Archive for the ‘Misc. Information’ Category

PLANNING MEALS FOR THE FAMILY

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

PLANNING MEALS FOR THE FAMILY

PLANNING for anything is thinking ahead and deciding what to do about a situation. To plan meals, then, is to think ahead and decide what to have for them. In most homes the homemaker serves here meals a day, or twenty-one meal a week. It involves a great deal of money, time, and effort to produce these twenty-one meals to the enjoyment and satisfaction of everyone. With so much at stake, it seems only sensible to think ahead and plan meals for several days, or preferably for a week, in advance rather than to leave the choice to a last last-minute decision to be made three times every day in the week.

The homemaker who does not plan meals beforehand finds herself at a great disadvantage. She becomes tense and fatigued as she keeps wondering what to have for the next meal. Then confusion results because she starts meal preparation only to find that there is too little time to prepare the food, that there is too much to do at one time, or that some essential food item is lacking. Perhaps she may rush to the market and then buy impulsively an unwisely, selecting food that is quick and easy to prepare without regard to its cost or appropriateness to the other meals of the day. She is apt to neglect to include those foods that are so necessary to the health of her family. She may resort to the preparation of some foods so often that her meals become monotonous. She is often wasteful because she ignores or forgets to make use of food left from a previous meal, which, with planning, could be made into an appetizing dish.

Advantages of Planning

The homemaker who plans her meals ahead of time has these advantages over the one who does not make plans:

1. She can take into consideration her family’s nutritional needs.

2. She can consider her family’s food likes and prejudices.

3. She can make her meals varied and attractive.

4. She can save time and effort in buying, preparing, and serving meals.

5. She can save money.

6. She will experience less tension.

How to Plan

There are many things a homemaker must know if she is to profit from all the advantages of planning meals ahead. She must have some knowledge of the right foods to select for her family’s health and of the reasons why these foods are important. She must know how to distribute these foods among the three meals of the day so her family will be satisfied with both the amounts and kinds of foods and with the amounts and kinds of foods and with the appetizing quality of each meal. She must know what foods are available in the markets and their approximate cost. As she plans, she must have some knowledge also of ways to organize her work so her plans can be carried out efficiently later on. An experienced homemaker thinks of all these points more or less at the same time, but for someone less experienced it is a good idea to consider each point separately.

• If you plan menus for several days or for a week in advance, meal preparation will go more smoothly and family needs and preferences can be considered.

Follow Planning Guides

Two kinds of guides are helpful in planning meals: (1) a daily food guide based on the nutritive contribution of foods to the diet, and (2) meal patters based on courses in a meal. There are a number of daily food guides an meal patterns. The ones followed are a matter of personal choice. Meals planned with these guides, adjusted to family preferences for foods, are sure to be nutritious and pleasing.

The Daily Food Guide – The guide followed in this text gives information on the nutritive value of foods by classifying different foods into groups according to their nutritive content. For good health, the body needs substances called “nutrients” – carbohydrates, proteins, fats, minerals, vitamins, and water. Nutrients are present in foods, but no one food contains all of them. Moreover, these nutrients are present in different amounts in different kinds of foods – fruits, vegetables, and meats, for example – and are this fact on which the classification of foods in the Daily Food Guide is based. The guide lists four groups of foods: the Milk Group, the Meat Group, the Vegetable-Fruit Group, and the Bread-Cereal Group. In addition, it gives for each group (1) some representative foods, (2) the special nutrient contribution of foods in this group, and (3) recommendations for the amounts of these foods that should be eaten every day.

Meal-pattern guides. These guides are helpful because the Daily Food Guide does not include information on planning the three individual meals of the day among which the needed foods are distributed. A meal pattern is something like an outline, for it lists the parts of a meal. These parts are called “courses.” A meal pattern also suggests the kinds of foods that make up each course. There are a number of possible patterns for each meal. Meal patterns for any one of the three daily meals differ from one another in the number or kind of courses served. Which pattern is selected will depend on such things as types of activity and ages of family members, time available for preparation of meals, how family meals are served, and the amount of money which can be spent for food.

