david barton – Page 50 – Warren Throckmorton

Dear David Barton: Virginia Law Allowed Manumission of Slaves After 1782

In his pulled-from-publication book, The Jefferson Lies, David Barton took the position that Virginia law did not allow Thomas Jefferson to free his slaves. In our book on Jefferson, Getting Jefferson Right, Michael Coulter and I demonstrated that slave owners were allowed to manumit (free) slaves after Virginia lawmakers passed the 1782 Law on Manumission. However, Barton keeps spreading the misinformation.
In February, Barton told Charis Bible College students George Mason was not allowed to free his slaves (at 1:38 into the video). Prior to 1782, slaves could only be freed by the Virginia legislature due to some meritorious service by the slave. Mason died in 1791 so his window of opportunity to free his slaves came near the end of his life. However, despite his strong rhetoric against slavery, he did not manumit his slaves in life or at his death. Barton told the Bible college students Mason didn’t free his slaves “because in the state of Virginia, it was illegal to free your slaves.” Not so.
More recently, he told the pastor of Calvary Chapel Jack Hibbs that Virginia law didn’t allow manumission. It is beyond me why he keeps saying this when it is an easy to look up Virginia’s manumission law as well as the many deeds of manumission which were filed after 1782 (Utah State’s Michael Nicholls is the go to person on this). In prior posts, I have pointed out the amazing story of Robert Carter III who began a process of manumitting more than 450 slaves beginning in 1791.
Barton’s remarks to Hibbs on his show Real Life with Jack Hibbs are below. I provide the video and link to the transcript.

Barton: So just—Let me jump in again on that because one of the blemishes is Washington owned slaves, Jefferson owned slaves, they could not have been good people. It’s interesting that Washington who did own slaves and inherited slaves and Thomas Jefferson inherited most of his slaves when he was fourteen, he got almost two hundred slaves between his inheritance and his and his in-laws. Virginia law made it illegal to free your slaves.
Hibbs: Listen why, yeah.

At 14, Jefferson was not allowed to free his slaves. As an aside, Jefferson did not inherit most of his slaves at 14. This is easily checked by examining Jefferson’s Farm Book. He acquired many of his slave through inheritance from his father-in-law John Wayles. By 1774, Jefferson listed “187 in all.”
Barton asserts that “Virginia law made it illegal to free your slaves.” Before 1782, that was true; after 1782, Virginia allowed manumissions. Jefferson owned slaves until he died (1826) and so it is misleading to say Jefferson could not have freed slaves. In fact, he did. He freed two slaves before he died and then he freed five more in his will. Barton is simply misleading his audience.
In The Jefferson Lies, Barton made the claim that Virginia law did not allow manumission. In a prior post, I pointed out that Barton cited the Virginia law of 1782 in his book but left out the part of the law which allowed slave owners to free slaves by a deed of manumission. Here is what Barton cites from the law in his book:

[T]hose persons who are disposed to emancipate their slaves may be empowered so to do, and…it shall hereafter be lawful for any person, by his or her last will and testament…to emancipate and set free, his or her slaves.

Now, here is the entire relevant section of the 1782 law on manumission:

[T]hose persons who are disposed to emancipate their slaves may be empowered so to do, and the same hath been judged expedient under certain restrictions: Be it therefore enacted, That it shall hereafter be lawful for any person, by his or her last will and testament, or by any other instrument in writing, under his or her hand and seal, attested and proved in the county court by two witnesses, or acknowledged by the party in the court of the county where he or she resides to emancipate and set free, his or her slaves, or any of them, who shall thereupon be entirely and fully discharged from the performance of any contract entered into during servitude, and enjoy as full freedom as if they had been particularly named and freed by this act.

