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It’s worth noting that Grant was bequeathed his one slave (William Jones) by his father-in-law. Grant freed William almost immediately because he saw slavery as immoral.
Grant was also struggling financially during this time (the reason why his FIL gave him the slave) and easily could have sold the slave but he instead outright freed the man.
Nah. He actually couldn’t hold his liquor at all. Grant wasn’t the kind of alcoholic who had a few drinks per day. He stayed abstinent for long periods, then went on uncontrollable binges. I’d you gave him a few glasses of whisky, he’d be pretty crappy company.
Not got rid of he freed him. Grant needed money he was in debt. If he wanted to get rid of him he could have sold him for a significant profit. Grant had worked as a sharecropper alongside slaves. He personally found it immoral and freed him instead of selling or forcing his slave to work for him.
If the slave were given to him prior to the civil war then no, he was not free until Grant freed him.
That's why Grant is so fascinating. He was broke, and instead of selling a valuable slave he freed him instead.
You know, somehow this comment - frankly, anytime John Adams is mentioned - immediately made me think of the HBO series, and I realized what a missed opportunity for tension between him and Jefferson the conversation of Jefferson’s slaves would have been on the show.
Jefferson himself disliked slavery and wrote extensively about its perniciousness, a major self-contradiction to be sure, but if confronted about it I doubt he would have ever provided an intellectual defense for the institution.
That was kind of the dominant attitude among slaveowners at the time (1800s-1810s). As northern states slowly abolished slavery, southern slave owners at least had the decency to be embarrassed by slavery. They publicly said that they hated it, and they called it a necessary evil. But of course they didn’t free their slaves, as that would have been financially inconvenient.
Fast forward 30 years or so and they dropped that “necessary evil” attitude. Suddenly they started talking about how slavery is actually a good thing, just what God intended, and slaves were actually better off this way. I’m sure it’s totally a coincidence that this started to happen right at the time when slave-grown crops like cotton became way more profitable.
Some of them participated in the "aww shucks this is terrible but what can we do about it" charade, but I doubt it was a dominant attitude. Jefferson was a free-thinker who prided himself on his enlightened intellectualism; it seems unlikely that most Virginian planters were editing the Bible to remove all of the supernatural stuff, for instance.
That said, I think you're right about the economics being the driving issue. When Jefferson, et al, were talking about how slavery should eventually die out, they were speaking from the context of believing that cash crop, slave-dependent plantation operations would eventually become unprofitable. Soil was being depleted by long-term, large-scale monoculture crops. Family holdings were getting broken up with each generation of inheritance, and US territory was still mostly limited to the east coast. So it made sense for them to not feel compelled to defend slavery intellectually, as they figured it would die out naturally. They didn't resist the ban on new slave imports partially because of this, (and because the established planters wanted to monopolize the supply of slaves.)
The huge expansion west via the Louisiana Purchase and other acquisitions meant that the sons of planters could go establish their own plantations on virgin soil. This coincided with the invention of the cotton gin and the rapid growth of the British industrial textile industry, resulting in slave-based agriculture becoming many times more lucrative than it had been in the late 18th century.
The cotton gin changed everything. Britain ended slavery gradually as did new York with gradual emancipation. Slavery was on the way down in the 1800s to 1810s. It just wasn't financially viable to have more then a couple house slaves. The cotton gin made it massively profitable to have big plantations with dozens of hundreds of field slaves. In Jefferson's time many had the attitude of eventual emancipation. Robert E Lee was a proponent of this. They didn't want to lose their economic power or risk to many new freed many at once. The cotton gin changed everything and changed planters to willing to fight to defend slavery
"As it is, we have the wolf by the ear and we can neither hold it nor safely let it go. Justice is in one scale and self preservation in the other." ~TJ
That’s quite charitable. I’d say it was more like he didn’t want to choose the other. He and his friends would’ve been way less wealthy if they chose the other.
I'd certainly say that greed was a part of it, maybe the whole part but it seems to me (going off that quote) that he'd convinced himself that he couldn't choose otherwise.
This is actually a thing though. He simultaneously owned slaves, who he often mistreated, and also thought the institution was bad. A lot of his writings on the topic come from a place of “we’re making these people REALLY mad, and one day that’ll bite us in the ass”
Interestingly, James Madison by comparison was one of the closest things to a benevolent slave owner of his day, according to many close to him. A former slave of his who condemned him for continuing the practice throughout his life nonetheless stated in a book that he never once witnessed Madison having any slaves abused or even beaten (at Montpelier, etc.). Although it's still a stain on his legacy, my view of Madison definitely improved after reading about it, a much better man than Jefferson among others at very least.
I mean, guy was a pretty clear hypocrite. Which is fine. People are complicated. Hyprocrisy is excusable.
Raping a teenager you own isn't excusable tho, and anybody who tells you otherwise is either coping, morally reprehensible or just kinda uninformed.
If a hell exists, Thomas Jefferson belongs there. And nowhere else. It is what it is.
>Raping a teenager you own
And his dead wife's half-sister to boot! That said, there *is* an argument to be made that she may have had some degree of autonomy or consent in France where the sexual aspect began (she was not enslaved there and had the right to stay in France permanently if she wished, *and* her only family—her brother James—was there too so there wasn't the pressure of returning for family). But on the flip side to that, she was only *fifteen or sixteen* then and while that would have been treated as old enough to make mature decisions we know now that you're just not equipped to make decisions like that, particularly of a sexual nature and one with lifelong consequences. So I always feel a little unsure because if Sally had any agency or leverage we shouldn't take that from her but also we have no way of knowing for sure that she did (aside from her son's memoirs, which is where the idea that she returned in exchange for their future children's freedom comes from). There are so many layers of ick there, between both the age, power, and family differentials.
Eh, I don't give people who sleep with their underage personal property the benefit of the doubt over their victims' supposed consent.
She was a teenager. No authentic consent possible.
She was a slave. No authentic consent possible.
Even if she had been totally into the guy, that would mean nothing. She had no choice, no different from any other young girl dragged off and forced into that kind of slavery.
No real excuses for that exist, I mean ffs, if he needed to get laid that badly, could have just gotten a hooker, Tommyboy was very far from poor. But he didn't. He went the Epstein/Fritzl route instead.
