A GLIMPSE INTO HISTORY-WHAT JOHN ADAMS SAID TO THOMAS JEFFERSION ( ABOUT ROME & THE BEAST)

THIS IS A SPECIAL EDITION, TO SHOW HOW MAN WILL HOLD TO MAN. THINK OF THE MILLIONS WHO HOLD TO THE 4TH DAY OF THE 7TH MONTH ON MAN'S ROMAN CALENDAR, CALLED THE DAY OF INDEPENDENCE OR LIBERTY. YET THESE SAME MILLIONS WILL NOT KEEP THE 4TH COMMANDMENT-- THE 7TH DAY [ON GOD'S SACRED 'HOLY' CALENDAR] AS GOD HAS SAID TO BREAK THE BONDS OF EVIL, FOR ONLY GOD, THROUGH HIS TRUTH MAKES ONE FREE (THE SMALL AND THE GREAT). THESE SAME PEOPLE WOULD NOT SAY LET US KEEP "THE DAY OF INDEPENDENCE ON JUST ANY 4TH OF THE YEAR, YET THEY SAY "LET'S KEEP THE SABBATH-THAT COMMANDED BY GOD ALMIGHTY HIMSELF (SINCE CREATION WEEK AND WHEN HE WROTE IT WITH HIS VERY OWN FINGER IN STONE--2500 YEARS LATER, AND AFTER HE MADE IT AN EVERLASTING SIGN BETWEEN HIM AND HIS PEOPLE)....THEY SAY LET US KEEP THE SABBATH ON ANY OF THE DAYS OF THE WEEK 'NOT THE 7TH AS GOD COMMANDED, BUT THE 1ST AS THE PAGANS HAVE ALWAYS DONE IN WORSHIPPING SATAN-AND HIS DEMONS-THROUGH IDOLIZING THE SUN (INSTEAD OF HOLDING TO THE SON OF GOD). FOR GOD 1ST KEPT THE 7TH DAY SABBATH WHEN HE RESTED AND MADE IT HOLY--"BLESSED AND HALLOWED OUT"(MAN CAN MAKE NO THING HOLY) AND CHRIST ALSO DID THAT WHICH PLEASED THE FATHER AT ALL TIMES AND HE TOO KEPT THE 7TH DAY SABBATH. TRADITIONS ARE NOTHING, THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD ARE EVERYTHING. WE CAN SINCERELY BELIEVE SOMETHING IN OUR HEARTS BUT THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT RIGHT, GOD'S WORD IS THE ONLY TRUTH. (AT ONE TIME HUMAN BEINGS SINCERELY BELIEVED THAT THE EARTH WAS "SQUARE" BUT THAT DID NOT CHANGE THE FACT THAT IT IN FACT IS ROUND--SOMETHING GOD, THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE--ALWAYS KNEW.

THOMAS JEFFERSON AND JOHN ADAMS, TWO OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND WRITERS OF INDEPENDENCE, YET, HOW MANY "SLAVES" DID JEFFERSON ALONE HAVE. THE ABOLISHING OF SLAVERY CAME 100 YRS AFTER THIS DAY MILLIONS KEEP (AS A MEMORIAL) AND ANOTHER 100 YEARS AFTER THAT BEFORE "CIVIL-HUMAN" RIGHTS WERE GIVEN TO ALL. YET PEOPLE HOLD ON TO IF FOR IT IS "A TRADITION", GOD SAYS HIS PEOPLE LOVE LIES, BUT NONE WHO LOVETH A LIE SHALL ENTER HIS GATES (SEE REVELATION).

ANOTHER 'EXAMPLE' OF HOW PEOPLE HOLD ON TO TRADITIONS (LIKE PAGAN HOLIDAYS). IN THE OLD TESTAMENT GOD TOLD MOSES TO HAVE THE PEOPLE LOOK UP TO THE BRONZE SNAKE ON THE POLE (THAT WHICH PICTURED JESUS CHRIST ON THE POLE) WHEN THEY WERE BITTEN BY THE POISONOUS SNAKE (SATAN-IN THIS WORLD, THROUGH FLESHY SIN).

