Were our Forefathers child molesters, thieves, bigots, and murderers?

[VoteClark]

Sounds harsh! But were they?

Thomas Jefferson slept with his 14 year old slaves.

Most of them owned slaves.

Franklin infected blankets with smallpox and gave them to Indians.

Many of them made huge profits off of laws they passed and the Revolutionary War.


Does this also make them evil people? Or were they simply products of their own time?

:kick:
J4Clark

[scarletlib]

1. It makes them human

Just like you and me--acting in our own interests 90% of the time.

[sujan]

6. yes

and dispels the myth that they were 'superbeings'.

[Capt_Nemo]

2. At least they weren't war criminals with 1000+ body counts

As well as corporate criminals with their creative accounting
scheemes...

[Mika]

7. WHAT???

"At least they weren't war criminals with 1000+ body counts"

YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING!

Amazing. Still, to this day, Americans are unaware of the ethnic cleansing & genocide the new American 'leadership' used (and still use) to clear and steal this once beautiful land from its rightful inhabitants.

[sujan]

9. right you are

read 'People's history of the US'....the first chapter on the arawak Indians made me sick, for real.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

13. Mika thank you!

[peacetalksforall]

3. Or not the congresspeople

who are supposed to represent us in Washington, but only represent their favorite lobbyists and cabal.

[BigDaddyLove]

32. Who do you think................

our fabled forefathers designed our fledgling government to 'represent', the little people or the wealthy?

Nothing has changed, it's only gotten bigger.

This is a government founded by the rich for the rich.

[VoteClark]

50. Very True

[ElsewheresDaughter]

4. absolutely...technology advances, but , man stays the same

sadly it is the darkside of the human condition...altho 14 was legal marraige age even in the 1970's in many southern states

[Runesong]

5. "Franklin infected blankets with smallpox and gave them to Indians"

Actually, that was Lord Jeffery Amherst.

[seventhson]

8. WTF === Links please

or at least a source for these claims.

This is what Aaron Magruder points out is the danger of the internet. Anyone can say anything and whom do you trust.

So please source the ben franklin and amherst claims you two.

I am interested --- but really this is a scary claim against Franklin and if true deserves to be known more widely.

I always thought he was like the coolest of them all.

so let us all know please. Link.

[sujan]

10. I have to agree

Ben Franklin may have been the most consistent on his principles than any other founders of this country, save John Q Adams.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

15. Franklin was a hoaxster...had a great sense of humor and showmanship

there is a new book due out about this...was listening to the promo on NPR just a few days ago...sorry i tuned in in the middle of the interview and missed the authors name and title of the book :shrug:

[sujan]

16. walter Isaacson?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

18. sujan...could be...i read the reviews and sounds like it

thanks...

[sujan]

19. check him out on cspan archives

[ElsewheresDaughter]

14. read some Howard Zinn

[bicentennial_baby]

17. Lord Jeffrey

It is thought that the blankets were his idea and he ordered it, not that he gave them out physically:

"At the time of the Pontiac rebellion in 1763, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in North America, wrote to Colonel Henry Bouquet: 'Could it not be contrived to send smallpox among these disaffected tribes of Indians? We must use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.' The colonel replied: 'I will try to inoculate the with some blankets that may fall in their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself.' Smallpox decimated the Native Americans, who had never been exposed to the disease before and had no immunity."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/coldwar/pox_weapon_01.shtml

"At Fort Pitt, a British outpost located in western Pennsylvania, health conditions were unfavorable. As Colonel Ecuyer writes, "We are so crowded in the fort that I fear disease; for, in spite of every care, I cannot keep the place as clean as I should like. Besides, small pox is among us; and I have therefore caused a hospital to be built" (Parkman 14). General Amherst planned to use this misfortune to his advantage. In a series of letters, Amherst relates his plan to gives blankets infested with small pox to Indians in hopes that it would spread throughout the entire Indian nation and kill as many as possible. In response to Amherst's letters, Colonel Bouquet, the commanding officer at Fort Pitt, replied, "I will try to inoculate the bastards with some blankets that may fall in their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself. As it is a pity to expose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spanish method, to hunt them with English dogs" (Long 187).


This plan clearly displays the genocidal intent of the English and their loathsome views that the Indians “have forfeited all claims to the rights of humanity” (D’Errico 3); it also documents the first attempt at biological warfare in the United States (Waldman 108). Historian Jeffrey W. Reed argues that “Bouquet never used the small pox plan, and there is uncertainty in many peoples' minds if the blankets were ever issued to the Indians and if Amherst even knew what he was doing (D’Errico 7). However, documents and letters from 1763 testify that Amherst knew exactly what he was doing and that the blankets were given to the Indians in an attempt to "put a most effectual stop to their very being" (Amherst 3).


