Episode 16 - Disciplinarians

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant
Episode 16: "Disciplinarians"
Published on February 2, 2021

Note: This transcript was generated by Otter.ai with light human correction

Kathryn Gehred 

Hello, and welcome to Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant. This is the Women's History podcast where we feature eighteenth and early ninetenth century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they should. I'm your host, Katherine Gehred. So, I had a scheduled episode for two weeks ago, that I wasn't able to put up because of technical difficulties, I will eventually put it up, don't worry, but as I had just decided, sort of thrown in the towel that I wasn't gonna be able to get this episode ready. I saw that the 1776 report had been released, and was causing a bit of a hubbub, and even in just the short time since that happened, the 1776 Commission report has been rescinded and disavowed by the new administration. So, it's been just a really exciting couple of weeks in the history of the United States, but there was a section to the 1776 report on slavery, and it's an area of history that's really important to me. So, I thought that while this was all still up and fresh, and there was this debate sort of going around about whether talking about slavery, divides the country or brings the country together, or whether we should actually whether slavery was even that bad. I would do a letter that was relevant to the issue of slavery, and particularly to the issue of white women and slavery.

There's been recent scholarship published about this. In particular, there's a book called They Were Her Property by Stephanie Jones Rogers, which sort of reimagines the way we talk about white women and slaveholding in the past, because there's sort of this idea that like white women are, in some ways more innocent when it comes to the institution of slavery, because they themselves were also so legally disenfranchised, and depressed in a lot of ways, but when you look at it, you also see the ways that white women benefited from the institution of slavery, benefited from white supremacy and continue to benefit from white supremacy. So, this is a letter that really gets into that. I discovered it while I was working on my master's thesis. When I was in graduate school, I decided I wanted to write about Thomas Jefferson's daughter and slavery at Monticello. So, a lot of episodes of this particular podcast, have been written by white women, white women of a certain class, white women with certain connections, and because the women themselves don't talk about slavery all that much in those letters, it doesn't always come up. And, because there's so much in these letters, that is like fun and relatable, it's really easy to forget that sometimes these horrible things are happening in the background. So, this is a letter that discusses some of that horribleness. And, it was a letter that when I found it, as I was researching my thesis, it changed the entire direction of my thesis. And it's too much to expect that everybody listening to this letter is going to get the same things out of it that I did, but I do think it's an important letter to get out there. And so I'm going to read it. So, I'm just going to go ahead and dig into the context of this particular letter.

This is another one where I'm definitely going to include a heads up. This letter talks about violence against enslaved people, and quite a bit of talking about slavery. It also talks about animal death, not in a way that's related to the other violence, but if that's something that people find upsetting, that's at the very end of the letter, but Okay, so this letter was written in 1833. It's by one of Thomas Jefferson's granddaughters, Cornelia Jefferson Randolph, to her sister, Virginia Jefferson Randolph Trist. I have done a letter by Cornelia before, that was episode 3 letter with Mary, where we talked about the dancing sort of Pride and Prejudice one, that's the episode where I described Cornelia as being sort of like "Mary" from Pride and Prejudice. But, so, this is a few years after that she's no longer the sort of young teenager out on the town of balls, she's about 34 years old, she's still unmarried, she never marries. And at this point, she's living with her mother, and quite a few of her siblings and other extended family members in a house in Washington, DC. They've had to leave Monticello. Jefferson died in 1826, and he died super in debt over $100,000 in debt, the family that had to sell the house almost immediately afterwards, nd for a while, they're sort of at the mercy of staying with family, friends, they are trying to figure out a way to make any type of money to sort of dig themselves out of this debt. So, in 1829, Martha Jefferson Randolph and much of her family are all able to they've gotten they've managed to scrounge enough money together to move to DC. I'm not 100% sure on this, they might be living with Martha's son in law, Nicholas Trist, he was married to Virginia who's the the woman receiving this letter? At this point, Nicholas had just finally landed a job with a lot of help from Martha and some of these other women, sort of visiting other women in DC society and just asking, 'Do you have any work in a well paying government position? I'm Thomas Jefferson's daughter, can you cut me a break?' But, Nicholas Trist, and his brother Hore Browse Trist, both end up as clerks for the Department of State for a little while. So they're living in DC, and I think Martha might be living in their house, technically, but I'm not 100% sure. The fact of the matter is, her and her family have gone from this massive plantation 5000 acre estate into a smaller sort of city house living situation, and it's a huge adjustment for everyone. So, Cornelia is writing to her sister, Virginia. She addresses letter to Edwardsville. So it seems like Virginia is staying with family members there. So, there's going to be some names that come up, as I read this letter that are important to know. I'm not going to name everybody but key figures to know before I even start the letter, there's going to be an enslaved woman named "Sally." This is not Sally Hemings. This causes a lot of confusion. Sally Hemings at this point, while she was never legally freed, had been given her time by Martha Jefferson Randolph, Sally Hemings at this point is living in what is now downtown Charlottesville, with her and Thomas Jefferson sons, Madison and Eston. So, the woman named Sally mentioned in this letter is actually a enslaved woman who is new to the family, and might be somebody that they either bought or hired, when they moved to DC.

