Jeffersonian Legacies

Jeffersonian Legacies
Author: Peter S. Onuf
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 500
Release: 1993
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780813914633

Jeffersonian Legacies provides the next generation of students, scholars, and citizens a better understanding not only of Jefferson in his own world but his influence in the shaping of ours.

Religious Freedom

Religious Freedom
Author: John A. Ragosta
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2013-04-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0813933714

For over one hundred years, Thomas Jefferson and his Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom have stood at the center of our understanding of religious liberty and the First Amendment. Jefferson’s expansive vision—including his insistence that political freedom and free thought would be at risk if we did not keep government out of the church and church out of government—enjoyed a near consensus of support at the Supreme Court and among historians, until Justice William Rehnquist called reliance on Jefferson "demonstrably incorrect." Since then, Rehnquist’s call has been taken up by a bevy of jurists and academics anxious to encourage renewed government involvement with religion. In Religious Freedom: Jefferson’s Legacy, America’s Creed, the historian and lawyer John Ragosta offers a vigorous defense of Jefferson’s advocacy for a strict separation of church and state. Beginning with a close look at Jefferson’s own religious evolution, Ragosta shows that deep religious beliefs were at the heart of Jefferson’s views on religious freedom. Basing his analysis on that Jeffersonian vision, Ragosta redefines our understanding of how and why the First Amendment was adopted. He shows how the amendment’s focus on maintaining the authority of states to regulate religious freedom demonstrates that a very strict restriction on federal action was intended. Ultimately revealing that the great sage demanded a firm separation of church and state but never sought a wholly secular public square, Ragosta provides a new perspective on Jefferson, the First Amendment, and religious liberty within the United States.

Jeffersonian America

Jeffersonian America
Author: Peter Onuf
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2001-10-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781557869234

This book analyzes Thomas Jefferson's conception of American nationhood in light of the political and social demands facing the post-Revolutionary Republic in its formative years.

Thomas Jefferson: Architect

Thomas Jefferson: Architect
Author: Hugh Howard
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 078933979X

This is the first volume to include all of the existing work by Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and the father of American architecture. Along with his numerous political achievements, Thomas Jefferson was also the first great architect of the United States. The Jeffersonian Classical style has been so influential that along with Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson, Jefferson is one of the three most recognized architects in American History.

America's Environmental Legacies

America's Environmental Legacies
Author: Franklin Kalinowski
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2016-09-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1349948985

This powerful book focuses on the capacity of the American political system to respond to ecological challenges through policy perspectives, the constraints of our written Constitution, and the determination we muster to address these tests of national character. Put simply, this is a book about politics, policy, and political will. Kalinowski brilliantly shows that America’s collective will is found in the cultural values enunciated by the Founding Fathers and passed down through history with modifications. It comprises the essential missing ingredient in determining how we currently respond to crises. Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison had distinct ideas concerning the role that Nature might play in the future. Recognizing the origins and impacts of their environmental legacies is the key to interpreting where American environmental politics is today, how we got here, and where we might be headed.

Master of the Mountain

Master of the Mountain
Author: Henry Wiencek
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2012-10-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1466827785

Is there anything new to say about Thomas Jefferson and slavery? The answer is a resounding yes. Master of the Mountain, Henry Wiencek's eloquent, persuasive book—based on new information coming from archaeological work at Monticello and on hitherto overlooked or disregarded evidence in Jefferson's papers—opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson's world. We must, Wiencek suggests, follow the money. So far, historians have offered only easy irony or paradox to explain this extraordinary Founding Father who was an emancipationist in his youth and then recoiled from his own inspiring rhetoric and equivocated about slavery; who enjoyed his renown as a revolutionary leader yet kept some of his own children as slaves. But Wiencek's Jefferson is a man of business and public affairs who makes a success of his debt-ridden plantation thanks to what he calls the "silent profits" gained from his slaves—and thanks to a skewed moral universe that he and thousands of others readily inhabited. We see Jefferson taking out a slave-equity line of credit with a Dutch bank to finance the building of Monticello and deftly creating smoke screens when visitors are dismayed by his apparent endorsement of a system they thought he'd vowed to overturn. It is not a pretty story. Slave boys are whipped to make them work in the nail factory at Monticello that pays Jefferson's grocery bills. Parents are divided from children—in his ledgers they are recast as money—while he composes theories that obscure the dynamics of what some of his friends call "a vile commerce." Many people of Jefferson's time saw a catastrophe coming and tried to stop it, but not Jefferson. The pursuit of happiness had been badly distorted, and an oligarchy was getting very rich. Is this the quintessential American story?

