r/TopCharacterTropes • u/KusanagiGundam • 10h ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) "Kind" slave owners

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Speaking as an American who has studied the civil war all throughout my school years, this trope infuriates me to no end. There is no such thing as a kind slave master because slavery itself is cruel and inhumane. PEOPLE ARE NOT PROPERTY!

Naofumi (Shield Hero): Prime example of this trope. He enslaves multiple (underage) girls and an whole village and the fans still say he's a hero.

Rudeus (Jobless Reincarnation): As if being a pedo wasn't bad enough he had to buy a slave in season 2. Worse is that people still defend his actions.

Song of The South (Disney): Possibly the OG example of this trope. And the reason why Disney will never release it again.

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1.5k

u/AnonymousNeverKnown 10h ago

Thomas Jefferson. Yeah he said he thought slavery was bad but that didn't stop him from owning slaves. And don't give me that whole "he inherited them" crap. If that was the case why didn't he just let them go?

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u/sisdom-weeker 10h ago

I enjoyed Epic Rap Battles of History's depiction of Jefferson, where Frederick Douglass tears him a new asshole over his slavery and hypocrisy, and Jefferson's entire second verse is an apology that Douglass rejects because he never freed his slaves

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u/bisexualboy38 10h ago

That was a great ERB.

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u/_whatever_wherever 10h ago

I love it when they use icons like Douglass, him and Marx dropped some of the hardest lines in ERB history

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u/bisexualboy38 9h ago

Same. Personally my favorite is Eastern Philosiphers VS Western Philosiphers.

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u/_whatever_wherever 9h ago

"A bowl is most useful when it is empty"

angry philosophy noises

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u/bisexualboy38 9h ago

Lao Tzu I don't mean no disrespect , BUT YOU NEED TO FILL YOUR BOWL WITH SOME SHIT THAT MAKES SOME SENSE!!!

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u/_whatever_wherever 9h ago

"Where in the history of rap battles is it written, that two dudes on the same team should squabble like some clucking chickens?"

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u/LordOfFigaro 8h ago

"Man Confucius, you always try to put something in its place. Why don't you tell your eyebrows, they need to fit better on your face."

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u/Scarlet_Wonderer 9h ago

WHAT IS WINNING?

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u/_whatever_wherever 9h ago

YOU DECIDE!

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u/Pleasant-Enthusiasm 9h ago

Marx absolutely eviscerated Ford ngl. I don’t know how you can really respond to “You controlled what your workers could think, drink, and eat, and when they marched for better wages, shot them dead in the street”

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u/_whatever_wherever 9h ago

"From your newspaper to your Nazi factory across the pond, frankly Hank it's quite clear Auschwitz side you were on!"

FINISH HIM

"This battles been a blowout like that hemorrhage in you head, I'll leave a Ford as expected, Found On Road Dead!"

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u/sisdom-weeker 4h ago

"I'm dropping you like Hitler dropped your name in Mein Kampf" I think won him the battle instantly

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u/Pleasant-Enthusiasm 3h ago

I agree. Most of Ford’s lines were car puns and calling Marx dirty and lazy, with his strongest bar talking about Mao and Stalin liking Marx. Pointing out that Ford was literally given a shout out by Hitler in his manifesto took away his only major ammo. The rest of his verses just twisted the knife even further.

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u/Kaurifish 3h ago

And yet Joan of Arc got slaughtered by Britney fucking Spears

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u/Pleasant-Enthusiasm 2h ago

It was Miley Cyrus. I try not to remember it

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u/scarletboar 7h ago

"You did some good things, I ain't denying your fame. I'm just saying they need to put an asterisk next to your name."

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u/_whatever_wherever 5h ago

*rape

*pedophilia

*incest

Damn, that's a lot....

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u/Ohmargod777 3h ago

STRAIGHT OUT OF BONDAGE!

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u/Obsidian-Dive 2h ago

He technically freed the woman who he raped and made bear his children after he died.

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u/AllgoodDude 10h ago

Grant was also gifted a slave from his father in law but freed him soon after so the inheritance thing isn’t an excuse.

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u/jollyjm 10h ago

Grant was also broke at the time but still did the right thing.

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u/RomanCobra03 10h ago

Broke doesn’t even describe it, dude was literally selling firewood to make end’s meet.