NOW INSTEAD OF THE PEOPLE LOOKING TO GOD THEY LOOK TO THE "SYMBOL" AND THAT SNAKE ON THE POLE SYMBOL (FROM OLD TESTAMENT, ANCIENT ISRAEL) IS SEEN ON OUR HEALTHCARE TO, HOSPITALS, AMBULANCES, ETC. YET, THIS IS WHERE THAT SYMBOL CAME FROM, LITERALLY HANDED DOWN, GENERATION AFTER GENERATION. WE CAN'T JUST MAKE ASSUMPTIONS, GOD CALLS US "TO SEEK" AND "TO PROVE ALL THINGS". 

WHAT JAMES ADAMS SAID TO THOMAS JEFFERSON (AND OTHERS) ABOUT IT:


As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?
-- John Adams, letter to FA Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816

I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.
-- John Adams, letter to his brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, August 29, 1756, explaining how his independent opinions would create much difficulty in the ministry, in Edwin S Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation (1987) p. 88, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, "Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church"

When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.
-- John Adams, from Rufus K Noyes, Views of Religion, quoted from from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient Christianism which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public? Miracles after miracles have rolled down in torrents.
-- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, December 3, 1813, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Cabalistic Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1,500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires.
-- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, July 16, 1814, from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?
-- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821, from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era? Where are fifty gospels condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius? Where are forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope, because of suspected heresy? Remember the Index Expurgato-rius, the Inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter, and the guillotine; and, oh! horrible, the rack! This is as bad, if not worse, than a slow fire. Nor should the Lion's Mouth be forgotten. Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years.
-- John Adams, letter to John Taylor, 1814

Numberless have been the systems of iniquity The most refined, sublime, extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy that ever was conceived by the mind of man was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandizement of their own Order They even persuaded mankind to believe, faithfully and undoubtingly, that God Almighty had entrusted them with the keys of heaven, whose gates they might open and close at pleasure ... with authority to license all sorts of sins and Crimes ... or withholding the rain of heaven and the beams of the sun; with the management of earthquakes, pestilence, and famine; nay, with the mysterious, awful, incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and wine the flesh and blood of God himself. All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet among the people by reducing their minds to a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity, and by infusing into them a religious horror of letters and knowledge. Thus was human nature chained fast for ages in a cruel, shameful, and deplorable servitude....

     Of all the nonsense and delusion which had ever passed through the mind of man, none had ever been more extravagant than the notions of absolutions, indelible characters, uninterrupted successions, and the rest of those fantastical ideas, derived from the canon law, which had thrown such a glare of mystery, sanctity, reverence, and right reverend eminence and holiness around the idea of a priest as no mortal could deserve ... the ridiculous fancies of sanctified effluvia from episcopal fingers.
-- John Adams, August 1765


Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826)[2]  was the third President of the United States  (1801–1809)

John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American politician and political philosopher and the second President of the United States  (1797–1801),



John Adams, after being the first Vice President of the United States (1789–1797) for two terms. He was one of the most influential Founding Fathers of the United States.

Adams came to prominence in the early stages of the American Revolution. As a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress, he played a leading role in persuading Congress to declare independence, and assisted Thomas Jefferson in drafting the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776. As a representative of Congress in Europe, he was a major negotiator of the eventual peace treaty with Great Britain, and chiefly responsible for obtaining important loans from Amsterdam bankers. A political theorist and historian, Adams largely wrote the Massachusetts state constitution in 1780, but was in Europe when the federal Constitution was drafted on similar principles later in the decade. One of his greatest roles was as a judge of character: in 1775, he nominated George Washington to be commander-in-chief, and twenty-five years later nominated John Marshall to be Chief Justice of the United States.

Adams' revolutionary credentials secured him two terms as George Washington's vice president and his own election in 1796 as the second president. During his one term, he encountered ferocious attacks by the Jeffersonian Republicans, as well as the dominant faction in his own Federalist Party led by his bitter enemy Alexander Hamilton. Adams signed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, and built up the army and navy especially in the face of an undeclared naval war (called the "Quasi War") with France, 1798-1800. The major accomplishment of his presidency was his peaceful resolution of the Quasi-War in the face of Hamiltonian opposition.

