“…She gave him a dose of morphine and whiskey.” (Elinore Rupert, Part 11)

Sally Hemings’s Quarters (image credit: monticello.org)

Someone On The Internet said, “Studying history will sometimes make you feel extremely angry. If studying history always makes you feel proud and happy, you probably aren’t studying history.”

I must be doing it right!

I had forgotten that Elinore was born and raised in the antebellum South, but she reminded me with her Christmas letter and racist party “game.”   As I was trying to figure out a way out of recording it,  I remembered why the American Revolution became more interesting to me.  It was because I learned more about the Founding Fathers in their full humanity, and not as demigods in bronze and marble.  You’ll be glad to know that there are no demigods in this episode.  Only fallible human beings.

Additional Reading on the Founders, slavery, and the African Americans mentioned in the episode:

The Founding Fathers on Slavery (battlefields.org)

James Madison and Slavery (including Billey) (princeton.edu)

Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (monticello.org)

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (monticello.org)

James Hemings (chef) (monticello.org)

Benjamin Banneker (whitehousehistory.gov)

Letter from Benjamin Banneker to Thomas Jefferson (archives.gov)

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Banneker (archives.gov)

Phillis Wheatley (poetryfoundation.org)

Phillis Wheatley and George Washington (gilderlherman.org) 

Letter from George Washington to Phillis Wheatley (loc.gov)