Small pox was one of the world's most dreaded plagues until just a few years ago. The disease has been documented on the earth since 1122 BC. A virus that has no natural carriers except for the human body, small pox can survive for long periods at a time outside of the body. In the late seventeenth century, the virus "survived in a bale of cotton for eighteen months, so that laundry contaminated by a smallpox patient is a source of infection" ("Smallpox" 888). The known communicability of the disease supports the belief that Amherst probably knew that small pox could be spread to the Indians through the blankets.


The question of whether or not the blankets were actually issued is answered by reading an excerpt from the journal of William Trent, which is the most detailed contemporary account of the happenings at Fort Pitt during the Pontiac Uprising. In response to one of Amherst's letters, Trent, a soldier at the fort, writes in his journal, "Out of our regard to them we gave them two blankets and an handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect" (Harpster 103). This strongly suggests that at least some blankets were given to the Indians; there is also documentation which reveals that several tribes of the Ohio Valley were stricken with small pox a very short time after the blankets were distributed (Parkman 46)."

http://oprfhs.org/division/history/interpretations/1999interp/Kaye.doc

*edited to fix link

[VoteClark]

27. Franklin's idea, Lord Jeffrey ordered it, Gen. Amherst carried it out.

[wellstone_democrat]

64. Bullshit

try real archives rather than on-line crap. Amherst mentioned it in a letter---so did plenty of people plenty of times as the etiology of smallpox was one of the few understood that well. Amherst was a dreadful individual but there is no proof he ever did this.

Franklin certainly did not.

BTW, "Lord Jeffrey??:" do you mean "Lord Jeffrey Amherst?" Amherst was a peer, he was not techinically a General and I know of no "Lord Jeffrey.

However, if you do have real documentation on this, please share it with the world---you'll make a fortune on the book settling this old story once and for all.

[VoteClark]

25. We are both correct

Amherst was the one that ordered the action. But it was Fraklin that came up with the idea. Kind of like he came up with the idea of certain types of fertilizer. But he did not manufacture it. While I can't find a direct link online that shows that Franklin said," infect blankets with smallpox", there are plenty of links that will tell you how Franklin loathed Indians and warned about keeping them around that can be found on a simple google search. He was also very well aware of smallpox because he lost a son to smallpox and studied it.

I can give you a book to read that states that he did. "America's Fascinating Indian Heritage" Published by Readers Digest in 1996. It is compliation of works by over 13 Professors of Native American History. I had to read it in College for my Native American studies.


Gen. Jeffery Amherst orders smallpox-infected blankets given to to Delaware Indians at a peace-making parley
http://www.gocreate.com/History/ra18.htm

:kick:
J4Clark

[gulliver]

28. "I can't find a direct link online..."

I don't see how that makes you correct.

Please don't attack Benjamin Franklin, a hero of mine, without some sort of evidence. Some professor wrote it in a book you once read in college. Then you state it as established fact...Jeez!

Let's insult the founding fathers under the name "VoteClark." What a great thing to do. This is a crappy thread.

[slackmaster]

11. They were all hop-heads

Our forefathers took DRUGS including cannabis and opium.

[RedSock]

12. adams

wasn't adams pushing for the establishment of a monarchy in the us? and for him to be king?

[WoodrowFan]

24. NO

That was a charge pushed by his rivals, i.e., Jefferson supporters. No truth to it.

[VermontDem2004]

21. Cannabis?

I guess that makes me a "hop-head"

[shanti]

66. a few of them grew

ganja on their plantations too!

[VermontDem2004]

20. They were no superhumans

but they were geniuses. George Washington saved this country so many times in his first term, also. They created a perfect government system, where in the country as a whole and state by state a checks and balances system. I just think they were more of a product of their own time.

[Flubadubya]

22. I hope you're not presenting this retroactive indictment...

to somehow justify or condone the offenses of the current administration. Just because larceny, deception, and malfeasance have existed in the past, it certainly doesn't mean that this should be considered acceptable in the present day. Bear in mind, the general public was overall not as enlightened then as some are today... unfortunately, many are still asleep, of course.

There are always better ways of conducting private and public behaviors.

[Kamika]

23. They were a product of their time as we all are.

Everyone is a product of their time.