Examples of patterns for breakfast, lunch, and dinner are given at the left. A breakfast planned according to pattern 1 is nutritionally adequate, provided, the servings are ample. In fact, it is considered to be a “minimum adequate breakfast.” However, a breakfast following either Patterns 2 or 3 would be more satisfying, especially to active and rapidly growing teen-agers. These breakfasts would go further toward meeting their nutritional needs than the breakfast in Pattern 1. A lunch such as the one in Pattern 1 is a light lunch, and it may not include foods from as many of the groups in the Daily Food guide as is desirable. The other lunch patterns are more adequate because they give an opportunity to use foods from more of the groups in the Daily Food Guide. Dinners following Patterns 1 and 2 are light meals, and those following Patterns 3 and 4 are more elaborate and more suitable for a hearty dinner.

Make Menus
A menu is a list of specific foods, or “dishes” as they are sometimes called, to fit the meal pattern selected, If, in planning menus, you use for each day and combination of meal patters for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and include in your menus foods from all the groups as recommended in the Daily Food Guide, you will have good, healthful meals.

Consideration in Planning Meals
Consider the advertisements in newspapers.
Consider the nutritional needs of your family.
Consider the foods on hand. This includes your food storage. Your food storage needs to be rotated also.
Consider the time needed.
Consider the members of the family.
Consider the amount of money available.
Consider the best form of food.
Consider the method of preparation.

This is Your Answer – Why Have Food Storage

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

This is Your Answer – Why have food Storage

In response to one of my early articles a reader commented that she didn’t understand why food storage or what to do with it; but, she enjoyed reading about it.

I didn’t quite know how to respond at the time- I certainly do know why now, The answer is whatever happens to you, that prevents you from acquiring the necessary food, heat and shelter needed to provide for your family. We are not talking luxury here only basic life sustaining needs.

December 18, 2010 we ate dinner at a friend’s house. We drove home in the rain. The following morning it was still raining as we drove to church. We then drove home in the rain. The rain continued to fall. We spent the balance of the day reading and watching the fireplace.

We fell asleep in our warm bed listening to the rain. It continued raining throughout the night and all day Monday – Tuesday the 21st in the early morning hours I answered a knock on our door. To my surprise a neighbor was stand there in the rain.
This visit was his official notice that the Enterprise, Utah reservoir was nearing the overflow stage, and would we like to evacuate. We told him “NO”.

The dam did overflow on the day of the 21st, and the bridge crossing taking the spill water on its way safely, held. We stayed safely in our home, unharmed throughout this entire time.

To all of you who read my blog. This is your answer as to why we put food away. The answer is “In case we need it for what ever reason.” Flood, drought, terrorist attack, loss of income, inflation, poor heath, bad weather, crop failure, etc., whatever could happen. I hope that everyone reading this article lives there life’s as if nothing will ever happen and yet prepare and remain prepared for the very worst.

If there is a disaster, you do not want to sit helplessly by; waiting for help and food to arrive. It may not come — If it does arrive you may be very hungry before it does.
We had everything we needed to live in our own home for a long time and never need for any food, shelter or medication.

ARTICLE TWO OF Family Emergency Preparedness Guide

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

ARTICLE TWO OF Family Emergency Preparedness Guide
PREPARE YOUR VEHICLES
One never knows when you may have to evacuate your home. Also, you may not know in advance why, when or if you will be able to return to your home again.
If you are evacuating an area or you are stranded in your vehicle, you should make sure your vehicle is prepared to help you survive. To the extent possible, we should all keep our vehicles prepared to such an emergency. Prepare now by storing these items in your vehicle and be sure to rotate the items periodically. Keep vehicles fueled and in good condition, and check weather and road conditions before a trip and in good conditions before a trip.

• First aid kit with manual
• Flashlight and extra batteries
• Cell phone and phone card
• Roadside assistance card
• Portable radio and extra batteries
• Fire extinguisher (5 lb. A-B-C type)
• Extra fuses
• Flares or hazard reflectors
• Jumper cables
• Properly inflated spare tire
• Jack, lug wrench, tire gauge
• Basic tool kit
• Windshield scraper and brush
• Small folding shovel
• Sand for traction
• Duct tape
• Gloves, rages, paper towels
• List of important phone numbers, local and out-of town
• Detailed maps
• Waterproof matches and candles
• Whistle and small mirror
• Pen, pencil, paper
• Cash (bills and coins)
• Drinking water
• Bleach (disinfecting)
• Cash (bills and coins) (small bills denomination – You may not be able to get change.)
• Drinking water
• Bleach (disinfecting)
• Non-perishable energy foods
• Can opener
• Medications
• Toiletries
• Pre-moistened wipes
• Good shoes
• Extra clothes, gloves and hats
• Blankets or sleeping bag.