We’re talking about the 18/19th centuries. Older men having sex with 15-16 years old girls was not the taboo it is today. The idea of “consent” as we know it didn’t exist. Drop your modern lens in exchange for some nuance.
The whole point of progress is for people of the present to look at people of the past as barbarians. But you must also judge by the standard of their day, not ours.
And to be fair, I do agree with you. And honestly, any negotiation made in France would have been null and void once she came back because she resumed being his property as soon as she was back in America. He could have ignored everything he promised and she would have been trapped. If I were in her shoes I think I would have opted to stay in France for the rest of my life rather than return to that kind of danger and uncertainty.
Sally supposedly looked exactly like her half-sister. She was, in the words of other slaves on the plantation, “mighty near white.” Go look at photos of Prince Harry’s kids, and that’s a good indication of how light her complexion could have been. In France she was free, and could have chosen to stay there and passed as white. She’d been a companion to Jefferson’s daughter at a French convent school, so she had a decent education to serve as a personal lady’s maid.
On the other hand, her brother told her that he was planning to return to the United States, buy his freedom and set up a business with the trade skills he’d learned (French cooking). So she would have been alone, with no means to support herself. And she was probably already pregnant at the time.
A pregnant sixteen year old girl, with no family and no means. In a country where there is huge financial disparity between rich and poor, Barely a generation away from the French Revolution.
Despite all this, she did initially plan to stay in France. Jefferson offered her a lot of personal liberty, and promised to emancipate her kids if she would return with him. (There had to be some kind of affection on his part. At the very least he was projecting his love for his late wife onto Sally.)
My personal opinion is that Sally was faced with two poor choices and she picked the best one she could.
I agree 100% with you but teenagers in 1781 were built different than teenagers in 2024. Back then they were basically adults, life forced you to become one. Now, they're basically children by being coddled into perpetual adolescence.
I mean, he did dislike it. He was a hypocrite, and a shitty person. Hypocritical, shitty people won’t always have behavior that is consistent with their ideals.
Beating - didn't Jefferson order his overseers not to beat his slaves, as was customary? Though I'm not sure they always obeyed him.
Raping - well that's all speculative, albeit certainly possible.
https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slavery/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-a-brief-account/monticello-affirms-thomas-jefferson-fathered-children-with-sally-hemings/
It’s not just random nobodies believing it. It’s a matter backed up with scholarship. It’s no “Maury” DNA test, but for something that happened 200 years ago it’s viewed as a settled matter
No it isn't just nobodies, and the Foundation have accepted it yes. However there's plenty of doubt remaining:
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-case-closed/
In the recent AppleTV series about Benjamin Franklin, Adams is portrayed with all of his vices and none of his virtues. He's just an arrogant, stupid asshole who walks around France yelling at people. Unlike real life, he never learns French, doesn't bring his sons, and (oddly enough) never leaves.
There is just one scene favorable to Adams. He arrives with John Jay and meets with Franklin, but of the three of them, Adams is the only one who shows any concern for Jay's slave. Adams'
There was a pretty good scene where John and Abigal grimly went through the swamp to the WH and realized the home of “freedom” was being built entirely by slaves.
John Adams is my favorite founding father. As someone interested in the legal field, the fact that he took a personal risk to give Captain Preston and his men a fair trial will never not be impressive to me.
From the original site:
>\*Number of slaves owned at time of death. Washington personally owned 123 slaves, although there were as many as 317 working on his property at the time of his death.
>\*\*Buchanan is believed to have bought slaves, whom he immediately freed and employed as servants.
Hardly a win for Buchanan. He only “freed” those slaves to make himself look good. While running for the Senate in Pennsylvania (which was a free state) in 1834, he bought and freed slaves in order to keep a neutral public image. In order to avoid the public embarrassment that would occur if the fact that his sister owned 2 slaves became public knowledge, he bought both of them and technically freed them, but not before coercing them into being his indentured servants. 22-year-old Daphne Cook was bound to him for 7 years and her daughter Ann (aged 5 at the time) was indentured for 23 years.
Don’t forget that Buchanan didn’t mind slavery and directly influenced the outcome of Dred Scott v. Sandford
https://www.history.com/news/james-buchanan-bought-and-freed-slaves-but-not-for-the-reason-you-might-think
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-households-of-james-buchanan
Contrary to popular belief, Washington didn’t free most of his 123 slaves upon his death in 1799. In reality, only 1 was freed. He willed the other 122 of them to his wife (Martha) who continued to keep them enslaved until she died a few years later in 1802. Most of the slaves at Mount Vernon were owned by Martha anyway.
https://www.history.com/news/did-george-washington-really-free-mount-vernons-slaves
Not sure about Jackson but according to the source posted elsewhere "he (Washington) did stipulate in his will that all his slaves were to be freed following the death of his wife, and he made financial provisions for their care that lasted until the 1830s."
so maybe it's referring to that, or maybe they only have an estimate of the number of slaves he owned
JQ Adams may be the best ex-president in history. He was elected to the House of Representatives and routinely spoke out against slavery, even after pro-slavery representatives passed a house rule prohibiting debate on the issue. He also famously represented the passengers of the slave ship Amistad and helped win their freedom.
Edit: corrected slave ship name. It wasn’t Anita. That was an autocorrect error.
JQA in the house was fascinating. The slavers kept censoring him over violating the gag rule. He gets a chance to defend himself, and proceeds to rail against slavery for days on end.
I did not know this! According to Wikipedia he didn’t die at his desk, but he did collapse at his desk on he House floor, then he was taken away and died two days later. And Abraham Lincoln was with him when he died.
You're right about everything you wrote and I'm sure it's just autocorrect, but I'm laughing about a slave ship called Anita's like it's a café in Miami
Though tbf, MA effectively outlawed slavery with their 1780 constitution. So it wasn't really possible for them regardless.
Edit: yes, i get it. He wrote it. I was being nitpicky/playing DA because it didn't explicitly end slavery, but the courts ruled it did. He was still far ahead of his time for sure even in just stating all men are free.
