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 ...
Ping
jefferson was a francophile and a utopian. if he was alive today, he would be a liberal.
Nonsense.
This raises Jefferson up a few more notches in my book.
believed that the only real wealth was land....
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Jefferson, for all of his flaws, was for limited government.
there was more to jefferson than a few half understood quotes (always taken out of context, I might add) that conservatives love to trot out when it serves their purpose.
jefferson was easily the most distasteful, most scheming, and most unreliable of all the founding fathers that didn’t shoot another founding father in a duel.
Remember, this is the NY Times talking here.
mendacious nonsense. government was all but nonexistent when you say he was for limited government.
Coming from the biased NY Times this means squat.
I find the piece to be quite fanciful, and without much of a point.
Federalist/Anti-Federalist ping. If you substitute the name “Hamilton” for “Lincoln,” you get to the basic argument that illuminated the debate over the Constitution and America’s future.
Yes, he was. But was also for limited government. Jeffersonian Democracy contains the following core tenants:
— The national government is a dangerous necessity to be instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community; it should be watched closely and circumscribed in its powers.
— Separation of church and state is the best method to keep government free of religious disputes, and religion free from corruption by government.
— The federal government must not violate the rights of individuals. The Bill of Rights is a central theme.
— The federal government must not violate the rights of the states. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 (written secretly by Jefferson and James Madison) proclaim these principles.
Call him what you want, but by any modern measurement, he would have been anything but a Democrat.
Interesting to think that Jefferson and Lincoln were alive at the same time, Lincoln and Taft were alive at the same time, and Taft and George H.W. Bush were alive at the same time, and Bush is still kicking. Just two lifetimes separate Bush from Jefferson.
Lincoln knew of Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings? Then why was it so hard to prove and has yet to be proven? Lol.
Republicans hated Jefferson.
John is correct. Jefferson would be the biggest liberal out there. I daresay he would be pro-dope, pro-abortion, pro queer marriage, and other idiot causes.
Being for “limited government” does not make one a conservative.
Read Gore Vidal’s “Burr”.
Fascinating.
Also, I should note, Vidal’s scholarship is impeccable.
Anyway, Burr’s opinions regarding Jefferson are interesting and enlightening regarding this thread...
Yes, and he wanted even less of it.
The DNA "proof" of Jefferson's paternity finds only a 12.5% chance that Jefferson fathered Sally Heming's children, and it conclusively showed that a number of so- called "descendants" of Jefferson who have maintained his paternity for generations were not even remotely related to anyone in Jefferson's patrilineal line, let alone Jefferson himself. [This despite an early claim that the test was 100% definitive. Nope, it was not.]
Contemporaneous accounts by Jefferson's family do not support the theory that Jefferson fathered Heming's children; his daughter maintained on her deathbed that he was not present during a 15 month period when one of Heming's children was born, and to this day the Jefferson family denies the relationship.
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