If a democracy drifts into unlimited notions of freedom, the best course of action is not to strip citizens of freedom, but rather to educate them, so that they can correct any constitutional abuses that contributed or led the way to the abyss of nihilism. Introduction This essay will revisit the age-old concern with the [...]
Here are recommended essays regarding Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) on The Imaginative Conservative: Looking for Mr. Jefferson by Clyde Wilson Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday by Clyde Wilson The Jeffersonian Conservative Tradition by Clyde Wilson Thomas Jefferson, Conservative by Clyde Wilson From Union to Empire by W. Winston Elliott III Was Thomas Jefferson a Philosopher? by Eva Brann [...]
What is history if not a “survey,” and what are historians if not chain-bearers? Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? —Walt Whitman, Song of Myself History records that in 1763 two guys surveyed a demarcation line separating Pennsylvania and Maryland as well as bits of Delaware and West Virginia. The surveyors were Charles Mason [...]
The adoption of the Declaration of Independence of “the thirteen united States of America” on July 4, 1776 formally ended a process that had been set in motion almost as soon as colonies were established in what became British North America. The early settlers, once separated physically from the British Isles by an immense ocean, [...]
Were the actions of Thomas Jefferson as president consistent with his constitutional theory? David N. Mayer’s account raises fundamental but unanswered questions. The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson by David N. Mayer (416 pages, University of Virginia Press, 1995) Thomas Jefferson continues to fascinate scholars. A voluminous literature examines his long public career and extensive comments on [...]
For Clyde Wilson, the Jeffersonian conservative tradition was never a stale embrace of the past for its own sake. It conserves only to produce something better. In 1969 the late Mel Bradford recommended to Modern Age’s second editor, Eugene Davidson, that he should publish a groundbreaking article by a young historian named Clyde Wilson. The [...]
Cara Rogers Stevens has done the history profession proud with her new book, and we owe her a huge thanks for revising our understanding of Thomas Jefferson in terms of his lifelong opposition to slavery. Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery, by Cara Rogers Stevens (400 pages, (University Press of Kansas, 2024) As I’ve [...]
In “Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor,” Richard R. Beeman tells a compelling narrative of the crucial years between the first meeting of the Continental Congress and the announcement of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. He gives concrete examples of the novel ways in which the lines of political and legal [...]
The need for understanding our roots is as timeless as the human story itself and explains why we cling to the Declaration of Independence. Most people know that the Fourth of July—Independence Day—is a celebration of America’s separation from Great Britain. July 4, 1776 marks the beginning of the United States. It’s like our national birthday. [...]
The sanitizing of Thomas Jefferson has played a role in the crippling of public discourse. Nowadays, anyone who would discuss something so anodyne as political decentralization or states' rights has to walk on eggshells, lest he find himself attacked and stigmatized by enforcers of political orthodoxy. We should question an American political establishment that obfuscates [...]
Nowhere to be seen now are the old Jeffersonians, once a major American type, rebellious men who dared defend the rights of themselves and their communities from outside impositions. But buried somewhere deep in the American soul is a tiny ember of Jeffersonian democracy that now and then gives off an uncertain, feeble, and futile [...]
The irony of Jefferson's conception of a republican future for the United States was that the establishment and maintenance of a simple, peaceful, agrarian republic required an aggressive foreign policy that virtually ensured conflict with other peoples and nations. I. Like most of his contemporaries, Thomas Jefferson believed that republican government was, at best, fragile [...]
The Declaration of Independence, intended as an expression of the common opinion, is truly a text of "right opinion," a benign practical text which also has a peculiarly sound relation to the realm of thought. Section I: The Legacy of the Declaration When American schoolchildren first discover that they have a place in the world they [...]
No one who reads and digests “A Better Guide Than Reason” can fail to be revolutionized. We had thought that the great Southern political tradition—that of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun, and the agrarians—was dead. Not so. A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution by M.E. Bradford (241 pages, Sherwood Sugden [...]