THOMAS JEFFERSON

This is a very Jeffersonian type statement.

Martin Luther not only reformed Christianity but was a catalyst for many religious Christian alternatives thereby ending monolithic worldwide Christian religious doctrine and control. He argues that Islam must have a similar reform process.

Jefferson wrote more on more subjects than any other president in American history. For exa,ple, he wrote more letters during his presidency than any other president including the modern ones who had word processors and large staffs. So Jefferson wrote on almost every subject and expressed so many ideas that Lincoln could make this statement.

The late Supreme Court Chief Justice, John

The "Virginia Dynasty": Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. George Washington, a Virginian, was followed by John Adams of Massachusetts, and is apart from the Virginia Dynasty.

The ex-President was not very happy with the appointments of his successor.

The debate was on the concept of a National Fast Day. Thomas Jefferson, who rarely spoke or debated made an exception and strongly opposed the proposal of which Adams was a prime supporter. Jefferson carried the motion but Adams had sharply rebuked Jefferson’s lack of piety to the degree that he feared that he had insulted and angered Jefferson with whom he agreed on most issues. Jefferson, however, appeared not to be insulted at all, and after the debate took the chair next to Adams. The incident was the subject of a famous letter from Benjamin Rush to Adams years later. It is not clear whether Jefferson was being particularly magnanimous and forgiving or as some suspect did not regard being accused of a lack of religiosity as an insult at all. Later, of course, the two became major political enemies, and then became friends after they both were out of politics.

In 1872 a proposed Constitutional amendment was debated throughout much of the country. The proposed “Christian Amendment” to the Constitution, recognized the Bible, God, and made Christianity the state religion requiring religious tests of public officials including belonging to an organized Christian Church. “Deists” as used then referred to people who had a general belief in a Supreme Being but did not belong to any formal or organized church.

Arguing to impeach President Thomas Jefferson:

Writing about congressional investigations such as those carried out by the House Un-American Activities Committee:

The staid clergyman who headed Yale solemnly predicted that if Thomas Jefferson were to win the election for President of the United States:

There were a number of Blacks who believed that they were descended from the progeny of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, one of his slaves. Despite most evidence supporting that position, the Thomas Jefferson Society of Jefferson’s descendents, refused to admit them.

This statement has been described by the great American scientist Stephen J. Gould as “the most famous 19th century statement of equality made by a scientist.” Humboldt was one of the great scientists of his era and personally met with Thomas Jefferson who was a great admirer of his and who had read his works. It is somewhat ironic that the German racism of the 20th century was so ignorant of Humboldt’s views even as it lauded the great German. The famous Nazi book burning scene seen in newsreels around the world actually took place outside the library of Humboldt University in Berlin.

This was one of the favorite quotations of Thomas Jefferson who copied it into his Commonplace Book.

Jefferson had insisted that the expedition was purely scientific. The fact that it was lead by two military officers and involved soldiers led many to suspect the expedition was an “invasion” of what was then officially Spanish Territory. The very small size of the expedition made the concept of an expansion effort seemingly ridiculous to many. Jefferson was never public about his hopes fort the eventual possibilities but Martinez seemed to have gotten it right but was paid little heed.

Levy was the first Jewish naval captain of the United States Navy. He was acknowledged by the Secretary of the Navy to be qualified for promotion to Commodore, but there was much anti-Semitic opposition among the other senior officers. Levy was finally promoted to Commodore. He was so grateful for the freedom of America that he had purchased Thomas Jefferson's home Monticello and maintained it as a shrine to the author of the Declaration of Independence. See George Bancroft

the Confederate States of America

The bitter partisanship of the time was as intense as any in our history. Jefferson was attacked more frequently and more virulently than even William Clinton. Further, there were still major issues of Congressional vs. Presidential power, and there were those who believed the President should not at all concern himself with the legislative process but should merely carry out those laws that Congress passed.

Pickering referred to Jefferson as the “Negro President” because he believed his presidential power rested on the shoulders of slavery.

Luttrell was interested in buying some Western land and moving to America. His advice regarding assistance to immigrants was never adopted by the Federal Government even though shortage of manpower was a critical problem for early America. There was so much public debt that Federal funds were too short for the purpose. Several of the States however did provide varying forms of assistance to immigrants. See {57719}.

At the time, the Muslim nations of the Barbary Coast commonly seized merchant ships anywhere in the Mediterranean and other oceans. They would sell the cargos, enslave the Christian crews and passengers and then demand ransom for the ships and the freedom of the slaves. However, if nations paid each of the rulers of three countries--Morocco, Algeria & Tunisia--enough annual tribute, ships of the paying nation would not be molested. The European Maritime powers paid the tribute rather than go to war. However, this became a political controversy in the U.S. John Adams and many others wanted to pay the tribute. Jefferson and still others, argued that such tribute should never be paid and war was preferable. This treaty, negotiated by Donaldson and the Algerian Ruler, was a great victory for Jefferson as no tribute would be paid by the U. S.—the only country so exempted. However, it took an invasion of Tripoli lead by U.S. Marines and a massive naval bombardment of Algiers to ‘persuade’ the ruler of Algeria to sign the treaty. Later, the Barbary pirates reneged, and the U. S. did pay a tribute rather than have another war. They did however, pay less than the European powers.

See {604839} and {606444} as examples that O’Brien argues prove his point. However, Pol Pot’s killings were not to revolt. He had already achieved power, and the murders were a combination of vengeance and an attempt not to change government but to alter culture and values be exterminating those whose cultural perspective was different from the regime IN POWER.

Morgan was always loyal to his war commander, George Washington, and resented the Jeffersonians bitterly because they criticized Washington’s policies Presidential policies.

By the end of George Washington’s Second term, he and Thomas Jefferson, his Secretary of State, were at odds. Jefferson became concerned at the Federalist policies and directions and their pro British and anti French tilt and became a leader of the attack on the Federalists after John Adams assumed the Presidency. Since Washington was the leading Federalist of his time, Mrs. Washington felt that Jefferson’s attacks on the Federalists were insulting to her husband. Washington had died in 1799, and Adams and the Federalist Party was on their last legs. When Jefferson came to give his condolences, he was on the verge of destroying Washington’s party, and Martha Washington believed that Jefferson had written some material that had attacked her husband’s policy. While Jefferson never attacked Washington by name—no one did—Mrs. Washington felt that there was too much innuendo and implied criticism from Jefferson’s strong attack on the Federalists. In the final analysis, when Jefferson won the presidency, the Federalists were so badly trounced, the party died and most of the nation agreed with Jefferson.

In early America, the political parties had their own newspapers where “truth” was not an important journalistic virtue. Red scares and other fears of foreign conspiracies are as old as our nation. In 1798 the Federalists accused Vice President Thomas Jefferson, among others, of being in contact with the foreign conspirators and printed details of a "manufactured" plot to massacre the citizens of Philadelphia in one of their controlled newspapers. The nation was so alarmed that the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by Congress a few months later. These were probably the greatest infringements on American civil liberties in our history.

Pound was not only an admirer of Mussolini and Fascism, but actually was a traitor and became a propagandist for the Axis in WWII. At his treason trial after the war, he had a breakdown and was committed to a mental hospital as he was not fit to stand trial. He was hospitalized for 12 years. Jefferson and Mussolini could not be more opposite in political philosophy.

The Federalists had a loathing of President Thomas Jefferson as strong as that held by Conservatives regarding President William Clinton. Some leading Federalists including Timothy Pickering, a former Secretary of State, developed a plan whereby the New England states would secede if Jefferson won his second term and entice New York to join them thus creating a new empire. Hamilton was one of the most popular Federalists of the day and he put a stop to the plot. This was the last letter Hamilton was ever to write. The next morning he fought his fatal duel with Aaron Burr. Ironically, Burr had negotiated with the plotters for the New York action. He straddled the fence refusing to commit to the plan, but not clearly repudiating it either as Hamilton had done.

When Secretary of State, Jefferson ran the first American Patent Office. The Patent system was originally and educational program, not an intellectual property program. Inventors would keep all their technological secrets to themselves. The idea behind the original patent system was to give an inventor a limited monopoly on profiting from his invention in exchange for sharing his information and techniques with his countrymen—thus improving the technological competency of the entire society. The very first patents were available for public inspection for that reason. And even today, copies of patents are available easily for almost no cost. And few American ideas worked as well as our early patent system. Through its educational role and technology transfer, America came from technological nowhere to being the pre-eminent inventing nation of the world. The balance between public access to invention and innovation and preservation of some rights to the creator of intellectual property is key to modern development.