Okay, so the woman who was mentioned whose name is Melinda, however, we know a little bit more about. This is a black woman formerly enslaved by the Jefferson family. Her name was Melinda Kolbert Freeman. So, she actually used to belong to Thomas Jefferson, but she'd been given as a wedding present to Jefferson's daughter, Mary. When Mary died during Jefferson's presidency, this left Melinda in sort of a precarious situation seemed like there was likelihood that she might have been about to be sold, and she had just gotten engaged to one of the enslaved men who worked at not called the White House then, but the president's house under Jefferson as president. His name was John Freeman. So after Jefferson's daughter Mary died, John Freeman actually wrote a letter to Jefferson asking if he would buy both Melinda and himself. Freeman had belonged to a man in Maryland, who had actually been leasing his labor to Jefferson, and Melinda, who had been given as a gift was technically no longer Jefferson's property, even though there's still those ties to the family. So, John Freeman, sort of, as a gambit to try to see if his family can stay together, asks Jefferson, 'hey, if you buy me, and you buy, Melinda, then we can be married and we can stay together.'

Kathryn Gehred 

Jefferson agrees to buy John, but he doesn't want to buy Melinda, because he says he doesn't need any more servants in DC. So, he buys John Freeman, so he can continue to work in DC, but he agrees as he buys him, that no matter what John is going to be freed in the year 1815. He also doesn't technically buy Melinda, but he talks to his son in law, and he says lease Melinda out to work in Charlottesville, which isn't too far away from DC. John Freeman and Melinda can still see each other, and that way, his son in law would continue to make money off of her labor, and she could stay close by, and so she ends up being manumitted freed in 1809. It sounds to me as though maybe the work that she was doing, leased out, sort of paid for her own freedom after a few years. So, she's free 1909, and she moves to DC lives with her husband. And, after Jefferson leaves the presidency in 1809, John Freeman stays as a worker in the White House is sort of passed on to Madison, and then he's eventually freed in 1815. So, they're too they become too free black people part of DC is thriving, free black community at this time, and John Freeman continues to work in and around the Capitol. He ends up they actually he buys a house on K Street, and by the time this letter is written in 1833, he's working as a waiter for the Secretary of the Treasury. So they're a free black family living in DC that's mentioned in this letter, but they have ties to the Jeffersons because Melinda used to belong to them and her husband worked for Jefferson while he was President. I wanted to give that background about Melinda and John because sometimes we forget about the free black community that's living in DC. I also think it's interesting to show the ways that somebody like Jefferson, or even Martha Jefferson Randolph could be like, 'See we're good slaveholders. John Freeman asked to be purchased by us because we're such good slave holders.' But the thing is, he's not asking to be bought, he's asking permission to marry the woman that he loves, and if there was any kind of justice in this society, he shouldn't have had to beg and plead his boss permission to get married in this insane way. I think, with any sort of reasonable lens, this is a story that shows the horrors of slavery as it's demonstrating the way that people who were enslaved could maneuver their way around it. Alright, so back to the letter. All this is to say that when I mentioned Melinda, this is a free black woman who used to belong to the Jefferson family. She knows everybody in this family, and at the time this letter is written, she's about 56 years old.