Note the second selection above in bold print. This is the relevant portion of the 1782 law Barton omits. This section allowed living slave owners to release their slaves by filing a deed. Emancipated slaves needed a document which was recorded according to the law as proof of their status. This law allowed slave owners when they were alive to free their slaves, provided slaves were of sound body and older than eighteen if a female and older than 21 if a male, but not above the age of 45. Thus, Jefferson could have freed many of his slaves within the law while he was alive. Not only was Jefferson legally permitted to free his slaves, he actually freed two slaves in the 1790s, Robert (1794) and James (1796) Hemings.

Barton clearly knows what the law on manumission said but chose to remove the part of the law that contradicts his statements to the public. Even though this has been pointed out, he still fails to tell audiences that Virginia law allowed manumission.

While it would have been economically difficult for Jefferson and Mason and Washington to manumit large numbers of human beings, it is simply false to say there was not an opportunity to do it.

The Monticello website explains:

DID JEFFERSON FREE HIS SLAVES?

During his lifetime, Jefferson freed two enslaved men. At his death, Jefferson bequeathed freedom to five men in his will. At least three other slaves were unofficially freed when Beverly Hemings, Harriet Hemings, and James Hemings, son of (Critta Hemings Bowles) to leave Monticello without pursuit.

A single paragraph cannot do justice to the issue of Jefferson’s failure to free more than a handful of his slaves. Some of the possible reasons include: the economic value of his human property (at certain times, his slaves were mortgaged and thus could not be freed or sold); his lifelong view that emancipation had to go hand-in-hand with expatriation of the freed slaves; his paternalistic belief that slaves were incapable of supporting themselves in freedom and his fear they would become burden to society; his belief in gradual measures operating through the legal processes of government; and, after 1806, a state law that required freed slaves to leave Virginia within a year. Jefferson wrote that this law did not “permit” Virginians to free their slaves; he apparently thought that, for an enslaved African American, slavery was preferable to freedom far from one’s home and family.

Jefferson did free slaves. It might have been economically difficult for him to free the rest of them at various times between 1782 and 1806 but Virginia law allowed it. Barton misleads the audience when he says without qualification that the law did not permit it. Jefferson said in a letter that the law did not permit Virginians to free slaves, but he wrote this in 1814, long after the laws had changed to make it difficult to emancipate slaves. Barton then has to account for George Washington’s actions to free his slaves at death in 1799.

They would not let you free your slaves, now there was a period of reprieve for a short time starting in 1782 and so when George Washington died he freed all of his slaves on his death, there was a loophole in the law and the legislature goes “oh my gosh we didn’t see that,” they changed the law, so Jefferson was not even able to free his slaves on his death.

This is a misleading story from The Jefferson Lies. Barton here mentions “a period of reprieve for a short time starting in 1782” and then correctly says that George Washington freed his slaves in his will in 1799. However, the “loophole in the law” is a fiction. As noted above, Jefferson freed five slaves at his death via his will in 1826. There was no loophole. Virginia made it more difficult for freed slaves after 1806 because freed slaves needed to leave the state. For some slaves, this was deterrent because it meant leaving family.
There are many other things Barton told Hibbs and his audience that are inaccurate. For now, I hope it is clear that Virginia law allowed manumission of slaves after 1782 and that many such slaves were freed by owners in Virginia.

Here's What David Barton Calls Vindication of His Historical Claims

Recently, I questioned the way World Net Daily writer John Aman characterized David Barton’s defamation suit against W.S. Smith, a writer for Examiner.com who criticized Barton’s historical claims. Aman wrote:

Barton also won in court against W.S. Smith, a self-described atheist who published an online article in 2010 calling Barton “an admitted liar” whose “books have been picked apart time and again and exposed as fallacious.”

Smith was a no-show throughout the lawsuit, disappearing shortly after Barton sued him in September 2011. Barton’s legal team hired a private detective and published notices in Texas newspapers statewide in an unsuccessful attempt to find the elusive writer.

Smith disappeared after he boasted, in an email to Huffington Post columnist Chris Rodda that he was “happy to meet” Barton in court “because the truth in [sic] on my side.”