In 1800 Adams was defeated for reelection by Thomas Jefferson and retired to Massachusetts. He later resumed his friendship with Jefferson. He and his wife, Abigail Adams, founded an accomplished family line of politicians, diplomats, and historians now referred to as the Adams political family. Adams was the father of John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States. His achievements have received greater recognition in modern times, though his contributions were not initially as celebrated as those of other Founders.

Religious views

Adams was raised a Congregationalist, becoming a Unitarian at a time when most of the Congregational churches around Boston were turning to Unitarianism. Adams was educated at Harvard when the influence of deism was growing there, and used deistic terms in his speeches and writing. He believed in the essential goodness of the creation, but did not believe that God intervened in the affairs of individuals, and, being a Unitarian, his beliefs excluded the divinity of Christ. He also believed that regular church service was beneficial to man's moral sense. Everett (1966) concludes that "Adams strove for a religion based on a common sense sort of reasonableness" and maintained that religion must change and evolve toward perfection. Fielding (1940) shows Adams synthesized his beliefs as a Puritan, a deist, and a humanist. Adams thought Christianity had originally been revelatory, but was being misinterpreted and misused in the service of superstition, fraud, and unscrupulous power.
A tall, grey brick building with four columns before the entrance. In the foreground, a black lightpost is seen with a banner featuring a version of the flag of the United States.
United First Parish Church

In common with many of his contemporaries, Adams criticized the claims to universal authority made by the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1796, Adams denounced political opponent Thomas Paine's criticisms of Christianity, saying, "The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity, let the Blackguard Paine say what he will."

The Unitarian Universalist Historical Society provides information about Adams’s religious beliefs. They quote from his letter to Benjamin Rush, an early promoter of Universalist thought, “I have attended public worship in all countries and with all sects and believe them all much better than no religion, though I have not thought myself obliged to believe all I heard.” The Society also relates how Rush reconciled Adams to his former friend Thomas Jefferson in 1812, after many bitter political battles. This resulted in correspondence between Adams and Jefferson about many topics, including philosophy and religion. In one of these communications, Adams told Jefferson, "The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion." In another letter, Adams reveals his sincere devotion to God, “My Adoration of the Author of the Universe is too profound and too sincere. The Love of God and his Creation; delight, Joy, Tryumph, Exaltation in my own existence, tho' but an Atom [Adam-'means man in Hebrew], a molecule Organique, in the Universe, are my religion.” He continues by revealing his Universalist sympathies, rejection of orthodox Christian dogma, and his personal belief that he was a true Christian for not accepting such dogma, “Howl, Snarl, bite, Ye Calvinistick! Ye Athanasian Divines, if You will. Ye will say, I am no Christian: I say Ye are no Christians: and there the Account is ballanced. Yet I believe all the honest men among you, are Christians in my Sense of the Word." The Society also demonstrates that Adams rejected orthodox Christian doctrines of the trinity, predestination, yet equated human understanding and the human conscience to “celestial communication” or personal revelation from God.

Midnight Judges

The lame-duck session of Congress enacted the Judiciary Act of 1801, which created a set of federal appeals courts between the district courts and the Supreme Court. As his term was expiring, Adams filled the vacancies created by this statute by appointing a series of judges, called the "Midnight Judges" because most of them were formally appointed days before the presidential term expired. Most of the judges were eventually unseated when the Jeffersonians enacted the Judiciary Act of 1802, abolishing the courts created by the Judiciary Act of 1801 and returning the structure of the federal courts to what it had been before the 1801 statute. Adams's greatest legacy was his naming of John Marshall as the fourth Chief Justice of the United States to succeed Oliver Ellsworth, who had retired due to ill health. Marshall's long tenure represents the most lasting influence of the Federalists, as Marshall infused the Constitution with a judicious and carefully reasoned nationalistic interpretation and established the Judicial Branch as the equal of the Executive and Legislative branches.


