[ExI] hero worship

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Thursday, July 9, 2020, 10:37:32 AM PDT, John Clark via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: 
>> On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 11:25 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> As for just keeping slaves, just about every plantation owner did so.
> 
> True,

Trivial though because the plantation system in British North America and then in the US was a slave system. So, duh, owning a plantation meant almost certainly owning slaves. So, it's like say the owning of a big corporation has employees.

> and unlike Washington and Jefferson most plantation owners didn't
> free their slaves even in their wills, sure you could say its too little too
> late but historical figures have to be judged by the standards of their
> own day.

Actually, one can do both: judge by standards of the times or those of today. The problem with their times is that many people back then thought slavery was horrible. In the Anglosphere, for instance, Quakers had already been agitating against slavery since about 1750 -- a quarter century before the War of Independence. Also, there were places where it was illegal, including in the US during the lifetimes of both Washington and Jefferson. In particular, the New England states and New York and Pennsylvannia were also free states by 1800. And the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory (which basically became the core of the modern Midwest). So, being anti-slavery wasn't some lunatic fringe position only citizens of Cloud Cuckoo Land held.

Now, sure, again, big plantation owners generally owned slaves. But this hardly excuses slavery back then. Again, this is sort of the argument along the lines of slave owners would have to give up a comfortable, fairly wealthy lifestyle to free slaves so they should get credit for not being quick to free their slaves. Jefferson's case here is telling because he started out being outspoken against slavery. If you read the early draft of the Declaration of Independence, he pushed an anti-slavery position. But by the 1790s, he became silent on the issue. Why? Well, one speculation is that he discovered slaves paid a nice profit if one figured in their children:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/

This doesn't paint a flattering portrait of him by the standards of the day. Instead, it paints one of a man whose political ideals were servant to his creature comforts. And the idea that that's wrong precedes us by thousands of years. It's not an invention of 21st century ideologues.

> By standards of 1760 they were ahead of the curve

See above. Again, it looks more like he backslid. By the way, Jefferson was 17 in 1760, so that's not a good date to pick to judge his moral growth or standing. (Washington was 28 and one can blame his ambition by that age for playing a major role in fomenting the Seven Years War. By that age, he'd married into a plantation-owning family.)

Again, no, there were behind the curve. There were abolitionists like John Woolman (1720-1772) and John Laurens (1754-1782). These folks were ahead of the curve. There's also a longer history of antislavery in the world, including in Europe. To make it seem like the world was waiting for Washington and Jefferson to free slaves in their wills -- as if that were the cutting edge of abolition at that time -- is to ignore and diminish so many others to favor a few elite hypocrites in service of patriotism.

General rule: politicians are unlikely to be the cutting edge anyhow. Even someone as seeming enlightened as Jefferson wasn’t so much an originator of new ideas as a conduit. His most well known political work, the Declaration, comes from ideas in Trenchard and Gordon. (And those two were conveying and applying ideas from big guns like John Locke and Algernon Sydney.)  

> but in 1860
> most Americans would not be willing to kill and commit treason to
> preserve the institution of slavery, but Robert E Lee did both and so
> the world would have been a better place if he had never been born.
> Whatever their faults that could not be said about Washington or
> Jefferson; we honor them in spite of the fact that they were slaveowners
> not because of it, but without slavery there wouldn't have been a Civil
> War and history wouldn't even remember who the hell Robert E Lee was.

Show Quoted Content
> but in 1860
> most Americans would not be willing to kill and commit treason to
> preserve the institution of slavery, but Robert E Lee did both and so
> the world would have been a better place if he had never been born.
> Whatever their faults that could not be said about Washington or
> Jefferson; we honor them in spite of the fact that they were slaveowners
> not because of it, but without slavery there wouldn't have been a Civil
> War and history wouldn't even remember who the hell Robert E Lee was.

Agree with that last sentiment. Lee would be unknown save for military history buffs for his role in the Mexican-American War. Then again, without slavery, that war might not have happened either. Why? The Texas Revolution which resulted in an independent Texas which was later annexed by the US was mainly about slavery. Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, but Texans, which were somewhat autonomous under Mexico, held slaves. Thus, the impetus to secede from Mexico. The latter desire by Texas to be annexed by the US was mainly about the fear Mexico might retake Texas.

Regards,

Dan
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