"George Washington disliked slavery. “I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species,” he wrote. Thomas Jefferson liked it even less. “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever,” Jefferson wrote in reference to the evil America was storing up for itself by practicing slavery."
Everyone as of late who has been calling Washington and Jefferson evil slave-masters without consciences should read that.
And yet they did NOTHING in their lifetime to free the people they held in slavery. Jefferson basically had to be bribed by Sally Hemings to free her children when she likely promised to return to the USA from France with him.
I would not go so far as to call them evil , but to claim to abhor slavery but then keep them is rather lazy way out
Washington and Jefferson, like most other slave-owners, were trapped by an economic system. Most slaves, like homes today, were mortgaged. Free your slaves, you still owe the debt, and your farm goes to seed.
"George Washington disliked slavery. “I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species,” he wrote. Thomas Jefferson liked it even less. “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever,” Jefferson wrote in reference to the evil America was storing up for itself by practicing slavery."
Everyone as of late who has been calling Washington and Jefferson evil slave-masters without consciences should read that.
And yet they did NOTHING in their lifetime to free the people they held in slavery. Jefferson basically had to be bribed by Sally Hemings to free her children when she likely promised to return to the USA from France with him.
I would not go so far as to call them evil , but to claim to abhor slavery but then keep them is rather lazy way out
Washington and Jefferson, like most other slave-owners, were trapped by an economic system. Most slaves, like homes today, were mortgaged. Free your slaves, you still owe the debt, and your farm goes to seed.