Bob Barr: Secession Talk Far From Extreme
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Pat Sellers’ favorite quote was from Thomas Jefferson:
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
But Libertarians and other right wing extremist secessionists remove that single sentence from Jefferson’s 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith.
That letter is not favorable to the leaders of Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts. Jefferson was not pro-secession. He was fiercely anti-secession.
The refreshing with blood part refers to putting down the insurrection with troops. Troops killing the anarchists fighting for misguided “economic liberty.”
At the time the British crown said the former colonies will dissolve into anarchy. Monarchs around the world were threatened by this new democracy thing, government led not by monarchs anointed by God to rightfully rule but by lowly commoners.
I separated the meat of Jefferson’t letter so it’s easier to understand:
“Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them…
Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives.
They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.1 The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.
If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state.
What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?
Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?”
George Washington was not about pacifying them but killing them. Something he did later in Western Pennsylvania at the Whiskey Rebellion
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.
Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.”
The tree of liberty... (Quotation)
"I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.1 The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.2
Monticello"
Podcast: Jefferson's Words: Three Letters on the New U.S. Constitution includes audio of the letter that contains this quote, as read by Bill Barker, who interprets Thomas Jefferson at Monticello and elsewhere.
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