Jefferson’s bubble

Sun 10.6.19

      The housewife’s half hour is when after cleaning house for a couple of hours, carpets vacuumed, furniture dusted, bathroom polished up, and the kitchen, oh the kitchen is in order, you can kick back for a half hour, with a glass of wine, a beer, or whatever.  CHILL CITY! It only lasts for a half hour because already your making a mess with your crackers and cheese or the cat throws up on the rug, your man comes in with his dirty boots.

      Peace reigns in my tidy kingdom, so sitting back.  Lots of talk these days about impeachment.  I’ve been reading a book on Thomas Jefferson, entitled The Art of Power, by Jon Meacham.  The impeachment subject doesn’t come up, though Tom did believe and champion the idea that something works up to a point and inevitably, when it’s no longer working you scrap it and start over.  Concerning the present impeachment, I say same old, same old.  I seriously doubt there is one ethical person in DC.  Tom Jefferson was a rich man, a very, very rich man, and so was Washington, Franklin, Hamilton and others who instigated the fight for independence against Britain.  As a young man leaving home for the first time, Tom goes out to build Monticello, a mansion, (https://www.monticello.org/house-gardens/the-house/)

so we are talking privilege here.    He had a number of farms and houses.   Slaves kept it all running smoothly, over 600 of them throughout his life. As ambassador to France, he brought a big chunk of Europe back with him in oil paintings of all the great European men he admired, also busts, oils depicting famous Christian events, rugs, furnishings, trees, plants, books, gifts for friends. 

      In many ways, Jefferson was a great man.  He had the courage and foresight to inaugurate the American experiment in democracy. He fought throughout his life against Hamilton and the Federalists who wanted a return to monarchy.  Born of wealth, Jefferson lived in a protective bubble that allowed for magnanimity and graciousness.  Hamilton, a poor and bastard child from the West Indies had no such liberality.  

In his bubble, Tom a brilliant man, with no field of study he wasn’t informed about, was cordial and amiable in relationship with colleagues, which goes a long way to accounting for his rise to power.  He had that rich man’s coldness and detachment toward what he would undoubtedly have thought his inferiors.  He pursued the wife of a close friend who was not at all interested in him, even walking into her bedroom one night when he learned her husband had stepped out! 

Sally Hemings, the black slave he had sexual relations with was actually his wife’s half sister.  Both were sired by the same father.  Sally, a biracial woman, became Jefferson’s property, inherited when the father died.  Mrs. Jefferson bequeathed the little bell she used for calling servants to her when she passed.  Make what you will of it; looks like a pointed message to me.  Sally had 6 children with her master.  Their offspring were slaves who worked on the plantation like the other slaves.  Be it noted that these children were white, and when freed passed as white in that world and had white children. Jefferson never treated them other than slaves, nor acknowledged them as family.  Sally’s home at Monticello was rough slave quarters, https://www.monticello.org/visit/tickets-tours/hemings-family-tour/

Jefferson knew, and often spoke of the immorality of slavery, yet never took steps to correct the situation.  He believed that if freed the blacks should be returned to Africa because he didn’t think the two races could, as he put it, “amalgamate”.  That is also why the Indians were moved on reservations far from whites.

The favorite essay this month has been, UBI v AI