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There is a poster here that goes under the pseudonym rlmorel. He likes to pick out posts and criticize others for rudeness and insults. I am including him on the ping list so that he might be able to appreciate your work.

We all know that you relish employing every shady debate tactic and logical fallacy you can in your posts, and your last one was up to par.... having used six outright misrepresentations, four direct insults, three red herrings, two pejorative accusations, and two false admonitions......Your usual fare, which will likely send a chill up the leg of rlmorel..

Are you serious about using some undocumented source (?) to accuse Jefferson of failing to “speak up”, “defend”, or engage in ongoing support of his own ideas?

All of that is pure nonsense….I am amused that you seem to think that you can get by with that type of accusation. Well, let's do a bit of research on that red herring.

First, Founding Father Jefferson was engaged in countless efforts to express his concepts of Liberty for his entire life.....not failing to “speak up”, and this manifested itself while he was serving as a representative in the Virginia House of Burgesses, the Virginia Convention, Continental Congress, Confederation Congress, and as Governor of Virginia, Minister to France, Secretary of State, Vice President and President of the United States. (His speeches are preserved, if you care to take a look).

He was constantly corresponding with the most influential men, organizations, and publication entities of his time. He was not bashful in presenting ideas that ran counter to those in power. You can find evidence of that in "A Summary View of the Rights of British America" and the original draft of the DOI. There is no mistaking his willingness to break from the status quo.

“Jefferson drafted more reports, resolutions, legislation, and related official documents than any other Founding Father. Above all, Jefferson wrote letters, probably more than his illustrious contemporaries, and a larger number of these letters survive—some 18,000. He corresponded with many leading lights of liberty, including Thomas Paine, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, Marquis de Lafayette, James Madison, George Mason, Jean-Baptiste Say, Madame de Stael, and George Washington.” (James Powell, 1995).

So, his positions were constantly being reiterated, reinforced, and revisited for the public and legislative venues in which he visited.

He was nothing like the perverse picture you attempt to present. You ought to be ashamed of that type of intentional misrepresentation.

I will say again that it should be pointed out that just after Jefferson's first term in the House of Burgesses, Thomas Jefferson proposed legislation to emancipate slaves in Virginia. This was done in late 1769. In the 1770s and 1780s, Jefferson also presented initiatives in the Virginia legislature and the federal government to seriously address the issue of slavery. And as I have pointed out to you already, in 1784, Jefferson supported legislation prohibiting slavery in the western territories. Enacted or not, his position was clear.

Here is one of your polite points: “I can't believe how deceptive you are! I put your quote in bold type, appropriate given the boldfaced liar we've always known you to be. Jefferson helped draft legislation that would allow slave owners to free their slaves in their wills. It didn't pass. It would have left slavery in place. I suppose Jefferson's bill was a step in the right direction, but let's be honest: it wouldn't actually have directly emancipated any slaves if it had become law.”

**Note to rlmorel....see above paragraph and respond accordingly.

So you do admit that Jefferson wrote a manumission bill. The definition of the term manumission is the freeing of a slave. I correctly pointed out that he offered that concept in the attempt to create legislation. Whether or not it was successful, as you tend to want to emphasize in the effort to discredit the effort, has nothing to do with the validity or relevance of the issue. You can try every rhetorical trick you can devise, but my statement remains true.

Thomas Jefferson was one of, if not the strongest of early leaders in pushing for the abolition of slavery. In his letters, legislative drafts, and in his book Notes On The State of Virginia he denounced slavery while devising plans of gradual manumission that featured an end to the slave trade, slavery prohibition, and the establishment of a method for newly born children of slaves to be freed.

Have you noticed that the less ground Pea has to stand on, the longer and more indignant and more bloviating his posts get.

He started out by accusing John Adams and Robert Livingston of killing Jefferson's anti-slave trade passage in the Declaration. He never actually provided any evidence at all for that assertion. But here he is getting on his high horse about sourcing, like that's his right.

I gave my source many posts back as R.B. Bernstein. That's his biography, Thomas Jefferson. Page 34: "Jefferson took each cut and change as a personal affront. While Adams fought to keep the draft intact, Jefferson suffered in silence." Just how Bernstein found that out, I don't know, but there it is in black and white on the printed page.

Looking for more information, I dug up Carl Binger's Thomas Jefferson, a Well-Tempered Mind. Here's a quote from John Adams on pages 61-2: "Mr. Jefferson had been now about a year a member of Congress, but had attended to his duty in the House a very small part of the time, and, when I was there, had never spoken in public. During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentences together."

Consequently, it's a lot more likely that Jefferson didn't speak up in defense of his original draft, than it is that Adams tried to kill his anti-slave trade passage, a charge that Pea has never provided evidence for.

I don't get why he keeps going on with this. We all know Jefferson had a checkered record on slavery. Some good spots, some bad ones. I guess he was like most people in that, not pure good or pure evil either. He wasn't wholly a villain, but there are better heroes out there if you want one. If some of us take a particular dislike to him, it's because of hero-worshipers like this guy.