UPDATE: A new response in the Federalist (click on screenshot) says that Serfilippi’s interpretation is wrong, and that the evidence that Hamilton owned slaves is unconvincing. Click on screenshot to read:
I wondered why the conservative Federalist would publish this, as well as adding the slur about the NYT, but then I realized that part of this is an implicit attack on the contention of the Times‘s 1619 project about the Founding Fathers creating the Revolution to preserve slavery. Anyway, read and judge for yourself. I expect that Serfilippi will reply.
h/t: Dvorah
_________
A new paper by Jessie Serfilippi, a 27-year-old interpreter at the Schuyler Mansion Historic Site in Albany, New York, begins this way:
In the 21st century, Alexander Hamilton is almost universally depicted as an abolitionist. From Ron Chernow’s Hamilton to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical, there is little room in modern discourse for questioning the founder’s thoughts and feelings on slavery.
In fact, the article below, from the new Smithsonian Magazine (click on screenshot), notes that both Chernow’s book and Miranda’s play based on that book make a point of painting Hamilton as an abolitionist. While Hamilton was tangentially engaged in some abolitionist activities, Serfilippi’s extensive paper, published by the Schulyler Mansion Historic site, makes an almost airtight case that Hamilton not only owned slaves, but rented them out to others for a fee. In addition, he gave advice to others who wanted to promote slavery (often about maintaining ships for transporting slaves), and bought slaves to sell to others.
(The Schuyler mansion, built by Revolutionary War general Philip Schuyler in 1761, is a National Historic site; the Hamilton connection involves Alexander H. marrying Schulyer’s daughter Elizabeth, or “Eliza”.)
If you want a short take, read the Smithsonian article, a good summary of the 28-page article by Serfilippi. But her original publication, which you can get free by clicking on the second screenshot below, is more useful in establishing Hamilton’s slave-owning and -trading activities, as well as his legal advice promoting slavery, with original historical records and documents. These documents include the ledgers of Philip Schuyler, of Hamilton himself, and of John Barker Church, who settled Hamilton’s estate after his death.
Serfilippi’s publication (free pdf at link)
I’ll give Serfilippi’s main take first, and then list the ways that Hamilton was involved with slavery. It was, as she says, a “complicated relationship”, but it clearly seems more pro- than anti-slavery.
A thorough study of the depths of Hamilton’s involvement in the institution of slavery has yet to be done through a close examination of Alexander Hamilton’s cash books, various letters to and from Hamilton, letters to Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton from her father, Philip Schuyler, and other related primary accounts. When those sources are fully considered, a rarely acknowledged truth becomes inescapably apparent: not only did Alexander Hamilton enslave people, but his involvement in the institution of slavery was essential to his identity, both personally and professionally. The denial and obscuration of these facts in nearly every major biography written about him over the past two centuries has erased the people he enslaved from history. It has also created and perpetuated a false and incomplete picture of Hamilton as a man and Founding Father.
Here are Serfilippi’s arguments, some merely inferential, but the most damning ones based on historical documentation.
1.) Hamilton, who grew up in St. Croix, was part of a household that had at least seven slaves. After his dad abandoned the family, Alexander also worked as a clerk at a trading post involved in the slave trade. It is probable, says Serfilippi, that Hamilton was involved in the machinations of this trade. There is no historical record that Hamilton objected to the slavery on St. Croix during his entire life. As Serfillipi surmises,
As a teenager, Hamilton writes to his friend Ned Stevens that he “would willingly risk my life tho’ not my Character to exalt my Station,” showing that his major concern was improving his own situation, not the ones of the enslaved people around him.14 It is more likely that Hamilton’s exposure to slavery as a child caused him to internalize the lesson that enslavement was the symbol of success for a white man like himself and could lead to the higher station he sought. He would carry that lesson with him as he began a new life in New York, and its impact would much later be revealed on the pages of his cash books.
This is, of course, speculative, and is more biographical surmising than hard evidence. But let’s proceed:
2.) Hamilton was a middleman in the trading of slaves. The 1784 entry in Hamilton’s own ledger (“cash book”) below documents the sale of a woman named Peggy from Hamilton to physician Malachi Treat for ninety pounds. Apparently Hamilton bought Peggy and held her for Treat until the latter could pay for her. This makes Hamilton a slave trader. The sale of “regular” servants (the name “servant” was often used as a synonym for “slave” back then) did not occur; the only humans bought and sold this way were slaves.
In 1797, and not for the first time, Hamilton bought a “negro woman and child”, holding her for his brother-in-law John Church, who was arriving from England.
