Posted on 07/05/2015 3:24:11 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — “Lincoln hated Thomas Jefferson.” That is not exactly what we expect to hear about the president who spoke of “malice toward none,” referring to the president who wrote that “all men are created equal.”
Presidents have never been immune from criticism by other presidents. But Jefferson and Lincoln? These two stare down at us from Mount Rushmore as heroic, stainless and serene, and any suggestion of disharmony seems somehow a criticism of America itself. Still, Lincoln seems not to have gotten that message.
“Mr. Lincoln hated Thomas Jefferson as a man,” wrote William Henry Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner of 14 years — and “as a politician.” Especially after Lincoln read Theodore F. Dwight’s sensational, slash-all biography of Jefferson in 1839, Herndon believed “Mr. Lincoln never liked Jefferson’s moral character after that reading.”
True enough, Thomas Jefferson had not been easy to love, even in his own time. No one denied that Jefferson was a brilliant writer, a wide reader and a cultured talker. But his contemporaries also found him “a man of sublimated and paradoxical imagination” and “one of the most artful, intriguing, industrious and double-faced politicians in all America.”
Lincoln, who was born less than a month before Jefferson left the presidency in 1809, had his own reasons for loathing Jefferson “as a man.” Lincoln was well aware of Jefferson’s “repulsive” liaison with his slave, Sally Hemings, while “continually puling about liberty, equality and the degrading curse of slavery.” But he was just as disenchanted with Jefferson’s economic policies.
Jefferson believed that the only real wealth was land and that the only true occupation of virtuous and independent citizens in a republic was farming. “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people,” Jefferson wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
hero worship doesn’t make up for poor historical knowledge.
The question was not whether he was a conservative or a liberal. It was whether he would be a democrat or a republican. Jefferson was for limited government. Name me ANY current day democrat who is for limited government.
Come back and post when you aren't drunk.
Jefferson was a libertarian. He opposed the Big Government "conservatives" of his day, and he and his minions fought them tooth and nail.
Yet another classic example of how the socialists/communists now infesting government and the media employ the tried and true technique of casting those they hate or whose policies they detest into disrepute. Jefferson is one they particularly despise.
An astute student of history and human nature, Thomas Jefferson, predicted what we see happening here in America. While a strong case can be made that the French aristocracy brought it upon themselves, as ambassador in France, he witnessed the run up to the FIRST socialist/communist revolution there. He penned the following observations concerning what would happen HERE should that socialism come to the United States. He CORRECTLY predicted that we would become an increasingly contentious and litigious people as we shouldered one another out of the way to get OURS from the public trough and the trough would soon be empty.
He also knew where the bulk of the problem would originate.
That whirring noise you may hear coming from that mountain in Charlottesville, Virginia is Mr. Jefferson getting up to around 3600 RPM.
(A 6 minute video with this information may be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypLu49pq3bI)
As I understand it, at the time of the drafting of the Declaration, Mr. Jefferson originally wrote “…Life, Liberty and PROPERTY…” (meaning that one’s right to freely acquire, use and dispose of his property – to the extent doing so did not violate the same to others – was a Creator endowed right. Because slavery viewed humans as property, the phrase “Pursuit of Happiness” was adopted instead to avoid – at least for the time being — the inevitable debate on that subject.
“The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIX, 1782. ME 2:230
“I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.” —Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Papers 12:442
“I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.” —Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1800. ME 10:173
“Our cities... exhibit specimens of London only; our country is a different nation.” —Thomas Jefferson to Andre de Daschkoff, 1809. ME 12:304
“Everyone, by his property or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in the support of law and order. And such men may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over their public affairs and a degree of freedom which, in the hands of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public and private.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:401
“An insurrection... of science, talents, and courage, against rank and birth... has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty, and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will recover from the panic of this first catastrophe.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:402
“I fear nothing for our liberty from the assaults of force; but I have seen and felt much, and fear more from English books, English prejudices, English manners, and the apes, the dupes, and designs among our professional crafts. When I look around me for security against these seductions, I find it in the wide spread of our agricultural citizens, in their unsophisticated minds, their independence and their power, if called on, to crush the Humists of our cities, and to maintain the principles which severed us from England.” —Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:120
He wasn’t my hero. I’m just using facts to support my argument.
I suspect Jefferson and most of the other Founders would have thought little of Lincoln.
Now we know why 49 of the 50 States stole your land with their property tax schemes.
Lincoln was well aware of Jefferson’s “repulsive” liaison with his slave, Sally Hemings...
I beg to take issue with this assertion.
DNA evidence attests to the FACT that ‘a Jefferson’ exists within the lineage of the Hemmings.
However, it Does NOT implicate Thomas Jefferson explicitly.
Sally Hemmings, the slave, was acquired from the brother of Thomas Jefferson.
It is most likely HE, the brother, who is complicit in this DNA lineage.
But it made him "not a liberal."
Claiming someone was not a liberal isn't the same as claiming he was a conservative. He wasn't. He was a liberal in the classical tradition: a libertarian.
Jefferson wasn’t a libertarian, he wasn’t for gay marriage and abortion, and drug use, polygamy, and porn, and prostitution.
Wonder if they have beaten Lincoln when they caught him wiping his bum with the Constitution?
Yet Hamilton, the "conservative" argued for more. And Jefferson argued for less.
Libertarians; classical, traditional or today’s modern libertarian.
Useless then. Useless now
FredZarguna replied: Nonsense.
bigdaddy45 wrote: You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Jefferson, for all of his flaws, was for limited government.
I second Fred's motion.
Your typically unhinged position regarding libertarians is noted, and, as usual, complete nonsense.
Name me ANY current day democrat who is for limited government.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sure. But first, name me ANY current day REPUBLICAN who is for limited government.
Jefferson was right about pretty much everything. If you think that makes him “useless” your opinion is entirely worthless.
What you just posted is as nutty and dishonest as your trying to claim that Jefferson was a homo loving libertarian who wanted to homosexualize the American military and have gay married soldiers getting marriage benefits as a “libertarian”.
Not surprising, considering Lincoln was pretty much felt there should be no limits on federal power.
BenLurkin wrote: believed that the only real wealth was land....
As I posted before - 49 of the 50 states stole the ownership of "your" land within the last 50 or so years with property tax legislation.
In most states, if you don't pay The King's Rent, they'll take "their" property back within 3 or 4 years - even if you have paid for the land in full...
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