The last person I'm going to introduce before I start the letter is Willie, they mentioned. This is a little boy William S. Bankhead, who is Martha Jefferson Randolph's grandson, so he's Thomas Jefferson, his great grandson. He was seven years old at the time of this letter, and he's one of the few surviving children of Martha Jefferson Randolph's oldest daughter, Anne Cary Randolph Bankhead. I have not yet done any letters from Anne Cary Randolph Bankhead, she had a very tragic life, and most of her letters are just sort of profoundly sad. Anne had died in February of 1826, so actually, before her grandfather did, after a miserable and abusive marriage to Charles Bankhead, she had ended up marrying a man who was an alcoholic and clearly physically violent. She had many, many miscarriages, very few children who survived to adulthood, and she sort of retreated into a very sort of heavy religious life. After she died, Charles Bankhead had basically had the children be taken care of by whoever wanted to, so Martha Jefferson Randolph had been raising Willie for a while now. So Willie's father, Charles, had just died two months before this letter was written. So, despite Charles being an abusive husband, Martha wrote that he was a kind father, and after his death, she writes, "Willie has shown a degree of feeling on the occasion that has a good deal affected me." So this is a seven year old boy, who is now an orphan, both of his parents have died, and he's very much grieving at the time of this letter. All right. So, that's the context I've got for you for this one. I'm gonna go ahead and read the letter all the way through, it's a little bit long. And at the end, I'll go through and talk about what I think is significant about each of the sections.

So here is the letter:

"Cornelia Jefferson Randolph to Virginia Jefferson Randolph Trist. Washington, August 11 1833. 

I must try & make out to write a short letter to my dear Virginia although I am tired & indisposed to write. Lewis has had a fever & headach for the last two days; Mama has not yet thought it necessary to send for the doctor; she would have done so this morning if he had not been better. I will do so still if his fever rises in the course of the day; but he thinks himself much better this morning; probably in consequence of the operation of his medecine. Tim made such a fuss about her pain in her side that at last mama consulted the Doctor about her; he did not seem to think there was much the matter with her but said there was probably a slight derangement of the liver which was very common at this season & ordered her to take blue pills for a short time; it is surprising how we all get over our fear of mercury even mama did not say a world against the blue pills & I really believe it is necessary to take calomel occasionally in this climate. I think it quite probable Tim’s liver may be in some degree to blame for her being so sick at particular times. I do not think she looks badly now. Mama continues quite well.

You will laugh to hear what disciplinarians we have turned out to be. Not a week after Sally was put in the hands of the constable who gave her by far too moderate a correction, she stole a pr of stockings & gave them to Melinda’s Ann. Melinda brought them back, Sally was called up & asked when she took them, she told the day without any hesitation, mama asked where a pr of satin shoes were which Septimia missed, she said they were up stairs & went & brought them from where she had hid them. I thought we held a council about what was to be done, Mama, Melinda & myself. I thought we had better send for the constable again without any delay but Melinda said no it would give us a bad reputation, that she would whip her if we chose, whereupon we decided, took her down into the basement, Melinda & myself held her & mama inflicted the flagelation pretty severely but Melinda said it was not enough; however, I think it will have more effect than the constable’s whipping. You are quite mistaken in that girl she has nothing malignant or revengeful about her; so we all think, the servants too, she is passionate like a spoilt child but nothing more; she is kind to the animals & fond of Ellen’s child & never has given a single proof of revenge. to satisfy your fears mama has put away the key of the medecine chest not that she thinks there is any danger of what you feared. The next day Willie throthrew a stone & broke one of the windows of the large dining room & told a story about it as might be expected; Mama told him then she would whip him if he ever did it threw stones again (he had been chased home a few days ago by a boy who said Willie had stoned him) & I told him I would whip him if he ever told me another story for he had been just caught in a desperate lie a short time before. Not [. . .] fifteen minutes after these threats Tim happened to be looking out of the window & saw him throw a great stone at Sally, mama just walked down & gave him a nice trimming and since that we have not heard of his throwing stones; I am not so sure that he has not lied to me since but I would not rush the matter as when I do I shall have to take the rod in hand myself. Willie some weeks ago was out all day on Sunday, did not come home to dinner, when he did come we taxed him with having gone to the river with [the y]oung Waglers, he was quite indignant at our [su]pposing such a thing, & said he had been playing all [day] with John Hanson in the president’s square where we some[times] let him go to play. I sent to ask the Waglers & they said Wi[llie] had been with them at the river all day; Willie said he did not care what the Waglers said he had not been with them, but the whole day in the president’s square with John Hanson; he persisted so boldly that I was staggered, I did not know what to think; I told him if he would tell me the truth I would let him off but that if he continued telling me a story I certainly would whip him, he said he had told the truth. I locked him up & went to him several times with no better success; I then went to Mrs Hanson’s & learnt there that John had not been out once that day; Willie did not care, he said, John had been with him in the presidents square at last mama prevailed on him to acknowledge that he had been fishing with the Waglers [. . .] all day; I had him put to bed directly & his pockets were full of shells which I threw away & I have never let him go out in the street since except when he goes with me, I find no difficulty in keeping him in, the servants watch him with hawks eyes & when I leave him in Fanny’s care she never lets him go out of her sight.

