Oh, Dear, I've Offended The Jefferson Cult, What Ever Will I Do Now?

When  the Jefferson cult annoys me the most, in thinking about the unfillable gap between his most famous claim in the Declaration of Independence, that "All men are created equal . . . " and his not only continuing holding of slaves but also his increasing enthusiasm and advocacy (to his friends of his class) for keeping Black People enslaved as a means of wealth creation for them every time a new Black Child was born into slavery, not to mention his own history of raping a slave child and maintaining her and his children by her in slavery during his lifetime,  I don't think he really meant it.  He was recruiting poor men to fight his war.  Like Thomas Paine, his fellow enthusiast for shedding blood for the "tree of liberty" he made damned sure it wasn't his that was going to do the watering of it. 

I don't think many, perhaps any of those rich, white men who signed the Declaration of Independence believed what it said about equality because their actions after independence was gotten prove they didn't believe it.  Slavery wasn't abolished, poor men without property were not universally given the vote, Women were certainly not made equal in terms of the law, the genocides and land theft from the original inhabitants of North America continued and increased, without whatever inhibition that Britain had been on that - one of the major bones of contention stated in the Declaration was that the Founders were not free to kill and steal land, though stated in more elegant double-speak.  

No, I think the loftiest language in the Declaration was there to sucker the poor into fighting the war on behalf of the wealthy founders, including some Black men - Britain's offer to give slaves who fought against the American independence effort freedom proved somewhat of a better promissory note than the one issued in the Declaration on that count.   The rebellions that led to the Constitutional Convention came about when poor white people who had been told they were getting a lot more found out the Founders, once with power, intended to welsh on those promises, too. 

I think Jefferson may have liked to strike the pose of an egalitarian lover of liberty - he was a man of late 18th century fashion - but his life puts the lie to his ever having really had that as a principle that he had any intention of living by.   He was certainly smart enough to have noted the damning gap between his words and his life, though he could count on his fellow aristocrats in delicately choosing not to mention that too often. They didn't mean it anymore than he did.   The slaves who demanded their freedom certainly did then and Black People and others still subjugated still now have noticed that gap, even in many cases, people of the humblest backgrounds without the advantages that Jefferson had in education.  

Naw,  Jefferson was a piece of crap, adding hypocrisy to the sin of slave holding and selling, of slave raping.   I don't trust him.