(Keep first aid kit, food and water close to the driver’s seat if you are traveling alone. You may become trapped in your vehicle and would be unable to access your vehicle’s storage area. Most important, remain calm.)

It’s that time of year again!

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

It’s that time of year again

It’s that time of year again, when the countdown to the holidays hovers in our periphery, creating just a little anxiety and provoking thoughts of “What will I ever find for so-and-so?”. TamPogo has perfect solutions for all your holiday shopping. Buying gifts has never been so quick or painless, and in no time at all, by using TamPogo, you will find that you belong to the “ I got my Christmas shopping done in October” club. Today we will discover the amazing benefits of the Jewelry of the Month Club. Everyone knows someone that loves jewelry. We also know that jewelry is one of the most expensive gifts to purchase. Jewelry, like clothing or perfume, can be difficult to buy another person because of differing tastes and preferences. TamPogo has found a solution to both of these predicaments.

For only $30, you can join the jewelry of the month club. Choose the autoship option, and automatically receive a new piece of jewelry each month, and receive a bigger discount. For $45, you can join the club one step higher, while enjoying the same amenities of autoship and discounts. The beauty of this club is that you can see what will be sent in future months before they arrive.. Still not quite what you had in mind? Browse all of TamPogo’s options, and you are sure to find a gift for every occasion.

More importantly, by shopping with TamPogo, you are supporting a cause near and dear to our hearts, Feed My Starving Children. Since opening for business on July 20th 2009, through the efforts of iReps and founders, TamPogo has helped feed nearly three quarters of a MILLION MEALS to starving children around the world. This is just the beginning! Imagine how many lives we can save every day by sharing the TamPogo story. Starvation is a problem we simply cannot ignore. Imagine a world in which you help end hunger, poverty and hopelessness. It is possible and TamPogo is dedicated to make this dream a reality. We have committed a percentage of every purchase to feed a starving child for one week. That’s right! EVERY purchase you make at TamPogo feeds a starving child somewhere in the world for one week. You can be part of the solution by providing hope and nutrition for a hurting child.

Our beneficiary is Feed My Starving Children, a Christian organization that has a passion and a plan for eradicating starvation. They have designed a food and vitamin product that provides all of the essential nutritional support for undernourished children in second and third world countries around the world. The food is packaged by volunteers and shipped to volunteer run distribution sites around the world. Last year alone, this organization provided meals for over 73 million children. Every item you purchase on TamPogo, feeds a starving child somewhere in the world for one week.

Visit us at TamPogo by copying and pasting:
Fast Track Under $30 /
http://www.tampogo.com/elhglobal
http://www.tampogo.com/ehunt
http://www.tampogo.com/hunt

into your web browser. We’re sure that TamPogo will become one of your new online favorites for shopping.

You may telephone (432) 231-1301 for any further information.

TamPogo Product Update!

Friday, August 13th, 2010

Good Morning Everyone:

TamPogo Product Update!

We are happy to bring you a product update. So many things are happening on the product front that we thought it would be good to get everyone up to speed.

Pure Chemistry Botanical Buffet: The 9 products that form the Botanical Buffet line have been widely accepted by most all who use them. The testimonials and positive vibe generated by these products have been much higher than expectations. Two large skin care chains (more than 2,500 total stores) have accepted the products for sale in their North American stores, pending custom packaging which is being created at this writing. Point of purchase displays are currently being designed and fabricated for the current line to go into individual and small chain retail. When the new packaging is available Pure Chemistry will submit Botanical Buffet to a small group of buyers representing over 12,000 individual stores as well as hundreds of thousands of customers on the internet.

A Botanical Buffet Moisturizer product is being manufactured along with sample (or travel) sizes of the various Botanical Buffet products.

Night Cap: Pure Chemistry has been experiencing a bottle cap problem with Night Cap which has been worked out at this writing by totally changing both the bottle and cap. This has slowed the introduction of the MD Products Night Cap version which will be an all natural product sweetened with Stevia. At this writing the bottle issues have been solved and the both the original Pure Chemistry Night Cap and the MC clear version are in manufacturing and should be available for sale during the month of August. The all natural clear Night Cap version is the one that will sold via TV advertising in the trial size bottle. This media is ready to go upon product availability in our warehouse.

