Mount Vernon exhibit looks at Washington as slaveholder

[don-o]

Mount Vernon exhibit looks at Washington as slaveholder

MATTHEW BARAKAT
May. 25, 2016 4:17 AM EDT

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/32c2543de8f042e69720ddaf45d08799/mount-vernon-exhibit-looks-washington-slaveholder

MOUNT VERNON, Va. (AP) — It is the unavoidable Achilles' heel in the reputation of George Washington and so many other Founding Fathers: that men who risked their lives to protect their nation's liberty were also slaveholders.

That dichotomy will be explored in a new exhibit at Washington's Mount Vernon estate, in a museum space previously dedicated to exhibitions featuring Washington's furniture, fineries and his penchant for dining on syrupy hoecakes.

The $750,000 exhibition, Lives Bound Together, will explore hard truths about Washington's life as a slaveholder, including an acknowledgement that Washington's adopted son likely fathered a child with one of the family's slaves.

Work to heal racial wounds with one hand. Keep picking the scab with the other.

[Smokin Joe]

The assumption, of course, is that every slaveholder was like something out of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and every slave was grievously mistreated.

While I have no love for slavery, slaves were seen as a valuable investment, and treated as such in order to get a good return on that investment.

But but...they didn't have television, cell phones, hot and cold running water, central air, central heat, flush toilets, or any of the necessities of life as we know it...

...but neither did their owners.

While I find the idea of one human owning another repulsive enough to justify the elimination of the institution, in practice I doubt that it was ordinarily as harsh as Ms. Stowe's novel portrayed it.

[don-o]

The assumption, of course, is that every slaveholder was like something out of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and every slave was grievously mistreated.

While I have no love for slavery, slaves were seen as a valuable investment, and treated as such in order to get a good return on that investment.

But but...they didn't have television, cell phones, hot and cold running water, central air, central heat, flush toilets, or any of the necessities of life as we know it...

...but neither did their owners.

While I find the idea of one human owning another repulsive enough to justify the elimination of the institution, in practice I doubt that it was ordinarily as harsh as Ms. Stowe's novel portrayed it.

Slavery was an evil enmeshed in the world economy (triangular trade.) It was an evil, but not an unalloyed evil. Perhaps I can run down a source for this anecdote I have in my memory.

He was a black man, I believe a reporter, standing by a river watching victims of whatever fighting was going on in Africa at the time. And reflecting on three hundred years of history, he expressed his gratitude that HIS ancestors had been removed to America.

If England had not built those ships and sailed to Africa to sell goods and buy Africans (from Africans) and take them West to exchange them for sugar, rum, tobacco, cotton to take back to England, then his body may well have been floating down that river.