on Thomas Jefferson's alcohol policies for American Indians: 
    "In the development of the American civic religion in the 19th and 20th centuries, Thomas Jefferson has played a central role and has been idealized in the process.  The spotlight has been on the benign things that Jefferson said, from time to time, about -- for example -- Indians and slaves, and not on what he actually did, and refrained from doing. He said many benign things about American Indians, on familiar 'noble redman' lines. But his instructions to American officials dealing with Indians were free from such sentimentality. Finding that such officials were trying to check the access of Indians to firewater, in order to save their lives, he instructed such officials to desist from such interference with the natural course of things.  The sooner the Indians died out, or at least declined into helplessness, the better it would be."  Conor Cruise O'Brien, review of vols. I & II of the Oxford History of the British Empire,  New York Review of Books, 16 Dec., 1999, pp. 78, 82, 83 (at p. 82).
    I would be interested if anyone on the list has the references which might underlie O'Brien's statements here.  Robin Room