Continuing to promote the desecration of historic national monuments, the sixth-generation great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson Lucian K. Truscott IV excoriated his ancestor as a slave-master, refusing to accept his rightful place in U.S. history. Giving a Jefferson ancestor a forum for invective, the New York Times promotes the divisive racial atmosphere giving rise to riots, looting, vandalism and anarchy, all because one sick Minneapolis cop murdered 46-year-old George Floyd. Giving the black community a forum to erase U.S. history does more harm than good for African Americans, certainly for distant relatives over the union between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings. “The memorial is a shrine to a man who during his lifetime owned more that 600 slaves and had ad least six children with one of them, Sally Hemings,” Truscott said.
No legendary figure in U.S. history was a saint but a man with all the virtues and flaws that go with the territory of human existence. Jefferson, who wrote most of the 1776 Declaration of Independence and heavily influenced the 1787 Constitution through his student James Madison, shaped the United States by transforming the 1781 Articles of Confederation into a more coherent national document. During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Jefferson was in Paris, corresponding with Madison, at the same time, helping the French to formulate the intellectual basis for their own revolution, copying much of the American experience. “It’s a shrine to a man who famously wrote that ‘all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence that founded this nation,” Truscott said, forgetting that slaves or negroes were not considered as “men” during Colonial times.
Whatever Truscott’s motives, he taking his Great-great grandfather’s generation, a man of the 18th century, and applying today’s contemporary standards to a bygone period of history. Jefferson’s Memorial is not a contemporary artifact to a monument to a long-past era instrumental in forming a new country, whose chance of breaking off from King George’s England were slim and none. Truscott says the Declaration of Independence founded the nation but he’s forgetting that words alone didn’t forge the new American experiment. It was George Washington assembling his Continental Army from volunteer farmers that became the backbone of a bloody Revolutionary War that lasted 18-years [1765-1783] before the last battle of Yorktown Truscott’s great-grandfather brought his friend the great French General Lafayette with French cash, arms and troops to the Revolutionary War.
Giving Truscott space on the New York Times op-ed page to share his thoughts adds to the ongoing civil war that has many disenfranchised groups seeking to revolt against American democracy. Truscott may not like descending from slaves but that’s part of U.S. Colonial history, whether living in the colonies, Great Britain or other parts of Europe which utilized slaves as part of 18th century economies. It’s surprising that a descendant of Thomas Jefferson doesn’t give him much credit for providing the intellectual underpinnings of American Democracy, whether or not he owned 600 slaves, a sign of the time for rich aristocrats. Truscott asserts that his great-grandfather did little to advance he cause of racial equality “And yet he never did much to make those words come true. Upon his death, he did not free the people he enslaved, other than those in the Hemings’ family . . “ Truscott said.
Giving Truscott’s space to air his views lends support to what Trump calls the “cancel culture,” needing to erase American history by applying today’s political correctness to a complex new history that gave rise to the birth of a new nation that’s done more over its 244-year to advance the dignity of humankind that any other nation. Truscott surely knows that life in Africa in the 18th Century at the time of the American Revolution was a far worse for ordinary people than anything experienced under the British, French or American rule. Yet to Truscott, Jefferson didn’t fulfill his promise written in the Declaration of Independence. Any superficial view of Jefferson’s role in forming a new nation gives him a lasting imprint on American history. Slave ownership in Colonial days was not the most pressing problem breaking away from England to form a new nation.
Instead of tearing down coveted national monuments, Truscott should work with his favorite non-profit group to fundraise and create monuments or statues to his favorite heroes in American history. If he thinks Harriet Tubman deserves a memorial or statute he should work toward making that happen. “It’s time to honor one of our founding mothers, a women who fought as an escaped slave to free those still enslaved, who fought as an armed scout for the Union Army against the Confederacy . . .” Truscott said, recommending Harriet Tubman. Just as he has his favorites, other Americans have theirs. Anyone touring Monticello, Jefferson’s Virgina estate knows that, despite his flaws by today’s standards, he left an indelible mark on forming new republic in 1787. Destroying past historic monuments and statues does not change today’s arc of U.S. history.
