American Memory Hole: How the Court Historians Promote Disinformation

Copyright © 2024 by Donald Jeffries

Foreword copyright © 2024 by Sam Tripoli

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5107-8194-8

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5107-8195-5

Cover design by David Ter-Avanesyan

Printed in the United States of America

This book is lovingly dedicated to my parents, Richard Ellsworth Jeffries and Anna Catherine Turvey, who were obsessed with the past in different ways. They triggered my own intense interest in history.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Sam Tripoli

Introduction

Chapter One: Hidden Gems from Early American History

Chapter Two: Scorched Earth and Other Precedents

Chapter Three: Woodrow Wilson: One Worlder Eugenicist

Chapter Four: FDR: Corrupt Foe of the People

Chapter Five: Joe McCarthy: Unfairly Maligned and Misrepresented

Chapter Six: The Kennedys: We Hardly Knew Ye

Chapter Seven: The Kennedy Assassinations

Chapter Eight: 1970s–1990s: The Slow Deterioration of America

Chapter Nine: The Nineties: More Conspiracy Central

Chapter Ten: 9/11: A Transformative Inside Job

Chapter Eleven: Conclusion but Not the End: Paving the Way for the Next Volume of Hidden History

Selected Bibliography

Notes

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, I very much appreciate Tony Lyons and Skyhorse having the courage to publish truly controversial books. I owe a deep gratitude to Chris Graves and Peter Secosh, whose research provided a great deal of material that wound up in the text. Peter also went the extra mile and proofread the manuscript with his superb editing skills, and contributed numerous suggestions that made the book better. I would also like to thank Tony Arterburn, Billy Ray Valentine, John Barbour, J. Gary Shaw, Vince Palamara, Ann Bougher, Carolyn Rose Goyda, Devvy Kidd, Felix Caraballo, G. Edward Griffin, Joseph P. Farrell, David T. Beito, Charles Key, Phil Nelson, Richard Gage, Steven Lamb, Tivilla Dean Lamar, Charles Ragan, Buell Wesley Frazier, Doug Horne, Scott Enyart, Paul Schrade, Vince Agnelli, Richard Syrett, Tim Kelly, William Matson Law, Nicole Shelton, John A. Quinn, John Hankey, Max Good, Steve Cameron, Steve Ubaney, Laurie Dusek, Jeff Rense, Robbie Robertson, Lisa Belanger, Georgia Ann Brown, and Sharon Farley. My wife Jeanne has stood beside me as I tackled one controversial subject after another, and maintains a consistently positive attitude I deeply admire. My children John and Julianna are my greatest blessings, and they are the reason why I keep doing what I do.

FOREWORD

BY SAM TRIPOLI

It is with great enthusiasm and admiration that I introduce you to Don Jeffries’s latest literary endeavor, American Memory Hole. I’ve had the privilege of knowing Don through his insightful contributions to journalism—a field where his commitment to truth-telling stands as a beacon in an often-murky landscape.

In the realm of investigative journalism, Don Jeffries is a name that resonates with authenticity and courage. His career spans decades, marked by an unwavering dedication to uncovering the hidden truths that shape our world. From clandestine operations to governmental cover-ups, Don fearlessly navigates through the labyrinth of misinformation to expose the realities obscured from public view.

I first encountered Don’s work through his appearances on Tin Foil Hat with Sam Tripoli, where his piercing analyses of corruption, secret societies, and intelligence psyops captivated audiences worldwide. What sets Don apart is his refusal to accept the status quo; he digs deeper, asks the tough questions, and challenges the narratives designed to keep us complacent.

American Memory Hole is a testament to Don’s relentless pursuit of justice and transparency. In these pages, he meticulously unravels the threads of historical amnesia that cloud our understanding of pivotal events. He invites us to peer into the recesses of our collective memory, urging us to confront uncomfortable truths that have been conveniently swept aside.

Through meticulous research and a keen investigative eye, Don sheds light on the mechanisms of power that operate beyond public scrutiny. He reminds us that journalism is not merely a profession but a moral imperative—a call to hold power accountable and to empower the public with knowledge.

I am honored to pen this foreword for Don Jeffries’s new book, as it represents not only a culmination of his life’s work but also a rallying cry for all who seek a deeper understanding of our world. American Memory Hole is a wake-up call—a reminder that the past is not always as it seems and that our future depends on our willingness to confront uncomfortable truths.

Prepare yourself for a journey into the heart of darkness and back, guided by a journalist who has made it his mission to illuminate the shadows. Don Jeffries’s American Memory Hole is more than a book: It is a testament to the power of investigative journalism and a testament to the courage of one man who refuses to let history be written by the victors.

