**Race Card Alert** Smithsonian To Host Exhibit On Jefferson, Slavery

[thoughtone]

source: Huffington Post


WASHINGTON -- The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture is planning an exhibit with Thomas Jefferson's Monticello to explore the third president's history with slavery.

Museum officials say "Jefferson and Slavery at Monticello: Paradox of Liberty" will tackle the sensitive subject of slavery during the American Revolution. Jefferson called slavery an "abominable crime" but was a lifelong slaveholder.

The exhibit announced Tuesday will open in January at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The black history museum is under development and is slated to open in its own building on the National Mall in 2015.

At Monticello in Virginia, curators are beginning a long-term restoration of Mulberry Row, which included 21 dwellings for enslaved and free workers at the plantation. An exhibit on Mulberry Row opens in February.

 

[SPECTRE1]

All of the key player pushing for Independence, The Father of the Constitution (James Madison), Thomas Jefferson (Declaration of Independence), and George Washington were slave holders. England banned slavery in 1772 and 1776 there is the American Revolution. Jefferson expressed his desire not to have freed slaves living around him as citizens and shipping them back to Africa if they couldn't be exploited as slaves. The North benefited tremendously from Slavery and probably didn't want slaves being turned into citizens

You can't tell me that somebody like Jefferson that had 700 slaves wasn't affected by the ban, the history behind this is suspect. The irony is the continuance of slavery that started in 1619 could have been the catalyst for so called freedom and democracy than oppression from England.


Another suspect historical perspective: Abraham Lincoln is credited with freeing slaves but belong to the American Colonization Society. ACS is an organization that 'encourages' freed black to return back to Africa. I think his model for freedom was to end slavery and engage in ethnic cleansing by 'shipping' blacks to Africa into Liberia. Unfortunately he was gunned down, no way to know what his intentions; but there is significant clues in his membership to ACS.


In any event, the truth seems to not be history; history shouldn't be used as propaganda tool to enhance your image.

 

[SPECTRE1]

Early in his presidency, Abraham Lincoln tried repeatedly to arrange resettlement of the kind the ACS supported, but each arrangement failed (See Abraham Lincoln on slavery). By 1863, following the use of black troops, most scholars believe that Lincoln abandoned the idea. Biographer Stephen B. Oates has observed that Lincoln thought it immoral to ask black soldiers to fight for the US and then to remove them to Africa after their military service. Others, such as the historian Michael Lind, believe that as late 1864 or 1865, Lincoln continued to hold out hope for colonization, noting that he allegedly asked Attorney general Edward Bates if the Reverend James Mitchell could stay on as "your assistant or aid in the matter of executing the several acts of Congress relating to the emigration or colonizing of the freed Blacks."[16] Mitchell, a former state director of the ACS in Indiana, had been appointed by Lincoln in 1862 to oversee the government's colonization programs.