Night Cap Zz Shots: The all natural clear Night Cap is the one being used for the Zz Shots and is currently in production by the manufacturer. As soon as the product is blended and complete (see above), it will be packaged in 2 oz. bottles with shrink sleeve labeling and exterior point of display packaging. The Zz Shots have been accepted for distribution, pending approval and testing of the final product by over 20,000 convenience stores will be submitted for review by buyers for chain stores with over 30,000 additional outlets.

Crystal Thin: Crystal Thin is under review by three nutrition chains with over 8,000 stores. It is going through the approval process as a food product in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico as well as 9 other Central and Caribbean countries. The leading direct market seller in Brazil and Argentina has a LOI with Pure Chemistry for a minimum starting order of 60,000 bottles per month of the Crystal Thin product. Point of purchase displays are also being designed and manufactured as well as trial size bottles for use in the national TV media campaign which feature Night Cap and Crystal Thin.

Safe Teeth: Production samples of Safe Teeth have been received and accepted by Pure Chemistry and the product is in manufacturing and packaging. Exterior boxes are designed and being manufactured. Virtually every major drug store and grocery chain is awaiting test samples and packaging as well as a number of international distributors who have requested this unique prebiotic oral care product. Sample size packaging is being selected and should be available in roughly the same time frame as the finished Safe Teeth product. This product is also being considered by a European Distributor that supplies buyers at the Vatican for health care initiatives among the poor.

MD Products: Over 20 individual MD products have gone into final production. They are beginning to be received by the warehouse, one by one, at this writing and will be available for sale in the coming days. We will notify everyone of the addition of these products to the store as they become available for sale. Pure Chemistry has developed a list of interested buyers who want to review the final products as they become available. There is also a list of national and international distributors interested in this line as well as medical product suppliers. Actual sales here cannot be consummated without the products in hand.

Cacao Wow ™: Pure Chemistry released production samples of this product last week and in the opinion of TamPogo CEO Chuck Stebbins, it is “far and away the best diet or energy pill product” he has ever taken. The product is currently available for pre-sale at TamPogo and will be in the warehouse within the next 10-14 days. 2 pill sample packets will also be available and are offered free with pre-orders and various Tango packages. While Cacao Wow ™ has taken longer than expected to become a final retail product, the wait has been more than worth it as the final product provides all the fantastic effects of the greatest diet pills in the history of nutrition and then some – with no negative effects!

Functional Foods: Pure Chemistry is striving to make a clear statement with their line of high protein, no sugar, functional, engineered desserts and food based meal replacements. You only have one chance to get the attention of food buyers and each product must be the best it can be for introduction. While Pure Chemistry is extremely happy with the taste and appearance of each dessert product, the chemists and bakers and working together to increase shelf life. Shelf life is critical to mass marketing and as this hurdle gets leaped, the products will go into production for distribution to buyers throughout the US.

TamPogo is pleased and excited to be part of the creation and initial marketing, as well as the benefits that accrue from worldwide distribution of these incredible products. It goes without saying that any ONE of the above products could sustain an entire network marketing company and our having ALL of them at our disposal as well as a piece of the outside sales worldwide, makes TamPogo, hands down, THE BEST PLACE TO BE.

Pure Chemistry, as always, will put its best effort forward to formulate, create and sell a variety of life changing and hopefully retail revolutionary products. We are proud to be their partner in all these efforts.

For more information telephone Emma, Lee or Bryan at (435) 231-1301
http://www.tampogo.com/ehunt
http://www.tampogo.com/hunt
http://www.tampogo.com/elhglobal

I WAS SADDENED TO READ THIS!

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

(However it is a good warning to all of us. We need to learn to prepare and learn how to use and serve what we have in our home food storage. )

Death toll from Pakistan floods rises to 1,100

AP – Pakistani villagers collect their belongings from their houses collapsed by heavy flooding in Dera Ismail …

SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-08-01-13-06-32PESHAWAR, Pakistan – The death toll from massive floods in northwestern Pakistan rose to 1,100 Sunday as rescue workers struggled to save more than 27,000 people still trapped by the raging water.

