Thomas Jefferson
Created | Updated Mar 10, 2004
I've finished a book regarding the presidency and political squabblings of the Honorable nickel-man himself. The book is titled "The Negro President" and this book is a scholarly review of Jefferson's (TJ) second revolution and his political fights with a certain Pickering (a lesser light of the American political scene of the revolutionary times). Pickering stands against TJ in many influential political struggles of the day including the horrible three-fifths compromise and the President's maneuvers in the international. TJ was a proponent of the Louisiana purchase and he had his own policy to handle the Napoleonic wars which were rending Europe asunder. American shipping was running a brisk business at this time until both France and Britain took the wars to international shipping. American ships were seized and cargoes liberated (along with some English sailors who'd escaped the press gangs to make a good living on American ships) which led to a political crisis. TJ decided to halt all shipping to both combatants, a policy that was as unpopular as it was unpracticable. Pickering was anti-slavery for many reasons, and has influential writings on the compromise that allowed slaves to be counted as three-fifths of a person when counting for state population and therefore representation in the federal government. One of Pickering's strongest arguments was that slaves were not counted or taxed as property, and were not allowed to vote, but were still given representation at the bizarre count as 60% of a human. This gave the southern states more votes than the northern states, which led to many southern politicians achieving the presidency in the early years of the nation. This also led to TJ being dubbed The Negro President because it was assumed that the southern states elected Jefferson due to the power of the slave vote.
