It must come as a sobering shock to you, Whiskey, to find out that the American Revolution was already more than a year old before Jefferson penned those words. Or does your calendar have a void from April 18, 1775 to July 4, 1776? What were they fighting for in the interim? Were they psychically channelling Jefferson's future words? Or were they fighting for Independence, as in The War of Independence?
I suspect you have no explanation for the Virginia Governor who complained that Union troops were freeing his slaves as they chased the Rebel army up the Virginia Tidewater. That was Governor Thomas Jefferson. The Union troops were the Redcoats of the United Kingdom. The Rebel army was that of George Washington. Do you suppose Thomas Jefferson failed to understand "the basis of the American Revolution"?
And we still haven't learned if you are consistent in choosing Loyalist Governor Lord Dunsmore, the Emancipator of 1775, over rebel George Washington, slaveowner. Please advise us which horn you pick in your dilemma- Emancipation and loyalty to King George III, or Independence and the slaveholders.
Why would I make generational judgments on historical figures?
That would be useless.
That's the thing about condemnations of President Lincoln; whatever his ideas, they were far in advance of most people of -his-day.
Walt