#the person who owns this paid 2231$

[beatsfornone]

1973 McCartney ‘Strawberry’ jacket

[earth-2020]

Republic of California

In the newly formed Republic of California, former soldier and veteran of the Second American Civil War, Anonymous, aged 44, offers a personal view into the increasing rate of homelessness in the most prosperous nation of the former United States of America. Moreover, he describes a “Home” from the “good ol’ days.”

…

          I was only eighteen years old when I enlisted to protect our freedoms. Back then, you could walk down the block to the enlistment office without encountering one of those damn security cameras once. Now I can’t even take a shit in a public washroom without a goddamn robot trying to sell off the data of my bowel movements. Pardon my French but, none of us thought any of this could happen, not in our lifetimes anyway.

          The United States of America was the best country on Earth, not even thirty years ago; and they said we were divided back then. In those days, when my father needed a job, he could just work on his father’s greenhouse, which his father owned, and so on. Now here I am, a war veteran with more kills to my name than my great, great, great grandfather, and I can’t find a single job in the richest country that used to be part of my father’s America. Instead, I spend most of my days and nights, as an “Alley Nomad,” searching for whatever work I can find amongst the last people on this godforsaken Earth with the money to hire. You heard me right, we didn’t pick that name, that’s what they call us. The ones in the suits that make the rules, that tell us who to kill so that their stock prices can keep hitting “record highs,” like one of those arcade video game machines. But that’s besides the point. Now, I’m no stranger to rejection. Back when we had “high schools,” we’d have an annual dance called a “prom,” and boy let me tell you, I’ve been rejected by countless females. In those moments, it felt like the world was going to end, every single time. The world has yet to end, but every rejection today, brings me one step closer to my last dance with lady death.

          There was a brief instance in my life when I wasn’t starving, and that was the last time I ever stepped foot in Corporate California. I know that “Content Custodian” doesn’t sound like the best work in the world, and it wasn’t, but it paid the bills. You know how NewTube isn’t what it used to be? Clean, advertiser friendly, child friendly? That’s all thanks to us – well, them. They sit in a room on Floor 2231, floating in a sea of cubicles, toiling away as drones, compiling and cleaning the site. I got fired during my probation period because I couldn’t figure out how to use the damn software. I guess that’s what I deserve for spending my teenage years on attempting to protect our freedoms.

Sincerely,

Anonymous (44)

[sonofhistory]

Hi! Have you done anything on Sally Hemings? If so, could you possibly link me? If not, do you have any information about her? I know so little about her and wish I knew more

Here you go, I wrote you a 2231 word essay on Sally Hemings. All sources come from Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged a Nation and Thomas Jefferson: Art and Power. 

          1735, a man named Hemings, the white English captain of a trading ship, fathered a daughter with a “full-blooded African” woman. The African woman’s child was named Elizabeth. The mother and daughter ended up as slaves of the Eppes family- the Eppes family from which John Wayles (Thomas Jefferson’s father in law) would marry his first wife, Martha. 1746- the year Wayles married Martha Eppes- Elizabeth Hemings, then about eleven years old, moved to the Wayles property. 1761, Elizabeth was taken by John Wayles into concubine and she bore five children to him, Robert Hemings, James Hemings, Thenia Hemings, Critta Hemings an Peter Hemings. In 1773, she gave birth to a sixth child: Sarah “Sally” Hemings.

             Thomas Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton on New Year’s Day 1772. Martha, was a daughter of John Wayles. Through his marriage ,Jefferson acquired more slaves, later receiving Elizabeth Hemings, whose daughter, Sally, who would be born months later- was a half-sister of Martha Jefferson, after Wayles’s death. Martha Jefferson chose to keep the Hemings family together after her father’s death by bringing them onto her land. Jefferson payed a midwife to deliver Elizabeth’s son John. Nearly noon on Friday, September 6, 1782 Martha Jefferson died. Her house servants- including Elizabeth Hemings, were among those with Martha as she lay dying. In her last pledges to her husband, she told him to never marry again- Sally Hemings who was witness to this was not quite ten years old yet. Among one of the last things she did, Martha handed Sally a tiny silver servant bell as a gift.

