If you had access to all Jefferson's papers and could follow him from draft to draft, you might say, "Ah, yes, this is what happened to his long strange attack on slavery. It somehow got condensed into a sentence about 'domestic insurrections,'" but if you were the average reader of the time -- or even of today -- you might not reach that conclusion, because most of the stuff about slavery was removed.
It's a strange passage. Wasn't the Revolution itself a kind of "insurrection"? Were there really royalist "insurrections" against it? How many actual slave revolts were "excited" by the king and his army and officials? Or was just running off considered to be an "insurrection" by Jefferson?
I also don't remember any "urban anti-abortion rioting" in the last century or this one. I also never heard of the "anti-abortion riots of 1834 and 1835 (more than a dozen)." It looks like the writer (or editor or publisher) wanted to say "anti-abolition" or "anti-abolitionist" and got confused (or spellchecked). While the article makes a good point that "domestic insurrections" aren't necessarily slave uprisings, that doesn't mean it's authoritative about everything.
When you say “reposting this” what do you mean?
Not a trick question. There's been a lot of hay put on the ground and I'm not sure exactly what “this” means.
I agree with you here. The post (Brother Joe #343) was totally not credible. Confused as you say.
I only brought it up again - - in a very, very understated way - - to challenge my good friend Brother Joe about the stuff he grabs off the Internet and puts forward when he gets his upper body parts caught in the wringer. I love that man.