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To: DoodleDawg

“So you keep claiming.”

Claim? It’s in the text of the Declaration of Independence. Look it up.


252 posted on 04/17/2017 8:47:21 AM PDT by jeffersondem
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To: jeffersondem
Claim? It’s in the text of the Declaration of Independence. Look it up.

Let's look at the phrase in question: "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us,...".

You keep claiming that Jefferson is referring to slave insurrections. But in an earlier draft of the Declaration, that clause was worded as "he has incited treasonable insurrections among our fellow citizens, with the allurement of forfeiture and confiscation of our property." Do you honestly think that Jefferson, or anyone else at Congress, would have considered slaves "fellow citizens"? And if not citizens then how could they ever be regarded as "treasonable"?

Also look at how Jefferson used the term insurrection on other occasions. In a 1787 letter to James Madison Jefferson wrote, "The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections." In his 1806 message to Congress Jefferson wrote, "In a country whose constitution is derived from the will of the people directly expressed by their free suffrages, where the principal executive functionaries and those of the legislature are renewed by them at short periods, where under the character of jurors they exercise in person the greatest portion of the judiciary powers, where the laws are consequently so formed and administered as to bear with equal weight and favor on all, restraining no man in the pursuits of honest industry and securing to every one the property which that acquires, it would not be supposed that any safeguards could be needed against insurrection or enterprise on the public peace or authority. The laws, however, aware that these should not be trusted to moral restraints only, have wisely provided punishments for these crimes when committed." Do you think it likely that Thomas Jefferson would use the same word to describe a slave uprising and the act of a free people rebelling against tyranny?

You see something and imply a meaning that is not necessarily borne out once you examine all the evidence.

255 posted on 04/17/2017 9:47:15 AM PDT by DoodleDawg
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