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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  28
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] What is said about slaves and slavery in the passage?
选项 A、Some founding Fathers benefit politically from slavery.
B、Slaves in the old days did not have the right to vote.
C、Slave owners usually had large savings accounts.
D、Slavery was regarded as a peculiar institution.
答案 D
解析 第四段第三句提到The southern states would not have signed the Constitution without protections for the“peculiar institution”，根据peculiar institution前面的定冠词the可知，peculiar institution指代前面已经出现的内容，即Owning slaves，也就是slavery，由此可知，slavery被看作是a peculiar institution，故答案为D)。倒数第二段只提到杰斐逊能在1800年大选中以微弱优势胜出得益于将奴隶看作3／5人，但并未提及其他的开国者也得益于奴隶制，A)中的Some founding Fathers在文中没有依据，故排除强干扰项A)。第四段末提到一个奴隶算作3／5人，并未提到奴隶是否有选举权，故排除B)。第四段第二句中的Owning slaves was“like having a large bank account”是比喻，比喻拥有奴隶就像拥有大笔存款，C)是对此句的错误理解。
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