Franklin would have, for sure, but I'm pretty sure the rest of them would have just kept raping their own slaves.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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Franklin famously preferred older women.
I did not know that, I just knew he liked French prostitutes.
Not all. Pretty sure John Adams would not have been.
Hamilton and Jefferson would probably have written most of them though, about each other.
I don't think they would have been called the Epstein files though. It probably would have been called the Franklin files. All of this stuff seems like Ben Franklin's jam.
No I don't think Ben Franklin would have done it for espionage or spying purposes I think he would have just done it for the love of the game.
I agree, Ben probably would have indulged and not cared about using it to his advantage.
Hamilton and Jefferson were absolutely cold blooded in their political pursuits and use of published letters. They would have used any opportunity to cut the other down. Maybe mutually assured destruction would have stayed their hands on that particular indulgence, though Hamilton did famously out his own affair to clear himself of the embezzlement allegation.
Ben Franklin's letter from 1745 is pretty good evidence that he liked older women. We're not just talking 30's here either; he implies women in their 40's and older.
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/eros/praise-older-women
The misogyny is strong, but at least it's not pedophilia.
I get that a lot of this linked article is written to (correctly) change the narrative around slavery erasure but some of it delves into baseless hyperbole that can't be anything but counter productive.
For example:
Evidence suggests that sexual abuse of slaves was so fundamental to chattel slavery that it’s reasonable to assume any histories of “kind” slave owners are complete fabrications designed to preserve the legacy of the masters.
That is either playing fast and loose with wording or an absolutely incredible claim requiring incredible proof.
On one hand, the "kind" slave owner is always a fabrication because the act of owning slaves is inherently immoral and reprehensible. This view makes the claim a borderline platitude; perpetuating an institution that enables rapists is very obviously unkind.
On the latter interpretation, you're claiming that rape was so universal that any slave owner was almost certainly a rapist (especially if they claimed they weren't). This would require some sweeping evidence, think studies on the demographics of mixed race slaves or on medical records tied to sexual assaults.
So what evidence follows? Excerpts from Frederick Douglas giving second hand accounts of rape and of Harriet Jacobs giving her first hand account. Nothing that incriminates slave owners broadly beyond Douglas's phrasing "...in [rape] cases not a few,...".
I don't even deny that the evidence might exist, and I would love to see it brought to light if it does. But the thing about slavery, and specifically the USA's commercial cotton slavery: it's fucking awful enough if you just list verifiable facts without aggrandizing. Even if everything in this article were true, it doesn't move the needle much farther beyond the baseline of American slave ownership.
If you're going to broadly claim "America's founding fathers were sex traffickers that raped children" then please, name names! Bring receipts! You can't open with...
These facts are not debatable. [Child sex trafficking] happened.
...and then lay out a single link rehashing that Thomas Jefferson was a massive piece of shit. What do we know about the other 54+ Founding Fathers?
baseless hyperbole
an absolutely incredible claim requiring incredible proof
I do not think it is much of a stretch to think that there were a fuckton of rapists in times past, judging by the fuckton of rapists in contemporary time. To be honest, I think it is awful of you to assume that men in positions of power do not rape, when we have so much evidence that they do (and please do not talk to me about "not all men rape", because that is not what we are talking about, we are talking about systemic issues).
Boys at 16 years old rape sleeping girls, because they can. Film directors and businessmen (unsuccessful ones as Trump as well) rape women and children, because they can. Slave owners raped their slaves, because they could. This is a question of power dynamics.
Bring receipts!
No.
Finding it offensive to expect evidence for any such accusation is absolutely asinine. What a stupid fucking conclusion.
Expecting an American to have historical literacy is considered one of their gravest insults. Akin to telling an Israeli they are bad at raping children.
Do you disagree on my remark that Trump is a pedofile rapist or only that about the slave owners that also happened to be founding fathers for a genocidal empire?
There exists ample evidence of how widespread rape is today and throughout history. I do not see why you give slave owners the benefit of doubt in this regard, seeing as they had a blatant and fundamental disregard for their fellow human beings, in their eyes property.
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