“If this is what you want, Mr. Barton, then let’s do it,” Smith said. “Bring it on. Bring it on. Bring it on. The path you’ve chosen will lead only to your embarrassment and ruin.”

Three years later, a Texas court found Smith’s assertions about David Barton both false and defamatory.

It is true that a W.S. Smith was dismissed from the suit via the filing of a notice of non-suit. However, the reason the man was dismissed was because he was the wrong W.S. Smith. The W. S. Smith served with the defamation complaint was not the Examiner.com writer. See this explanation from a letter to the Parker County TX judge.

Thus, the W.S. Smith of Keller, TX was released from the suit. I am sorry for the error in my original reporting and have made a correction in that post. The Parker County TX records I had access to at the time did not provide that information.

So what happened to the writer of the Examiner.com article? Apparently, he disappeared and did not answer any communications from the court. Mr. Aman’s description is accurate until the last sentence in the block quote above: “Three years later, a Texas court found Smith’s assertions about David Barton both false and defamatory.”

W.S. Smith never turned up. In a case where a defendant doesn’t appear, Texas law provides that a judge can appoint an attorney to defend an absent defendant. However, Barton’s lawyers had another idea. They filed a motion for default judgment instead. Essentially, Barton asked the judge to find in Barton’s favor without the benefit of a trial. As you can see from the documents linked below, that is what the judge did.

First, read the argument Barton’s attorney made to Judge Quisenberry in the Motion for Final Default Judgment. It is too long to reproduce fully but the main requests and rationale are below.

Continue reading “Here's What David Barton Calls Vindication of His Historical Claims”

Pastor Jack Hibbs Takes Lessons from David Barton

The third video in Jack Hibb’s mini-series (see a previous post on a prior episode) with David Barton features Hibbs trying his hand at historical interpretation. Watch Hibbs talking about Washington and Jefferson as slave owners (for context, here is the complete segment).

In this clip, Hibbs makes some Bartonesque statements about Washington and Jefferson. Below I give the claim and then after that what I believe to be the truth. Hibbs said:
1. George Washington was one of the ten wealthiest men in American at the time.
This may be true. Washington was certainly wealthy and may have been in the top ten, although I cannot find a source to that effect.
2. George Washington was a good horseman.
I believe we can all agree to that.
3. Washington’s personal slave William (Billy) Lee was the second best horsemen after Washington.
By all accounts, until he injured his knees, Lee was able to keep up with Washington on horseback.
4. Washington would not allow his attendant (William Lee) to be called a slave.
I searched Washington’s papers for evidence relating to this claim and found nothing to support it. In his will, Washington called Lee, his “mulatto man William.” Elsewhere he called him “my mulatto servant Billy” (see the letter to the Connecticut Journal below). It is true that Washington provided good care for William Lee, but there was no confusion about Lee’s status as a servant.

5. A quarter or half of Washington’s estate went to William (Billy) Lee.
This is a fabrication. In Washington’s will, Lee was given his freedom, a monthly stipend, and a place to live at Mt. Vernon if he wanted it. The following excerpt is from Washington’s will:

And to my Mulatto man William (calling himself William Lee) I give immediate freedom; or if he should prefer it (on account of the accidents which ha<v>e befallen him, and which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment) to remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so: In either case however, I allow him an annuity of thirty dollars during his natural life, whic<h> shall be independent of the victuals and cloaths he has been accustomed to receive, if he chuses the last alternative; but in full, with his freedom, if he prefers the first; & this I give him as a test<im>ony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War.

