You did notice the date on the letter, didn’t you? 1820. Long after the founding of the nation and only 6 years before his death. Martin Hyde’s post amounted to a criticism of Jefferson for failing to forsee the Civil War at the time of the nation’s founding.
It’s easy enough for us to say from this safe distance that Jefferson should have bankrupted himself on principle. It’s a little harder when you’re the one with mouths to feed and a mortgage to pay.
He propsed gradual emancipation, and that is probably the path that should have been followed (minus the expatriation). That path might have prevented civil war without destroying the Southern economy.
Yes it is. That’s a textbook example of hindsight.
And Hamilton got some things right, some things wrong. Same with Jefferson. In the final analysis, I think Jefferson’s egalitarian ideals are more to be admired. Even if he didn’t always live up to them, they gave us the blueprint for the society we could become.
Sorry, spoke-, I didn’t frame my response properly, and you’re quite right to point it out.
What I was trying to respond to was your suggestion that it’s not fair to Jefferson to criticise his preference for an agrarian model, when he couldn’t have foreseen the industrial revolution. My position is that it certainly is a fair criticism, since his contemporary, Alexander Hamilton, correctly foresaw that the economic future of the United States lay in urban, commercial and industrial development. Hamilton and Jefferson were both well-informed public citizens, contemporaries; and Hamilton got it right and Jefferson got it wrong, on the issue of the economic future of the United States. It is a fair criticism for us, today, to point out that Jefferson was wrong, based on the knowledge available to him at the time.
On the other issue - well, it wasn’t just in 1820 that Jefferson saw the troubles and moral issues raised by the slavery issue. See for example his Notes on the State of Virginia, ch. 18
So Ol’Tom certainly foresaw both the moral and political disaster of slavery - in 1781. And what did he propose to do about it, when he was a member of the Continental Congress, the Virginia Legislature, the Governor of Virginia, and the President of the United States? Not a single blessed thing, beyond writing about the inalienable right of all people to be free. The only solution he proposed, again in his “Notes on Virginia” was a pious hope that the insititution of slavery would wither away, without anyone having to take any strong political action:
Coming from a supposed revolutionary, that’s just pure hypocrisy. And as for the comment that he couldn’t have been expected to risk his personal fortune in the cause of liberty for the downtrodden, isn’t this the generation that pledged “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour” to the cause of liberty? I could have sworn someone wrote about that…
Northern Piper I think something that is overlooked here is that most of the Founding Fathers were landed aristocracy, and that they weren’t at all fighting for the rights of the poor. They were fighting against their lack of representation. They built up a solid base of support amongst the poor who they would have otherwise been at odds with, by turning their enmity against the British.
The criticisms of Hamilton and Jefferson both forget this and for the same reason. If Jefferson had bankrupted himself he would have had no power to affect change. He chose incremental change over personal continuity of values. The people who don’t like Hamilton don’t like him for NOT being a hypocrite, and the people who don’t like Jefferson don’t like him for being a hypocrite. Hamilton wasn’t a hypocrite for understanding the strength of the landed aristocracy, and Jefferson was a hypocrite for understanding the same.
I’m sure Jefferson cried over Plato, More and Bacon every night when he went to sleep.
When drafting Virginia’s constitution, he proposed that all persons born in Virginia be born free. (His proposal was rejected.) Free birth was his idea for effecting a gradual end to slavery. (A method which proved successful in other nations. Virginia should have listened to him.)
Jefferson also drafted the Ordinance of 1784, the precursor to the Northwest Ordinance. He included a clause that would have prohibited slavery in the new territories after 1800. This measure was defeated by one vote. Wrote Jefferson, “The voice of a single individual … would have prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country. Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, and Heaven was silent in that awful moment!”
What kept Jefferson from freeing his own slaves was debt. Monticello was mortgaged to the hilt at Jefferson’s death, presumably including a mortgage on the slaves (which, after all, were regarded as a species of property). You can’t free a slave that is subject to a mortgage any more than you can give away your house without paying off the bank first. Jefferson’s overseer Edmund Bacon had this to say after Jefferson’s death: “I think he would have freed all of them if his affairs had not been so much involved that he could not do it.”
