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This being election day, the esteemed editors of this newspaper discourage any discussion here of the merits and demerits of various candidates and ballot issues.
And they should. It's only fair that the candidates, along with the proponents and opponents of ballot issues, have a chance to respond what is published, and on election day, there isn't time to respond.
Of course, not all organizations are as fair-minded as
the editors. Yesterday, I heard on NPR that some
fundamentalist coalition plans to distribute voter
information guides
today.
As a non-profit educational organizations, such a group
can't endorse candidates. But it can provide information,
like Candidate X may say he's all for family values, but
this degenerate is from the same political party that
Thomas Jefferson founded, and Jefferson, as science has
recently demonstrated, was a hypocritical libertine who
abused his position by taking sexual advantage of a young
woman.
What should we make of the recent DNA tests which demonstrated that Jefferson almost certainly sired at least one child by Sally Hemings, one of his slaves?
The information is hardly new. It and other sexual allegations against Jefferson appeared during his candidacy for the presidency and during his tenure in the White House, from 1801 to 1809.
In the political terminology of the day, Jefferson was a Republican, which evolved to Democratic-Republican, and by the 1820s, just plain Democratic, leaving the Republican name free in 1854 for a new third party to take.
In Jefferson's time, his political opponents belonged to the Federalist Party of George Washington and John Adams. In 1802 a Federalist newspaper brought forth a scandal.
The story said that in 10768, one of Jefferson's Virginia neighbors, Jack Walker, had to leave his plantation on business for several months.
Walker, a good friend, asked 25-year-old Jefferson to look after his farm and family -- including his wife, Betsy -- during his absence. Jefferson propositioned Betsy, and she turned him down.
The Federalist press decided that this was newsworthy 34 years later. The allegations were buttressed by a letter from Jack Walker (by then an enemy of Jefferson's) detailing what his wife had told him about Jefferson's advances:
He renewed his caresses
and placed in Mrs. W's
gown sleeve cuff a paper tending to convince her of the
innocence of promiscuous love.
Then at a social
gathering, as the women retired, Jefferson feigned
sickness, but instead of going to bed, as his sickness
authorized a belief, he stole into my room, where my wife
was undressing or in bed. He was repulsed with indignation
and menaces of alarm and ran off...
Walker's charges were even discussed on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1805.
As for Jefferson and Sally Hemings, consider this choice piece of 1802 investigative journalism:
Jefferson for many years has kept, as his concubine,
one of his own slaves. Her name is SALLY.... His slaves
are said to bear a striking although sable resemblance to
the president himself.... By this wench Sally, the
president has had several children... THE AFRICAN VENUS is
said to officiate as housekeeper at Monticello.
It was an issue in the election of 1804, although
Jefferson easily gained another term. He never spoke
publicly about the allegations concerning Betsy Walker or
Sally Hemings, but in private letters, he denied any venery
with Sally, and as for Betsy, when young and single, I
offered love to a handsome lady. I acknowledge its
incorrectness.
The astonishing thing about Jefferson, to me anyway, is not that he had flaws, but that he had so few of the vices that often accompanied his upbringing as part of Virginia's cavalier planter gentry.
Most of his aristocratic fellows grew up to care about little except riding, card-playing, dancing, drinking and wenching. Jefferson forswore most of those pleasant pursuits to excel at law, music, philosophy, science and even the mechanical arts.
In other words, despite considerable temptation, Jefferson didn't grow up to be the typical Southern rakehell; some years later, Gen. William T. Sherman remarked that this group was fit only for execution after the Civil War ended and there was no need for so many dashing cavalrymen -- the only useful skill they possessed.
But now that we know the truth about Thomas Jefferson, even without the help of a special prosecutor, we must face the implications. Should he resign, or should the House commence impeachment procedures?
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