Commendably, Washington recognized his “mulatto man William’s” faithful service and provided him with monthly living expenses and a place to stay. Lee did not own any part of the estate.
6. When Jefferson went to Europe (France), he took slaves with him.
That is true. Among the slaves, he took James Hemings, the older brother of Sally Hemings. Sally later accompanied Jefferson’s youngest child Polly to France to live with Jefferson.
7. It was illegal to educate slaves (according to the crown of England).
I don’t know why Hibbs mentioned the crown of England, but it was not illegal to educate slaves in Virginia for most of the period of time Jefferson owned slaves. Schools for Black children existed in Virginia and offered classes for slave and free children. For instance, Ann Wager was a teacher at a school in Williamsburg, VA from 1760 until 1774. Samuel Davies, a Presbyterian minister, educated slaves as a means of converting them to Christianity. By 1819, however, Virginia greatly restricted slave gatherings so that classes were viewed as possible meetings to plan rebellion. With most statements about the founders, it is important to specify a time period as a part of a claim. In the case of the founders, they lived and owned slaves when slaves could be educated and freed but also during times when such freedoms were restricted.
8. Jefferson had his slaves educated.
According to the Monticello website, there is no record of it. Jefferson’s family members taught some of the slaves to read but there is no record Jefferson did anything systematically to educate his slaves. In an aside to a friend, he proposed that his system of public education might include slave children but this never was implemented. Jefferson also believed that freed slaves should be educated before being removed to a colony outside of America. He favored somewhere in the West Indies.
9. Jefferson demanded that his slaves be well versed in the Scriptures.
I can’t find anything that supports this. If anything, Jefferson took a hands off attitude toward slave religious observances (again, see the Monticello website). Hibbs indicated that this claim is based on a visit to Monticello. I have also visited Monticello and I don’t recall anything I saw or heard there which indicated Jefferson demanded that his slaves be well versed in the Scriptures. As the Monticello website indicates, slaves were allowed to practice Christianity but they also included some of the religious beliefs learned prior to conversion.
There is something unseemly watching two privileged white males stretch the truth to make the white founding fathers seem like they were benevolent and good slave owners. While Washington and Jefferson appear to be better than some other slave owners, and Washington perhaps better than Jefferson, neither of them compare to Robert Carter who freed all of his slaves beginning in 1791. But no matter how good Washington and Jefferson were, I cannot understand why it is important for Hibbs and Barton to stretch the truth to make the situation seem better than it was. In the process, Hibbs’ audience is less educated and less equipped to speak intelligently than before the program began. How does this help the church achieve anything?

Who is Bringing David Barton to PA in March?

As noted in January, David Barton is speaking at Lancaster Bible College on March 19. A group called the Pennsylvania Pastor’s Network is listed as sponsor of the U-Turn conference, named after Barton’s book with George Barna (who is also slated to appear). Even though I have lived in PA for 20 years, I knew almost nothing about them. My initial thought is the PPN might be mainly the people advertising the event, and that seems to be the case.
According to Capstone Legacy Foundation operations manager, Kevin McKay, the PPN is a ministry affiliate of the Foundation but is not financially supported by it. McKay told me that Capstone does not exert operational control over the network. He declined to offer comment about Barton’s appearance on behalf of their ministry affiliate. The PPN is not incorporated and does not file a 990 form with the IRS, rather Capstone files for them.
I asked the PPN how many pastors made up their network but they did not provide a specific answer. Instead, PPN’s Amy Baisley told me that the network is a new effort and is “in communication with thousands of pastors.” However, there is no evidence that being “in communication” with many pastors translates into membership or involvement in the work of the PPN or parent group, the American Pastor’s Network. Currently, the PPN is one of three affiliates of the APN. PPN did not answer repeated requests for membership numbers. My perception based on their response to my inquiries is that the network is quite small.
I asked CEO of the PPN and the APN, Sam Rohrer, why he decided to invite David Barton to headline the conference as an historian in light of the controversy surrounding the accuracy of his historical claims. As an illustration, I used the removal of the The Jefferson Lies from publication by Thomas Nelson. In response, Rohrer told me:

Let me say that I appreciate you taking the time to express your concern about David Barton being part of the March 19 conference. Like you and me who write and speak a lot, we know how easy it is to for opponents or even overly zealous well intentioned people to parse a person’s words, and make a mountain out of a mole hill. The case that you cite is quite old, known by very few, discounted by most and without merit. I have personally talked with key people on this matter over the years and find the concerns to be short on substance and absent of malicious intent.
There is no one I’ve ever met who embraces Truth and integrity – including Jesus Christ – who hasn’t had someone try to build a case against them at some point. I believe that David is the kind of man that if he would ever mistakenly make an inaccurate statement that he would do his best to acknowledge it, make it right and go on. If only all those in positions of leadership would determine to do the same.