Twelve years later, the Churches again turned to Hamilton to purchase enslaved servants. On May 29, 1797—only a week after the Churches arrived in New York from England—Hamilton recorded in his cash book that he spent $225 purchasing a “negro woman and child” for John B. Church.24 (The “X” over the entry in the image below means the debt was paid.
Serfilippi says that Hamilton’s book makes it clear that Hamilton himself carried out this transaction “for himself”, meaning he purchased the slave to sell to Church. It’s clear that he was engaged in buying and selling slaves—acting as a slave trader.
3.) Hamilton was a “middleman for legal clients.” Serfilippi’s search showed that Hamilton was paid by slaveholding and possibly slave-trading clients to advise them on the slave trade (the “advice” was unrecorded), and records of some of these consultations show that he defended the right of Americans to own ships that had been fitted out to carry slaves. While these ships may not have been used later in the slave trade, Serfilippi argues—and this is speculative and not very hard evidence—that if he were an abolitionist, clients involved in the slave trade would not have sought and paid for his expertise.
4.) Hamilton owned slaves. There are several documented instances. In May, 1781, Hamilton wrote to George Clinton saying he “paid the value of a woman” for Hamilton’s wife Eliza. Eliza’s family had at least 13 slaves, and, says Serfilippi, Hamilton would have been expected to purchase slaves for his own family as part of a “lifestyle reflective of his status as part of one of the wealthiest and most prominent families in New York.”
More telling is an entry in Hamilton’s cashbook from March 23, 1796, in which Hamilton paid $250 to his father in law for “2 Negro servants purchased by him for me”. Here’s the entry:
And there’s more:
On June 25, 1798, Hamilton recorded that he’d received $100.00 for the “term” of a “negro boy.” [JAC: probably one of the “two Negro servants” above]. He rented the boy to someone else––who that person was is not mentioned––and collected money for the child’s labor. The fact that he was able to lease the boy to another person absolutely indicates that Hamilton enslaved the child.
Serfilippis gives other evidence that these people were slaves, though the material above should be dispositive. There is other evidence that Hamilton had white “servants”, who, because they were paid wages, were not slaves. No wages were given to the slaves above. Read Serfilippi’s article for more detail.
4.) Hamilton’s slaves were part of his property valued after he died. The document below, probably by the hand of George Church, Hamilton’s executor, shows the value of his estate (1818 pounds) after Hamilton’s pre-mortem debts were paid off. The items valued were his house, his furniture and library, and his “servants”:
Paid servants do not have a value like this; these were slaves. As Serfilippi notes:
In the assessment likely drawn by Church, the “servants” are valued at £400. Monetary value ascribed to a human being as property is an inherent aspect of slavery. Valuing servants in such a way, as part of the estate on par with furniture, simply cannot refer to hired servants, such as the coachman, gardener, or “White Peggy,” who were hired, paid, and not considered to be the property of the Hamiltons.
In 1804, it is possible there were four servants at The Grange. The first would be the woman Hamilton purchased for Eliza in 1781, the woman and boy, and the maid for Angelica. It is known that a man or boy named Dick died, meaning it is more likely that there were three enslaved servants in 1804: the two women and the girl, who may have been a young woman by that point. There may also have been another maid, as multiple maids were mentioned in relation to the Hamilton children in Schuyler’s 1799 letter and who those maids were—whether they were one of the two women already purchased by Hamilton or not—is unclear.
The auditor does specifically write servants, using the plural of the word, implying there was more than one servant present. Who they were may never be known, but the presence of “servants” on the inventory of Hamilton’s estate is proof enslaved servants were present at The Grange when Alexander Hamilton died in 1804.
It is true that Hamilton occasionally espoused abolitionist views, but Serfilippi argues that these views, which changed over time, simply reflect his adherence to the political organizations with which he was affiliated. Her conclusion:
We may never know what became of the people the Hamiltons enslaved, but we know they existed. Alexander Hamilton’s cash books offer a history of his connections to and relationship with the institution of slavery. He was trusted by legal clients to know the ins and outs of the slave trade for certain cases. He was selected by friends and family to act as a financier and to purchase enslaved people for them. He purchased multiple enslaved people for his own family and did not leave instructions for them to be freed upon his death. The presence of these enslaved servants at his estate, The Grange, is confirmed by the value of Hamilton’s estate, calculated after his death, likely by John Barker Church.
In light of these primary sources, the majority of which are in Hamilton’s own hand, it is vital that the myth of Hamilton as the “Abolitionist Founding Father” end. These documents, especially when placed in context with each other, make it evident that Alexander Hamilton was an enslaver. The truth revealed in Hamilton’s cash books and letters must be acknowledged in order to honor the people he enslaved. Through understanding and accepting Hamilton’s status as an enslaver, the stories of the people he enslaved can finally take their rightful place in history.
