Jefferson Day

[Ross Barlow]

Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson, wherever you are.

(April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826)

I raise a glass in your honor. Thank you for the example and the inspiration of a life well-thought, well-lived and well-expressed.

-Ross Barlow.

[Chris Grieb]

Ross; Thanks for the reminder. Jefferson is taking a lot of lumps these days but the Declaration is a great and endearing document. John Adams who had his ups and downs with Jefferson last words were about Jefferson and I think all Americans should remember and praise our first three Presidents. Let's all left a glass.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I received an email from NIF giving two very interesting links to an article by Gen LaGreca.

Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson (Front Page Magazine)

Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson (Free-Market News Network, published in George Resiman's space)

It is very interesting. LaGreca several times points to Jefferson's original views, then asks what he would think about modern government. Seeing how far America has strayed is food for thought.

She provided a charming touch of information on Jefferson I did not know:

Life requires productive work and effort to sustain it, a fact that Jefferson considered to be our glory. When his Monticello farm fell on hard times, he began producing nails, and did so proudly because "every honest employment is deemed honorable [in America]…. My new trade of nail-making is to me in this country what an additional title of nobility … [is] in Europe."

Michael

[Greybird]

Thanks for the reminder, Ross!

I didn't need it, because someone far closer to me shares that birthday: My younger brother. Who also shares Tom's red hair ... and his, and my, passion for human liberty.

We spent much of the day at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, glorying in un-carbon-offset (zark you, Gore) fuel and tires being consumed, and the superb, unleashed functioning of magnificent machines. Tom, like us, would have been fascinated, I'd think.

[BaalChatzaf]

She provided a charming touch of information on Jefferson I did not know:

Life requires productive work and effort to sustain it, a fact that Jefferson considered to be our glory. When his Monticello farm fell on hard times, he began producing nails, and did so proudly because "every honest employment is deemed honorable [in America]…. My new trade of nail-making is to me in this country what an additional title of nobility … [is] in Europe."

Michael

You can be sure Jefferson's slaves did the heavy lifting. I am equally sure he never flogged them.

All men are created equal except Sally Hemming and her brother.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Greybird]

You can be sure Jefferson's slaves did the heavy lifting. I am equally sure he never flogged them.

All men are created equal except Sally Hemming [sic] and her brother.

This spitting at Jefferson is both unnecessary and unjust.

When he wrote the Declaration of Independence, he tried to have the Continental Congress decry slavery and the slave trade. His lengthy passage on those subjects was excised due to intercolonial politics.

Manumission was rarely allowed, apart from a slaveholder's death. He wanted those laws changed, and finally got them changed, while he was Virginia's governor.

And as for Hemings, I'm still dubious, as are many others, of the accuracy or precision of DNA tracing over that many generations. Especially when the charge of such relations has little contemporary support, and came from bitter political enemies.

For a good summary of where he succeeded in decrying and discrediting slavery, despite his shortcomings, see this PDF article.

When and if you've done one percent of what he's done to further human liberty, methinks you might start to have a particle of the moral right to condemn him so freely for these shortcomings — many of them involving matters beyond his control. Not until then.

Edited April 26, 2007 by Greybird

[Chris Grieb]

In connection with Sally Hemmings- Thomas Jefferson controversy Dave Mayer who will be speaking at 2007 TAS Summer Seminar has written a great deal on this subject. If you Goggle Dave Mayer you will find his web site. He teaches at the law school. I think there is more than one.

Ba al; You beginning to bore me with your constant negativity.

[Michael Russell]

I'm more inclined to believe that Jefferson fathered a child with Sally Hemmings than is Greybird. That said, who cares if he did? Does the fact that Jefferson owned slaves and may have fathered children with one of them diminish his accomplishments? Does it render the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom meaningless? Jefferson wasn't perfect, but is ideas were and still are darn close.

Mick

Edited April 27, 2007 by Michael Russell

[Chris Grieb]

Michael; Well said! Jefferson as late as 1820 was still warning about slavery.

[BaalChatzaf]

Michael; Well said! Jefferson as late as 1820 was still warning about slavery.

And he still retained his "property". His slaves were manumitted upon his decease. Do you see a problem with this? I sure do. His sin is magnified precisely because he knew better.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

And he still retained his "property". His slaves were manumitted upon his decease. Do you see a problem with this? I sure do. His sin is magnified precisely because he knew better.

