Best President in US History?

[RFayette]

The fetish of several members of this forum for an unrepentant slaveholder is mildly disturbing.

Are you part of the "slave owner = automatic HP" crowd? If you are, by the same logic I guess we must never vote for FDR because he put Japanese Americans in camps. Or perhaps there's more to a president than doing or being one horrific thing/action...

There's a difference between doing something, however horrific, because you believe it to be necessary for the survival of the nation, and doing something because you hope to profit personally from it.

You have to consider things in the context of the time......  It's a lot easier to oppose something when it's widely condemned and completely illegal.  It's certainly not good many Founders had slaves, but that doesn't mean we should automatically call them HPs. 

Who knows, we may be calling people "unrepentant meat eaters" 500 years in the future.  We don't know what moral directions society would turn.

[RFayette]

The fetish of several members of this forum for an unrepentant slaveholder is mildly disturbing.

Are you part of the "slave owner = automatic HP" crowd? If you are, by the same logic I guess we must never vote for FDR because he put Japanese Americans in camps. Or perhaps there's more to a president than doing or being one horrific thing/action...

There's a difference between doing something, however horrific, because you believe it to be necessary for the survival of the nation, and doing something because you hope to profit personally from it.

You have to consider things in the context of the time......  It's a lot easier to oppose something when it's widely condemned and completely illegal.  It's certainly not good many Founders had slaves, but that doesn't mean we should automatically call them HPs. 

Who knows, we may be calling people "unrepentant meat eaters" 500 years in the future.  We don't know what moral directions society would turn.

That logic would hold up better if there wasn't a significant movement for the abolition of slavery during Jefferson's lifetime. As it was, Jefferson survived to see the elimination of slavery in all states north of the Mason-Dixon, as well as the prohibition of the international slave trade. Half the country hasn't yet banned meat.

Good point, but Jefferson did free some of his slaves and was a relatively kind slaveholder for a Southern Planter.  He also did want to see that slavery would be eventually eliminated, unlike many a Southern politician of the time.