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①In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George Washington, 52, was nearly toothless.

②So he hired a dentist to transplant nine teeth into his jaw-having extracted them from the mouths of his slaves.

翻译译文：

1784年，也就是在其成为美国总统的五年前，52岁的乔治·华盛顿牙齿几乎掉光了。于是他雇用一名牙医移植了九颗牙齿到自己颌中--这些牙齿是从他的奴隶们口中拔出来的。

第二段

①That’s a far different image from the cherry-tree-chopping George most people remember from their history books.

②But recently, many historians have begun to focus on the role slavery played in the lives of the founding generation.

③They 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.

④And only over the past 30 years have scholars examined history from the bottom up.

⑤Works of several historians reveal the moral compromises made by the nation’s early leaders and the fragile nature of the country’s infancy.

⑥More significantly, they argue that many of the Founding Fathers knew slavery was wrong-and yet most did little to fight it.

翻译译文：

这一形象与大多数人所记得的历史书中“砍樱桃树的乔治”大为不同。但最近，许多历史学家开始关注奴隶制在开国元勋们生活中所扮演的角色。他们在某种程度上是受到了1998年获得的DNA证据的鼓舞，该证据几乎可以确证托马斯·杰斐逊曾与其奴隶萨利·赫明斯育有至少一个孩子。只在最近三十年间学者们才开始全方位、彻底地研究历史。数位历史学家的著作揭示了美国早期所做的道德妥协以及建国初期的脆弱性。更为重要的是，他们提出，许多开国元勋明知奴隶制是错误的--然而大部分人却极少有行动去抗争它。

第三段

①More than anything, the historians say, the founders were hampered by the culture of their time.

②While 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.

翻译译文：

最为重要的是，历史学家表示，开国元勋们受到了他们那个时代文化的束缚。尽管华盛顿和杰斐逊私下表达过对奴隶制的反感，但他们也明白奴隶制是他们帮助创建的这个国家的政治与经济基石的一部分。

第四段

①For one thing, the South could not afford to part with its slaves.

②Owning slaves was “like having a large bank account,” says Wiencek, author of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America.

③The 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.

翻译译文：

一方面，南方承担不起放弃奴隶的后果。拥有奴隶就“如同拥有大额银行存款”，《不完美的偶像：乔治·华盛顿，他的奴隶和美利坚的创立》一书的作者温瑟柯说道。如果没有对这种“特别制度”的保护条款，其中包括一项出于国会代表权的目的而将一名奴隶视为3/5个人的条款，南方各州当时便不会签署宪法。

第五段

①And the statesmen’s political lives depended on slavery.

②The 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.

③Once in office, Jefferson extended slavery with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803; the new land was carved into 13 states, including three slave states.

翻译译文：

并且这些政治家的政治生涯也取决于奴隶制。五分之三方案使选举人团中南方各州的选票数得以激增，使杰斐逊在1800年总统大选中得以险胜。杰斐逊一就职，便通过1803年的“路易斯安那购地案”扩大了奴隶制的范围，这片新土地被划分成13个州，包括三个蓄奴州。

第六段

①Still, Jefferson freed Hemings’s children-though not Hemings herself or his approximately 150 other slaves.

②Washington, 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.

③Only a decade earlier, such an act would have required legislative approval in Virginia.

翻译译文：

即便如此，但杰斐逊还是解放了赫明斯的孩子们--虽然没有解放她本人和其他大约150名奴隶。在目睹了独立战争中黑人士兵的勇敢后，华盛顿开始相信人人生而平等，从而克服亲属的强烈反对，在遗嘱中给予了他的奴隶自由。就在十年前，这种行为在弗吉尼亚还要得到立法机构的批准。

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