Taking Back Thomas Jefferson

The Abbeville Review ^ | March 10, 2015 | James Rutledge Roesch

[don-o]

Jefferson, a member of the gentry of Old Virginia, was always regarded as one of the best and brightest of his generation, a gentleman of the finest intellect, taste, and manners. Although Jefferson loved and was loyal to the Union, he was a Virginian first and an American second; Virginia, Jefferson avowed, was his “country.” This order of allegiance – State over Union, or “Society” over “the State” – was firmly rooted in the Old South.

Accordingly, in the emerging conflict between the North and the South, Jefferson sided with his own country. “It is true that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts & Connecticut,” Jefferson said of the South, “and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings as well as exhausting our strength and substance.”

Indeed, as Secretary of State, Jefferson stated to the President, “Whenever Northern and Southern prejudices have come into conflict, the latter have been sacrificed and the former soothed.” To expose Jefferson as a hypocrite, therefore, is not only to dethrone a Founding Father, but also to dishonour a Southern icon and thereby dishonour the South herself.

There is no greater threat to the money and power of the fascists and socialists perched in Washington, D.C. than the Southern political tradition which Jefferson personified. Indeed, many of the features of modern politics which are taken for granted today were originally abhorred by Jefferson as grievous betrayals of the American Revolution, to which secession and resistance were the only hope:

[don-o]

Just a snip from a long and interesting essay.

[don-o]

ping

[iowamark]

The implication that Jefferson would have been sympathetic to secession is quite false. He denounced secession as treason.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Later.

[ansel12]

You should read the article.

[don-o]

He denounced secession as treason.

Got a source for that?

[Chuckster]

I didn’t know Jefferson “Bore six children”. Stopped right there.

[don-o]

Read more carefully.

[Chuckster]

Read more carefully.

"It is now accepted as a fact that one of the preeminent Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson – the Apostle of Liberty and Reason – engaged in an illicit sexual relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, by whom he bore up to six children."

One of us should.

[don-o]

Deep sigh. He is stating the case he is REFUTING.

[iowamark]

I was referring to Jefferson’s reaction to the Burr Western plot and the reaction of the Virginia Dynasty (Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe) to the secession talk during the War of 1812.

[piasa]

Interesting.