wkwillis said:
Without that nitwit America would have been much better off. The only thing he did right was the Louisiana purchase...
Actually, in my opinion, the Louisiana Purchase was the worst mistake Jefferson made as President. Jefferson, up until that time, had been a "strict constructionist" with regard to the Constitution. The Constitution does not give Congress the power to appropriate money for the purchase of territory from foreign powers. By violating his own principles and asking Congress to do something which it, in fact, constitutionally had no power to do, he set the precedent which would be used by future Presidents (such as Abe Lincoln, FDR, and all the the Presidents who followed FDR) and Congresses to expand federal power. The land COULD have been constitutionally acquired (the Constitution could have been amended to allow the federal government to make such purchases), but it would have taken much more time. Jefferson was simply not willing to wait. If Jefferson had resisted the temptation to usurp powers which did not rightfully belong to him, we would all be a lot more free today.
wkwillis said:
...and the only reason he did that was to prevent the formation of a French sanctuary for slaves.
Wrong again. Jefferson made the purchase because it seemed too good a deal to refuse. It gave the U.S. complete control of the Mississippi River, and nearly doubled the size of the country at a cost of a few cents an acre. Jefferson was also at heart a scientist, and the unknown wonders to be found in these virtually unexplored regions were very tempting for him personally (which is why just about the first thing he did after he made the purchase was to organize the Lewis and Clark expedition, with orders to carefully document all the geology, flora and fauna they encountered on the journey west to the Pacific).
wkwillis said:
...Without Jefferson we would have had a decent navy and the British wouldn't have kept enslaving Yankee sailors. .
Wrong again. The problem which kept us from having a strong navy was a penny-pinching Congress which would not invest the necessary funds to build one. There is no way we could have built a navy which would have worried the British at that point in history, anyway. We simply did not have the population, industry, or financial resources to do so. And Jefferson did recognize the value of a strong Navy...it was he, after all, who completed our wars with the Barbary Pirates.
wkwillis said:
...Even then the southerners hated the northerners for getting rich without slaves.
Oh? And on what do you base this remarkable assertion? The South at this time was the wealthiest region in the country...a situation which continued until after 1860 (Hmmm, can anyone guess why this suddenly changed after 1860?). Most northerners who were wealthy during the years Jefferson served as President were wealthy because of their involvement in the slave trade...either directly as ship-owners or indirectly because they produced rum and other items for export to Africa, to be traded for slaves. There was very little other industry in the North producing income during this time period. And plantation agriculture based on slavery still existed in the North at this time, too.