Citizen
Founder's Club Member
You would only be able to call it a lie if you superimpose 21st century cultural mores and norms onto an 18th century people. During those times, the land owning patriarch of the family represented the entire family through the vote that he cast - very much like the representative republic that they voted for! If you think that the wife did not have the ear of her husband and he did not take her input seriously, then I would suggest that you would be, again, superimposing your views onto an 18th century people.
Or, I could superimpose their own thinking on them--not their "norms"; just because something was a norm does in no way validate it or say that even they didn't know it was wrong.
Just a few random observations.
In a letter to James Madison in 1789, Thomas Jefferson questioned whether one generation could bind a later generation with a constitution. Jefferson was literally only one step away from questioning whether a current generation could bind other members of a current generation with a constitution.
Christian country. Jesus's words were already seventeen centuries old.
Shall we say we cannot criticize Plessy v Ferguson because it was based on 19th century norms? How about Sherman's genocide of Plains Indians?
Etc.