"Most Blessed of the Patriarchs": Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination

Author: Annette Gordon-Reed
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2016-04-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1631490788

New York Times Bestseller Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle Finalist for the George Washington Prize Finalist for the Library of Virginia Literary Award A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection "An important book…[R]ichly rewarding. It is full of fascinating insights about Jefferson." —Gordon S. Wood, New York Review of Books Hailed by critics and embraced by readers, "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs" is one of the richest and most insightful accounts of Thomas Jefferson in a generation. Following her Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hemingses of Monticello¸ Annette Gordon-Reed has teamed with Peter S. Onuf to present a provocative and absorbing character study, "a fresh and layered analysis" (New York Times Book Review) that reveals our third president as "a dynamic, complex and oftentimes contradictory human being" (Chicago Tribune). Gordon-Reed and Onuf fundamentally challenge much of what we thought we knew, and through their painstaking research and vivid prose create a portrait of Jefferson, as he might have painted himself, one "comprised of equal parts sun and shadow" (Jane Kamensky).

American Sphinx

American Sphinx
Author: Joseph J. Ellis
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 463
Release: 1998-11-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0375727469

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.

Thomas Jefferson: Founding Hypocrite

Thomas Jefferson: Founding Hypocrite
Author: Thomas Jefferson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2020-06-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Need a Thomas Jefferson quote to support your position on an issue? Or a quote to argue against that very same position? You’re in luck, because there is a Jefferson quote to argue for or against virtually anything. Want a Jefferson quote in favor of democracy? You’ll find it in this book. Need a Jefferson quote against democracy? It’s in here too. How about the American Revolution? Or Jefferson’s opinion on various Founding Fathers, including Washington, Adams, and Hamilton? The Constitution? Military and national defense? Slavery? Free trade? Agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing? Banks? Taxes? There are Jefferson quotes arguing for and against just about every topic you can imagine. And for the first time, Jefferson’s hypocrisy is on full display in this book of contradictory quotes.

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

Thomas Jefferson
Author: Alf Johnson Mapp (Jr.)
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2009
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780742564404

Follows Jefferson from his inauguration as President in 1801 to his death at the age of 83 on July 4, 1826. It embraces the eight years as Chief Executive in which he doubled the size of the United States by his daring Louisiana Purchase, sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on one of the world's greatest expeditions of exploration, and challenged the formidable Chief Justice John Marshall with a major program of judicial reform. It proves the falseness of the stereotype that Jefferson ignored national defense and tried to keep the Navy weak. The book shows him late in life, with ideas that have relevance today, planning a system of public education and founding the University of Virginia, and it reveals, better than any other biography to date, the intimate details of the lonely private battle he fought during his last tortured, but ultimately triumphant, decade.

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?

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.

An Imperfect God

An Imperfect God
Author: Henry Wiencek
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 505
Release: 2013-11-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1466856599

An Imperfect God is a major new biography of Washington, and the first to explore his engagement with American slavery When George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his "only unavoidable subject of regret." In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father's engagement with slavery at every stage of his life--as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman. Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington's attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but, Wiencek shows, even before he became president Washington had begun to see the system's evil. Wiencek's revelatory narrative, based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington's determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine. And it was perhaps related to the possibility--as the oral history of Mount Vernon's slave descendants has long asserted--that a slave named West Ford was the son of George and a woman named Venus; Wiencek has new evidence that this could indeed have been true. George Washington's heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait: now we see Washington in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.

Jefferson

Jefferson
Author: John B. Boles
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2017-04-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0465094694

From an eminent scholar of the American South, the first full-scale biography of Thomas Jefferson since 1970 Not since Merrill Peterson's Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation has a scholar attempted to write a comprehensive biography of the most complex Founding Father. In Jefferson, John B. Boles plumbs every facet of Thomas Jefferson's life, all while situating him amid the sweeping upheaval of his times. We meet Jefferson the politician and political thinker -- as well as Jefferson the architect, scientist, bibliophile, paleontologist, musician, and gourmet. We witness him drafting of the Declaration of Independence, negotiating the Louisiana Purchase, and inventing a politics that emphasized the states over the federal government -- a political philosophy that shapes our national life to this day. Boles offers new insight into Jefferson's actions and thinking on race. His Jefferson is not a hypocrite, but a tragic figure -- a man who could not hold simultaneously to his views on abolition, democracy, and patriarchal responsibility. Yet despite his flaws, Jefferson's ideas would outlive him and make him into nothing less than the architect of American liberty.

Jefferson and Hamilton

Jefferson and Hamilton
Author: John Ferling
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1608195430

One of America's foremost historians brilliantly brings to life the fierce struggle - both public and, ultimately, bitterly personal - between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton - two rivals whose opposing visions of what the United States should be continue to shape our country to this day.