Bob,

During the context of those times, there were complicating factors for people in the public eye. The republic was young and slavery was a hot button issue. Jefferson was not the only one who resolved the issue of his own slaves on his death. I read a very charming biography of George Washington right before I came back to the USA (about 3 years ago or so): Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner. If I remember correctly, Flexner wrote Washington never spoke out in public against slavery because of the controversy it would generate (presumably he prioritized the gain of founding the country and did not want to jeopardize that). In his will, he only set them free on his wife's death so she would not have to change her lifestyle. Breaking up families was also a concern. And, of course, there were the politics and economics of it. I find it hard to imagine the context of those times. One thing is certain: it is very easy to judge with 20-20 hindsight sitting here in 2007.

I looked up Jefferson briefly on this issue. According to the Wikipedia article on him, he did not free his slaves in life because he had money problems and had mortgaged them for loans. From the article:

Jefferson owned many slaves over his lifetime. Some find it baffling that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves yet was outspoken in saying that slavery was immoral and it should be abolished. Biographers point out that Jefferson was deep in debt and had encumbered his slaves by notes and mortgages; he could not free them until he finally was debt-free, which he never was.[38] Jefferson seems to have suffered pangs and trials of conscience as a result.[39]

[38] Herbert E. Sloan, Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt (2001) pp. 14–26, 220–1.

[39] Hitchens, Christopher, Author of America: Thomas Jefferson, Atlas Books/HarperCollinsPublishers (Eminent Lives series), 2005, pp. 48

On his death, he freed 5 of his most trusted slaves and the others were sold off, not freed, to pay off his debts. According to this online source from the Library of Congress, there was another factor:

In his will, Thomas Jefferson freed five slaves, all members of the extended Hemings family: John Hemings, Joe Fossett, Burwell, Madison, and Eston. The latter two, sons of Sally Hemings, were to be given their freedom when they became twenty one. Because Virginia law required a freed slave to leave the state within one year, Jefferson asked the Virginia assembly to grant the freed slaves permission to remain in the state "where their families and connections are." The request was granted. Sally Hemings was not freed but was allowed to live as a free person with her sons Madison and Eston.

This kind of problem (splitting up families) and the political price it would entail to grant legal exceptions so families could stay together are very difficult for us today to visualize. One thing must be kept in mind. Jefferson inherited a society where slavery was promoted and passions were high about it. We don't live in that environment. That fact that he spoke out against it among all the hostility speaks volumes of his character.

And he was even flying in the face of his political advantages by speaking out. According to this article I came across doing a Google search: The Great Cover-up: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery by Mitchel Cohen, which is a review Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power by Gary Wills, by maintaining the 3/5 of a man provision for slaves in the Constitution, Jefferson and Southern politicians had more votes in the electoral college and more Representatives, thus kept the reins of power.

In this 1784 statement (although the date is not given on the linked page), Thomas Jefferson on Slavery, our dear Founding Father gets pretty much out there in his description of blacks. That passage is a hoot. See here also. So it is especially charming to read the following from the Wikipedia article linked above about his changing view of blacks:

On February 25, 1809, Jefferson repudiated his earlier view, writing:

“Sir,--I have received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind to send me on the "Literature of Negroes". Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunity for the development of their genius were not favorable and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making toward their re-establishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family. I pray you therefore to accept my thanks for the many instances you have enabled me to observe of respectable intelligence in that race of men, which cannot fail to have effect in hastening the day of their relief; and to be assured of the sentiments of high and just esteem and consideration which I tender to yourself with all sincerity.[47]

[47] Letter of February 25, 1809 from Thomas Jefferson to French author Monsieur Gregoire, from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (H. A. Worthington, ed.), Volume V, p. 429. Citation and quote from Morris Kominsky, The Hoaxers, pp. 110-111.

Here are some interesting comments by Eyler Coates on Jefferson and the emancipation of slaves. I believe this is the same person who wrote the following essay: Objectivism and Thomas Jefferson by Eyler Robert Coates, Sr.

I read this a few years ago and I suspect it is one of the main sources from which some Objectivists have developed antipathy toward Jefferson—despite Rand's high praise of him (and Peikoff's) and her mention of the quote on the Jefferson Memorial, "I have sworn...eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man" at the end of "Censorship: Local And Express" in the Ayn Rand Letter.

Jefferson was not a perfect man, but he was a very, very good one. He was a giant and I am deeply grateful he lived.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Michael; Thanks for all the information. The business of Jefferson not being a very good manager reinforces the other worldness of the man. Washington was a good manager.

Eric Daniels in his ARI course on American history makes the point that after the cotton gin was invented that slavery was much more valuable to the South. There were much stronger defenses than there had been before. I have read that by the 1840ths in South Carolina one needed the permission of the state legislature to free your slaves.

Edited April 27, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[BaalChatzaf]

In connection with Sally Hemmings- Thomas Jefferson controversy Dave Mayer who will be speaking at 2007 TAS Summer Seminar has written a great deal on this subject. If you Goggle Dave Mayer you will find his web site. He teaches at the law school. I think there is more than one.

