News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Aug. 18, 2017: Something good did come out of that horror last weekend and President Donald Trump’s absurd troubled response to it …
A much needed review of America’s heroes – real and false. The ultimate issue here is slavery and those who clearly facilitated its continuation. There would have been no Civil War in 1861 if slavery did not exist at that time.
Pictured above is one of the very, very FALSE heroes of American history – as bad as and in fact worse than Robert E. Lee. Much – worse on a certain level because in fact Jefferson is glorified far, far beyond Robert E. Lee.
Lee’s response to slavery was criminal but Jefferson took an active role in institutionalizing slavery, which Lee and others later tried to defend. Jefferson “owned” at least 200 slaves and some reports argue, far more than that. Lee’s family “owned” 43 slaves. Jefferson actively bought and sold slaves. The official Monticello Website states Jefferson sold 110 slaves for financial gain as well as buying slaves for his estate. There are no records that Robert E. Lee actively bought and sold slaves.
Thomas Jefferson was a White Supremacist. There is no other way to describe him. He “owned” 200 or more African Americans throughout his life, bought and sold them, and at his death, unlike Washington and others, Jefferson confirmed on his Death Bed, his belief in Slavery by NOT freeing those 200 or more human beings in his will and selling them to benefit his family.
As The New York Times states clearly and emphatically in its editorial today, August, 17, 2017 ….
(Supreme Court Justice) “Taney wrote in 1857 that under the Constitution, black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” Dred Scott is part of the woeful history underpins a swaggering modern white supremacy movement.”
If nor for southern SLAVE masters led by the most famous of them all, Thomas Jefferson, no one would know who Robert E. Lee is today and there would be no statues of him because the Civil War would not have happened.
So Dear Readers let me get REAL here …
Yes Robert E. Lee was BAD but Thomas Jefferson was far WORSE.
Take DOWN those Lee monuments but do NOT let Jefferson’s STAND!
To do so would be blatant HYPOCRISY, which too many do practice.
There is NO place in 21st century America for The Jefferson Memorial.
The very foundation of the Confederacy was based on the plantation society that was institutionalized in the U.S. Constitution on the absolute insistence of the southern political leaders, led by Thomas Jefferson. Glorifying Jefferson with the huge Jefferson Memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC, which presents Jefferson as an American “god,” one of our great heroes, makes no sense any longer. It never did!
Indeed, there never would have been a Jefferson Memorial in our nation’s capitol if Franklin Roosevelt had not made a cynical decision to associate himself vigorously with Jefferson in order to win southern support for his campaigns for President and his programs. Until Roosevelt resurrected Jefferson he was largely fading from American history.
The Jefferson Memorial was the ultimate manifestation of his wicked “embrace” of Jefferson serving both as a reward to racist southerners who supported President Roosevelt and to insure continued Southern support by deifying their most important demigod the DEMAGOGUE Jefferson.
Read some of President Roosevelt’s outrageous speech at the dedication of the Jefferson Memorial in 1943 and not a word about the real Thomas Jefferson in any of it at all …
Here is President Roosevelt, April 13, 1943:
“Today, in the midst of a great war for freedom, we dedicate a shrine to freedom. To Thomas Jefferson, Apostle of Freedom, we are paying a debt long overdue.”
ENCORE … “To Thomas Jefferson, Apostle of Freedom, we are paying a debt long overdue.” Apostle of Freedom ?? What a Joke !
More Roosevelt …
“Yet, there are reasons for gratitude that this occasion falls within our time; for our generation of Americans can understand much in Jefferson’s life which intervening generations could not see as well as we.”
ENCORE … “our generation of Americans can understand much in Jefferson’s life which intervening generations could not see as well as we.”
That would be amusing IF it was not so painfully absurd.
More Roosevelt …
“He Jefferson ) faced the fact that men who will not fight for liberty can lose it. We, too, have faced that fact.”
REALLY President Roosevelt . you are adding INSULT to injury .. In addition to all Jefferson’s other sins he was a COWARD who ran as far away from the American Revolution as he could fleeing Philadelphia right after the Declaration of Independence, then fleeing the capitol of Virginia and landing up in France living in luxury throughout the War.
There is much more from Roosevelt …
“He ( Jefferson ) lived in a world in which freedom of conscience and freedom of mind were battles still to be fought through—not principles already accepted of all men. We, too, have lived in such a world.”
Here Roosevelt adds ugly cynical irony to his speech. This is way way beyond absurd and convoluted beyond imagination. Roosevelt is equating Jefferson being a SLAVE owner in some weird positive way in comparison with Hitler’s enslavement of Jews and others. It is beyond comprehension except Roosevelt knew exactly what he was doing trying to fool everyone.
Next Roosevelt goes completely off the deep end mocking reality …
“He (Thomas Jefferson) loved peace and loved liberty—yet on more than one occasion he was forced to choose between them. We, too, have been compelled to make that choice.”
WHAT?
Jefferson loved peace and liberty for WHITE Americans especially RICH White Southern Americans like him were RICH because they ENSLAVED African Americans DENIED them peace or liberty !