The rescue effort was aided by a slackening of the monsoon rains that have caused the worst flooding in decades in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa province. But as flood waters started to recede, authorities began to understand the full scale of the disaster.

“Aerial monitoring is being conducted, and it has shown that whole villages have washed away, animals have drowned and grain storages have washed away,” said Latifur Rehman, spokesman for the Provincial Disaster Management Authority. “The destruction is massive.”

The flooding, which the U.N. estimates has affected 1 million people nationwide, comes at a time when the Pakistani government is already grappling with a faltering economy and a war against the Taliban.

The United States announced Sunday that it would provide Pakistan with $10 million in humanitarian assistance, a high-profile gesture at a time when the Obama administration is trying to dampen anti-American sentiment in the country.

The 1,100 death toll from the flooding could go even higher since rescue workers have been unable to access certain areas, said Adnan Khan, a disaster management official.

Almost 700 people have drowned in the Peshawar valley, which includes the districts of Nowshera and Charsadda, and 115 others are still missing, Khan said.

The districts of Swat and Shangla have also been hit hard and have suffered more than 400 deaths, said Mujahid Khan, the head of rescue services for the Edhi Foundation, a private charity.

Residents of Swat were still trying to recover from a major battle between the army and the Taliban last spring that caused widespread destruction and drove some 2 million people from their homes. About 1 million of those were still displaced.

In Swat alone, the floods have destroyed more than 14,600 houses and 22 schools, said Khan.

Authorities have deployed 43 military helicopters and more than 100 boats to try to rescue some 27,300 people still trapped by the floods, said Rehman, the disaster management spokesman.

“All efforts are being used to rescue people stuck in inaccessible areas and all possible help is being provided to affected people,” said Rehman.

But some residents stepped up their criticism Sunday of the government’s response.

“The flood has devastated us all, and I don’t know where my family has gone,” said Hakimullah Khan, a resident of Charsadda town who complained the government has not helped him search for his missing wife and three children.

“Water is all around and there is no help in sight,” said Khan.

The military deployed 30,000 army troops who helped rescue more than 20,700 people, said Khan, the disaster management official.

However, some people like Sehar Ali Shah who were rescued complained that authorities didn’t provide shelter that would allow them to stay until the floodwaters receded.

“My son drowned, but I don’t see the government taking care of us,” said Shah after returning to his half-submerged house in the city of Nowshera. “The government has not managed an alternate place to shift us.”

The flooding has also affected the central Pakistani province of Punjab, where troops rescued more than 1,400 people trapped by rising water, said Brig. Ahmad Waqas.

“We have lost everything: our houses, our crops, cattle,” said Ahmad Hasan at a government relief camp in Taunsa Sharif district.

The threat of disease loomed as well as some evacuees in the northwest arrived in camps with fever, diarrhea and skin problems.

“There is now a real danger of the spread of waterborne diseases like diarrhea, asthma, skin allergies and perhaps cholera in these areas,” said Shaharyar Bangash, the head of operations in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa for World Vision, an international humanitarian group.

A variety of nations and aid organizations have begun to mobilize a response to the disaster.

The U.S. delivered thousands of food packages, four rescue boats and two water-filtration units to the northwest, said Rehman.

“This is much-needed stuff in the flood-affected areas and we need more of it from the international community,” said Rehman.

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad also announced it will provide 12 prefabricated steel bridges to temporarily replace those damaged by the water.

But some residents wondered how they would ever recover from such a disaster.

“I won’t be able to cover my losses for 10 years,” said Shair Dad, a timber shop owner in Nowshera who lost most of his wood in the floodwaters.
___
Associated Press writers Nabeel Yusuf in Nowshera and Khalid Tanveer in Taunsa Sharif contributed to this report.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/fronts/HOME?SITE=AP

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_PAKISTAN_FLOODS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-08-01-13-06-32

This is one of the many reasons that we need home food storage.

I have had people say to me that their food storage is the things they put on the shelf and never touch unless they have an emergency. To that I say my food storage is everything that my family eats in the house. We use everything and rotate it. If my family does not like it or I cannot prepare it in a manner that my family likes it; there is no reason to have it in the house. If eats these items on a regular basis, their diet will not be changed in an emergency. Do not change your families diet in times of stress. Things are bad enough as they are.

