𝓔𝓲𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓷ᵕ̈

Team Chaotix Week 2026: Picnic

ART CREDS: Jhoca ; sink-is-ey-okay ; Mono-socke ; Depressedrevolutionariesinlove ; oceanjar01 ; badeyesightdog ; ferosfer

I know it took me a long time to post this, but I just remembered, haha. I'll upload day two in a little while, I swear! 🙏🥹

Correction; I don't think he's a hero, or a villain. Due to my lack of interest of learning about him - which isn't deep or anything, he just genuinely does not interest me - I can come across as being harsher towards him than how I do with many of the other founders. The ideology someone could be a saint, or pure evil; is kind of a childish fairytale view. When judging historical figures, you need to see them as the people that they are, not statues of fictional heroes upon a pedestal. And in almost every case with a founder; they are just morally gray people. On one hand; Jefferson was the author of the Declaration Of Independence, a ballsy job not many were willing to commit to and do. And on the other; he was an asshole, manipulative politician, pedophile, etc. People often times seem conscripted to choose between seeing controversial historical figures as heroes, or villains. With the downfall being missing the reasonable answer that is the ambiguity and complexity of humanity. It's a common side affect to trying to objectify these real human people as saints, or sinister people to either only condone or condem. Because the end result is; the polarization. There isn't going to be a completely terrible or completely great person.

Anyway, in many cases; it's subjective wether someone's shortcomings outweigh their accomplishments. And I'm not here to personally countdown every misdeed in Jefferson's life to give an answer. But I will say that; from most of what I've heard, I am not fond of Jefferson in any aspect. I'll spare the details about his relationship with slavery and the Hemming's case — not out of the intent to dismiss those disgusting acts, but because I don't feel like repeating what has already be told repeatedly. And we are really judging on his “personality” here, so let's just take from the perspective of his own time.

He was a sexist, and supported rapists.

Jefferson believed that;

“More so than most founders, Thomas Jefferson dwelled on disorderly women. He noted that his good-hearted male assistant “loses all power over himself and becomes almost frenzied” when in the company of women. Jefferson was against imposing harsh penalties on rapists lest disorderly women use the rape charge as “an instrument of vengeance against an inconstant lover and of disappointment to a rival.” He condemned French women who engaged in public petitioning and protests for abandoning their families and nourishing “all our bad passions.” He blamed France's Queen Marie Antoinette for an “inflexible perverseness and dauntless spirit," manipulation of the king, and the violence of the French Revolution. He commented, “I should have shut the Queen in a convent, putting harm out of her power.” Jefferson's misogynist tendency to blame women for all public problems was simply an extreme example of the founders' deep distrust of public women.

Not surprisingly, many founders joined fraternal organizations where men could escape from women to enjoy male camaraderie. Social groups like the Freemasons, martial institutions such as the Society of the Cincinnati, and political clubs like Democratic Societies were male-only organizations that invited members to congregate, socialize, network, deliberate, plan, and make decisions regarding their families, businesses, communities, and nation without women's presence, intervention, or interference.”

(source — The Gendering of American Politics: Founding Mothers, Founding Fathers, and Political Patriarchy, by Mark E. Kann)

He was super racist, even for his day.

Granted, throughout Jefferson's life, he was always publicly disagreeing towards slavery, despite enslaving 600 people. Jefferson called slavery a “moral depravity”, and he believed that slavery was a great threat to their new nation. And he also thought that slavery was a terrible contradiction to the laws of nature, which was that everyone had a right to personal liberty.

But that is all severely less applauding when Jefferson's belief in the necessity of abolition was intertwined with his racist beliefs — as in, Jefferson didn't care if slaves were freed or not, he still thought they were inferior and didn't deserve to be in America with white folks. He thought that white Americans and enslaved black people constituted two separate nations, and that they could never live together peacefully, or even in the same country, abolishment or not.

Jefferson also believed that black people were racially inferior, and even had the capability of children;

“for, men, probably of any colour, but of this color we know, brought up from their infancy without necessity for thought or forecast, are by their habits rendered as incapable as children of taking care of themselves, and are extinguished promptly wherever industry is necessary for raising the young. in the mean time they are pests in society by their idleness, and the depredations to which this leads them. their amalgamation with the other colour produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character can innocently consent.”

