Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the third American president, being in office during the time of Napoleon. He also wrote the Declaration of Independence. It declared America to be independent of Britain. Among other things it says:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Jefferson goes on to say that governments rule only by consent of the governed. That gives the governed the right to overthrow the government in serious cases. Which is just what Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers did when they overthrew British rule in America.
Jefferson was an intellectual, a child of the Enlightenment who was up on all the latest ideas. Most of his political ideas came from John Locke. He called Locke, Bacon and Newton the three greatest men who ever lived. He had a picture of each one on his wall.
When Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, he owned 175 black slaves. By 1822 he had 92 more: 267. He only freed 8 of them.
But there is more: after his wife died, Jefferson seems to have had six children by one of his slave women, Sally Hemings, possibly the black half-sister of his dead white wife.
While most consider George Washington and Abraham Lincoln better presidents and better men, Jefferson would make almost anyone’s short list of American presidents. He is on the money and you can see his face on the side of Mount Rushmore along with Lincoln, Washington and Teddy Roosevelt.
When he was president he doubled the size of the country: Napoleon, needing quick money for his wars, sold Louisiana to America. Louisiana in those days was not just a little state next to Texas like it is now: it was all the land from the Mississippi River to the Rocky mountains (except for Texas).
Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark on a three-year journey to find out what was out there. On the way they met Sacajawea.
Jefferson had a vast curiosity. He got every book he could find on America and wrote a book about his own state of Virginia.
He loved inventions. When he saw something new, he figured out how it worked and made one of his own. He invented a new sort of plough and was serious about making and selling nails.
Jefferson designed and built his own house, the Monticello.
Sometimes his intellectual pride got the best of him: He believed in God but not in miracles. Therefore he wrote his own gospel about Jesus without miracles.
Later in life Jefferson was deep in debt. When the British burned down the Library of Congress, Jefferson sold his books to Congress to start a new library.
Both Jefferson and John Adams died on the 50th birthday of the country, July 4th 1826. They were the last two of the Founding Fathers to die. That was the summer Lincoln was 17.
See also:
Abagond 
Thomas Jefferson was vile scumbag and right now he is probably getting anally raped in hell!!!!
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^^^^^^^
Amen!!!
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Maryland mathematician and astronomer Benjamin Banneker is considered the first black American scientist. After helping survey the District of Columbia in. Abolistionist acknowledged his ability of mathematics as proof that people of African descent had all the higher mental capabilities of white people and that slavery was wrong. They understood his value and intelligence. Banneker, sent Jefferson a copy of his first almanac. Jefferson was not persuded of black people’s intelligence, him being an owner of slaves.
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Phyllis Wheatley’s poems also failed to change Jefferson’s mind about the inferiority of African descended people. Even though her fellow Americans of any race of gender equaled her as a poet. Jefferson, like Washington was equally as racist. They just believed African Americans were inferior and they just didn’t give a damn about black people period.
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Haplogroup T is a fairly rare lineage in Europe. It makes up only 1% of the population on most of the continent, except in Greece, Macedonia and Italy where it exceeds 4%, and in Iberia where it reaches 2.5%, peaking at 10% in Cadiz and over 15% in Ibiza. The maximal worldwide frequency for haplogroup T is observed in East Africa (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania) and in the Middle East (especially the South Caucasus, southern Iraq, south-west Iran, Oman and southern Egypt), where it accounts for approximately 5 to 15% of the male lineages. Besides these regions and Europe, T is found in isolated pockets as far as Central Asia, India, Cameroon, Zambia and South Africa. Its highest density is actually found among the Fulani people of Cameroon (18% of the population).
The testing of Thomas Jefferson’s DNA revealed that the third US president belonged to haplogroup T.
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_T_Y-DNA.shtml#famous_people
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@LofM,
How do you reconcile your fondness of Jefferson with his policy on Native American removal (or failure to recognize their land rights) and slavery?
He freed 8 of his slaves upon his death, but I understand that included his slave mistress, some of them was his very own children (meaning that he enslaved his own children) and some were the siblings of his slave mistress — meaning that they were more or less family members.
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I find it really odd to refer to, say, the enslavement of one’s own children as a “flaw”. His notes and writings showed that he knew that slavery was wrong. His notes and writings, esp. the earlier ones indicated that he thought Native Americans to be equal to white men.
I cannot refer to his egregious actions as “flaws”. I have to look at his having to perform mental gymnastics to maintain the cognitive dissonance spawned by his mangled moral compass.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
Owning 275 slaves is more than just a “flaw”. It was what made him rich and powerful. It paid for all his fine books and fine French cooking. It morally warped him – and the rest of the rich people of Virginia, and, to this day, White Americans as a whole. Calling it a “flaw” is like calling Pamela Anderson’s breasts an “impefection”.
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https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/15/1363268/-Thomas-Jefferson-hypocrite-Robert-Councillor-Carter-emancipator?detail=emailclassic
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@Herneith,
Thanks for the link. A month ago I was debating with a history professor friend of a friend of mine about Jefferson. He was doing a research piece on Jefferson and sounded just like L of M above.
What ticked him off was that he told me that he had also taught history from a Native American perspective, and I replied that I could not believe that based on the terminology he was using and his account of Jefferson and the policies that were instituted on his watch about the European “settlement” of the West (western North America) as he was using very anglo-centric terminology and points of view. That in effect is “whitewashing” the account of what happened. Then he got hurt and offended and our mutual friend told me that I should acknowledge TO HIM that his feelings got hurt. I did not.
I am not going to feel compelled to give into making it about someone’s feelings when they are espousing and promulgating exceedingly racist accounts of history and simultaneously denying that they are doing so.