Now you probably know why I’m putting up this post. Hamilton, seen as an colonial abolitionist by liberals, turns out to have been just another slaveholder—like many of the founding fathers, including Jefferson, Washington, Monroe, and Madison. But because Hamilton was thought of as different, he’s been deified, by Chernow and especially by Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose play Hamilton was a theatrical phenomenon.
Hamilton is now seen as a man of his time: a white person who owned slaves as a sign of social standing. That doesn’t make slavery right, of course, as it’s the most odious of practices in America. It’s just that because slavery is seen as an original sin in early Americans, and because those who owned or even just approved of slavery have been demonized and their statues torn down, in the name of consistency the antiracists must now tear down or deface the statues of Hamilton, as they have of Jefferson, and rename any monuments or buildings raised in his honor. One might expect that the play Hamilton would be picketed now, and that there would be calls to remove Hamilton from the ten-dollar bill. After all, Theodore Roosevelt’s statue was removed from in front of the American Museum of Natural History simply because he was astride his horse, with an African and a Native American walking by his side.
That won’t happen, probably because Miranda’s play has put Hamilton, the star, beyond reproach (Miranda is a person of color, of Puerto Rican descent, and a left-wing activist). We shall see if this new research casts doubt on Hamilton’s legacy. I wouldn’t hold my breath, as consistency has never been a defining feature of woke ideology.
What are my views on Hamilton? Given the currents of abolitionism already about in his time, one can’t say that Hamilton is completely absolved of moral failure. He and other slaveholders knew that there were good arguments about the immorality of slavery, and nevertheless still held slaves.
Hamilton shouldn’t be considered as culpable as, say, someone who held slaves today, since morality has progressed substantially since the 18th century. Should Hamilton still be lionized? Yes, I think that the good he did outweighs the bad, though a calculus in a case like this is hard to perform. But any monuments celebrating the many good things that Hamilton did should stay up, for they are not celebrating his slaveholding.
Perhaps his monuments should be qualified with plaques, as statues of others have been qualified. I leave that to those who deal with the ethics of monuments. The only case I’m making here is that if you erase or demonize someone for merely approving of slavery, or of eugenics, then you must do more to fight against those who actually owned or traded slaves. In other words, whatever treatment was given to Confederates or Founding Fathers who owned slaves should also be meted out to Alexander Hamilton.
The Schuyler Mansion:
Hamilton:
h/t: Dom
can not subscribe.
There are lots of ecologically minded people who still drive or fly. Will future generations curse them or only remember the good they did?
Yes, and love their pets and eat animal flesh. Evidently it’s hard to ensure future virtuosity.
I’m with Marcus Aurelius (as interpreted by Thomas Harris in “Hannibal”) in that I think the opinions of future generations are likely to be no more valuable than the opinions of the current one. Better to be strive to have the best possible (honest) opinion of yourself. Not that I do, but it sounds good.
That issue was, uh, “skewered” in print some years before this “Hamilton” rebel was around, so he had no excuse for not being a paragon of woke perfection.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1080
To compete the demonization, I’m sure that at some point in his life, he trod on a cats tail. Ultraviolence round here.
It is probably worse than that. None of us can predict which of today’s commonplace practices will be seen as unforgivable in a couple of centuries.
Not only that, but practices which will then be common and unremarkable would probably upset many of us.
It is funny that most people seem to think that the evolution of morality always moves in an objectively positive direction. (real)History does not support that view.
“History does not support that view.”
Pinker would disagree, if large enough stretches of time are used. Me also. I’d feel safer walking around in the most dangerous city in the ‘western’ world today, than doing so in London centuries ago. And rather less likely to be captured as a slave by the Vikings or the Algerians or …
Such dilemmas for the Woke! My only thought here is to suggest that Hamilton should both be demonized AND lionized. Demonized for his support of slavery and whatever other bad things he might have done and lionized for all the good things he did. Those for whom anti-racism is a calling can demonize him and fans of Miranda’s musical may lionize him, but there’s also nothing wrong with the two attitudes residing in the same individual. Odd that many of those that insist sex is a continuum will also insist that we all have to take the same side against historical figures like Hamilton. I support diversity of opinion.
I don’t think it is necessary to demonize him. We can turn up our noses, and say we would never own slaves. I don’t think anyone who owned slaves should be demonized for something that was not illegal, and that, at the time, was not even broadly viewed as wrong.
“I don’t think anyone who owned slaves should be demonized for something that was not illegal, and that, at the time, was not even broadly viewed as wrong.”
How do you evaluate the efficacy of the views of abolitionists, and slaves, regarding slavery?
I am not sure why either term, lionize or demonize should be applied to persons in history. It is a view mostly by people who feel a need to judge anything and everything that crosses their path. In a nutshell, it is stupid and a waste of time.