Learn new ways to prepare foods that you have on the shelf now. Learn to prepare, serve and eat new foods. If you put a lot of foods that your family has never tasted on the shelf and count on keeping them alive in an emergency; you may regret your shopping choices. I have heard ladies tell their children; “If you were hungry enough you would eat anything.” Trust me there are things that I would not eat, if it cost me my life. And! It could cost us our life. If you have never made home make bread; If your family will not eat homemade bread; Do not store 100 pounds of wheat and nothing else. Trust me you will starve to death. Store enough of the things that your family enjoys eating on a daily basis and then lengthen your horizons.

Start your food storage with canned and packaged food that you know your family will eat and enjoy. Stock your shelves, refrigerator and the freezer with those items that your family eats and enjoys on a regular basis.
I dehydrate and can foods that we grow in our own yard are purchase at reasonable prices.

Learn new tricks. If you do not know how to can or freeze learn how. Go on the internet or to the public library and research how to do these things. It is hard but not difficult work, you can learn how.

If you purchase commercially freeze dried foods the taste more like the real food than you might expect. Not so much with commercially dried food products. However, I do dehydrate and use my one home grown foods. It keeps longer than the home canned and frozen foods. I store only the home canned and frozen that I know we will use within its shelf life. It is not that difficult to do. I don’t know very many people who would not do a lot of work and sacrifice to keep an member of their own family alive.

When making stews, soup, casseroles etc., if you find yourself out of a particular item that you usually have on hand. Open a can of freeze dried of a jar of your own home dried fruit or vegetable and throw it in. You will be pleased at how great it tastes and your family will learn to eat them and frequently will not even know what you have done.

As Julia Child would have said bon apatite.

The 20th Annual Enterprise Cornfest

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Lee Bracken
mayor@enterpriseutah.org
City of Enterprise
435-231-1774

Dear Potential Vendor:
The 20th Annual Enterprise Cornfest will be held on Saturday, August 28, 2010, at the
Enterprise Elementary School and City Park and booths are going fast.

The hours of the Cornfest will be 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Food vendors must be set‐up
and ready to open by 10:00 a.m. and must close between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. to
accommodate the Dutch Oven Dinner. Non‐food vendors must have their booths set‐up
and be ready to open by 10:00 a.m. and must remain open until 6:00 p.m.

Food booths will be limited again this year to prevent more than one vendor selling the
same food product. All food vendors will also be required to have a food handlers
permit this year. Non‐food booths will have some limits on how many of a particular
type may sign up (for example, jewelry). Non‐food booths will only be provided
electricity by special arrangement. You will only be able to sell items that are listed on
your application. You will not be allowed to sell food or baked goods from non‐food
booths.

Booth prices are listed on the booth application form. Booth fees must be paid and
products approved by the Cornfest committee before the booth is guaranteed. If your
application is not accepted by the committee, you will receive a full refund. If your
application is approved by the committee, they will contact you to confirm acceptance.
Booth fees are not refundable after the first of August.

All approved vendors will receive a vendor packet that will let you know at what time
Cornfest staff will be available to transport your items to and from your booth location
to prevent congestion of loading and unloading. This packet will also include a parking
pass for the vendor parking area.

If you have any questions please feel free to call Verla Wilson at 435‐878‐2414. Thank
you for your time and we hope to see you soon.
Sincerely,
Verla Wilson
Cornfest Booth Committee Chair

For further information contact the City of Enterprise, Utah – http://www.enterpriseutah.org/information.php?pg=29
– LINKS TO APPLICATIONS AND FORMS – http://www.enterpriseutah.org/information.php?pg=29

July – Month Long Observances – Who would have thought?

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

With all there is to do every day of the year. Do we really need an Anti-Boredom Month? Someone out there must be really bored. I thought the problem was that we had too much to do, not too little.
National Baked Bean Month.

If you have trouble with beans getting tender in the crockpot, simmer the beans on the stovetop first, until just tender, then drain. This will cut the crockpot cooking time in half.

Ingredients:
• 1 pound dried small white beans, rinsed and soaked overnight
• water to cover
• 1/3 cup molasses
• 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1/4 pound salt pork, rinsed and cut into 1/2-inch cubes, or diced bacon
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste

Preparation:
In Crockpot, combine all ingredients except salt. Cover and cook on low 12 to 14 hours, stirring occasionally if possible. Add salt to taste when beans are tender.
Makes 6 to 8 servings.

