1) One of the many things one learns studying slavery is that the system could be adapted to fit the personalities and the preferences of individual enslavers. There was no one way of doing things, and that flexibility allowed the institution to survive and grow. 2) Enslavers were acting according to their self-interest and self-conceptions. It is still imperative to consider, to the extent we can, how the enslaved responded to the differing personalities and circumstances they faced.

1) As usual, fascinated by phenomena. Trying to figure out what’s going on with the impatience about retold stories. Why get upset if others want to have the same story told to them periodically in different venues? 2) We don’t do that as much with music. I have multiple versions of Beethoven’s Ninth— Bernstein, Von Karajan. I’ve gone to see popular singers multiple times, and heard them singing the same songs. Why couldn’t people respond to authors in the same way?

1)This is a great piece by @jbouie. It's not a surprise, but it's so clear how so much American strife has grown out of questions about Black people's place in the country-- should we be/remain enslaved, should be we citizens? If so, first or second-class?

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1414923443179606017

2) These questions often get dressed up as discussions about other matters-- Federalism, states' rights. Only sometimes do people say the quiet part out loud. Andrew Johnson said it out loud. The government of the United States was to be a "white man's government".

1)In my latest book, On Juneteenth, I finally get to say what I’ve longed to say about William Faulkner’s oft-quoted statement from his novel Requiem for A Nun, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past”—that it’s not true. The past is dead, I say, but its echoes remain. 2)What has bothered me about the quote, besides untruth, is that it's linked in my mind with another Faulkner quote about the battle of Gettysburg. From Intruder in Dust:

1)Thanks to all you kind people who sent condolences to me upon Mr. Jordan's death. The tweets, emails, texts have meant a lot. He was a major, major figure in my life. I feel privileged to have gotten to work with him, though the work most often seemed like play. 2) When he asked me to work on his memoirs with him, there were a number of people who counseled against it. I had just started being a historian, and wouldn't being a "ghostwriter" take away from my credibility? I had to get to the Hemingses, after all.

1)This is my 4th of July remembrance.Back in Jan. 1995, I decided to write book about the way historians had written about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.I was dissatisfied with the biased consideration of the topic.The idea was to look at all the historiography on the topic.

https://twitter.com/FrankCogliano/status/1279435901609918465

2) Writing in a white heat, and enjoying every second-- I sometimes woke up in mid-sentence-- I finished the manuscript in April. I mainly wanted to send it to people who I thought would disagree with what I was saying--no real point in preaching to the choir.

1) What a wonderful conference, #Global1776. I would never have imagined spending two days discussing Adam Smith’s, The Wealth of Nations. I would never have imagined reading the whole thing, either. But it was quite something. 2) It was great to hear from people who know lots about Smith who were able to contextualize him and his world in important ways. Of course a great deal happened in 1776, the Declaration and the founding of the USA, for example. We will be working our way to that.

@onceRepub @KevinLevin TJ refused to be the executor the for a couple of reasons, but chief among them was that Kosciusko wrote multiple wills, one that revoked the will talked about here. TJ, at 74, did not want to take on a lawsuit. He had just lost a major one the year before. @onceRepub @KevinLevin He guessed right. Disputes over the will lasted until the 1850s, when the Supreme Court declared that the bequest had been revoked in the 2nd out of the 4 wills Kosciusko, for whatever reason, left.

By all means there should be a History Day, particularly as this sounds to be something that was already in the works. But American history is talked about every day on social media, in newspapers, on TV, magazines, in books that people read and discuss. And yet, here we are... Perhaps I misunderstood what National History Day was to be about. I took it to be a proposed antidote to a current day political problem.If it's just to remind us of our past, and its connection to the present, that's very different from the political responses I raised.

1) The idea of a history teach-in is attractive, however I would favor historians acting as active citizens—registering voters, getting involved in local activism, politics, things like that. 2) This is not a problem of history. This is a problem of politics and citizenship. We should tap into those statuses at this moment. Voter suppression is real. Action, not words are needed.

1)Some thoughts about Sally Hemings. It makes no sense to think of her life out of the context of her family's story. She was a part of a web of relationships put in place before she was born.Her specific context can only be discerned by garnering details from the archives. 2) Simply looking at a statute book and/or looking at other people's lives, and extrapolating to create a picture of SH's life, will not do. She cannot be taken, nor should any one person be taken, as the embodiment of the system of American slavery.

1) For those who think I hate the Declaration of Independence: I do not. The Douglass speech calls us, then and now to work, to work to achieve its promise, whenever we fall short. The Declaration, even more than the Constitution, is a living document 2)Jefferson believed that. In the last months of his life, when he was too ill to attend a 50th Anniversary celebration of the signing of the Declaration, he wrote of the document’s promise:

1) How history surprises. Got a query the other day from an editor at The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton) about a reference in TJ's Summary Journal of Letters. TJ records receiving a letter on Nov. 19 1805 from Critta Bowles. I almost fell out of my chair. 2) Critta Bowles was the married name of Critta Hemings, sister of Sally Hemings and daughter of Elizabeth Hemings and Johns Wayles. We knew she was married to Zacharia Bowles whenTJ died in 1826. We had indications they had married before that, but this sets an early time.

1) I gather some see my thread about some members of the Hemings family as an attempt to absolve TJ of having enslaved people, as if giving “preferences” to a handful of people could ever do that. 2) My goal is to understand and illuminate the life of some members of this family. For many years, people (myself included) have acted as if we know nothing of Sally Hemings’s vision of her life.

1) A point on generalizing and slavery. The experiences of James and Sally Hemings, and others in the family, are fascinating. They tell us something about slavery, but in particular ways. 2) For example, one of the most poignant parts of Madison Hemings's recollection is when he says that he and his siblings were "always permitted to be with [their] mother." We know kids follow their mother everywhere they can. At 68, Hemings remembered that as important.