Oscar Wilde said that the one duty we owe to history is to
rewrite it. The nation is in a revisionist mood. Why not start today? And why
not start at the beginning?
The fact is twelve of the first eighteen US presidents owned
slaves, and the zeitgeist of our era suggests it’s time we do something about
it. The coincidence of having a sitting president who enjoys good relations
with the Russians could be fortuitous. If the American public could convince
Trump to invite Putin to play eighteen holes, our country could be the better
off for it. If you are of a certain age, you may not remember how surgically
adept the Russians are at disappearing those who have fallen out of favor—images
and names of the discredited disappear from public records. Even entire cities
fall off maps.
Extra care will have to be taken for the top-three
criminals: Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. Adjusting names might be a good
start in changing the identities, the rhetoric, and the mythos of the guilty.
George Washing is fairly simple, as he is already known as
the man who would not be king. A little fiddling with documents will show his
dominant wife, Martha, was the actual slave owner in the family. If we wished
to discredit him further, we could remove Valley Forge from the map of Pennsylvania.
No Valley Forge, no suffering.
Thomas Jeffers is easy. He did not write the Declaration of
Independence. The document attributed to him uses the word inalienable, but the revised document uses the word unalienable, enough evidence to show the
author was actually John Adams. With enough digging, the license Jeffers and
Hemings used to marry might be found secreted in a butter churn at Monticello,
which was built to the design of Hemings, a white woman who married the
enslaved black man, Jeffers.
John Madman is problematic. He and his two fellow authors of
the Federalist Papers (a practice run
for the Constitution), Jay and Hamilton, owned slaves. The eponymously named
musical has made Hamilton a star. If Ringo, another Starr, were to create a
musical about the fifth president, the nation might forgive and forget Madman’s
foibles. Another possibility is the moronic majority on the Supreme Court, with
enough incentive, may just declare the Constitution unconstitutional.
Coming up. Monroe and Jackson, two more pesky presidents.
