Anne --

There were unquestionably other colonies. And certainly other  
Founders to whom we, their posterity, are beholden. Franklin, for  
instance, quite clearly saw the America we have become more  
presciently than any other Founder, certainly much more insightfully  
than Jefferson and is, on the evidence, more responsible for the  
modern structure of our culture than anyone else of the period.  But  
without Mason's obsession with a statement of Rights, and his great  
insight that for a democracy to succeed it must acknowledge in its  
foundational documents, that each person had inalienable rights by  
reason of being alive — a political statement quite different from  
Locke and Hume's philosophical perspective — I am not sure America  
would have developed such a perspective from another source.  Without  
Washington, as the Revolution's Cincinnatus, the war would almost  
certainly have gone in another direction, and had he not stepped down  
from the Presidency, even the political structure created in 1787  
would have evolved quite differently. John and Abigail Adams  
certainly understood that. And these are but three points. I do not  
say that without Virginia there would have been no Revolution,  
although it was hardly the popular uprising of pop history. That  
would be absurd. But individuals do matter, and had the small cadre  
of slave owners from Virginia that we name as Founders never been, I  
think North America would be a very different place today.

-- Stephan


On 4 May 2008, at 20:45, Anne Pemberton wrote:

> Stephen,
>
> Not sure if your reply was to me, or another poster.
>
> I really do not think that having fathered children by a slave  
> woman makes Jefferson a "villian", but it does tend to tarnish a  
> probably mistaken view that without these men, democracy could not  
> have happened. I wonder if you realize that the whole rest of the  
> country was in on this expedition, not just Virginia. Before moving  
> to Virginia, I didn't know so many people believed Virginia to be  
> the only colony!
>
> Anne
>
> Anne Pemberton
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.erols.com/apembert
> http://www.educationalsynthesis.org
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