—Sam Tripoli Host of Tin Foil Hat with Sam Tripoli

INTRODUCTION

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

—George Orwell

¹

History is a pack of lies we play on the dead, Voltaire said. George Bernard Shaw reminded us, History, sir, will tell lies as usual. Hitler declared, The victor will never be asked if he told the truth. And Lenin stated, A lie told often enough becomes the truth. All the lies we’ve been told have become truth to the masses. And it isn’t Hitler behind our collection of Big Lies.

This is my third volume of hidden history. There is a never-ending supply of ignored, suppressed, and misrepresented information from our past. If professional journalists did their jobs, and court historians told the truth, then books like this wouldn’t be possible. To quote Harry Elmer Barnes, I am attempting to bring history into accord with the facts. By far my best-selling books have been Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics, and its prequel, Crimes and Cover-Ups in American Politics: 1776–1963. Despite the dumbing down from our state-controlled media and woeful education system, some people still have a real thirst for historical knowledge.

When Hidden History was published in November 2014, this was an entirely different country. Woke madness had yet to rear its ugly head. It’s hard to believe so much has changed in such a short period of time. But the Past is Prologue, and we didn’t arrive at our current situation without plenty of warning. In this volume, we will dive deeper into the JFK assassination quagmire. The research community is more dysfunctional than ever and continues to work against the common interest of exposing the impossibility of the official narrative. That dysfunction extends to the 9/11 and other conspiracy-friendly researchers, who waste far too much time on infighting and accusing each other of being disinformation agents. In this book, we’ll examine in greater detail the events of 9/11, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the death of JFK Jr. We’ll also look back at the Founding of the Republic, James K. Polk, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Joe McCarthy, and several other misrepresented historical events and personalities. We’ll further scrutinize good guys Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.

It isn’t easy being a historian when most of America isn’t interested in the past, and is woefully uninformed or misinformed about even the most important events and personalities. A 2015 poll conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni concluded that many are alarmingly ignorant of America’s history and heritage. Ten percent polled thought TV’s Judge Judy was a member of the Supreme Court. Barely 20 percent could identify James Madison as the father of the US Constitution. The 40 percent that were ignorant of the fact Congress has the sole constitutional authority to declare war can’t really be blamed; Congress hasn’t exercised this crucial power since World War II. So in effect, this power vested in Congress by the Constitution has long become irrelevant. When surveys repeatedly show that college graduates do not understand the fundamental processes of our government and the historical forces that shaped it, the problem is much greater than a simple lack of factual knowledge, those conducting the poll noted, It is a dangerous sign of civic disempowerment.² In another poll, from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist in 2017, only 77 percent of Americans knew which country the colonies had broken away from to declare their independence.

This isn’t a brand-new phenomenon. In a 2008 Common Core survey, fewer than half of American teenagers knew when the Civil War was fought, and 25 percent thought Columbus arrived in the New World sometime after 1750. The group lamented American youngsters’ stunning ignorance of history and literature.³ A 2004 poll of adult Americans found that only 43 percent could correctly identify a figure as recent as President Herbert Hoover.⁴ It is hard enough to get educated people to comprehend how thoroughly they’ve been lied to about our history. It becomes almost impossible, when you’re attempting to enlighten people who aren’t even knowledgeable about the lies. If someone doesn’t even know the official version of an event, how do you show that it’s inaccurate?

Going against the historical grain is just as bad a career move as going against the mainstream media-driven consensus on current events. Harry Elmer Barnes was a highly respectable historian, who wrote frequently for Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the foremost insider organizations. Barnes was so enthusiastic a supporter for World War I, his anti-German propaganda was rejected for being too violent to be acceptable by the National Board for Historical Service.⁵ However, during the 1920s, Barnes changed views dramatically, and he came to believe America had fought on the wrong side in the war. This was a period where alternative historical views were tolerated to some degree by the mainstream. Barnes’s articles that portrayed Russia and France as the aggressors in WWI were published by outlets like The Nation. Barnes’s 1926 book The Genesis of the World War was the first work on the subject published using primary sources. Calling the conflict an unjust war against Germany, Barnes urged this country to be better prepared to be on our guard against the seductive lies and deceptions which will be put forward by similar groups when urging the necessity of another world catastrophe in order to ‘crush militarism,’ ‘make the world safe for democracy,’ put an end to all further wars, etc.⁶ Among those who admired Barnes’s writings were classical liberal journalist H. L. Mencken and Socialist leader Norman Thomas. Barnes officially became persona non grata with his contention that all sides were equally responsible for World War II, and that Franklin D. Roosevelt had deliberately provoked the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor. In a letter to his friend Oswald Garrison Villard, an early civil rights activist who was one of the founding members of the NAACP, Barnes bemoaned the fact that I cannot fight the thirty million dollars now in the coffers of the Anti-Defamation League to be used for character assassination.⁷

