incurred there.[188][190] Ten years after the abolition of the American slave trade, Jefferson, again to pay his debts, sold slaves to his grandson.[191] He inherited slaves from both his father, Peter, and his wife's father, John Wayles. Over the course of his life, he owned some 600 slaves,[192] requiring about 130 at any one time to work at Monticello.[193]

Jefferson freed two slaves of the Hemings family by manumission and allowed two of Sally Hemings's children, widely believed by historians to be his, to leave the Monticello estate without formal manumission when they came of age; five other slaves, including two more Hemings children, were freed by his will upon his death.[219]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson#Slaves_and_slavery

[john9blue]

Perhaps more facts would help Symmetry.

...are you serious?

[stahrgazer]

Perhaps more facts would help Symmetry.

...are you serious?

Guess I was wrong. Symmetry just won't accept that certain LAWS that Jefferson was supposed to follow, governed when he could/when he could not, and when it was simply not wise for them, to free the children of his black mistress. Symmetry won't accept it even when he was shown, just wants to go on about how Jefferson didn't free the kids when Symmetry thought he should.

Of course, Symmetry, if alive back then, would probably not have freed them at all, he'd have sold them, since according to the laws at the time, it was his right to do.

Why do I say that? Because Symmetry seems to believe that "today's laws" should have governed Jefferson's actions, which means, Symmetry is into the laws in operation when he, himself, is alive. Thus, if he were alive back then instead of now, Symmetry would've been full-bore into those laws that were in operation then. And possibly not clever enough to think how best to get around the laws, since he'd rather quote irrelevant facts than look at the facts with some logic applied.

I'll still try again.

Symmetry: freeing a slave upon owner's death was LEGAL. Freeing a minor slave or a slave who was not otherwise prepared to move away from the county/state/commonwealth where he was freed, subjected that slave to re-enslavement by another party, any party who came along to claim the slave. That's in Virginia, where Jefferson lived. In other places in the south it was illegal to free a slave EXCEPT on owner's death or if the slave bought out his own purchase price.

So, would it make your feel-bads feel better if Jefferson had freed 2-day-old or 5 year old kids and shipped them north? Would it make your feel-bads feel better if Jefferson had freed his black mistress only to have her re-enslaved a year later by some nastier dude when she was out to a market getting her bread (because, since she liked Jefferson and wanted to be near him, she herself wouldn't have gone north where she was not subject to that re-enslavement clause.)

[PLAYER57832]

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.

I have never claimed he should be ignored. If anything, this thread shows that I want more attention paid.

A counter claim, of course, would be that you seem to be ignoring Sally Hemings, and of course the children who Jefferson enslaved.

No, that is a pretended “high ground”. In truth, its nothing but a load of hypocritical claptrap, that would only be real if todays situation and that then were the same. The fact is that Sally did consider hereself fortunate.

You want to pretend an idealized world in which Jefferson either would have treated Sally just like a wife is treated today OR would have taken some kind of “stand” that would have been evident by his not having Sally in his household.. or even employ.

None of those were real options with the outcome you pretend.

Say Jefferson were to treat Sally just like a white wife.
-- well, he actually treated her better than many married white women in his class. Consent? Legally, consent to marriage was not necessarily given by the woman, it was given by the father, who may or may not have truly asked his daughter. And, given the naïveté of many women at the time, do you seriously think most married women truly “consented” to sexual relations? If you do, you are ignorant of history. It was plain expected that women would do as their husbands demanded.. whether they wanted to or not!

Materially, otherwise… if you consider her life, it was, for the time, a pretty decent life for a woman. For a black woman of the time, it was simply amazing. The only thing she really lacked was marriage.. but in return for that lack, she got something actually better. She got true affection and decent treatment.

Say Jefferson were to have freed Sally and either married her or just “kept” her as a mistress.
Your envisioned result would be that Sally and Jefferson might live together, happily but in open… proving some kind of “point” perhaps. The truth? The truth is that Jefferson was considered slightly “odd”, not quite up to “standards” by treating this woman as well as he did. Such was tolerated, as long as not openly paraded. Had he done ANYTHING to make it more “legal” or per your standards, then he would have been ostracized. He never could have served in the positions he did, could not have made the mark on our country that he did. It would not have been easy for her, either. Sally would have been derided, instead of just ignored – or worse. She could easily have been considered some kind of “devil” who used “trickery” to “win his affections”.

Had he just ignored her, not done anything? Then what… another master, who was unlikely to treat her with anything close to the benefits she got from being Jefferson’s mistress.

All in all, your attempt to parade this as some kind of real “issue” is just an attempt to make a claim that you have the right to judge someone who’s circumstances are very, very different from your own.. without bothering to even truly consider those circumstances.

