Re: The War on Pleasure

"JoatSimeon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (Aaron Brezenski)
>
> >They *went into formal independence* knowingly compromising their
principles
> to grab independence, instead of holding out
> for the additional anti-slavery and being crushed.
>
> -- depends on who "they" were.  Most Southerners then and later closely
> associated slavery with freedom -- that is, freedom for white men was
largely a
> product of slavery for black ones.
>
> In the mind of the late 18th century, "freedom" involved a good deal
more than
> the franchise.
>
> It meant social and economic freedom as well -- "independency".

A situation directly analagous to Athens from what I understand.

> You couldn't be really free unless you were economically independent, at
least
> self-employed, head of a property-owning household.
>
> That's what's behind Jefferson's much-publicized admiration for the
'yeomen' an
> 'virtuous freeholders', btw.  It wasn't nearly as eccentric a position
then as
> it is now.

Jefferson himself never freed his slaves, like Washington eventually did.
There is every indication he was addicted to the economic freedom that
owning slaves granted him.  He wouldn't have been able to build Monticello
or support himself in Paris for years except for the free labor he got
from slaves.  From what I can tell he compromised his personal beliefs in
the pursuit of his personal comfort and economic expediency.