To the editor:

President Trump recently criticized the Smithsonian Institution for focusing on “how bad slavery was.” Trump was partially correct, as chattel slavery was a great era for some people: slave owners, their male family members, and friends. But it was hell on earth for enslaved females who were routinely raped for pleasure, punishment and profit.

As children born to enslaved females inherited their mothers’ enslaved status, slave owners had a financial interest in impregnating their “property.” In 1832, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates compared a slave owner’s right to increase the number of his slaves to that of “the owner of brood mares.”

The female slaves as “brood mares” strategy increased dramatically when the federal government outlawed the importation of enslaved people from Africa in 1808. In some instances, enslaved people could not choose their mates as slave owners matched the most fit male slaves to the most fit female slaves to enhance the quality — and value ­ of their [slave owners] stock.

Enslaved females who resisted sexual assault were threatened with being sold, or their children sold, to another plantation owner, breaking up families. In Missouri (1855), a slave woman was convicted of murder (and hanged) for killing a man who repeatedly raped her. The court rejected her self-defense claim, ruling that enslaved women had no right to resist the sexual advances of their owners.

The following is from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” The Smithsonian should be commended for telling it like it was.

George J. Bryjak

Bloomingdale