You gain no points by trying to paint ills of the past with a brush from today. Instead, you would be far better to look at the ills of today .. and make sure that future generations won’t judge you the way you claim you have the right to judge Jefferson. In fact, I can point to several issues upon which you likely will face condemnation by future generations. I suggest that is a better path for thinking.

[Symmetry]

Perhaps more facts would help Symmetry.

...are you serious?

Guess I was wrong. Symmetry just won't accept that certain LAWS that Jefferson was supposed to follow, governed when he could/when he could not, and when it was simply not wise for them, to free the children of his black mistress. Symmetry won't accept it even when he was shown, just wants to go on about how Jefferson didn't free the kids when Symmetry thought he should.

Of course, Symmetry, if alive back then, would probably not have freed them at all, he'd have sold them, since according to the laws at the time, it was his right to do.

Why do I say that? Because Symmetry seems to believe that "today's laws" should have governed Jefferson's actions, which means, Symmetry is into the laws in operation when he, himself, is alive. Thus, if he were alive back then instead of now, Symmetry would've been full-bore into those laws that were in operation then. And possibly not clever enough to think how best to get around the laws, since he'd rather quote irrelevant facts than look at the facts with some logic applied.

I'll still try again.

Symmetry: freeing a slave upon owner's death was LEGAL. Freeing a minor slave or a slave who was not otherwise prepared to move away from the county/state/commonwealth where he was freed, subjected that slave to re-enslavement by another party, any party who came along to claim the slave. That's in Virginia, where Jefferson lived. In other places in the south it was illegal to free a slave EXCEPT on owner's death or if the slave bought out his own purchase price.

So, would it make your feel-bads feel better if Jefferson had freed 2-day-old or 5 year old kids and shipped them north? Would it make your feel-bads feel better if Jefferson had freed his black mistress only to have her re-enslaved a year later by some nastier dude when she was out to a market getting her bread (because, since she liked Jefferson and wanted to be near him, she herself wouldn't have gone north where she was not subject to that re-enslavement clause.)

Another strawman.

I would ask of you some basic questions:

1) Do you consider having sex with a 14 year old child to be rape?
2) Do you think a slave is free to consent?
3) Do you think that rape is simply a legal issue?

[Symmetry]

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.

I have never claimed he should be ignored. If anything, this thread shows that I want more attention paid.

A counter claim, of course, would be that you seem to be ignoring Sally Hemings, and of course the children who Jefferson enslaved.

No, that is a pretended “high ground”. In truth, its nothing but a load of hypocritical claptrap, that would only be real if todays situation and that then were the same. The fact is that Sally did consider hereself fortunate.

You want to pretend an idealized world in which Jefferson either would have treated Sally just like a wife is treated today OR would have taken some kind of “stand” that would have been evident by his not having Sally in his household.. or even employ.

None of those were real options with the outcome you pretend.

Say Jefferson were to treat Sally just like a white wife.
-- well, he actually treated her better than many married white women in his class. Consent? Legally, consent to marriage was not necessarily given by the woman, it was given by the father, who may or may not have truly asked his daughter. And, given the naïveté of many women at the time, do you seriously think most married women truly “consented” to sexual relations? If you do, you are ignorant of history. It was plain expected that women would do as their husbands demanded.. whether they wanted to or not!

Materially, otherwise… if you consider her life, it was, for the time, a pretty decent life for a woman. For a black woman of the time, it was simply amazing. The only thing she really lacked was marriage.. but in return for that lack, she got something actually better. She got true affection and decent treatment.

Say Jefferson were to have freed Sally and either married her or just “kept” her as a mistress.
Your envisioned result would be that Sally and Jefferson might live together, happily but in open… proving some kind of “point” perhaps. The truth? The truth is that Jefferson was considered slightly “odd”, not quite up to “standards” by treating this woman as well as he did. Such was tolerated, as long as not openly paraded. Had he done ANYTHING to make it more “legal” or per your standards, then he would have been ostracized. He never could have served in the positions he did, could not have made the mark on our country that he did. It would not have been easy for her, either. Sally would have been derided, instead of just ignored – or worse. She could easily have been considered some kind of “devil” who used “trickery” to “win his affections”.

Had he just ignored her, not done anything? Then what… another master, who was unlikely to treat her with anything close to the benefits she got from being Jefferson’s mistress.

All in all, your attempt to parade this as some kind of real “issue” is just an attempt to make a claim that you have the right to judge someone who’s circumstances are very, very different from your own.. without bothering to even truly consider those circumstances.

You gain no points by trying to paint ills of the past with a brush from today. Instead, you would be far better to look at the ills of today .. and make sure that future generations won’t judge you the way you claim you have the right to judge Jefferson. In fact, I can point to several issues upon which you likely will face condemnation by future generations. I suggest that is a better path for thinking.

