Quote:
Originally Posted by kindlekitten
large property owners could not succeed without utilizing slave labor. I am in no way excusing the practice, simply sharing the reality check of the day
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That's essentially the same rationale Henry Ford and other anti-unionists used in attempt to prevent unionization.
It is the same rationale that was used to oppose child labor laws and the laws mandating the 8-hour workday. In fact, it was used in the defense of the owners of the clothing factory whose employees had been locked in the factory to insure they worked and who died when it caught fire.
And it was part of the rationale for the labor camps used by Stalin and Hitler.
And many slave holders were repeating that rationale as they fired on Fort Sumter and voted to seced from the union.
Just because others believed it to be true, one would think that a man of Jefferson's intelligence would have been able to see through the facade and would have freed his slaves (and opposed slavery) as many other plantation owners did. Jefferson and crew deserve a lot of respect for what they did, but it needs to be tempered with their view that women and nonwhites were chattel. When he wrote "All men are created equal," he literally meant white males.