Hmmm, let me take a guess! It was the hypocritical Jefferson, the one who wrote pleasantries to African American astronomer and Almanac & Ephemeris creator Benjamin Banneker telling him how nice to was to know there was someone like him and he'd tell his friends, (the Royals) in France about him. He thought it shocking that such an intellectual as Banneker existed in his race. However, later on we find from Jefferson's letters he simply has a very duplicitous nature about him. Intelligent yes,but I don't think I'd want to have tea with him or get to know him in any other then a very superficial, "hello-goodbye" way. Personally, whoever spoke first about the "forked tongue" must have been thinking of Thomas Jefferson.
Benjamin Banneker first wrote to Jefferson mainly to tell him off (and he did) - for keeping slaves, people of Banneker's race (although he himself was not a slave) nor born into slavery.On his mother's side, a white woman from Scotland who taught her grandson when she came to this country, educating him. She then married a black man who worked on her Maryland property farming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Banneker
Correspondence with Thomas JeffersonOn August 19, 1791, after departing the federal capital area, Banneker wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson, who in 1776 had drafted the United States Declaration of Independence and in 1791 was serving as the United States Secretary of State.[28][29] Quoting language in the Declaration, the letter expressed a plea for justice for African Americans. To further support this plea, Banneker included within the letter a handwritten manuscript of an almanac for 1792 containing his ephemeris with his astronomical calculations.
In the letter, Banneker accused Jefferson of criminally using fraud and violence to oppress his slaves by stating:
…Sir, how pitiable is it to reflect, that although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of Mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of these rights and privileges, which he hath conferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren, under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.[30]
The letter ended:
And now, Sir, I shall conclude, and subscribe myself, with the most profound respect,
Your most obedient humble servant,
BENJAMIN BANNEKER.[31]
Without directly responding to Banneker's accusation, Jefferson replied to Banneker's letter in a series of nuanced statements that expressed his interest in the advancement of the equality of America's black population.[36] Jefferson's reply stated:
Philadelphia Aug. 30. 1791.
Sir,
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 colours of men, & that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa & 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 & mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecillity of their present existence, and other circumstance which cannot be neglected, will admit. I have taken the liberty of sending your almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet, 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 colour had a right for their justification against the doubts which have been entertained of them. I am with great esteem, Sir,
Your most obedt. humble servt.
Th. Jefferson[37][38]
Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, to whom Jefferson sent Banneker's almanac, was a noted French mathematician and abolitionist.[39] It appears that the Academy of Sciences itself did not receive the almanac.[40]
From Jefferson's own hand, we can easily (or should be easily seen) his dupliticious nature of the man:
His natal
in Detriment in last decan of
and harshly
to his
When writing his letter, Banneker informed Jefferson that his 1791 work with Andrew Ellicott on the District boundary survey had affected his work on his 1792 ephemeris and almanac by stating:
.... And although I had almost declined to make my calculation for the ensuing year, in consequence of that time which I had allotted therefor, being taken up at the Federal Territory, by the request of Mr. Andrew Ellicott, ....[31][41]
On the same day that he replied to Banneker (August 30, 1791), Jefferson sent a letter to the Marquis de Condorcet that contained the following paragraph relating to Banneker's race, abilities, almanac and work with Andrew Ellicott:
I am happy to be able to inform you that we have now in the United States a negro, the son of a black man born in Africa, and of a black woman born in the United States, who is a very respectable Mathematician. I promised him to be employed under one of our chief directors in laying out the new federal city on the Patowmac, & in the intervals of his leisure, while on that work, he made an almanac for the next year, which he sent to me in his own handwriting, & which I inclose to you. I have seen very elegant solutions of Geometrical problems by him. add to this that he is a very respectable member of society. he is a free man. I shall be delighted to see these instances of moral eminence so multiplied as to prove that the want of talent observed in them is merely the effect of their degraded condition, and not proceeding from any difference in the structure of the parts on which intellect depends.[42]
In 1809, three years after Banneker's death, Jefferson expressed a different opinion of Banneker in a letter to Joel Barlow that criticized a "diatribe" that a French abolitionist, Henri Grégoire, had written in 1808:[43]
The whole do not amount, in point of evidence, to what we know ourselves of Banneker. We know he had spherical trigonometry enough to make almanacs, but not without the suspicion of aid from Ellicot, who was his neighbor and friend, and never missed an opportunity of puffing him. I have a long letter from Banneker, which shows him to have had a mind of very common stature indeed
THOMAS JEFFERSON:
Mercury in detriment in the last decan of Pisces and semi-square to natal Venus must say something about this duplicity imo.
Correction: I said they (the Ellicott Brothers) were Mennonites, actually they were Quakers from Pa. Banneker attended the same Quaker church as they did in the same region of Oella Maryland (offshoot of Ellicott City Md.)
I said his mother was white and from England, actually Molly Banneker was his grandmother, the maternal grandmother .
So Jefferson was techinically correct when he said his mother was black. (but she was only 1/2 black) Like Pres. OBama.
See LInk :
http://www.mccsc.edu/~jcmslib/mlk/banneker/facts.htm
The actual Letter in full to Thomas Jefferson then, Secty of State (see Link below)
obviously it pained Mr. Banneker to no small degree to know his race was being held as slaves and he did what he could to try & instill a conscience at that time.
Yet, he did many marvelous things, beyond his astronomy, (not wholly disconnected however), by inventing timepieces, clocks, etc. (See Inventor's link for the Letter)
Benjamin Banneker's Letter to Thomas Jefferson
Maryland, Baltimore County, August 19 1791
http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventors/a/Banneker_2.htm
in Detriment in last decan of
and harshly
to his
WHO can take this man seriously?
