The First Maga Challenge

The Jeffersonian Disagreement

First published MAY 19, 2023  (This post brought me 9 views and my first subscriber)

In 1789, the United States actually became the United States, in that we had actually begun our government under the constitution. On April 30 of that year George Washington was inaugurated as our first president.  Six days later on May 5 the French Revolution began with the passing of the ancien regime and the opening of the first Estates General.  On July 4 we celebrated the 13th anniversary of our declaration of independence but the first as an actual nation and not a collection of states.  Ten days later the Bastille was stormed and the descent into chaos began that resulted in the reign of terror between 1793-1794.

In the United States in 1793 the first beginnings of our own Jacobin clubs began to spring up across the country that began to secretly agitate for an overthrow of the constitution as being an autocratic institution similar to the French monarchy.  Especially under attack was the “authoritarian” president, a guy named George Washington.  Clearly he had earned his credentials as an autocrat in the way he swiftly called together 12000-man militia and personally marched across the state of Pennsylvania to put down the Whiskey Rebellion.  This march put an end to the possibility of an armed insurrection.  Washington didn’t fool around and wait two years to seek out the rebels and prosecute them.  He just marched out immediately to illustrate that such chaos would not be tolerated.  While our jacobin clubs, that called themselves democratic-republican clubs, were prompted by Jefferson’s self-established newspaper  (he paid for its publication) edited  (and mostly written) by Philip Freneau, the National Gazette.  The   Gazette editorial policy basically blasted Washington as a power hungry autocratic who suppressed individual liberty and was trying to make America into a cabal of the rich.  And supporting replacing Washington, sometimes with rather violent rhetorical calls to action to replace him with Thomas Jefferson, of course the leader of the Democratic-Republican party, who at that time was Washington’s secretary of state.

While there has begun to be a shift in historical admiration for all things Jefferson, Jefferson’s soaring words in the declaration of independence has created a myth that he was one of history’s (not just American) greatest champions of liberty that his many faults have for too long been overlooked.  Let’s contrast these two men before continuing.

Thomas Jefferson said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident….that all men are created equal.” I reposted an article a few days ago from Lucian Truscott that quoted Mr. Jefferson’s own words on the inferiority of blacks.  He did propose ending slavery, but only if they could be sent away.  Preferably back to Africa, or somewhere in the west, but they would need to be monitored and overseen because they were incapable of self-governing.  Of course he thought most people were incapable of self-governing.  Native-Americans were too childish to self-govern (even though they were doing quite a capable job of it for centuries before we invaded their lands, as had the east Africans before they were brought here to be slaves), and while he thought the only dignified profession for human liberty was farming and that every white man should have a small acreage of his own—but not divide up the aristocrats land, somewhere in the west where they would need “benign oversight” to make sure they didn’t make a mess of their freedom.  

George Washington believed slaves (blacks) were quite capable of self-governing if given freedom.  He never spouted too much rhetoric about freeing slaves, as Jefferson did, but he tried to treat his own as equally as he could.  He housed and fed his slaves somewhat better than most.  He did expect what he called an honest day’s work from his slaves, but he didn’t actually see himself as a “master.”  He saw them (from his perspective, not the slaves’ perspective, of course) as basically under a contract with him, he provided shelter, food, and protection and they in return provided their labor as repayment.  I’m not saying he didn’t know they were chattel, his possessions, but he didn’t think they should be and he would have preferred to free them.  He did own a few personal slaves of his own that he had inherited, but most of his slaves were a dowry gift from his marriage to Martha Curtiss that were deeded to him in the marriage contract.  We don’t really know why he couldn’t free all of his slaves, or even free his own except that Martha forbade him to free hers.  I think he planned to follow his friend George Mason (closest by some accounts until Mason refused to sign the constitution and never accepted it afterwards, while the other two refusals at the convention did and became officials in the government after the government was accepted) during his own lifetime, and some have suggested his will to free his own slaves after his death was delayed because he wanted  Martha to agree to freeing her slaves as well.  He didn’t plan on dying quite exactly when he did either, but he had made his will in advance, and since he had no heirs, the will returned everything in the marriage contract back to the Curtis’ except the slaves.  And in the meantime,he had done as much as he could to prepare them for being able to transition as smoothly as possible to freedom.

