Thomas Jefferson: Afrocentric Slave-Owner
DiscussieBlack Theology & Religious Studies
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1quicksiva
Why did Thomas Jefferson risk his political career and maybe his life to translate a future Afrocentric Classic into English?
While serving as Ambassador to France(1785-1789), Thomas Jefferson seriously imperiled his political future by secretly joining with the noted anti- slavery poet and founder of ''the American Mercury", Joel Barlow to provide his friend Constantin-Francois Volney with an English translation of The Ruins: Or a Survey of the Revolutions of Empires, a translation from the French Les Ruines ou Meditations sur les Revolutions des Empires, published in 1796 by William A. Davis, in New York.
These thought provoking lines are among my favorites:
"Those piles of ruins which you see in that narrow valley watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia. Behold the wrecks of her metropolis, of Thebes with her hundred palaces, the parent of cities and the monument of the caprice of destiny. There a people, now forgotten, discovered while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature , those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe. Lower down those dusky points are the pyramids whose masses have astonished you. Beyond that, the coast, hemmed in between the sea and a narrow ridge of mountains was the habitation of the Phoenicians. These were the famous cities of Tyre, of Sidon, of Ascalon, of Gaza, and of Berytus. "
This is an admittedly radical work even by today's Liberal standards. Maybe that is why it took the University of Virginia 185 years to remember that Jefferson had given it not one, but two copies of his personally selected translations of Volney's work.
One copy was presented to the Library of Congress just in time for it's 200th birthday. This translation of Volney's work is the same edition as the one Jefferson had sold to The Library of Congress in 1815, but which was sadly lost to flames in 1851.
Mark Dimunation, Chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections division at the Library of Congress, has called Volney's work an “important source,..”, “that influenced Jefferson's thinking”. Just think, “Afro-Centric Scholars” (Not an oxymoron) have been teaching for decades that this particular translation of this work is an important primary source. Its taken almost 200 years, but thanks to the ongoing deification of Thomas Jefferson, more mainstream scholars may finally work up the nerve to examine Volney's message in the exact words that President Jefferson chanced so much to create and preserve.
Why did Jefferson do it? Did his Unitarian beliefs play any role? Did Sally put something in his tea? Or was he much more radical than anyone has ever suspected until now.
Thanx,
Viator
While serving as Ambassador to France(1785-1789), Thomas Jefferson seriously imperiled his political future by secretly joining with the noted anti- slavery poet and founder of ''the American Mercury", Joel Barlow to provide his friend Constantin-Francois Volney with an English translation of The Ruins: Or a Survey of the Revolutions of Empires, a translation from the French Les Ruines ou Meditations sur les Revolutions des Empires, published in 1796 by William A. Davis, in New York.
These thought provoking lines are among my favorites:
"Those piles of ruins which you see in that narrow valley watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia. Behold the wrecks of her metropolis, of Thebes with her hundred palaces, the parent of cities and the monument of the caprice of destiny. There a people, now forgotten, discovered while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature , those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe. Lower down those dusky points are the pyramids whose masses have astonished you. Beyond that, the coast, hemmed in between the sea and a narrow ridge of mountains was the habitation of the Phoenicians. These were the famous cities of Tyre, of Sidon, of Ascalon, of Gaza, and of Berytus. "
This is an admittedly radical work even by today's Liberal standards. Maybe that is why it took the University of Virginia 185 years to remember that Jefferson had given it not one, but two copies of his personally selected translations of Volney's work.
One copy was presented to the Library of Congress just in time for it's 200th birthday. This translation of Volney's work is the same edition as the one Jefferson had sold to The Library of Congress in 1815, but which was sadly lost to flames in 1851.
Mark Dimunation, Chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections division at the Library of Congress, has called Volney's work an “important source,..”, “that influenced Jefferson's thinking”. Just think, “Afro-Centric Scholars” (Not an oxymoron) have been teaching for decades that this particular translation of this work is an important primary source. Its taken almost 200 years, but thanks to the ongoing deification of Thomas Jefferson, more mainstream scholars may finally work up the nerve to examine Volney's message in the exact words that President Jefferson chanced so much to create and preserve.
Why did Jefferson do it? Did his Unitarian beliefs play any role? Did Sally put something in his tea? Or was he much more radical than anyone has ever suspected until now.
Thanx,
Viator
2morningrob
I do not understand how somebody who had no problem raping a black woman (women maybe?) could be called a Afrocentric scholar.
3quicksiva
Please reread this line;)
Why did Thomas Jefferson risk his political career and maybe his life to translate a future Afrocentric Classic into English?
Thomas Jefferson Was a rich land baron in a feudal economy. He could do whatever he pleased with his "property". My question is, why was he working so hard to destroy all this?
Viator
Why did Thomas Jefferson risk his political career and maybe his life to translate a future Afrocentric Classic into English?
Thomas Jefferson Was a rich land baron in a feudal economy. He could do whatever he pleased with his "property". My question is, why was he working so hard to destroy all this?
Viator
4quicksiva
Please reread this line;)
Why did Thomas Jefferson risk his political career and maybe his life to translate a future Afrocentric Classic into English?