In 1940, the New York World-Telegram dropped Barnes’s weekly column. As he became increasingly controversial, Barnes was forced to self-publish most of his writings after 1945. Barnes coined the phrase court historians, which I use regularly, and I believe perfectly describes their toadying, tenured work. In his self-published book Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Barnes wrote, It is no exaggeration to say that the American Smearbund, operating through newspaper editors and columnists, ‘hatchet-men’ book reviewers, radio commentators, pressure-group intrigue and espionage, and academic pressures and fears, has accomplished about as much in the way of intimidating honest intellectuals in this country as Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, the Gestapo, and concentration camps were able to do in Nazi Germany. Interestingly, one of the last true liberals, Gore Vidal, opted to use Barnes’s exact title for his 2002 book, which included the subtitle, How We Got to Be So Hated. Barnes, like Pulitzer Prizewinning historian John Toland, learned that the court historians brook no dissent within their midst. Criticize iconic figures like Abraham Lincoln at your own peril. Contend that We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future, as John F. Kennedy did regarding the enemies of his age, and risk what George Bernard Shaw termed, the most extreme form of censorship.

There is one underlying narrative in our modern society: while our leaders and institutions are labeled racist, homophobic, and transphobic, to call anything they do, or anything that happens, a conspiracy is to threaten our safety and democracy, to quote from a March 2019 article in Scientific American, titled People Drawn to Conspiracy Theories Share a Cluster of Psychological Features. With the advent of Donald Trump, opposition to conspiracy theories reached new levels of hysteria. National Geographic invoked science to explain the attraction of conspiracy theories, and bemoaned the misinformation behind them.⁸ Everywhere, the same theme was trumpeted: conspiracy theorists are mentally ill, endanger freedom, and must be silenced. There is even a Conspiracy Theory Addiction Center.

Economist Adam Smith explained economic price-fixing succinctly a long time ago, when he said, People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. Leo Tolstoy excited the hearts of future anarchists when he declared, The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens. World leaders have often acknowledged a shadowy presence behind the scenes. In a July 14, 1856, speech in the British House of Commons, Benjamin Disraeli stated, There is in Italy a power which we seldom mention in this House. . . . I mean the secret societies. . . . It is useless to deny, because it is impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe—the whole of Italy and France and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other countries—is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads. And what are their objects? They do not attempt to conceal them. They do not want constitutional government; they do not want ameliorated institutions . . . they want to change the tenure of land, to drive out the present owners of the soil and to put an end to ecclesiastical Establishments. Some of them may go further.⁹

The Establishment view of history, where high crimes and organized conspiracies are confined to Harding’s Teapot Dome and Nixon’s Watergate scandals, can only be promoted by ignoring all contrary evidence, eyewitness accounts, suspicious deaths, and historical precedents. Impossibly cartoonish villains from Jefferson Davis to Hitler to Osama bin Laden are trotted out to justify one unconstitutional and unjust action after another. Mass killings, like at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are explained with the Orwellian justification that it saved lives. According to our government, and its sycophants in the press, America never starts wars. And yet we are always at war. Iran has long been demonized because they called out the United States for its aggressive bullying.¹⁰ In a classic demonstration of what psychologists call deflection, right-wing media especially have ludicrously called Iran the world’s bully.¹¹ America continues to occupy at least seven smaller countries around the world. Iran hasn’t invaded a single country in more than two hundred years. Much as Agent Orange and other horrors plagued American service members in Vietnam, millions of US veterans still suffer from the toxic effects of the burn pits established by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan to dispose of all kinds of waste.¹² Russia and Vladimir Putin in particular, have now become the primary targets of today’s woke Leftist hate, superseding Iran. This is especially ironic given how liberals as recently as forty years ago were magnanimous toward a much more threatening Soviet Union, urging détente and smearing the extreme Right as red baiters.

Thanks in large part to the diligent efforts of researchers Chris Graves and Peter Secosh, I was able to find contact information for many persons associated with the events I cover in this book. The instances where I was able to contact them, and they were willing to speak with me, are recounted in detail here. However, the vast majority never answered my emails, and almost all the phone numbers listed for them—obtained via public records—had been disconnected. The few working numbers rarely answered. Messages I left on voicemail were never responded to. There is a clear reluctance or fear out there, which I don’t think can be explained away innocently. Why wouldn’t you be interested in questions about your loved one’s unnatural death? Why wouldn’t you be willing to talk further about things you had previously talked about? Why wouldn’t you want to reveal the truth about events you were associated with? And if there is nothing to see here, move along, and those asking the questions are despicable conspiracy theorists, what is there to fear? The nefarious forces that are merely figments of our demented imaginations?

I expressed my pessimism about America in the Introduction to Hidden History. In the years since then, nothing has changed to make me more optimistic. Even I didn’t foresee a world-wide lockdown, small businesses destroyed, millions thrown out of work, mandatory mask wearing, and the potential of a vaccine passport. The corruption in the past was always there, but it was tempered a bit by a general competence. The trains ran on time, to use the old analogy applied to Mussolini. Now things are more corrupt than ever, and the trains don’t run on time. I don’t pretend to know what the end game is. I just present the information, and let the reader decide. These aren’t theories, they are data unwanted by the court historians. The Damned, as the great iconoclast Charles Fort put it.

Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith wrote in 1984, I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY.¹³ I haven’t figured out the why yet, either. But it is undeniable that the past is falsified in present-day America, as it was in the fictional Oceana. Think of a long, complex mathematical equation; if even one of the numbers is off, the answer will be wrong. In the case of our history, virtually all of the numbers are incorrect, so the answer cannot possibly be right. Sunshine is the best disinfectant; shining light on all the real disinformation and misinformation from our past can help place the Orwellian new normal in the proper context. Orwell also introduced memory hole into the popular vernacular. It is an appropriate term to use for this book, because all of the information I write about has effectively been shoved down the memory hole.

We need not go to the extremes of an H. L. Mencken, who once wrote, Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. But we should at least seek the truth, about the past and the present. And the ugly truth is we have been lied to about everything.

CHAPTER ONE

HIDDEN GEMS FROM EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY

I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.

—Patrick Henry

¹

I fell in love with history as a child, and my favorite era was the founding of this Republic. The War for Independence, the American Revolution—call it what you will—I devoured every book imaginable on the subject as a youngster. It excited me to read about the Sons of Liberty meeting surreptitiously in taverns, or angry colonists throwing tea into the Boston Harbor. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense made a lot of sense to this blooming young radical. Thomas Jefferson became my favorite, in large part because his surname was closest to my own. That sort of thing often causes a great impression on a child.

But the Founders weren’t perfect. They were flawed like all humans. George Washington first achieved notoriety at age twenty-two when his incompetence and poor judgment led to the outbreak of the French and Indian War.² There is still an intelligent argument to be made that the Articles of Confederation was better than what replaced it. Some of the best minds of the time—Patrick Henry, George Mason, and others—opposed the Constitution, feeling that it gave the government too much power. Mason’s significance in the founding of the Republic has been largely overlooked. He wrote the Fairfax Resolves, which questioned British authority over the colonies, and drafted both the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Virginia Constitution. Mason memorably refused to sign the US Constitution because it didn’t forbid further importation of slaves, or stop the spread of slavery to other states. Declining to become one of Virginia’s two US senators, he instead retired to his Gunston Hall estate. By not signing the Constitution, he lost his long friendship with his neighbor George Washington.

Seldom reported is the fact that, as would happen during the Civil War, wealthy colonists could avoid being conscripted into the War for Independence by paying a substitute to take their place. According to Howard Zinn, this led to rioting, with one familiar cry being, Tyranny is Tyranny let it come from whom it may. In the spring of 1774, a Virginian wrote in his diary: The lower Class of People here are in tumult on account of Reports from Boston, many of them expect to be press’d & compell’d to go and fight the Britains! Indeed, four days after the Declaration of Independence was first read from the town hall balcony in Boston, the Boston Committee of Correspondence ordered townsmen to show up on the Common for a military draft. Connecticut passed a law requiring military service for all males between sixteen and sixty. The typical troubling exceptions for certain government officials, ministers, and Yale students and faculty were included. Eighteen men who failed to report for military duty were jailed and had to pledge to fight in the war in order to be released. Regarding the strict discipline in George Washington’s army, a Concord, Massachusetts chaplain observed, New lords, new laws. The strictest government is taking place and great distinction is made between officers & men. Everyone is made to know his place & keep it, or be immediately tied up, and receive not one but 30 or 40 lashes.³

The Colonial troops weren’t perfect, either. In a shocking, rarely discussed atrocity, on March 8, 1782, a Pennsylvania militia group attacked peaceful residents of a Moravian Indian village in Gnadenhutten, Ohio. These Indians were Christians, and neutral in the War for Independence. Nevertheless, the militiamen voted to execute them all. The Indians spent the night before their executions praying and singing Christian hymns. Eighteen members of the militia were opposed to killing the Indians, and refused to participate. In a barbaric act that would become all too familiar to students of hidden history, before murdering them, the American soldiers dragged the women and girls out into the snow and systematically raped them. The Indians were bludgeoned to death and then scalped. The Moravian Indians were perhaps the earliest historical examples of nonresistance, as they did not fight back, but begged for their lives to be spared. Ninety-six Indians were killed, and the entire village was burned down. And in another precursor to what would become standard operating procedure for Northern troops during the Civil War, all property belonging to the Indians was confiscated.⁴ This atrocity, which came to be known as the Gnadenhutten Massacre, led many Indians to lose faith in the Patriots’ cause and precipitated reprisals.

