VoteJP
J.P. Cusick
Some people try to claim that the Sotterley Plantation is so beautiful and nice but it is the ugliest place in all of St Mary's County. It is ugly because Sotterley is built upon the most brutal hatred that the USA has ever known, it was built by violent exploitation and by cruel butchery and by sinful greed.
The supporters always brag about the Sotterley slave cabin on the property, but that was the cabin for for the house slaves, while the field slaves lived and labored in far worse conditions.
The bigger wrong of financing and supporting the Sotterley Plantation is not the slavery but the horrible process of glamorizing the slave Masters, and of glamorizing the Master's Mansion as if it is some noble or honorable place which it is not. Of course many people like to refer to it as "history" and "Historic" as if being "history" makes it all okay, but that is not accurate because the Sotterley Plantation is presenting that "history" in a dishonest way as in a pack of lies. The people who built and maintained the Sotterley Plantation did not do the work, they did not earn the money or the wealth, as the Masters of Sotterley were really sinful and barbaric persons.
It would be different and would be better if that ugly Plantation building were torn down, and maybe build some decent place on the property, as like build a school or a nursing home there, so then the entire St Mary's population could take pride into the property, instead of the now one-sided praise given to honor that slave Plantation which it does not deserve. That kind of ugly history needed to have been left to rot or buried and disposed of, instead of praising it or sustaining it as a true embarrassment to the other part of our community who reject it and denounce it.
The supporters always brag about the Sotterley slave cabin on the property, but that was the cabin for for the house slaves, while the field slaves lived and labored in far worse conditions.
The bigger wrong of financing and supporting the Sotterley Plantation is not the slavery but the horrible process of glamorizing the slave Masters, and of glamorizing the Master's Mansion as if it is some noble or honorable place which it is not. Of course many people like to refer to it as "history" and "Historic" as if being "history" makes it all okay, but that is not accurate because the Sotterley Plantation is presenting that "history" in a dishonest way as in a pack of lies. The people who built and maintained the Sotterley Plantation did not do the work, they did not earn the money or the wealth, as the Masters of Sotterley were really sinful and barbaric persons.
It would be different and would be better if that ugly Plantation building were torn down, and maybe build some decent place on the property, as like build a school or a nursing home there, so then the entire St Mary's population could take pride into the property, instead of the now one-sided praise given to honor that slave Plantation which it does not deserve. That kind of ugly history needed to have been left to rot or buried and disposed of, instead of praising it or sustaining it as a true embarrassment to the other part of our community who reject it and denounce it.