I did not know there were many out there who thought of Hamilton as an abolitionist or as a slave owner. Most of the stuff I have read on Hamilton tended to not cover either of these things. As a young person, boy actually, he had pretty large responsibilities handling the job of a merchant ship owner in St Croix. Because of his talents he was backed by some business people who paid for him to come to America and get an education. In St. Croix slavery would have been all around him. Sugar cane was the crop in the islands and slavery was how it worked. Slavery was all over the merchant trade business as well. I do not think Hamilton had strong opinion on the subject of slavery one way or the other. It would have been surprising if he did. He was a very close associate of George Washington for many years. It is unlikely he could have been a raving abolitionist in the many positions he served Washington. It would make no sense.
It is something of a ridiculous false dichotomy – wrongness comes in degrees, it seems. (Like most other properties.)
This is true.
But the Woke religionists view this as sin: Digital. If you sin against the party line, then you are sent to hell.
The size of the sin doesn’t matter. The time of the sin doesn’t matter. The context of the times doesn’t matter (I always find it hilarious when the Woke demand that we see the nuance in things!). You sin, you are thrown out.
Which pretty much means that anyone who was born before about 1980 is banished to Woke-hell.
Paul, I really like your point about those who insist sex is a continuum resorting to binary judgements about historical and contemporary people. On the latter topic they insist upon nuanced thought, on the former, not so much, eh?
Well! That will put a severe test to the Protocols of the Woke.
I can still support removal of statues of confederate generals, historically erected by racists with the expressed intent of mythologizing the “Lost Cause” and to remind former slaves of their proper place. Those are surely outliers that should go, imo.
But the broad brush of de-platforming historical figures should be a Lost Cause in its own right.
Math: Hard to read handwriting with corrections overwritten, but estate value is 1888 (not 1818). Slaves value is 100 (not 400).
House 2200
Library 800
Slaves 100
= 3100
– 1212
= 1888
Has Chernow responded? It seems as a historian he should have known about this.
Things were certainly more complicated than the cartoonish “spy vs spy” woke version would indicate. Take the case of my favorite slave autobiograpy, The Life of Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was a slave long before he’d heard of white people, then sailed the seven seas as the slave of a British naval officer, then was enslaved in America, after which he purchased his manumission and went in on a plantation venture with one of his former masters. As a partner, he would sometimes go out to the ships and purchase slaves, choosing those from his own tribe to assure that they would be treated humanely on his own plantation. (Yes, the idealist in pursuit of worldwide abolition was also a pragmatist doing the best he could within the system in which he found himself.)
A dissenting voice from the late 20th century can be found in Gore Vidal’s historical novel Burr.
As long as I’ve been aware of Hamilton, I think I’ve always known he was a slave owner. I try not to get my History from musicals. The problem is that History is so neglected that many people do. Those who ignore History are not only doomed to repeat it, but also to be surprised by it.
Hamilton’s involvement with slavery is illustrative of the fact that the pernicious effects of slavery and racism were not limited to the South. Many influential northerners had connections to slavery through business dealings or marriage. For example, Ulysses S. Grant had married into a Missouri slaveholding family. As has been well documented, probably the overwhelming majority of Northerners were racist to one extent or another. This includes Lincoln, although historians still debate the extent of his racism and to the degree it evolved during his presidency. Some of the small band of abolitionists were exceptions.
It is true that in the decades leading up to the Civil War more Northerners began to view slavery as immoral while in the South pro-slavery attitudes hardened. Although hard numbers are hard to calculate, many northerners opposed slavery for reasons other than morality – mostly on the grounds that slavery was an economic threat to free white labor and that Southerners were bullying the North. Regardless of whether slavery was opposed for moral or economic grounds or both, most of these people were racist as well. Then, of course, there was a considerable portion of Northerners (probably hovering around half) that were indifferent to slavery or actually supported it and were racist. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois had a successful political career appealing to such people. The important point here is that opposing slavery and being racist were not at all incompatible.
All this leads up to what I have railed about in the past – the fairy tale version of American history perpetuated by the right wing, such as at sites like New Discourses, has been demolished by almost all reputable historians. This understanding makes the debates over the 1619 Project trivial. It makes clear that slavery and racism were deeply enmeshed in the entire country from its founding (pick any date you like, I don’t care) and though the Civil War ended slavery as a legal institution, its effects still linger to this very day. The country may have been a shining city on a hill, but only for a part of the population.
You’re right in that, by today’s standards, just about every single white person from that era was racist. Hardly any of them — even the abolitionists — would have regarded blacks and whites as, in general, intellectual equals.