In the summer of 1787, less than four years after they’d won their independence from England, representatives from the thirteen original colonies assembled in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation. Setting an unfortunate precedent for politicians in the future, the delegates opted for absolute secrecy of their proceedings. They decreed that no copy be taken of any entry on the journal during the sitting of the House without the leave of the House, that members only be permitted to inspect the journal, and that nothing spoken in the House be printed, or otherwise published, or communicated without leave. During the four months they were in conference, the closed-door sessions featured sealed windows, and there were armed sentinels stationed both inside and outside of the statehouse. This was in stark contrast to the 1776 debates, when states like Pennsylvania had published weekly accounts of the proceedings in both English and German. Even George Mason himself expressed support for the secretive nature of the constitutional convention in a June 1, 1787, letter to his son George Mason Jr. James Madison kept details of the proceedings from even his close high-profile friends like Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. In an August 1, 1787, letter to his famous cousin and namesake, the Reverend James Madison, president of the College of William and Mary, argued, If you cannot tell us what you are doing, you might at least give us some Information of what you are not doing. James Madison would later acknowledge that, no Constitution would ever have been adopted by the convention if the debates had been public.⁵

During the ratification debates in New York, John Lansing Jr. accused Alexander Hamilton of wanting to literally abolish the individual states altogether; retaining them merely as parts of a powerful central government. Hamilton hotly denied this, and ironically almost became involved in a duel over it. (Hamilton would, of course, later be killed in a duel by Aaron Burr.) Surprisingly, in his defense Hamilton criticized the Madison-led secrecy of the proceedings. This was perhaps the only time he agreed with his archfoe Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in an August 30, 1787, letter to John Adams that he was sorry they began their deliberations by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the tongues of their members. Nothing can justify this example but the innocence of their intentions, & ignorance of the value of public discussions. Jefferson referred to it as an assembly of demigods. George Washington, as president of the Convention, was fully on board with the secrecy. Bemoaning a document recklessly left outside the meeting room, Washington told the delegates, Gentlemen, I am sorry to find that some one Member of this Body, has been so neglectful of the secrets of the Convention as to drop in the State House a copy of their proceedings, which by accident was picked up and delivered to me this Morning. I must entreat Gentlemen to be more careful, least our transactions get into the News Papers, and disturb the public repose by premature speculations. I know not whose Paper it is, but there it is (throwing it down on the table), let him who owns it take it.⁶

Maryland delegate Luther Martin was outraged at the lack of transparency, and was compelled to write a series of newspaper articles after the Convention was over, which were titled Genuine Information, and published in the Maryland Gazette from December 28, 1787 through February 8, 1788. A fellow Anti-Federalist, known only as Centinel, credited Martin with having laid open the conclave, exposed the dark scene within, developed the mystery of the proceedings, and illustrated the machinations of ambition. His public spirit has drawn upon him the rage of the conspirators, for daring to remove the veil of secrecy, and announcing to the public the meditated, gilded mischief; all their powers are exerting for his destruction; the mint of calumny is acidulously engaged in coining scandal to blacken his character, and thereby to invalidate his testimony; but this illustrious patriot will rise superior to all their low arts, and be the better confirmed in the good opinion and esteem of his fellow-citizens.⁷ Patrick Henry predictably agreed, arguing that government shouldn’t be permitted to carry on the most wicked and pernicious of schemes, under the dark veil of secrecy. The liberties of a people never were nor ever will be secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them . . . to cover with the veil of secrecy, the common routine of business is an abomination in the eyes of every intelligent man, and every friend to his country.⁸

George Mason foretold the kind of southern sentiment that eventually caused states to secede from the Union. Jefferson described, in a March 4, 1800, letter to Madison, how incensed Mason had been over the northern states exerting their will over the southerners. G. Mason’s proposition in the convention was wise, that on laws regulating commerce, two-thirds of the votes should be requisite to pass them. However, it would have been trampled underfoot by a triumphant majority, Jefferson wrote. Edmund Randolph was Mason’s ally, and argued against the constitutional distribution of power, which would create monarchy, or a tyrannical aristocracy, to quote from Randolph’s motion for a second constitutional convention. This Constitution had been formed without the knowledge or idea of the people, Randolph charged. Randolph refused to sign the Constitution, and every state delegation opposed his motion. On June 16, 1788, Mason declared, Among the enumerated powers, congress are to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; and to pay the debts, and provide for the general welfare and common defence; and by that clause (so often called the sweeping clause) they are to make all laws necessary to execute those laws. Now suppose oppressions should arise under this government, and any writer should dare to stand forth and expose to the community at large, the abuses of those powers. Could not congress, under the idea of providing for the general welfare, and under their own construction, say, that this was destroying the general peace, encouraging sedition, and poisoning the minds of the people? The Father of the Bill of Rights would be mortified that, over two hundred years later, our government is indeed demonizing critics as insurrectionists and domestic terrorists. Just imagine what kind of civil liberties Americans would have ever had without that Bill of Rights. Another Virginian, Richard Henry Lee, also strongly opposed expanding upon the powers granted to the government under the Articles of Confederation.