The implications of Adams's actions in appointing Federalists to the Supreme Court led to one of the most important decisions in American judicial history. Marbury v. Madison solidified the United States' system of checks and balances and gave the judicial branch equal power with the executive and legislative branches.”  This controversial case began with Adams’s appointment of Federalist William Marbury. When the newly appointed Secretary of State James Madison refused to process Marbury’s selection, Marbury requested a writ of mandamus, which would force Madison to make his appointment official.”  Chief Justice John Marshall declared that the Supreme Court did not have the authority to force Madison to make the appointment official.” This statement actually challenged the Judiciary Act of 1789, which stated that the Supreme Court did, in fact, have the right to issue those writs. Marshall, therefore, ruled that part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 unconstitutional because the Constitution did not expressly grant this power to the judiciary.”  In deciding the constitutionality of an act of Congress, Marshall established judicial review, the most significant development in the history of the Supreme Court.

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) is a landmark case in United States law. It formed the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the United States under Article III  of the Constitution.

This case resulted from a petition to the Supreme Court by William Marbury, who had been appointed by President John Adams as Justice of the Peace in the District of Columbia but whose commission was not subsequently delivered. Marbury petitioned the Supreme Court to force Secretary of State James Madison to deliver the documents, but the court, with John Marshall as Chief Justice, denied Marbury's petition, holding that the part of the statute upon which he based his claim, the Judiciary Act of 1789, was unconstitutional.

Marbury v. Madison was the first time the Supreme Court declared something "unconstitutional," and established the concept of judicial review in the U.S. (the idea that courts may oversee and nullify the actions of another branch of government). The landmark decision helped define the "checks and balances" of the American form of government.

 John Adam's Major presidential actions

    * Built up the U.S. Navy
    * Fought the Quasi War with France
    * Signed Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798
    * Ended war with France through diplomacy
    * Appointed John Marshall to Supreme Court

Adams never bought a slave and declined on principle to employ slave labor.  Abigail Adams opposed slavery and employed free blacks in preference to her father's two domestic slaves. John Adams spoke out in 1777 against a bill to emancipate slaves in Massachusetts, saying that the issue was presently too divisive, and so the legislation should "sleep for a time." He also was against use of black soldiers in the Revolution, due to opposition from southerners.  Adams generally tried to keep the issue out of national politics, because of the anticipated southern response.  Though it is difficult to pinpoint the exact date on which slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, a common view is that it was abolished no later than 1780, when it was forbidden by implication in the Declaration of Rights that John Adams wrote into the Massachusetts Constitution.

Jefferson was the first President to propose the idea of a formal Indian Removal plan.

Andrew Jackson is often erroneously credited with initiating Indian Removal, because Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, during his presidency, and also because of his personal involvement in the forceful extermination and removal of many Eastern tribes. But Jackson was merely legalizing and implementing a plan laid out by Jefferson in a series of private letters that began in 1803 (for example, see letter to William Henry Harrison below).

Jefferson's first promotions of Indian Removal were between 1776 and 1779, when he recommended forcing the Cherokee and Shawnee tribes to be driven out of their ancestral homelands to lands west of the Mississippi River.

His first such act as president, was to make a deal with the state of Georgia that if Georgia were to release its legal claims to discovery in lands to the west, then the U.S. military would help forcefully expel the Cherokee people from Georgia. At the time, the Cherokee had a treaty with the United States government which guaranteed them the right to their lands, which was violated in Jefferson's deal with Georgia.

The religious views of Thomas Jefferson diverged widely from the orthodox Christianity of his day. Throughout his life Jefferson was intensely interested in theology, biblical study, and morality. He is most closely connected with the religious philosophy of Deism, and Unitarianism. He is reported to have said, "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."


In 1768 Thomas Jefferson started the construction of Monticello, a neoclassical mansion. Starting in childhood, Jefferson had always wanted to build a beautiful mountaintop home within sight of Shadwell. Jefferson went greatly in debt on Monticello by spending lavishly to create a neoclassical environment, based on his study of the architect Andrea Palladio and The Orders.