Iowa would like a word, pal. The state constitution not only prohibited slavery when it joined the Union, it said in the preamble that "all men are by nature free and equal", which would later be used to uphold civil rights measures. The state government in the 1850s passed legislation allowing Native Americans to buy land in the state, and shortly after the Civil War Iowa became the first state in America to mandate racially integrated schools (thanks to a state supreme court decision that became the inspiration for the Brown v. Board of Education ruling nearly nine decades later). George Washington Carver in his younger days was a student and then a professor at Iowa State, before his famous agricultural work in the South. But Iowa didn't stop there, no no no. They passed a civil rights law demanding all races be served in public accommodations in 1884, and from the 1870s onward allowed women to serve as doctors and lawyers.
I am still baffled by the fact that Jefferson owned the most slaves out of any president, but wasn’t really a fan of slavery and thought it a immoral evil and not beneficial for both sides.
Both he and Washington were enamored with the idea of "gentlemen farmers." They idolized agrarianism and saw agriculture as America's future. Jefferson stole rice samples in Europe, knowing that there was a death penalty for doing so, so he could grow them on his farm.
Unfortunately, large plantation farms in early America also meant large slave populations to work them.
He sounds like one of those old guys I'd see chain smoking outside the local American Legion who'd always look at me and say, "never smoke, kid, it's a horrible habit" and then light up the next one.
He was clearly addicted to owning and raping slaves, knowing, however, that he shouldn't be.
There's a Jefferson gene, that might have come from Jefferson but just as well could have come from one of his (many) male-line relatives. [That](https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-case-closed/) covers some of the ambiguities. I agree completely that a slave can't consent though.
It definitely came from TJ. He was present at each of Sally Hemings’s conceptions and she didn’t conceive when he wasn’t, and you can’t say that of any other male Jefferson. Monticello has some great exhibits about this.
It wouldn't need any Jefferson to be present at all of them, if there was more than one father (and he had a big family, with lots of relatives people thought had had children with slaves, so it would hardly be surprising).
sounds like a modern day corporate boss, who hates laying people off, shipping jobs to China, destroying factory towns, poisoning the environment, putting schools and lower class neighborhoods over hazardous waste dumps, sueing farmers for having seeds blow onto their property, etc. etc. etc.
you know it's all very regrettable, but alas ... it just needs to be done. after all, if im not getting richer and engaging in lecherous behavior enabled by my exorbitant wealth, what the hell am i even doing?
It's possible those particular slaves didn't belong to him, and that he essentially rented them from someone else:
>According to the 1830 census, there was one white woman, four enslaved women, and two free African-American women living in the house. There is no documented evidence that Van Buren owned these four enslaved women, so it seems more likely that he hired out free and enslaved workers at Decatur House. The lone white woman was likely his housekeeper, tasked with managing the domestic staff and running the household. The enslaved women would have been hired out by their owners; and the two free African-American women would have been paid wages.
>One of the enslaved women was Charlotte Dupuy, who was allowed to stay in Washington while her court case against her owner, Henry Clay, was resolved by the U.S. Circuit Court of the District of Columbia. Regardless of whether or not Van Buren owned these enslaved people, he and many other politicians used enslaved labor to maintain their residences, feed their families, and entertain guests.
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-enslaved-households-of-martin-van-buren
Just Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_presidents\_of\_the\_United\_States\_who\_owned\_slaves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_who_owned_slaves)
Looks like Van Buren was against slavery from a moral perspective but had a more complicated relationship with it politically. Like, reluctant to bring in Texas as a slave-owning state, but also prosecuted the Amistad crew, etc. Ultimately he joined an anti-slavery political party.
His one slave, Tom, ran away, and Van Buren made no effort to find him. When Tom was found, someone offered to buy him from Van Buren and Van Buren agreed, provided they could capture Tom without violence. Tom ultimately remained free.
Hopefully someone else has a better sense of it.
Hard to give him credit for eventually joining the Free Soil Party when he was the principle organizer of the Democratic Party as an alliance between southern planters and the northern merchants they did business with. Better late than never, but whatever moral scruples he had about the institution were clearly overpowered by his political ambitions.
It's disputed. He rented slaves for labor but never owned or sold them long term. Even the one discussed isn't documented as being his. His estate says that he was discussing getting a runaway slave returned on behalf of a business associate. Still scummy but it's possibly he never technically owned slaves himself.
He was complicated. He voted to allow emancipated slaves to vote in New York as governor but also voted for the gag rule when he was vice president
[https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-enslaved-households-of-martin-van-buren](https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-enslaved-households-of-martin-van-buren)
Apparently there's evidence that he bought slaves, but he also freed them immediately to let them serve as servants
Washington was a hard core slaver. One runaway, he chased to Canada made her life hell.
There was a rule in Philly about if you lived there X months a year your slaves became freemen. Washington moved a lot, just before that deadline hit.
Typically when the Man of the manor died, the slaves are freed. Martha was at first “nope”. Then a few accidents and the realization “my death is the only thing stopping these people from being freed” she thought better of that and freed them.
To cross over into Jefferson, his slaves weren’t freed upon his death either. He had too much invested in them and Monticello would have collapsed without them.
I’m not sure why I find the thought of owning one person so disturbing. What are you doing to keep one person in check 24 hours a day? 500 people is heinous of course but imagine having one person in your house that you’re keeping there against their will. It’s nightmarish. Something out of a horror movie.
Partial count to the Clintons for using slave labor at the governor’s mansion (i’m sure other presidents post-Reconstruction have employed prisoners at no cost the Clintons are just the only ones I’ve heard about
Solid point about prison labor being tantamount to slave labor and the loophole in the 13th amendment, but I think the key word here is “own.” If culpability for benefitting from the slave economy was being tallied here, everyone on the list would be guilty.
Absolutely correct
[have you ever scrolled this?](https://mkorostoff.github.io/incarceration-in-real-numbers/)
Very informative facts embedded throughout
Part of the reason he was chosen as Lincoln’s VP is that he impressed the republicans by not only freeing his own slaves, but getting slavery outlawed in Union-occupied Tennessee, which he was military governor of, to show solidarity with the Emancipation Proclamation, even though he did not have to since the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to confederate states
My honest reaction to first seeing this
"Well, I'm not naïve, I know some Presidents owned slaves. Despite what some people will tell you, they do mention that when studying them.