Mystery surrounds George Mason’s second wife, Sarah Brent. Upon his death, she essentially disappeared from the historical record. Sources indicate she died in 1805 or 1806 at Gunston Hall, but also say it isn’t known where she was buried. Researcher Vince Agnelli claimed that she seems to have vanished right after Mason’s death, which he also thinks was suspicious. On the We Relate genealogy site, Sarah is listed as being born about 1742, with no death date listed. Her birth date curiously varies as well. Wikipedia and other mainstream sources indicate she was 51–52 when they married in 1773. This would have her born around 1720, which no source lists. I’ve seen her birth date listed anywhere from 1730 to 1742. The online Virginia Encyclopedia informs us that Mason married Sarah Brent, the fifty-year-old daughter of George Brent, a family friend. It is Brent’s first marriage. I find it decidedly odd that a woman of her class had never married earlier. Most sources say that upon Mason’s death, Sarah probably moved to Dumfries to live with her sister Jean. This is strange behavior, since she inherited her husband’s 400-acre property. It always attracts my attention when so little is known about the death of a prominent historical figure. Sarah Brent certainly qualifies in that regard, as the wife of one of the Founding Fathers.

Thomas Jefferson Battles the Supreme Court

The great object of my fear is the Federal judiciary.

—Thomas Jefferson

⁹

In an 1820 letter to W. C. Jarvis, Thomas Jefferson made his views on the power of the Supreme Court quite clear. You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy, Jefferson wrote. Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves. Jefferson seems to have been the last politician to understand just how thoroughly the early Supreme Court justices were usurping power, and shattering the separation of powers and checks and balances which made the Constitution a revolutionary document. The essence of populism is an opposition to excessive power concentrated anywhere. Jefferson was aghast at Judicial Review, which basically makes these unelected judges the arbiters of all important public policy. Jefferson asked how to check these unconstitutional invasions of state rights by the Federal judiciary? Not by impeachment in the first instance, but by a strong protestation of both houses of Congress that such and such doctrines advanced by the Supreme Court, are contrary to the Constitution: and if afterward they relapse into the same heresies, impeach and set the whole adrift. For what was the government divided into three branches, but that each should watch over the others and oppose their usurpations?¹⁰

John Marshall, as the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, became as powerful an enemy of Jefferson as Alexander Hamilton. Responding to Jefferson’s constant criticisms, Marshall declared, in a September 18, 1821, letter to Joseph Story, A deep design to convert our government into a mere league of States has taken strong hold of a powerful & violent party in Virginia. The attack upon the judiciary is in fact an attack upon the union. Note how this reverential reference to union foretells what would come from the first imperial president, Abraham Lincoln. Jefferson and his fellow Democrat-Republicans (it wasn’t until the election of Lincoln that those who’d previously been known as Federalists broke off to become the modern Republican Party) framed the debate as one of the People versus an unelected court tied to the old aristocratic ways the Founders had rebelled against. Jefferson wanted to take away the power of judicial review, which was not sanctioned under the Constitution, and return it to the states. When Jefferson took office as the third President of the United States, there was not a single federal judge sitting in any courtroom who was not a Federalist. Much as Hamilton and his ilk had prevailed early on in terms of establishing horrific precedents like unlimited national debt and a powerful central bank, the same forces won again with the Supreme Court’s 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision, which established the principle of Judicial Review, whereby unelected judges were granted the power to strike down laws and statutes they deem unconstitutional. Jefferson was incensed over this usurpation of power, writing in a September 11, 1804, letter to Abigail Smith Adams, the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature & executive also in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch.

Andrew Jackson, much as he took up Jefferson’s mantle in battling a central bank, followed his lead in battling the Supreme Court as well. Jackson’s antagonism toward the Marshall Supreme Court was more a reflection of his combative personality, however, than any strong intellectual opposition to Judicial Review. The Marshall Court ruled against Jackson when he was attempting to force out Native Americans from Georgia. In response, Jackson supposedly declared, John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it. Some believe this quote is apocryphal and was never actually uttered by Jackson. Regardless, in this case, Jackson’s defiance was hardly heroic, as it led to the devastating Trail of Tears. Jackson actually acknowledged the power of the Supreme Court in a proclamation a few years later. John Marshall mockingly referred to this, stating, Imitating the Quaker who said the dog he wished to destroy was mad, they said Andrew Jackson had become a Federalist, even an ultra-Federalist. To have said he was ready to break down and trample on every other department of the government would not have injured him, but to say that he was a Federalist—a convert to the opinions of Washington, was a mortal blow under which he is yet staggering.¹¹ Jackson had sounded much more like Jefferson when he courageously vetoed a request to renew the Second National Bank’s charter in 1832. Jackson commented at the time, It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the president to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the president is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve.¹² Jackson proved he had a lot of typical politician in him after Marshall died, when he lauded him as a national hero.

