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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jay: [QB] Like I said, it was not my intent to turn this into a thread about slavery, but apparently life and history are a little more complicated than some folks are willing to accept. Thomas Jefferson wrote: [QUOTE]Notwithstanding these considerations which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude and unshaken fidelity. The opinion, that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious pecularities.[/QUOTE] The above letter had the intent to clarify Jefferson's position on race in general, but it also served as a primer for owners on how to treat slaves. In other words the wise owner was a kind owner. The relationship between owner and slave was intricate, and what I stated about "something" of a familial relationship is true and not apologetic about the system of slavery. Stating that some owners were more kind than others or that some owners subscribed to a form of paternalism in no way diminishes the fact that slavery based on race as it was in the United States was an inherently evil system. The slave system necessitated that slaves were to do the hard manual labor. Labor that they did not necessarily want to do and labor that someone else benefited from. It is important to keep in mind the word is still "owner." It is not friend. There were many slave holders who viewed their slaves as simple children or even more correctly as animals to be cared for and fed including the slaves old age. But always, slaves were viewed as property. I suggest you take a look at the following: [i]Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made[/i] by Eugene D. Genovese [i]The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders [/i] by James Oakes [i]The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South[/i] by Kenneth M. Stampp [i]Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877[/i] by Eric Foner. Paperback [/QB][/QUOTE]
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