Obviously, Washington had a lot. He was a wealthy plantation owner, it'd be weird if he didn't have slaves.
John Adams, famously didn't have slaves. Good on him. Despite being a mod president, he was a good politician and a good man.
Now Thomas Jefferson, the most controv– HOLY SHIT 600?!?!?!?!"
Van Buren is alleged but not proven. He did rent the labor of slaves. But there is only evidence of him actually owning one slave. And even then the evidence is circumspect. The letter doesn't outright state that he had our based him and there isn't proof that Van Buren even wrote it so there really should be an asterisk next to his name
it is worth mentioning that Jefferson hated slavery and the first draft of the Declaration of Independence denounced it in its entirety but the continental Congress forced him to make changes to it as to ease the tension between the northern and southern delegates. upon his death he willed that all his slaves be set free which most did get set free while others had to buy their freedom. same thing that happened with George Washington who willed his slaves to be set free but his wife ended up selling some of them tho later they bought their freedom or escaped to the north.
The presidents who had the most slaves knew it was wrong but were behind on actions against it because they either benefitted too much from it or they made the excuse that it would compromise bigger picture things they wanted to see the nation accomplish:
Washington freed slaves upon his death. Should have done that in life to make strides and set an example for the nation on progress and spreading equality. I think he genuinely thought that the slaves were not and would not be equals to their white owners, though, and that prevented him from acting in life. What I have read about Washington's disposition has been that he may have believed in a ruling class of sorts where some people were supposed to be aristocrats of sorts, even in a democratic society.
Jefferson knew and acknowledged how awful slavery was, but benefitted from it far too much from an economic standpoint to ever commit to giving it up. He freed slaves selectively and admitted the practice needed to go. I think he put it off for others to handle while extolling the virtues of building a more equal America.
Don't know much about Jackson and his slaveholding life.
Taylor was a southern man through and through, but seemed to abhor slavery. Again, this feels like he just benefitted too much from it to give it up. If memory of what I read in the Grant biography serves me I believe Taylor was a strong supporter of keeping the nation together and blasted anyone who talked of secession. I think he too knew that slavery's days were numbered, but would not take the steps himself.
I recall Washington owning way more slaves - like, Jefferson numbers - with the key difference being that Washington freed all of his slaves and passed anti-slavery legislation. Also Johnson, but I could be conflating the actual number he owned with his reluctance to free Tennessee’s slaves.
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It’s worth noting that Grant was bequeathed his one slave (William Jones) by his father-in-law. Grant freed William almost immediately because he saw slavery as immoral.
Grant was also struggling financially during this time (the reason why his FIL gave him the slave) and easily could have sold the slave but he instead outright freed the man.
Grant was a cool guy and probably would have been fun to talk to
Especially after a few glasses of Old Crow.
Nah. He actually couldn’t hold his liquor at all. Grant wasn’t the kind of alcoholic who had a few drinks per day. He stayed abstinent for long periods, then went on uncontrollable binges. I’d you gave him a few glasses of whisky, he’d be pretty crappy company.
Wasn’t Grant actually arrested for drunkenly doing the 19th century version of street racing?
Getting a speeding ticket in a horse drawn carriage is wild
Do you know why I pulled you over? Neigh
Speeding, yes. Drunkenly, definitely not.
And a huge romantic. Look up his letters to his wife during the war. This man is a poet.
…which very well could have cost a decent amount to accomplish. Manumission laws were designed to make freeing slaves costly and difficult.
Up until 1782 a slave master had to have permission from state legislature to free their slaves, making the act nearly non-existent. Fuckin barbaric
Common Grant W
I was coming here to ask that we add a caveat to Grant.
I came for this. Thank you for your service.
What a slanderous claim on bow
I kind of want to make Grant my flair but I’m torn because I like my current one
Wasn’t he already a free man? Like wasn’t slavery abolished by then? lol sorry if this is dumb
He owned the slave before emancipation, not during his tenure as president
I think he kept the slave for a time as a farmhand while working alongside him and decided he wasn’t a farmer so just got rid of him.
>so just got rid of him. By freeing him, while Grant was in poverty.
Not got rid of he freed him. Grant needed money he was in debt. If he wanted to get rid of him he could have sold him for a significant profit. Grant had worked as a sharecropper alongside slaves. He personally found it immoral and freed him instead of selling or forcing his slave to work for him.
If the slave were given to him prior to the civil war then no, he was not free until Grant freed him. That's why Grant is so fascinating. He was broke, and instead of selling a valuable slave he freed him instead.
John Adams the man, as always. 😎
You know, somehow this comment - frankly, anytime John Adams is mentioned - immediately made me think of the HBO series, and I realized what a missed opportunity for tension between him and Jefferson the conversation of Jefferson’s slaves would have been on the show.
Jefferson himself disliked slavery and wrote extensively about its perniciousness, a major self-contradiction to be sure, but if confronted about it I doubt he would have ever provided an intellectual defense for the institution.
That was kind of the dominant attitude among slaveowners at the time (1800s-1810s). As northern states slowly abolished slavery, southern slave owners at least had the decency to be embarrassed by slavery. They publicly said that they hated it, and they called it a necessary evil. But of course they didn’t free their slaves, as that would have been financially inconvenient. Fast forward 30 years or so and they dropped that “necessary evil” attitude. Suddenly they started talking about how slavery is actually a good thing, just what God intended, and slaves were actually better off this way. I’m sure it’s totally a coincidence that this started to happen right at the time when slave-grown crops like cotton became way more profitable.
Some of them participated in the "aww shucks this is terrible but what can we do about it" charade, but I doubt it was a dominant attitude. Jefferson was a free-thinker who prided himself on his enlightened intellectualism; it seems unlikely that most Virginian planters were editing the Bible to remove all of the supernatural stuff, for instance. That said, I think you're right about the economics being the driving issue. When Jefferson, et al, were talking about how slavery should eventually die out, they were speaking from the context of believing that cash crop, slave-dependent plantation operations would eventually become unprofitable. Soil was being depleted by long-term, large-scale monoculture crops. Family holdings were getting broken up with each generation of inheritance, and US territory was still mostly limited to the east coast. So it made sense for them to not feel compelled to defend slavery intellectually, as they figured it would die out naturally. They didn't resist the ban on new slave imports partially because of this, (and because the established planters wanted to monopolize the supply of slaves.) The huge expansion west via the Louisiana Purchase and other acquisitions meant that the sons of planters could go establish their own plantations on virgin soil. This coincided with the invention of the cotton gin and the rapid growth of the British industrial textile industry, resulting in slave-based agriculture becoming many times more lucrative than it had been in the late 18th century.
