Washington Post tallies "enslavers" who feature in Capitol building artwork

Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison implicated

An intrepid reporter for the Washington Post says she checked more than 400 pieces of art at the U.S. Capitol building to see how many of them depict “enslavers.” She examined statues and paintings on display in the interior of the building, on the ceiling of the Capitol Rotunda, and even in the Crypt.

Her conclusion? One third of the art honors “enslavers.” She reports her findings in a frontpage story in today’s Post that spills onto two more pages.

Actually, it’s not clear that any of the honorees was an enslaver. All were slaveowners, but as far as appears, none enslaved anyone — i.e., brought someone who was free into bondage. In fact, some of the so-called enslavers freed slaves.

The woke left finds it useful, rhetorically, to conflate the terms slaveowner and enslaver. The woke left finds it even more useful to pretend that owning slaves more than 200 years ago provides meaningful insight into the character of the owners — insight so meaningful that it overrides all other information about these men. In this way, the left can encourage the naïve to despise many of America’s Founders and, with luck, the Founding itself.

In reality, knowing that a Southerner owned slaves in the late 18th and first half of the 19th century tells us little more than that he was a well-to-do planter. Had Gillian Brockell, author of the Post’s art-work exposé, been a well-to-do planter in the South at that time, it’s very likely that she would have owned slaves. Same with her bosses at the Post.

Magnifying the significance of slave ownership as a marker of character enables Brockell to lump George Washington (who freed every slave he owned upon his death) with Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens, who served, respectively, as president and vice president of the Confederacy more than 60 years after Washington died.

Washington accounts for 17 of the pieces of art depicting slaveowners. If my math is correct, that’s about 12.5 percent of the slaveowner depictions. Throw in top-tier Founders and intellectual giants Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin (who freed his slaves while he was alive and became president of an anti-slavery society), and James Madison, and you’ve accounted for about 25 percent of them.

The absurdity of the Post’s exercise in counting is highlighted by the inclusion of the famous painting that depicts George Washington resigning his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. The Post doesn’t just include this painting in the count. The paper edition contains a picture of the work that takes up about one-third of a page (and commands the top of the online edition of the story).

Washington’s resignation of his commission is probably one of the half-dozen or so most important events in American history. Indeed, it’s a seminal event in modern world history.

The resignation established civilian control over the military and set the stage for America’s successful experiment in democracy — “our democracy,” as Democrats and the Post like to say. (I wonder whether the significance of the resignation, or even the event itself, is still taught in America’s schools.)

Of course this painting should feature prominently at the Capitol building. Yet to the Post, its display is just another “enslaver” being honored.

Brockell’s “exposé” is not a one-off. The Post says it’s conducting “a year-long investigation into Congress’s relationship with slavery” — a relationship no one disputes and that has already been investigated thoroughly by historians (though, I’ll grant the likelihood that no historian wasted time counting depictions of slave owners at the Capitol building.)

The fruits of the Post’s investigation regularly make it to the paper’s frontpage, along with a seemingly endless stream of BLM-style propaganda. When the Post takes a day off from this barrage, it’s likely to include a frontpage article about “L’s,” “G’s,” and/or “T’s”.

Why, with so much real news happening, does this sort of woke stuff (much of which isn’t new) make it to the Post’s frontpage almost daily? A friend offered this explanation: (1) woke staffers love to write these stories and (2) editors are afraid not to allow it, and even to refuse it frontpage treatment.

The explanation is quite plausible. One thinks of the New York Times, where staff sentiment led the paper to go with its deceitful 1619 project, to force out an editor for publishing an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton, and to the end of Bari Weiss’ association with that paper.

Yet, it’s possible that my friend’s explanation is too charitable. He assumes there are adults present at the Post for woke staff to intimidate. I’m not sure there are.

In either case, the Post has lost its way.

It has also lost tons of subscribers — about half a million of them in less than two years. To what extent the Post’s over-the-top wokeness contributes to the losses, I don’t know.

I do know that the Post is laying off staff. And that there aren’t enough non-woke Post staffers to absorb the entire hit.