Although Thomas Jefferson was a great man as the author of the Declaration of Independence and promoter of the Louisiana Purchase, he was a confused man. On the inside, Jefferson was morally opposed to slavery and we can see this in the Declaration of Independence when he wanted emancipate and free the slaves. He knew in his heart that was wrong, but that didn’t stop him from owning them himself or fathering children into slavery. I feel that Jefferson was a hypocrite and contradicted himself. In private he was against slavery, but in the publics eye he was for it. On the other hand, I think it’s difficult to judge what someone does in a time period completely different from now days by using today’s present standards. Unlike many slave owners, Thomas Jefferson treated his slaves with kindness and he freed Sally Hemmings, who he was in a relationship with (on his deathbed). I consider Jefferson to have some flaws, but he was only human who was bound to make mistakes, and despite his contradictions he truly was a great American.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
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I think he was hypocritical, but the thing with him holding slaves- well, everyone held slaves. But it goes deeper than that- I don't think that he, or the other people he was around- were inherently racist, but were simply uninformed. At first they (the society) had never really been around black people so they didn't really realize that another race of human could still BE human- and second, even after theyd had several generations together, the whites didn't allow the blacks to be educated so of course they were going to assume that they were intellectually inferior. The whites didn't really even see the blacks as people, they saw them as something in between animals or people, and even though this is a pretty disgustig viewpoint, they didn't hold it out of selfishness or racism, they simply believed it because they didn't really know any better.
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