I am a great lover of American history. I see American history from a different perspective than most. I consider the real history of America to be written by the common man. Those who the writers of great history books would deem insignificant. All the important moments of our brief national existence have been created by the individual, unrestrained by the shadow of historical importance, acting with millions of other like-minded single souls. This country has been made strong and just by small, not great man. In turn, when presented with the story of any of our forefathers, we are always given a picture of a saintly, hallowed man who put all of mankind on his back and lifted them to heights they could never imagine for themselves. Kind of like Daddy Warbucks with wings.
I just went on an American road trip with my family. On the way from the Shenandoah Mountains to Williamsburg, Virginia we decided to take a break at Charlottesville and visit Moniticello, home of our third president, Thomas Jefferson. Our group was large and included members of three generations of the family. We paid our twenty dollars per and were led to an undertaker-like figure on the porch of Monticello for our guided tour. This was a tour of the word “lie”. We had all the variations presented to us in profusion: the stretching of the truth lie, the obscuring the facts lie, the straight-faced bold as hell not a speck of reality lie, the lie of omission and of course, the mythic lie. There is no better figure to guide this tour than the disdainful, arrogant professor in a black suit filled with white puffiness smirking his stories to we, the twenty dollars poorer, masses. Our guide has this in spades.
Of course, he hit us with “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal” quote right away. At that precise moment, my little voice within said, “you are shitting me”. I agree that the words are inspiring and “the endowed by their creator” follow up is a classic, but what good are words from a man who refused to live by them. All men were created equal to Jefferson except black skinned humans, women and any individual who did not own land. You had to have to get. My mentoring guide explained this away with “he was caught up in an agrarian society”. He owned other human beings that did all his work for him. That old “he didn’t know any better” line is limp and ineffective. Even Moses, thousands of years before Jefferson, realized that owning another human was wrong. The only black people that Jefferson ever treated near equal to himself were the ones he created with his slave lover, Sally Hemmings. He did not mind having sex with a negro, but God forbid he would have to eat with one.
My guide was so involved with creating a Jefferson that everyone could admire that he called him the first American paleontologist. Ole Tom sent Lewis and Clark on one of the most significant hikes in the history of walking. They came back with a present of the jaw bone from an animal that Jefferson considered the American wooly mammoth. To my turd polishing tour guide this made Tom a paleontologist. He had as much to do with the study of ancient fossils as he had in actually building Monticello—nothing. Agreed, he was a brilliant man who designed his digs and wrote a beautiful introduction to The Declaration of Independence. (The rest of the Declaration is just a list of grievances that were agreed upon by committee). He did say that “all men are created equal”, but it took two centuries of effort from the average American to make it so. Making a man like Jefferson seem faultless and giving him credit for forming a truly democratic nation denigrates the sacrifice made by so many men and women who had no statues built for them as they completed the struggle for a free American individual.
Mothers and fathers, paint the picture with all the colors, not just the ones that give glory to a few. To hand lies down from generation to generation is a dismal way to insure our democracy.
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