I am sorry to have to tell pat that her male canary is dead, I am sure she cannot be as much distressed about it as I was, after feeding & attending to the little creature so long I was quite attached to him; I went to see Miss Clarks the when he was taken sick (he was moulting) on purpose to consult them about him, & lost no time on coming home to follow their directions, Miss but he died that night. I buried him under the little elm tree.

Miss Clark said she was afraid he would die when I told her he did not sit upon the roost; she said they were very often sick & frequently died while moulting. The female called him for two days incessantly after his death & sung so sweetly that I determined it was a vile slander to say the female canary did not sing; she seems to be comforted now and has stopped her song.

Alexandrine Macomb has been exceedingly ill with the bilious fever but is better. Frank is better also; Matilda, her family say she is & some persons say she is not & very hard things are said of the Gen. for not sending her from home. Mrs Lagnel is perfectly well & looks very pretty. Mrs Williams had an enormous boy the night before last. Miss Stillings is getting worse.

The Kanes have returned home benefited by their jaunt and as yet in no danger of bilious fever Adieu & give much love to every body from me. ever yours.

All right, so that's the end of the letter. Obviously, there's quite a bit to dig into. So, I'm just going to go through chronologically. The first paragraph talks about Tim being sick, and her brother Louis being sick, and they mentioned the blue pills. blue pills were what they called Mercury pills back then, from what I can tell from looking at old medical books, they were prescribed for a lot of sort of common aches and pains. Mercury was recommended for it. But it was so common for mercury to be used as a medicine that I'm almost surprised at how skeptical the family seems of it. She says it's surprising how we all get over our fear of mercury, even mama. Now I know that when Jefferson died, they had been treating him with mercury. So, maybe that made them a little bit suspicious of it, and as well, they should have been suspicious of it. But I just thought that was a little bit interesting that apparently the Jefferson family was not so sure that you should be taking these blue Mercury pills. But if they were feeling bad, or they had an issue of the liver, they would go ahead and take them. So that brings us to the next paragraph, you will laugh to hear what disciplinarians we have turned out to be. I think that this is a really interesting way to start this section. So, some historians have taken the way she opens this, as you will love to hear what disciplinarians we have turned out to be, and the way she describes this whole anecdote, as sort of evidence that this sort of thing didn't happen very often, right? She's writing about this as sort of an anomaly, but I also think you could read that as the uncomfortable laughter of this is something that made her uncomfortable and was serious, and she's trying to make it something light and not important. By saying, you will laugh to hear, what disciplinarians we have turned out to be what a silly image. Little old me and our little old mother holding a woman down and beating her. So, she could either be saying, 'Oh, what a rare thing that doesn't happen very often.' She could be saying, this is uncomfortable, but I'm going to try to make it as comfortable as possible. Haha, it's a silly joke. Or she might have honestly thought it was a funny image. Which, when you look at the situation from the enslaved perspective, woman Holding down and beating someone is not particularly funny. So, this tells a lot about the time. So, she mentioned that they've already taken Sally to the constable to be whipped. So, they themselves didn't want to deal with the situation. Back at Monticello, they would have had the overseer take care of it, but in DC, they don't really know how to deal with this situation. And so they actually take her to the constable and have her whipped in a public way, and it must be publicly because Melinda says that they can't do it again, because it'll give them a bad reputation. Now, is that a bad reputation because they're having someone whipped multiple times? Does that show them as being sort of brutal slaveholders that something that would give them a bad reputation? Or, would it give them a bad reputation because they can't keep their enslaved people in line. Or, or, there's also the possibility that Melinda just doesn't want them to take the constable because that's going to be a very brutal beating, and the beating of an older woman is now going to be quite so hard. And, when Melinda says she will do the beating herself. I think that's also very interesting. So this is a free black woman who is offering to beat the enslaved servant of the family who used to own her. So, she's saying that because she's not going to whip her all that hard. Is she trying to cut Sally a break? Or, is she trying to teach Sally a lesson? Because Melinda is one of those people who followed all the rules, became sort of friends with the white family, and was able, through maneuvering and a long period of time, to get her own freedom. So when she sees somebody like Sally, stealing stuff, being rather open about it, I love the image of them saying, 'Where are these stockings?' And she just admits that she took them? I think, Sally seems pretty cool actually. Like, 'Oh, where are these shoes?' And she's like, 'Yeah, I stole them,' and comes and brings them down. Maybe when Melinda sees Sally doing something like this, she thinks this is not the way. This is not how you eventually get your freedom. This isn't how you work the system. And I'm going to teach you in the way that I know how to teach people because this is the violence society that I've been raised in.