Jefferson had what was probably the largest library in America and as usual was in need of money. He offered to sell the library to Congress and this purchase was the beginning of the Library of Congress—now the greatest library of the world. Congress purchased 6,487 volumes for $23,950. There were a few members of the House who objected to the purchase. The first government financed library was also the first attempt at censorship. Voltaire was too liberal for the minority and Callendar was a Jefferson partisan. The “otherwise objectionable” referred to books where religion was questioned and sexual mores discussed—not terribly different from modern reasons for attempted censorship. The minority objections were noted and the overwhelming majority voted to begin the Library of Congress.

This quotation is very important in that Wood was one of the great political historians of early America and his judgment about the hyperpartisanship of 2012 had reached such extremes that our greatest founding fathers could not have survived in that arena.

This was a dramatic change from President John Adams who was extremely concerned with the dignity of the office of the Presidency and functioned with much more pomp and ceremony. The reason this quotation is so important is that there is no other record of the event.

The electoral college had tied between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, and under the Constitution, this threw the decision to the House of Representatives. The House was deadlocked politically between Federalists and Democratic Republicans, but Jefferson had won the popular vote by a substantial margin. Morris, a leading Federalist, and one of Jefferson’s political enemies, however argued that the will of the people should be respected, and the man who won the popular should be President. The vote then went to Jefferson who became our third President.

He was particularly distressed that Jefferson did not believe in the Biblical narrative of Noah and the Flood. Actually, this was the only Presidential race in American History where BOTH candidates, Adams and Jefferson, were not orthodox Christians and BOTH rejected literal interpretation of the Bible and even questioned the Trinity. Adams religious views were not as public as Jefferson’s and so many who voted against Jefferson because he was not a literal follower of the Bible, did not realize that Adams also was not and like Jefferson regarded the Trinity and the deification of Jesus as naive belief of unthinking people.

by stopping all interest payments on Federal Debts. because Jefferson would dismantle the Navy. Hamilton, a Federalist was supporting John Adams for a second term, and created lies that made the 2012 Republican prevarications against Barack Obama seem like innocent fibs. These 3 lies covered the areas which candidates ever since have gotten mileage out of attacking the opposition. 1) He is fiscally irresponsible and would ruin the economy. 2) He does not support the Constitution. 3) He is unpatriotic and would weaken the military. These have been the 3 favorite areas for lying about an opponent ever since. As in {629237} each of the lies has a grain of truth in it to make it more believable. Jefferson had been an opponent of the Federal Government assuming the States’ Revolutionary War debts, but he never favored defaulting on the interest after the debt was assumed and when elected always paid the interest. Jefferson was representing the United States in France when the Constitutional Convention was held and was not a part of its creation. He was critical of parts of the Constitution and was one of the many who demanded that a Bill of Rights be added. Therefore Hamilton claimed he was against the Constitution. Jefferson was opposed to a standing professional army. It turned out that when he was President. he not only built up the Navy but used it to attack the Barbary States who were assaulting our ships. These were just the biggest lies; the Federalists had many more, and Hamilton enumerated several in this article.

This quotation was a the description of the nail manufacturing operation using slave labor on Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, Monticello. Note the almost romantic scene that the author paints of slavery and forced child labor. That is why this is a very important quotation. This biography of Jefferson, written for a young audience, was typical of material written about the South and slavery from the late 19th century till the late 20th century. The South was still resentful about losing the war, and there was still, late in the 19th century, negative feelings in the rest of the nation about the South’s lack of patriotism and worse their basic morality of having not only supported but fought to maintain the cruel, evil institution of slavery. Many wanted to get these sectional feelings behind them and move forward. One way was to do much revisionist history about the institution of slavery and the reasons for the Civil war. Books, plays, and later films, and the school curricula, were designed to edit out or minimize the brutality and cruelty of slavery. And the reasons for the Southern rebellion was not any longer only to maintain slavery, but more palatable, almost noble reasons were substituted for the reality that slavery was the only major reason for the Southern rebellion. Maintaining a different culture and way of life, freedom from Federal intrusion in state and local affairs, honor and others were then new given reasons, and the problems of Reconstruction for the South exaggerated to justify the then Jim Crow American era of legal discrimination and lynching. This passage came from a book that was so popular with young people, that it was published again in a new edition as late as 1961. Most white Americans, growing up in the 20th century learned this version of events and many vestiges of it could be seen, even in the 21st century. In the 1970s, with an end to legal segregation, attention turned to the culturally and historically distorted views, and slowly schools began to change curricula. However, in the Southern States, in order to prevent the schools from departing from the false, romantic view of Southern Slavery, local schools where not allowed to select their own textbooks and in many cases even their own library books.

