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    BrotherFromAnotherMotherKen Layne
    2/17/14 12:03pm

    At least Lincoln didn't die in debt, unlike certain other Presidents.

    Looking at you, Thomas Jefferson.

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      The Ghost of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ AKA BabyStepsBrotherFromAnotherMother
      2/17/14 12:09pm

      OHHHH! I felt the cut of that historical side-eye!

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      JohnMcClanesSmirkBrotherFromAnotherMother
      2/17/14 12:11pm

      Exactly. You know why Jefferson could amass such a huge library and laze around all day pontificating about "liberty" and "freedom"? Because the guy never worked a day in his life. And that which he did inherent he pissed away. He was like what happens if you took an emo teenager and gave him a couple million dollars and said, "Hey, here's a few hundred human beings that will do all your farming for you so you can sit around and jerk yourself off all day."

      Now, Alexander Hamilton. That fucker was (relatively) self-made. Born poor and a bastard in the British West Indies. Paid his way to America by writing polemical poetry. Fought to abolish slavery. Jefferson wasn't worthy to hold his jockstrap.

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    wkiernanKen Layne
    2/17/14 12:26pm

    In fact, Washington went bonkers trying to chase down one of his slaves who escaped.

    You know, you look at these eighteenth-century fuckers and their absolutely blithe acceptance of the abomination that was American slavery, and you wonder, "What am I and everyone around me doing today that will be comparably abhorrent to all decent people living two hundred years from now?" That is, assuming that there are any human beings alive at all two hundred years from now, which I rather doubt.

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      Ken Laynewkiernan
      2/17/14 12:31pm

      It's true! That's the link in that part, to the story of Oney Judge. There is something incredible about one of the richest men on the planet going so batshit over a single slave escaping to freedom.

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      BrotherFromAnotherMotherwkiernan
      2/17/14 12:40pm

      They weren't all blithe acceptors of slavery. Most of the New England Founding Fathers tended towards to abolitionist side. That was actually a sticking point in the Continental Congress, because when they were drafting the Declaration of Independence, they had to be neutral on the issue of slavery (to the displeasure of certain delegations) in order to insure that the southern states would be united with the rest of them. In a certain context, it's remarkable they came together at all, given that several of the colonies weren't 100% on board with the idea of revolting against the British Empire.

      Which is always something they leave out of history books.

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    MiniatureamericanflagsforothersKen Layne
    2/17/14 12:08pm

    . . . and then we collectively scratch our heads at FDR's place in this narrative . . .

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      BrotherFromAnotherMotherMiniatureamericanflagsforothers
      2/17/14 12:22pm

      FDR is the exception that proves the rule.

      If his mother had had her way, after he was crippled, he would have had the quiet, dignified life of landed gentry. Thankfully, he had bigger plans, and even though he and Eleanor were a married couple in name only by that point, he had a partner who was able to do things he couldn't, and was his equal in terms of intellect, passion, and drive.

      I heart Eleanor.

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      Ricki Spanish HarlemMiniatureamericanflagsforothers
      2/17/14 12:32pm

      FDR was considered a traitor to his class, that's why he gets a pass. He was keenly self-aware about his wealth and his policies went against his own self-interest. Washington not so much.

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    fudgesicleuighyrKen Layne
    2/17/14 12:11pm

    Most of the outrage on this piece is about slavery. To be fair to Washington, Lincoln was a racist who wanted to send the freed slaves away to a colony in Panama.

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      Ken Laynefudgesicleuighyr
      2/17/14 12:19pm

      No this is all about the difference between SUCCESSFUL people and the whiny losers with their books and their talking and no money at all.

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      sanderson1655Ken Layne
      2/17/14 1:10pm

      Then why did you include it in the article?

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    frrostemudrKen Layne
    2/17/14 12:10pm

    Ken Layne is terrible.

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      Ken Laynefrrostemudr
      2/17/14 12:19pm

      You sound like a poor person. Well at least it's free to leave blog comments (for now).