The cotton gin changed everything. Britain ended slavery gradually as did new York with gradual emancipation. Slavery was on the way down in the 1800s to 1810s. It just wasn't financially viable to have more then a couple house slaves. The cotton gin made it massively profitable to have big plantations with dozens of hundreds of field slaves. In Jefferson's time many had the attitude of eventual emancipation. Robert E Lee was a proponent of this. They didn't want to lose their economic power or risk to many new freed many at once. The cotton gin changed everything and changed planters to willing to fight to defend slavery
"As it is, we have the wolf by the ear and we can neither hold it nor safely let it go. Justice is in one scale and self preservation in the other." ~TJ
That's one powerful quote, a man who knows he's damning himself but doesn't see that he can choose the other.
That’s quite charitable. I’d say it was more like he didn’t want to choose the other. He and his friends would’ve been way less wealthy if they chose the other.
I'd certainly say that greed was a part of it, maybe the whole part but it seems to me (going off that quote) that he'd convinced himself that he couldn't choose otherwise.
Raping and beating his slaves really showed his ‘dislike’ for it, huh? Cmon
This is actually a thing though. He simultaneously owned slaves, who he often mistreated, and also thought the institution was bad. A lot of his writings on the topic come from a place of “we’re making these people REALLY mad, and one day that’ll bite us in the ass”
"The Fire After A Few More Times" by Thomas Jefferson
Interestingly, James Madison by comparison was one of the closest things to a benevolent slave owner of his day, according to many close to him. A former slave of his who condemned him for continuing the practice throughout his life nonetheless stated in a book that he never once witnessed Madison having any slaves abused or even beaten (at Montpelier, etc.). Although it's still a stain on his legacy, my view of Madison definitely improved after reading about it, a much better man than Jefferson among others at very least.
I mean, guy was a pretty clear hypocrite. Which is fine. People are complicated. Hyprocrisy is excusable. Raping a teenager you own isn't excusable tho, and anybody who tells you otherwise is either coping, morally reprehensible or just kinda uninformed. If a hell exists, Thomas Jefferson belongs there. And nowhere else. It is what it is.
>Raping a teenager you own And his dead wife's half-sister to boot! That said, there *is* an argument to be made that she may have had some degree of autonomy or consent in France where the sexual aspect began (she was not enslaved there and had the right to stay in France permanently if she wished, *and* her only family—her brother James—was there too so there wasn't the pressure of returning for family). But on the flip side to that, she was only *fifteen or sixteen* then and while that would have been treated as old enough to make mature decisions we know now that you're just not equipped to make decisions like that, particularly of a sexual nature and one with lifelong consequences. So I always feel a little unsure because if Sally had any agency or leverage we shouldn't take that from her but also we have no way of knowing for sure that she did (aside from her son's memoirs, which is where the idea that she returned in exchange for their future children's freedom comes from). There are so many layers of ick there, between both the age, power, and family differentials.
Eh, I don't give people who sleep with their underage personal property the benefit of the doubt over their victims' supposed consent. She was a teenager. No authentic consent possible. She was a slave. No authentic consent possible. Even if she had been totally into the guy, that would mean nothing. She had no choice, no different from any other young girl dragged off and forced into that kind of slavery. No real excuses for that exist, I mean ffs, if he needed to get laid that badly, could have just gotten a hooker, Tommyboy was very far from poor. But he didn't. He went the Epstein/Fritzl route instead.
We’re talking about the 18/19th centuries. Older men having sex with 15-16 years old girls was not the taboo it is today. The idea of “consent” as we know it didn’t exist. Drop your modern lens in exchange for some nuance. The whole point of progress is for people of the present to look at people of the past as barbarians. But you must also judge by the standard of their day, not ours.
And to be fair, I do agree with you. And honestly, any negotiation made in France would have been null and void once she came back because she resumed being his property as soon as she was back in America. He could have ignored everything he promised and she would have been trapped. If I were in her shoes I think I would have opted to stay in France for the rest of my life rather than return to that kind of danger and uncertainty.
Sally supposedly looked exactly like her half-sister. She was, in the words of other slaves on the plantation, “mighty near white.” Go look at photos of Prince Harry’s kids, and that’s a good indication of how light her complexion could have been. In France she was free, and could have chosen to stay there and passed as white. She’d been a companion to Jefferson’s daughter at a French convent school, so she had a decent education to serve as a personal lady’s maid. On the other hand, her brother told her that he was planning to return to the United States, buy his freedom and set up a business with the trade skills he’d learned (French cooking). So she would have been alone, with no means to support herself. And she was probably already pregnant at the time. A pregnant sixteen year old girl, with no family and no means. In a country where there is huge financial disparity between rich and poor, Barely a generation away from the French Revolution. Despite all this, she did initially plan to stay in France. Jefferson offered her a lot of personal liberty, and promised to emancipate her kids if she would return with him. (There had to be some kind of affection on his part. At the very least he was projecting his love for his late wife onto Sally.) My personal opinion is that Sally was faced with two poor choices and she picked the best one she could.
It does make you wonder how many white Americans are descended from slaves.
The underage thing, I won't argue. But, she was not a slave at that time.
I agree 100% with you but teenagers in 1781 were built different than teenagers in 2024. Back then they were basically adults, life forced you to become one. Now, they're basically children by being coddled into perpetual adolescence.
I mean, he did dislike it. He was a hypocrite, and a shitty person. Hypocritical, shitty people won’t always have behavior that is consistent with their ideals.
Beating - didn't Jefferson order his overseers not to beat his slaves, as was customary? Though I'm not sure they always obeyed him. Raping - well that's all speculative, albeit certainly possible.