Since of course, without copyright, big business and publishers would be so thrilled to make sure that authors and artists were compensated for their efforts. :rolleyes:
I don’t have a favorite, but if pressed I would say Washington. None of the great principles of government that the Founders came up with would mean squat if independence was never won, which without Washington would not have happened.
John Adams was underrated. He took it upon himself to get loans from other European nations while France kept the US waiting. As vice president, he took that job as president of the Senate very seriously, explaining to the body before every vote what the issues were before them and what their votes would mean. It probably drove the Senators nuts but that style vice president had a lot going for it, as opposed to the recent trend.
Not only was the statement misguided, it was subjective in the extreme. No one I know of would ever exclude the signers of the Declaration of Independence from the title: Founding Father.
Favorite: George Washington, hands down. He led the Continental Army through eight hard years of war, sometimes holding it together by sheer force of will. Lost a lot of battles, but won when he had to, and brilliantly. Firmly discouraged talk of a crown for himself. Would just as soon have stayed retired on his farm in 1787, but risked his prestige to preside over the Constitutional Convention, ensuring its success. Would again just as soon have returned to Mount Vernon, but agreed to serve as President. Then reluctantly agreed to a second term. Peacefully bequeathed the office to Adams, setting an invaluable precedent of democracy. In his Farewell Address, warned of the risk of disunion and partisan divisions. He was “modest, wise and good,” said Abigail Adams, and she was right. See Richard Brookhiser’s Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington or Joseph Ellis’s Founding Brothers for more info on this remarkable, almost too-good-to-be-true man. Without Washington, we wouldn’t even think of his contemporaries as founders of anything.
Least favorite: Thomas Jefferson, for the reasons already stated. On the plus side of the ledger: writing the Declaration, accomplishing the Louisiana Purchase, sending out Lewis and Clark. On the negative side: being a hypocrite on slavery and Federal power; backstabbing Adams and even Washington; getting so deeply into debt with his endless redesign and rebuilding of Monticello that his slaves had to be sold when he died, even breaking up slave families; failing to recognize the infant republic’s need for a strong navy (read Theodore Roosevelt on Jefferson’s failures in this regard sometime - T.R. was scathing!); making excuses for the murderousness of the French revolutionary regime. A vastly overrated Founding Father, IMHO. And no one taught me that; I learned it all by myself.
I’m not sure why you consider it a revolutionary idea that the founding fathers were innately aware that there were strong and contentious standing issues between the thirteen colonies. I never said Jefferson necessarily should have foreseen the Civil War as it happened, I think if several of the colonies had decided to break away in 1800, the result would have been no war at all. The union was too weak and too new at that time, there would have been no war to keep it together.
However, the fear of the union splitting up was genuine and legitimate throughout the revolutionary period. “Making this marriage work” was one of the paramount considerations of every single one of the founding fathers. If you don’t see how Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolution of 1798, which completely undermines the idea of Federalism and the ultimate supremacy of Federal over State law, then I think you lack a fundamental understanding of what it is that makes America work. We already tried a system once where the national government did not have supremacy, where it had to rely on the good will of the States. That government, while it got us through some rough years, was ultimately not satisfactory and that is why the United States Constitution was created.
I’m not entirely sure how to parse that sentence, but surely you understand that the Kentucky Resolutions were an attack on the constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts. At that time, the principle of judicial review (the power of the Supreme Court to declare laws unconstitutional and therefore void) had not been established. That didn’t happen until Marbury v. Madison (1804). So the only way to attack an unconstitional law (and prevent an overextension of federal authority) was by an assertion of state power.
By the way, do you mean to argue that the Alien and Sedition Acts were an example of “what it is that makes America work” and “the ultimate supremacy of Federal over State law”? Surely you recognize that under our federalist system of government the federal government decidedly does not have a free hand to pass whatever laws it wishes. It is (as Jefferson asserted) a government of delegated powers.
Are you familiar with the judicial history of the commerce clause? Just curious.