But, having said that, it would be wrong to condemn them morally for such attitudes, since that was in line with the evidence that they, in those times, had available to them.
For example, Abraham Lincoln argued for abolition, saying that blacks deserved the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, but also said:
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, — that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
This utterance by Lincoln is one of his most known and was stated in one of the famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas. It was from the debate on September 18, 1858 in Charleston, Illinois. Lincoln was trying to take away Douglas’s Senate seat (which he didn’t). Some Lincoln apologists have argued that because Charleston was in the southern part of the state where a lot of pro-South people resided, he said this to appeal for their votes, but he didn’t really mean it. Of course, this would have made him a hypocrite. Others argue that by the time of the end of his presidency in 1864 and 1865, he had become more liberal in his views and was partial to giving African-Americans the right to vote. Because his life was cut short, it is mere speculation as to what Lincoln would have said and done in subsequent years.
Moreover, in his pre-presidential years, Lincoln never argued for abolition except to hope that someday it would fade way. He hoped that by blocking the spread of slavery into the territories, this goal would be speeded up. Lincoln said many times that there was no constitutional right for the federal government to interfere with slavery in the states where it already existed.
Why is it considered a moral failing if people believed that different races had different traits and abilities and even different roles in the natural order? It was a perfectly plausible belief given the state of knowledge and creationist dogma at the time.
Were they supposed to simply know this wasn’t true? How?
Worse than imposing the morals of our time on people retroactively is judging them for not know what we know.
You have railed about the stories many believe about our founding and rightly so. But sometimes your targets have been people here who do not hold those fairy tale views you so despise but simply disagree with your reading of the 1619 project.
Like the very people in history we today so gleefully and self-righteously damn, we also have our complications.
PS Can you point me at something that New Discourses gets wrong on this?
I was thinking of an article on the 1776 Project written by a group of African-Americans that was nothing more than a screed on how great America was and is. I have tried to find the article at the New Discourses site, but it doesn’t seem to be there anymore. Or perhaps my memory is faulty.
Since about 2015, the African American writer Ishmael Reed has been a vociferous critic of “Hamilton,” and its whitewashing and idolizing Alexander Hamilton. Of course, that was ignored. Ask a black person to look back at Hamilton’s life and evaluate it in terms of his record on slavery. I doubt that one (oh, maybe one) would come back with such “balanced” and sanguine judgments.
Don’t know if this posted twice.
Historian, I when I commented on the comments in this post, I was not referring to yours.
Readers of WEIT, myself included, are hardly so balanced when it comes to criticizing religious beliefs and actions in times of yore. We don’t say, well, that was back then, so we shouldn’t criticize them from our enlightened 21st century vantage point, we should praise them for what good they did criticize them mildly for the rest because they didn’t know any better. If we did, there wouldn’t be much at all to the comments section of WEIT
You make a great point. I don’t think that most descendants of slaves would likely subscribe to the “balanced” point of view.
I would argue that yes we do – when it’s relevant.
So for example, very few scientists take issue with the belief in spontaneous creation or separate creation of species by people in the 1700s. Or geocentrism amongst even learned people before, oh, about the 1400s or so.
Likewise, I don’t think many people complain about animistic beliefs of stone age peoples. They simply had no better explanations for a lot of natural phenomena.
But when you talk about Christian defense of the resurrection of Jesus, or the trinity, or concepts like that, this sort of forgiveness-of-ignorance simply doesn’t apply. Nobody resurrects. Nobody speaks in multiple actual languages at once. Nobody walks on water. There is no regular or common observation requiring explanation. Unlike species or stars and planets or even droughts and hurricanes, Jesus’ miracles aren’t things in our lives which demand explanation.
I think the Fugitive Slave Act and other outrageous demands by the slave states (e.g. that (nevermind their talk about states’ rights) that slaveholders should be able to move to the north, non-slave states, and retain their salves there) helped push northerners into the anti-slavery position.
I think the 1619 project is as biased as the “fairy tale” versions of the historical figures of the past.
I saw posted on FB a picture of Mt. Rushmore and each of the faces was tagged with “Slave Holder”, “Racist”, etc. (So much for the “nuance” that the Woke are always flogged on about.)
I felt like replying sarcastically that:
Yep, that fully defines these figures, doesn’t it?
Any Woke schmuck off the street could have commanded the continental forces in 1776-1781, refused to become king, handed over power in March 1797, written the Declaration of Independence, closed the Louisiana Purchase, launched the Lewis and Clark Expedition, founded the University of Virginia, written the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, commanded the Union during the Civil War, made the Emancipation Proclamation, [I won’t enumerate TRs accomplishments].
One view is mostly caused by benign ignorance, the other a racialist propaganda campaign.
