Of course McConnells family were slave owners...

[pbmus]

Link to tweet

[BigmanPigman]

1. He is one of the people I'd like to see on Finding Your Roots.

[UniteFightBack]

4. Waiting for the day he is down there with the roots. nt

[maxsolomon]

19. He's 79, so

it will probably happen in the next 25 years...

[spin]

2. I have no idea if any of my ancestors owned slaves or not. ...

Since what little I do know about my ancestors is that both sides of my family came from Pennsylvania and New York State it seems unlikely that any were slave owners.

However it seems unfair to hold a person accountable for what their ancestors did. With me iit is quite possible that some of my ancestors fought for the Union to free slaves. That doesn’t mean I deserve any credit if that is true.

[GeoWilliam750]

3. Pennsylvania and New York also had slavery

Although steps were taken to abolish slavery at the time of the revolution, there were still slaves in Pennsylvania into the 1840s, and the last slave in NY was freed in 1827. That being said, the numbers were quite small with the number of owners few, and were typically a legacy of slavery from before abolition laws were passed.

It is strange and sickening to go through county records in the North, and find these records.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Pennsylvania
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_New_York

Reading the individual records of slavery is nauseating and disgusting, and once in a very long time, uplifting.

[spin]

6. I grew up in a house in Ohio a mile from Lake Erie that was supposedly ...

a stop on the Underground Railroad and also a speakeasy during prohibition.

[spin]

10. It is possible to study the tactics Robert E Lee used and learn lessons...

about warfare from them just as it is possible to study the tactics the Nazi general Erwin Rommel used in WWII. That does not necessarily involve honoring those generals.

[alphafemale]

12. Look into Sherman much?

He slaughtered civilians and was racist as fuq.

There are generally not clean cut good/bad sides to anything.

[GeoWilliam750]

13. I find no credible mention of Sherman slaughtering civilians in any credible source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman%27s_March_to_the_Sea
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/rethinking-shermans-march/
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/scorched-earth
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/shermans-march-sea
https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/shermans-march
https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/shermans-march-to-the-sea.html

I would be grateful if you could link me to some credible sources that show him to have slaughtered civilians.

[jberryhill]

14. People who were educated in the south believe interesting things

[Hermit-The-Prog]

5. slavery reparations

TA-NEHISI COATES: I think people—again, I think people are—you know, I said this yesterday—I think people are very, very uncomfortable when we start talking about the things in America’s past that do not credit us. Again, we have no problem at all taking credit for the things that people who are no longer here, who were in our past—we have no problem taking credit for their efforts. You know, you take somebody like Mitch McConnell, who does not want to be responsible for enslavement that happened 150 years ago, but, yet and still, wants the right to operate his business or operate his career in a building that was built by enslaved people. And so, we have no problem taking the credit, the benefits for what was done in our past. But when you start talking to people about actually paying that back or actually some sort of evenness around that, you know, a lot of discomfort comes up.

I understand that. I would like to also take only my paycheck and not have to pay my bills. I would like that, too. That would be great, you know? But I think if this idea of patriotism and citizenship is to mean anything, you know, you can’t, as I say, be a fair-weather friend to your country. You can’t decide that your past only matters, you know, that you want to invoke your country as a land of the free, when you want to go invade Iraq, for instance, and then, when you’re being called to be responsible for what made it possible for that country to be called “land of the free” in the first place, to act like you don’t owe anybody anything or you’re not part of it, especially, as I said yesterday, when a lot of this happened in your own lifetime. It isn’t the past. It happened while you were alive. Mitch McConnell was 26 years old by the time the Voting Rights Act was passed. You know, so this is very well within the lifetime of living people today.

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/4/ta_nehisi_coates_reparations_are_not

[TreasonousBastard]

7. McConnell has enough of his own sins to account for but I can't see...

how he would be responsible for the sins of his ancestors.

[airmid]

11. I am the descendent of slave owners and slaves in addition to my abolitionist ggggrandfather

who was murdered by confederate raiders when he went to check his back field. While slavery is reprehensible, I think you are likely to find a lot of good people are descended from this type of background as well.

[StarfishSaver]

16. True but

People need to own all of it, not just the good parts.

Americans love to celebrate our "heritage" when it involves things they think are laudable, insisting that what our ancestors did instills some special nobility into us centuries later (4th of July, etc.), but when it comes to the sordid parts, people suddenly go all "*I* didn't own slaves! I wasn't even ALIVE then! So why are you blaming ME?!"

But if we're going to take credit for and celebrate the good stuff in our heritage, we also have to own up to the bad. It's all part of the same heritage.

[airmid]

17. I've never had a problem owning my ancestors failings or my own. The world

would be a whole different place if people would just be responsible.

[Joe941]

15. The apple doesnt fall far from the family tree.

[moondust]

18. How much of McTurtle's current wealth

started with money made by his ancestors on the backs of slaves, was handed down through generations, and invested in the stock market and elsewhere along the way to grow into what he has today?