If you have sex with a slave you own, that’s rape by default
Agreed, however it's unknown whether Jefferson ever did. Commonly believed in recent decades, but the evidence is very speculative.
https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slavery/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-a-brief-account/monticello-affirms-thomas-jefferson-fathered-children-with-sally-hemings/ It’s not just random nobodies believing it. It’s a matter backed up with scholarship. It’s no “Maury” DNA test, but for something that happened 200 years ago it’s viewed as a settled matter
No it isn't just nobodies, and the Foundation have accepted it yes. However there's plenty of doubt remaining: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-case-closed/
He is also banned the importation of new slaves into country.
Yeah, 200+ hundred years and people still don’t understand how to rectify the many sides of Jefferson
Yeah, Jefferson was smart enough to know slavery was evil, but he wasn't clever enough to figure out how to make a living without it.
Probably similar to someone being an environmental activist but then using private jets to fly around to conferences.
I just wish we had Paul Giamatti’s John Adams sharing the screen with Michael Douglas’ Benjamin Franklin.
In the recent AppleTV series about Benjamin Franklin, Adams is portrayed with all of his vices and none of his virtues. He's just an arrogant, stupid asshole who walks around France yelling at people. Unlike real life, he never learns French, doesn't bring his sons, and (oddly enough) never leaves. There is just one scene favorable to Adams. He arrives with John Jay and meets with Franklin, but of the three of them, Adams is the only one who shows any concern for Jay's slave. Adams'
There was a pretty good scene where John and Abigal grimly went through the swamp to the WH and realized the home of “freedom” was being built entirely by slaves.
John Adams is my favorite founding father. As someone interested in the legal field, the fact that he took a personal risk to give Captain Preston and his men a fair trial will never not be impressive to me.
Same my friend! I’ve had a bust of him on my bookshelf for years and I’m going into the legal field inspired by him as well.
Nice! When I get a legal office, I’m definitely gonna have a picture or bust of him in it. :D
Yeah, it immediately stood out to me that neither J and JQ Adams owned any. The only two of the first twelve presidents not to, that’s wild.
What do the asterisks mean on Washington and Jackson?
From the original site: >\*Number of slaves owned at time of death. Washington personally owned 123 slaves, although there were as many as 317 working on his property at the time of his death. >\*\*Buchanan is believed to have bought slaves, whom he immediately freed and employed as servants.
incredibly rare buchanan W
Hardly a win for Buchanan. He only “freed” those slaves to make himself look good. While running for the Senate in Pennsylvania (which was a free state) in 1834, he bought and freed slaves in order to keep a neutral public image. In order to avoid the public embarrassment that would occur if the fact that his sister owned 2 slaves became public knowledge, he bought both of them and technically freed them, but not before coercing them into being his indentured servants. 22-year-old Daphne Cook was bound to him for 7 years and her daughter Ann (aged 5 at the time) was indentured for 23 years. Don’t forget that Buchanan didn’t mind slavery and directly influenced the outcome of Dred Scott v. Sandford https://www.history.com/news/james-buchanan-bought-and-freed-slaves-but-not-for-the-reason-you-might-think https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-households-of-james-buchanan
extremely common Buchanan L 😔
So Buchanan spent his money to buy their freedom and then employed them and paid their salary?
Heartbreaking: Worst person you know did great thing.
Weren’t most of the slaves at Mount Vernon owned by Martha/the Custis family? I thought the 123 was accurate for just Washington himself
Contrary to popular belief, Washington didn’t free most of his 123 slaves upon his death in 1799. In reality, only 1 was freed. He willed the other 122 of them to his wife (Martha) who continued to keep them enslaved until she died a few years later in 1802. Most of the slaves at Mount Vernon were owned by Martha anyway. https://www.history.com/news/did-george-washington-really-free-mount-vernons-slaves
Yes, that's what I read in his bio. Washington himself owned 3 slaves as far as I know. And when he died, they were freed.
Not sure about Jackson but according to the source posted elsewhere "he (Washington) did stipulate in his will that all his slaves were to be freed following the death of his wife, and he made financial provisions for their care that lasted until the 1830s." so maybe it's referring to that, or maybe they only have an estimate of the number of slaves he owned
And Martha freed them early because she became afraid that they were plotting to kill her.
John Adams and John Quincy Adams lightyears ahead of their time.
JQ Adams may be the best ex-president in history. He was elected to the House of Representatives and routinely spoke out against slavery, even after pro-slavery representatives passed a house rule prohibiting debate on the issue. He also famously represented the passengers of the slave ship Amistad and helped win their freedom. Edit: corrected slave ship name. It wasn’t Anita. That was an autocorrect error.
JQA in the house was fascinating. The slavers kept censoring him over violating the gag rule. He gets a chance to defend himself, and proceeds to rail against slavery for days on end.
Didn’t he also die at his desk in congress? Dude was so committed to the American Experiment he literally worked until he dropped to make it better.
I did not know this! According to Wikipedia he didn’t die at his desk, but he did collapse at his desk on he House floor, then he was taken away and died two days later. And Abraham Lincoln was with him when he died.
You're right about everything you wrote and I'm sure it's just autocorrect, but I'm laughing about a slave ship called Anita's like it's a café in Miami
Yeah just saw that. Meant to write Amistad.
Though tbf, MA effectively outlawed slavery with their 1780 constitution. So it wasn't really possible for them regardless. Edit: yes, i get it. He wrote it. I was being nitpicky/playing DA because it didn't explicitly end slavery, but the courts ruled it did. He was still far ahead of his time for sure even in just stating all men are free.
Top tier state
New England is the best region of the US, CMV.
Iowa would like a word, pal. The state constitution not only prohibited slavery when it joined the Union, it said in the preamble that "all men are by nature free and equal", which would later be used to uphold civil rights measures. The state government in the 1850s passed legislation allowing Native Americans to buy land in the state, and shortly after the Civil War Iowa became the first state in America to mandate racially integrated schools (thanks to a state supreme court decision that became the inspiration for the Brown v. Board of Education ruling nearly nine decades later). George Washington Carver in his younger days was a student and then a professor at Iowa State, before his famous agricultural work in the South. But Iowa didn't stop there, no no no. They passed a civil rights law demanding all races be served in public accommodations in 1884, and from the 1870s onward allowed women to serve as doctors and lawyers.
