Life, Liberty and the Fact of Slavery WASHINGTON — The
astounding thing about American slavery is not that it existed —
the enslavement of one people by another may be one of history’s
universals — but that it persisted. It lasted into an era when
its absence could be imagined and its presence could become an
outrage. That was one of the chilling peculiarities of slavery
in the United States: As revolutionary ideas of human rights and
liberty were being formulated, slavery was so widely accepted
that contradictions between the evolving ideals and the brutish
reality of enslavement were overlooked or tolerated. We look
back now, shocked at the cognitive and moral perversity. And
that is one reason why a prevalent reaction has been to assert
that the champions of those revolutionary ideals were
hypocrites, including 12 of the first 18 American presidents,
who were slave owners. But that too-familiar judgment brings us
to the most challenging example of all: Thomas Jefferson. And
two new exhibitions come to a fa