Word: jeffersons
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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...
What does it mean to be a Jeffersonian? You must pick your Jefferson. Every other American statesman, Henry Adams wrote, could be portrayed "with a few broad strokes of the brush," but Jefferson "only touch by touch with a fine pencil, and the perfection of the likeness depended upon the shifting and uncertain flicker of semitransparent shadows...
...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, Notes on the State of Virginia, he was a magnificent writer and tireless correspondent. He left behind an astonishing 18,000 letters, including his memorable correspondence with John Adams. (Adams and Jefferson died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence...
...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 Isaac Newton) and an obsession with mathematical precision. The writer Garry Wills has suggested that Jefferson believed human life could be geared to the precision and simplicity of heaven's machinery. Many of the contradictions in his character arose from the discrepancies between such intellectual machinery and the passionate, organic...
...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 am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular. You are very much otherwise." Besides, "You can write 10 times better than I." The committee chose Jefferson...