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  3. In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George

In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George

游客2025-04-08  53
问题     In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George Washington, 52, was nearly toothless. So he hired a dentist to transplant nine teeth into his jaw — having extracted them from the mouths of his slaves.
    That’s a far different image from the cherry-tree-chopping George most people remember from their history books. But recently, many historians have begun to focus on the roles slavery played in the lives of the founding generation. They have been spurred in part by DNA evidence made available in 1998, which almost certainly proved Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one child with his slave Sally Hemings. And only over the past 30 years have scholars examined history from the bottom up. Works of several historians reveal the moral compromises made by the nation’s early leaders and the fragile nature of the country’s infancy. More significantly, they argue that many of the Founding Fathers knew slavery was wrong — and yet most did little to fight it.
    More than anything, the historians say, the founders were hampered by the culture of their time. While Washington and Jefferson privately expressed distaste for slavery, they also understood that it was part of the political and economic bedrock of the country they helped to create.
    For one thing, the South could not afford to part with its slaves. Owning slaves was "like having a large bank account" , says Wiencek, author of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. The southern states would not have signed the Constitution without protections for the "peculiar institution" , including a clause that counted a slave as three fifths of a man for purposes of congressional representation.
    And the statesmen’s political lives depended on slavery. The three-fifths formula handed Jefferson his narrow victory in the presidential election of 1800 by inflating the votes of the southern states in the Electoral College. Once in office, Jefferson extended slavery with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803; the new land was carved into 13 states, including three slave states.
    Still, Jefferson freed Hemings’s children — though not Hemings herself or his approximately 150 other slaves. Washington, who had begun to believe that all men were created equal after observing the bravery of the black soldiers during the Revolutionary War, overcame the strong opposition of his relatives to grant his slaves their freedom in his will. Only a decade earlier, such an act would have required legislative approval in Virginia. [br] What do we learn about Thomas Jefferson?
选项 A、His political view changed his attitude towards slavery.
B、His status as a father made him free the child slaves.
C、His attitude towards slavery was complex.
D、His affair with a slave stained his prestige.
答案 C
解析 细节推断题。根据题干关键词Thomas Jefferson定位到原文第三段。第三段提到的Jefferson对slavery的attitude是distaste，但又没有废除它，因为它是国家政治经济的基石。接下来的第四到六段，行文脉络非常清晰，第四段谈经济基石(当然也有政治，南方的)，第五段谈政治基石，第六段再转折一下，虽然Jefferson认为奴隶制度是一个基石，没有触动他，但他还是解放了Hemings’schildren，这也算是做了点事情，这一定程度上呼应了前面的distaste，虽然这其中可能有他的孩子。纵观三到六段，就是在表达Jefferson对奴隶制度的复杂态度。故答案为C。
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