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America, AMERICA DYING, America failing, America falling, AMERICAN PEOPLE, Civil War, Jefferson, Obama, President, Racism, Slavery
I have been reading. I have been going over several documents and writings that I used to research my novel Jayes: 1627. Imagine my shock when I realized that I can relate with 200 year old documents and see the message that connects with our current times.
These are only a few of the messages that really hit me. I could have stayed up all night typing more.
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Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Coles, August 1814
“The hour of emancipation is advancing in the march of time. It will come, and whether brought on by the general energies of our own minds, or by the bloody process of St. Domingo, excited and conducted by the power of our present enemy, if once stationed permanently within our country and offering asylum and arms to the oppressed, is a leaf in our history not yet turned over.”
From Thomas Jefferson’s~ From his- Notes on Virginia: Written in 1781 xviii:
I have taken the liberty to modernize the best I can the spelling.
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unrelenting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it, for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave, he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive, either in his philanthropy of self-love, for restraining the intemperance passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally, it is not sufficient. The parent storms; the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose tongue to the worst of his passions, and, thus nursed, educated and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and his morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, the amor patria of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this World, it must be any other preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another- in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute, as far as depends on his individual endeavors, to the vanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of a people, their industry also is destroyed; for, in a warm climate, no man will labor himself who can make another labor for him. This is so true that, of the proprietors of slaves, a very small portion, indeed, are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis- a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God; that they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever. That, considering the numbers, nature and natural means, only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events. That it may become possible by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest.
But it is possible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history, of natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one’s mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating. That of the slave, rising from the dust, his condition mollifying-the way, I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, or a total emancipation; and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the mastersy rather than by their expiration.
Virginia Legislature, January 1832 Mr. P.A. Rolling of Buckingham:
“Slavery is a withering curse, that robs Virginia of her wealth, honor and prosperity, and lie foreboded the day when civil discord shall shake this vast empire to its centre, when black war-cloud shall lower and it’s thundering’s be heard throughout the land.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is vain gentleman to deny the fact, the feelings of society are fast becoming averse to slavery. The moral causes which produce that feeling are on the march. Look over this world’s wide page- see the rapid progress if liberal feelings- see the shackles falling from the nations who have long writhed under the galling yoke of slavery. Liberty is going over the whole earth, hand in hand with Christianity. The ancient temples of slavery, rendered venerable alone by their antiquity, are crumbling into dust. Ancient prejudices are flying before the light of truth- are dissipated by its rays, as the idle vapor by the bright sun.”
The Noble Sentiment of Burns: 1832 Virginia Assembly
“Come let us pray, may brother be brother. The day star of human liberty has risen above the dark horizon of slavery, and will continue its bright career, until it smiles alike on all men.”
Mr Thomas Jefferson Randolph: Grandson of Thomas Jefferson~
“There is one circumstance to which we are to look as inevitable in the fullness of time- a dissolution of this Union. God grant that it may not happen in our lifetime or that of our children: but, Sir, it must come sooner or later, and when it does come, border war follows it, as certain as the night follows the day. An enemy on your frontier offering arms and asylum to the disadvantaged population, tampering with it in your bosom……in arrogance, and inhuman appendages, under a just and overruling providence, it will blindly destroy itself, and face a rebellion against the best government in the world.”
When I was growing up, and perhaps it was only my naivety, I believed that we had overcome and grown so much. That we had conquered racism and advanced as people. Equal all with the same opportunity to pursuit liberty and happiness. That anyone who set forward could make any dream come true if they really wanted it. I believed that our generation accepted people of all colors, and we were color blind. I believed that more than ever when we elected President Obama. I believed that Women had advanced so much, and there were women in every seat of power, running multi-million dollar companies, and even running for President.
I looked at history, and I believed that we had come so far. I was proud of my parents and grandparents for all that they had accomplished from the founding of this country. And the generations before them that fought for civil freedom for all.
Now I am asking myself, would my grandparents be proud of me? What has happened? Have we regressed and moved backwards? Have we not learned from histories past? After reading some of the writings, I relate. I can actually see a message as if it speaks to our current times. We are divided like never before in American history, if there is one certainty, hate and emotion is stronger than ever before. Do we have less hope in America today than Thomas Jefferson had in 1781?
Look at everything in history that our Ancestors endured to get us to where we were 30 years ago. How far have we fallen? Have we not learned enough from history to not repeat it, or are we writing history that future generation will look back on as America’s darkest times?
We no longer agree to disagree. Violence seems to be ‘the next step.’ Families are torn apart by opinions. What ever happened to agree to disagree?
Most of America feels as though they are the minority, we are controlled and work for our Government and only the 1% thrive. What is happening? WE ARE TORN! WE ARE FULL OF HATE AND WE DIVIDED. WE THE PEOPLE ARE DIVIDED!
This Clinton Trump Divide, could it possibly lead to the undoing of America as we know it? Or is there hope? Can we find hope, rise above emotion, and work together to find common ground? I hope so, for the future of our next generations.