I asked the Capstone Legacy Foundation a similar question since the PPN is a ministry affiliate and they offered no comment.
It is hard to take Sam Rohrer’s comment seriously. Barton’s book was pulled less than three years ago in 2012. Rohrer has not talked to Jay Richards or me or anyone who could provide the rest of the story on the matter. However, I suppose this display of confirmation bias may help explain how Mr. Barton continues to be revered within certain evangelical circles while the rest of the world scratches their heads.
One of the reasons I continue to track Barton’s claims is because it makes a fascinating study in confirmation bias and in-group loyalties. I continue to be amazed at how Barton can make easily debunked claims like crime has gone up 694% since 1963 and that he played basketball at Oral Roberts University and that the Constitution quotes the Bible verbatim, and so many more without arousing concern among his true believers.
Barton recently worked with Rohrer on the PPN’s Ukraine Initiative. This close working relationship and the fact that Barton endorsed Rohrer for governor in the 2010 Republican primary argues against Rohrer being able to be objective regarding his ally.
For more information about the event, click here.

AFA Journal Compounds Dubious Claim that David Barton Was Vindicated in Court

David Barton’s vindication campaign is getting some traction among far right publications.
The newest American Family Association Journal ran a brief summary of the December 2014 World Net Daily article. The AFA article concluded with this unsubstantiated sentence: “Barton has also won legal judgment against others who published lies about his veracity and his ministry.” See below.

While Barton did settle out of court with his accusers on the white supremacy charges, he dismissed the person who questioned his veracity (W.S. Smith) from the suit in April of 2012. To date, Barton has not published any judgment relating to his historical claims. John Aman, the author of the World Net Daily article on Barton’s suit, said a Texas judge ruled that statements about Barton’s historical claims were “false and defamatory.”

Barton also won in court against W.S. Smith, a self-described atheist who published an online article in 2010 calling Barton “an admitted liar” whose “books have been picked apart time and again and exposed as fallacious.”

Smith was a no-show throughout the lawsuit, disappearing shortly after Barton sued him in September 2011. Barton’s legal team hired a private detective and published notices in Texas newspapers statewide in an unsuccessful attempt to find the elusive writer.

Smith disappeared after he boasted, in an email to Huffington Post columnist Chris Rodda that he was “happy to meet” Barton in court “because the truth in [sic] on my side.”

“If this is what you want, Mr. Barton, then let’s do it,” Smith said. “Bring it on. Bring it on. Bring it on. The path you’ve chosen will lead only to your embarrassment and ruin.”

Three years later, a Texas court found Smith’s assertions about David Barton both false and defamatory.

So far, Mr. Aman is standing behind his story. I informed him that Parker County, TX public records disclose that W.S. Smith was dismissed from the suit in 2012. Aman responded that Mr. Barton was the source of his information about the disposition of the suit. Aman provided no response to the Parker County, TX records.

At issue are the claims that “Barton also won in court against W.S. Smith” and “a Texas court found Smith’s assertions about David Barton both false and defamatory.” According to the Parker County TX records, Smith was removed from the case. The only names on the settlement are Jennings and Bell-Metereau. I call on World Net Daily, John Aman and David Barton to produce court documents showing a win against W.S. Smith and a finding that Smith’s claims were “both false and defamatory.”

Of course, even if a judge wrote those things, it wouldn’t place David Barton on the Oral Roberts University basketball team, or make his denial of progress toward an HIV vaccine true. It wouldn’t change the fact that he omits parts of quote from America’s founders that don’t align with his views, or that the Consitution doesn’t quote the Bible verbatim.