There's a lot of different ways to take it. And I can see getting sort of caught up in oh my gosh, how could this black person commit this violence on other people? But I don't think that's the most interesting question here. It also takes a lot of the pressure off of the white people who are beating black people with some frequency in order to maintain the system of white supremacy, the way that Melinda sort of wrinkles around and maneuver herself within it doesn't strike me as worthy of comment as the people who are benefiting the most from it. Or I also don't want to give up on the possibility that Cornelia, who's the person writing this letter is sort of exaggerating Melinda's role in the whole thing to kind of take some of the blame off of herself like see, this former slave held her down with me. It's not us being bad and bad slave holders and violent people, Melinda wanted us to Melinda said, we should have done it worse. So, that wouldn't surprise me either, that this is Cornelia twisting this in a way that makes her come out a little bit better. Part of the reason this letter struck me as significant was the context that I read it. So, I had been, after graduating undergrad, I spent a year as an intern at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello as a tour guide. So, especially to undergrad, hadn't done a lot of research into slavery or the history of slavery, apart from what came up in my women's history classes, which was like I had read Harriet Jacobs diary and things like that, but hadn't really delved into it. So working at Monticello, I learned more about slavery. But there's this thing that happens when you're working as a tour guide, where the people who are going on your tour, don't want to hear anything bad about Thomas Jefferson. They're here to have a good time to hear to talk about the great man, Thomas Jefferson. So, I thought that I was being super edgy by even talking about slavery at all. I would be like, yeah, Thomas Jefferson, super great, but did you know he also had slaves, which is coming at an incredibly tragic and terrible story from a really terrible angle. But so there was a lot of emphasis at Monticello, that was sort of trying to explain how Thomas Jefferson, this great man who wrote the Declaration of Independence, could have possibly done something as hypocritical as own slaves when he's the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. So, there's a lot of discussion of how not necessarily that he was a good slave holder, but that he tried to get around the worst aspects of the institution of slavery, things like corporal punishment, he would have at Monticello, a reward system instead of a violent system of beatings so that people would learn to behave better because they were getting enticements to behave better. So, for a long time, people would say, oh, there weren't any beatings at Monticello, Jefferson was a was a humane slaveholder. But if you look at the documents, it's just not true. If you look at his farm notebooks, he makes an exception that the enslaved boys that work in the nailery are not to be whipped, which everybody was saying, 'Oh, look how nice he wasn't whipping these boys.' But the implication is, nobody else is exempted from the whip their stories of people being whipped. We know that people were beaten at Jefferson's orders. So, then people would be like, 'Well, did you ever son actually ever call for somebody to be whipped? Or was it all just these evil overseers?' It turns all of the blame for the corporal punishment on the overseers, these nasty overseers who Jefferson couldn't control, whereas Jefferson, if he had his way, it would all be wonderful, and he'd be so nice to these slaves. And, so all of a sudden became this very important talking point, that Jefferson never whipped a slave, his overseers would whip them. But he himself never whipped the back of a slave, which is a nonsensical way to look at history.

