"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society... This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. All honor to Jefferson -- to the man, who in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecaste, and sagacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there that to-day and in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression." – Abraham Lincoln
http://www.kingsbenchletter.com/library/lincoln-tribute/
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Thomas Jefferson on gossips: "I should have fancied myself half guilty had I condescended to put pen to paper in refutation of their falsehoods, or drawn them respect by any notice from myself." - THOMAS JEFFERSON: A DEFENSE OF HIS CHARACTER -- http://www.liberty1.org/defense.htm
"A fact that went largely unreported was that the DNA test DID RULE OUT Thomas Jefferson as the father of Thomas Woodson, the eldest of Hemings' sons..."
"While Jefferson did not free all of his slaves on his death (as did Washington), a law passed in Virginia in 1806 required that the legislature pass a special bill that would attest to the exemplary behavior of each slave to be freed. If freed, THE SLAVE HAD TO LEAVE THE STATE WITHOUT HIS OR HER FAMILY.
Jefferson tried unsuccessfully to get this law changed. Further, Jefferson trained his slaves in skills that would be useful when they were free. He believed that to free them first would be irresponsible -- since they would be homeless and without family."
The Thomas Jefferson - Sally Hemings Myth and the Politicization of American History http://www.ashbrook.org/articles/mayer-hemings.html#V
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Debating Slavery Clause in the Declaration of Independence: Second Continental Congress
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_41wDUvai1s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk5NAeIRY4k&feature=related
"The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, [and] we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good." - Thomas Jefferson
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Historians have lied about Jefferson. I compiled these facts when this came to my attention:
The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia website states: “As historian David Brion Davis noted, if Jefferson had died in 1785, he would be remembered as an antislavery hero, as "one of the first statesmen anywhere to advocate concrete measures for eradicating slavery." After that time, however, there came a "thundering silence." Jefferson made no public statements on American slavery nor did he take any significant public action to change the course of his state or his nation.”
This is a MALEVOLENT LIE.
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"Under the Law of Nature, All Men are Born Free." - Thomas Jefferson
Logically & morally, one cannot be faulted for something outside of one's choice. Slavery was OBTRUDED on the Colonies by King George III. Thomas Jefferson INHERITED slaves. It was AGAINST THE LAW TO FREE THEM.
When he was 26 years old, chosen for the first time to be a member of a legislature, he submitted a bill for the EMANCIPATION of ALL slaves. As a lawyer in 1770, age 27, Jefferson defended a slave, saying: "Under the law of nature, all men are born free."
Facts:
1769: Chosen for the first time to be a member of a legislature, Thomas Jefferson made one effort in the House of Burgesses for the permission of the emancipation of slaves, but was rejected.
From Jefferson's autobiography: http://www.constitution.org/tj/jeff01.txt -
"In 1769, I became a member of the legislature by the choice of the county in which I live, and so continued until it was closed by the Revolution. I made one effort in that body for the permission of the emancipation of slaves, which was rejected: and indeed, during the regal government, nothing liberal could expect success."
1770: As a lawyer, Thomas Jefferson defended a slave, saying: "Under the law of nature, all men are born free."
"Under the law of nature, all men are born free; everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance." -- Thomas Jefferson: Legal Argument, 1770. FE 1:376
1776: He strongly condemned slavery in his draft of the Declaration of Independence.
"He (King George III) has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another."
http://www.princeton.edu/~tjpapers/declaration/declaration.html
1778: The legislature passed a bill he proposed to ban further importation of slaves into Virginia.
“Congress Again--and France: This first retirement was brief. In a year his wife died. Jefferson reentered Congress, throwing himself into the work of lawmaking, this time for the national government. Within two years he wrote some of the most meaningful state papers of the Continental Congress. Three reports were especially good: 1. On Government for the Western Territory, the basic document for the growth of the United States, in which Jefferson's effort to abolish slavery failed by one vote.”
http://history-world.org/thomas_jefferson.htm
1784: His draft of what became the Northwest Ordinance stipulated that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude" in any of the new states admitted to the Union from the Northwest Territory.
1806: President Jefferson requested Congress to ban all slave importation to the US.
1807: As President, Jefferson signed a bill abolishing the slave trade: on March 3, 1807, as President of the USA, Thomas Jefferson signed a bill making slave importation illegal in the United States.
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Thomas Jefferson is the author of the Declaration of Independence, the Father of religious freedom, the advocate of the Bill of Rights, and the President who abolished the slave trade: “the business or process of procuring, transporting, and selling slaves, esp. black Africans to the New World prior to the mid-19th century.” Jefferson successfully abolished primogeniture in Virginia, the rule by which the first born son inherited all the land.
"In matters of principle, stand like a rock.... The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being… Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights… A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature…” -- Thomas Jefferson
“I believe with you that morality, compassion, generosity are innate elements of the human constitution; that there exists a right independent of force; that a right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings; that no one has a right to obstruct another exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature; that justice is the fundamental law of society; that the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest, breaks up the foundations of society; that action by the citizens in person, in affairs within their reach and competence, and in all others by representatives chosen immediately and removable by themselves, constitutes the essence of a republic…” - Thomas Jefferson
http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9116915
“A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse or rest on inference.” – Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787
http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9116913
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While abolishing ALL excise taxes
Including the whiskey tax
In the first year of his first presidency,
While engaging in the Barbary War
Within two months of his first presidency,
And then spending $15 million
In the Louisiana Purchase
To double the then size of the USA,
Jefferson reduced the national debt
From $83 million to $57 million.
Thomas Jefferson said every word in the Constitution
Is subsidiary only to the execution
Of the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence:
First: Equal Inherent Inalienable Rights,
Second: The only proper function of law and of government
Is "to secure these rights."
Jefferson was first elected into public office when he was 26 years old. In early 1809, when he finished his second term as president, he was almost 66. He said, "I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty."
Jefferson served the cause of freedom and his country during his prime and for forty years. After which, he pursued science and natural history through research, experimentation, and invention, he continued in his post as the elected president of the American Philosophical Society until 1815, and he founded the University of Virginia. Jefferson designed all of its campus buildings, set up its curriculum, and selected its faculty. The University is notable in U.S. history for being the first educational institution to offer academic programs in disciplines such as astronomy, botany, and philosophy. Its School of Engineering and Applied Science was the first engineering school in the United States to be part of a comprehensive university. In the University of Virginia, Jefferson implemented his vision that education should be completely separate from religious doctrine.
The University was established in 1819 and Jefferson died in 1826. Jefferson served the causes of freedom, science, and education his entire life. For emphasis, I repeat: Thomas Jefferson reduced the national debt from $83 million to $57 million while abolishing ALL excise taxes including the whiskey tax in the first year of his first presidency, while engaging in the Barbary War two months into his first presidency, and then spending $15 million to double the then size of the USA.
THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON
Definitive Edition
CONTAINING HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, NOTES ON VIRGINIA, PARLIAMENTARY MANUAL, OFFICIAL PAPERS, MESSAGES AND ADDRESSES, AND OTHER WRITINGS, OFFICIAL AND PRIVATE, NOW COLLECTED AND PUBLISHED IN THEIR ENTIRETY FOR THE FIRST TIME INCLUDNG ALL OF THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS, DEPOSITED IN THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE AND PUBLISHED IN 1853 BY ORDER OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE OF CONGRESS http://www.constitution.org/tj/jeff01.txt
Happy Birthday to the most glorious human who ever lived!
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