Atoning for America’s ‘Original Sin’ at James Madison’s Montpelier An exhibition that traverses the president’s Virginia plantation, ‘The Mere Distinction of Colour,’ considers Madison’s role in slavery and the founding of the nation. By Edward Rothstein see note please
https://www.wsj.com/articles/atoning-for-americas-original-sin-at-james-madisons-montpelier-1496869382?mod=nwsrl_wonder_land
I visited Montpelier last fall in the company of a Professor of History and I was dismayed that the entire tour was devoted to his ownership of slaves and virtually nothing to his contribution to our enduring democracy …rsk
“The effect is a bit like dismissing the Magna Carta because it catered to distasteful 13th-century English barons. But Madison is, in many ways, the least understood founder. In his work in the Continental Congress and on the Constitution, he served as philosopher, negotiator, deal-maker. After being thoroughly upset by how his ideas were altered, he remained a passionate advocate of the Constitution. He wrote much of it, along with the Bill of Rights. He nudged and argued and lobbied. He gave in, rebelled, waged war, celebrated democracy and abhorred it. He was, in short, this nation’s first brilliant politician. And he is remembered, surely, not because of the slaves he owned but because of the mechanisms he helped establish that ultimately led to their slow and pained liberation. But we, like Madison, are creatures of our time, so that idea might have to wait.”
If you stand on an upper-level patio of James Madison’s finely restored home at his Virginia plantation, Montpelier, and look westward, you see a sweep of open lawn leading to fields and the Blue Ridge mountains in the distance; one of Madison’s visitors noted that the setting sun’s rays were cast into the home with great effect.
Madison (1751-1836), who became the nation’s fourth president, was aware that something was awry. In the early 1780s, we learn, Madison believed one of his slaves was “thoroughly tainted” by exposure to free blacks in Philadelphia, but Madison affirmed that he would not punish him for “coveting that liberty for which we have paid the price of so much blood, and have proclaimed so often to be the right, & worthy the pursuit, of every human being.” That tension would not lessen over time; nor would Madison’s irresolute hope to wash away this “original sin.”
In this, Madison was, unfortunately, a man of his time. This 5,300-square-foot exhibition—created under the oversight of Christian Cotz , Montepelier’s director of education, with designs by Proun Design and Northern Light Productions—begins with reminders of slavery’s centrality. In a panel showing American presidents we are asked to push a button to see which presidents owned slaves. Thirteen of the first 18 light up. George Washington, we are told, owned 318 slaves. Zachary Taylor was “the last president to enslave people while in office.” Ulysses S. Grant, who freed his only slave in 1859, was the last president to have ever owned any.
The effect is a bit like dismissing the Magna Carta because it catered to distasteful 13th-century English barons. But Madison is, in many ways, the least understood founder. In his work in the Continental Congress and on the Constitution, he served as philosopher, negotiator, deal-maker. After being thoroughly upset by how his ideas were altered, he remained a passionate advocate of the Constitution. He wrote much of it, along with the Bill of Rights. He nudged and argued and lobbied. He gave in, rebelled, waged war, celebrated democracy and abhorred it. He was, in short, this nation’s first brilliant politician.
And he is remembered, surely, not because of the slaves he owned but because of the mechanisms he helped establish that ultimately led to their slow and pained liberation. But we, like Madison, are creatures of our time, so that idea might have to wait.
. CONTINUE AT SITE
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