Posted on 07/09/2022 2:52:46 PM PDT by DFG
Monticello is going woke — and trashing Thomas Jefferson’s good name in the process.
The Charlottesville, Virginia, home of the Founding Father and America’s third president is one of our best-known national monuments, familiar from its appearance on the nickel since 1938.
But the hilltop mansion designed by Jefferson himself, once preserved as a tribute to the author of the Declaration of Independence, now offers visitors a harangue on the horrors of slavery.
“The whole thing has the feel of propaganda and manipulation,” Jeffrey Tucker, founder of the libertarian Brownstone Institute and a recent visitor, told The Post. “People on my tour seemed sad and demoralized.”
The new emphasis is the culmination of a 10-year effort to balance the historical record, officials of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the nonprofit that owns the estate, have said.
But visitors complain that employees go out of their way to belittle Jefferson and his life.
“The tour guides play ‘besmirchment derby,’ never missing a chance to defame this brilliant, complex man,” Stephen Owen of Enochville, NC, wrote on Facebook.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
There was no proof that T.J. ever had a physical relationship with Sally Hemmings.. Any DNA sharing could very well have come from his visiting nephew. Not what the destroyers want to hear.
An aside, I see all the great trees that once surrounded the house are no longer there, defeated by time, or careless groundskeeping. Detracts from the great scheme of design.
This is very true. We went there about 8 or 9 years ago - and the script the docent delivers is very focused on the enslavement of the enslaved who were held under slavery by the filthy rich Jefferson who impregnated all of his female slaves - except the cook. Her he kept so busy over the scorching hot flames cooking delicacies for his pleasure, that he couldn’t get a chance to ravage her. The home was built by the enslaved people who were only given little teeny wooden huts to live in, which they had to build themselves. Once in awhile Jefferson might have bothered himself to read a book or write a letter, and was said to have invented something unimportant once. The End. And please stop by our gift shop and cafe before you leave.
They’ve already done this to the president’s house site in Philadelphia. While touring the site, you will not hear or see anything about George Washington or John Adams.
“I hope I don’t run into this when I visit Mount Vernon in November”
It’s not as pervasive, but it certainly has taken firm hold. It is becoming all about the “enslaved”. We have been there five times in the past 17 years. I noticed the creep, and the last time that we went it was very different than the first. Washington is a side note now. I won’t ever go back.
Even the mansion tour was spoiled - it is very rushed, and that is the best thing that I can say about it. Perhaps in November it will be shoulder season, and won’t be like Disneyland of the Slaveholder.
Swell. Always wanted to go. Scheduled to be there October 5. I feel my enthusiasm a bit dampened
Punch a few of the tour guides spouting this garbage and it will stop.
L
And it definitely made no difference to Muhammad Ali, either! ;)
I visited there in May 2019 and you had the option of doing either the slave tour or the garden one. I did the garden one and that was the right choice as there were way fewer people (the slave one was filled with noisy schoolkids) and it was led by a lovely lady who gave all sorts of interesting and insightful information. That same day, I went over to the Highlands (James Monroe’s place) and also did James Madison’s Montpelier the day before.
I’ve visited Monticello many times and loved it. Learned something new each time. Jefferson was an amazing man.
Guess I won’t go anymore. So sad.
If I went on a tour there I’d have earbuds in so I couldn’t hear the leftist, revisionist drivel from these propagandists.
Jefferson was born into a family that owned slaves. He owned slaves until he died. Some of his slaves were sold to pay off his estate’s debt.
He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, which has the immortal words that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Some see a contradiction between those words and his owning slavery. Some of his slaves were able to read and write; Jefferson and they communicated with each other by letters. Virginia had a law making it illegal to teach the Negro how to read and write.
He was a man of his times and era, a great man, a significant founder of this country. Slavery should be part of Jefferson’s story at Monticello and Poplar Forest. It needs to be told, honestly but not through the lens of a woke culture - which is nothing but anti-America disease ... a new strain of communism, tyranny and slavery. Learning from Jefferson truthfully may be necessary to thwart our current challenges.
“The bill on the subject of slaves was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting them, without any intimation of a plan for a future & general emancipation. It was thought better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment whenever the bill should be brought on. The principles of the amendment however were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even to this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government....It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be pari passu filled up by free white laborers. If on the contrary it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.
page 51
Thomas Jefferson Redivivus
Wow. I’ve never read this before.
“Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government..”
He called it I think. Harsh to say, but the way our government uses/pits races against each other is just one example of why multiple races have difficulty living under the same government.
Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence (April 17, 1743)
Thomas Jefferson, born April 17, 1743, was chosen to write the Declaration of Independence first because he was a Virginian and second for his writing skill. Virginia was the most populous colony, but precipitating revolution events like Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, the siege of Boston, and the capture of Fort Ticonderoga happened up North. Virginia would cement an alliance by bringing Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia with it.
Jefferson was well satisfied with his writing but suffered a painful ordeal as the Continental Congress remade his work. His draft at 1704 words was 366 words longer than the final. The Congress proceeded to add 253 words, and remove or change the phrasing for 792 words, thereby transforming over 60% of his work. Among passages removed was a section complaining the mercantile system, imposed on the colonies by commercial charter, mandated the importation of slaves to the New World.
Britain had forbidden the colony’s two attempts to abolish slavery, but between the start of the revolution and writing of the Constitution six of thirteen colonies freed slaves. The philosophical doctrines consulted for the Declaration of Independence and Constitution placed master and slave on the same plain of existence, and thereby doomed the institution of slavery.
Decisions to denigrate Thomas Jefferson in historical accounts examples contra-factual analysis supporting newly popular morality. We remember Martin Luther King for achievements as a civil rights leader, and not for adultery. Recognizing Jefferson commemorates his writing the Declaration of Independence, and not slave ownership.
Declaration of Independence: A Transcription (1333 words)
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
Jefferson's "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence (1704 words)
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html
British prohibit abolition of Slavery
https://books.google.com/books?id=VqVzeHFaa1QC&pg=PA132&lpg=PA132&dq=%22slave+trade%22+virginia+%22privy+council%22&source=bl&ots=KHnj2vqxY5&sig=14kubMg1qCFRlTvKLSy4KaaQW5Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjg0O7MktTaAhUOEqwKHecgAKs4ChDoAQg3MAU#v=onepage&q=%22slave%20trade%22%20virginia%20%22privy%20council%22&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=VqVzeHFaa1QC&pg=PA131&lpg=PA131&dq=%22Virginia%27s+assembly+intended+to+prohibit+absolutely+the+slave+trade%22&source=bl&ots=KHtn4vrw53&sig=ACfU3U2KtJ7zBW7UvBdAiDKcSZdZS9_JrA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjryd310aDpAhVEPawKHQq-CzMQ6AEwAHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Virginia's%20assembly%20intended%20to%20prohibit%20absolutely%20the%20slave%20trade%22&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=VqVzeHFaa1QC&pg=PA134&lpg=PA134&dq=remove+all+Restraints+on+your+Majesty%27s+Governors+of+this+Colony,+which+inhibit+their+assenting+to+such+laws+as+might+check+so+very+pernicious+a+Commerce&source=bl&ots=KHtn4vrAY5&sig=ACfU3U01RHw9Q-T8NgyY1rvOP91TiYigDg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj3gMKK06DpAhUmnq0KHfnMA_MQ6AEwBnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=remove%20all%20Restraints%20on%20your%20Majesty's%20Governors%20of%20this%20Colony%2C%20which%20inhibit%20their%20assenting%20to%20such%20laws%20as%20might%20check%20so%20very%20pernicious%20a%20Commerce&f=false
The Virginia Slavery Debate of 1831-1832
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Virginia_Slavery_Debate_of_1831-1832_The
Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom#1701–1799_(Late_Modern)
13 Colonies Population (1710 - 1770)
http://worldpopulationreview.com/states/thirteen-colonies/
Wokeness = Marxism. Both are highly toxic to any society or culture.
This is going on everywhere In society including the landmarks, and it started the last decade or so in earnest. Major aspect seems to be every Civil War site hosting a major ode to “the enslaved” and how CW was all about them and Lincoln set up the EP to free them from all the evil white America has wrought.
Is anyone really surprised?
No, put the author of the piece called Monticello a national monument, which apparently it is not.
Is that what you want folks? Do you realize that followers of the master of Hell are NOT going to see the Father God of Heaven??
Suppose slavery existed in the US today and was a legal form of trade. Any color, just people caught for the purpose of being sold to other people.
Now. If you, being a kind hearted Christian who abhorred slavery, had knowledge of an auction and knew terrible people were going there to buy slaves but you had enough cash to buy one or more,
Would you go the auction and try to buy as many as you could to save some from terrible masters?
Or you’ve inherited slaves you cannot free for their own safety.
As hard as Jefferson fought to address slavery in the Declaration AND that he loved Sally and fathered children, I believe he was in one of those positions.
bkmk
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.