this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2025
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In my eyes a slaver is a slaver, plain and simple.
It’s an evil thing to treat people as property, no matter how well intentioned someone thinks they may be.
Granting freedom in a will also doesn’t count for much in that regard. It screams “I know it’s evil to enslave these people, but I’m too weak to do anything about it and too dependent on abusing them to live on my own.”
In my eyes, people who are unable to look at the past with an ounce of nuance as to what was acceptable at the time, and view everything through the lens of present day morals are drooling idiots who's opinion is worth less than used diaper.
Imagine in the future, some dipshit claims you were an irredeemable heartless monster because you ate chocolate at a time when most chocolate comes from essentially slave labor.
Was it acceptable at the time? In his lifetime Pennsylvania and Vermont implemented total bans on slavery, and within a decade of his death slave trading was illegal throughout the British Empire, the Northern states had abolished slavery itself, and the importation of slaves was illegal acroas the entire US.
As early as 1315 slavery was illegal in Metropolitan France, and in the 1540s was abolished by the Spanish Empire.
Washington knew it was wrong. They all did.
The whole “they just didn’t understand it was wrong” defense straight-up ignores that there were, in fact, people at the time who deeply opposed slavery.
It’s about a completely different slave owner, but I always think back to W.E.B. Dubois thoughts on Robert E Lee whenever the topic of defending slavers comes up. I’ll copy the full quote below:
“It is the punishment of the South that its Robert Lees and Jefferson Davises will always be tall, handsome and well-born. That their courage will be physical and not moral. That their leadership will be weak compliance with public opinion and never costly and unswerving revolt for justice and right. It is ridiculous to seek to excuse Robert Lee as the most formidable agency this nation ever raised to make 4 million human beings goods instead of men. Either he knew what slavery meant when he helped maim and murder thousands in its defense, or he did not. If he did not he was a fool. If he did, Robert Lee was a traitor and a rebel – not indeed to his country, but to humanity and humanity’s God.”
If you were born rich in the American south in 1815 you would have been a slaver.