A fortunate slave is still a slave, and this "mistress" talk is frankly appalling when applied to a woman in slavery.

[PLAYER57832]

A fortunate slave is still a slave, and this "mistress" talk is frankly appalling when applied to a woman in slavery.

And your words are utterly dishonest, because the truth is that "free" women in that day were little better than slaves.

[Symmetry]

A fortunate slave is still a slave, and this "mistress" talk is frankly appalling when applied to a woman in slavery.

And your words are utterly dishonest, because the truth is that "free" women in that day were little better than slaves.

That's a big claim, where have I been utterly dishonest?

[BigBallinStalin]

I'm glad he wanted more of the good, children, but how about a clear and relevant answer?

So, a person enslaved is considered as "goods" by the owner; however,
that good is still a conscious, decision-making entity, so
how does that change the circumstances for you?

You'll have to tell me what circumstances you mean.

Circumstance = the interaction between a slave and the owner.

Any response?

Just trying to have you clarify your argument ITT because so far its implicit assumptions cannot be determined.

[greenoaks]

Perhaps more facts would help Symmetry.

...are you serious?

Guess I was wrong. Symmetry just won't accept that certain LAWS that Jefferson was supposed to follow, governed when he could/when he could not, and when it was simply not wise for them, to free the children of his black mistress. Symmetry won't accept it even when he was shown, just wants to go on about how Jefferson didn't free the kids when Symmetry thought he should.

Of course, Symmetry, if alive back then, would probably not have freed them at all, he'd have sold them, since according to the laws at the time, it was his right to do.

Why do I say that? Because Symmetry seems to believe that "today's laws" should have governed Jefferson's actions, which means, Symmetry is into the laws in operation when he, himself, is alive. Thus, if he were alive back then instead of now, Symmetry would've been full-bore into those laws that were in operation then. And possibly not clever enough to think how best to get around the laws, since he'd rather quote irrelevant facts than look at the facts with some logic applied.

I'll still try again.

Symmetry: freeing a slave upon owner's death was LEGAL. Freeing a minor slave or a slave who was not otherwise prepared to move away from the county/state/commonwealth where he was freed, subjected that slave to re-enslavement by another party, any party who came along to claim the slave. That's in Virginia, where Jefferson lived. In other places in the south it was illegal to free a slave EXCEPT on owner's death or if the slave bought out his own purchase price.

So, would it make your feel-bads feel better if Jefferson had freed 2-day-old or 5 year old kids and shipped them north? Would it make your feel-bads feel better if Jefferson had freed his black mistress only to have her re-enslaved a year later by some nastier dude when she was out to a market getting her bread (because, since she liked Jefferson and wanted to be near him, she herself wouldn't have gone north where she was not subject to that re-enslavement clause.)

Another strawman.

I would ask of you some basic questions:

1) Do you consider having sex with a 14 year old child to be rape?
2) Do you think a slave is free to consent?
3) Do you think that rape is simply a legal issue?

but he didn't have sex with a 14 yo child, he had sex with a 14yo woman

[PLAYER57832]

A fortunate slave is still a slave, and this "mistress" talk is frankly appalling when applied to a woman in slavery.

And your words are utterly dishonest, because the truth is that "free" women in that day were little better than slaves.

That's a big claim, where have I been utterly dishonest?

The claim that you have the right to take things you have learned today, with today's standards and pretending that the choices were the same in the past.

Why not just blame Sally for succumbing at all, after all she could have just objected, faught, even if it killed her. Many women have done just that.

No? But its OK for you to judge Jefferson even though you know full well that the consequences to both would have been severe.

The thing you miss above all else is that Sally herself was not angry, not bitter.. she was happy.

[Symmetry]

A fortunate slave is still a slave, and this "mistress" talk is frankly appalling when applied to a woman in slavery.

And your words are utterly dishonest, because the truth is that "free" women in that day were little better than slaves.

That's a big claim, where have I been utterly dishonest?

The claim that you have the right to take things you have learned today, with today's standards and pretending that the choices were the same in the past.

Why not just blame Sally for succumbing at all, after all she could have just objected, faught, even if it killed her. Many women have done just that.

No? But its OK for you to judge Jefferson even though you know full well that the consequences to both would have been severe.

The thing you miss above all else is that Sally herself was not angry, not bitter.. she was happy.

In cases of rape, I find "blaming the victim" a remarkably poor argument,

[muy_thaiguy]

First of all, history is never black and white, especially the farther back you go.

