Notes on the state of Virginia

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1. TeeverJul 2026
   Walter, you sort of gave the game away with this last post when you wrote 'It is wrong that Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington kept slaves.' It was wrong, but by whose standards exactly? Not the standards of the time as half the colonies, by your own account, thought it was fine. So you're judging them by a fixed standard that sits above the mores of 1787 and is the exact thing you spent the entire thread insisting people shouldn't do.

   Not only that, but you just did it again when you said that they 'rose above the accepted norm' by abolishing nobility and the dominance of religious institutions because 'rose above' only means something if there's a fixed height to measure against. You can't say "they rose above the norm" and 'don't judge them against anything but the norm' in the same paragraph. So I wouldn't say that the position you're taking is one of historical relativism but more of a universalist with a conspicuous discontinuity on at least this specific issue.

   As someone who is fond of American history but is relatively unknowledgeable about the pre-civil war era this thread and previous conversations that we have had on George Washington have piqued my interest, so I did some digging.

   Even if we provide the most charitable interpretation of your argument that the American founding fathers were a 'product of their time' that kind of defense only works when someone is blind to a wrong because nobody around them has conceived of or articulated an objection to slavery but that certainly isn't something that can be said in this situation. So, let's use the examples of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington to see why that isn't the case.

   THOMAS JEFFERSON

   Thomas Jefferson enslaved roughly 600 people over his lifetime, holding about 130 at any given moment across his numerous properties. He initially inherited his slaves from his father and in far greater numbers from his father-in-law. Despite being an owner of hundreds of slaves throughout his lifetime Jefferson was critical of the practice and advocated for restrictions on the practice.

   His draft of the Declaration of Independence contained a passage [0] criticizing King George III over the British slave trade which was struck by the Congress. The passage read as follows:

   "he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce..."

   At the time he wrote this Thomas Jefferson was thirty-three and he owned about 175 people.

   Somewhere between 1781-1785 (I'm seeing a lot of different publishing dates for this and I'll leave it to someone else to pin down the exact date if they're interested) in Notes on the State of Virginia Jefferson wrote of slavery: "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other"[1] and argued that it corrupted the slaveholders' own children, who learned tyranny by imitation. Jefferson even wrote "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever."[1]

   The Virginian abolitionist Edward Coles[2] who in his youth had been neighbours with Jefferson wrote to him in 1814 asking him to lead an emancipation movement. Jefferson replied that he was too old to do so and he counseled Coles to stay in Virginia and keep his slaves rather than free them. Coles ignored him, moved to Illinois and freed his.

   So what motivated Jefferson to hold these incompatible views and maintain his abhorrent practices while counselling others to do the same? Why the thing which you value most Walter -- money.[3] Thomas Jefferson lived beyond his means his entire adult life and died owing more than $100,000.[4] The people that he enslaved were his collateral and capital. In an 1820 letter to his son-in-law John Wayles Epps Jefferson wrote, "having scruples about selling negroes but for delinquency, or on their own request. but your proposition gets me over these scruples as it is in fact to keep them in the family." and went on to tell Eppes, "I know no error more consuming to an estate than that of stocking farms with men almost exclusively. I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption."[5] Keep in mind that Jefferson wrote this six years after he told Coles that he was too old to lead an emancipation movement.

   This doesn't read like a man who was oblivious to the consequences of his actions or his financial motivations. This reads like a man who knew what he was doing was abhorrent but wasn't willing to stop because it would have led to his financial ruin and suffering.

   [0] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0...

   [1] https://archive.org/details/notesonstateofvi1787jeff/page/27...

   [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coles

   [3] https://youtu.be/5V6GHnxEJjg?t=108

   [4] https://www.monticello.org/encyclopedia/debt

   [5] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/ Jefferson/03-16-02-0052

   (My full comment was too large so I have had to split it into two comments)

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2. willmarchJan 2026
   You’re still dodging the point by arguing founders’ personal depravity instead of the political theory they articulated: rights don’t come from government, authority is delegated, and it has limits. The fact that many founders violated their own principles doesn’t erase the principles, it proves why limiting doctrines and later amendments were necessary.

