Haile’s Reviews > Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America > Status Update

Honestly I’m considering DNF-ing this book, which I rarely do on purpose. The author seems far too keen to excuse and forgive the Jefferson family’s relationship with slavery. There was just a whole paragraph (or more) about how Martha and her husband Tom didn’t *want* to enslave people - in fact, they hated slavery! - but it’s just not possible to make a living in Virginia without slavery so they did it…against their will, I guess? Yes, Thomas Randolph had one of the largest enslaved populations in the county, but he had no choice! After all, it must have been really embarrassing for Martha to explain to her French friends why she had slaves, so we really should feel bad for her and her unfortunate circumstances.

Give me a break. I can’t pretend to know everything about life at the time or the options available to people in their position. But if they were really that opposed to slavery, they had choices. At the very least, if it was truly impossible to make a living without slaves in Virginia, they could have moved somewhere else. Like, oh, I don’t know, New York, where one could practice a number of professions - namely, the law, which just so happens to be what Thomas apparently *wanted* to study before he decided to stay in Virginia instead. They were wealthy, white, and the daughter and son-in-law of the vice president. They had more choices than almost anyone else in the country.