Kathryn Gehred 

So there'd been all this focus on well, Jefferson, yeah, he owned slaves, but he never whipped a slave himself, and then there's this letter that his own daughter whipped with her own two hands, a woman who was enslaved. So, so much for this whole humane slavery thing. All of Jefferson's scruples when it came to the institution of slavery. It's all sort of going out the window, and Martha Jefferson Randolph, She also writes wonderful things about how slavery is so terrible how anti slavery she is. But then here's this example, this incontrovertible example of her whipping somebody herself. In hindsight, the entire framework that you're working with here, is just trying to sort of twist yourself into these logical pretzels to try to find a way that Thomas Jefferson wasn't so bad for owning slaves, which is what brings me to the 1776 Commission. The fact of the matter is that Thomas Jefferson owned over 200 people who had no legal rights, who could not legally marry, that even if Thomas Jefferson had never beat anybody, and everybody lived without any sort of threat of physical violence at Monticello, he owned them. They could not leave his plantation of his own free will, they could not control their own work hours, they were living at constant risk of being separated from their family, if something that happened in Jefferson family made that possible. So say, Thomas Jefferson's daughter gets married, your sister could be a wedding gift, and you could never see your sister again. So, all of that is in what people consider the most benign form of slavery, because everybody gets so focused on these whippings in the corporal punishment, that they lose sight of the central injustice of slavery, which is that you are not a human being legally, you are considered property. And this is something that no softening of slavery, no humane slaveholding can get around. And it's made possible by the institution of slavery itself, which Thomas Jefferson, as President, had a lot more power than he let on to get rid of he could have done so much more to end the institution of slavery as an institution than he chose to do. And he chose not to do that.

So that is why people are frustrated with Thomas Jefferson. And the fact that he owned other people, and didn't immediately free them, which was also within his power is complicit in the institution of slavery in a way that needs to be acknowledged and discussed, and not just seen as this blip, or oh, just this flaw in his character. It is a profound failure of American history. And it's something that we have never actually grasped or looked at head on, so that's the first reason that this letter struck me when I was reading through it. The second reason was I had been working on my thesis on Martha Jefferson Randolph, and I had become very fond of Martha Jefferson Randolph, I had just spent almost a year of my life, reading hundreds of Martha Jefferson Randolph letters, and finding all these cute little letters where she's so funny. She's writing about her family. She's really well educated woman in a culture that doesn't really celebrate well educated women, and I had just become really fond of Martha Jefferson Randolph, and I had been doing the thing, where I was thinking about her as somebody who was just a victim of this terrible system that she was born into, and to see her participate in it in such a brutal, ugly way, made me reevaluate the way I was looking at a lot of her letters. And, what I saw was that what I had been doing for the whole year I was reading all these letters, was if there was something that maybe came across as callous, or maybe came across as her not paying attention to an enslaved person, or talking about an enslaved person in a really patronizing way. I was sort of skipping over it, or forgiving it, or just the English, she said such nice things against slavery, I'm not going to pay attention to that. It sort of hit me, as I read this. And as I discussed this letter in class with my cohort, who were very quick to point out, particularly just how horrible it is that she's writing about this situation in such a cheerful way, that I needed to shift my perspective from, this is a great person who everybody needs to know about to this is a person who's capable of doing immense harm to other people, but I still think it's significant that I was able to empathize so much with Martha Jefferson Randolph, because I did have a little bit of an epiphany moment after this where I thought God, I thought of myself as very similar to Martha Jackson Rudolph, I was really projecting onto Martha Jefferson Randolph. And, if she was capable of having this massive blind spot, and doing such harm to people, and not really thinking of black people, as human beings, was I also capable of doing that, and I realized that I absolutely was, and that by looking at slavery, the way that I had been looking at slavery, I wasn't treating these enslaved people that turn up in these letters, with the same level of complexity as I had been looking at the white people. And, here I had been thinking of myself as being so progressive, but even talking about slavery at all, but I still was not actually thinking of the black people in these letters, as individuals with the same level of complexity, the same level of humanity as I had been with Martha Jefferson, Randolph, and what would it change about my thesis, and what would it change about my historical writing, if I tried to do that, and it shifted everything, and I had to throw out a lot of the thesis that I had written, and it made it a lot better, it's still not a good thesis. It changed the way I view news, it changed the way I view the world, and I think that what I learned from the way that people actually lived within this horrible, corrupt system of slavery, is that somebody who's very nice, and somebody who you can really empathize with, is not free from having these massive blind spots, and particularly as a white woman, myself, it helps to evaluate what those blind spots are. And, I think what's frustrating is that when you really dig into it, it's the exact same blind spot when it comes to white women. This is something that I think, is getting a little bit more discussion publicly. But I think that there are a lot of nice white ladies like me, who know all of the jargon have read all of the books, would never think of themselves as possibly being racist. They care so much about social justice and society, but when push comes to shove, if it comes to giving up some of your privilege, in order to actually affect racial justice, they'll grab onto their purse when a black man walks by, or they'll call the cops when they see somebody suspicious, walking through the street, and by suspicious, I mean black. Or, they'll say something about Colin Kaepernick just going too far, you know, you just if they would just people would just be nicer about it, then maybe you would listen to them. Well, that's not treating black people as capable of the same level of human complex thought, as you see your own "in" group. I think that by looking at these historic letters, and looking at the way that people talk about slavery head on, even the ugly ways that people like Thomas Jefferson and Martha Jefferson Randolph and George Washington and Martha Washington, the way these people write about slavery can help us in a very real modern sense, see the legacies of slavery as they continue to play out today and they continue to play out in so many of the same ways. and begin to start to work to fix them, and that process is exactly what the 1776 Commission is trying to stop. The 1776 Commission is saying we're fine, if we just don't talk about slavery, all the issues of it will go away. We don't have to think about this at all. And it is precisely stopping us from making the type of progress that we absolutely need to make as a society.