   And the “they wouldn’t care” claim is overstated even on its own terms. The founders were divided and inconsistent, but several explicitly condemned slavery and/or refused to participate in it:

   Jefferson (who was deeply compromised personally) still wrote this about slavery’s corruption and consequences:

   > “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever…” (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII (1784), as transcribed by Encyclopedia Virginia)

   Jefferson also documented that Congress removed an anti–slave trade passage from his draft for political reasons (i.e., to get unanimity):

   > “The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves…” (Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography (1821), as reproduced by Monticello / Avalon Project)

   John Adams:

   > “my opinion against it has always been known… and never in my Life did I own a Slave.” (John Adams to George Churchman and Jacob Lindley, Jan. 24, 1801; Gilder Lehrman Institute primary source)

   So no, it’s not accurate to collapse “the founders” into “they endorsed whatever abuses you can point to.” Some did; some didn’t; many were hypocrites; but the rights-and-limits framework is real, and it’s the framework the country later used to correct (some of) those failures.

   On Hamilton: yes, courts are an intermediate body. But it does not follow that “if the Court doesn’t stop it (especially on an emergency posture), it’s therefore within authority.” Courts can be wrong, courts can be procedural, and emergency orders are not merits adjudications. “Not enjoined today” is not the same thing as “constitutional.” If that were the rule, coordinated abuse across branches would become self-legitimating (exactly what checks and balances are meant to prevent).

   Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion is a non sequitur. Nobody is arguing the government can’t enforce laws or respond to violence. The question is whether current enforcement is staying inside constitutional rails.

   And on your legal citations: sure, INA authority exists. But statutory authority doesn’t dissolve the Fourth Amendment. Your own lead case, Brignoni‑Ponce, is precisely about limits: reasonable suspicion has to be based on specific articulable facts, and it can’t collapse into ethnicity/race-by-proxy plus “totality of circumstances” handwaving.

   So let’s keep it concrete: what specific factors are officers using in practice to form reasonable suspicion, and what safeguards prevent that from becoming a dragnet? “The INA authorizes questioning” is not an answer to whether particular stops/detentions are constitutional.

   Finally: “I defer to the Supreme Court” is fine as a personal posture, but it’s not an argument that the Constitution has no redlines unless five Justices say so on a given day (especially not on the shadow docket).

   > “to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions: a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an Oligarchy.” (Jefferson to William Charles Jarvis, Sept. 28, 1820)

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3. famouswafflesJul 2024
   I'm not sure why a rock or piece of wood is the bar here. The fact is nearly no-one in the Americas would call or describe Sub-Saharan Africans as Intelligent.

   Thomas Jefferson who generally seemed to oppose slavery says this in his book, "Notes on the State of Virginia" (1785):

   "In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection."

   "Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous."

   Doesn't even sound like he's talking about the same species. We can scarcely agree on the intelligence of other humans. Let's not even get into the topic of animals.

   So the idea that intelligence will manifest and we'll all just see it and agree...Yeah No.

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4. quinnjhFeb 2022
   Maybe because this is text you are failing to properly interpret my words.

   -The post you replied to did not contain the word racism

   -The post was calling into question the exclusion of certain classes of humanoids from the framework of rights agreed on at birth of US

   -No commenter said the words "you are racist"

   -You failed to offer why the exclusion of black or female people is just

   In “Notes on the State of Virginia,” Jefferson wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever…” He believed that to keep slaves in bondage, with part of America in favor of abolition and part of America in favor of perpetuating slavery, would result in civil war. Jefferson’s prediction was correct: in 1861, the contest over slavery sparked a bloody civil war and the creation of two nations — Union and Confederacy — in the place of one.

   Read up on natural law

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5. vonzeppelinAug 2018
   - Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence

   - He drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

   - He served as the third President of the United States

   - United States Military Academy was established during his presidency

   - Jefferson doubled the size of the United States during his presidency

   - He made sure US presence was established in the Louisiana territory

   - President Jefferson abolished the slave trade

   - He made an important contribution to the Library of Congress

   - Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia

   - He wrote a book titled Notes on the State of Virginia

   https://learnodo-newtonic.com/thomas-jefferson-accomplishmen...

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6. elliusFeb 2016
   It's worth noting they were well aware of the contradiction and slavery mainly got a pass to avoid an immediate civil war with the southern colonies. So yeah, they made choices for purposes of political expediency, but they weren't totally unaware of the contradiction. Thomas Jefferson was actually in sort of a "tough" spot (I say this without sympathy or defense) because it was widely recognized in his intellectual circles that slavery was wrong and against the many ideas he and his peers espoused, but his own personal wealth was so tied up in it that he had to make intellectual excuses for it (see Notes on the State of Virginia).
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