I wrote about the St. Louis arch celebrating Westward expansion and the Louisiana Purchase as a "symbol of genocide." In a comment to that same piece Fausto writes "I'm sure our own "famous UU" TJ didn't have genocide in mind when he bought Louisiana or commissioned Lewis and Clark, but the fact remains that in the way things came to pass, genocide became an integral element of the whole package."
When governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson stated: "If we are to wage a campaign against these Indians the end proposed should be their extermination, or their removal beyond the lakes of the Illinois River. The same world would scarcely do for them and us." When he became President he had a standing army to wage his campaign of extermination and during his administration many of the nations were eliminated on the Atlantic side of the Eastern Mountains. His administration then waged war against the people indigenous to the "near West" beyond the Appalachians. Then he "bought" the West from France (whose claim to the land was based on the theology of the Christians Crusades (non Christians have no rights a Christian is bound to recognize.)
Did Jefferson mean it? His whole life reveals an Enlightenment gentleman, curious about the new science, opinionated about the project of a propertied persons' democratic republic, who was openly racist, genocidal, grandiose, and patriarchal. The Louisiana Purchase was intended as a way to provide opportunities to his people (White People) and "extermination" of the same final solution to the native people west of the Illinois River. The word genocide didn't exist in his vocabulary, but his "extermination" policy was very real, very intentional, and very calculated. The West he envisioned would include slavery. His writings make this clear, and when the senators and representatives in congress representing the Northern states tried to restrict slavery in the West he was alarmed and spoke of dissolving the United States.
Did Jefferson mean genocide? He didn't consider Africans and Native Americans to be fully human, so enslaving them and exterminating them did not bother his conscience. At least he does not share any self criticism for his words or actions in his writings, or any agonizing that as a result of his policies and practices hundreds of thousands of people were burned to death, shoot to death and starved to death, and hundreds of thousands were held in degrading slavery with their families ripped from them and all the fruits of their labor taken for the enrichment of generations of white people.
Unitarian Universalists speak of our continuing work against our own institutionalized racism. We insist that racism is not just bad attitudes held by bigots (who are of course are not Unitarian Universalists) but built into the way this nation was built on conquest, plunder, and slavery and has subsequently evolved its institutional arrangements of power. We see an example of this in our own practice. Jefferson is sanitized and served up as a "famous UU" by Unitarian Universalist religious educators and clergy rather than presented as a morally questionable and politically contradictory example of Unitarian origins in the Enlightenment elite. By doing this and allowing this to be done in our name we are perpetuating racism and contributing to holocaust denial.
Wow, Clyde! Thanks for this additional detail. I had no idea that Jefferson wrote so frankly and coldly about such things.
I do note that in the citation you give, he considered extermination and relocation as equally viable options, so I don't think it would be fair to conclude that genocide was necessarily his aim. However, by the same token, he apparently did not consider either option to be superior to the other, and even the non-genocidal policy amounts to the same sort of ethnic cleansing and relocation that was later carried out on the Trail of Tears.
On a second reading of your post, I noticed that your Jefferson quote is from the period when he was governor of Virginia. When I wrote my response above, I was mistakenly assuming that your quote referred specifically to clearing the Indians of the Louisiana Territory. Who are the "Indians" and what was the conflict with them that Jefferson was actually referring to?
Even if your quote does not apply specifically to Lousisiana, it does illustrate that extermination of native populations was widely seen as a feasible policy option during the pioneer period, beginning at a very early date. But I think that's pretty common knowledge. What's striking is that even our adopted UU saints like TJ apparently felt no moral qualms about such policies.
My own 300+-year-old church's archives include the daily journal of the second minister, who served for 40+ years, owned two slaves, and recorded in detail how he beat them when they were disobedient.
He not only talked about extermination, he order armed troops to carry out the policy, not only as Governor but as President.
He is author of the Move or Die policy.
Genocide is destroying a people. Individuals might survive, but if their language, culture and sacred land is taken from them and booze and casinos are given instead that is a people destroyed.
The Trail of Tears was Genocidal in that the Native's sacred relationship to ancestorial space was destroyed.
The Middle Passage was Genocide because it ripped people forcefully from Africa.
One can kill the body and one can kill the soul.
Thanks, Reverend Clyde, for once again telling it like it is. I wanted to respond to the original response from fausto, but just didn't have the energy. You wrote a better post than I would have, but I need to start finding the energy.
Thank you, Clyde. The truth hurts, but we must face up to it. Those of us raised with white privilege and steeped in white culture so yearn to be blameless, but we are not. Thank you for being willing to remind us and not give up on us as we resist knowing.
Excellent posting on Jefferson and genocide. I linked to it on my website at http://www.bluecorncomics.com/july4th.htm .