Madison's Lessons in Racism

If slavery was a neutral thing for most colonials and early Americans, the Founding Fathers are on record with a position. On the one end Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton were against it; in the middle Thomas Jefferson, while believing that enslaved blacks should be free, also believed they were inferior — and never found a way to divorce himself and his way of life from his Monticello plantation and his little mountain of slavery.

There is a more nuanced middle inhabited by James Madison — slave-owner, political philosopher and practical repositioner, three-fifths-er, and Father of the Constitution — who truly believed that Africans were equal to whites yet never found a way to let go of the peculiar institution enjoyed by the South. See Noah Feldman on James Madison’s Lessons in Racism (29-Oct-2017) for a look at Madison and his evolving political positions vs. his unchanging personal one.

JDN | 1-Nov-2017

Summer or winter the men of the [British] line regiments wore the same heavy greatcoats with sleeves tight as stockings. The stock, or waistcoat, was equally tight and had a high stiff collar which forced the soldier to keep his head up, even when the sun was in his eyes. His pants were as tight as possible and the gaiters, put on wet, frequently shrank so that they hampered the circulation in his legs. From the belt around his waist hung his bayonet scabbard which knocked against his calves as he walked. On his right hip, supported by a broad, constricting belt which ran over his shoulder and across his chest, was his rectangular cartridge box, which interfered with his haversack, if, as now [Boston, 1775], he was carrying his full equipment.

— Thomas Fleming

Now We Are Enemies: The Story of Bunker Hill (1960; reissued 2010)