Slave Quarters
To its credit, Monticello doesn't shrink from the great controversy of Thomas Jefferson's life. Most of the ancillary buildings that once stood around Monticello have long since fallen to dust, but the historical foundation that owns the estate has built replicas of some of them, including this slave cabin. This would have been one of several such cabins that stood on a little terrace to the southeast of the home. Jefferson owned as many as 600 different slaves throughout his life, which worked out to as many as a hundred or so at any given time. Other slave cabins would have stood on other patches of ground down the hill. These cabins close to home would have been for the house slaves. This is where Sally Hemings would have lived.
The cabin the historical society envisions is actually kind of nice, though who knows how close this comes to what was here in Jefferson's day. All indications both from Jefferson's records and from archaeological examinations of the site are that this structure fits the footprint of the structure that stood here before, so the size is at least right. And everything in the historical record suggests that Jefferson treated his slaves well. There's a certain sketchiness about the Sally Hemings thing that nobody knows what to do with--the girl was only 16 when she bore Jefferson's child, and she was a slave, which doesn't suggest consent was much of a concern, so the tale of romance depicted in films seems a bit optimistic--but all in all Jefferson seems to have been a considerate owner.
There's a temptation by some--especially those who romanticize the South--to look at this nice cabin built by a generous owner, then, and say, "You know, being a slave really wasn't all that bad." You usually hear this sort of talk from people who chafe at the idea of a speeding ticket and would never tolerate being owned by somebody else. There was this fun moment during the whole Cliven Bundy mess, for instance, where in the middle of fighting against paying the government a fee for grazing cattle on public land, the old man went on an "And another thing" tirade in which he said that black people were a lot better off in slave days, and that's just never been the kind of argument I could get behind. For one, the kind and generous owner was far from the norm, but even if it had been, people were still owned. They still had no freedom to choose anything about their lives, and their children or husbands or wives could always be sold out from under them with no notice at all. They still had to live in ways the people of modern America simply can't imagine, because there's no frame of reference for it in even the saddest of our lives.
It looks like an enlightened guy like Jefferson would have realized that. He might have saved us all a lot of trouble.
Slave Quarters
To its credit, Monticello doesn't shrink from the great controversy of Thomas Jefferson's life. Most of the ancillary buildings that once stood around Monticello have long since fallen to dust, but the historical foundation that owns the estate has built replicas of some of them, including this slave cabin. This would have been one of several such cabins that stood on a little terrace to the southeast of the home. Jefferson owned as many as 600 different slaves throughout his life, which worked out to as many as a hundred or so at any given time. Other slave cabins would have stood on other patches of ground down the hill. These cabins close to home would have been for the house slaves. This is where Sally Hemings would have lived.
The cabin the historical society envisions is actually kind of nice, though who knows how close this comes to what was here in Jefferson's day. All indications both from Jefferson's records and from archaeological examinations of the site are that this structure fits the footprint of the structure that stood here before, so the size is at least right. And everything in the historical record suggests that Jefferson treated his slaves well. There's a certain sketchiness about the Sally Hemings thing that nobody knows what to do with--the girl was only 16 when she bore Jefferson's child, and she was a slave, which doesn't suggest consent was much of a concern, so the tale of romance depicted in films seems a bit optimistic--but all in all Jefferson seems to have been a considerate owner.
There's a temptation by some--especially those who romanticize the South--to look at this nice cabin built by a generous owner, then, and say, "You know, being a slave really wasn't all that bad." You usually hear this sort of talk from people who chafe at the idea of a speeding ticket and would never tolerate being owned by somebody else. There was this fun moment during the whole Cliven Bundy mess, for instance, where in the middle of fighting against paying the government a fee for grazing cattle on public land, the old man went on an "And another thing" tirade in which he said that black people were a lot better off in slave days, and that's just never been the kind of argument I could get behind. For one, the kind and generous owner was far from the norm, but even if it had been, people were still owned. They still had no freedom to choose anything about their lives, and their children or husbands or wives could always be sold out from under them with no notice at all. They still had to live in ways the people of modern America simply can't imagine, because there's no frame of reference for it in even the saddest of our lives.
It looks like an enlightened guy like Jefferson would have realized that. He might have saved us all a lot of trouble.