ENOUGH of this nonsense. There is much, much more of it in Roosevelt’s speech more of the same some I have used here. But I used more than enough. Here is the most “impressive” (sic) aspect of Roosevelt’s speech at the dedication of The Jefferson Memorial.
In 577 words Roosevelt does NOT use the word SLAVERY even once. He does not even come close to the using the word SLAVERY which far and away was THE defining aspect of Thomas Jefferson’s life.
Without SLAVERY there would have been no famous Thomas Jefferson.
Back to the larger issue and Jefferson why his Memorial is a SHAM…
The Confederacy itself is not the core issue here the institution of slavery is. Southern states seceded from the Union in order to protect their “right” to enslave Africans. The great hero of southern slavery is Thomas Jefferson. It was Jefferson who was the acknowledged leader of the plantation south all who insisted that the U.S. Constitution protect slavery.
Jefferson “owned” hundreds of slaves. His entire luxurious life and his fortune from the day of his birth until his death was dependent on slavery. Unlike Washington and others who at least freed theirs in their wills upon their death Jefferson in contrast included their sale in his will.
Jefferson fathered 6 slave children by forcing himself on one of his slaves Sally Hemings beginning when she was only 14 and Jefferson did not even free her in his will. Today what Jefferson did to Hemings has an unambiguous name repeated RAPE and imprisonment PUNISHABLE by multiple life sentences in maximum security prisons without possible parole.
Let me add just one more of Jefferson’s many sins and crimes. Unlike various other slave “owners,” Thomas Jefferson PREVENTED “his” slaves from learning to read and write. This straight from the official Monticello Website that glorifies Jefferson …
“There is no record that Jefferson provided instruction for his slaves or encouraged them to learn their letters … Although severe legal restrictions on slave education were not enacted in Virginia in Jefferson’s lifetime, many plantation owners tried to prevent their slaves from learning their letters. Educated slaves were considered potentially rebellious and those who could write could also forge passes.”
And this from an all important seminal article about Thomas Jefferson in The Smithsonian Magazine, October, 2012.
“A letter has recently come to light describing how Monticello’s young black boys, “the small ones,” age 10, 11 or 12, were whipped to get them to work in Jefferson’s nail factory, whose profits paid the mansion’s grocery bills. This passage about children being lashed had been suppressed—deliberately deleted from the published record in the 1953 edition of Jefferson’s Farm Book, containing 500 pages of plantation papers. That edition of the Farm Book still serves as a standard reference for research into the way Monticello worked.”
AGAIN … “Monticello’s young black boys, “the small ones,” age 10, 11 or 12, were whipped to get them to work in Jefferson’s nail factory, whose profits paid the mansion’s grocery bills.”
AGAIN … “Monticello’s young black boys, “the small ones,” age 10, 11 or 12, were whipped to get them to work in Jefferson’s nail factory, whose profits paid the mansion’s grocery bills.”
Moe from Jefferson’s own Farm Book as referenced by The Smithsonian….
“Tobacco required child labor (the small stature of children made them ideal workers for the distasteful task of plucking and killing tobacco worms); wheat did not, so Jefferson transferred his surplus of young workers to his nail factory (boys) and spinning and weaving operations (girls).”
The most important monument to slavery is the huge Jefferson Memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC. Its removal should be the #1. It is impossible to justify The Jefferson Memorial and now even less so in the wake of last weekend and an even higher sensitivity to memorials that glorify Slavery and the Civil War waged to try and protect Jefferson’s kind of slave nation.
No don’t tear down this Memorial. No reason to be as brutal as Jefferson and his plantation society. If there are those in Virginia who want it let then pay to have it carefully taken apart and put somewhere obscure in Virginia although there is also a strong argument it should not exist at all.
What should be done with this priceless land on the Mall in Washington ?
One would be to highlight the carnage of Slavery on that site. We do have a new African American Museum on the Mall that very much covers slavery.
I very much favor a far more positive and inspiring use than a slavery monument. Rather finally provide a national monument to the Great American Hero who Thomas Jefferson hated and that Jefferson did everything he could to destroy. America’s greatest immigrant and a recognized leader of the anti-slavery movement in America and the Savior of our nation under the Constitution as the First Secretary of the Treasury.
Truly the Greatest American who was never President of the United States and why so far he does not have a monument on the Mall – and this is very important who I argue was NEVER President ONLY because Thomas Jefferson and his band of slavers FEARED the likely rise of the most brilliant Founding Father becoming President because Jefferson and the others just like him with power in the South knew …
if anyone as President could and would have brought …
an END TO SLAVERY in America
and without the Civil War it was ..
Alexander Hamilton!
Replacing The Jefferson Memorial with The Hamilton Monument on The Mall in Washington, DC, although I favor a national monument for Alexander Hamilton where he lived most of his life, where he became First Secretary of the Treasury, where the First Capitol of the United States was and where Hamilton is now at Rest forevermore …
Lower Manhattan!
(This entire series is dedicated in honor of Liu Xiaobo)
EDITOR’S NOTE: About The Writer: Arthur Piccolo is a professional writer and commentator and often writes about Latin America for New Americas.
