Anything's a dildo if you're brave enough.

Nope. He had many redeeming qualities and he did indeed make some legislative effort to remove the institution. I just think his own internal biases and uncertainties were his undoing in regards to slavery. He believed blacks were inferior to whites, and he thought they should be emancipated in Africa and that freedmen should colonize there, because doing it on American soil would lead to great social turmoil and violence. From an observational standpoint, he was correct in the latter thought, to his credit. Civil unrest and war broke out after the abolition of slavery.

Oh, for heaven's sake, he wasn't restricted from freeing his own slaves. Robert Carter did it! George Washington did it! Nobody said anything about a magic hand wave. He could have just made the decision to let his own captives go. He seemed to have thought the event of complete emancipation would trigger great civil unrest at the time. His refusal to create an amendment for the gradual emancipation of slavery combined with his condemning/outlawing the international slave trade leads me to believe he was wishy-washy and selfish in his anti-slavery efforts, at best.

So level with me then: these people are ignorant by stating a simple fact about him. This frustrates you because it doesn't complete the picture. Yet I have to ask, if Jefferson "was at the forefront" as you say, why did he not start with his own slaves? If you're going to expect something from others, you should probably make it your own practice. In my mind, that makes him one of two things in regards to the abolition of slavery: foolish or insincere. We can't pretend he had no influence in Revolutionary America, and we can't we pretend he practiced what he preached. Honestly if he had started with his own (more than just 2 of his 600), it may have gone a long way. Yet speculation is just speculation and the facts remain: Jefferson owned slaves and used them. He freed a handful (including those freed before and after he died), and the rest were sold after his death to pay off his substantial debt.

That's true too. Remember discussions don't have to stay in one place though. The post was about Thomas Jefferson's variety with churches he attended, and the comments drifted toward a discussion about Thomas Jefferson in general, which seems normal honestly. It's natural for people who aren't fans of Jefferson to point out his flaws and for people who think positively about him to defend all his merits

I have no idea who this de Beauvoir guy was, and to be honest I don't give a shit. Jefferson was what he was. Pointing out that he owned slaves isn't somehow wrong, no matter what effect that information has on the public. Those facts should be just as front-and-center as any of his redeeming qualities or achievements.

What is all this nonsense about striking Jefferson from history and revering French gender theorists?

You're exactly right, there is more to Jefferson than slavery. Yet, you could measure historical figures in their entirety and not see them as people to hold in reverence at all. I'd be more impressed that Jefferson was the primary penman behind the Declaration of Independence if he wholly subscribed to the ideals therein, for instance. You know, contrary to the whole "don't measure by today's standards, such and such person was just a product of their time", it's perfectly acceptable to judge the actions of a historical figure by our own standards. It reasserts our own moral progress. People in the future are going to do it to us, too

Hey. Don't bother people with the truth , they hate it

Oh look, my diagnosis!