Word: jeffersonism
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...Thomas Jefferson passed much of his time writing letters from his home at Monticello, Va., to political heavyweights and family alike, revealing a more personal side to history...
Enter Andrew Burstein and his third work on Thomas Jefferson, “Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello.” Burstein attempts to prove that in addition to the image that we all hold of Jefferson from his actions on the political scene, his retirement correspondence can shed new light on the already mythical figure...
...work that revisits a historical figure as popular and as abundantly studied as Thomas Jefferson must provide a new spin. In “Jefferson’s Secrets,” Burstein boldly attempts to use Jefferson’s understudied retirement years (1809-1826) as the twist, providing a new lens through which to view and perhaps reevaluate our third president. Burstein studied the massive amount of retirement correspondence to investigate Jefferson’s views on his mortality, slavery, his relationship with Sally Hemmings, and political opposition...
...study of these issues—which Jefferson rarely addressed during his political career—that Burstein’s work proves so valuable, for only through an investigation of his retirement papers can one understand these private parts of Jefferson’s life...
...this regard, Burstein, as a discoverer of a different, unseen Jefferson, has produced a truly original and necessary work that will guide future research. The author skillfully takes a figure known to most only from a distance as a brilliant revolutionary and humanizes him, portraying Jefferson as a loving grandfather, an inspired educator, and an old man perhaps unusually aware of and at peace with his impending death...