           1784, when Thomas Jefferson accepted a position as ambassador of France, he brought with him his eldest daughter, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson, and James Hemings- son of Elizabeth Hemings and brother of Sally Hemings. Jefferson had intentions to train James to be a cook of French food. June 26th, 1787, Jefferson was able to get his daughter, Mary “Polly” Jefferson whom he’d left in the company of family along with his now deceased younger daughter Lucy Elizabeth Jefferson over to France to join him and Patsy in attempt to recreate his family. Polly arrived in London and was handed into the care of Abigail Adams, with the youngest Jefferson was Sally Hemings. “The old nurse whom you expected to have attended her was sick and unable to come, Abigail Adams wrote to Jefferson, “She has a girl about about 15 or 16 with her, the sister of the servant you have with you.” Abigail also told she is “quite like a child” and required more care than Polly- who was five year younger. She inquired about sending Sally back to Virginia.

             There are no known images of Sally Hemings. On arrival in Europe, Sally was fourteen years of age, and had very light skin, “almost white” and “very handsome, with long straight hair down her back”. There was some resemblance between Sally Hemings and Jefferson’s late wife Martha Jefferson. Abigail Adams also described Sally as, “…she seems fond of the child and appears good natured.” Polly Jefferson and Sally arrived in Paris on July 15th, 1787. She probably ran errands and served as a chambermaid as well as a seamstress. She accompanied Patsy and Polly to dances and dinners, Jefferson spent a considerable sum in 1789 on clothing for Sally. While in Dusseldorf, Jefferson found himself fascinated by a 1699 painting by the Dutch artist Adriaen van der Werff of Abraham taking the young servant Hagar to his bed. The Virginian described it as, “delicious. I would have agreed to have been Abraham though the consequence would have been that I should have been five or six thousand years.”

         Since her arrival in France, Sally had been paid some small wages- twelve livres a month for ten months. Jefferson had bought clothing for her and had her inoculated against smallpox. Sally’s day routine is less clear, though she may have served the Jefferson daughters as a maid at the convent school during part of her time in Paris. It was during the years of 1788 and 1789 that Thomas Jefferson began his sexual activity with Sally Hemings (then only fifteen or sixteen years old). The emotional content of the Jefferson-Hemings “relationship” is a mystery. Some say he loved her, and vice versa. Others argue it was coercive, institutionalized rape. If someone is your property, it is impossible for you to ask consent before sexual acts because they are “property” to you, property cannot give consent. No consent before sex is rape. All those who were slaves brought into concubine with their masters were raped- property cannot give consent because they are owned by another human being. It was not love, it was rape. Property cannot give consent. Sally Hemings might of been doing what she had to do to survive an evil system, accepting sexual duty as an element of her enslavement and using what leverage she had to improve the lot of her children.

         Hemings, was “light colored and decidedly good-looking. What little evidence of her suggests she was an intelligent, brave woman who did as much as she could with what little the world have given her. A later account, according to Madison Hemings (son of Hemings and Jefferson), Sally was pregnant at the time Jefferson was going to return to the United States. He desired to bring her back to America “but she demurred”. She was just beginning to understand the French language, and in France she was a free woman and refused to return with him. “To induce her to do so he promised her extraordinary privileges, and made a solemn pledge that her children should be freed at the age of twenty-one years”, Madison Hemings recalled. Sally agreed and she returned to Virginia. Soon after arrival, she gave birth to a child. It lived a very short time. She would give birth to four other children, her master father to all of them. Beverly Hemings, Harriet Hemings, Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings. Jefferson kept it- “it was one of the most important pacts of Jefferson’s life” wrote Jon Meacham and in September 1789, Thomas Jefferson left Paris with his daughters and the Hemings siblings to return to America.

         As Jefferson came home in 1789 expecting to be in Virginia only briefly, it is possible that Sally wished to visit her relatives, after which she would return with him to Paris. There is a theory that Patsy Jefferson married so soon after her return to America because she was reacting to her father’s liaison with Sally Hemings. The daughter might have felt disassociated to her father’s affections. During Jefferson’s appointment as Secretary of State, Sally stayed at Monticello. Her main work was the care and tending to Jefferson’s private rooms, drawers, papers and wardrobes. The precise location of her living quarters is unknown, she may have lived in one of the new log servants houses on Mulberry Row. Though, during Jefferson’s presidency, she is thought to of slept in the South Terrace wing. Sally Hemings as pregnant early in 1795 and in October gave birth to a daughter, Harriet. ThereJuly 11th, 1797, Sally gave birth to a son. The baby was named William Beverly, called Beverly. In a letter dated January 22, 1798, Patsy announced the death of Harriet Hemings, the two year old daughter of Jefferson and Hemings; Patsy said nothing of the parentage. August 1799, Sally was pregnant with another child, the unnamed daughter did not live long, born in December 1799. There is no doubt that Jefferson was the father of these children, for he was always home eight to nine months prior to the birth of each of these children. It is highly unlikely Jefferson was in love with Sally, he could never surrender his heart to someone who could break it and it was highly unlikely to occur with Sally; she was bound to him.