Monticello was also Thomas Jefferson's slave plantation. Throughout a period lasting seventy years, Thomas Jefferson owned over 600 slaves. Many of the slaves at the Monticello plantation intermarried amongst each other and produced children. Jefferson only paid a few of his trusted slaves in important positions for work done or for performing difficult tasks like cleaning chimneys or privies. Although there are no direct workday references, Jefferson’s slaves probably worked from dawn to dusk, with shorter or longer days according to the season. Fragmentary records indicate a rich spiritual life at Monticello slave quarters, incorporating both Christian and African traditions. Although there is no record that Jefferson instructed slaves in grammar education, several enslaved men at Monticello could read and write.

Jefferson was not an abolitionist, and he owned many slaves over his lifetime. Biographers point out that Jefferson was deeply in debt and had encumbered his slaves by notes and mortgages; he could not free them until he was free of debt, which never happened. As a result, Jefferson seems to have suffered pangs and trials of conscience. His claimed ambivalence was also reflected in his treatment of those slaves who worked most closely with him and his family at Monticello and in other locations. He invested in having them trained and schooled in high quality skills. He wrote about slavery, "We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."

He sponsored and encouraged Free-State advocates like James Lemen. According to a biographer, Jefferson "believed that it was the responsibility of the state and society to free all slaves." In 1769, as a member of the House of Burgesses, Jefferson proposed for that body to emancipate slaves in Virginia, but he was unsuccessful. In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson condemned the British crown for sponsoring the importation of slavery to the colonies, charging that the crown "has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere." However, this language was dropped from the Declaration at the request of delegates from South Carolina and Georgia because it was obvious that these slave owners did not oppose slavery; neither did Jefferson, Washington or the dozens of other slave owners.

In 1778 the legislature passed a bill he proposed to ban further importation of slaves into Virginia, and he said it "stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication." Many slave owners opposed the slave trade, while supporting slavery. The two were distinct institutions.

Though Jefferson supported the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, it was not an anti-slavery law; it was supported by slave owners because it contained a fugitive slave clause (they could recover runaway slaves), and it would not affect the number of slave to free state House Representatives in the Congress because they knew that the Southwest Ordinance of 1790 would guarantee slavery south of the river Ohio.


In 1807, as President, he signed a bill abolishing the slave trade. This was not a form of abolition. The slave trade was an embarassment and and other nations like Great Britian were doing the same, whilst maintaing slave plantations and slavery.

Jefferson seems to attack the institution of slavery in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1784):

    There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.

In this same work, Jefferson advanced his suspicion that black people were inferior to white people "in the endowments both of body and mind." However, he also wrote in the same work that black people could have the right to live free in any country where people judge them by their nature, and not as just being good for labor. He also wrote, "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. [But] the two races...cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them." According to historian Stephen Ambrose: "Jefferson, like all slaveholders and many other white members of American society, regarded Negroes as inferior, childlike, untrustworthy and, of course, as property. Jefferson, the genius of politics, could see no way for African Americans to live in society as free people." At the same time he trusted them with his children, with preparation of his food and entertainment of high-ranking guests. So clearly he believed that some were trustworthy. For a long-term solution Jefferson believed that slaves should be freed then deported peacefully to African colonies. Otherwise, he feared war and that in his words, "human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. We should in vain look for an example in the Spanish deportation or deletion of the Moors. This precedent would fall far short of our case."

But on February 25, 1809, Jefferson repudiated his earlier view, writing in a letter to Abbé Grégoire:

    Sir,—I have received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind to send me on the "Literature of Negroes." Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunity for the development of their genius were not favorable and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making toward their re-establishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family. I pray you therefore to accept my thanks for the many instances you have enabled me to observe of respectable intelligence in that race of men, which cannot fail to have effect in hastening the day of their relief; and to be assured of the sentiments of high and just esteem and consideration which I tender to yourself with all sincerity.

In August 1814 Edward Coles and Jefferson corresponded about Coles' ideas on emancipation: "Your solitary but welcome voice is the first which has brought this to my ear, and I have considered the general silence which prevails on this subject as indicating an apathy unfavorable to every hope.

In 1817, as Polish general and American war of independence rebel Tadeusz Kos'ciuszko died, Jefferson was named by Kos'ciuszko as the executor of his will, in which the Pole asked that the proceeds from the sale of his assets be used to free, among others, Jefferson's slaves. Jefferson, 75 at the time, did not free his slaves and pleaded that he was too old to take on the duties of executor; at the same time energetically throwing himself into the creation of the University of Virginia. Some historians have speculated that he had qualms about freeing slaves.