Ba al; You beginning to bore me with your constant negativity.

Would you recommend hiding defects for the sake of being more "interesting"? A defect is there to be exposed and identified. I am the Little Boy who told the Emperor to his face that he is bare-ass. For truth to be promoted falsehood and error must be rooted out without mercy or hesitation, regardless of who is offended or even "bored".

One of the things I did for over forty years was test software and find errors. Finding errors has been my life. If that is negative, then so be it.

Bob Kolker

[BaalChatzaf]

Ross; Thanks for the reminder. Jefferson is taking a lot of lumps these days but the Declaration is a great and endearing document. John Adams who had his ups and downs with Jefferson last words were about Jefferson and I think all Americans should remember and praise our first three Presidents. Let's all left a glass.

There is no doubt of Jefferson's intellect and brilliance. However, his vision for America would have left us weak and prey to any ambitious imperial power reaching out from Europe. He saw America as a nation of farmers and husbandmen. He was not all that partial to industry and finance. It was the man who never become president, Alexander Hamilton who drew the blueprint for the America that came to be, a powerful, productive and vital Nation. A Jeffersonian America would be been weak and obscure on the world stage. We would have been no more powerful and influential than (say) Australia is now, not that there is anything wrong with Australia, mind you. America would not have even reached the level of Switzerland had Jefferson's view prevailed.

Jefferson was also far from consistent (notwithstanding his fine intellect). Here is one of his quotes.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

~Thomas Jefferson

So why did T.J. send the Fleet to Tripoli? Or why was he in principle anti-military?

His inconsistency did have one beneficial effect. It doubled the size of the Nation. He bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon even though he had no Constitutional mandate to do so. Tom Jefferson silenced the his misgivings about powerful government long enough to make the purchase. Thomas Jefferson was a man of many contradictions and conflicts. He saw clearly that slavery was wrong but he held onto his slaves. Westerners have known slavery is a sin and an abomination since the Israelites departed in haste from Egypt. It cannot be excused.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited May 19, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Chris Grieb]

Ross; Thanks for the reminder. Jefferson is taking a lot of lumps these days but the Declaration is a great and endearing document. John Adams who had his ups and downs with Jefferson last words were about Jefferson and I think all Americans should remember and praise our first three Presidents. Let's all left a glass.

There is no doubt of Jefferson's intellect and brilliance. However, his vision for America would have left us weak and prey to any ambitious imperial power reaching out from Europe. He saw America as a nation of farmers and husbandmen. He was not all that partial to industry and finance. It was the man who never become president, Alexander Hamilton who drew the blueprint for the America that came to be, a powerful, productive and vital Nation. A Jeffersonian America would be been weak and obscure on the world stage. We would have been no more powerful and influential than (say) Australia is now, not that there is anything wrong with Australia, mind you. America would not have even reached the level of Switzerland had Jefferson's view prevailed.

Jefferson was also far from consistent (notwithstanding his fine intellect). Here is one of his quotes.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

~Thomas Jefferson

So why did T.J. send the Fleet to Tripoli? Or why was he in principle anti-military?

His inconsistency did have one beneficial effect. It doubled the size of the Nation. He bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon even though he had no Constitutional mandate to do so. Tom Jefferson silenced the his misgivings about powerful government long enough to make the purchase. Thomas Jefferson was a man of many contradictions and conflicts. He saw clearly that slavery was wrong but he held onto his slaves. Westerners have known slavery is a sin and an abomination since the Israelites departed in haste from Egypt. It cannot be excused.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Bob,

The West and the rest of the world has had slavery almost since history began. Slavery was not considered an abomination by the Old Testament Jews. I suspect that Spartacus would have practiced it. It was in the US and the UK that opposition began to it.

Your comments about Jefferson views on the ecomey are correct.

My comments about your negativety were overdone.

Edited May 19, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

The West and the rest of the world has had slavery almost since history began. Slavery was not considered an abomination by the Old Testament Jews. I suspect that Spartacus would have practiced it. It was in the US and the UK that opposition began to it.

Your comments about Jefferson views on the economy are correct.

My comments about your negativety were overdone.

Regardless of whether slavery was -practiced or not- it was regarded as a sin and an abomination. The only way slavery could be morally justified in the United States was to assume either:

1. Black Africans were not really human persons

OR

2. The harm of slavery was exceeded by the harm of leaving Africans alone. In short, it was asserted that slavery is really "good" for the Africans and improves their lot in life. Talk about altruistic krapdoodle, there it is!

Ba al Chatzaf

[Chris Grieb]

Bob,

I think that's our disagreement. Slavery was not regarded as a wrong in any part of the world.

