Tweet of the Late Night:

[applegrove]

Last edited Mon Oct 3, 2022, 02:13 AM - Edit history (1)

Link to tweet

James Madison raped his half sister who was a slave, had a son by her, then sold his child into slavery when he was a teenager and y'all mad at Lizzo for playing his flute?

Applegrove: not fact checked. Insert only "Madison was a slave owner of 100. And y'all mad at Lizzo for playing his flute."

[brush]

1. Damn! The more you learn about the founding fathers...

the less you want to know.

[Bev54]

7. Agree, it all becomes too much, it is a lesson to be careful who you

want to emulate or make a hero. I just wish people would be authentic and quit trying to make heroes out of those who were fallible.

[dchill]

2. Now THAT'S leadership in the making!

/sarc

[rubbersole]

3. Ah, yes...miss the fireside stories about Christopher Columbus discovering America...

Murdering motherfucking psycho never set foot in America.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

4. How do we know this is true?

I'm not sure how to fact check this.

[KS Toronado]

5. Here's a start to fact check

Madison never had children, but he adopted Dolley's one surviving son, John Payne Todd (known as Payne), after the marriage.[102] Some of his colleagues, such as Monroe and Burr, alleged that Madison was infertile and that his lack of offspring weighed on his thoughts; but Madison never spoke of any such distress.[228] Nonetheless, his fertility has come into questions in recent years, following a popular 2007 article in The Washington Post, in which an African-American named Bettye Kearse claimed to be a descendant of Madison and a slave named Coreen.[229][230]

Above listed under......Personal life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison

[ShazzieB]

6. Yes, it would be nice if people would provide a source when making such an accusation.

I got so curious about this claim that I tried to do some research. I've found nothing to substantiate it, and what I have learned makes me question it even more. James Madison was a slave holder, but the behavior described in this tweet seems at odds what I've learned about his character and his complicated and conflicting views on slavery.

This article, while it does not address the story in the tweet, provides some interesting background information: https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/james-madison

[hlthe2b]

8. That anyone can state anything as fact on Twitter which then goes viral is so damned concerning...

I appreciate the fact that our founding fathers were hardly the purely principled men that history books long conveyed sans any complexity or full examination and I do not know this is NOT true any more than I know that it IS. But, will any real historians on Twitter fact-check this and weigh in or will it become "fact" by mere default? I, for one, would love to know the truth (with validated fact), for good or bad.