Americans transcribed the Edenic myth and heralded the supremacy of the New World over the Old. Yet, many could not suppress the fear that they were already losing their sense of purity, innocence, and power, and would in time come face to face with the disappointments of history, the sorrows of the human condition, and [...]
Editor's Note: Thomas Jefferson wrote several lists of advice about the virtuous life to his children, grandchildren, and the children of friends. The final list, which he called "A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life," was sent during his retirement years from his beloved home of Monticello to Thomas Jefferson Smith, the son [...]
From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition by Clyde N. Wilson (356 pages, The Foundation for American Education, 2003) “To check power, to return the American empire to republicanism we do not need to resort to the drastic right of revolution nor to the destructive goal of anarchic individualism. We have in the [...]
Asked fifty or one hundred years ago, Americans would have identified Thomas Jefferson as a great hero, perhaps the great hero, of American history. As democrat, intellectual, and revolutionary penman, the man who made the case against George III and defeated Alexander Hamilton had lit the path toward American republican success. In recent years, however, the general [...]
Thomas Jefferson is a kind of incarnate compendium of the Enlightenment. His remarkable openness to its spirit is the philosophical counterpart to his political sensitivity in making himself “a passive auditor of the opinions of others,” so as to catch the “harmonizing sentiments of the day” and to incorporate them into a document that would [...]
For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and [...]
The masters of slaves, it turned out, were themselves neither independent nor self-sufficient, but were bound to, and reliant upon, their slaves both for their welfare and their identity. This vague recognition in part accounts for the grim tone that Thomas Jefferson adopted in his analysis of slavery: He had to confront the prospect that [...]
The Sage of Monticello, by Dumas Malone, Volume Six of Jefferson and His Time In 1809 Thomas Jefferson yielded up the Presidency and crossed into Virginia. In the 17 active years remaining to him he never left there. The first volume of Malone’s masterpiece, published in 1948, was Jefferson the Virginian. The sixth and last [...]
Thomas Jefferson considered his authorship of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom one of his three greatest accomplishments; he dictated that his gravestone should acknowledge this fact next to his authorship of the Declaration of Independence and his founding of the University of Virginia. Drafted in 1777, the statute was first introduced into the Virginia [...]
Thomas Jefferson had hardly been exposed to the scientific and literary talents of black people except, to some extent, Phyllis Wheatley and Benjamin Banneker. At the end of his life, blacks in America were at the portal of coming into their own and would flower in the pursuits he most admired by the mid-late-19th century [...]
All Americans tend to look at the nation either as disciples of Jefferson or as disciples of Adams: Jefferson told Americans what they wanted to hear; Adams told Americans what they needed to know… I. I was having a beer with a couple of other graduate students. We were looking out onto State Street, enjoying [...]
Editor’s Note: We invite you to join Thomas Jefferson (portrayed by Bill Barker) as he explores the remarkable history of the early American Republic and the principles that undergird it. From Jamestown to Plymouth, from the American Revolution to the Louisiana Purchase, the promise of free enterprise has driven the course of human history on [...]
America’s Founders did not want Congress to establish a national church, and many opposed establishments at the state level as well. Yet there was virtually no support for the sort of separation of church and state promoted today by organizations such as the ACLU. In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), Justice Wiley Rutledge proclaimed that “no [...]
The “separation of church and state” was intended in part to prevent the sorts of religious conflicts that had racked Europe in previous centuries. Nevertheless, it was only a matter of time before the ambiguity of this figure of speech would be exploited. During her confirmation hearing last September, Notre Dame law professor, Amy Coney Barrett, [...]