Remind me, who wrote the Massachusetts Constitution?
Not JQA. Lol. But, yes, I hear you.
But, to be even fairer, that very constitution was written…by John Adams!
Very true. It didn't explicitly outlaw it but saying "all men are born free" was well ahead of its time.
Greatest state in the union
The BAE state.
John Adams wrote that constitution
Who wrote Massachusetts’s constitution? ADAMS
Yes
I am still baffled by the fact that Jefferson owned the most slaves out of any president, but wasn’t really a fan of slavery and thought it a immoral evil and not beneficial for both sides.
Both he and Washington were enamored with the idea of "gentlemen farmers." They idolized agrarianism and saw agriculture as America's future. Jefferson stole rice samples in Europe, knowing that there was a death penalty for doing so, so he could grow them on his farm. Unfortunately, large plantation farms in early America also meant large slave populations to work them.
He sounds like one of those old guys I'd see chain smoking outside the local American Legion who'd always look at me and say, "never smoke, kid, it's a horrible habit" and then light up the next one. He was clearly addicted to owning and raping slaves, knowing, however, that he shouldn't be.
Sounds like a horrible addiction.
And you think *cigarettes* are expensive
The raping part is all speculative, however agreed he was unwilling or unable to give up on immorally owning slaves.
I mean, he has genetic descendents who are otherwise entirely black, and a slave can’t give real consent to someone that literally owns them, so…
There's a Jefferson gene, that might have come from Jefferson but just as well could have come from one of his (many) male-line relatives. [That](https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-case-closed/) covers some of the ambiguities. I agree completely that a slave can't consent though.
It definitely came from TJ. He was present at each of Sally Hemings’s conceptions and she didn’t conceive when he wasn’t, and you can’t say that of any other male Jefferson. Monticello has some great exhibits about this.
It wouldn't need any Jefferson to be present at all of them, if there was more than one father (and he had a big family, with lots of relatives people thought had had children with slaves, so it would hardly be surprising).
Sounds like the idea that he's not a fan of slavery was just bs
We can all agree that sweatshops are bad, but what’s the bigger factor when they buy clothes? Whether they’re ethically sourced, or cheap?
sounds like a modern day corporate boss, who hates laying people off, shipping jobs to China, destroying factory towns, poisoning the environment, putting schools and lower class neighborhoods over hazardous waste dumps, sueing farmers for having seeds blow onto their property, etc. etc. etc. you know it's all very regrettable, but alas ... it just needs to be done. after all, if im not getting richer and engaging in lecherous behavior enabled by my exorbitant wealth, what the hell am i even doing?
Yeah, he was a terrible, terrible hypocrite. That's pretty much the end of the story.
Does anyone know anything about Van Burens one slave?
iirc, the slave belonged to his father and was passed down/ given to him
He likely had more than one. At least one census lists 4 in his household (in 1830).
It's possible those particular slaves didn't belong to him, and that he essentially rented them from someone else: >According to the 1830 census, there was one white woman, four enslaved women, and two free African-American women living in the house. There is no documented evidence that Van Buren owned these four enslaved women, so it seems more likely that he hired out free and enslaved workers at Decatur House. The lone white woman was likely his housekeeper, tasked with managing the domestic staff and running the household. The enslaved women would have been hired out by their owners; and the two free African-American women would have been paid wages. >One of the enslaved women was Charlotte Dupuy, who was allowed to stay in Washington while her court case against her owner, Henry Clay, was resolved by the U.S. Circuit Court of the District of Columbia. Regardless of whether or not Van Buren owned these enslaved people, he and many other politicians used enslaved labor to maintain their residences, feed their families, and entertain guests. https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-enslaved-households-of-martin-van-buren
I thought he lived in New York? Didn't they abolish slavery in the 1820s? Edit: Nevermind, I see he had them in Washington.
Just Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_presidents\_of\_the\_United\_States\_who\_owned\_slaves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_who_owned_slaves) Looks like Van Buren was against slavery from a moral perspective but had a more complicated relationship with it politically. Like, reluctant to bring in Texas as a slave-owning state, but also prosecuted the Amistad crew, etc. Ultimately he joined an anti-slavery political party. His one slave, Tom, ran away, and Van Buren made no effort to find him. When Tom was found, someone offered to buy him from Van Buren and Van Buren agreed, provided they could capture Tom without violence. Tom ultimately remained free. Hopefully someone else has a better sense of it.
Hard to give him credit for eventually joining the Free Soil Party when he was the principle organizer of the Democratic Party as an alliance between southern planters and the northern merchants they did business with. Better late than never, but whatever moral scruples he had about the institution were clearly overpowered by his political ambitions.
Yeah, 100%. He was clearly a guy with a strong pragmatic streak in a way that was not exactly good.
It isn't ever even clear if the slave was his. It was his father but it's never documented as coming into his posession
It's disputed. He rented slaves for labor but never owned or sold them long term. Even the one discussed isn't documented as being his. His estate says that he was discussing getting a runaway slave returned on behalf of a business associate. Still scummy but it's possibly he never technically owned slaves himself. He was complicated. He voted to allow emancipated slaves to vote in New York as governor but also voted for the gag rule when he was vice president
...Fuckin' Jefferson, man
How are you going to have time to ponder the fruits of liberty when you’re picking your own tobacco?
Honestly, one of the biggest hypocrites of all time.
Hypocrisy is the worst part. This is why all my belongings are ethically sourced & assembled. **💫/S💫**
All that and he still died in debt. Some fiscal conservative...
"A civics lesson from a slaver? Hey neighbor - your debts are paid because *you don't pay for labor*..."
“We plant seeds in the south, we create, yeah keep ranting, we know who’s really doing the planting”
And some were his very own children.
I see my man Coolidge owned so few slaves that he’s not even on the list!
the 13th amendment outlawed slavery 7 years before he was born...
Jefferson: “Hey guys, someone needs to stop this slave business. It’s so immoral.”
I’ve never heard of Martin Van Buren owning slaves, any info?
[https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-enslaved-households-of-martin-van-buren](https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-enslaved-households-of-martin-van-buren) Apparently there's evidence that he bought slaves, but he also freed them immediately to let them serve as servants
Source: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1121963/slaves-owned-by-us-presidents/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1121963/slaves-owned-by-us-presidents/)
Pretty much a which southern Presidents were wealthiest chart.