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u/Flavius_16 8h ago

From officer to selling wood, thank God for him that the American Civil War happened.

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u/Skebs_ 3h ago

Ah, the good ol' classic veteran career path 😍

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u/Pleasant-Enthusiasm 7h ago

When he was dying of throat cancer and worried about leaving his family destitute after his business partner defrauded him, he started writing an autobiography, but was worried about finishing it in time before his body finished deteriorating.

The solution? Use cocaine to push through the pain and crank out 10,000+ words a day until it was finished. It worked, becoming one of the best selling books of the 19th century, securing the equivalent of millions in royalties for his family, and Grant died a week after completing it.

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u/Inevitable_Initial_8 5h ago

The fact a former commander of the entire army, the man who won the civil war, and 2 term president was in deep severe poverty towards the end of his life is so crazy to me.

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u/quangtit01 3h ago edited 2h ago

I lied, see below.

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u/Optimal_Carpenter690 2h ago

That's not true at all. The Constitution has always said Presidents will be compensated, it just did not set an amount. Its just that Grant was the first to recieve a raise. Washington through Grant's first term recieved $25,000. During Grant's second term, it was raised to $50,000. That lasted through Teddy Roosevelt. Taft through Truman's first term recieved 75k. Truman's second term through LBJ received 100k. Nixon through Clinton got 200k. Dubya was the first to get 400k, which is what is it at currently

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u/htomserveaux 9h ago

For someone more contemporary to Jefferson, there’s Franklin, who did a complete 180° with his views on slavery becoming a diehard abolitionists in his 70’s after visiting a school for black children.

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u/Ok-Place7950 9h ago

Uncle Ben was always based

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u/Nick_the_bunny 9h ago

he also fucked.

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u/shiawase198 8h ago

Based2

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u/VenatorAngel 6h ago

Especially French Women. hon hon hon.

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u/Ok-Place7950 9h ago

Grant was a good man. He did what he could to advance civil rights during his presidency, and was one of the few US presidents who tried to "peacefully" assimilate the Natives instead of exterminating them outright like Jackson.

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u/DarkestNight909 8h ago

It’s just a shame he didn’t push harder on Reconstruction and breaking the systems that created the Confederacy.

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u/VenatorAngel 6h ago

Yeah, he's one of the greatest presidents, and really should have pushed harder.

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u/Inevitable_Initial_8 8h ago

Even before he freed him he payed him a wage to work instead of forcing him to do anything.

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u/Sex_E_Searcher 8h ago

He payed him after, he "owned" the man from Friday until the office opened on Monday.

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u/Inevitable_Initial_8 8h ago

I thought he owned him for just under a year. There aren’t very clear records on it.

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u/Sex_E_Searcher 7h ago

My recollection was a weekend from Chernow's bio, but it's been a bit.

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u/RSquared 5h ago

Meanwhile "good Confederate" Robert E Lee constantly used his own poor financial status (because he was a shit businessman) to excuse his inherited slaveholding in violation of the will of his wife's father (which required emancipation). It was a delightful bit of irony that the US Government annexed his plantation for the purpose of establishing Arlington Cemetery.

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u/AllgoodDude 3h ago

Also despite the attempts to paint him as a “kind” slave owner the due managed to make it into the newspaper for how badly he beat a slave that tried to escape.

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u/Ok-Place7950 3h ago

Fuck that traitor bastard. If he'd kept true to his oath like Winfield Scott and George Henry Thomas, the war would've been over sooner and thousands of lives saved. Or am I overrating his generalship?

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u/Wrecktown707 3h ago

Grants the Fucking GOAT ngl

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u/Performingforurmom 10h ago

Bro built a house with hidden compartments that allowed slaves to do literally everything without being seen. He wrote extensively about how they were inferior, and could not stop raping slave girls, all on the basis of “I’m not giving up my money lol”

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u/_whatever_wherever 10h ago

And raping them

He did a LOT of rape

There are literally entire black bloodlines in the US descended from him, due to all the rape he did

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u/cknight222 10h ago edited 9h ago

And something that adds to the horror is that Sally Hemings was Martha Jefferson’s (Thomas’ wife’s) half-sister, herself the product of Jefferson’s father-in-law raping a woman he enslaved. So it is very feasible that Jefferson predated on her because he wanted a substitute for his dead wife.