And during the revolutionary war, his personal slaves, and black freedmen were welcomed into his army, and if proving themselves, they could become influencers and leaders.  He never saw slaves as inferior to whites, and his argument for their freedom was not just a moral wrongness to slavery, but that they were fully capable of being equal to white men, the only thing that prevented their full abilities and that kept them inferior was that they were not being treated as equals.  

In 1791, as France was beginning its descent into chaos and declaring a war with England, the  third revolution for freedom occurred in Haiti.  Distracted by the revolution in France and the renewed war with England, and also by a split in the colony itself amongst those loyal to the king, and the more Lafayette following aristocrats, and a large population of white lower class artisans and some 30,000 free black men (including former slave, Toussaint L’Overture). Besides those 30,000 free blacks there were around 500,000 other blacks, either enslaved, or those who had escaped into the mountains and managed a subsistence living.  But unlike America, the black population in Haiti outnumbered the whites by close to 13 to 1 and slave rebellions prior to 1791 had been numerous.  But of course, the might of French forces had managed to maintain the plantation system—they had to—they not only produced more wealth for France than any other French colony for France, they produced more wealth for France than the 13 North American colonies produced for England, prior to the American revolution.  In fact the revolution of the American colonies was largely because they had become more of a drain on Britain than a benefit , since Britain had to supply resources due to American expansion into the west, and Britain had to defend that expansion both against the natives and the French.  Taxation without representation was mostly an attempt by the British to recoup the losses that had begun to make the colonies unprofitable.  Well, the revolution in Haiti saw over half of the white population die (and there were actually several simultaneous rebellions occurring, not just one centralized revolution—but over 100,000 of the blacks were killed in the revolt.  That’s an awful lot of deaths, but the Haitians wanted to not be enslaved and that many were willing to die rather than to continue being enslaved.  Now get this—the British sent reinforcements to aid the French In suppressing the rebellion because they feared similar rebellions on their own Caribbean plantations, where many of the actual plantation owners didn’t even reside. But to no avail, the slaves were slaughtered but continued to fight and somehow they staved off both the combined British and the French.

Now this is all key to understanding the almost end of American democratic in its very first decade, but has been almost completely ignored in discussions of the events about to occur in the United States.  Because the end of the Haitian revolution is totally connected to Thomas Jefferson and the rise of the democratic-republican clubs in the United States.

Washington tried to walk a fine line of neutrality in the European conflict This infuriated Jefferson.  He even wrote a letter to a compatriot that it didn’t matter if everyone died in France as long as an Adam and an  Eve survived to carry on liberty and the revolution.  No excess was too extreme for Jefferson.  The famous conflict over the bank that Jefferson proclaimed via the National Gazette was mostly made up by Jefferson.  In fact the record shows Washington favored Jefferson’s opinion almost equally, or perhaps slightly more than Hamilton’s.  On the bank issue, Washington understood that the country would fail if it could not repay its massive war debt, (does that sound familiar?) but he was actually uncertain about the bank’s constitutionality, and if one bank could be central over the state banks, so he asked Jefferson for an alternative plan to pay off the debt.  Jefferson’s response was basically to have Freneau editorialize that the bank would be tyrannical, end freedom, and who cares if we defaulted on our debt if paying it off meant losing our freedom.  (Sidenote: Jefferson’s “frugal” financial management as president created massive unemployment and bankrupted well over half of American businesses and farmers and saw our national exports decrease by four-fifths.)

