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  3. In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George Washington, 52, was nearly toothless. So he hired a

In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George Washington, 52, was nearly toothless. So he hired a

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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.
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答案 1784年，离乔治-华盛顿成为美国总统还有5年，那时他52岁，可牙齿已所剩无几了。于是他请了一位牙医往他的嘴里种了9颗牙齿——这些牙齿是从他的奴隶们口中取下来的。 这种行径与大多数人所熟知的历史书里误砍樱桃树的乔治形象有着天壤之别。近些年来，许多历史学家开始关注奴隶制对开国元勋们生活的影响。他们这么关注一定程度上是受了1998年开始采用的DNA证据的激励。DNA证据几乎完全证实，托马斯-杰斐逊曾与他的女奴萨利-海明斯至少生有一子。仅仅在过去的30年间，他们就将历史翻了个底朝天。好些历史学家的论著都表明，这批早期国家领导人在道德上都实行折中主义，而且美国建国初期非常脆弱。更具意味的是，这些历史学家还指出，许多开国元勋明明知道奴隶制度不对，但基本没有采取措施去废除奴隶制。 历史学家表示。这些开国元勋最主要是受制于他们那个时代的文化。尽管华盛顿和杰斐逊私下都表示憎恶奴隶制，但是他们也明白，这个制度是他们创建的这个国家的政治经济根基的一部分。 首先，南方奴隶主是不可能放弃其奴隶的。正如威瑟克在《有过之圣贤：乔治-华盛顿，他的奴隶们和美国的诞生》一书中写的，拥有奴隶就像“拥有一个数额巨大的银行账户”。若是不保护这一“特别制度”，南方各州是不会在联邦宪法上签字的。而该制度就包含有这么一个条款：在分配国会代表名额时，每个奴隶按3／5个人头算。 此外，这些国家领导人的政治生涯也离不开奴隶制度。3／5人头公式使得选举团中南方各州的选票增加，从而帮助杰斐逊在1800年的总统大选中险胜。杰斐逊一执政，即于1803年买下路易斯安娜，扩大了奴隶制的范围。这块新购置的土地变成了13个州，其中3个州实行奴隶制。 虽然杰斐逊没有让海明斯本人和他另外的约150名奴隶获得自由，但他还是给予海明斯的子女以自由之身。美国独立战争时期，华盛顿亲眼目睹了黑人士兵的骁勇善战，这使他开始相信所有人生来是平等的。于是他不顾亲人们的极力反对，立下遗嘱让其奴隶自由。而仅在10年前，这一举措在弗吉尼亚州是需要通过立法会批准的。
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