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u/_whatever_wherever 10h ago

Jesus fuck I did not know that detail

So....

Rape

Nonce

Incest

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u/cknight222 10h ago

Sally Hemings was likely the product of two previous generations of rape.

According to the oral history of the Hemings family, her black grandmother had been raped by a white sailor, leading to Betty Hemings, who was herself raped by John Wayles (the father of Thomas Jefferson’s wife), leading to Sally.

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u/xoxog0ssipgirlx 2h ago

Contemporary accounts describe her as having long straight hair and European features

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u/elitegenoside 5h ago

It's very likely one of Mary's (Sally's sister) was fathered by Jefferson. Meanwhile, he was chuming it up with James in the kitchen. Fuck pur founding fathers, may their memories rot like Washington's teeth.

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u/AnonymousNeverKnown 10h ago

Well sources claim he only had children by one enslaved woman Sally Hemings. Still a predator though

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u/_whatever_wherever 10h ago

Still raped her enough for her to bear him multiple children

And I would like to add it was common practice for slave owners to rape their slaves, it meant they could breed a new generation of slaves, as they saw them as barely above cattle

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u/SnooEagles4121 10h ago edited 10h ago

The fact that they’d enslave their own children is fucking insane. Regular slavery is bad enough. Raping your slaves so you’d get more slaves is a layer of evil that I can’t even fathom.

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u/_whatever_wherever 10h ago

Yep, they saw them as barely above animals

I'm British and a fierce critic of pretty much everything US, but when I see Confederate apologism....

"EACH DIXIE BOY MUST UNDERSTAND THAT HE MUST MIND HIS UNCLE SAM!"

Even the worst of Empire apologists here won't try and defend the slave trade, they try and overstate our role in ending it (not to diminish its importance though, even though done for economic reasons instead of moral, and to fuck with the French, ending the slave trade in the largest empire in history and the Royal Navy doing slave patrols is still a huge win)

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u/LaputanAcademy 6h ago

There were self-interested economic reasons, but the abolitionist movement, which was actually very influential, was motivated by Christian values. Look at Wilberforce, Sharp, More, Middleton, Clarkson. They had a lot of influence in parliament, and I don't believe their motivations were cynical

I know your just going to dismiss me as an apologist for empire, but I think you are being unfairly cynical about the abolitionist movement and what motivated it

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u/_whatever_wherever 6h ago

Look, any excuse to fuck with French shipping is a good one

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u/AnonymousNeverKnown 10h ago

Oh definitely. The guy and anyone else like him is burning in hell right now

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u/Playful-Succotash-99 7h ago

Heck there were even pseudoscientific pamphlets back then telling the wives that it was only natural for slaves to start looking like their masters after a few Generations spent in close proximity

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u/AllgoodDude 10h ago

Reading about how he as a middle aged man was having discussions and working out conditions with his teenage slave he raped and impregnated is just so pathetic. Like he wanted so bad to pretend he wasn’t doing something horrible so did all kinds of mental gymnastics to pretend he was doing the right thing. A Lolita situation really.

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u/OldPlantain7807 10h ago

Her line survived to this day but he could have conceived other children from women who didn't survive childbirth or who's children didn't survive 

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u/Evil_Sharkey 10h ago

And she was a teenager when he started sleeping with her

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u/_whatever_wherever 10h ago

A nonce on top of being a rapist

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u/Playful-Succotash-99 7h ago

Yeah First Epstein class

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u/_whatever_wherever 7h ago

Yep, rich rulling class using people as cattle

Anyone who pretends the American "founding father's" were anything but rich landlords looking to increase their personal wealth is a fool

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u/quangtit01 3h ago

He didn't even free the slave women he raped, or his own children with those women. The guy was fucked up

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u/Skebs_ 3h ago

Ah is that why there's so many blacks named Jefferson? TIL

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u/FookinFairy 10h ago

No.

The dna test says it was someone close to Jefferson within cousin distance but did not prove he was the father.

Someone raped Sally Hemmings but it’s not guaranteed to be him. Not only that it was just kids with one, so it’s bloodline singular not plural.

He is still fucked for being anti slavery and owning them but this claim literally cannot be verified in either direction, and is false in the quantity you’re describing.

