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Thomas Jefferson

  • Originally published 11/18/2014

    Was Jefferson a “Scientific Racist”?

    Would it have been rational for a man, steeped in the science of Jefferson’s time, to reject outright the scientific utterances on racial classification that were common?

  • Originally published 05/21/2013

    Monticello works to include slavery

    Monticello is one of the region's most popular landmarks, bringing in tourists from around the country to view the mansion and garden of Thomas Jefferson.But it's also a former plantation with deep racial history that's often been overlooked on tours and in public dialogue.Monticello opened in 1923, and for the first 50 or so years there was little, if any, mention of slavery."For a long time it wasn't a topic that was talked about," said Gary Sandling, the vice president of visitor programs and services for Monticello. "There would have been talk of servants, or field hands, or a skilled workforce," he said....

  • Originally published 05/14/2013

    Papers shed light on Thomas Jefferson

    CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Manuscripts and other materials that offer new perspectives on Thomas Jefferson are being donated to the foundation that owns his estate.The Thomas Jefferson Foundation was to formally accept 2,500 manuscripts, works of art and decorative objects at a reception Tuesday afternoon at the Jefferson Library at Monticello. The items donated by Sister Margherita Marchione are related to Jefferson’s longtime friend, Philip Mazzei.“The materials shed new light from different angles on Jefferson, Monticello, and the whole founding generation,” Jack Robertson, Monticello’s foundation librarian, told The Daily Progress (http://bit.ly/10UNnTC )....

  • Originally published 05/12/2013

    Thomas Jefferson's Nightmare

    Incendie de la Plaine du Cap. - Massacre des Blancs par les Noirs, 1833.This article is adapted from Thomas Fleming’s new book, A Disease In the Public Mind – A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War. Part two of a three-part series (read part one here).

  • Originally published 04/17/2013

    Va. Group Looks to Preserve Monticello’s View

    CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — The foundation that owns Thomas Jefferson’s estate hopes to take efforts to preserve Monticello’s spectacular mountain views a step further, an idea that worries some developers.A request the group filed with the Albemarle County Planning Commission calls for nearly quadrupling the size of what’s known as the Monticello viewshed and expanding voluntary guidelines for developers in the region.“There’s a reason we’re up there with the pyramids and the Great Wall,” said Leslie Greene Bowman , president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. “It has a lot do with Jefferson’s vision, not only figuratively but literally.”...

  • Originally published 04/17/2013

    Monticello historian's digitizing project

    Thomas Jefferson died 186 years ago. But J. Jefferson Looney still wants the nation’s third president to speak for himself.The Monticello historian has spent more than a quarter-century deciphering, annotating and publishing thousands of Jefferson’s letters precisely as they were written, including eccentric spellings (“knolege”), obscure capitalizations and musings on slavery, God and death.Looney’s work is part of an audacious, multimillion-dollar memorial to some of the nation’s most prominent Founding Fathers: an attempt to track down and publish an exhaustive collection of all of the significant correspondence and other documents written by -- and sent to -- George Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin....Read more here: http://www.macon.com/2013/04/14/2431291/historian-seeks-to-have-jefferson.html#storylink=cpy...

  • Originally published 01/18/2013

    The History of Inauguration Day

    HNN Hot Topics: Presidential Inaugurations “So Help Me, God”: The History of the Presidential InaugurationOn Monday, January 21, 2013, President Barack Obama will be sworn in for his second presidential term. The inauguration has been a key event at the start of each presidency since George Washington first took office. Since then, certain features have remained fairly constant, such as the oath and the inaugural address. Other aspects, such as the date, have changed. Inauguration Day was originally March 4 until the ratification of the 20th Amendment, which switched the date to January 20, except in years such as this one when that date falls on a Sunday. In these cases, the president is sworn in with a private ceremony on Sunday and then takes a public oath on the next day. The event has changed with the times in some ways and held to tradition in others, not to mention the mishaps that have occurred along the way.

  • Originally published 01/10/2013

    Channelling George Washington: Junking the Constitution

    Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff."Mr. Madison, call your office!""I beg your pardon?"I’m only half kidding. As if we didn’t have enough trouble holding the country together, a law professor at university located in our national capital recently published an article in a major newspaper, entitled 'Let’s Give Up on the Constitution.'" "Why does he think we should do that?""He quotes Tom Jefferson, who believed every constitution should expire after a single generation. The professor doesn’t seem to realize he’s succumbing to Tom’s wackiest idea, 'The Earth Belongs to the Living.' Tom picked it up in France, along with his consuming love for French radicals who killed tens of thousands of innocent people to purify their revolution.""What else did 'The Earth Belongs to the Living' include?"

  • Originally published 12/17/2012

    Thomas Jefferson's Radical Plan to Avert the Fiscal Cliff

    Those looking for guidance on how to chisel the federal debt today might re-examine how Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican party tackled the issue. Jefferson, who fought personal debt all his days, made the erasure of the federal debt his number one priority after his first election in 1800. He believed debt siphoned money from taxpayers by forcing them to pay interest, giving more funds -- and hence, power -- to bankers, who Jefferson deeply distrusted. The choice for Americans, Jefferson believed, was between “economy and liberty” and “profusion and servitude.”Jefferson understood that debt was necessary to pay for war and to invest in the public good, but he believed that “neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself, assembled can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time....” That was a generation, according to Jefferson, and his debt reduction plan, devised by his Secretary of Treasury Albert Gallatin, was to eliminate the debt he inherited in sixteen years.

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