• National Blueberry Month
Mar 6, 2010 … July was proclaimed National Blueberry Month by the United States Department of Agriculture on May 8th, 1999, by the Secretary of Agriculture of the … do hereby proclaim the month of July 1999 as “National Blueberry Month” . Blueberries are reaching peak production in July. Blueberries are marvelous little berries that grow on bushes. These versatile berries are in season from May to October. Blueberries are nutritious, rich in antioxidants and contain Vitamins A, C, E and beta-carotene. This is a wonderful time to celebrate these little berries fresh, frozen, canned or dried.

Blueberry Pie Recipe

INGREDIENTS
Crust:
• One double recipe for all butter pie crust dough

Filling ingredients:
• 6 cups of fresh (or frozen) blueberries, rinsed and stems removed (if using frozen, defrost and drain first)
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour (for thickening)
• 1/2 cup white granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 Tbsp butter (unsalted), cut into small pieces
Egg wash ingredients:
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon milk
METHOD
1 Prepare the crust. Roll out half of the dough to 1/8-inch-thick circle on a lightly floured work surface, about 13 inches in diameter. Fit the dough over a 9-inch pie pan, and trim the edges to a 1/2 inch over the edge all around the pan. Put into the refrigerator to chill for about 30 minutes.
2 Gently mix the blueberries, sugar, flour, cinnamon, lemon zest, and lemon juice in a large bowl. Transfer them to the chilled bottom crust of the pie pan. Dot with butter pieces. Roll out remaining dough to the same size and thickness as the first. Place on top of the berry filling. Tuck the top dough over and under the edge of the bottom dough, and crimp the edges with your fingers. Transfer the pie to the refrigerator to chill until the dough is firm, about 30 minutes. Heat oven to 425°F.
3 Whisk egg and milk together to make an egg wash.
4 Remove the unbaked pie from refrigerator. Brush the top with egg wash. Score the pie on the top with 4 cuts (so steam can escape while cooking). Place the pie on the middle rack of the oven with a parchment paper or Silpat lined baking pan positioned on the lower rack to catch any filling that may bubble over. Bake for 20 minutes at 425°. Reduce heat to 350°F and bake for 30 to 40 minutes more or until juices are bubbling and have thickened. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Let cool completely before serving.
Makes 8 servings.

• National Baked Bean Month
If you have trouble with beans getting tender in the crockpot, simmer the beans on the stovetop first, until just tender, then drain. This will cut the crockpot cooking time in half.
Ingredients:
• 1 pound dried small white beans, rinsed and soaked overnight
• water to cover
• 1/3 cup molasses
• 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1/4 pound salt pork, rinsed and cut into 1/2-inch cubes, or diced bacon
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
Preparation:
In Crockpot, combine all ingredients except salt. Cover and cook on low 12 to 14 hours, stirring occasionally if possible. Add salt to taste when beans are tender.
Makes 6 to 8 servings.

• National Hot Dog Month
• July is National Hot Dog Month, and according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, Americans will be consuming the infamous little red tubes of “meat” in record numbers this summer.

The Council estimates that over seven billion hot dogs will be eaten by Americans between Memorial Day and Labor Day. During the July 4th weekend alone (the biggest hot-dog holiday of the year), 155 million will be downed.

Every year, Americans eat an average of 60 hot dogs each. They are clearly one of the country’s most loved, but most misunderstood, comfort foods. Below you’ll find some frequently asked questions regarding the hot dog. For more information, visit the Council’s website at www.hot-dog.org. Bon appétit.

• How did the hot dog get its name?

• The term “hot dog” is credited to sports cartoonist Tad Dorgan. At a 1901 baseball game at the Polo Grounds in New York, vendors began selling hot dachsund sausages in rolls.

• From the press box, Dorgan could hear the vendors yelling, “Get your dachshund sausages while they’re red hot!” He sketched a cartoon depicting the scene but wasn’t sure how to spell “dachshund” so he called them simply, “hot dogs.” And the rest is history.

• What exactly is a hot dog made of?

• Nope. You’re not allowed to ask that one. And do you really want to know anyway? For the record, the Council refers to the actual meat as “specially selected meat trimmings.” They would like to point out, however, that thanks to stricter U.S. Department of Agriculture rules, hot-dog meat has become much leaner and, unless otherwise indicated, must be made from muscle (as most meat found in supermarkets is).