Secondly, a wife (lets put it at that for simplicity) at 14 or so was not that uncommon in the US and Europe, dating back centuries. Mainly due to the stress of child bearing as younger usually meant healthier and able to withstand giving birth multiple times (rare was a woman who did not have multiple babies) due to the high infant mortality rate. A good example would be Romeo and Juliet. The original Juliet was supposed to be around 12, if I remember I right, while Romeo would be in his mid 20s. By today's standards, that would make him a pedophile and sent to prison without a second thought. 200 years ago and more, that was more the standard. Hell, it wasn't even strange to see 1st cousins marry eachother (Edgar Allen Poe married his cousin for example), and royalty went a step further at times, even marrying their own siblings.

So the whole age thing is a moot point for history. As for consent, well, that's hard to say (other than being a slave I mean). If she did not want to have intercourse with him, than it would have been rape, but if she was willing to, it would have been consentual, and therefore no crime committed.

But seriously, to compare modern day morals and ethics to those 200+ years ago is, well, for lack of a better way, foolish. Different times, different morals, different ethics, and different laws.

PS, wikipedia is a bad source to cite, as it is not peer reviewed (and can be edited by literally anyone) and professors and experts of all branches of education will laugh at it and give you an 'F' if used as a source, especially historians and history professors.

[Symmetry]

First of all, history is never black and white, especially the farther back you go.

Secondly, a wife (lets put it at that for simplicity) at 14 or so was not that uncommon in the US and Europe, dating back centuries. Mainly due to the stress of child bearing as younger usually meant healthier and able to withstand giving birth multiple times (rare was a woman who did not have multiple babies) due to the high infant mortality rate. A good example would be Romeo and Juliet. The original Juliet was supposed to be around 12, if I remember I right, while Romeo would be in his mid 20s. By today's standards, that would make him a pedophile and sent to prison without a second thought. 200 years ago and more, that was more the standard. Hell, it wasn't even strange to see 1st cousins marry eachother (Edgar Allen Poe married his cousin for example), and royalty went a step further at times, even marrying their own siblings.

So the whole age thing is a moot point for history. As for consent, well, that's hard to say (other than being a slave I mean). If she did not want to have intercourse with him, than it would have been rape, but if she was willing to, it would have been consentual, and therefore no crime committed.

But seriously, to compare modern day morals and ethics to those 200+ years ago is, well, for lack of a better way, foolish. Different times, different morals, different ethics, and different laws.

PS, wikipedia is a bad source to cite, as it is not peer reviewed (and can be edited by literally anyone) and professors and experts of all branches of education will laugh at it and give you an 'F' if used as a source, especially historians and history professors.

She was never his wife. Your premise is unsound.

[stahrgazer]

In cases of rape, I find "blaming the victim" a remarkably poor argument,

While I agree with you about "in cases of rape," the fact is, you only have "your opinion" that Sally was raped.
Your opinion simply isn't enough for you to keep saying she was raped other than you being obtuse about it.

Others have a different opinion about it, and believe there's enough to suggest she was NOT "raped," even if you don't like the age of consent laws that existed then that made the only "problem" with the relationship that she was black and he was white and, in accordance with the laws in Virginia at that time, she was "slave."

Yes, you can say she didn't have the "right" to object, because she was "slave," but how do you know she would have if she could have, and how do you know Jefferson would've used his "massah rules" power to overcome her objections if she had wanted to object? Fact is, you don't know.

Obviously society decided that being black was insufficient to warrant being a slave, and the type of white enslavement that existed then, "bond-servant," is also no longer popular. Similary, the various states within the United States have increased their "ages of consent" although there is still variation (but in other countries, ages of consents are frequently lower.)

But back then, old man/young woman was more common than it is today, and just because the woman could be 2 years younger than she's allowed to be (legally) today, doesn't mean she was "raped."

And just because she happened to be a slave doesn't mean he forced her to have sex with him; thus, doesn't mean she was "raped."

There's no evidence to suggest she was a "sex slave" for him vs. a WILLING "black mistress" to him. Since there is no evidence, then, per society's rules, he's innocent of your charge.

[Symmetry]

In cases of rape, I find "blaming the victim" a remarkably poor argument,

While I agree with you, you only have "your opinion" that Sally was raped. Others have a different opinion about it.

No- I have that she was 14 years old and a slave,

[stahrgazer]

In cases of rape, I find "blaming the victim" a remarkably poor argument,

While I agree with you, you only have "your opinion" that Sally was raped. Others have a different opinion about it.

No- I have that she was 14 years old and a slave,

But back then, old man/young woman was more common than it is today, and just because the woman could be 2 years younger than she's allowed to be (legally) today, doesn't mean she was "raped."

And just because she happened to be a slave doesn't mean he forced her to have sex with him; thus, doesn't mean she was "raped."