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In 1821, at the age of seventy-seven, Thomas Jefferson decided to "state some recollections of dates and facts concerning myself." His ancestors, Jefferson writes, came to America from Wales in the early seventeenth century and settled in the Virginia colony. Jefferson's father, although uneducated, possessed a "strong mind and sound judgement" and raised his family in the far western frontier of the colony, an experience that contributed to his son's eventual staunch defense of individual and state rights. Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary, entered the law, and in 1775 was elected to represent Virginia at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, an event that propelled him...
Hitchens brings the character of Jefferson to life as a man of his time and also as a symbolic figure beyond it. Conflicted by power, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and acted as Minister to France yet yearned for a quieter career in the Virginia legislature. Predicting that slavery would shape the future of America's development, this professed proponent of emancipation continued to own human property. He negotiated the Louisiana Purchase with France, doubling the size of the nation, and authorized the Lewis and Clark expedition, opening up the American frontier. The Barbary War, a lesser-known chapter of his political career, led to the building of the U.S. Navy and the fortification of America's reputation regarding national defense. In the background is the fledgling nation's struggle for independence, formed in the crucible of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and, in its shadow, the deformation of that struggle in the excesses of the French Revolution.
Dumas Malone wrote his first 15,000 word essay about Jefferson for the scholarly Dictionary of American Biography. This reprint is Malone's own revision of that essay, made after his decades of study of a remarkable American.
Jefferson regarded Jesus as a moral guide rather than a divinity. In his unique interpretation of the Bible, he highlights Christ's ethical teachings, discarding the scriptures' supernatural elements, to reflect the deist view of religion.
In this definitive short biography, Bernstein deftly synthesizes the massive scholarship on his subject into an insightful, evenhanded account illuminating Jefferson's central place in the American Enlightenment. Book jacket.
The definitive life of Jefferson in one volume, this biography relates Jefferson's private life and thought to his prominent public position and reveals the rich complexity of his development. As Peterson explores the dominant themes guiding Jefferson's career--democracy, nationality, and enlightenment--and Jefferson's powerful role in shaping America, he simultaneously tells the story of nation coming into being.
Among the Second Series of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, this volume has the most detailed coverage of his day-to-day life. These disciplined records of personal expenditures, and of various other daily observations, furnish valuable information about prices and availability of commodities of the period and provide abundant evidence of Jefferson's devotion to a systematic way of living and of his insatiable curiosity. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Includes Jefferson's correspondence, drawings, and plans for Monticello's gardens.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER Following Thomas Jefferson from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, Joseph J. Ellis unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. He gives us the slaveholding libertarian who was capable of decrying mescegenation while maintaing an intimate relationship with his slave, Sally Hemmings; the enemy of government power who exercisdd it audaciously as president; the visionarty who remained curiously blind to the inconsistencies in his nature. American Sphinx is a marvel of scholarship, a delight to read, and an essential gloss on the Jeffersonian legacy.