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| Part of the extensive vegetable gardens at Jefferson's Virginia estate. |
Thomas Jefferson: "I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables which constitute my principal diet."About those servants:
Ellen W. Coolidge, granddaughter: "He lived principally on vegetables. ... The little meat he took seemed mostly as a seasoning for his vegetables."
Edmund Bacon, Monticello overseer from 1806-1822: "He never eat much hog meat. He often told me, as I was giving out meat for the servants, that what I gave one of them for a week would be more than he would use in six months."
"Over the course of his life, Jefferson owned 600 people. His way of life always depended on the labor of people he held in slavery."A country founded on the principles of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" kept enslaved 20% of its population, not accounting for women, while inscribing these principles in a Declaration of Independence. Jefferson, while claiming "all men are created equal" and calling slavery an "abominable crime," spent much of his adult life finding ways to maximize the productivity of his slaves.2
2PBS: Scientific American Fronteirs: Thomas Jefferson, Slavemaster
6 comments:
"Not accounting for women"--how typical, even today.
Can you believe ... women could not vote nationally for almost 100 years after Jefferson died? All those Presidents, all voted for by men.
Yup, not till 1920. And it was a boy from Tennessee who cast the deciding vote, persuaded to do so by his mother! Good woman!
A boy from Tennessee?
Well, practically a boy--a very young state legislator. Here's the story--they needed 36 states to ratify the suffrage amendment, and TN would have been 36th:
"When thirty-five of the necessary thirty-six states had ratified the amendment, the battle came to Nashville, Tennessee. Anti-suffrage and pro-suffrage forces from around the nation descended on the town. And on August 18, 1920, the final vote was scheduled.
One young legislator, 24 year old Harry Burn, had voted with the anti-suffrage forces to that time. But his mother had urged that he vote for the amendment and for suffrage. When he saw that the vote was very close, and with his anti-suffrage vote would be tied 48 to 48, he decided to vote as his mother had urged him: for the right of women to vote. And so on August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th and deciding state to ratify."
Dear God, what a story. It was so close!
Looking back, it seems odd that men would act, overtly, to prevent women from having a say.
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