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> How We Can Save America: A Practical Solution

28 March 2006, 14:59

216.61

"THE OTHERS WHO QUOTE JEFFERSON AND WASHINGTON , YES SALLY HEMMINGS AND SLVE-HOLDER JEFFERSON AND WASHINGTON WHO OWNED LAND BEYOND THE APPLACHIANS IN INDIAN TERRITORY WHEN HE FORBADE OTHERS THE SAME, ARE DRIVEL."

LOL

Why not read their wills, their own words. The "slave holding founding father’s" is pro-federalist rhetoric, one look into the VERY extensive libraries and collected quotes and papers would give you a differen’t view. Learn about the Burr conspiracy.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/duel/sfeature/burrconspiracy.html

If you bother digging past the 8th grade US history class, you will discover that the British had a vested interest in destroying the young United States...thus, many agent-provocateurs were sent to ridicule, propagandize, and chip away at what the founding father’s called an "experiment" themselves.

What was the experiment? Within a few generations, if Liberty were upheld and taught, the old ways of thinking....you know, European monarchies, dictators, and kings....would shrink and new forms of thinking would begin taking place. This was the age of enlightenment after all, followed by reason.

Were they perfect? No one is saying they were perfect, the british burned the capitol in the war of 1812.

In spite of the fact that he owned slaves himself, as was common with plantation owners of his time, Jefferson spoke out tirelessly throughout his life against the institution of slavery and for the right of black people to be free. Apparently there were many factors, financial, social and political, that prevented him from freeing his own slaves. In a letter to Edward Coles (Aug 25, 1814), he wrote, "The laws do not permit us to turn them loose, if that were for their good." To Edward Bancroft he wrote (in 1788), "As far as I can judge from the experiments which have been made, to give liberty to, or rather to abandon persons whose habits have been formed in slavery is like abandoning children." (ME 19:41)

Thus, he seems to have sincerely believed that merely freeing the slaves was not the best solution, and that the most important step to take was the elimination of the real source of this injustice, which was the institution of slavery itself. Thus he wrote to Edward Rutledge (in 1787), "I congratulate you, my dear friend, on the law of your State, for suspending the importation of slaves, and for the glory you have justly acquired by endeavoring to prevent it forever. This abomination must have an end. And there is a superior bench reserved in heaven for those who hasten it." (ME 6:173) His overall solution to the slavery problem was to return the blacks to their own African homeland or to some land where they could live as "a free and independent people," and to provide them with implements and skills to establish their own nation.

"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all." —Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824. ME 16:73

"Our system is to live in perpetual peace with the Indians, to cultivate an affectionate attachment from them by everything just and liberal which we can do for them within the bounds of reason, and by giving them effectual protection against wrongs from our own people." —Thomas Jefferson to William H. Harrison, 1803. ME 10:368

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account

In September 1802, political journalist James T. Callender, a disappointed office-seeker who had once been an ally of Jefferson, wrote in a Richmond newspaper that Jefferson had for many years "kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves." "Her name is Sally," Callender continued, adding that Jefferson had "several children" by her.

Although there had been rumors of a sexual relationship between Jefferson and a slave before 1802, Callender’s article spread the story widely. It was taken up by Jefferson’s Federalist opponents and was published in many newspapers during the remainder of Jefferson’s presidency.

http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/hemings-jefferson_contro.html