The downturn in land prices after 1819 pushed Jefferson further into debt. Jefferson finally emancipated his five most trusted slaves (two, his mixed-race sons through Sally Hemings confirmed 1998 DNA tests) and petitioned the legislature to allow them to stay in Virginia. After his death, his family sold the remainder of the slaves by auction on the lawn of his estate to settle his high debts.

Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. He died a few hours before John Adams, his compatriot in their quest for independence, then great political rival, and later friend and correspondent. Adams is often rumored to have referenced Jefferson in his last words, unaware of his passing. Jefferson is considered to have died from a number of conditions in his old age: toxins in his blood and uremia from nephropathy, severe diarrhea, and pneumonia. Problems urinating from a urinary tract infection, while a symptom of kidney disease, have made some consider that Jefferson died from undiagnosed prostate cancer.

Although he was born into one of the wealthiest families in North America, Thomas Jefferson was deeply in debt when he died. Jefferson's trouble began when his father-in-law died, and he and his brothers-in-law quickly divided the estate before its debts were settled. It made each of them liable for the whole amount due – which turned out to be more than they expected.

Jefferson sold land before the American Revolution to pay off the debts, but by the time he received payment, the paper money was worthless amid the skyrocketing inflation of the war years. Cornwallis ravaged Jefferson's plantation during the war, and British creditors resumed their collection efforts when the conflict ended. Jefferson suffered another financial setback when he cosigned notes for a relative who reneged on debts in the financial Panic of 1819. Only Jefferson's public stature prevented creditors from seizing Monticello and selling it out from under him during his lifetime.

After his death, his possessions were sold at auction. In 1831, Jefferson's 552 acres (223 hectares) were sold to James T. Barclay for $7,000, equivalent to $143 thousand today.[41] Thomas Jefferson is buried on his Monticello estate, in Charlottesville, Virginia. In his will, he left Monticello to the United States to be used as a school for orphans of navy officers. His epitaph, written by him with an insistence that only his words and "not a word more" be inscribed (notably omitting his service as Governor of Virginia, Vice-President and President), reads:

    "HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON
    AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
    OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
    AND FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA."

Below the epitaph, on a separate panel, is written

    BORN APRIL 2. 1743. O.S.
    DIED JULY 4. 1826.

The initials O.S. are a notation for Old Style and that is a reference to the change of dating that occurred during Jefferson's lifetime from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar under the British Calendar (New Style) Act 1750.

Jefferson has been memorialized in many ways, including buildings, sculptures, and currency. The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. on April 13, 1943, the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth. The interior of the memorial includes a 19-foot (6 m) statue of Jefferson and engravings of passages from his writings. Most prominent are the words which are inscribed around the monument near the roof: "I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man".

[1943 right in the middle]: World War II, or the Second World War[1]  (often abbreviated as WWII or WW2), was a global military conflict  lasting from 1939 to 1945 which involved most of the world's nations, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, with more than 100 million military personnel mobilised. In a state of "total war," the major participants placed their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by significant action against civilians, including the Holocaust  and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, it was the deadliest conflict  in history.


Jefferson's portrait appears on the U.S. $2 bill, nickel, and the $100 Series EE Savings Bond.

Recent memorials to Jefferson include the commissioning of the NOAA ship Thomas Jefferson in Norfolk, Virginia on July 8, 2003, in commemoration of his establishment of a Survey of the Coast, the predecessor to NOAA's National Ocean Service; and the placement of a bronze monument in Jefferson Park, Chicago at the entrance to the Jefferson Park Transit Center along Milwaukee Avenue in 2005.


Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!" But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell.
-- John Adams, quoted from Charles Francis Adams, ed, Works of John Adams (1856), vol. X, p. 254


THEY SAY JOHN ADAMS WAS AN 'ATHEIST' ONLY GOD REALLY KNOWS: BUT HISTORY SHOWS THAT HE WAS AGAINST ALL THE FALSE HOOD, THE WORLD WAS FLOODED WITH IT AND HE SAW NO WAY OUT YET ONLY ONE WAY IN. BECAUSE OF LIES HE COULD NOT RECEIVE THE TRUTH OF CHRIST, BECAUSE 'CHRISTIANITY' HAD BECOME SO 'PERVERSE' JUST AS WHEN BOTH THE LAW OF GOD AND THE LAW OF MOSES WAS PERVERTED BY THE PHARISEES AND SADUECESS IN JESUS' DAY AND BEFORE...[ONLY GOD KNOWS 'THE HEART' AND THIS IS WHY GOD IS THE ONLY JUDGE OF MAN, AND HE'S GIVEN ALL AUTHORITY TO HIS SON, HIS FAITHFUL AND TRUE WITNESS, JESUS CHRIST (Y'SHUA THE MESSIAH)].



John Adams is here describing to Thomas Jefferson what he sees as an emotion-based ejaculatory thought that keeps coming to him. This was not his reasoned opinion. Although John Adams often felt an urge to advocate atheism as a popular world view (because of the sheer abuses perpetrated by religious charlatans), he was of the firm and reasoned opinion (basically undisputed in his day) that religion is essential to the goal of keeping the masses in line.

Knowing what we know today, to say this is pure slander against atheists. And yet it is still quite popular, especially among the uneducated, the widespread acknowledgment of its falsehood notwithstanding.

Thus, Adams was not above presenting such travesties as his National Day of Prayer and Fasting proclamation. These acts reflected his view that the masses needed religion to keep this world from becoming a bedlam. However, Adams, like Washington and Jefferson, did not apply this reasoning to himself -- as we can plainly see from the quotations in the main section: religion was good for the masses but not for John Adams (for the most part), who was above all that and needed no piety in order to maintain his own sense of civility.


Main Entry: bed·lam
Pronunciation: \?bed-l?m\
Function: noun
Etymology: Bedlam, popular name for the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, London, an insane asylum, from Middle English Bedlem Bethlehem
Date: 1522

1 obsolete : madman, lunatic
2 often capitalized : a lunatic asylum
3 : a place, scene, or state of uproar and confusion

— bedlam adjective


If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.-- Winston Churchill

We don't need a constitutional amendment for kids to pray.-- Bill Clinton, at the 1996 presidential debate in San Diego, responding to minister Ron Kite, who falsely spoke of "founding fathers who possessed very strong Christian beliefs and godly principles," quoted by Cliff Walker


To give oneself earnestly to securing righteousness and justice among the people, and while respecting the gods and demons, to keep aloof from them, that may be called wisdom.-- Confucius, expressing agnosticism and urging the avoidance of religious matters nonetheless, quoted from Jim Herrick, Against the Faith (1985), p. 20

In the United States, Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, political speeches and ceremonies, and various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States. Independence Day is the national day of the United States.

Abolitionism was a movement in western Europe and the Americas to end the slave trade and set slaves free. The slave system aroused little protest until the 18th century, when rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticized it for violating the rights of man, and Quaker and other evangelical religious groups condemned it as un-Christian. Though anti-slavery sentiments were widespread by the late 18th century, they had little immediate effect on the centers of slavery: the West Indies, South America, and the Southern United States. The Somersett's case in 1772 that emancipated slaves in England, helped launch the movement to abolish slavery. Pennsylvania passed An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1780. Britain banned the importation of African slaves in its colonies in 1807, and the United States followed in 1808. The British West Indies abolished slavery in 1827 and the French colonies abolished it 15 years later.

In Britain, William Wilberforce took on the cause of abolition in 1787 after the formation of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in which he led the parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire with the Slave Trade Act 1807. He continued to campaign for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.

In eleven States constituting the American South, slavery was a social and powerful economic institution, integral to the agricultural economy. By the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million. American abolitionism labored under the handicap that it was accused of threatening the harmony of North and South in the Union.

On April 11, 1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, or as CRA '68), which was meant as a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibited discrimination in housing, there were no federal enforcement provisions. The 1968 act expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and as of 1974, gender; as of 1988, the act protects the disabled and families with children. It also provided protection for civil rights workers.