When i read the Thomas Jefferson's declaration,i felt tht it's only made 4 American white males and not the...

Question

millions of females and non-white, born and bought up in US.What u guys think abt it?

Answer 1

Well since that was generally the way they thought back then.

You are correct.Women were second class citizens and slaves didnt have rights at all.

Answer 2

It was after all still only the 18th century. Women had few rights in law and were then seen merely as chattels, the property of their husbands.

As for black slaves, they counted for nothing save their ability to work long hours in the hot sun for a few crusts and potatoes.

Thomas Jefferson was a notorious slave owner, most of the slaves he owned were women with whom he had sex. They were in effect his 'sex slaves'.

But like I say, it was the 18th century and attitudes were quite different then.

Always remember that 'history is a foreign place' and when we go there we must not expect the people we find to be as we think they are [were], because in many cases that simply is not the case.

Slavery was big business from the 16th century on. The profits from the slave trade financed the Industrial Revolution here in UK.

Gotta ask yourself, where did all that money come from to suddenly build all them mills? Slavery, that's where from.

NOTE: slaves in the American Colonies were fed mainly a diet of wheat and sugar - the wheat home grown, the sugar imported [cheaply] from the slave colonies of the West Indies.

HISTORY: Unless you were born as I was in 1941, you probably have no experience of an air-raid. I have, but if you were not there, then you do not and neither did Thomas Jefferson, not even in his wildest nightmares, of which I hope he had many. Bad guy.

Answer 3

Originally, that was the case. The Constitution only guaranteed the rights of adult white males, and even then, the Founding Fathers originally were only thinking of landowners. But for the time, those were still a lot more rights than people in other countries had. But we've gotten a little more liberal over the years. African American men were finally given the same rights as other men in the 1800's, and they've kind of inferred that we women are human, too, even though they never passed the Equal Rights Amendment to admit it.

Answer 4

The declaration that you are talking about is not for anyone but the free european males of the United States. It does not cover any other type of person including the Indentured Servants from Europe. It was also aimed mainly at those of English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Dutch and Northern Rhine Stock as those where the more intergrated folk calling themselves part of the colonies.
As part of the problem was that the British Crown was refusing the large scale expansion of the Colonies at the expense of the Native Population or the intrusion onto French Soil (The Louisana Area of mid north America) the demand for the colonies to pay for the upkeep of troops on its soil to protect them from themselves as well as from the two groups of hostiles was another reason for the split, showing the short sighted bigotted action of the colonial mind in exploiting the non european races as much as possible.
This of course led to the Extermination of most of the Natives of North America along with the disgusting treatment of any Indentured persons like the Black Slaves, Chinese Labour, where treated and are still treated so bad in many of the backwater areas of the United States.

Answer 5

You can't take Thomas Jefferson's writings out of context.

At the time they were written, females didn't vote (that has changed now), slavery wasn't illegal (that has changed now) and the majority of land owners and powerful people were white males in a new and fledgling country (that too has changed now, although many will argue not enough yet.)

You can't say he was racist or bias on gender by applying the morals of the twenty first century to his writings in the eighteenth century.

People on Yahoo Answers always post "what if" scenarios and if you did one on Thomas Jefferson's attitude today, I for one feel he would be equal opportunity all the way.



g-day!

Answer 6

He attempted to free the slaves in the Declaration but was defeated. Even though he owned 100+ slaves he felt that as an institution it was corrupt and evil and financially unsound. (This isn't quite as liberal as it sounds- Jefferson was an ardent white supremacist [like most men of his times] who wanted blacks returned to Africa or settled in Central America once freed as he felt they'd rise up and destroy whites once liberated.) After the motion to free slaves was defeated by slaveowning delegates to the convention, Jefferson's writings on blacks and slavery became increasingly more racist.

Jefferson and Franklin and others toyed with the idea of extending the vote to women- they both knew extremely intelligent women whose knowledge and intellect far surpassed most men- but ultimately they and other delegates felt that women as a group weren't educated enough to vote. For that matter, Adams and Jefferson expressed major concerns over whether most PEOPLE were educated and informed enough to vote (and I'm not so sure those concerns [about people in general, not women] were unfounded).

It would have been almost inconceivable to have felt women were the equal of men and blacks the equal of whites at this time. While even at the time there were people who condemned slavery and championed rights for women, in general it was a racist and misogynistic time by our standards and a person we'd think of as a bigot may well have been a liberal by the standards of his day.

Answer 7

You're absolutely right. Thomas Jefferson wrote the declaration, which was in actuality somewhat based on earlier documents from individual states, and its prose about all men being created Equal, whilst being waited on hand and foot by his slaves. He was in fact the 3rd largest slave owner in his county, and by the time he rose to prominence in the political scene he was an accomplished slave owner and trader, nevermind the whole Sally Hemmings thing.

Answer 8

It is the time it was written in. Woman were still thought of as property. Only having rights if there husband died. Blacks were slaves. Most had never seen anyone from Asia. So , yes it was made for white males.

Answer 9

um, Thomas Jefferson wasn't American when he wrote it, he was English. I figure Tom was more the idea man, and like most politicians, never let facts get in the way of a pretty phrase like "All men are created equal."

Answer 10

ummm not new. a few others that he actually did want to free the slaves but he knew that if he did he would lose the south and there would probably another civil war. as for the females, some women did try to get him to remember them when he was going to write the declaration but he just didn't do it.

Answer 11

Similarly if you read MLK 'I have a dream' speech, you will also notice that this also excludes females.
Eg: “sons of former slaves and sons of former slave owners”
“black men and white men”
Such omissions are not uncommon throughout history, it's just that women were not considered as equal as men until the last quarter of the twentieth century.