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  • 2019-09-11 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Thomas Jefferson Say the Tree of Liberty Must Be Refreshed 'With the Blood of Patriots and Tyrants'? (en)
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  • A viral quote from Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, is frequently shared by groups who seemingly support some sort of violent uprising. On Sept. 10, 2019, the quote — The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants — was included in a political comic from conservative cartoonist Ben Garrison: In Garrison's version, the tree of liberty is being destroyed by Democrats, Google, globalism, communism and the Illuminati (we're not entirely sure what the bird on the right is supposed to represent in the cartoon). The inclusion of Jefferson's quote seems to imply that the tree of liberty can only be revived via a violent rebellion against these groups and ideas. This is a genuine quote from Jefferson. However, it is missing a bit of context. This quote comes from a letter Jefferson wrote to William Stephens Smith on Nov. 13, 1787, about Shay's Rebellion in Massachusetts. While Jefferson, who was living in France at the time, seemed to support that rebellion and other such violent uprisings, he also noted in his letter that such acts were often founded by ill-informed groups. The remedy to these uprisings, according to Jefferson, was to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. A transcription of this letter, as well as an image of this letter from the Library of Congress, can be glimpsed below: This quote, at least the selection that appeared in Garrison's cartoon, has previously been employed to justify acts of war, rebellion, and violence. The quote was also scrawled across the shirt-back of American domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people when he blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, when he was arrested in 1995. A few days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, author Jim Wooten also used this quote as the basis of an op-ed in The Atlanta Constitution calling on young people to sacrifice and join the military because the tree of liberty needed to be refreshed: Sun, Sep 16, 2001 – 40 · The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia) · Newspapers.com While this is a genuine quote from Jefferson, both its meaning and what this quote says about Jefferson himself remains up for interpretation. In September 2016, Andrew Holowchak, the author of several books on Jefferson, including Framing a Legend: Exposing the Distorted History of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, explored the meaning of this quote in an article published on the History News Network. Holowchak wrote that scholars had interpreted this quote in different ways over the years. Some argued that this letter was atypical of Jefferson and showed that he had a sanguinary streak in him. Others believed that the letter wasn't at all surprising because Jefferson, an author of the Declaration of Independence, was well-versed in revolutions: Holowchak also warned against forming an opinion on Jefferson, or on Jefferson's views, from a single sentence: We reached out to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation for their interpretation of this quote. We will update this article if more information becomes available. (en)
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