- Lock - i can usually follow your point, even when in disagreement. I guess this time calling Jefferson a progressive is clouding my thoughts. Please, say it ain't so and you're playing devil's advocate somehow. I just can't find a space for Jefferson in the room full of 'progressives' I've come to despise so much.(unless, of course, you're making the 5000 YEAR LEAP point - as being true progress and should own the word progressive)
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- Excerpts of Jefferson’s papers have been published before. Four collections were produced between 1829 and 1904, but all were highly selective in terms of what they included and were full of typographical errors and garbled transcriptions. “People picked and chose the letters they thought were interesting or that created for them the Jefferson they wanted,” Oberg explains. None of the earlier collections included Jefferson’s incoming correspondence.The shelves of the offices Oberg and her five collegues occupy in Firestone are lined with more than 70,000 photocopies of everything in existence that Thomas Jefferson wrote or received, sometimes in multiple version, and important letters and documents about him. Those documents are drawn from more than 900 repositories around the world, including the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the University of Virginia, which hold the largest collections of original Jefferson papers. Others, however, come from libraries as far away as Paris, London, and Moscow, and even at this late date calls come in from auction houses and autograph dealers when a previously unknown piece of Jeffersoniana surfaces. In terms of completeness, organization, and legibility, the photocopies in Firestone comprise the world’s largest collection of Jefferson’s papers.If John Adams was, in historian Joseph Ellis’s phrase, a “passionate sage,” the Jefferson that comes across in these papers is much more dispassionate. “His letters to his daughters make me very sad,” Oberg says. “He is very restrained, controlling.” A typical letter from Jefferson to his daughter Martha in early 1799 begins with some rather transparent nagging: “The object of this letter, my very dear Martha, is merely to inform you I am well, and to convey to you the expressions of my love. It will not be new to tell you that your letters do not come as often as I could wish.” Also amidst Jefferson’s correspondence in the 13 months covered by the current volume is a letter in which he thanks his son-in-law for disciplining slaves caught growing tobacco in their own small gardens. “I have ever found it necessary to confine them to such articles as are not raised for the farm,” he writes. “There is no other way of drawing a line between what is theirs and mine.”Although the volumes contain much material never before seen by scholars, they contain few of what the casual reader might call bombshells. Oberg says we are unlikely, for example, to find correspondence in subsequent volumes about Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings, simply because that was not the sort of thing likely to be addressed in a letter. Rather the revelations, particularly about the fine points of Jefferson’s political philosophy, come in the details, between the lines. By meticulously noting all of Jefferson’s revisions, one can gain insights into his thoughts as he composed his papers. We can watch him edit himself. By reading his incoming correspondence, scholars can better divine Jefferson’s motives for what he wrote, noting what he responded to or chose to ignore. Finally, by gathering the documents together, one can watch history unfold.As an example of this, Oberg cites the Kentucky Resolutions, which are contained in the current volume. Jefferson’s resolutions, which he wrote anonymously and which were adopted by the Kentucky General Assembly in November 1798, advanced the doctrine that states could nullify acts of Congress (in this case, the Alien and Sedition Acts) that they believed to be unconstitutional. That doctrine of nullification would be taken up again by Southern states as a defense against encroachments on slavery. Although it had been known that Jefferson wrote the resolutions, the details of his role in their creation are explained in a very detailed and informative annotation. And never before had Jefferson’s first draft, finished draft, and the completed resolutions, along with related correspondence, been collected together in one place, enabling a scholar to trace their development from Jefferson’s pen to the final document.In part because of Jefferson’s uneasy coexistence with slavery, revelations about the Hemings affair, and the celebration of his Federalist rival, John Adams, in recent popular biographies, Jefferson’s reputation has waned in recent years. He has been called duplicitous and inconsistent by scholars such as Adams biographer David McCullough.Still, as the Princeton papers show, the Jefferson who owned slaves also wrote ringing declarations of freedom. In a letter dated June 18, 1799, to William G. Munford, which will appear in the next volume, Jefferson discourses on the nature of knowledge. “What is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost. To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for so long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.” As Julian Boyd observed, “If all other writings of Jefferson were destroyed, the essential quality of the man would remain fully and brilliantly portrayed in this single document.”And so, according to Brown’s Gordon Wood, Jefferson remains today “a crucial figure – if not the crucial figure – in American history.” No one else articulates the vision of a democratic America in the same way, and if that vision fell short of reality, if it was sometimes clouded by inconsistency, it is a vision that compels us still. More than two centuries after he first took the oath of office, biographer Joyce Appleby says, Jefferson is still cited more frequently than any other president. “We can’t really do without Jefferson.”
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- The shelves of the offices Oberg and her five collegues occupy in Firestone are lined with more than 70,000 photocopies of everything in existence that Thomas Jefferson wrote or received,
I would dearly love to have access to that collection!
Lock,
Could Jefferson be equated with a modern progressive? Short answer, no. While some of his ideas could be placed into that category if taken in total they do not. A very complex man, to say the least and, if the measure of a wise man is based on his ability to modify his opinions based on experience and accumulated knowledge, a very wise one.
