Jefferson Vindicated

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (89 download)

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Book Synopsis Jefferson Vindicated by : Cynthia H. Burton

Download or read book Jefferson Vindicated written by Cynthia H. Burton and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Re-examines the controversy over the nature of Thomas Jefferson's relationship with his slave Sally Hemings by looking at the DNA evidence, written accounts, oral histories, and other sources in an attempt to resolve ambiguities and speculations, and determine their relevance and credibility. Includes 20 pages on Jefferson's brother, Randolph Jefferson and his sons.

In Defense of Thomas Jefferson

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Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9781429969260
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (692 download)

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Book Synopsis In Defense of Thomas Jefferson by : William G. Hyland, Jr.

Download or read book In Defense of Thomas Jefferson written by William G. Hyland, Jr. and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The belief that Thomas Jefferson had an affair and fathered a child (or children) with slave Sally Hemings---and that such an allegation was proven by DNA testing—has become so pervasive in American popular culture that it is not only widely accepted but taught to students as historical fact. But as William G. Hyland Jr. demonstrates, this "fact" is nothing more than the accumulation of salacious rumors and irresponsible scholarship over the years, much of it inspired by political grudges, academic opportunism, and the trend of historical revisionism that seeks to drag the reputation of the Founding Fathers through the mud. In this startling and revelatory argument, Hyland shows not only that the evidence against Jefferson is lacking, but that in fact he is entirely innocent of the charge of having sexual relations with Hemings. Historians have the wrong Jefferson. Hyland, an experienced trial lawyer, presents the most reliable historical evidence while dissecting the unreliable, and in doing so he cuts through centuries of unsubstantiated charges. The author reminds us that the DNA tests identified Eston Hemings, Sally's youngest child, as being merely the descendant of a "Jefferson male." Randolph Jefferson, the president's wayward, younger brother with a reputation for socializing among the Monticello slaves, emerges as the most likely of several possible candidates. Meanwhile, the author traces the evolution of this rumor about Thomas Jefferson back to the allegation made by one James Callendar, a "drunken ruffian" who carried a grudge after unsuccessfully lobbying the president for a postmaster appointment---and who then openly bragged of ruining Jefferson's reputation. Hyland also delves into Hemings family oral histories that go against the popular rumor, as well as the ways in which the Jefferson rumors were advanced by less-than-historical dramas and by flawed scholarly research often shaped by political agendas. Reflecting both a layperson's curiosity and a lawyer's precision, Hyland definitively puts to rest the allegation of the thirty-eight-year liaison between Jefferson and Hemings. In doing so, he reclaims the nation's third president from the arena of Hollywood-style myth and melodrama and gives his readers a unique opportunity to serve as jurors on this enduringly fascinating episode in American history.

Long journey with Mr. Jefferson

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Publisher : Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 1612341977
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (123 download)

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Book Synopsis Long journey with Mr. Jefferson by : William G. Hyland, Jr.

Download or read book Long journey with Mr. Jefferson written by William G. Hyland, Jr. and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The magisterial collaboration over half a lifetime between historian Dumas Malone and his subject, Thomas Jefferson, is the basis for William G. Hyland Jr.'s compelling Long Journey with Mr. Jefferson. Malone, the courtly and genteel historian from Mississippi, spent thirty-eight years researching and writing the definitive biography of the man who invented the United States of America. Hyland provides a surprising portrait of the man many consider America's greatest historian, recording in detail Malone's struggle to finish his towering six-volume work on Jefferson through excruciating pain and then blindness at the age of eighty-three. Hyland includes Malone's previously unpublished correspondence with such notables as John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, George H. W. Bush, Felix Frankfurter, and Fawn Brodie. Readers are treated to an exclusive look at private family documents and Malone's unfinished memoir, which reflects on history, social commentary, and his life's accomplishments. Offering much more than most biographies, this book imparts extensive insight into Malone's earlier years in Mississippi and Georgia, and how they shaped his character. Through interviews with Malone's intimates, family members, rivals, and subordinates, Hyland generates a true portrait of the man behind the intellect and the myth.

