Tracing the bogus Thomas Jefferson bank quote

As mentioned in the previous post, a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson is being bandied about now that the bank bailout is in the news. The quote is:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” – Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1802

I thought the quote was fishy-sounding, so I did some Googling tonight to find where it came from. The first step was to search on a unique snippet of the quote. Out of 220 Google results on “continent their fathers conquered” I found a slew of results from this year (and especially last month), but many without listed dates. How far back could I trace it?
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Bogus Thomas Jefferson quote

I found this quote supposedly by Thomas Jefferson floating around the Internet:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” – Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1802

While a bit poetic, I think the quote is fabricated. The folks at Snopes think its bogus. It also doesn’t appear on UVa’s Thomas Jefferson Quotation Page.

Just like the Einstein Bee quote, someone used Jefferson’s stature to prop up their modern-day argument. Continue reading

Highway horses

Watching a police officer ride on horseback through downtown this afternoon got me wondering: what are the laws about horses on public streets? Still legal? I imagine there was never a defined point where cars became kings of the road.

Any horse experts want to weigh in?