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      frrostemudrKen Layne
      2/17/14 12:58pm

      Often I don't see who authored an article before I begin reading it, and as I'm half way through a subpar Gawker article, I'm thinking "god this article is really just the worst" and it's invariably attributed to you. That NYE alcohol-free disaster of a story is your finest example.
      Except For Dinner Last Night, I Haven't Had a Drink This Year Except For Dinner Last Night, I Haven't Had a Drink This Year Except For Dinner Last Night, I Haven't Had a…

      Alcohol plays a large role in everyone's life. We use it to clean our many wounds, and we add… Read more Read more

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    MisterHippityKen Layne
    2/17/14 12:12pm

    With a net worth of more than half a billion in today's dollars, President Washington was a real success.

    So the father of our country belonged to the one percent. Why am I not surprised?

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      MegSwanKen Layne
      2/17/14 12:21pm

      President Ulysses Grant almost died indigent. His son lost Grant's entire life fortune in a Ponzi scheme (I believe the Ponzi scheme) and then Grant got throat cancer. Mark Twain, a huge fan of Grant, commissioned him to write an autobiography both to earn money for his estate and because Twain thought such a book would be a good historical read. Grant wrote that book in excruciating pain and finished it 3 days before he died. It earned his estate a considerable amount of money. Thanks, CBS Sunday Morning!

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        MegSwanMegSwan
        2/17/14 12:56pm

        Upon some research, it was not the Ponzi scheme but rather a Ponzi scheme.

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        SondraHuxtableMegSwan
        2/17/14 2:39pm

        I love Mark Twain. He is in all the best stories and has all the best ideas.

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      김치전!Ken Layne
      2/17/14 12:09pm

      If I could have the stuff of any US president, I would choose John Quincy Adams. He was only worth $21 million in today's money, but look at his amazing, passage-to-Narnia library:

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        BrotherFromAnotherMother김치전!
        2/17/14 12:14pm

        Technically, Peacefield was built by JQA's father. But I agree, if I had to pick a former Presidential residence, that's the one.

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      numaKen Layne
      2/17/14 12:50pm

      Lincoln was also responsible for the greatest expropriation of property that the world had ever seen up to that point:

      "American historian R.R. Palmer opined that the abolition of slavery in the United States without compensation to the former slave owners was an "annihilation of individual property rights without parallel...in the history of the Western world".[112] Economic historian Robert E. Wright argues that it would have been much cheaper, with minimal deaths, if the federal government had purchased and freed all the slaves, rather than fighting the Civil War." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_i…)

      No other American president has ever effected such an equivalent anti-property undertaking, neither at home nor abroad—even the conquest of Northern Mexico was remunerated (albeit at a pittance), not to speak of the preservation of ante bellum property rights in postwar Germany and Japan. And yet the Constitution seemingly allows for the great and unprecedented assault on property effected by Lincoln sans remuneration; so the Constitution is not inherently capitalist, nor therefore is the American state.

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        Upper-Middlebrownuma
        2/17/14 1:10pm

        The systematic seizure of lands occupied by native americans was also sans remuneration, and could be considered by this metric if the native americans believed in, or enshrined into law property ownership as we think of it. When you don't own something you can't be paid for it! Likewise, the federal government did not seize property without remuneration, they declared it illegal to consider fellow human beings as property. Offering remuneration would be starkly contradictory to any ethic of abolition. If you're counting slaves as seized property when it had been declared illegal to consider them property, then it's barbarically biased to claim this as a greater annihilation of property than the complete disenfranchisement of an entire society.

        Economic historian Robert E Wright also fails to note that purchasing the freeing all the slaves would be somewhat foolhardy unless you have some sort of plan to dismantle the entire society that had been founded on slave ownership and some sort of reason to believe that former slave owners would be prevented from purchasing or outright kidnapping new slaves (there would probably be a couple million unprotected people trapsing about the United States in this hypothetical.)

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        tsagobranuma
        2/17/14 1:23pm

        people aren't property, so everything you wrote is just so much bullshit

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      Cristobal JuntaKen Layne
      2/17/14 12:07pm

      expansive tracts of real estate

      I believe you mean "huge... tracts of land."

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