TIL: 1/4th of all US presidents were slaveowners

Those first two columns have a UX person screaming somewhere.

The fourth column too. + & < , left and right. It should have been < & > all on the left.
I'm in the process of getting rid of all html tables in lemmy-ui because of this. 90% of us are on our phones and don't want to see squished content or have to scroll right.

Well, yeah. Owning slaves was an affluent male thing to do, and most politicians are those kinda people even today. If it wasn't abolished, I'm quite certain this would be 3/4, if not much, much higher.

I mean, do you think Trump, Bush(es), Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy or Nixon wouldn't own slaves? I can only see Obama and Carter (despite a peanut farm), and I'll venture a guess that Obama probably didn't get elected president in that fucked up parallel universe since voting rights are probably pretty different even if he was allowed to run.

I mean, do you think Trump, Bush(es), Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy or Nixon wouldn’t own slaves
Clintons technically did. https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2017/06/the-clintons-had-slaves
There is absolutely no way Carter wouldn't have had slaves.

*Not counting prison slavery

Special mention for Bill Clinton who benefited from penal slavery in the governor's mansion while governor of Arkansas.

True...it could be 100% if we include the US's currently legal form of slavery: prison labour.
- That's what I mean by penal slavery.
  The reason I only included Clinton rather than every president who has benefitted from prison slave labor (which as you say is all of them), is that to my knowledge he's the only one who basically had house slaves provided to his home by the state prisons..

Capitalism is the modern extension of slavery; they are all complicit.

After having read many books about the American revolution and the beginning of the u.s, Thomas Jefferson is the most duplicitous, hypocritical, full of shit dirtbag that ever was.

Jefferson also virulently condemned the Haitian revolution, which was the first successful slave rebellion in the western hemisphere, and helped spread the abolition of slavery to the rest of the caribbean and south america.
Also for all the hamilton liberals, yes he owned slaves too, and that musical is whitewashing the US founding slaveowners.
- I don't think Jefferson comes across that great in Hamilton. His defense of the South and slavery is made pretty clear.
- People defend Jefferson for not releasing his slaves, saying anti slavery wasnt a thing to them. John Adam’s and his wife were anti slavey, and found it abhorrent. He liked to hire freed black men and didn’t allow slave servants in the White House. So clearly the idea that slavery was wrong was around and lots of people practiced it
Truth. Jefferson is the equivalent of a William F Buckley, who could write bullshit so it sounded smart but had no actual thought or intelligent ideas beyond dressing up Greed. Jefferson was a fucking coward and a shit bag.

Ulysses Grant did quite a bit of work to end slavery

Its still simultaneously true that he and the first lady owned a lot of slaves. He may have only personally owned one, but his wife had inherited many of them. If you visit the Grant’s Farm historical site in Missouri they dont hide that fact, and Missouri was the one Union state that was not forced to end enslavement practices. She had grown up on the same property as a girl, and her family owned a bit over 30 people there IIRC. They probably owned nearly as many, while actively fighting to end enslavement

Whew not Sam Adams though! (nor Jr!)

edit - (and neither were presidents! Holy shit I'm developing a maga-level remembrance of history! 😁 )

It's ok, you just got him confused with John Adams, his cousin, who was the second president (and his son John Quincy Adams the 6th president.)
- While I thank you for that clarification and you are absolutely correct, it doesn't change my assessment of the error on my part. 😢🙂
Was searching the post to see if someone else pointed out that neither Adams was on the list.
Thank you for the laugh this morning.
Everytime I see Sam Adams mentioned, I always think of Sam Jackson beer.
- Everytime I see Sam Adams mentioned, I always think of Sam Jackson beer.
  😂 Oh same, and I really wish Chappelle would do a 3.0 version of himself. (or at least like a 2.3 or 2.whateveritwouldbe) I'd love to be able to enjoy his humor again.

+1 if ya include presidents who thought slavery is not so bad.

It would be higher if slavery wasn't outlawed.

For a moment my brain had a sort circuit and thought why Armin Van Buuren was in a list of USA presidents who owned slaves.