“…the fairy tale version of American history perpetuated by the 1619 Project.”
This could have just as easily been a true sentence, but it’s not one you would ever write.
And, once again, you tar people who “perpetuate” any other version of history but the 1619 Project as “the right wing.” And, once again, you claim that pointing out the voluminous, critical, and often hypocritical errors of the 1619 Project is “trivial” debate, not worth anyone’s time. Ending debate on it, as you seem so keen to do, would leave it as the definitive history, despite it too being a fairy tail.
Why do you continue to defend a project rife with historical inaccuracy and false narratives?, when in other posts you always seem so committed to telling history as it really happened? It seems like it’s just because you want to believe that every critic of the 1619 Project is a right-winger, despite the fact that you’ve seen many on this very website who you know are not criticize it. And you have been made aware, over and over, that some of the most ardent criticism has come from the very far left (like the WSWS). It seems you’ve convinced yourself that all of your enemies on this are right-wing bigots, when evidence otherwise has been placed right in front of you again and again and again.
I’ve explained three or four times my views on the 1619 Project with evidence. I am not going to do it again.
Maybe there are no heroes. But we still want to enshrine some people, for some reason.
The clearest path through this thicket is to condemn the time, not the person who lived in that time.
If aliens were to swap fertilized eggs of any person here in the 20th century with someone from the 18th century, the transplanted persons would of course grow up with all the attributes of their adapted time.
For much the same reason that no man is a hero to his valet, no man can be entirely heroic to anyone who examines his life in minute detail.
No more heroes any more… I wonder whatever happened to them? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2tfy8f9lDD0
Hero Worship can be quite seductive.
Hard to resist this.
I think that heroism is relative, both to oneself and one’s peers. If we take men like Washington and Jefferson compare their contribution to those of some of his peers, their achievements are laudable, even allowing for the slavery. It is an iconoclast’s straw-man to say that heroes must have no flaws.
Heroes are human beings, and as such are imperfect relative to ideals.
Making hero’s or villains out of people in history is really a mistake. It is especially bad because our history in the past 10 or 20 years is so much better than it use to be. The more I read about Jefferson by some of the best historians the more bad stuff comes out. He is certainly one of the strangest characters in American history and very much the enemy of Hamilton. They were political opposites so it becomes easy to take sides based on the politics alone. I believe that Hamilton was far superior to Jefferson in politics yet Jefferson becomes the hero of masses and certainly the far right. Hamilton was not right about everything but he was far ahead of Jefferson or Madison in his views of what American should be.
When I read Chernow’s Hamilton bio, any sort of vague esteem I had for Jefferson greatly diminished.
I don’t think those two groups — Founders and Confederates — stand on precisely the same footing. The arc of the moral universe is long, but (with the abolitionist movement gaining momentum) it did bend some toward justice during the intervening four score and seven.
18th century America was far different from the 19th century and the change came very fast almost as we moved from the 1700s into the 1800s. Some of the founders who survived into the 1800s, such as Jefferson and Adams believed their founding ideas had gone to hell and the people were headed the same way. The society and it’s norms were changing in ways they never thought would be happening. By the 1820s they hardly recognized their surroundings.
Plus ça change, bro.
This recent research into the relationship of Hamilton with slavery is not particularly new, but perhaps offers more detail. In October 2016, historian Annette Gordon-Reed stated this about Hamilton and the show:
———-
The show portrays Hamilton as a “young, scrappy, and hungry” immigrant (he was born on the Caribbean Island of Nevis, but qualified as a U.S. citizen when the Constitution was adopted), an egalitarian, and a passionate abolitionist. All of this is wrong, Gordon-Reed said.
“In the sense of the Ellis Island immigrant narrative, he was not an immigrant,” she said. “He was not pro-immigrant, either.
“He was not an abolitionist,” she added. “He bought and sold slaves for his in-laws, and opposing slavery was never at the forefront of his agenda.
“He was not a champion of the little guy, like the show portrays,” she said. “He was elitist. He was in favor of having a president for life.”
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/10/correcting-hamilton/
—————
Since about 2015, the African American writer Ishmael Reed has been a vociferous critic of “Hamilton,” and its whitewashing and idolization of Alexander Hamilton. Of course, that was ignored. Ask a black person to look back at Hamilton’s life and evaluate it in terms of his record on slavery. I doubt that one (oh, maybe one) would come back with such “balanced” and sanguine judgments.
If we just make it a contest of infidelity between Hamilton and Jefferson – Hamilton had far more character in this regard than Jefferson. Hamilton publicly admitted his discretion but you never got any out of Jefferson.
There is another group who held slaves, and who were deeply involved in the slave trade, but about which we will never hear a word from Wokies or from those who get their history from musicals. This group is the entire ruling class of many of the Black kingdoms of Africa. Wiki reports as follows.
