Posted on 09/06/2021 9:32:50 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1732, a Virginia slave entered American presidential lore at the end of a noose.
The Madisons were “planters, and among the respectable though not the most opulent class”* resident in Virginia from the 1650s or so — and would in time bequeath the new American Republic its fourth president, James Madison.
We are concerned for today’s post with President Madison’s paternal grandfather, Ambrose Madison. Alas, concern will not necessarily translate to elucidation, for most of the Madison family’s records and correspondence were destroyed in the 19th century: the first Madison generations are shadowy historical figures. Ann Miller has pieced together the fragments in the short book “The Short Life and Strange Death of Ambrose Madison”, published by the Orange County (Va.) Historical Society, and that is the primary source for this post.**
Ambrose Madison was a local grandee of King and Queen County, with landholdings elsewhere in Virginia; it was Ambrose Martin who in the 1720s acquired (via his father-in-law, a land surveyor) the Orange County grounds that would become the great Madison estate Montpelier.
In 1732, Madison moved his family to the Montpelier property. By that time, he controlled 10,000 acres in present-day Orange and Greene Counties, and was gobbling up land elsewhere — like the new frontier of westward settlement, the Piedmont.
And of course, Madison owned human beings, too. The inventory of his estate from 1732 lists 29 black slaves by their first (sole) names: ten adult men, five women, and 14 children.
In the summer of 1732, Ambrose Madison took ill and started wasting away towards death. The fact was apparent to Madison and those around him; the last weeks of his life were taken up in settling affairs. (He made out a will on July 31.)...
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
Neat story, I didn’t know a slave poisoned Madison’s grandpa, presuming he actually was poisoned.
Pompey, played by Woody Strode in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
I’ve always wondered about that name, Pompey, in Liberty Valance. Now I wonder if the screenwriter knew this story.
Liberty Valance. Great movie. Love the Duke. Love Woody Strode.
Thanks for posting.
Interesting story, even with the gratuitous slap at the 3/5ths compromise.
"...We must deny the fact, that slaves are considered merely as property, and in no respect whatever as persons. The true state of the case is, that they partake of both these qualities: being considered by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other respects as property … Let the compromising expedient of the Constitution be mutually adopted, which regards them as inhabitants, but as debased by servitude below the equal level of free inhabitants, which regards the slave as divested of two fifths of the man..."
There were no quotes around this part, so I have to assume that this is the sloppy and ignorant work of the "author" of that web page and that Madison said this.
No doubt the stilted phrasing has to do with the fact that Madison was a politician who actually LIVED on those times, and in the Federalist Papers, was endeavoring to capture the approval of both abolitionists and middle of the road citizens, and as many middle of the road citizens from other states (including middle of the road citizens from states with large slave populations) as could be convinced that the Constitution should be ratified.
As he correctly (for that time) stated: "...that they partake of both these qualities: being considered by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other respects as property..."
That would be Madison's excuse for his stilted language. To me, it is clear that Madison was straddling the issue so as not to put off potential acceptance of the Constitution then under consideration for adoption.
Leftists today have no such excuse. They have a few hundred years of context.
There is no greater indicator of the utter historical ignorance of Leftists (and most especially and embarrassingly, black Leftists) when they deride the 3/5ths Compromise as an product of racism, when it was exactly the opposite.
Conservatives understand this, and it fills me with disgusted amazement bordering on humor to see Leftists who try to sound educated put their foot squarely into this hole.
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