One has only to read the words of Jefferson and Jackson to understand just how thoroughly their perspective was defeated over the course of time. In today’s corrupt climate, no one bats an eye at the universal declaration let the courts decide. Not only would the Supreme Court transform the cultural landscape with their Roe v. Wade 1973 decision, effectively granting rights for a procedure never imagined, let alone mentioned, in the Constitution, federal courts have overturned reform-minded voter referendums and initiatives. Judicial Review of ballot initiatives was a logical extension of the power unwisely granted to the courts to decide which laws are instituted. In the 1930s, Indiana Congressman Louis Ludlow proposed permitting a referendum following any congressional declaration of war. This sounds like an eminently sensible idea, although as noted earlier Congress last exercised its power to declare war in World War II. Needless to say, America has been perpetually involved in other wars since then. Naturally Ludlow’s idea was rejected, under predictable pressure from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as was a similar effort from Rep. John Rarick during the Vietnam War. California’s Proposition 187, which would have stopped illegal immigrants from getting public services, was passed by a substantial margin in 1994. Almost immediately, a federal judge declared it unconstitutional. Why should one unelected judge be able to thwart the will of the people? In 2021, the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned a successful ballot initiative to establish a medical marijuana program, on a minor technicality.¹³

Like Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson had his flaws. His behavior in pushing the prosecution of his former Vice President Aaron Burr for treason was deplorable. As one of Burr’s lawyers charged, some of his actions indeed resembled what one might expect from a monarch, not a champion of liberty. Burr was dubiously alleged to have plotted to take some western states out of the union, in order to wage war against the Spanish in Mexico. Jefferson also publicly accused Burr of treason, before he went to trial, in the manner that other presidents like Richard Nixon, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden would employ in later high-profile trials. The motivations of the author of the Declaration of Independence were undoubtedly personal. Jefferson still smarted over the extremely close 1800 presidential election, which initially saw Burr tie him in electoral votes. Even when Burr killed his archenemy Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel, Jefferson remained bitter at him. Burr was acquitted of treason, and when John Marshall, who was involved here as well, directed that he be brought before another grand jury in Ohio, Burr simply never showed up, and efforts at further prosecution were dropped. In one of those ironic quirks of history, when Burr’s much younger wife sought to divorce him years later, she chose Alexander Hamilton Jr. as her lawyer.

Despite his human imperfections, the author of the Declaration of Independence was a true Renaissance man, and in my view the classical liberal of the era. I wrote extensively about the slandering of Thomas Jefferson in Crimes and Cover-Ups in American Politics: 1776–1963. This true man of the Enlightenment has been denigrated by the court historians, and in popular culture, to the extent that he is now crudely dismissed as a racist. It’s not widely publicized, but Jefferson’s Monticello estate was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. The United Nations did recognize that Monticello, which the architect Jefferson designed himself, represents a masterpiece of human creative genius.¹⁴ They also noted that his unique design was based on ancient and Renaissance models. But despite this acknowledgment, those who run Monticello continue to stress the unfounded Sally Hemings nonsense, over the myriad of astonishing real accomplishments of Jefferson. Has there ever been another instance of a historical foundation denigrating the memory of the individual they are ostensibly honoring? In 2018, a new exhibit opened at Monticello, celebrating Sally Hemings, and matter-of-factly referred to her as mother of Jefferson’s other children.¹⁵ In fact, the DNA evidence, if it proved anything at all, completely eliminated Jefferson as the father of any of Hemings’s children except one, and even that was unlikely.¹⁶

Most offensive of all to Jefferson’s legacy was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The play, using a largely nonwhite cast, chronicles the life of Alexander Hamilton, who was the bankers’ favorite Founder, and the father of our national debt, utilizing rap and hip-hop. This anti-libertarian elitist has been rebranded as extremely cool in the eyes of impressionable younger audiences. He and Jefferson were staunch political enemies. We can judge the effectiveness of this kind of absolutely inaccurate historical propaganda by the fact that Barack Obama told leftist comedian and talk show host Jon Stewart that he found the play phenomenal. Miranda’s Jefferson is an effeminate coward who doesn’t appear until the War for Independence is over, with the opening line, What’d I miss? One would think his authorship of the Declaration of Independence alone might warrant some kind of mention. Jefferson and Madison are cast as dirty tricksters scheming to ruin the virtuous Hamilton. Establishment mouthpiece Conor Cruise O’Brien foretold the shifting political landscape in a biased and unfair 1996 article attacking Jefferson. I believe that in the next century, as blacks and Hispanics and Asians acquire increasing influence in American society, O’Brien declared, the Jeffersonian liberal tradition, which is already intellectually untenable, will become socially and politically untenable as well.¹⁷ Presumably, the same blacks and Hispanics and Asians who were persuaded to turn on Jefferson somehow became entranced enough with another dead White male, Alexander Hamilton, to plunk down exorbitant money on wildly overpriced tickets for the play celebrating him.

