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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Alas, indignant--or prurient--revisionism does not work with a fine pencil. Thomas Jefferson amounted to something infinitely more important--and more interesting--than one would know from the noise and scandal obscuring his achievement now.
He was arguably the most accomplished man (and in some ways the most fascinating one) who ever occupied the White House--naturalist, lawyer, educator, musician, architect, geographer, inventor, scientist, agriculturalist, philologist and more. His only presidential rival in versatility of intellect was Theodore Roosevelt. Though Jefferson wrote only one book...
Jefferson was a creature of the 18th century; he was the man of the 18th century. A dozen powerful strands of the Enlightenment converged in him: a certain sky-blue clarity, an aggressive awareness of the world, a fascination with science, a mechanical vision of the universe (much thanks to...
Jefferson's finest hour came when he was young, only 33. The Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia in June 1776, chose a committee of five (Benjamin Franklin, Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston and Jefferson) to draft a Declaration of Independence. Jefferson nominated Adams to compose the draft. Adams demurred, "I...
The truths that Jefferson famously declared to be "self-evident" were not new. He drew his ideas from an extraordinarily wide range of reading, especially from the works of Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton and John Locke, and from the Scottish moral philosophers--Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Reid, David Hume, Adam...