Framing a Legend

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Publisher : Prometheus Books
ISBN 13 : 161614730X
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (161 download)

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Book Synopsis Framing a Legend by : M. Andrew Holowchak

Download or read book Framing a Legend written by M. Andrew Holowchak and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A penetrating critical perspective on the question of Thomas Jefferson's paternity that will make you rethink recent conventional wisdom. It is accepted by most scholars that Jefferson had a lengthy affair with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered at least one of her children, a conclusion based on a 1998 DNA study published in Nature and on the work of historian Annette Gordon-Reed. Framing a Legend argues compellingly that the DNA evidence is inconclusive and that there are remarkable flaws in the leading historical scholarship purporting to show such a liaison. Author M. Andrew Holowchak critically examines well-known books by Fawn Brodie, Annette Gordon-Reed, and Andrew Burstein, labeling their views as "three prominent spins." He then delves into what we know about Thomas Jefferson's character, showing that the historical facts do not suggest any romantic interest on Jefferson's part in his female slaves. Turning to the genetic evidence, Holowchak points out that, though DNA analysis indicates the presence of a Y-chromosome from some Jefferson male in the Hemings family line, it is unwarranted to conclude that this must have come from Thomas Jefferson. Finally, he discusses Jefferson's racial attitudes and says that they argue against any liaison with Sally Hemings.

Martha Jefferson

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1442239840
Total Pages : 311 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (422 download)

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Book Synopsis Martha Jefferson by : William G. Hyland

Download or read book Martha Jefferson written by William G. Hyland and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martha Jeffersonis the first and only biography of Thomas Jefferson’s greatest love and true kindred spirit, who died an untimely death at the young age of thirty-three in 1782. Drawing on a wealth of newly probed sources—including family letters, documents, and the handwritten notes left by Jefferson’s famed biographer, Dumas Malone—William G. Hyland Jr. captures the charm, sophistication, and grace, as well as a profound sense of history, of this little known and elusive figure who, until now, has been a mere footnote to the story of America’s founding. Hyland brings us a conflicted and honest Martha Jefferson, who endured the Revolution as valiantly as some men—defending her very doorstep from raiding British troops—and presided over the domestic life of the Jeffersons’ “little mountain,” Monticello, during her husband’s long absences and historic rise to power. A revealing and insightful look at an often overlooked American woman, this book provides a unique and previously unexplored understanding of America’s Revolutionary Era, and the men and women upon whose bravery, talent, and resolve our nation was founded.

Jefferson's Empire

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Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 9780813922041
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Jefferson's Empire by : Peter S. Onuf

Download or read book Jefferson's Empire written by Peter S. Onuf and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Jefferson believed that the American revolution was atransformative moment in the history of political civilization. He hoped that hisown efforts as a founding statesman and theorist would help construct a progressiveand enlightened order for the new American nation that would be a model andinspiration for the world. Peter S. Onuf's new book traces Jefferson's vision of theAmerican future to its roots in his idealized notions of nationhood and empire.Onuf's unsettling recognition that Jefferson's famed egalitarianism was elaboratedin an imperial context yields strikingly original interpretations of our nationalidentity and our ideas of race, of westward expansion and the Civil War, and ofAmerican global dominance in the twentiethcentury. Jefferson's vision of an American "empirefor liberty" was modeled on a British prototype. But as a consensual union ofself-governing republics without a metropolis, Jefferson's American empire would befree of exploitation by a corrupt imperial ruling class. It would avoid the cycle ofwar and destruction that had characterized the European balance ofpower. The Civil War cast in high relief thetragic limitations of Jefferson's political vision. After the Union victory, as thereconstructed nation-state developed into a world power, dreams of the United Statesas an ever-expanding empire of peacefully coexisting states quickly faded frommemory. Yet even as the antebellum federal union disintegrated, a Jeffersoniannationalism, proudly conscious of America's historic revolution against imperialdomination, grew up in its place. In Onuf's view, Jefferson's quest to define a new American identity also shaped his ambivalentconceptions of slavery and Native American rights. His revolutionary fervor led himto see Indians as "merciless savages" who ravaged the frontiers at the Britishking's direction, but when those frontiers were pacified, a more benevolentJefferson encouraged these same Indians to embrace republican values. AfricanAmerican slaves, by contrast, constituted an unassimilable captive nation, unjustlywrenched from its African homeland. His great panacea: colonization. Jefferson's ideas about race revealthe limitations of his conception of American nationhood. Yet, as Onuf strikinglydocuments, Jefferson's vision of a republican empire--a regime of peace, prosperity, and union without coercion--continues to define and expand the boundaries ofAmerican national identity.

