A Okie look at all thing Politics, eCampaign, New Media and Warfare - - - I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. - John Adams
Showing posts with label Thomas Jefferson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Jefferson. Show all posts
He drafted the Declaration of Independence, was Governor of Virginia and founded the University of Virginia.
As the 3rd U.S. President, he approved the Louisiana Purchase and had Lewis and Clark explore it.
He sent the Marines to stop the Muslim Barbary Pirates of Tripoli.
His name was Thomas Jefferson, born APRIL 13, 1743.
Inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC are his words:
"God who gave us life gave us liberty.
Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?
Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever."
In his Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, January 16, 1786, Jefferson wrote:
"Almighty God hath created the mind free...
All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments...tend only to begat habits of hypocrisy...and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in His Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone."
In his 2nd Inaugural, Jefferson wrote:
"I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old."
On MARCH 7, 1774, the British passed the Boston Port Act, closing the harbor to all commerce to punish the colonists for the Boston Tea Party.
Surrounding towns rallied by sending food. William Prescott, who later commanded at Bunker Hill, wrote:
"Providence has placed you where you must stand the first shock...
If we submit to these regulations, all is gone."
William Prescott continued:
"Our forefathers passed the vast Atlantic, spent their blood and treasure, that they might enjoy their liberties, both civil and religious, and transmit them to their posterity...
Now if we should give them up, can our children rise up and call us blessed?"
Upon hearing of the Boston Port Act, Thomas Jefferson led the Virginia House of Burgesses, May 24, 1774, to declare a Day of Fasting.
The Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, retaliated by dissolving the House of Burgesses two days later.
Jefferson's Virginia Proclamation stated:
"This House, being deeply impressed with apprehension...from the hostile invasion of the city of Boston in our Sister Colony of Massachusetts Bay, whose commerce and harbor are, on the first day of June next, to be stopped by an armed force, deem it highly necessary that the said first day of June be set apart, by the members of this House, as a Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, devoutly to implore the Divine interposition, for averting the heavy calamity which threatens destruction to our civil rights."
"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Shelton Gilliam, 19 June 1808
They both served in the Continental Congress. One was elected the second President and the other was elected the third.
Once political enemies, they became close friends in later life. An awe swept America when they both died on the same day, JULY 4, 1826, exactly 50 years since they passed the Declaration of Independence.
Their names were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
In his Second Annual Message to Congress, December 5, 1826, President John Quincy Adams referred to Jefferson and Adams, stating:
"Since your last meeting at this place, the fiftieth anniversary of the day when our independence was declared...two of the principal actors in that solemn scene - the hand that penned the ever-memorable Declaration and the voice that sustained it in debate - were by one summons, at the distance of 700 miles from each other, called before the Judge of All to account for their deeds done upon earth."
President John Quincy Adams added in an Executive Order, July 11, 1826:
"A coincidence...so wonderful gives confidence...that the patriotic efforts of these...men were Heaven directed, and furnishes a new...hope that the prosperity of these States is under the special protection of a kind Providence."
John Adams,Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson collaborate to edit the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. Franklin revises arguably the Declaration's most prominent and oft-repeated passage-We hold these truths to be self-evident. Jefferson also demonstrates the swivel chair he invented.
"It is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country."
-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Hugh P. Taylor, 4 October 1823)
"In forming the Senate, the great anchor of the Government, the questions as they came within the first object turned mostly on the mode of appointment, and the duration of it."
-- James Madison (letter to Thomas Jefferson, 24 October 1787)
"We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience."
-- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the state of Virginia, 1782)
"He was certainly one of the most learned men of the age. It may be said of him as has been said of others that he was a "walking Library," and what can be said of but few such prodigies, that the Genius of Philosophy ever walked hand in hand with him."
-- James Madison (on Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Harrison Smith, 4 November 1826)
American Minute