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“What strikes me about this is that initially I thought Jefe was one of the more conciliatory ones. Certainly when stacked up against Blakksage, HipHopRecords, Origin, et centers.”
– SOME of us are Black. Being conciliatory after hundreds of years of racism/white supremacy is wearing quite thin.. to put it nicely. From my own personal perspective holding white people’s hand and offering comfort to their feelings has not halted racism since we were brought here in chains and made to work for free.
Some of us here are not Black. Perhaps if you commented less and read more you might learn whom is whom – and possibly even more.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
It is not about your DNA but what you say. If you are going to say racist or clueless stuff, then people are going to take issue with it, as they should.
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L of M,
You are not being mercilessly attacked here (at least not by me).
I have European DNA. So do 90% of the people responding on this blog. It has nothing to do with that.
You have a perspective about yourself as being a liberal antiracist. Perhaps, in some part, you may very well be. However, you consistently display behaviour and attitudes that reflect some white-centric point of view. To be able to receive that feedback so that it would be beneficial to you, it would be more effective if you
– Did not feel the need to “defend” any white point of view. 90% of the readers here have heard that point of view defended time and time again
– Do not deflect or derail an argument, esp. one that is made about an observation about white people by pointing to “bad behaviour” or atrocities committed by non-whites, as seemingly that will mitigate the scope, extent or effect of anything bad that white people did.
– Admit that you might be using Anglo-centric sources to defend some of your viewpoints
– Acknowledge, at least occasionally, some actions and viewpoints that Irish and Irish-Americans may have done now or in the past to validate the ideology of whiteness or white supremacy in the USA. Blacks, Asians, Latinos and Native Americans all do this from time to time. For example, Uncle Toms, Rented Negroes, and those that support the Model Minority Stereotype are doing this all the time
– Stop making it about your feelings. That is only derailing the discussion. Why are you feeling hurt “personally” by any of this?
I have some European ancestry, but I have no problem pointing out wrongdoings (or even hypocritical actions) done by European Americans, including Jefferson. Why do you feel any compulsion to defend someone, just because they are white? Even white people should not have the need or compulsion to do this. Why do you?
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Then he got hurt and offended and our mutual friend told me that I should acknowledge TO HIM that his feelings got hurt. I did not.
Jefe, you have the patience of Job. I do not know how you do it. I do not have the time nor patience to ‘educate’ or ‘debate’ these clueless white people. I couldn’t care less about their feelings. Personally, I would ignore them, mock them or tell them where to go. Of course it would depend on the mood I was in. As for Jefferson, he was an over-hyped, racist piece of s***.
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@ Abagond
“As far as I am concerned, the Irish are first and foremost an oppressed race in America, battered in the old country and the new, viewed as the scum of the Earh by SOME Anglo-Americans, but always resisting and always valiant.”
This really baffles me. It seems obvious that a person or a group can be victim and perpetrator at the same time. You seem to think that discussing the Irish-American role in the oppression of Black Americans somehow diminishes the oppression they faced in Ireland or the discrimination by Anglo-Americans in the US.
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Obviously the post was addressed to Lord of Mirkwood.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
When the Irish started arriving in New York in large numbers in the 1840s, most Black maids and dock workers were thrown out of work because Wasp employers preferred the Irish because they were White. Most native-born Irish Americans were able to vote by the 1850s – not the 1960s. In the 1860s in New York, many of the Irish were AGAINST fighting in the Civil War. They were FOR Black slavery. They joined the White club in part by stepping on the the faces of Black and Chinese Americans, instead of making common cause with them.
If you want to go on defending the Irish, please do it here:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/irish-americans/
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@L of M,
You made the comments to this post all about you. Why?
Can you discuss a post without derailing the topic to make it about yourself? I was talking about Jefferson.
The serious and earnest commenters on this thread do not make a big issue about the race of the commenter (or as you put it, his “DNA”), but about what he says and does. Reread Abagond’s last comment to you.
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Lotr said “A White {commentator} would not root for Mugabe or Malcolm X, either.’
What? Me personnally? Mugabe not so much but definitely malcom x, but as compared to whom? Jebediah Bush? Elijah Muhammed?
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Lord of Mikrkwood said
“Even liberals get mercilessly attacked here.”
You view yourself as an anti racist liberal yet your posts show that your not self aware that the ideology of white supremacy underlies everything that is happening on this planet today as well as the history of the last 500 years. .
The cold war wasn’t about which economic model the world needed or which political ideology was superior. Rather it was about WHICH white supremacy group was going to control the worlds resources.
The left/right paradigm is just a diversion to get different countries to choose a ‘trading partner” which is another way of saying “we will keep safe from the other guy” while we rip you off.
“the race of the commenter seems to matter a lot in the reception it receives.”
No it doesn’t . It is what you say and how you say it that matters. You are also presuming that only liberals can be antiracist when their are libertarians, anarchists and communists that get it.
In the U.S. I think 15% of the population is hard core racist. Then you have another 80% that say “I’m not racist but …” That’s where you are. The remaining 5% (if that) get it. They are on the fringe of the fringe of their perspective ideologies.
Both political parties deny that white supremacy ideology underlies the American way of life. They seek political solutions to solve racism which becomes a debate about how to manage the lives of non whites while maintaining the system. Non whites are allowed a seat at the table provided they don’t threaten the system.
Occasionally somebody shows up who threatens to overturn the apple cart like Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby. Her willingness to charge public servants with the same crimes that the public get charged with has been met with a lot resistance and push back. If equality of justice is what we seek then we need as lot more people like her in places of power.
Jefferson was only about the equality of justice for white people. Owning a human doesn’t make sex consensual. Its still rape.
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@lotr wow dude.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
No thanks. I came to this thread to discuss Jefferson, not you.
Haven’t you engaged anyone on your own blog yet.
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