“Many nations such as the Bono State, Ashanti of present-day Ghana and the Yoruba of present-day Nigeria were involved in slave-trading.[51] Groups such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as intermediaries or roving bands, waging war on African states to capture people for export as slaves.[52] Historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University have estimated that of the Africans captured and then sold as slaves to the New World in the Atlantic slave trade,[53] around 90% were enslaved by fellow Africans who sold them to European traders.[54] Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard Chair of African and African American Studies, has stated that “without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents,[55] the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.”[54]”
A general point:
People vote with their feet, always have, always will.
About 40,000 people of all races (mainly Hispanic/Amerind due to geography) cross the US southern border every year. Over 100 per day, on average.
If the USA is such a horrible, oppressive place for “people of color”, then why isn’t the flow the other way: Away from this terrible oppression?
Why are tens of thousands of people every risking their life savings and their lives to come to the US (if it’s so horrible)?
… people every year risking their life savings …
The Woke claim that the US is so horrible and oppressive is an affectation that they can afford to adopt precisely because Americans are (in world terms) pretty well off and safe.
Undoubtedly this will prompt another “reckoning” over race, though as usual this will less of an actual reckoning and more of a quasi-religious banishment of Hamilton from any sort of public regard. In religious terms, Hamilton will become another aspect of America’s founding sin and thus regarded as something unclean and taboo, that must be suppressed and denounced. A true reckoning with the founding fathers would explore the complexity of their morals, achievements, and flaws, and the context of their time and class. This would be very difficult for many Americans, who prefer history that either be unthinkingly celebrated or unthinkingly denounced.
Apologies for the typos in my post (maybe I’m not as awake as I presumed this morning!).
“as usual this will less” should be “as usual this will be less”
“who prefer history that either be unthinkingly” should be “who prefer history that can either be unthinkingly”…
(Probably Capt. Obvious here, but) I’ll put up an insightful quote from Andrew Sullivan:
Until the Civil War, approximately one half of the nation was indeed a slaveocracy and then attempted to establish a slave republic. Also, up to the Civil War all the presidents, except the two Adamses and arguably Millard Fillmore, were slaveholders or sympathetic to their interests.
Indeed. But damning them all for this simply doesn’t make sense.
Summarizing Jefferson as “a slaveholder” lacks, shall we say, nuance? And that is the woke left’s tack these days.
Slavery was the norm throughout the world until very recently, including amongst native Americans and Africans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery
Yet the ‘Africans’ and ‘native Americans’ did not hide their practice of slavery behind idealistic proclamations such as the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson et al. were basely hypocritical about their own interests in slavery as a means of promulgating their fortunes.
Since the D. of I. begins ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident,’ and then appends its list of human rights, the document leaves for its authors and the ‘republic’ they were to create no room for equivocation, whatever the ‘norms’ might have been across the rest of the world.
Again, recognize the hypocrisy while continuing to celebrate the accomplishments.
And I’ll wager that the Iroquois and Dinka thought of themselves as moral and free people too, despite their slavery.
Yes, it’s important to recognize the hypocrisy, the imperfection of the USA up to an including today.
But to say as the woke do, that because of that hypocrisy, into the dustbin you go, is silly and “lacking nuance”.
My point is that the purity test fails. And it does. No one is pure. Certainly no one born before 1980 is pure enough for these people. So it’s an absurd exercise.
And again, 40,000 “people of color” are risking their lives and life savings to illegally cross to the US every year. Poor souls. They must not be well enough schooled in Critical Race Theory.
What Alexander Hamilton did in his short life was come to America with nothing but his brains. He was a bastard of the lowest class in the new world. He joined up to fight in the revolutionary war and became an aid to George Washington. He became a lawyer in New York and a member in politics in New York. He along with James Madison sent out a letter to all the states to meet in Philadelphia in the spring of 1787. They initiated the beginning of a plan for real government in this country and signed the Constitution. He pushed for ratification of the Constitution in the Federalist Papers. He became the first Secretary of Treasurer in the new government and then developed a plan of finance for the new country. He was a true Federalist unlike Madison who soon flipped to become anti-Federalist. Any of the slavery or abolitionist around Hamilton was of little significants, given the period.
+1
If we can celebrate no one who not without flaw (in the eyes of the Woke), then we are well and truly screwed.
And welcome to the permanent hegemony of the GOP.
We still have our blindspots today. When I consider how animals are treated, it doesn’t seem much better than slavery to me.
The history of the great civilizations in all the continents of the Earth shows us that the institution of slavery was central to their material development. Its gradual disappearance was possible not by virtue of the new modern ethical conscience but by the technical development that made the capitalist economy possible and with it superfluous this form of exploitation of human labor.
