Word: jefferson
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...peculiar door at Monticello, the revolving serving door outside the dining room. One side has shelves. The other is flat. Food would be brought up from the basement kitchen and placed on the shelves on the outer side of the door. It would then be swung around. What did Jefferson and his guests see? Dinner, minus the slaves who prepared...
...Jefferson resorted to many devices, architectural and intellectual, to enjoy the bounties of plantation life without having to face its injustices. He was more clear-sighted, however, in facing that other American conundrum, the Native American. Jefferson had great respect for the Indians. He considered them the equal of the white man. And yet he fully understood that America would have to be built at their expense. Hence his remarkable letter to Benjamin Hawkins on Aug. 13, 1786: "The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded are justice and fear...After the injuries we have...
Justice and fear. What modern politician would be bold enough to characterize foreign policy so starkly? "Behind every great fortune there is a crime," said Balzac. Behind every great nation too. Jefferson certainly wanted to do justice to the Indians. But he knew the white man needed to instill fear in the Indian or the American experiment would fail. How characteristically Jefferson: an offhanded trope that sublimely captures the central tension of all foreign policy--that between morality and necessity, power and principle...
...Jefferson could not only hold two contradictory ideas in his head, he could also act on both. Here, after all, is the great champion of small, limited government perpetrating the Louisiana Purchase, arguably the grandest exercise of extra-constitutional Executive power in American history. But what else should we expect from the founder whose great vision of America was the Empire of Liberty, as profound an oxymoron as political theory can provide...
...most delightful example of the duality of the man is to be found in the library that Jefferson gave the U.S. in 1815. Two-thirds of the books were destroyed in a fire in 1851, but now the Library of Congress has found equivalent editions and put the entire 6,487 volumes on magnificent display. The tall stacks are arranged as Jefferson had them at Monticello. What strikes you first is how brilliantly and methodically they are cataloged. Jefferson's classification system--used by the Library of Congress for 82 years--divided all knowledge into three parts: memory (history), reason...