Bøger i Jeffersonian America serien

Distant Revolutions: 1848 and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism is a study of American politics, culture, and foreign relations in the mid-nineteenth century, illuminated through the reactions of Americans to the European revolutions of 1848. Flush from the recent American military victory over Mexico, many Americans celebrated news of democratic revolutions breaking out across Europe as a further sign of divine providence. Others thought that the 1848 revolutions served only to highlight how America's own revolution had not done enough in the way of reform. Still other Americans renounced the 1848 revolutions and the thought of trans-atlantic unity because they interpreted European revolutionary radicalism and its portents of violence, socialism, and atheism as dangerous to the unique virtues of the United States.When the 1848 revolutions failed to create stable democratic governments in Europe, many Americans declared that their own revolutionary tradition was superior; American reform would be gradual and peaceful. Thus, when violence erupted over the question of territorial slavery in the 1850s, the effect was magnified among antislavery Americans, who reinterpreted the menace of slavery in light of the revolutions and counter-revolutions of Europe. For them a new revolution in America could indeed be necessary, to stop the onset of authoritarian conditions and to cure American exemplarism. The Civil War, then, when it came, was America's answer to the 1848 revolutions, a testimony to America's democratic shortcomings, and an American version of a violent, nation-building revolution.

The essays in this book explore how individual biographers have shaped history - as well as how the interests and preoccupations of the times in which they wrote helped to shape their portrayals of Jefferson.

Provides an in-depth look at the founding of the University of Virginia and, in the process, develops new and important insights into Thomas Jefferson's contributions as well as into the impact of the University on the history of higher education.

Explores the logic and logistics of Jeffersonian statesmanship. Focusing on Jeffersonian Republican statecraft in action, Jeffersonians in Power maps the meeting place of ideology and policy as Jeffersonians shifted from being an oppositional party to exercising power as the ruling coalition.

For biographers and fans of Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Mary Cutts's memoir of her famous aunt has been indispensable. With this new, annotated transcription of both drafts of the memoir, The Queen of America offers scholars and general readers the first modern and contextualized version of this crucial piece of Founding-era biography.

When we think of Thomas Jefferson, a certain picture comes to mind for some of us, combining his physical appearance with our perception of his character. During Jefferson's lifetime this image was already taking shape. In this volume, G.S. Wilson draws on a broad array of sources to show how Jefferson fashioned his public persona to promote his political agenda

Why did Thomas Jefferson, who claimed to abhor war and fear standing armies, in 1802 establish the United States Military Academy? Thomas Jefferson's Military Academy is the most comprehensive treatment to date of the origins, purposes, and legacies of Jefferson's school on the cliffs above the Hudson River.

Presents the first in-depth, interdisciplinary, and integrated analysis by American and Haitian scholars of the creation and dissemination of Haiti's Declaration of Independence, its content and reception, and its legacy. Throughout, the contributors use newly discovered archival materials and innovative research methods to reframe the importance of Haiti within the Age of Revolution.

Thomas Jefferson believed that the American Revolution was a transformative moment in the history of political civilization. This work traces Jefferson's vision of the American future to its roots in his idealized notion of nationhood and empire.

Considers the conceptual and political problem of violence in the early modern Anglo-Atlantic, charting an innovative approach to the history of the American Revolution. Its editors and contributors contend that existing scholarship on the Revolution largely ignores questions of power and downplays the Revolution as a contest over sovereignty.

Drawing upon an archive of manuscript materials, this book illustrates how two generations of a colorful and influential family adapted to social upheaval. It reveals the process by which the world of Washington and Jefferson evolved into the antebellum society of Edmund Ruffin and Thomas Dew.

Historians have paid less attention to Thomas 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.

Takes the Louisiana Purchase as a point of departure for a discussion of the interaction between France and the US. The authors show how France and the US set about their competing imperial projects even as residents of the North American West effectively resisted those imperial aims, creating instead their own notions of community and connection.

This is an examination of the Thomas Jefferson and John Adams 1800 electoral race, arguably the most controversial in American history, a resulting tie threw the final decision into a House vote. This work looks at the election in the context of geopolitical and racial developments.

Argues that after the devastation of the American Revolutionary War, the main concern of Federalist and Indian leaders was not the transfer of land, but the restoration of social order on the frontier. This title focuses on the 'middle ground' of Indian treaty conferences.

A discussion of the probability (shown by DNA tests) that Thomas Jefferson was the father of his slave Sally Hemings's children. The essays reflect the deeper questions the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings has raised about American history and national culture.