A Companion to Thomas Jefferson

A Companion to Thomas Jefferson
Author: Francis D. Cogliano
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 899
Release: 2011-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1444344617

A Companion to Thomas Jefferson presents a state-of-the-art assessment and overview of the life and legacy of Thomas Jefferson through a collection of essays grounded in the latest scholarship. Features essays by the leading scholars in the field, including Pulitzer Prize winners Annette Gordon-Reed and Jack Rakove Includes a section that considers Jefferson’s legacy Explores Jefferson’s wide range of interests and expertise, and covers his public career, private life, his views on democracy, and his writings Written to be accessible for the non-specialist as well as Jefferson scholars

Reclamation

Reclamation
Author: Gayle Jessup White
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0063028670

A Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ family explores America’s racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors—both the enslaver and the enslaved. Gayle Jessup White had long heard the stories passed down from her father’s family, that they were direct descendants of Thomas Jefferson—lore she firmly believed, though others did not. For four decades the acclaimed journalist and genealogy enthusiast researched her connection to Thomas Jefferson, to confirm its truth once and for all. After she was named a Jefferson Studies Fellow, Jessup White discovered her family lore was correct. Poring through photos and documents and pursuing DNA evidence, she learned that not only was she a descendant of Jefferson on his father’s side; she was also the great-great-great-granddaughter of Peter Hemings, Sally Hemings’s brother. In Reclamation she chronicles her remarkable journey to definitively understand her heritage and reclaim it, and offers a compelling portrait of what it means to be a black woman in America, to pursue the American dream, to reconcile the legacy of racism, and to ensure the nation lives up to the ideals advocated by her legendary ancestor.

The Mind of Thomas Jefferson

The Mind of Thomas Jefferson
Author: Peter S. Onuf
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 437
Release: 2012-10-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813934230

In The Mind of Thomas Jefferson, one of the foremost historians of Jefferson and his time, Peter S. Onuf, offers a collection of essays that seeks to historicize one of our nation’s founding fathers. Challenging current attempts to appropriate Jefferson to serve all manner of contemporary political agendas, Onuf argues that historians must look at Jefferson’s language and life within the context of his own place and time. In this effort to restore Jefferson to his own world, Onuf reconnects that world to ours, providing a fresh look at the distinction between private and public aspects of his character that Jefferson himself took such pains to cultivate. Breaking through Jefferson’s alleged opacity as a person by collapsing the contemporary interpretive frameworks often used to diagnose his psychological and moral states, Onuf raises new questions about what was on Jefferson’s mind as he looked toward an uncertain future. Particularly striking is his argument that Jefferson’s character as a moralist is nowhere more evident, ironically, than in his engagement with the institution of slavery. At once reinvigorating the tension between past and present and offering a new way to view our connection to one of our nation’s founders, The Mind of Thomas Jefferson helps redefine both Jefferson and his time and American nationhood.

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
Author: Annette Gordon-Reed
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1998-03-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813933560

When Annette Gordon-Reed's groundbreaking study was first published, rumors of Thomas Jefferson's sexual involvement with his slave Sally Hemings had circulated for two centuries. Among all aspects of Jefferson's renowned life, it was perhaps the most hotly contested topic. The publication of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings intensified this debate by identifying glaring inconsistencies in many noted scholars' evaluations of the existing evidence. In this study, Gordon-Reed assembles a fascinating and convincing argument: not that the alleged thirty-eight-year liaison necessarily took place but rather that the evidence for its taking place has been denied a fair hearing. Friends of Jefferson sought to debunk the Hemings story as early as 1800, and most subsequent historians and biographers followed suit, finding the affair unthinkable based upon their view of Jefferson's life, character, and beliefs. Gordon-Reed responds to these critics by pointing out numerous errors and prejudices in their writings, ranging from inaccurate citations, to impossible time lines, to virtual exclusions of evidence—especially evidence concerning the Hemings family. She demonstrates how these scholars may have been misguided by their own biases and may even have tailored evidence to serve and preserve their opinions of Jefferson. This updated edition of the book also includes an afterword in which the author comments on the DNA study that provided further evidence of a Jefferson and Hemings liaison. Possessing both a layperson's unfettered curiosity and a lawyer's logical mind, Annette Gordon-Reed writes with a style and compassion that are irresistible. Each chapter revolves around a key figure in the Hemings drama, and the resulting portraits are engrossing and very personal. Gordon-Reed also brings a keen intuitive sense of the psychological complexities of human relationships—relationships that, in the real world, often develop regardless of status or race. The most compelling element of all, however, is her extensive and careful research, which often allows the evidence to speak for itself. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy is the definitive look at a centuries-old question that should fascinate general readers and historians alike.