         Knowledge of Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings was a topic of conversation in Charlottesville and among Virginia’s politicians. Wednesday, September 1st, 1802 in the Richmond Recorder, James Callender who once looked up to Jefferson, turned on his idol after not receiving the position he wished to receive. Callender got his revenge and published an account of the Jefferson-Sally relationship:

“It is well known that the man, whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps, and for many years had kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is SALLY. The name of her eldest son is TOM. His features are said to bear a striking… resemblance to those of the president himself. The boy is ten or twelve years of age. His mother went to France in the same vessel with Mr. Jefferson and his two daughters. The delicacy of this arrangement must strike every person of common sensibility. What a sublime pattern for an American ambassador to place before the eyes of two young ladies!… By the wench Sally, our president had had several children. There is not an individual in the neighborhood of Charlottesville who does not believe the story; and not a few who know it… Behold the favorite, the first born of republicanism! The pinnacle of all that is good and great!… ‘Tis supposed that, at the time when Mr. Jefferson wrote so smartly concerning negroes, when he endeavored so much to belittle the African race… We give it to the world under the firmest belief that such a refutation never can be made. The AFRICAN VENUS is said to officiate, as housekeeper at Monticello. When Mr. Jefferson had read this article, he will find leisure to estimate how much had been lost or gained by so many unprovoked attacks upon J.T. CALLENDER.”

           Jefferson never directly responded to the charge. Though, in a private letter from 1805- he denies the accusations. His reaction to a poem written about him, shared by Patsy was to laugh it off. “For Jefferson, the code of silence on the issue of sex across the color line appears to have been total” (Meacham 380). Jefferson “coolly” recorded the births of the Hemings children in his farm book along with other details of the lives of his slaves and of his crops. “He was not in the habit of showing partiality of fatherly affection to us children”, said Madison Hemings. According to a grandchild of Thomas Jefferson, “the resemblance was so close, that at some distance or in the dusk the slave, dressed in the same way, might be mistaken for Mr. Jefferson.” Jefferson was the code of denial that defined life in the slave-owning states.

          Many years earlier, February 5, 1796, Jefferson signed a deed of manumission for James Hemings. He was thirty-one years of age. James Hemings was unable to find a purpose for his existence. Although originally headed to Philadelphia, he soon may have traveled to Paris. Jefferson spoke with him more than a year later when James returned to Philadelphia. Jefferson was elected President and few days later reached out to James, who was working as a cook in a Baltimore tavern, if he would like him to come to Washington. James’s was reluctance to leave Baltimore may have been because he had formed an “attachment” there. A few months later, James turned up at Monticello to run the kitchen during Jefferson’s long summer. He was paid twenty dollars a month which was more than double his previous wage. James left Monticello in September, a little over a month later, James Hemings committed suicide.

         Thomas Jefferson died on July 4th, 1826. With him at the time of his death were many members of the Hemings family. His coffin had been made by John Hemings, the fifty year old brother of Sally. Of the four children of Jefferson and Sally’s who survived to adulthood, Beverly and Harriet had been allowed to leave Monticello in early 1820s. Harriet married a white man in Washington city and raised a family of children. Madison was freed in Jefferson’s will and ultimately moved to Ohio, as did Eston, eventually settling in Wisconsin, changing his name to eston jefferson, declaring himself white. In his will, Jefferson also freed three other members of the Hemings family: Burwell Colbert, John Hemings and Joe Fossett. Jefferson freed no other slaves. Sally Hemings soon after his death, moved to Charlottesville and lived without incident as a free woman. She died in 1835, giving a few momentos to her children of Jefferson’s: a pair of his glasses, an inkwell and a shoe buckle. No one knows where Sally Hemings is buried.

             Later years, many have tried to suggest that it was Jefferson’s cousin (who resembled him very much) who was the father of Sally’s children. Those rape sympathizers were finally proven wrong in 1998 with DNA findings and subsequent reevaluation that confirmed the “relationship”. DNA tests confirmed that a male in Jefferson’s line, not one of a suggested nephews, was the father of at least one of Sally Hemings’s children. The room where it is believe Sally Hemings slept was just steps away from Thomas Jefferson’s bedroom. But in 1941, caretakers of Monticello turned it into a restroom. It wasn’t until recently that the floor tiles were taking up and it was turned into a room dedicated to Sally Hemings. It was a liason long denied by “mainstream white historians” and reminds us of who Jefferson really was- a hypocrite.