Posted by Alan on September 24, 2003 at 10:52:14
Anovagrrl,
I've got good news and bad news. I'll start with the bad:
I did some searching at the Virginia.edu Jefferson library. Very interesting site, but I am thus far unable to find anything related to preemptory strikes at this site.
I found a search tool in the Jefferson Encyclopedia, and tried the key words "preeemptive" and "preemptory" but it couldn't find either word.
I'm not sure about how to proceed. Without a focused word to search on, you would have to use more broad-based terms such as war, warfare, etc. and then you would get hundreds of results that would have to be examined manually. That would be a daunting task, and could result in nothing about our topic.
I would prefer to find some definitive statements from the Jefferson library in regards to his views on preemptory strikes, because it is less likely to be tainted by either extreme of the political spectrum. But lacking anything from that source, I have found some useful information elsewhere.
Here is the good news:
I used Web Ferret Pro, an Internet search tool which uses 30 different search engines. I used a boolean search for the phrase "preemptory strike" and the key word "Jefferson." I got about 100 hits, but only found one nugget among them:
The following text was found at:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-houston/2002-December/004937.html
In fact the brutal, blood-stained nature of Uncle Sam goes back all the
way to the so-called 'Founding Fathers,' who made no attempt to conceal
it. As long ago as 1818, John Quincy Adams hailed the 'salutary
efficacy' of terror in dealing with 'mingled hordes of lawless Indians
and negroes.' He was defending Andrew Jackson's frenzied operations in
Florida which virtually wiped out the indigenous population and left
the Spanish province under US control. Thomas Jefferson and his
colleagues were not above professing to be impressed by the wisdom of
his words.
Source: Muslimedia: August 16-31, 1997
<
http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/features98/saddam.htm >
My conclusion from the above text is that John Quincy Adams supported some form of unconventional warfare that included preemptory strikes against Indians and fugitive slaves in Florida. The 1818 date is within the time frame of the so-called Seminole Indian wars.
This text also asserts that Thomas Jefferson agreed with Adams' analysis of the effectiveness of a preemptory strike against the Seminoles.
I am a bit bothered by the strongly anti-American bias of this web site, so additional corroboration of this information from other sources would certainly be desirable. On face value, however, this looks like a smoking gun!
Alan