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- Jefferson and Adams disagreed on many matters here is just a taste - if any desire there is more available. Adams hated slavery and Jefferson held slaves and much of the fight IMO started here.John Adams -All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from a want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation. – Letter to Thomas Jefferson (23 August 1787)The new Government has my best Wishes and most fervent Prayers, for its Success and Prosperity: but whether I shall have any Thing more to do with it, besides praying for it, depends on the future suffrages of Freemen. - Letter to Thomas Jefferson (2 January 1789)There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution. - Letter to Jonathan Jackson (2 October 1789)The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own. – First Address to Congress (23 November 1797)The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a Theatrical Show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that; i.e. all the Glory of it.I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization. – Letter to François Adriaan van der Kemp (16 February 1809)You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a Theatrical Show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that; i.e. all the Glory of it. - Letter to Benjamin Rush (21 June 1811)Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.We have now, it Seems a National Bible Society, to propagate King James’s Bible, through all Nations. Would it not be better to apply these pious Subscriptions, to purify Christendom from the Corruptions of Christianity; than to propagate those Corruptions in Europe Asia, Africa and America! … Conclude not from all this, that I have renounced the Christian religion, or that I agree with Dupuis in all his Sentiments. Far from it. I see in every Page, Something to recommend Christianity in its Purity and Something to discredit its Corruptions. … The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my Religion. - Letter to Thomas Jefferson (4 November 1816)Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society. - Letter to J.H. Tiffany (31 March 1819)
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- "There is very little difference in that superstition which leads us to believe in what the world calls 'great men' and in that which leads us to believe in witches and conjurors." Dr. Benjamin Rush to John Adams, 1808
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- He held the belief that progressive taxes were called for but so did Franklin. Many of the FF were progressive as they came from a Kingdom view point and had the knowledge that the nobles were charged with caring for the peasants. So, in today's terms they would still IMO be Progressives - not all Progressives are liberal.
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- Nathan here is the link and they give other links to the Jefferson papers.
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- So, in today's terms they would still IMO be Progressives - not all Progressives are liberal.
Okay, I see the point your making Lock. I still tend to differ in my view, but it's only a matter of degree.
Thank you for the link.
By the by, if your looking for an interesting, well researched read I highly recommend Madison and Jefferson byAndrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg
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- Interesting. Unfortunately, I don't have much hope that such an amendment could be passed without having to add in something pernicious as a compromise. The usual suspects are just too childish and too fond of evil to refrain from bad habits like horsetrading and logrolling to let such an amendment be passed without contamination.Also, I think that "the current state of the legal order" in the United States of America was brought about by a hoax, namely, that "this Constitution" was enacted such that it has authority. In reality, there has never been any such thing as "Establishment", as it reads in Article VII. I'm developing a blog to promote this claim and to explore the implications of persuading lawyers and military personnel, to give two examples, that I'm right and the common sense, wrong.
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- Paul, I am not sure I get the jest of your point about "Establishment" - Authority is granted by contract and the States formed a contract called the Constitution if you desire to view it that way IMO.Here is a link to the documents used in Article VII
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- I posted this on another thread but thought it might interest a few here?I just read the Bio of Lysander Spooner. In the 1840 era he thought up a banking system after the 1837 financial crisis. Banks issued currency and it was used to encourage trade particularly in the West [of that time - Ohio area]. He brings up the problem with limits to hard [metal] currency because it tends to be concentrated in the big cities. This he noted was the same problem the colonies had with England which hoarded the metal coins thereby limiting the colonies to basic barter.Interesting is that he proposed letting banks issue currency that would be backed by the value of land and secured by mortgages that carried interest. This is very similar to how the Fed functions with the Treasury and the full faith and credit of the Federal Government. The main assets of the government is land along with the power to tax. So, we must then take the next step in questioning what happens when the Federal government is forced to liquidate land and assets to pay debts owed to Foreign nations?Does this create a depression of land prices and other real property assets or do the holders of the debt simply take land in lieu of cash. For one could view Treasury debt as a mortgage on the Federal Government. It might be a very interesting legal question as the nation faces a possible default on the nations debts.We all know that the government can not increase taxation to the point of it being able to pay all entitlements and to amortize the current national debt even over 50 years. The debt now is almost equal to the GDP and that amount can not be paid as that is the total production - not profit or excess cash. So, the Federal Government is now going to borrow and spend over 20% of the GDP. Where will this come from as few if any enterprises generate a profit of 20%.So, it appears that the government in order to function must force massive inflation so they can address the debt issue without total destruction of the economy. We all argue that the Congress is limited to the Article I section 8 enumerated powers. However the Courts and the Executive have joined the Legislative branch and usurped the Constitution. We are no longer a RULE - BY - LAW Republic but a RULE - BY - MAN Democracy with the majority voting to tax others so they might get free benefits.The Congress and the Government are using taxpayers re-distributed wealth to bribe a majority of voters to re-elect them in a never ending usurpation. In law it is called QUID PRO QUO and is a violation of the laws. How will this all end is unknown but the fact is that it will end because it is running out of other peoples money to fund the charade.
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- You say; The main assets of the government is land along with the power to tax.and then point out the dangers of using that land as colateral for loans - to property values if liquidation occurs, or foreign ownership if just transferred to eliminate the debt..
It raises my oft question - why is it a good idea for a government of,for,by the people to own excessive land, over and beyond what current operations require?
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