As an illustration of the differences between the intellectual giant Thomas Jefferson and his foe (now a modern-day pop culture icon) Alexander Hamilton, consider this excerpt from Jefferson’s January 16, 1811, letter to Benjamin Rush. Describing a meeting during the Washington administration between himself, Hamilton, and John Adams, Jefferson wrote, Another incident took place on the same occasion, which will further delineate Mr. Hamilton’s political principles. The room being hung around with a collection of the portraits of remarkable men, among them were those of Bacon, Newton and Locke, Hamilton asked me who they were. I told him they were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever produced, naming them. He paused for some time: ‘the greatest man,’ said he, ‘that ever lived, was Julius Cæsar.’ Mr. Adams was honest as a politician, as well as a man; Hamilton honest as a man, but, as a politician, believing in the necessity of either force or corruption to govern men.

In October 2021, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio followed the recommendation of the Commission on Racial Justice and Reconciliation, which was chaired by his Black wife Chirlane McCray, to remove the statue of Jefferson which had stood in City Hall for 187 years. This was all to be done without any debate permitted. Democratic Councilman I. Daneek Miller, exemplifying the kind of representation Americans are being accorded in the twenty-first century, explained, There’s so much about Thomas Jefferson and his own personal writings, memoirs about how he treated his slaves, his family members and things of that nature and how he perceived African Americans and slaves—that they lacked intelligence, that they were not to assimilate into society. For us to really highlight such an individual is really not who we are as a council. Yes, Thomas Jefferson is most definitely not who we are at this point. In a June 1, 2020 letter, de Blasio had written, The statue of Thomas Jefferson in the City Council Chambers is inappropriate and serves as a constant reminder of the injustices that have plagued communities of color since the inception of our country. Jefferson is America’s most noted slave holder . . . and a scholar who maintained that Blacks were inferior to whites. Another statue of Jefferson, which stood outside a high school named for him, was toppled by Black Lives Matter protesters on June 14, 2020, in Portland, Oregon.¹⁸

Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio epitomizes the authoritarian nature of the woke Left. Born Warren Wilhelm Jr., he changed his name to Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm in 1983, and didn’t adopt his current moniker until 2002. Despite fawning press coverage, de Blasio has been awash in campaign finance scandals, and gave himself a hefty pay raise as mayor in 2016. Reflecting the connections we see invariably in these putrid public officials, de Blasio’s uncle was a CIA official who ghostwrote the memoir of Mohammed Reva Pahlavi, the shah of Iran.¹⁹ His mother, whose attendance at the prestigious Smith College is an indication of her impressive pedigree, served in the Office of War Information during World War II, while his father graduated from Yale, and held top level positions like contributing editor at Time Magazine and Texaco’s chief international economist. Both his parents were accused of being communist sympathizers in the 1950s. It is a severe indictment of present-day America that an entitled, lightweight, hack party politician like this could oversee the removal of a statue honoring perhaps the greatest statesman in the history of this country.

As I detailed in Crimes and Cover-Ups in American Politics: 1776–1963, Abraham Lincoln despised Thomas Jefferson, according to his former law partner, William Herndon. Mr. Lincoln hated Thomas Jefferson as a man and as a politician, Herndon wrote. Lincoln particularly disliked Jefferson’s moral character after reading Theodore F. Dwight’s 1839 hit piece of a biography on the Founding Father. Modern stories dealing with this topic allege that Lincoln knew about the Sally Hemings allegations, which is frankly absurd. These lurid accusations simply were not talked about in that time period. There is no record of, and certainly no direct quotes from Lincoln, regarding Hemings beyond the dubious inferences in a 2015 New York Times article. The contrast couldn’t be starker between the two; while Jefferson loved farmers and common people, even his associates admitted that Lincoln was never unwilling to appear in behalf of a great soulless corporation. Huey Long loved to boast that he’d never taken a case against a poor man. It could fairly be said that Lincoln never took a case for a poor man. Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, supported the Fugitive Slave Law and actually represented two masters seeking the return of their runaway slaves. Lincoln also had no qualms about evicting squatters who were farming land owned by his beloved big railroads.²⁰ Jefferson would probably have become a leader of the Confederacy if he’d been alive in 1860. His descendant Thomas Garland Jefferson was a VMI cadet who was killed by federal soldiers at the Battle of New Market. While Lincoln became the first president to install a mandatory draft during the Civil War, states had conscripted soldiers during the War for Independence, as noted previously. Jefferson, however, was strongly opposed to a military draft, calling it the last of all oppressions.²¹ Like many of the other Founders, Jefferson was also appalled at the prospect of a large standing army, and could never have pictured our monstrous military-industrial complex. A standing army, Jefferson wrote in a 1789 letter to David Humphreys, is one of those instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation. In a letter to Madison dated December 20, 1787, Jefferson had declared, I do not like [in the proposed Constitution] the omission of a Bill of Rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for . . . protection against standing armies. Jefferson reiterated this