Happy Independence Day!
Today the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography celebrates the life of John Adams. So, you ask, What is Adams doing in a *British* national biography? Well, as you may remember, he was once a citizen of King George III, and the new ODNB includes Americans from first settlement to independence. Truly inclusive.
Then read Lenni Brenner’s appreciation of Jefferson,
Breaking the Chains of Monkish Ignorance and Superstition: Jefferson, God and the Fourth of July, where inter alia he delivers some telling criticisms of Christopher Hitchens’ new book Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.
In conclusion, I quote from Brenner’s essay, where he tells a nice story about Jefferson:
“In 1791, Benjamin Banneker, a free black, sent Jefferson a copy of the Almanac he had written, and called upon him to acknowledge black intellectual equality. Jefferson truthfully replied:"I thank you, sincerely, for your letter of the 19th instant, and for the Almanac it contained. No body wishes more than I do, to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of the other colors of men; and that the appearance of the want of them, is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa and America. I can add with truth, that no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced, for raising the condition, both of their body and mind, to what it ought to be, as far as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances, which cannot be neglected, will admit. I have taken the liberty of sending your Almanac to Monsieur de Condozett, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and Member of the Philanthropic Society, because I considered it as a document, to which your whole color had a right for their justification, against the doubts which have been entertained of them.
“History's tragic contradiction deliberately closed with a courtly,"I am, with great esteem, Sir, your most obedient servant."”