Thomas Jefferson Was a rich land baron in a feudal economy. He could do whatever he pleased with his "property". My question is, why was he working so hard to destroy all this? Future Presidents dont talk like this. There are lines in this book that could have gotten Jefferson and Barlow hung.
Viator
Why did Thomas Jefferson risk his political career and maybe his life to translate a future Afrocentric Classic into English?
Thomas Jefferson Was a rich land baron in a feudal economy. He could do whatever he pleased with his "property". My question is, why was he working so hard to destroy all this? Future Presidents dont talk like this. There are lines in this book that could have gotten Jefferson and Barlow hung.
Viator
5ThomasCWilliams
Dit bericht is door zijn auteur gewist.
6quicksiva
Why are “Deist Founding Fathers” being mis-used by Sarah Palin and her crew to support their ideas? Consider these words from the polygraph of our third president.
“What accents of madness strike my ear? What blind and perverse delirium disorders the spirits of the nations ? Sacrilegious prayers rise not from the earth! and you, oh Heavens, reject their homicidal vows and impious thanks-giving! Deluded mortals! is it thus you revere the Divinity? Say then; how should he, whom you style your common father, receive the homage of his children murdering one another? Ye victors! with what eye should he view your hands reeking in the blood he hath created? And, what do you expect, oh vanquished, from useless groans ? Hath God the heart of a mortal, with passions ever changing? Is he, like you, agitated with vengeance or compassion. with wrath or repentance? What base conception of the most sublime of beings according to them, it would seem, that God whimsical and capricious, is angered or appeased as a man: that he loves and hates alternately; that he punishes or favors; that, weak or wicked, he broods over his hatred; that, contradictory or perfidious, he lays snares to entrap; that he punishes the evils he permits; that he foresees but hinders not crimes; that, like a corrupt judge, he is bribed by offerings; like an ignorant despot, he makes laws and revokes them; that, like a savage tyrant, he grants or resumes favors without reason, and can only be appeased by servility. Ah! now I know the lying spirit of man! Contemplating the picture," which he hath drawn of the Divinity: No, said I, it is not God who hath made man after the image of God; but man hath made God after the image of man; he hath given him his own mind, clothed him with his own propensities;; ascribed to him his own judgments. And when in this medley he finds the contradiction of his own principles, with hypocritical humility, he imputes weakness to his reason, and names the absurdities of his own mind the mysteries of God.
He hath said, God is immutable, yet he offers prayers to change him; he hath pronounced him incomprehensible, yet he interprets him without ceasing.
Imposters have arisen on the earth who have called themselves the confidants of God; and, erecting themselves into teachers of the people, have opened the ways of falsehood and iniquity; they have ascribed merit to practices indifferent or ridiculous; they have supposed a virtue in certain postures; in pronouncing certain words, articulating certain names; they have transformed into a crime the eating of certain meats, the drinking of certain liquors, on one day rather than another...."
Ruins of Empires; Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney ; trans. by Thomas Jefferson and Joel Barlow
“What accents of madness strike my ear? What blind and perverse delirium disorders the spirits of the nations ? Sacrilegious prayers rise not from the earth! and you, oh Heavens, reject their homicidal vows and impious thanks-giving! Deluded mortals! is it thus you revere the Divinity? Say then; how should he, whom you style your common father, receive the homage of his children murdering one another? Ye victors! with what eye should he view your hands reeking in the blood he hath created? And, what do you expect, oh vanquished, from useless groans ? Hath God the heart of a mortal, with passions ever changing? Is he, like you, agitated with vengeance or compassion. with wrath or repentance? What base conception of the most sublime of beings according to them, it would seem, that God whimsical and capricious, is angered or appeased as a man: that he loves and hates alternately; that he punishes or favors; that, weak or wicked, he broods over his hatred; that, contradictory or perfidious, he lays snares to entrap; that he punishes the evils he permits; that he foresees but hinders not crimes; that, like a corrupt judge, he is bribed by offerings; like an ignorant despot, he makes laws and revokes them; that, like a savage tyrant, he grants or resumes favors without reason, and can only be appeased by servility. Ah! now I know the lying spirit of man! Contemplating the picture," which he hath drawn of the Divinity: No, said I, it is not God who hath made man after the image of God; but man hath made God after the image of man; he hath given him his own mind, clothed him with his own propensities;; ascribed to him his own judgments. And when in this medley he finds the contradiction of his own principles, with hypocritical humility, he imputes weakness to his reason, and names the absurdities of his own mind the mysteries of God.
He hath said, God is immutable, yet he offers prayers to change him; he hath pronounced him incomprehensible, yet he interprets him without ceasing.
Imposters have arisen on the earth who have called themselves the confidants of God; and, erecting themselves into teachers of the people, have opened the ways of falsehood and iniquity; they have ascribed merit to practices indifferent or ridiculous; they have supposed a virtue in certain postures; in pronouncing certain words, articulating certain names; they have transformed into a crime the eating of certain meats, the drinking of certain liquors, on one day rather than another...."
Ruins of Empires; Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney ; trans. by Thomas Jefferson and Joel Barlow
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