So strange it is, this human ability to treat one group with kindness and respect and others not. Here is an account of Edmund Randolf's marriage.
"Miss Nicholas was daughter of the Hon. Robert Carter Nicholas, State Treasurer. Randolph wrote to his children after his wife’s death. “We were both born in the city of Williamsburg, within twelve hours of each other; myself on the 10th of August 1753, and she on the 11th. My aunt Randolph, who saw each of us soon after our birth, facetiously foretold that we should be united in marriage-a circumstance which, improbable at the time from the dissensions of our families, seemed daily to grow into an impossibility from their increasing rancor.
In childhood we were taught the elements of reading at the same school… she won me by the best of all graces, cheerfulness, good sense, and benevolence. I do not recollect that I reflected much upon that range of qualities, which I afterwards found to be constituents of nuptial happiness; but Providence seemed to be kinder to me than my most deliberate judgment could have been… I desired nothing more than that she should sincerely persuade herself that she would be happy with me.”
On the 29th day of August 1776 they were joined in wedlock. The relations between Randolph and his wife had always been true and tender. So free from friction had been the course of their united lives that his daughters could not forget the single instance of misunderstanding. Mrs. Randolph having related some incident, her husband hastily exclaimed: “That is mere gossip.” The lady repaired to her room, where she did not answer her husband’s gentle knock. Randolph then said “Betsey, I have urgent business in town, but I shall not leave this house until permitted to apologize to you.” The door opened and the unprecedented scene ends.
On the 6th of March 1810 came a blow from which Randolph could not recover; his wife died. After Mrs. Randolph’s burial the heart-broken husband wrote some account of her, and of their married life, which was addressed to his children as “the best witnesses of the truth of the brief history.”
In part of this account Randolph wrote, “My eyes are every moment beholding so many objects with which she was associated; I sometimes catch a sound which deludes me so much with the similitude of her voice; I carry about my heart and hold for a daily visit so many of her precious relics; and, above all, my present situation is so greatly contrasted by its vacancy, regrets, and anguish, with the purest and unchequred bliss, so far as it depended on her, for many years of varying fortune, that I have vowed at her grave daily to maintain with her a mental intercourse.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Randolph#/search
Yet this is the man that managed four plantations with hundreds of slaves. His family's wealth and luxurious lifestyles depended upon the oppression and exploitation of thousands of people. as the Governor of Virginia this man was instrumental in the theft of our democracy, our American Revolution, by introducing the Virginia Plan to the Constitutional Convention, a plan that gave power over the government to our nation's wealthiest.
How many of us do the same? We treat our family members with dignity and respect, and then at work switch to corporate, elitist, exploitive values. Why do we live these conflicting lives? It is time for a new American Revolution.