| August 27 |  |
Editor says, what if Thomas Jefferson was fully committed to the principle of the pursuit of liberty? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s).
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In 1789, on this day the de facto government of Revolutionary France, the National Constituent Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man of the Citizen, a statement of enlightenment principles co-authored by the Marquis de Lafayette and the Virginian émigreé radical Tom Jefferson.
Pursuit of LibertyThirteen years before, Jefferson had penned the United States Declaration of Independence. But a paragraph indicting Britain's role in the slave trade was deleted from the final version creating a contradiction between the claim that "all men are created equal" and the existence of American slavery. "If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature", English abolitionist Thomas Day wrote in a 1776 letter, "it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves".
"Rather it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated"Jefferson agreed, quitting Virginia to enjoy Parisian Society with his common law mixed race wife, Sally Hemings. They were soon to discover that the French were prosecuting their own revolution with a great deal more extremism, too much for Jefferson's own "personal taste for disorder and violence". Still, his vision for a French revolutionary occupation of England might yet rescue his former colleagues, because if there was one overarching principle Jefferson really believed in, it was that both revolutions were connected by the common pursuit of Liberty. It was a concept that Jefferson had brow-beaten Lafayette into codifying into the Declaration.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Long Affair ? Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution 1785 - 1800 (1996)Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, Paris, France, America. Editor says, Jefferson was in Paris in 1789 as an American Diplomat and both documents share common ideas, suggesting his secret involvement in the penmanship of the Declaration.
~ The intellectuals of france were loaded with bright unproven ideals but unfortnately had no experience with democracy or human nature in its uncontrolled form. End result is the reign of terror, attrocities and terrorism sponsored by the radicals, collapse and the rise of Napoleon's dictatorship and war, a process and tragedy repeated up to the present day throughout the world.
~ It seems unlikely Jefferson would have emigrated, unless forced to by the Revolution's failure, which would have made him a hunted man. He was altogether too comfortable in Virginia to have "quit" America over the deletion of a controversial passage in his draft of the Declaration of Independence.
~ Would a foreigner have had that much influence in Revolutionary France?
Comment from Arlena Arteaga Kelly on Facebook: I think the Hemmings descendents would say that he was........
Comment from Margo Barotta on Facebook: Thomas Jefferson travel a lot into france and he had a stronge friendshipe with laffayette ,and also jefferson was known that he had a lot of slaves in his farme ,and a rumer said that jefferson had mixed color childrens, but until now no true evidence.
Comment from Arteaga Kelly on Facebook: Arteaga Kelly Sally's descendants needed no true evidence, they knew. And it's interesting to note that Jefferson did not support Touissant L Overture's slave insurrection in Haiti and sent reinforcement to help Napoleon. So much for "Egalite, liberte, and fraternity".
~ At least one of her sets of decendents who went white has Jefferson's DNA. But the truth is that no matter who went over to France to ring in Liberty and Democracy, Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Payne, the revolution failed in France because ordinary French people had no experience with Government by the people for the people and those in charge really did not have an inkling on what Liberty really is. They looked to Rousou and the mythical Noble Savage where in Britain and America Liberty is seen as the ordinary man being as rotton as his king needs to be his own slave driver lest his king make him into his royal property and to do that he needs to work as a team with his ordinary common people like a pirate crew works together to their own mutual corrupt benefit. The French expected Utopia when they lifted away the royal chains while forgetting to chain everyone together in chains of the common man working together for mutual benefit. They just assumed to their disaster that everyone would swim together.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
