Posted on 07/03/2006 8:16:29 AM PDT by mathprof
IT'S a badly kept secret among scholars of American history that nothing much really happened on Thursday, July 4, 1776.
Although this date is emblazoned on the Declaration, the Colonies had actually voted for independence two days earlier; the document wasn't signed until a month later. When John Adams predicted that the "great anniversary festival" would be celebrated forever, from one end of the continent to the other, he was talking about July 2.
Indeed, the dates that truly made a difference aren't always the ones we know by heart; frequently, they've languished in dusty oblivion. The 10 days that follow — obscure as some are — changed American history. (In some cases, they are notable for what didn't happen rather than what did.)
This list is quirky rather than comprehensive, and readers may want to continue the parlor game on their own.[snip]
AUG. 20, 1998: Just Missed
With most Americans absorbed by the Monica Lewinsky affair, relatively few paid much attention when the United States fired some 60 cruise missiles at Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Most public debate centered on whether President Clinton had ordered the strike to deflect attention from his domestic troubles.
Although the details of that day remain in dispute, some accounts suggest that the attack may have missed killing Osama bin Laden by as little as an hour. How that would have changed America — and the world — may be revealed, in time, by the history that is still unfolding.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I had NEVER heard that he tought they wwere inferior, smelled and sweated differently, UNTIL last night when it was in his OWN handwriting!!
He WROTE "INFERIOR". Don't change his words for your argument.
I wonder why Hollywierd hasn't made a movie or three about this.
Anti-American revisionism alert!
That's correct. The two are separate issues.
Neither one.
were just different than whites in everything.
That is not true.
In Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia he does indeed make the statements about "odour" and "transpiration" (as he put it) but did not say blacks "were just different than whites in everything", in fact he points out many instances where they are the same or potentially superior.
Jefferson's "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence contained this paragraph which was removed to gain the support of the slave holding states:
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.Now as to him being "Horrified", who knows? However, I'm sure he was hoping no changes to the draft would be made.
Can you read?? He wrote that they were INFERIOR.
I'm not sure the NYT should have started the article with those five particular words.
can't you understand, if he believed blacks were DOGS that doesn't mean that didn't want them to be free?? my grandfather hated black people yet he didn't want them to be slaves either. the documents/statements aren't mutually exclusive
We have a winner. Man sometimes logical fallacies on these threads is appalling. Considering blacks to be inferior and opposing slavery are not mutually exclusive. You can oppose slavery and still consider blacks inferior or vice versa. You could think blacks were equal and STILL support slavery.
You seem to consistently make serious logical errors.
1. Jefferson thought blacks to be inferior.
2. Jefferson wanted slavery to be addressed in the initial U.S. documents.
You are making a logical error by assuming that 2. necessitates that you must think blacks are the equals of whites in order to not think they should be slaves. That is a fallacy. It is very easy to imagine that one might be morally opposed to slavery even of "inferior beings" (just as one might oppose making puppies work for us). Even if moral reasoning is ignored, it is easy to imagine Jefferson may have opposed slavery for pragmatic reasons--namely, the desire to get the issue out of the way to avoid a civil war, which did indeed result. Whether he thought blacks to be inferior is completely irrelevant to the statement that he was horrified that slavery was not addressed.
Your last sentence could NEVER be true!! One could NEVER think a group is equal to another yet think it would be ok to ENSLAVE them! Ridiculous...you might want to re-think it.
Neither of them is lying. Its just a contradiction of Jefferson that can't be explained and just leave it at that.
History demonstrates otherwise. Throughout history if you were captured in a war you could end up a slave. I guess if inferior means you were an inferior warrior.
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