Word: jeffersons
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...Jefferson were alive today, he would be shocked by the monstrous complexity and expense of modern politics. When he first ran for President in 1800, the Electoral College and the House of Representatives decided elections, by and large, and there was little campaigning in the current sense. The nonstop advertising, showy conventions and hectic travel would have repelled the shy Virginian, who found public speaking burdensome. "In [the Founding Fathers'] minds, the person who was ambitious and wanted high office was the one person you should never trust with it," says Yale historian Joanne Freeman, author of Affairs of Honor...
Once he took office, Jefferson's views on limited government didn't inhibit his muscular use of power. A born defender of the citizenry's right to dissent from and even actively oppose its leaders' decisions, he strongly aligned himself against the Alien and Sedition Acts, which had been signed by his predecessor Adams. (To the extent that certain elements of the current Patriot Act smack of oppression, Jefferson might find it alarming too.) And following the Louisiana Purchase--whose constitutionality he questioned but whose practical benefits he found irresistible--he boldly claimed the nation's far-reaching wilderness...
Today we don't live in Jefferson's America--not, at least, in any practical sense--and yet his ideals, if not always his actions, serve as a perpetual reminder of the country's potential to operate more freely, openly, rationally and fairly. Though not in a conventional religious sense, Jefferson was a man of faith. He expected that certain abiding truths, more durable than any physical monuments, would continue to guide the conscience of the nation long after he was gone. "The good sense of our people will direct the boat ultimately to its proper point," he wrote. Through...
...Thomas Jefferson once called the letters of A person "the only full and genuine journal of his life." By that standard, Princeton University Press's exhaustive Papers of Thomas Jefferson, the 31st volume of which will be released this week, is one colossal diary. Begun in 1943 and scheduled to be completed by 2026--the bicentennial of Jefferson's death--the project includes more than 20,000 letters the prolific Virginian wrote in his lifetime as well as an abundance of correspondence he received. From the newest volume, edited by Princeton historian Barbara B. Oberg, we offer a sampler that...
...Jefferson answered virtually every letter he received, including screeds from lunatics and pleas from strangers for money. In particular he could not resist a request for advice. When a young student wrote him seeking some suggested reading, Jefferson picked up a regular correspondence with the youth and even personally hunted bookshops for texts for him. The student, William Munford, turned out to be a scoundrel who would spread political gossip about Jefferson. But historians consider this letter from the then Vice President to Munford to be essential Jefferson: a statement of his fundamental optimism, his faith in the possibility...