Thread by @CitizenSE

Americans have yet to come to terms with Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence and what his fellow revolutionaries decided to cut from it.

loc.gov/exhibits/decla…

This passage deserves more attention:

"he has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, & conditions of existence:"

Yes, it's accusing the King of war crimes. But American colonists committed war crimes against Indigenous people and took over their lands. Jefferson's "merciless Indian savages" racialized and dehumanized indigenous violence, casting it as an indiscrimate threat to colonists.

When you listen to Republicans attacking protestors or violence that occurs during protests, listen for these kinds of rhetorical moves.

The mainstream media has examined the final revised version of the 27th grievance:

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

So has Indigenous media. Here's just one example:

indiancountrytoday.com/archive/the-de…

Consider how Monticello deals with Jefferson's draft and how it fits into the larger context of his career. How official institutions memorialize and contextualize past public rhetoric is always worth analyzing:

monticello.org/thomas-jeffers…

When you hear scholars and activists refer to "settler colonialism," think of Jefferson's draft and how and why it was revised by the Second Continental Congress. Here's one example:

kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-260…

And think about how the logic, rhetoric, and presumptions from this earlier era of the history of the Americas resonates today. @nikhil_palsingh

bostonreview.net/war-security-r…

Another passage that was cut from Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence was a harsh condemnation of the King for protecting the slave trade. But here's what got boiled down to "domestic insurrections" in the final version.

"he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them;

...

...

thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

Jefferson's last grievance, then, was that the King incited slave insurrections. Let's look at this from two angles: first, what the King did; next, the portrayal of the enslaved.

Consider how mainstream media portrays the long grievance that was cut and replaced with only a few words:

google.com/amp/s/www.hist…

Here's how PBS covers it:

pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2…

The History Channel covers the Dunmore Proclamation, which promised emancipation to escaped slaves of American revolutionaries:

history.com/news/the-ex-sl…

So the King is at fault for the slave trade (the colonists bear no responsibility for it or for centuries of slavery), for inciting the enslaved to fight for their freedom (an offer the American revolutionaries refused to make), and for becoming a tyrant. What do tyrants do?

In other revolutionary writings, the answer to what the King was doing that made him a tyrant was reducing subjects to slaves. Jefferson was well aware of this rhetoric, but only hinted at it in his draft of the Declaration of Independence.

Consider Jefferson's charge soon after this passage: that the King is "unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free." Who wasn't free at that time? Slaves. Consider this longer passage, too, justifying (and qualifying) the right to revolution.

"mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

What were many British people agitating to abolish around July 1776? Slavery.

Let's focus in on this part of the quotation:

"a long train of abuses & usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, & pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to subject them to arbitrary power"

Slavery was then seen as one of the worst types of arbitrary power.

So if Jefferson was smuggling in abolitionist language into the Declaration, how did he assert a right to revolution for American revolutionaries against the King and not extend it to American slaves against all enslavers?

Look at the end of his draft.

"British brethren"; "ties of our common kindred"; "they too have been deaf to the voice of justice & of consanguinity"; "of our common blood": the difference is race. Jefferson was a fan of racial Anglo-Saxonism. See Horsman.

hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…

Never mind that by this logic, Jefferson's children by Sally Hemings and the many other slaves of Anglo-Saxon descents in the Americas should also be free. (The one-drop rule and condition of the mother defining the condition of the child trumped Anglo-Saxon-descent.)

The key point is that Jefferson posited freedom as the natural state for Anglo-Saxons and slavery as antithetical to it. So British subjects had a right to revolution against a King seeking to enslave them. Other slaves did not.

Let's also put aside the reasons why the Second Continental Congress cut so much of Jefferson's last grievance and condensed it down to the race-neutral (on its face) "domestic insurrections," as interesting as they are.

Let's think instead about why "1776" is the rallying cry of white supremacists. Why do they feel justified in wrapping themselves in the mantle of American patriots? Well, they know full well the American Revolution was fought to keep white people from being enslaved.