When they lived it was just normal for people to do these thins it wasnt considered evil.

They didnt do the things thta at the time was considered evil.


Just imagine in 200 years from now using a gasoline car will be illegal and really evil, but now its totally normal.

[VoteClark]

26. I am not sure if sleeping with slaves was considered normal or very

well excepted at the time. I also know that many people opposed slavery at the time.

:kick:
J4Clark

[Northwind]

29. In Virginia and all across the South

Slave concubines were extremely popular. A whole sub-set of the slave trade was the trafficking in light skinned african women for use as "bedroom slaves". This is why the idea of white, racially pure people in the South is such a joke, if you come from a long lineage in the south, you HAVE african blood, period.

14 was not considered a child at the time.

[tjdee]

30. Sleeping with slaves was VERY normal.

It certainly wasn't frowned on generally.
I believe it was seen as that thing the master does...nobody talked about it, but everyone knew it was going on. At least Thomas Jefferson kept his children with him (98% sure about that), sometimes masters sold their own children.

Many people didn't oppose slavery, it was clearly the minority opinion that slavery was wrong.
Only the rich landowners had slaves, but it wasn't like the small farmers were crying about the poor black people.

[Mika]

35. NORMAL?

Since when is rape "normal"?


"Only the rich landowners had slaves, but it wasn't like the small farmers were crying about the poor black people."

Wrong WRong WRONG!


The Underground Railroad
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2944.html

The Underground Railroad, a vast network of people who helped fugitive slaves escape to the North and to Canada, was not run by any single organization or person. Rather, it consisted of many individuals -- many whites but predominently black -- who knew only of the local efforts to aid fugitives and not of the overall operation. Still, it effectively moved hundreds of slaves northward each year -- according to one estimate, the South lost 100,000 slaves between 1810 and 1850.
An organized system to assist runaway slaves seems to have begun towards the end of the 18th century. In 1786 George Washington complained about how one of his runaway slaves was helped by a "society of Quakers, formed for such purposes." The system grew, and around 1831 it was dubbed "The Underground Railroad," after the then emerging steam railroads. The system even used terms used in railroading: the homes and businesses where fugitives would rest and eat were called "stations" and "depots" and were run by "stationmasters," those who contributed money or goods were "stockholders," and the "conductor" was responsible for moving fugitives from one station to the next.

[tjdee]

43. Are you saying the Underground Railroad was the majority?

Obviously I know about the Underground Railroad.
My intention was to point out that people opposed to slavery a)weren't in the majority, and b)that many southerners who opposed slavery (and northerners too for that matter) weren't opposed to slavery because of its cruelty. If that many people were upset about the plight of the blacks in this country, slavery would have ended before it did.

There were a lot of people who were against it, obviously. The Quakers, the Underground Railroad operators, the abolitionists...but those people didn't represent the status quo.

And sleeping with and raping your slaves WAS normal at the time. As a poster above says, there were specific 'bedroom slaves' for sale.

[VoteClark]

47. Nope, it just was that the majority was not listened to

In many places in the South, Blacks were the majority. So obviously they were opposed to it. Then there was the poor farmer. Poor farmers didn't like slaves either. Rich owners of slaves were making it hard for them to make a living. If it costs you 10 cents to make a pound of tobbaco, and the rich slave owner could make it for 7 cents because he owned slaves, well, you can bet he didn't like it much. Most of the North opposed it. What you are correct on is the fact that most White people did not consider them equal to that of Whites, but slavery they opposed all over the North. Remember, only White Males over 26 that owned property could vote. The majority of people were women, non-white, didn't own property, or didn't attian to the age of 26. That was about 20% at most of population at most.

:kick:
J4Clark

[tjdee]

51. They weren't opposed toit because slavery was mean.

Some were, but again--the poor farmer was upset because the rich farmer and his slaves made the poor farmer's life difficult.

Not because he felt black people shouldn't be owned like cattle.

I think I'm being unclear or something, mostly I think we agree!

[VoteClark]

53. Yes we agree on this point

Whites in the south did not regard Blacks as equal. They regarded them as taking their jobs and costing them money for working for free.

But many people in the north did consider it wrong, most the states way up North were very liberal for their time.

:kick:
J4Clark

[maggrwaggr]

58. sex with slaves was "normal" but quiet, and 15 year old girls were

fair game as marriageable women.

Plenty of people, including Clark of Lewis and Clark fame, married 15 year olds back then.

I agree if you judge others by today's standards, nobody from the past comes out looking that hot.

