Thomas Jefferson himself cursed the immorality of slavery, it was something that he struggled with throughout his life. The original draft of the Declaration condemned King George for bringing slavery here to the United States and he passed the Abolition of Slavery Act as President.
I will never believe that either Jefferson or Washington would of been on the side of the Confederacy. Jefferson would have been appalled at the path his political party took from the Confederate democrats up to their transistion into becoming the Progressive demcorats.
Even today the democrats believe that they can ignore the Constitution at will just as the Confederate democrats believed that they could completley disregard it through unilateral seceesion.
Lincoln had as his purpose to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law against States ruled by a political party that had no regard for the rule of law or for liberty.
This is even more evident by the fact that even after the Civil war the Confederate democrats continue to operate terrorist groups (the KKK) in order to go around the rule of law and to murder republicans and those that they once held enslaved.
This love of rebellion and disregard for the rule of law continued from the Confederate democrats gto the Progressive democrats who were intertwined and both supported the KKK.
I know that many of the Lost Causers here at FR like to believe that they are the most truely aligned with the Founders but they are not. They are more like the libertarians that we see who align themselves with the Progressives and groups like Code Pink. They continually seek to undermine the Constitution.
"The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (or Resolves) were political statements drafted in 1798 and 1799, in which the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures resolved not to abide by Alien and Sedition Acts. They argued that the Acts were unconstitutional and therefore void, and in doing so, they argued for states' rights and strict constructionism of the Constitution. They were written secretly by Vice President Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, respectively.
The principles behind the resolutions became known as the "Principles of '98". Adherents argue that the individual states can judge the constitutionality of central government laws and decrees, and can refuse to enforce laws deemed unconstitutional. Such refusal was called nullification in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1799, while the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 refer to "interposition" to express the idea of the states’ right to "interpose" between the federal government and the people of the state."
"Jefferson would have been appalled at the path his political party took from the Confederate democrats up to their transistion into becoming the Progressive demcorats."
I'm sure that most southern Democrats prior to 1963 would be appalled by today's modern progressive Democrats, whose political philosophy derives from the old northeastern Republican progressives dating back at least to Teddy Roosevelt in 1912:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1912)
You see, the biggest problem that this Yankee has with Lincoln is that he destroyed the government left to us by Jefferson and Madison. In fact I never really understood what a slimeball Lincoln was because the Civil War era wasn't of much interest to me until I sought to learn how it all fell apart. James McPherson quotes a Harvard professor writing in 1869 as saying, "It is as if I am no longer living in the country of my birth." (may not be a precise quote as I am doing this from memory) This was a guy whose life was essentially untouched by the war, or so one would have thought. What ever do you think this professor had in mind?
ML/NJ