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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2024-05-21  10
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. He suspected the country would eventually come to its moral senses and find the notion of owning other human beings repugnant, says Joseph Ellis, author of the bestselling Founding Brothers. "He knew his legacy depended on it. He knew that we were watching." [br] We may infer from the second paragraph that______.
选项 A、DNA technology has been widely applied to history research
B、in its early days the U.S. was confronted with delicate situations
C、historians deliberately made up some stories of Jefferson’s life
D、political compromises are easily found throughout the U.S. history
答案 B
解析 根据题干中的second paragraph将答案出处定位到第二段。该段倒数第二句提到，一些历史学家的作品揭露了……这个新生的国家的脆弱(the fragile nature of the country’s infancy)，B)是对此的同义转述，其中的in its early days对应该句提到的the country’s infancy，delicate对应fragile，故答案为B)。第二段只说了利用DNA技术确定了杰斐逊和他的奴隶Saily Hemings生了至少一个孩子，并未提及这项技术是否被广泛用于历史研究，故排除A)。第二段并未提及历史学家是在编造故事，故排除C)。D)中的political compromises与第二段倒数第二句中的moral compromises不符，throughout the U．S．history与the nation’s early leaders不符，故排除D)。
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