Carl Byker: Was Jackson a vicious person for holding slaves or just a product of his time?
[Carl Byker is the producer of "Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil and the Presidency."]
After his pastor came under attack last week and before his historic speech on Tuesday, Barack Obama put his finger on the crux of the issue: "We've got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country," he said. "We've got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding."
Recently, I spent most of a year in one of the places where such emotions have created the "racial stalemate" that Obama spoke of Tuesday. I was in Tennessee making a PBS biography of President Andrew Jackson, and while we were filming at the Hermitage, Jackson's home and plantation outside Nashville, I discovered that the exhibits were being updated. One thing being changed was how slavery was discussed.
For decades, the 200,000 school kids, retirees and vacationing families who visit the Hermitage each year have been told that Jackson was a "good slave owner." The historical justification for this description was that Jackson did not sadistically abuse his slaves or sell their children.
But today, there's little support among historians for any "good slave owner" designation. In Jackson's case, the fact is that he owned more than 140 human beings. And as historian Bobby Lovett of Tennessee State University puts it: "To enslave another human being, you can't be a good person. You have to be a pretty tough, vicious, mean person to hold another person or another 140 people in slavery for all of their lives."
And so, in 2007, the Hermitage began focusing on how brutal and hopeless the lives of the slaves who lived there were, instead of on how "good" their master was. And that's when things started to get ugly.
For years, Dave McArdle loved dressing up as Andrew Jackson, and visitors to the Hermitage delighted in McArdle's folksy way of bringing "Old Hickory" to life. McArdle is also the spitting image of Jackson, and we cast him as Jackson in our film. But just after we finished shooting, startling news arrived: McArdle had resigned from the job he loved -- the job for which he was seemingly born -- because he refused to work for an organization that made Jackson look bad because he owned slaves.
Soon after, we found out that McArdle held something close to the majority view in Tennessee. Our PBS biography of Jackson, which shared the Hermitage's new approach to slavery, has been attacked by white Tennesseans at screenings, in letters to newspapers and e-mails to PBS stations. One viewer wrote: "I am outraged at the way you and professor Bobby Lovett, who appears in your show, portray Jackson's ownership of slaves as 'evil.' That kind of thinking is what I call 'present-ism,' applying the standards of today to Americans who lived in the past."
And there it is. Bitterness and misunderstanding. A racial stalemate. Lovett is black, and I'll hazard a guess that most black Americans would consider his statement that it takes a "vicious, mean person" to enslave another person for their entire life pretty obvious.
But it's not so obvious to many white Americans. Even the lead academic advisor to our film, Daniel Feller of the University of Tennessee, doesn't think it's fair to see all slaveholders as "vicious, mean" people. ...
Read entire article at LAT
After his pastor came under attack last week and before his historic speech on Tuesday, Barack Obama put his finger on the crux of the issue: "We've got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country," he said. "We've got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding."
Recently, I spent most of a year in one of the places where such emotions have created the "racial stalemate" that Obama spoke of Tuesday. I was in Tennessee making a PBS biography of President Andrew Jackson, and while we were filming at the Hermitage, Jackson's home and plantation outside Nashville, I discovered that the exhibits were being updated. One thing being changed was how slavery was discussed.
For decades, the 200,000 school kids, retirees and vacationing families who visit the Hermitage each year have been told that Jackson was a "good slave owner." The historical justification for this description was that Jackson did not sadistically abuse his slaves or sell their children.
But today, there's little support among historians for any "good slave owner" designation. In Jackson's case, the fact is that he owned more than 140 human beings. And as historian Bobby Lovett of Tennessee State University puts it: "To enslave another human being, you can't be a good person. You have to be a pretty tough, vicious, mean person to hold another person or another 140 people in slavery for all of their lives."
And so, in 2007, the Hermitage began focusing on how brutal and hopeless the lives of the slaves who lived there were, instead of on how "good" their master was. And that's when things started to get ugly.
For years, Dave McArdle loved dressing up as Andrew Jackson, and visitors to the Hermitage delighted in McArdle's folksy way of bringing "Old Hickory" to life. McArdle is also the spitting image of Jackson, and we cast him as Jackson in our film. But just after we finished shooting, startling news arrived: McArdle had resigned from the job he loved -- the job for which he was seemingly born -- because he refused to work for an organization that made Jackson look bad because he owned slaves.
Soon after, we found out that McArdle held something close to the majority view in Tennessee. Our PBS biography of Jackson, which shared the Hermitage's new approach to slavery, has been attacked by white Tennesseans at screenings, in letters to newspapers and e-mails to PBS stations. One viewer wrote: "I am outraged at the way you and professor Bobby Lovett, who appears in your show, portray Jackson's ownership of slaves as 'evil.' That kind of thinking is what I call 'present-ism,' applying the standards of today to Americans who lived in the past."
And there it is. Bitterness and misunderstanding. A racial stalemate. Lovett is black, and I'll hazard a guess that most black Americans would consider his statement that it takes a "vicious, mean person" to enslave another person for their entire life pretty obvious.
But it's not so obvious to many white Americans. Even the lead academic advisor to our film, Daniel Feller of the University of Tennessee, doesn't think it's fair to see all slaveholders as "vicious, mean" people. ...