Mali was then virtually a failed state where some mid level military seized “control” but had no other objective than to stay in control with no vision of what the country should be. Meanwhile there were several tribal groups that wanted autonomy. International Islamists whose only interest was in instituting Sharia Law and groups of smugglers, kidnappers and other criminals. The military had insufficient skill and power to control the other factions. The political groups lacked enough common vision, military resources and skill or common ethnicity to control or to even defend themselves against the International Islamists who could take over areas of the country but became rapidly unpopular with the traditional secularist leaning Mali Muslims. French and Africa forces rolled back the International Islamists, and there were calls for elections among Americans and other Nations but Lattemont urged caution in relying on elections at this stage of development of a country.

This size standing army which alarmed so many at the beginning of the 20th century, looked very small when compared with the standing army of America a century later. For earlier American Politician’s views on a standing army, see {592824}, {631687}, {622888}, and {641008}.

The Federalist Party had controlled the Executive and Congress for the first 3 Presidential terms (2 for Washington and 1 for John Adams) but Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic Republicans were threatening to unseat the Federalists. Even with the Sedition Act, the Jeffersonians won and the Federalist Party was destroyed forever. Ironically, Jefferson and subsequent administrations saw advantages to the incumbent in the Sedition Act so did not repeal it. It was not until John Quincy Adams (John Adams’ son) had finished his Presidency and became a Congressman that he led the movement to finally repeal the hated Sedition Act.

In modern times Congress, even when it is frozen in gridlock, always seems to find time to pass laws and resolutions for name days, weeks, and months for celebrating ideas and commercial products of almost every stripe.

Without a Constitution and a body of Federal Law, it was unclear during the American Revolution what a soldier should d if given an order that conflicted with the law. At the WWII Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, “obeying orders” was not a defense if the orders were illegal and against humanity. American law and military regulations require that a member of the armed forces refuse to obey an illegal order.

Bryant, like most New Englanders did not trust Jefferson and saw anything the President did in its worst possible light. He even believed that Jefferson’s great interest in science was evidence of his lack of respect for religion. Nothing he could do was right, much like the Tea Party and President Barack Obama more than 200 years later.

This is the only instance known in American Congressional races where one candidate suggested the killing of the other might be good for the country. As this quotation shows she was quite rabid and unbalanced, and the voters kept her out of the Senate. She later argued that she was speaking metaphorically and was not calling for Reid’s assassination.

Adams himself, when President, led the passage of the Alien & Sedition Act which were a major restriction on freedom of speech that was on the books until Thomas Jefferson pardoned all those convicted. There were many other restrictions which over the years were wiped away by policy and court opinion.

Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier. The Barbary Pirates had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom.

Thomas Jefferson thought that Franklin should write the first draft of the Declaration of Independence:

Jefferson, who drafted the declaration, asked Franklin to edit it—see {604295}. This phrase was suggested as a replacement for Jefferson’s original: “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.”

Although Jefferson was a strong immigration enthusiast, he and others were concerned about the ghettoization. The early German immigrants did not universally adopt English, just as today’s immigrants do not all. This was a concern of Americans since the first immigrations. Yet it has always occurred despite concerns about it. However, the second and third generations all become fluent and literate in English.

This was Jefferson’s definition of Christianity. However, for orthodox Christians, this was insufficient as Jefferson did not believe in the Trinity or in the divinity of Jesus. Nor did he believe in the Biblical narrative of most historical events. He was a Christian in the sense that he thought the ethics and philosophy of Jesus was as good as he had seen. See {629222}. In this sense, a number of the Founding Fathers were “Deists” including Jefferson’s conservative rival, John Adams.

See Thomas Paine for a contemporary similar view and Auguste Comte for an earlier statement of the consequences of the contrary.