The Cavernous Mind of Thomas Jefferson, an American Savant

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Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1527541142
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (275 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cavernous Mind of Thomas Jefferson, an American Savant by : M. Andrew Holowchak

Download or read book The Cavernous Mind of Thomas Jefferson, an American Savant written by M. Andrew Holowchak and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-07 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While every biographer has something to say concerning Thomas Jefferson’s cavernous mind—his varied interests and the depth of his understanding of them—there has never been, strange as it might seem, a non-anthology dedicated to fleshing out key features of his mind, exploring Jefferson’s varied interests through his varied personae. This book—studying Jefferson as lawyer, moralist, politician, scientist, epistolist, aesthetician, farmer, educationalist, and philologist—does just that. In tracing out the many “hats” Jefferson wore, there are many disclosures here. For instance, personal growth and human betterment were driving forces throughout his life, and they shaped his liberal and agrarian political philosophy, which, in turn, shaped his philosophy of education. Moreover, Jefferson was a great lover of beauty, but beauty for him was always second to functionality. That had implications for his views on agriculture, morality, aesthetics, philology, and even the Fine Arts. The structure of this book—covering an array of topics related to the mind of Jefferson—will make it appeal to a large audience. In addition, scholarly details in each chapter will make it must-read for Jeffersonian researchers.

Thomas Jefferson on Wine

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Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 9781578068418
Total Pages : 524 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (684 download)

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Book Synopsis Thomas Jefferson on Wine by : John R. Hailman

Download or read book Thomas Jefferson on Wine written by John R. Hailman and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2006 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A connoisseur's compendium of a great American's passion for fine wine

Thomas Jefferson on Wine

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Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 149680161X
Total Pages : 613 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Thomas Jefferson on Wine by : John Hailman

Download or read book Thomas Jefferson on Wine written by John Hailman and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2009-09-18 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Thomas Jefferson on Wine, John Hailman celebrates a founding father's lifelong interest in wine and provides unprecedented insight into Jefferson's character from this unique perspective. In both his personal and public lives, Jefferson wielded his considerable expertise to influence the drinking habits of his friends, other founding fathers, and the American public away from hard liquor toward the healthier pleasures of wine. An international wine judge and nationally syndicated wine columnist, Hailman discusses how Jefferson's tastes developed, which wines and foods he preferred at different stages of his life, and how Jefferson became the greatest wine expert of the early American republic. Hailman explores the third president's fascination with scores of wines from his student days at Williamsburg to his lengthy retirement years at Monticello, using mainly Jefferson's own words from hundreds of immensely readable and surprisingly modern letters on the subject. Hailman examines Jefferson's five critical years in Paris, where he learned about fine wines at Europe's salons and dinner tables as American Ambassador. The book uses excerpts from Jefferson's colorful travel journals of his visits to France, Italy, and Germany, as well as his letters to friends and wine merchants, some of whose descendants still produce the wines Jefferson enjoyed. Vivid contemporaneous accounts of dinners at the White House allow readers to experience vicariously Jefferson's "Champagne diplomacy." The book concludes with an overview of the current restoration of the vineyards at Monticello and the new Monticello Wine Trail and its numerous world-class Virginia wineries. In Thomas Jefferson on Wine, Hailman presents an absorbing and unique view of this towering historical figure.

The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission

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Publisher : Carolina Academic Press
ISBN 13 : 0890890854
Total Pages : 871 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission by : The Scholars Commission

Download or read book The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission written by The Scholars Commission and published by Carolina Academic Press. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 871 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2000, the newly formed Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society asked a group of more than a dozen senior scholars from across the country to carefully examine all of the evidence for and against the allegations that Thomas Jefferson fathered one or more children by Sally Hemings, one of his slaves, and to issue a public report. In April 2001, after a year of study, the Scholars Commission issued the most detailed report to date on the issue. With but a single mild dissent, the views of the distinguished panel ranged from "serious skepticism" to a conviction that the allegation was "almost certainly false." This volume, edited by Scholars Commission Chairman Robert F. Turner, includes the "Final Report"—essentially a summary of arguments and conclusions—as it was released to the press on April 12, 2001. However, several of the statements of individual views—which collectively total several hundred carefully footnoted pages and constitute the bulk of the book—have been updated and expanded to reflect new insights or evidence since the report was initially released.

Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson

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Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
ISBN 13 : 1429929863
Total Pages : 547 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson by : Darren Staloff

Download or read book Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson written by Darren Staloff and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2007-02-06 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where The Ideas for which We Stand came from. In this incisively drawn book, Darren Staloff forcefully reminds us that America owes its guiding political traditions to three Founding Fathers whose lives embodied the collision of Europe's grand Enlightenment project with the birth of the nation. Alexander Hamilton, the worldly New Yorker; John Adams, the curmudgeonly Yankee; Thomas Jefferson, the visionary Virginia squire—each governed their public lives by Enlightenment principles, and for each their relationship to the politics of Enlightenment was transformed by the struggle for American independence. Repeated humiliation on America's battlefields banished Hamilton's youthful idealism, leaving him a disciple of Enlightened realpolitik and the nation's leading exponent of modern statecraft. After ten years in Europe's diplomatic trenches, Adams's embrace of the politics of Enlightenment became increasingly skeptical in spirit, and his public posture became increasingly that of the gadfly of his country. And Jefferson's frustrations as a Revolutionary governor in Virginia led him to go beyond his Enlightened worldview, and articulate a new and radical Romantic politics of principle. As a consequence, Americans demand a government that is both modern, constrained by checks and balances, and capable of appealing to our loftiest aspirations while adhering to decidedly pragmatic policies.

Rethinking Thomas Jefferson’s Writings on Slavery and Race

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Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1527545199
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (275 download)

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Book Synopsis Rethinking Thomas Jefferson’s Writings on Slavery and Race by : M. Andrew Holowchak

Download or read book Rethinking Thomas Jefferson’s Writings on Slavery and Race written by M. Andrew Holowchak and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-01-10 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisionism has been the historical vogue for well over two decades concerning Jeffersonian scholarship. This movement has been an attempt to neutralize the avowed “hagiographical” scholarship on Jefferson by aiming to offer an all-too-human Thomas Jefferson. The regrettable result has been a depiction, iterated and reiterated uncritically by scholars, of a less-than-human Jefferson, presenting him as an inveterate hypocrite and racist. Thus, Jeffersonian scholarship, as argued here, has become an exercise in useless, fatuous repetition of the same claims that has impeded attempts by serious scholars to gain fresh insights into the mind of one of the greatest Americans. This book offers a stimulating, provocative challenge to the stale revisionist claims on Jefferson concerning his hypocrisy and racism. It will appeal to mavens of Jefferson, as well as scholars intent on moving forward with Jeffersonian scholarship. The book will also appeal to those persons who believe it is time to resituate Jefferson on his little mountain.

This Way Out

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Publisher : University Press of America
ISBN 13 : 0761846344
Total Pages : 487 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (618 download)

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Book Synopsis This Way Out by : Joseph Abrahams

Download or read book This Way Out written by Joseph Abrahams and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2010 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation This Way Out, a report of work done six decades ago in Howard Hall, the maximum security section of St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., is immediately pertinent to today's forensic and mental health crises. The two volumes of this work help fill a need for specific data on what transpires in psychotherapy, especially that of sexual and psychotic offenders. In an era prior to medication, the therapist employs a version of Freudian analysis and adapts it to groups, both large and small. A sophisticated program resulted, in which a spiritual component, messianism, is pivotal. The author relates this dramatic story through his narrative accounts of 629 sessions. Early in the work, he presents the microanalysis of a session, to make explicit what he and the members said and did to alter their severe personal and social alienation. An informal running commentary, journalist headlines, and annotated bibliography assist the reader in the exploration and comprehension of this extensive work.

