Jefferson The Hypocrite

Thomas Jefferson, a philosopher, author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third president of the United States of America, has been reviled in recent years as a hypocrite ... but is the criticism fair? Mary Jane Sheehy Moffett seeks to refute the idea that Jefferson was a hypocrite by taking a detailed look at his dealings with American Indians, his stance on slavery, and his relationship with Sally Hemings, a slave at Monticello. Noting that the slave trade began long before the Americas were discovered and that people of various races were sold into slavery, she contends that the Founding Fathers – including Jefferson – had nothing to do with slavery being introduced into America and everything to do with its demise. The author shares a brief history of the American Indians’ settlement in the Americas and Jefferson’s interaction with them throughout his lifetime. She also explores his relationship with Hemings. Get an accurate view of who Jefferson really was and gain a deeper appreciation for his many accomplishments with this rich analysis of his life – as well as what be motivating his detractors.

Need a Thomas Jefferson quote to support your position on an issue? Or a quote to argue against that very same position? You’re in luck, because there is a Jefferson quote to argue for or against virtually anything. Want a Jefferson quote in favor of democracy? You’ll find it in this book. Need a Jefferson quote against democracy? It’s in here too. How about the American Revolution? Or Jefferson’s opinion on various Founding Fathers, including Washington, Adams, and Hamilton? The Constitution? Military and national defense? Slavery? Free trade? Agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing? Banks? Taxes? There are Jefferson quotes arguing for and against just about every topic you can imagine. And for the first time, Jefferson’s hypocrisy is on full display in this book of contradictory quotes.

New York Times Bestseller Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle Finalist for the George Washington Prize Finalist for the Library of Virginia Literary Award A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection "An important book…[R]ichly rewarding. It is full of fascinating insights about Jefferson." —Gordon S. Wood, New York Review of Books Hailed by critics and embraced by readers, "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs" is one of the richest and most insightful accounts of Thomas Jefferson in a generation. Following her Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hemingses of Monticello¸ Annette Gordon-Reed has teamed with Peter S. Onuf to present a provocative and absorbing character study, "a fresh and layered analysis" (New York Times Book Review) that reveals our third president as "a dynamic, complex and oftentimes contradictory human being" (Chicago Tribune). Gordon-Reed and Onuf fundamentally challenge much of what we thought we knew, and through their painstaking research and vivid prose create a portrait of Jefferson, as he might have painted himself, one "comprised of equal parts sun and shadow" (Jane Kamensky).

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER Following Thomas Jefferson from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, Joseph J. Ellis unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. He gives us the slaveholding libertarian who was capable of decrying mescegenation while maintaing an intimate relationship with his slave, Sally Hemmings; the enemy of government power who exercisdd it audaciously as president; the visionarty who remained curiously blind to the inconsistencies in his nature. American Sphinx is a marvel of scholarship, a delight to read, and an essential gloss on the Jeffersonian legacy.

From an eminent scholar of the American South, the first full-scale biography of Thomas Jefferson since 1970 Not since Merrill Peterson's Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation has a scholar attempted to write a comprehensive biography of the most complex Founding Father. In Jefferson, John B. Boles plumbs every facet of Thomas Jefferson's life, all while situating him amid the sweeping upheaval of his times. We meet Jefferson the politician and political thinker -- as well as Jefferson the architect, scientist, bibliophile, paleontologist, musician, and gourmet. We witness him drafting of the Declaration of Independence, negotiating the Louisiana Purchase, and inventing a politics that emphasized the states over the federal government -- a political philosophy that shapes our national life to this day. Boles offers new insight into Jefferson's actions and thinking on race. His Jefferson is not a hypocrite, but a tragic figure -- a man who could not hold simultaneously to his views on abolition, democracy, and patriarchal responsibility. Yet despite his flaws, Jefferson's ideas would outlive him and make him into nothing less than the architect of American liberty.

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?

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.

In The Mind of Thomas Jefferson, one of the foremost historians of Jefferson and his time, Peter S. Onuf, offers a collection of essays that seeks to historicize one of our nation’s founding fathers. Challenging current attempts to appropriate Jefferson to serve all manner of contemporary political agendas, Onuf argues that historians must look at Jefferson’s language and life within the context of his own place and time. In this effort to restore Jefferson to his own world, Onuf reconnects that world to ours, providing a fresh look at the distinction between private and public aspects of his character that Jefferson himself took such pains to cultivate. Breaking through Jefferson’s alleged opacity as a person by collapsing the contemporary interpretive frameworks often used to diagnose his psychological and moral states, Onuf raises new questions about what was on Jefferson’s mind as he looked toward an uncertain future. Particularly striking is his argument that Jefferson’s character as a moralist is nowhere more evident, ironically, than in his engagement with the institution of slavery. At once reinvigorating the tension between past and present and offering a new way to view our connection to one of our nation’s founders, The Mind of Thomas Jefferson helps redefine both Jefferson and his time and American nationhood.

In "the best fictionalized life of Jefferson yet" (Jack McLaughlin, National Book Award finalist for "Jefferson and Monticello"), Byrd offers a rare glimpse behind the face this complex Virginian showed the world, dispelling the myths to reveal the passionate and elusive figure whose words and imagination may be said to have invented America. 432 pp. National print ads. 20,000 print. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.