It’s true that I did give Jefferson a hard time earlier in this thread. However, it occured to me that asking me my most favorite and least favorite founding father is like asking me what my most favorite and least favorite sexual position is. Even without the handcuffs it’s still a lot of fun.
The specifics of what brought about the Kentucky Resolution, while historically important, aren’t at issue here. What is at issue is the actual ideas and concepts that were expressed generally in the resolution and what their effects would be at large, they were not founded on a singular basis but were assertions of a general privilege Jefferson felt States should have, a privilege that if they did have would destroy the United States. I don’t think anyone, in retrospect, thinks the Alien & Sedition Acts were a good thing. But they are still not as bad as the concept that the individual States should be the deciding authority on what is constitutional and what is not. I agree that opposition to the Alien & Sedition acts was a good thing, however the actual wording of the Kentucky Resolution, in my mind, makes it clear that Jefferson wasn’t talking about a remedy for that single issue but was instead asserting that individual States essentially were the final authority on what was and was not constitutional. Imagine if that was actually how our government worked. Individual States could say, “Yeah, the Civil Rights Act of 1964–we view it as unconstitutional, so it doesn’t apply here.” There’s no check on such a State power, and the existence of such a State power would by its very nature castrate the Federal government. Jefferson’s proposed solution for the problem of the Alien & Sedition Acts is akin to taking someone with a fever and throwing them in an oven as a cure.
Context is important. Jefferson was seeking some sort of redress for the Alien and Sedition Acts. The court system was not an option, since a) the principle of judicial review hadn’t been established, and b) the chief justice was an ardent supporter of Adams.
So what was Jefferson to do? The only way left to fight these unjust laws was at the state level. What course would you have advised?
That’s just more hindsight. Looking at it from Jefferson’s perspective, he was on guard against consolidation of power in a tyrannical central government. You have to put yourself in his shoes and remember that at the time we were only on our second elected president. It was by no means a foregone conclusion that there would be 41 more of them. It was entirely reasonable at that time to expect that democracy might descend into despotism, and the Alien and Sedition Acts seemed like a big step in that direction.
If anything, history has shown just how fragile young democracies can be. Jefferson was right to be concerned.
Jefferson may be guilty of not thinking through every conceivable implication and outcome of the concept of nullification, but his cause was just, and he was using what tools were available to him at the time.
A good story about Hamilton, BTW, from Ron Chernow’s excellent bio of him (which was mentioned upthread). When Hamilton was a student and an ardent young Patriot at King’s College in NYC (the future Columbia U.), he learned that a mob was going to go to the home of the college president, a notorious Tory, to tar and feather him. Hamilton raced ahead of the mob, got to the president’s front door first, and implored the crowd to disperse. He urged them not to do such a foul deed, to act honorably and to show that the Patriot cause was just. He begged them to leave the old Tory alone in peace.
The president, who was hard of hearing, looked out from an upstairs window, saw Hamilton haranguing the crowd, and shouted down, “Pay no attention to that rascal Hamilton!”
Copyright up until the death of the author… fair as far as I’m concerned. But copyright to 75 years after death? Nothing but a way for corporations to leach money from the public.
Blalron, so you’re saying that Gone with the Wind should have gone directly to public ownership, with the death of Margaret Mitchell? Or that publishers would have paid anything for US Grant’s memoires, if the copyright didn’t extend past his immenent death? (Though, I’ll grant Samuel Clemens was such a quirky individual himself, he might have, given the circumstances.) And the estate of Ernest Hemingway would have been sued into oblivion, I think, had his copyrights become void upon his death.
Note, I’m not speaking neither in favor, nor against, the 75 years past the death of the artist - I can see that might be a bit much, though it’s also something I could be persuaded as being a good figure. But I think it’s to the artist’s benefit that copyright protection extends beyond his or her own mortality - because it makes the rights that they’re selling for a given work more marketable.
It used to be 50 years, IIRC. I’d be happy to see it reduced back to that. The 25 years increase was simply a giveaway to corporations, of minimal benefit to authors if any, and a loss for the public at large.