That's all about the second paragraph, but it's a heck of a paragraph. The next section, I do want to mention a few things about it. Virginia thinks I was trying to murder them. Cornelia says no. The section of Willy throwing a stone at Sally I think, is interesting and troubling. Martha Jefferson Randolph didn't just whip Sally, she also whipped her grandson, she gave him a nice trimming, and it sounds later like she used a rod to hit this kid. So, this is a boy that's grown up in an abusive household. He's now getting beaten by his grandmother, but he's acting out and throwing stones at the only people that are lower than him on the totem pole in this household, which are the enslaved people. So, you've got somebody who has the power to take out all of this anger, and aggression and violence that he's feeling from his father just dying and having this sort of miserable life so far, and he is taking it out on the enslaved people in the house. It doesn't surprise me when she says that when she leaves him in charge of the servants that they watch him with Hawk sighs. And Willie just lying, pathologically lying or just sticking to it. That's something that I think children do, sometimes, but also, you can see this as a way of acting out. And, also from what we know about what his father was like, maybe he's repeating sort of bad behavior that he's seen.

Kathryn Gehred 

The section about the canary dying, is very sad. I think she writes about it rather prettily burying the canary under the oak under the little elm tree. And she says, "It's slandered to say a female canary does not sing." But it's just a little bit telling that we've got this sort of heart wrenching section about a canary dying, and letter where she writes in a joking way, about holding a woman down and beating her. I didn't look up all the people at the end of the letter, my apologies. But it does sort of look like she's just sort of giving updates on the health and wellness of everybody in the neighborhood. And finishing up with a little update about the garden. So here we have sort of the brutalities of slavery mixed in with sort of family health and updates, mixed in with just sort of general news, which is how life in a slaveholding society was lived. I want to end this letter with another quote from Cornelia. It's actually written two years earlier than the other quote, she says,

"Mama would never sink deeper into the slough of slavery, and sister Jane, who has a colony of her own, has an equal horror for it. For my part, I have lived so long among slaves that though I disapprove of the system, as much as anyone can do, I have quite an affection for them and like to be served by them, if I could, I would make the whole world free. But as I cannot, I am content to live as I have lived all my life."

So this, I believe, is one of the most honest descriptions from one of these anti slavery- slave holders that you can find, saying it's outside of my power to get rid of slavery, but I like these slaves, I like to be served by them, it's not hurting me. I'm doing just fine. So I'll continue to live where there's slavery, it doesn't bother me the way it bothers everybody else. And this sounds so innocent. And from somebody who understands the amount of legal power she has, she doesn't have much legal power to change the whole system. But the hurt that that attitude is doing to people who could use a little bit of radicalization of people to fight for them, to get them out of this terrible system of slavery is what continues to perpetuate the institution for as long as it does. So it's that particular attitude, there's nothing vicious in it. There's nothing against black people in it, there's just this complete, blind spot to the realities of slavery as it's experienced by enslaved people. I just think that this is a perspective that needs to be acknowledged, and that you can learn about if you are willing to dig into some history with a different lens than you might be comfortable with. So, I want to thank you all very much for listening. I will have links to all the letters that I have quoted in the show notes. So I just want to thank the people at the Thomas Jefferson retirement series for taking these letters, transcribing them, putting them online and making them freely available to everyone. They're such an incredible resource and I wouldn't have been able to write my thesis or make this podcast without them. So thank you very much for all the work that you do. And I am, as ever, your most obedient and humble servant. Thank you very much