They see Black freedom as a threat. They see a sovereign that is on the side of Black freedom as a threat. They see a sovereign willing to pit Black slaves against their revolution as a threat. And they use these tropes to recruit whites into their race war.

Now do you see why they are obsessed with #BLM? And why Trump's "American carnage" imagery and rhetoric is so appealing to them? White supremacists continue to circulate racializing narratives invented to justify enslavement of Black people. They did it in Jefferson's time.

And they do it today. They're always adjusting it to be as appealing as possible to as many white people as possible. And they've been willing to redefine whiteness when circumstances require. Here's just one historical study on this subject.

hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…

Let's face it: the American Revolution's result (and the intent of many revolutionaries) was to protect the rights of white people to enslave Black people. We shouldn't be surprised when MAGA revolutionaries invoke this war.

newyorker.com/magazine/2021/…

In some ways, they are being true to one key strand in Thomas Jefferson's own thinking and writing. Of course, Jefferson was more complex than that and his legacy is exponentially more complex than that. But Trump's insurrectionists don't tend to value complexity and nuance.

So when those associated with Afropessimism trace current and historical refusals to acknowledge Black people as citizens, persons, humans, free, along with the persistence of the (attempted) "social death" that enslavement was for Black people, pay attention.

That persistence can take many forms and be expressed in many ways through many different types of media. That's why imagery, rhetoric, narrative, iconography, allusion, and performance are so often analyzed by Afropessimists.

Of course, many strands in the broader Black Radical Tradition investigate the politics and aesthetics of white supremacy. But Afropessimists bring to this effort a particular emphasis on anti-Blackness relegating Black people as the constitutive outside of the nation, the human.

But every American should be thinking through Jefferson's legacies at a time when many on Trump's side are invoking and rearticulating Jefferson to recruit for a revolutionary war against not just President-Elect Biden and his administration and party, but for a white republic.

Millions of words have been expended on Jefferson and his legacy in earlier contexts; I expect millions more will be for this one. Here are a few sources you might find interesting, informative, and provocative.

smithsonianmag.com/history/the-da…

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

pbs.org/jefferson/arch…

insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/0…

facinghistory.org/nobigotry/read…

foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/24/ame…

David Walker wrote one of the most powerful rebuttals of Jefferson's version of the Declaration of Independence a few years after Jefferson's death on July 4, 1826.

davidwalkermemorial.org/appeal

Frederick Douglass's "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" wrestles with Jefferson's legacy and puts Black freedom at the heart of the American revolutionary project.

blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandhe…

Here's a fan of Jefferson's Anglo Saxonism who manages to avoid race and slavery (at least overtly).

google.com/amp/s/misesuk.…

Here's another--on the pages of Forbes--who comes very close to saying the white supremacist parts out loud.

forbes.com/sites/billflax…

Of course, many attempt to reframe Jefferson as a universalist, someone who at his best transcended race-based notions of liberty. Here's one such attempt:

allthingsliberty.com/2017/09/thomas…

Larry Tise analyzes pro-slavery Republicanism here, in the context of other types of defenses of slavery in the US. Check out how he reads Jefferson.

ugapress.org/book/978082032…

So many on twitter are doing much more than me on the roots and significance of 1/6. Here are just a few that put me on the trail of the Jeffersonianism of revolutionary white supremacists in 2021.

https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1349403539257307142?s=19

https://twitter.com/NewBlackMan/status/1349752030861156356?s=19

@blacklikewho @hystericalblkns
@keguro_

https://twitter.com/canisialu/status/1350253683783692288?s=19

Hopefully this thread puts earlier ones of mine in context. Like this one.

https://twitter.com/CitizenSE/status/1349901006197370880?s=19

And here's a source I saw because of a @SethCotlar tweet!

theconversation.com/amp/why-the-al…