(source — from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Coles, [August 25, 1814])

And he was actually terrified what freed slaves might do to their previous owners, that he supported deporting black people out of the United States ( Freed or not ) in favor of protecting planation owners.

Which is the whole meaning behind Jefferson's well-known quote; “we have a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go”

All of which, was pretty racist even by his day-in-age. Trust me, there are plenty more admirable abolitionists that did not agree with this same sickening ideology.

He was a shitty person and friend.

So, I'm not going to bring up his rivalry with Adams because they were both petty and ridiculous.

Thaddeus - also known as Tadeusz - Kosciuszko ( 1746-1817 ), was a Polish engineer, and firm believer in liberty. Kosciuszko traveled to America during the American Revolution and even fought in the war, and later gained even greater recognition in defense of his native Poland. And he was also an abolitionist, and hated slavery.

Yet, he was also great friends with Jefferson. Who had called him; “as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.” The major difference between Kosciuszko and Jefferson as abolitionists, was that Kosciuszko was actually willing to act on his word.

In 1798, Kodciuszko left the United States and returned to the Russian-controlled sector of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Jefferson had helpfully provided him with a passport in a false name and arranged for his secret departure to France. But before leaving that same year, Kodciuszko wrote out a will and entrusted Jefferson to be the executor. In the document, Kosciuszko - long before the American Civil War - pleaded for the emancipation of America's black slaves. His plan was to leave his American estate to buy the freedom of the enslaved, including Jefferson's own, and to educate them for independent life and work as to help supply them after they would be freed from the planations.

“I Thaddeus Kosciuszko being just in my departure from America do hereby declare and direct that should I make no other testamentory disposition of my property in the United States I hereby authorise my friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole thereof in purchasing Negroes from among his own or any others and giving them Liberty in my name, in giving them en education in trades or othervise and in having them instructed for their new condition in the duties of morality which may make them good neigh bours good fathers or moders, husbands or vives and in their duties as citisens teeching them to be defenders of their Liberty and Country and of the good order of Society and in whatsoever may Make them happy and useful, and I make the said Thomas Jefferson my executor of this”

(source — Will of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, [May 5, 1798])

In October 1817, Kosciuszko passed. But even before such, in September, he wrote a letter to Jefferson reminding him of the deal; “—of which money, after my death, you know the fixed destination.” And yet, Jefferson waited until he was of age 77, to claim that he was too old to fill in the request, and that it was too complicated legally. After the case was passed around through a couple of other men who all refused to fullfil it; and I don't believe it was ever completed.

He was a manipulative politician.

He did that imperious, artificial sympathy shit of dressing poor to make himself appear more relatable and humanizing to people. Which in the end; is just insulting and arrogant, but even politicians ( And celebrities ) do things like that today and get away with objectifying others simply because of class differences.

From my judgement, he was just as sexist as the next man of his day, but I will argue he was a bit more strict on the subject. It is obvious he thought women were not equeal to men, and that men were superior. And he displays a lot of toxic masculinity.

Laurens wrote a letter to his father, sometime either during the Battle of Newport, or the Battle of Rhode Island. It was after the French came to the American coast to become an ally to the beleaguered Continental Army and help fight against the British. Although there was a lot of tension between the Americans and the French, and Laurens uses a rather misogynistic analogy to explain this — claiming women only debated dance, while men discussed the greater revolution;

“—this measure gave much umbrage to the french officers, they conceived their troops injured by our landing first, and talked like women disputing precedence in a country dance, instead of men engaged in pursuing the common interest of two great Nations.”

(source — John Laurens to Henry Laurens, [August 22, 1778])

There is also a case of Laurens hating a spie that was a woman they came across. There was many British deserters that Laurens and his men found, and they would usually give intell on the British army. But when Eliza Clitherall came along, and proved useful — Laurens looked down on her, and thought she was not of much use. While there is the possibility that Laurens disliked her because she was not a good informant, it is more likely that he thought she would not be useful because she was a woman, because there wasn't complaints of her value from any others;

“Loyalist informants from Charleston, a valuable source, frequently refused to give something for nothing.  Laurens furnished them supplies in return for their testimony.  More representative of his spies was Eliza Clitherall […] Clitherall gave Laurens frequent reports of British activity in Charleston.  Laurens regarded Clitherall as an irritant and even suggested to Greene that her services be discontinued.  Still, she continued to provide intelligence, and her efforts proved at least partially successful.”

(source — John Laurens and the American Revolution, by Gregory D. Massey)

This is also heavily present in his relationship with his sisters. As Laurens played an active role in assisting his siblings with their education, so he took it upon himself to also help his sisters become pious and appealing women (How very thoughtful of him,,,). Which didn't even stop there, as Henry Laurens was also quite misogynistic and there are even quotes of him telling Patsy she needs to limit herself, or focus more on training for her domestic wife life when she marries. So, the Laurens girls faced a lot of sexism from their male family members.

In a letter form Laurens to Henry, Laurens talks of how he believes Martha (Or Patsy) should work on her womanly traits, he implies that Martha must work on herself to fit into society's mold of an “ideal” woman, or else she will end up having no value;

“My Sister Patty from her retired Disposition does not appear to have either great opportunity or Ambition to improve in the matters which you allude to; tho’ she possesses in an eminent degree those Qualities which will render her valuable in Society, and lead her to her Duty in all the relative Situations of Life, she is deficient in that Grace of Deportment with gives Splendour to every Action, and increases Respect for the Virtue which it accompanies, but this she will acquire by proper Attention, her walk her Tone of Voice needed Reformation, at my earnest Request she has taken pains and not unprofitably, with the latter, she has good Sentiments and couches them in well chosen words, but they frequently lose their Effect, by being conveyed in an undecided Tone.”

(source — John Laurens to Henry Laurens, [April 26, 1776])

Continuing on with Patsy, Laurens also thought women were just naturally fearful and pathetic in comparison to men. As he challenged his sister to ride faster on a horse carriage ride of theirs to prove if she was so “woman-ish” or not, to which she gladly proved him wrong;

“John Laurens, from whom she had been for some years separated. Being older, he had taken great delight in forwarding her education, and particularly, in forming her mind to be superior to the common accidents of life, and the groundless fears of some of her sex. To ascertain whether his labors had been successful or not, he bribed the postillion to drive very rapidly, and at the same time, without discovering his views, narrowly watch- ed her countenance, to observe whether there were any changes in it expressive of womanish fears, at the novel scene, so totally different from all her former travelling in the low, flat, stoneless country of Carolina. On the termination of the experiment, to his satisfaction, he announced to his unsuspecting sister his congratulations, that ‘he had found her the same Spartan girl he had left her.’”

(source — Memoirs of Eminently Pious Women of Britain and America, Volume 1, edited by David Francis Bacon)

But also, since growing up in such a environment, Polly - Laurens's youngest sister - was quite aware of gender equality from a very young age. There is a letter where Laurens mentions that Polly wanted the same freedom as her older brother, Harry, and to be able to wear breeches. Since she and Harry were coming of age, and would have started to be treated much differently and beginning to be prepped for their different lives. Polly; likely a house wife — and Harry; a successful man. But the attitude that Laurens treats this entire matter with is dismissive, and even laced in a tone of arrogant fond laughter. Laurens says Polly talked with “as much Gravity as Innocence,” meaning he viewed the ideology of equality between men and women as childhood innocence, like this whole endeavor was just some blissful nonsense from a child without any true understanding of how the world works. Truly, he was took this all as if it was not to be taken seriously;

“Sweet little Polly is the admiration of every body_ we both agree that my Aunt does not exercise Authority enough over her, but it can scarcely be wonder’d at, a Person with my Aunts Circumstances with respect to Polly, would rather wish the world to say she is too indulgent, than to severe; and a Desire to avoid one extreme, often leads to another which ought equally to be shun’d, but with all my Aunts Mildness, Polly thinks the Restraint incident to her Sex, very mortifying, and asked one day with as much Gravity as Innocence, if the would not let her wear Breeches & become a Boy, She envied Harry his freedom very much and would wish to be upon the same footing with him, when she was told that this Change would not be effectual, she proposed what she thought would infallibly answer the purpose, to be re-christen’d, and have a male Name.”

Actual footage of Benjamin Tallmadge when he’s angry.