Jeffersonian Democracy, Defined and Vindicated

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 22 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (318 download)

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Book Synopsis Jeffersonian Democracy, Defined and Vindicated by : Benjamin Franklin Butler

Download or read book Jeffersonian Democracy, Defined and Vindicated written by Benjamin Franklin Butler and published by . This book was released on 1840 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Master of the Mountain

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Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 0374299560
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Master of the Mountain by : Henry Wiencek

Download or read book Master of the Mountain written by Henry Wiencek and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there anything new to say about Thomas Jefferson and slavery? The answer is a resounding yes. Master of the Mountain, Henry Wiencek's eloquent, persuasive book—based on new information coming from archaeological work at Monticello and on hitherto overlooked or disregarded evidence in Jefferson's papers—opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson's world. We must, Wiencek suggests, follow the money. So far, historians have offered only easy irony or paradox to explain this extraordinary Founding Father who was an emancipationist in his youth and then recoiled from his own inspiring rhetoric and equivocated about slavery; who enjoyed his renown as a revolutionary leader yet kept some of his own children as slaves. But Wiencek's Jefferson is a man of business and public affairs who makes a success of his debt-ridden plantation thanks to what he calls the "silent profits" gained from his slaves—and thanks to a skewed moral universe that he and thousands of others readily inhabited. We see Jefferson taking out a slave-equity line of credit with a Dutch bank to finance the building of Monticello and deftly creating smoke screens when visitors are dismayed by his apparent endorsement of a system they thought he'd vowed to overturn. It is not a pretty story. Slave boys are whipped to make them work in the nail factory at Monticello that pays Jefferson's grocery bills. Parents are divided from children—in his ledgers they are recast as money—while he composes theories that obscure the dynamics of what some of his friends call "a vile commerce." Many people of Jefferson's time saw a catastrophe coming and tried to stop it, but not Jefferson. The pursuit of happiness had been badly distorted, and an oligarchy was getting very rich. Is this the quintessential American story?

Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions

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Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 081393477X
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

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Book Synopsis Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions by : Simon P. Newman

Download or read book Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions written by Simon P. Newman and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The enormous popularity of his pamphlet Common Sense made Thomas Paine one of the best-known patriots during the early years of American independence. His subsequent service with the Continental Army, his publication of The American Crisis (1776–83), and his work with Pennsylvania’s revolutionary government consolidated his reputation as one of the foremost radicals of the Revolution. Thereafter, Paine spent almost fifteen years in Europe, where he was actively involved in the French Revolution, articulating his radical social, economic, and political vision in major publications such as The Rights of Man (1791), The Age of Reason (1793-1807), and Agrarian Justice (1797). Such radicalism was deemed a danger to the state in his native Britain, where Paine was found guilty of sedition, and even in the United States some of Paine’s later publications lost him a great deal of his early popularity. Yet despite this legacy, historians have paid less attention to Paine than to other leading Patriots such as Thomas Jefferson. In Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions, editors Simon Newman and Peter Onuf present a collection of essays that examine how the reputations of two figures whose outlooks were so similar have had such different trajectories.

Mongrel Nation

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Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813929857
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

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Book Synopsis Mongrel Nation by : Clarence E. Walker

Download or read book Mongrel Nation written by Clarence E. Walker and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debate over the affair between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings rarely rises above the question of "Did they or didn’t they?" But lost in the argument over the existence of such a relationship are equally urgent questions about a history that is more complex, both sexually and culturally, than most of us realize. Mongrel Nation seeks to uncover this complexity, as well as the reasons it is so often obscured. Clarence Walker contends that the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings must be seen not in isolation but in the broader context of interracial affairs within the plantation complex. Viewed from this perspective, the relationship was not unusual or aberrant but was fairly typical. For many, this is a disturbing realization, because it forces us to abandon the idea of American exceptionalism and re-examine slavery in America as part of a long, global history of slaveholders frequently crossing the color line. More than many other societies--and despite our obvious mixed-race population--our nation has displayed particular reluctance to acknowledge this dynamic. In a country where, as early as 1662, interracial sex was already punishable by law, an understanding of the Hemings-Jefferson relationship has consistently met with resistance. From Jefferson’s time to our own, the general public denied--or remained oblivious to--the possibility of the affair. Historians, too, dismissed the idea, even when confronted with compelling arguments by fellow scholars. It took the DNA findings of 1998 to persuade many (although, to this day, doubters remain). The refusal to admit the likelihood of this union between master and slave stems, of course, from Jefferson’s symbolic significance as a Founding Father. The president’s apologists, both before and after the DNA findings, have constructed an iconic Jefferson that tells us more about their own beliefs--and the often alarming demands of those beliefs--than it does about the interaction between slave owners and slaves. Much more than a search for the facts about two individuals, the debate over Jefferson and Hemings is emblematic of tensions in our society between competing conceptions of race and of our nation.