I ask the acceptance, by your son, of a keep-sake from me. It is an article of the tackle of a gun-man, offering the convenience of carrying the powder & shot together. I presume he is a gun-man, as I am sure he ought to be, and every American who wishes to protect his farm from the ravages of quadrupeds & his country from those of biped invaders.
Thomas Jefferson
August 15, 1816
Letter to Payne Todd.
[Every American ought to be a gun-man.
Update that to include women and it’s “case closed”.—Joe]
damn quadrupeds….
It amazes me that we are so technologically advanced compared to the 1800’s, yet their verbiage and prose are so much better than ours.
A gender non-specific default to masculine; I see no trouble with Jefferson’s wording being used verbatim as a quote to include women.
yeah, I never bought into that PC garbage either.
My grandmother hunted in the early 1900s while her husband was out working the fields of their homestead.
I imagine that scenario played itself out during Jefferson’s time as well, including self defense. Still; back then, men and boys were vastly more considered as the hunters and protectors. And women didn’t vote. Things were very different in that regard, but I’ll take the sex non-specific default for today.
It’s the principle or the ideal (liberty) that matters, and so I won’t get distracted by such details. The bipedal anti rights activists (what the hell – communists – let’s be clear) try to tell us that the founders didn’t mean what they meant, and this quote from Jefferson is a fine rebuttal, among many, to such lies.
I wonder if the “powder and shot together” item was one of Jefferson’s many inventions.