Because we have ignored the consequence of the Haitian revolution, we have been inclined to view the Alien and Sedition acts as the result  of a  thin-skinned John Adams bugged at personal criticism.   Well what happened was that as John Adams was ascending the presidency a few thousand French refugees from Haiti landed in the US, and began agitating for the US to help them reconquer their lost plantations.  Adams not only had no inclination to involve us in Haiti, as an opponent of slavery felt the Haitian revolution was a good thing.  This of course alarmed not only southern plantation owners but many in the north who accepted the reports from Jefferson’s opinion in his published work on the inferiority and inability of blacks to self-govern and the threats of the French refugees that the slaves in America could take heart and take over our whole nation and would force all the whites here to lose their property and be forced to flee. (Sound like the great replacement theory?) Adams might have tolerated that, however the democratic-republican began calling for public violence and storming government offices and over-turning the democratically elected and claiming the election of 1800 had been stolen from Jefferson. (Sound familiar?) And that Adams’ government was illegitimate, and the rightful president was really Thomas Jefferson. 

So you could say Adams was thin-skinned or you could say the suppression of speech was targeted against editors calling for sedition and supporting the French refugees (aliens) cause to attack Haiti  and reinstate the white masters to their rightful “property”. 

And I do have to admit that the only editors prosecuted were democratic-republican papers.  But then there were no federalist newspapers suggesting sedition and the only democratic-republican editors prosecuted were those actually calling for the overt actions against the government.

By the time Jefferson ascended to the presidency in 1801 the Haitian revolution, that had started two months after the one in France had outlasted the revolution in their former masters’ nation ,and France was now under the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte. And miracle or forecast come true, the Haitian revolution had extended,: by that time the Haitians had succeeded in overthrowing the Spanish portion of Hispaniola and the entire island was now free of slavery.  Napoleon sent General LeClerc to Haiti with 43,000 troops to recapture Haiti. LeClerc was able to capture L'Ouverture and he was sent to France and died in a French prison soon thereafter. But LeClerc was defeated at the battle of Vertieres and lost most of his troops on November 18. 1803.  There is another bit of misinformation here often propagated that Napoleon was eager to sell Jefferson the French territory we know as the Louisiana purchase and would have sold it even cheaper if the American purchasers had offered a higher price first than Napoleon expected  because of LeClerc’s humiliating loss in Haiti and Napoleon was eager to rid himself of France’s America possessions. Can’t be true.  The deal was made on April 30, 1803.  And it would be April of 1804 before he knew of LeClerc’s defeat.  But Napoleon did need money to continue his wars for European conquest.  

Jefferson also used the American navy to blockade Haiti and then a diplomatic effort to prevent Haiti from exporting its valuable communities.  One of the richest nations in the world became one of the poorest and has remained so.  And all because the man who thought all men had an inalienable right to freedom but that right did not extend to black people having a right to self-government because his slaves worked in the fields and were not given any perfumes, so naturally they would have more of a sweat smell, and naturally they would seem more capable of being laborers because that’s how they treated them,  but their working in the fields proved to Jefferson that they were incapable of intelligent thought.  And who was also the agitator-in-chief  that led a movement that almost overthrew the constitution less than ten years after that constitution had been founded.  And more than likely, had he not succeeded  to the presidency (in a tied electoral vote) in 1800, probably would have ended that constitution’s continued existence.

 1.Thomas Fleming, The Great Divide: The Conflict between Washington and Jefferson  that Defined a Nation

 2.  American history is usually not perceived this way.  Everything I have written is discoverable.  Most will probably not believe it is true.

3. Freneau’s National Gazette actually ceased publication in 1793, apparently due to a yellow fever epidemic.  But the burgeoning democratic-republican clubs would grow and continue to support sedition.  The architect for designing the law was John Marshall—claimed by some to be our greatest architect of American jurisprudence.

http://digitalhistory.hsp.org/hint/politics-graphic-detail/org/national-gazette-1791-1793

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/alien-and-sedition-acts

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvscxtj0