Visit to Jefferson's Poplar Forest

I am WAY behind on my posts, so here is my attempt to begin catching up...

Back in October, I attended the 1st MABIG meeting. My wife Noell and I decided to make a weekend of it and, on the way, we visited an interesting winery (Peaks of Otter, where we tried a pepper wine paired with, no joke, easy cheese) and Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest. Jefferson designed Poplar Forest to be a retreat from the busy world of Monticello, where he often had to entertain an endless procession of visitors.

The home is an octagon, and represents one of the most unique architectural achievements of the early republic. Today's situation reflects that of the early 19th century in that Poplar Forest is wonderfully cared for but not as crowded with tourists as Monticello. We were given a fantastic tour with just a handful of other folks. Unfortunately, the much of the original interior was lost in a fire in the 1845, and several owners later modified the building's layout. They are now painstakingly refurbishing the home to its original (Jeffersonian) state with the use of period tools and technologies. Visitors are not allowed to take photos inside the home at this time, so ours are limited to the exterior.

Noell standing in front of the Poplar Forest home.

One part of our visit really stuck with both my wife and I, and it involved African slavery. It is well-known that Jefferson was a slave owner and that slaves were involved in the building of both Monticello and Poplar Forest. There is one area at the back of the Poplar Forest building that was excavated by hand through slave labor (shovels, picks, and wheel barrels) in order to expose the basement of the home to the outside. As our docent explained this process, the following exchange occurred with one member of our tour group (note: I am paraphrasing here, as I do not remember the exact words that were spoken, but the gist is accurate):

Female visitor raises her hand and says: So, when you say "slave," you mean that they weren't paid?

Docent: Yes, they didn't receive payment for their work.

Female visitor: But they did get room and board, right?

Docent: Yes, yes they did.

A view of the back of the Poplar Forest home. Note the depression, which was
excavated by hand through slave labor.

The questions ended there, but the way she looked to her friends and the way she asked the question implied that her reaction was "See? They got room and board, so that's not so bad." I think that (white) people still have a hard time accepting and fully understanding the type of slavery that persisted in the Americas up until the Civil War. In fact, this reaction smacks of the "benevolent master" perspective that many slaveholders clung to in order to justify the enslavement of Africans.

There is also a lot of really interesting archaeology being done on the grounds, and an edited volume was recently published that summarizes much of it (Heath and Gary, 2012).

References:

Heath, BJ, Gary, J (Eds.) (2012). Jefferson's Poplar Forest: Unearthing a Virginia Plantation. University of Florida Press, Gainesville.

The ironies (and absurdities) of slavery in the early American republic

I just finished with Alan Taylor's The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832. The "internal enemy" is a term that whites often used to refer to the slaves in their midst since, as Taylor demonstrates, slave insurrections were a nearly constant fear among Virginia's slaveholders. I would highly recommend the book for those of you who are interested; here I just wanted to mention a few tidbits from the book that stuck out for me and, at the same time, highlight the sometimes highly paradoxical viewpoints that Virginia's slaveholders were forced, either intentionally or not, to maintain in order to preserve an economic system that was a large part of their cultural identity:

• The elimination of primogeniture and entail. These refer to the practices of, respectively, the inheritance by the firstborn child of the entirety of a family's estate and the restriction of inheritance to the family heirs only. When practiced, as they were in colonial America, these laws served to concentrate wealth among a small number of families and, within those families, a small number of powerful individuals. After the American Revolution, these laws were struck down in many of the former colonies, including Virginia. While American lawmakers (including most prominently Thomas Jefferson) felt that the elimination of such laws was more consistent with a republican form of government, it was actually devastating for slave families. In essence, primogeniture and entail prevented wealthy plantation owners from scattering their estates after their deaths. For slaves, this significantly reduced the likelihood that family members would be sold off. With the suppression of these laws after the revolution, wealth was more evenly distributed among whites but, at the same time, the breakup of slave families became easier and much more common.
• Blacks' lack of rights. In 1816, George Boxley hatched a plot to lead about 30 or so slaves (some of which were his own) to freedom in the North as revenge for being passed over for a militia promotion and a seat in the state legislature, both of which he blamed on the state's wealthy, slave holding elite. The plan never materialized, however, and Boxley was eventually arrested. Here's the catch, though: all the witnesses to the treasonous plot were black and therefore barred, by Virginia law, from testifying against a white man! I'll let Taylor (2013: 399) finish the story: "[u]ncertain what to do with Boxley, the authorities kept him in jail until...he escaped after breaking his irons and cutting a passage through the ceiling of his cell...[s]uspicions arose that some powerful local people wanted Boxley gone rather than risk an embarrassing trial that would acquit for lack of evidence." How's that for irony?

References:

Taylor, A (2013). The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832. W.W. Norton, New York.