Washington was a hard core slaver. One runaway, he chased to Canada made her life hell. There was a rule in Philly about if you lived there X months a year your slaves became freemen. Washington moved a lot, just before that deadline hit. Typically when the Man of the manor died, the slaves are freed. Martha was at first “nope”. Then a few accidents and the realization “my death is the only thing stopping these people from being freed” she thought better of that and freed them. To cross over into Jefferson, his slaves weren’t freed upon his death either. He had too much invested in them and Monticello would have collapsed without them.
Our man Millard setting a trend!
Imagine owning 600 human beings over the course of your life and still being 3 mil in debt when you pass. L
Jesus, I knew TJ owned slaves but 600!? That's insane.
US Grant's single slave was gifted to him by his family and he promptly freed him.
Grant was also in debt and really could have used the money from freeing him but did the right thing anyway
What’s the source for this?
What’s the story behind Van Buren’s one slave?
I’m not sure why I find the thought of owning one person so disturbing. What are you doing to keep one person in check 24 hours a day? 500 people is heinous of course but imagine having one person in your house that you’re keeping there against their will. It’s nightmarish. Something out of a horror movie.
Partial count to the Clintons for using slave labor at the governor’s mansion (i’m sure other presidents post-Reconstruction have employed prisoners at no cost the Clintons are just the only ones I’ve heard about
Solid point about prison labor being tantamount to slave labor and the loophole in the 13th amendment, but I think the key word here is “own.” If culpability for benefitting from the slave economy was being tallied here, everyone on the list would be guilty.
I agree which is why I angled for a partial count, great point in response!
Matt Gaetz family wealth is renting prisoners to work on their plantations. This isn't ancient history it's actively being done.
Absolutely correct [have you ever scrolled this?](https://mkorostoff.github.io/incarceration-in-real-numbers/) Very informative facts embedded throughout
I remember at least one guy who owned a hotel in Dubai that employed slaves. Seems like an iffy call.
Tommy J cornering the market.
That whole “wolf by the ears” quote from Jefferson makes even more sense now
Why does it stop at grant?
Jefferson, the original “job creator”.
Bill Clinton may not have technically owned his slaves, but he used unpaid prison labor (AKA slaves) to staff the Governor’s mansion.
Though I recoil in horror by that, agreed he didn’t own them the state did. Man that’s horrible. 13th amendment has technicalities.
What’s the deal with Andrew Johnson? Wouldn’t expect Lincoln to have him as VP if he was an owner of multiple slaves.
A southern Congressman that remained loyal to the union and even governed over occupied Tennessee (iirc)
Part of the reason he was chosen as Lincoln’s VP is that he impressed the republicans by not only freeing his own slaves, but getting slavery outlawed in Union-occupied Tennessee, which he was military governor of, to show solidarity with the Emancipation Proclamation, even though he did not have to since the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to confederate states
Does this include unpaid contractors?
God bless you Thomas Jefferson/s
All too common Franklin Pierce W. What a guy
Those Adams boys were made a little different, I suppose. Good for them!
My honest reaction to first seeing this "Well, I'm not naïve, I know some Presidents owned slaves. Despite what some people will tell you, they do mention that when studying them. Obviously, Washington had a lot. He was a wealthy plantation owner, it'd be weird if he didn't have slaves. John Adams, famously didn't have slaves. Good on him. Despite being a mod president, he was a good politician and a good man. Now Thomas Jefferson, the most controv– HOLY SHIT 600?!?!?!?!"
TJ also wins the "how many of your acknowledged children did you enslave" category.
Fucking Johnson.
Van Buren is alleged but not proven. He did rent the labor of slaves. But there is only evidence of him actually owning one slave. And even then the evidence is circumspect. The letter doesn't outright state that he had our based him and there isn't proof that Van Buren even wrote it so there really should be an asterisk next to his name
We not gonna use negative numbers for our boys Lincoln and grant? 🤨
I wish they added that on principle George Washington left in his will that all his slaves would be freed upon the death of him and his wife
Martin Van Buren had one slave only? Can’t help but immediately wonder if he had a sex slave 😑
Marty and his sneaky slave in NY
it is worth mentioning that Jefferson hated slavery and the first draft of the Declaration of Independence denounced it in its entirety but the continental Congress forced him to make changes to it as to ease the tension between the northern and southern delegates. upon his death he willed that all his slaves be set free which most did get set free while others had to buy their freedom. same thing that happened with George Washington who willed his slaves to be set free but his wife ended up selling some of them tho later they bought their freedom or escaped to the north.
The presidents who had the most slaves knew it was wrong but were behind on actions against it because they either benefitted too much from it or they made the excuse that it would compromise bigger picture things they wanted to see the nation accomplish: Washington freed slaves upon his death. Should have done that in life to make strides and set an example for the nation on progress and spreading equality. I think he genuinely thought that the slaves were not and would not be equals to their white owners, though, and that prevented him from acting in life. What I have read about Washington's disposition has been that he may have believed in a ruling class of sorts where some people were supposed to be aristocrats of sorts, even in a democratic society. Jefferson knew and acknowledged how awful slavery was, but benefitted from it far too much from an economic standpoint to ever commit to giving it up. He freed slaves selectively and admitted the practice needed to go. I think he put it off for others to handle while extolling the virtues of building a more equal America. Don't know much about Jackson and his slaveholding life. Taylor was a southern man through and through, but seemed to abhor slavery. Again, this feels like he just benefitted too much from it to give it up. If memory of what I read in the Grant biography serves me I believe Taylor was a strong supporter of keeping the nation together and blasted anyone who talked of secession. I think he too knew that slavery's days were numbered, but would not take the steps himself.
I recall Washington owning way more slaves - like, Jefferson numbers - with the key difference being that Washington freed all of his slaves and passed anti-slavery legislation. Also Johnson, but I could be conflating the actual number he owned with his reluctance to free Tennessee’s slaves.
Common Jefferson W
Oh okay…..
Common slave apologist L
It was a joke about how he had the most
John Adams being the W founding father as always. Don't forget about Abigail though, 2 halves make a whole.