Thomas Jefferson and Equality: Making America
“All men are created equal … “So states the Declaration of Independence, eloquently penned by Thomas Jefferson. How do we reconcile the obvious contradiction in between Jefferson’s words about freedom and his actions as a slave owner?
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Script:.
In one sentence Thomas Jefferson not only laid the foundation stone for a new nation he likewise set that new country, the United States of America, on a course we still follow today..
His affirmation in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are developed equal,” and “endowed by their Creator with particular unalienable rights,” may be the most influential words ever written this side of the Bible..
The US Constitution validated a little more than a years later, was guided by those words. Subsequent amendments, consisting of the Fourteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War, giving “equivalent rights under the law,” appear, for all their splendour, to be restatements of the equality principle in Jefferson’s initial Declaration.
Jefferson is questionable today due to the fact that he embodies the contradictions of the creators. Progressive scholars say, he was the worst of them, the most hypocritical, because the very guy who insisted that “all males are produced equal” not only allowed slavery, but himself owned servants..
Did Jefferson not see the glaring contradiction between his concepts and his practices, between the concepts and practices of the infant American nation? According to Chief Justice Roger Taney, who authored the notorious 1857 Dred Scott decision affirming slavery in the territories, neither Jefferson nor the other founders might have seriously meant that “all males are created equivalent.” They didn’t act upon the concept, so they couldn’t have believed it.
Modern progressive jurists such as Thurgood Marshall, along with historians such as John Hope Franklin, have, again with an irony that must not go undetected, adopted the Taney view. In Franklin’s words, the founders “betrayed the ideals to which they offered lip service.” They wrote, “eloquently at one moment for the brotherhood of man and in the next moment rejected it to their black brothers.”.
No defense of Jefferson or the American founding is possible that agrees with this evaluation. How, then, can Jefferson and the founding itself be vindicated against this most serious charge?.
For the response let’s look again at the Declaration and what comes right away after the declaration “all men are developed equal”– that governments derive their legitimacy from the “authorization of the governed.” This is the democracy principle and it is no less important, no less foundational, than the equality principle.
With this is in mind, let’s turn to the useful option faced by the creators. Progressives state they ought to have forbidden slavery in the original Constitution. Yet slavery was legal in all the states that sent out agents to Philadelphia in 1789..
How could these agents ban slavery without the permission of the people in their states? Were they anticipated to do so by overriding popular consent? Because case, they would be toppling democracy itself, before it was even presented as the bedrock of the new Constitution!.
As everybody in Philadelphia knew at the time, lots of states would not have actually signed up with a union that prohibited slavery at the beginning. Maybe a few would have done so, however no more..
Had those who opposed slavery held firm on the problem, the union would have consisted of a handful of states, or it would have stayed a utopian idea affirmed by a group of high-minded creators– however they would be founders … of absolutely nothing.
As Jefferson himself said about the slavery problem, “We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.”.
It is not reasonable– in reality, it is downright obtuse– to ask of statesmen to do what they manifestly can refrain from doing. It is only reasonable to ask them to make the best options offered to them under the circumstances– to hold the wolf, in Jefferson’s own terms, till he can securely be let go..
In Abraham Lincoln’s view, the American founders did simply that. They momentarily permitted slavery in practice, while constructing a framework based upon antislavery principles.
For the complete script along with FACTS & SOURCES, go to https://www.prageru.com/video/thomas-jefferson-and-equality-making-america.
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“All guys are produced equal … “So states the Declaration of Independence, eloquently penned by Thomas Jefferson. How do we fix up the apparent contradiction in between Jefferson’s words about freedom and his actions as a slave owner? Love PragerU? They didn’t act on the principle, so they could not have believed it.
They composed, “eloquently at one minute for the brotherhood of guy and in the next minute rejected it to their black siblings.”.