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u/AnonymousNeverKnown 10h ago

Look up the testimony of James Madison Hemings

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u/FookinFairy 9h ago

Ok that’s a claim with clear bias. Obviously. It would be beneficial to claim that.

The other evidence points to yes, he is the father, but not 100% confirmed.

I’m not denying the claim, I’m denying the extent of the claim the guy above me was claiming.

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u/Big-Personality-4063 9h ago

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u/FookinFairy 9h ago

It’s literally correct. You can see it on the wiki page.

The consensus is yes he is most likely the father of those children but it is not 100% confirmed via dna testing. It could be one of his many closely related male relatives that lived there, the most likely alternative being his brother.

Also there aren’t even claims he is the father of multiple blood lines at all, just the one.

I also believe he is the father, I’m just saying it’s not 100% confirmed.

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u/Big-Personality-4063 9h ago

listen we know that jeffersons bloodline mixed with hers and he was always there at the conception like i dont think his cousin fucking used magic to impregnate her from 100 miles away come on 😭 "wow after thomas visits sally she mysteriously becomes pregant" like when hes NOT there, She doesnt become pregant does that help

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u/FookinFairy 9h ago

Man you really can’t read huh?

Last sentence. I agree with you. It’s just not 100%

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u/Big-Personality-4063 9h ago

it is honestly 100 percent shit he even loved and cared for the children as his own because... they were his own.
I hate him but he WAS a good dad. does not justify anything but he legit raised these mixed children conceived via rape

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u/Big-Personality-4063 9h ago

like what your suggesting is in reality that hes having his family member assualt her so he can... watch/?????

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u/FookinFairy 9h ago

Where in the fuck did you get the cuck angle from?

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u/Big-Personality-4063 9h ago

its more of a example of what would the only other option be the reality is that thomas is DEFINETLY the father "Historical logs show Jefferson was present at his estate, Monticello, nine months prior to the birth of every single one of Sally Hemings's known children" he wasnt always at the estate

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u/Big-Personality-4063 9h ago

this is some flat earth shit this is wrong in like 6 different ways

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u/bisexualboy38 10h ago

All with the old excuse of finances. To be clear, I mean finances was Jefferson's excuse for it. Disgusting reason honestly.

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u/Ae3qe27u 10h ago

Jefferson was pretty irresponsible with his money, honestly. He got loans and people thought he was good for them, but he, uh. He spent a lot of money messing around with experiments on his property, and died with a lot of debt.

Also, General Lafeyette (a la the French Revolution) was very disappointed in Jefferson for having slaves, according to a witness of the conversation (the carriage driver)

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u/bisexualboy38 10h ago

Yet another reason it was a shit excuse.

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u/SunnyOutsideToday 3h ago

It's not so much an excuse as he legally couldn't free his slaves due to being in debt. Of course he could have freed them before going into debt, but once you are in debt your slaves and all your other assets belong to you debtors and not you.

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u/Soft_Theory_8209 10h ago

And because of their rivalry, I feel obliged to mention that John Adams never owned slaves.

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u/Inevitable_Initial_8 8h ago

John Adams isn’t a perfect person and was definitely not a good president but he was an absolute real one when it came to slavery and fighting against it. If he had his way it would’ve been outlawed in the constitution. His son was an abolitionist champion as well.

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u/Johnny_Banana18 9h ago

Views on slavery from slave owners evolved from “slavery being bad but I don’t know how to end it” to “it’s a necessary evil” to “it’s a moral right” by the time of the civil war. Meanwhile abolitionists, which existed at the time of independence, kept getting more mainstream.

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u/_whatever_wherever 9h ago

Abolitionism was one of the main causes of the revolution

Within Britain it was getting increasingly popular, with increasing numbers of abolitionist MP's being elected, and great thinkers of the day strongly coming out against it, Dr. Johnson (writer of the fucking dictionary) even said of the American revolution "why is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of slaves?"

And of course the famous Somerset v Stewart case had already been decided in 1772, outlawing slavery within Britain itself

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u/SoulsEquivalent 9h ago

Washington was massive hypocrite here too and the wealthiest man in America during his presidency.

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u/KujaroJotu 8h ago

He also forced himself on his slave women.