What about Lincoln's mass execution of Indian leaders?

Some people could argue that the plains Indians were the terrorists of their day.

[hippywife]

38. The preferable idea

is not to be a product of our times but for all times. :)

[gulliver]

31. This kind of thread really pisses me off.

It's not just the poorly sourced, outrageous attack on men who helped found the greatest country on earth. Even if there is a grain of truth to it (and your say-so makes me doubt it more), it still isn't appropriate to post it with Clark's name. That's a dirty trick, whether you are for Clark or not. Please stop sullying Clark with your musings.

[MiltonLeBerle]

33. The truth hurts, huh?

a grain of truth...?
What parts of the original post do find to be false?

It would be truly refreshing if they ever decided to teach the real American history in the schools.

[gulliver]

34. Truly refreshing indeed.

Yeah, I know about slavery and the Indians. I know there is a lot of dirty laundery, chicanery, villainy in our past, OK. It's oddly funny that you seem to think I'm the one being naive.

You have missed the point of my post entirely. I take for granted that there is a grain of truth in this know-nothing, ho-hum, freshman college history crap thread. That is beside the point. The poster, VoteClark, feels he/she has to post incendiary questions with no source links under Clark's name.

That's like calling someone in the middle of the night before an election and screaming at them, "Vote John Doe, you sleepy idiot who knows nothing about history! Paid for by Native Americans for John Doe." That's not going to get many votes for John Doe or much sympathy for Native Americans.

[VoteClark]

36. Oh, give it a rest

I am not going to change my name so I can discuss American History. And I did give you a link. I also gave you the name of a Book to go look it up yourself. Believe it or not, not all creditable information is listed on the internet. Somethings are in things called books. Reader's Digest, is a very creditable source. It was not a Freshman Course, it was a Senior level course. The Teacher was a Native American, and it was next (on top of an old) to an Native American Reservation. I also doubt that the 13 University Professors that have PhD's in Native American history from more than ten Universities around the country would be incorrect. But if it helps you to sleep at night to think that Ben Franklin was perfect go ahead and do so. Geez, no skin off my back. Also pretend that Native Americans only resided on current Indian Reservations and we didn't wipe out 95% of them. Columbus really discovered the Americas and Slavery never happened either.

:kick:
J4Clark

[gulliver]

40. Can't do it.

You know what you are doing is wrong. If you were really for Clark, you would admit that you aren't helping him with your choice of topics.

BTW, did you send Bush a bag of pretzels? You encouraged DUers to do that, but I couldn't find anything in your thread to indicate that you had done it yourself.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=184932&mesg_id=184932

Got any more pedestrian historical atrocities to trot out. Let's see, you got Columbus. Kennedy and Martin Luther King! That's the ticket! You haven't brought up their peccadillos yet. Next post, I guess. After all it's clearly up to you to teach us poor ignorant people about our history. No one knows this stuff but you.

OK. Waiting for your Kennedy/King post and more sanctimony.

[VoteClark]

44. I will

Big ones that are hard to swallow.

[gulliver]

46. Did you send the bag of pretzels?

Well?

[VoteClark]

48. Read the post above yours

[gulliver]

55. Did. That question's for posterity.

Answer with yes, the day you do what you think it's such a good idea for other DUers to do.

[MiltonLeBerle]

37. well, Gulliver's Travels is one of my favourite books-

and I don't like the way you sully the good name of Gulliver with your narrow-minded attitude.
I would appreciate it if you would either refrain from posting, or choose another screen-name.

[gulliver]

39. Gulliver and Swift aren't running for office

Neither is Milton Berle.

[VoteClark]

45. LOL, either is Clark-YET!

Got ya! I like that book too. You are hurting their sales. :)

[Clete]

41. Reading Howard Zinn's

"A People's History of the United States" does'nt make any of the European settlers and the aristocratic leaders of this country look good. But I would have to opt for a product of their times. Even though intellectually Jefferson was against slavery, he remained a slave holder to his death.

We still have a long way to go to become enlightened people and to start making up for the past so that there can be a better future for humanity in the future.

[Zuni]

61. Zinn's history is very biased

and tells only the side of the story he wants you to see. I have trouble reading it, because instead of writing a balanced history, he is handicapped by his far left wing views.
He knows that he who controls history controls the present.

I agree with efforts to show a balanced truth about early america, but I dislike demonization.

[Clete]

68. I think the other side has been told enough.

I applaud Zinn's effort to tell this side of the story, of the ordinary people caught up in the struggle to become a nation. Up to now very little has been said about them.

