Muscatine

Your reading comprehesion skills are failing you again, davieboy. Again you missed the point. If you are going to jump up here on the porch with the big boys, at least pay attention please.

I know the point you were making. It could have been made without the inflaming question. Without the request for anyone to educate themself. So, unless you can deny asking "How does one pen the Declaration of Independence while being a slave owner?" why don't you try answering it.

Peace

first off sir when did I say big brother had to come to my conclusion. never did. sir you are the one that keeps calling me names and insulting me. is that what a learned person learns, to insult. this is a discussion board not an insult board. you always say that my post are bs. all I'm saying is where is the beef. any uneducated person can name call. a 4th grader can achieve that in a debate. I would think a learned person might actually know how the debate works. I think you just look for someone to fight with. yes Jefferson had slave and so did every plantation owner of that time. just as store and restaurant owners of the 40's and 50's posted white only signs. same as it was acceptable to hunt and kill Indians. does it make it right, NO. Aborigines were hunted and killed into the 1970's. but did you know that Jefferson's first draft was very critical of the slave trade. he did try to end slavery. he actually introduced bills to end slavery. so what skeletons are in your closet. we all have them even great men as Washington and Jefferson. sir you live in and enjoy the freedoms these men fought and died (those are not written of) for. you should be more respectful of the people that put their life on the line for all of us. yeah I think the founding fathers were great men, who created a very wonderful thing the bill of rights. it is every free mans duty to protect those rights. not for you and me sir, but for our grand children and their grand children. I will not sit there and watch as evil people destroy the greatest country on earth. America! good day SIR!!!    p.s here is some reading material for you!

Jefferson served as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress beginning in June 1775, soon after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. When Congress began considering a resolution of independence in June 1776, Jefferson was appointed to a five-man committee to prepare a declaration to accompany the resolution. The committee selected Jefferson to write the first draft because of his reputation as a writer, and because no one else thought the task important enough to want the job.^[8] Jefferson completed a draft in consultation with other committee members, drawing heavily on George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, state and local calls for independence, his own proposed draft of the Virginia Constitution, and other sources.^[9]

Jefferson presented a draft to the committee, which made some final revisions, and then presented it to Congress on June 28, 1776. After voting in favor of the resolution of independence on July 2, Congress turned its attention to the declaration.(Over several days of debate, Congress made a few changes in wording and deleted nearly a fourth of the text, most notably a passage critical of the slave trade, changes that Jefferson resented.) On July 4, 1776, the wording of the Declaration of Independence was approved. The Declaration would eventually become Jefferson's major claim to fame, and his eloquent preamble became an enduring statement of human rights

The death of his wife, on Sept. 6, 1782, added to Jefferson's troubles, but by the following year he was again seated in Congress. There he made two contributions of enduring importance to the nation. In April 1784 he submitted Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit and of a Coinage for the United States in which he advised the use of a decimal system. This report led to the adoption (1792) of the dollar, rather than the pound, as the basic monetary unit in the United States.

As chairman of the committee dealing with the government of western lands, Jefferson submitted proposals so liberal and farsighted as to constitute, when enacted, the most progressive colonial policy of any nation in modern history. The proposed ordinance of 1784 reflected Jefferson's belief that the western territories should be self-governing and, when they reached a certain stage of growth, should be admitted to the Union as full partners with the original 13 states. Jefferson also proposed that slavery should be excluded from all of the American western territories after 1800. Although he himself was a slaveowner, he believed that slavery was an evil that should not be permitted to spread. In 1784 the provision banning slavery was narrowly defeated. Had one representative (John Beatty of New Jersey), sick and confined to his lodging, been present, the vote would have been different. "Thus," Jefferson later reflected, "we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, and heaven was silent in that awful moment." Although Congress approved the proposed ordinance of 1784, it was never put into effect; its main features were incorporated, however, in the Ordinance of 1787, which established the Northwest Territory. Moreover, slavery was prohibited in the Northwest Territory.