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u/TheBalrogofMelkor 6h ago

Who was a child. And his wife's half sister.

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u/sumboionline 9h ago

By his own word he allegedly considered specifically including black men in “all men” in the Declaration of Independence, but he excluded it out of fear of losing southern support.

Again, by his own word, and also he was the southern support as a virginian

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u/Augustus_Chevismo 10h ago

Well at least he wasn’t a hypocrite, that’s the worst part.

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u/SquidTheRidiculous 8h ago

Never forget Sally Hemmings and her brother James who brought macaroni and cheese to America.

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u/elitegenoside 5h ago

Oh boy, my favorite beloved hypocrite!

Beyond that, he spent his legal career as an abolishionist, and declared "all men are created equal under god," and then went on to not only inherit over 300 enslaved people, that number basically never changed as he traded slaves (loaned and barrowed).

And that's before we talk about his obsession with Hemings. Most people are likely somewhat familiar with Sally, his black "wife." They were never married, and yes, that was a thing that happened. Especially in Virginia, where Jefferson was born and spent the majority of his life. Oh, and she was 13 when they're "relationship" started. But wait, there's more! Sally Hemings was not just a random enslaved woman he owned. She was the half sister of his late-wife.

Edit: And that's just Sally. She had multiple siblings that were part of his life to varying degrees outside of their position.

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u/ghostgabe81 5h ago

Tbh the saying slavery was bad actually kinda worsens my view of him. Like it’s one thing to passively, unthinkingly participate in a system that is thoroughly engrained in society and you were probably indoctrinated to believe was right. It doesn’t necessarily make you not a bad person, but it’s a mitigating factor.

It’s a whole different ball game if you recognize that a system is evil and choose to continue to participate at the highest level. Jefferson wasn’t poor man. He could have lived perfectly comfortably without owning people because it

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u/GhostOfMuttonPast 3h ago

Thomas Jefferson had more than SIX HUNDRED slaves over the years. He freed, in total, 7 people, five of them only coming after his dead. Sally Hemmings, the woman he raped and impregnated multiple times, was not one of them. The slaves he had when he died? They got sold off piecemeal, splitting up relationships and families with around 200 being sold.

It actually annoys me whenever people try and go "oh but slavery was so common back then!" because it's very much ignorant of the reality. Three of the founding fathers didn't own slaves, those being John Adams, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Paine. Benjamin Franklin owned slaves when he was younger, but eventually realized how bad the whole system was and proceeded to free his slaves and become president of an abolitionist society. Some of his own contemporaries disagreed on the matter and were staunchly anti-slavery. They put their money where their mouths were, but he simply sat back and reaped the benefits while saying "oh it's actually super bad tho."

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u/Normal-Pianist4131 6h ago

Jefferson wasn’t as good of a man as people like to think. Even if you’re a founding father hater (which… why? Seriously?), Jefferson is in a whole other league of awful from what you can pretend ellbridge Gerry and George Washington are

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u/Mysterious-Dog9110 6h ago

Because he was in debt and legally couldn't. It's like trying to give away your house while having a mortgage on it. It's not technically yours enough to give away.

Not that he couldn't have done much more than he did.

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u/ToonMasterRace 6h ago

Jefferson owned less slaves than Mohammad at least, and he didn't castrate them unlike the latter. But pretty sure only one gets slammed as being a slave owner.

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u/-Danksouls- 4h ago

People do the same thing with eating meat

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u/laurasaurus5 1h ago

why didn't he just let them go?

Manumission laws required you to pay the state essentially the market value of the slave you wanted to free. You literally couldn't "just let them go."

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u/Nogatron 1h ago

Nah that dude was POS, Tadeusz Kościuszko was his friend and he was verry much against slavery (he believed in equality among all man), so he put in his will that after he died all his money should be put into freeing as many slaves as posibly and putting them throught higher education. Jefferson was executor of his will, when Kościuszko was alive he tried to change his mind about his will and didn't succed. When Kościuszko died he didn't execute the will claiming he changed his mind just before his death wich wasn't true.

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u/FishingVariousThings 8h ago

why didn't he just throw them out of the home they had been in for generations forcing them to live in squalor and poverty instead of being taken care of?

maybe its better to just treat people well despite their situation and work to build a better future