Making history a moral narrative of “good guys” and “bad guys” is an ideological ruse, and for many an intellectually spurious way of making a living in academic and journalistic settings.
There is no “historical guilt” and no morally “right” or “wrong” side. Even if, as David Hume (today reviled as “racist”) pointed out, history allows us to “simpathize with the persons that suffer, in all the various sentiments which belong to their fortunes.” (A Treatise of Human Nature, B. III, Of morals, p. 613)
Sorry, but I disagree strongly. Child labor, exploitation and abuse of women, and slavery are all morally wrong, and you are “right” to oppose them now. They were also morally wrong when they were practiced, even when they were the norm.
The moral judgments about historical practices that are repugnant to us today rest in an ethical framework historically as contingent as such practices. Extrapolating our rejection does not imply that with it the validity of said ethical framework is also extrapolated.
Today, pretty much everyone has access to means of production that conform with modern ethics. That was not the case even in the fairly recent past
When my parents were children, their families were among those who had not yet mechanized farm labor. They worked the fields from a young age. My Mom still has terrible scars on her hands from picking cotton as a child.
They had large families, and everyone worked. That was how small scale agriculture worked then, and always had.
I am not even sure my great grandparents would have approved of kids being mostly idle, even if they had alternatives. I don’t know. But I would find it pretty hard to judge them as morally inferior.
Still, they had no alternatives.
I got my first full time (summer) job when I was 12. I worked at an auto repair/machine shop. I was not very enthusiastic about it at the time, but I learned many of the skills I have relied on as an adult, as well as work ethic.
Under current law, my parents and employer would face criminal prosecution.
I personally don’t believe either situation was morally wrong, and I don’t think the situation in developing nations is morally unambiguous either. It would be great if families there were not struggling, and they could thrive with one adult in the workforce. That is not the reality many of them live in, so sometimes everyone who is able, works.
I certainly don’t think your parents should have faced criminal prosecution for letting you work at a garage during the summer of your twelfth year, Max.
But do you dispute that the enactment of child labor laws in the United States in the first half of the 20th century was generally a positive development?
It is probably worse than that. None of us can predict which of today’s commonplace practices will be seen as unforgivable in a couple of centuries.
Not only that, but practices which will then be common and unremarkable would probably upset many of us.
It is funny that most people seem to think that the evolution of morality always moves in an objectively positive direction. (real)History does not support that view.
Can you provide some examples of long term trends for the worse in human endeavors?
Okay, I have trouble with this. Since we are atheists who do not believe there is a God-given absolute morality, how can we conclude they were morally wrong? I agree they were and are morally wrong by today’s standards, or by my internal moral standards which are heavily influenced by my moral environment, but how do we conclude that their actions were immoral given the standards of the time? Slavery and debasement of women were the norms for thousands of years. Why and how do our contemporary moral standards take timeless precedence over the norms of their time?
If we declare that everybody who lived more than a hundred years ago was bad or evil, then the words no longer have meaning.
Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, et al are some the greatest Americans ever. We should celebrate their virtue while acknowledging their flaws. Black and white views are only proper in photography.
And for society masquerade balls thrown by Truman Capote at the Plaza hotel. 🙂
Thoughts:
1. Insofar as we know, there have always been slaves in almost all cultures; red and yellow, black and white.
2. The Old Testament gives instructions on how to treat slaves. In the New Testament, Paul told Christian slaves to remain as slaves. They had to await death to become free.
3. Wish I could find the source in which I found this, but slavery existed in all
of our colonies/states, both North and South. At about a 5% level in the northern states; much higher in the south. Undoubtedly, depending on proportion of agriculture and other manual labor jobs the economy depended on.
4. As is known, the Father of our Country, George Washington, had slaves. When he and his family went to a northern state that permitted freeing of slaves, they rotated the slaves they brought with them every six months so they would not be enticed to run away to freedom.
As an aside, I would much prefer that history be taught as close as possible to as it was with the good, the bad and the ugly as well as the rose colored glasses view.
Your number 3 is correct far as I know from my readings on American history. The difference in numbers was very true, I think maybe 3 or 4 thousand in Mass. around the time of the revolution. But there were also free Black people in those northern states. Most of the slaves were in homes doing the cooking and cleaning for the well off. But it was on the way out up north. Not so in the south and even later in the early 1800s in Virginia, Jefferson was going broke as were most of his planter neighbors. Jefferson was a spender and a poor farmer but he never gave up on slave labor in the house or doing the work outside. The slaves were used to borrow more money and go further into debt. This was not the cotton south were slavery was king. But Jefferson could do nothing but leave it to future generations to solve.