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