I believe Thomas Sowell has made this point. I think that Sowell has also made the point that opposition to slavery brought forth arguments in favor of it The Quakers were the first people to attack it.

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

I think that's our disagreement. Slavery was not regarded as a wrong in any part of the world.

I believe Thomas Sowell has made this point. I think that Sowell has also made the point that opposition to slavery brought forth arguments in favor of it The Quakers were the first people to attack it.

The why did the British outlaw slavery in 1832? And all without a war!

Consider this:

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Jefferson owned many slaves over his lifetime. Some find it baffling that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves yet was outspoken in saying that slavery was immoral and it should be abolished. Biographers point out that Jefferson was deep in debt and had encumbered his slaves by notes and mortgages; he could not free them until he finally was debt-free, which he never was.[39] Jefferson seems to have suffered pangs and trials of conscience as a result.[40]

During his long career in public office, Jefferson attempted numerous times to abolish or limit the advance of slavery. According to a biographer, Jefferson "believed that it was the responsibility of the state and society to free all slaves".[41] In 1769, as a member of the House of Burgesses, Jefferson proposed for that body to emancipate slaves in Virginia, but he was unsuccessful.[42] In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence (1776), Jefferson condemned the British crown for sponsoring the importation of slavery to the colonies, charging that the crown "has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere." However, this language was dropped from the Declaration at the request of delegates from South Carolina and Georgia.

In 1778, the legislature passed a bill he proposed to ban further importation of slaves into Virginia; although this did not bring complete emancipation, in his words, it "stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication". In 1784, Jefferson's draft of what became the Northwest Ordinance stipulated that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude" in any of the new states admitted to the Union from the Northwest Territory.[43] In 1807, he signed a bill abolishing the slave trade. Jefferson attacked the institution of slavery in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1784):

“ There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.[44] ”

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This is from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jeffer...son_and_slavery

Here is the long and skinny. Jefferson -knew- slavery was wrong. But he kept his slaves anyway. Shame on him!

Bob Kolker

[Brant Gaede]

Here is the long and skinny. Jefferson -knew- slavery was wrong. But he kept his slaves anyway. Shame on him!

Bob Kolker

So did Geo. Washington. True, he freed them out of his estate, but his estate had the means to do so.

Grt Br. did it without a war, but almost came into the Am. Civil War on the side of the South.

Complicated things.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

So did Geo. Washington. True, he freed them out of his estate, but his estate had the means to do so.

Grt Br. did it without a war, but almost came into the Am. Civil War on the side of the South.

--Brant

But not to defend slavery. The Brits were toying with the idea of -recognizing- the CSA, but not to send troops to her aid. And Lincoln cleverly avoided war with the Brits over the affair of two Confederate agents being taken off a British ship by the U.S. Navy.

If the Brits had ever aided the CSA militarily, the USA would have been all over Canada in a thrice. We had the Army for it. The Brits were far too smart to do anything like that.

Ba'al Chatazaf

[Chris Grieb]

Bob, Your view of the Brits in the Civil War is naive.

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob, Your view of the Brits in the Civil War is naive.

Naive? In what way. And be sure to document your position.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

If the Brits had ever aided the CSA militarily, the USA would have been all over Canada in a thrice. We had the Army for it. The Brits were far too smart to do anything like that.

Ba'al Chatazaf

Perhaps this is what Chris meant by "naive." The Brits did aid the CSA militarily and had to pay reparations after the war. (And France was told it was time to get out of Mexico.)

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

Two of great unsong heroes of the Civil War are Roger Cobden and John Bright. They kept the Brits from supporting the Confederacy.

Bob, I think Brant has said it.

Edited May 20, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The why did the British outlaw slavery in 1832? And all without a war!

Bob,

Here's a speculation based on my knowledge of politicians and businessmen in bed with politicians (and even churches in bed with politicians):

By the 1830's, slaves were no longer needed for anything deemed essential by the British.

Apparently you have a higher opinion of English politicians than I do. My own read of history is that monetary interests and/or property in general, added to loyalty to rulers, have been much stronger shaping forces in history than idealism. Thus, my speculation sounds more plausible to my ears than your insinuation that British politicians were morally superior to, and more idealistic than Thomas Jefferson.

I seriously doubt England would have outlawed slavery if it were still receiving all those fat revenues and goods coming in from all those slave-based ventures in the colonies. Instead, they got their asses kicked and saw that they were no good at slave-owning anyway. It took some years for the idea to settle in, but it did.

I would have to investigate the history of this to be sure, but I would bet good money that the abolition of slavery issue involved some pretty tangible interests and not merely a wish to be a moral benefactor of mankind.

Michael