[Khephra]

69. Uh, I think you utterly missed the point of Zinn's work then

Early on in his People's History he directly explains that he's not telling the whole story, but rather he's dealing with those events and people that are left out of most history books. He very openly and directly deals with the issue of bias, and argues that ALL historians present a biased view of history, only he's one of the few that openly speak about the fact and are upfront about the reasons they discuss certain topics.

[knight_of_the_star]

42. They were human

They weren't perferct. What surprises me on this thread is that there are so many people that are jumping forth to proclaim that the Founders were perfect saints. They weren't. There are even a few saints that were downright evil when you get down to it. No one is perfect, the Founders were only human, they had prejudices and indiscretions like any other normal person does.

[Q]

49. Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence...

...and...along with Jackson...started the Democratic Party.

- RWingers love to destroy the messenger instead of addressing the message. ( See: Clinton/Gore)

[9215]

52. It is important to focus on good and bad deeds

for a balanced perspective. Plus you should provide some sources for your claims. Franklin infecting blankets with smallpox?

The idea that they made "huge" profits (who? what? where?) is questionable. They risked their skins in a dangerous gamble that none of them had to make in order to live comfortably. Most of them would have done well financially under British rule.

For all their faults the Founding Fathers must never be forgotten for their deeds. Most of them, particularly Patrick Henry, were deeply trouble by slavery. The "Second Revolution" took care of that problem.

[VoteClark]

56. I agree to a point

I find it funny that I should prove that they profited vastly from the war. LOL, ask any College history professor. To me that is like asking me to proof that Washington was the general of the Continential Army, of that Alaska was not one of the original colonies. To me, it is just obvious if you read it all.

:kick:
J4Clark

[9215]

62. Oops, see my reply #59; it should be here

.

[9215]

59. You slipped the question

Sure, most of the Founding Fathers were well to do, but you need specifics for claiming war profiteering. Plus you don't address the other questions I asked.

[Deja Q]

54. BOTH

We've "evolved" since then, I suppose, but we have a long way to go before we really do evolve into peaceful people.

Franklin did his part with his genocidal warfare to exterminate peaceful Indians who did them no harm. (I could be wrong, maybe they were defending themselves but the methods, regardless, were still deplorable.)

Don't forget, our forefathers also stole the land from the Indians in typical American tradition. Cheat your neighbor, it'll get you in the end...

[VoteClark]

57. Well, it is more complicated than this

I don't think it was by far a fair war. First, Indians didn't know what owning land meant. To them it was like owning air, the sky, the river, and sunset. So to take it was not that complicated.

Second, they could not do much to communicate and explain their ideas and beliefs to the White people. I think it was not that the Indians were stupid, but that the white settlers were. Stuck in a frame of mind that they could not get out of.

Third, the dieases that white people brought with them were so horrible and they had no immunity to it.


:kick:
J4Clark

[Zuni]

60. Products of their time

1. Smallpox had decimated and destroyed Indians for centuries before that. Even if the blanket plan worked, the disease would have spread naturally to the Indians sooner or later. Actually smallpox wiped out about 85-90% of the North American Indians.
It was a British commander that did that, not Ben Franklin.
2. Slavery was the norm in much of the world. Russia, most of Africa, South America, the British Empire and the Arab lands (who were the most prolific of all the slavers. Saudi Arabia had legal slavery until 1961).
I think the fact that slavery still exists now in Sudan, Mauritania and other places is more shocking than that some of the founding fathers had slaves.
3. The Indians as innocent victims routine is rather unhistorical. Read the Histories of the Iriqouis Tribes or the Aztecs, two very violent and warlike groups, who had slaves and destroyed other tribes. The old view of the Indians as being bloodthirsty savages is also very unhistorical...but attempts to look at the real history of White-Indian relations is now clouded by attempts to show the whites as pure evil and the Indians as innocent victims.

[jafap]

63. strangely enough, I object

to calling Jefferson and Franklin "our forefathers". They are "founding fathers" but I am descended from neither Jefferson nor Franklin, but from dozens of small farmers and housewives who lived at the same time (at least half of them in Europe). They neither owned slaves, nor infected blankets, nor passed laws, nor made huge profits. They worked hard and tried to raise their children. They were not saints either, but closer to that than villains.

[TennesseeWalker]

65. Our country seems to have been founded on the following principle:

"Say one thing, while doing another".

[TennesseeWalker]

67. Kick....because this is interesting....

eom