Most supermarket hot dogs use cellulose casings, which are removed before packaging. Some, however, still use the traditional natural casings, made from animal intestines.

• By law, a hot dog can contain up to 3.5 percent of “non-meat ingredients.” Don’t be scared. This is usually just some type of milk or soy product used to add to the nutritional value. Many hot dogs may be relatively high in fat and sodium, but they are also a good source of protein, iron, and other necessary vitamins.

• What is the most popular condiment for a hot dog?

• Council research shows that for adults, mustard is the condiment of choice, while children prefer ketchup. That said, preferences do change from region to region. For instance, hot dogs in New York are generally served with a lighter mustard and steamed onions, while Chicago hot dogs can come with mustard, relish, onions, tomato slices, or pretty much anything at all.

Kids were also asked what condiment they would use “if their moms weren’t watching,” and 25 percent opted for chocolate sauce.

• Do I spread my condiment on the meat or on the bread?

• Always dress the dog and not the bun. The Council also recommends the following order for condiment application: first wet (mustard for example), then chunky (relish or onions), then cheese if desired, then any spices.

• What should I drink with my hot dog?

• Lemonade and iced tea—the tastiest drinks for a summer barbecue—are perfect with hot dogs.

• National Ice Cream Month

• Too bad my father-in-law Dalton Edward Hunt did not live to see that one. He would have loved it. He majored in dairy engineering and spent most of his working years manufacturing ice cream.

National Ice Cream Month Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month in 1984. He also appointed the third Sunday in July as National Ice Cream Day. …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ice_Cream_Month –

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010

Thomas Jefferson

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Thomas Jefferson

This is the latest accepted revision, accepted on 30 June 2010.

This article is about the United States president. For other uses, see Thomas Jefferson (disambiguation).

 

Thomas Jefferson 



3rd President of the United States

In office
March 4, 1801 – March 4, 1809

Vice President

Aaron Burr (1801–1805),
George Clinton (1805–1809)

Preceded by

John Adams

Succeeded by

James Madison





United States Ambassador to France

In office
1785–1789

Appointed by

Congress of the Confederation

Preceded by

Benjamin Franklin

Succeeded by

William Short



Delegate from Virginia to The Congress of the Confederation

In office
1783–1784



2nd Governor of Virginia

In office
June 1, 1779 – June 3, 1781

Preceded by

Patrick Henry

Succeeded by

William Fleming



Delegate from Virginia to The Second Continental Congress

In office
1775–1776



Representative from Albemarle County to House of Burgesses[1] 

In office
1769–1776

Born

April 13 [O.S. April 2] 1743
Shadwell, Virginia

Died

July 4, 1826 (aged 83)
Charlottesville, Virginia

Political party

Democratic-Republican

Spouse(s)

Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson

Children

Martha Washington Jefferson, Jane Randolph Jefferson, stillborn son, Mary Wayles Jefferson, Lucy Elizabeth Jefferson I, Lucy Elizabeth Jefferson II.

Alma mater

The College of William & Mary

Occupation

Statesman, planter, lawyer, philosopher, inventor, architect, teacher

Religion

see below 

Classic engraving of Jefferson on Louisiana Purchase Exposition issue of 1904.

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826)[2] was the third President of the United States (1801–1809), and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776). Jefferson was one of the most influential Founding Fathers, known for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States. Jefferson envisioned America as the force behind a great “Empire of Liberty[3] that would promote republicanism and counter the imperialism of the British Empire.

Major events during his presidency include the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806), as well as escalating tensions with both Britain and France that led to war with Britain in 1812, after he left office.

As a political philosopher, Jefferson was a man of the Enlightenment and knew many intellectual leaders in Britain and France. He idealized the independent yeoman farmer as exemplar of republican virtues, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states’ rights and a strictly limited federal government. Jefferson supported the separation of church and state[4] and was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779, 1786). He was the eponym of Jeffersonian democracy and the cofounder and leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, which dominated American politics for 25 years. Jefferson served as the wartime Governor of Virginia (1779–1781), first United States Secretary of State (1789–1793), and second Vice President of the United States (1797–1801).

A polymath, Jefferson achieved distinction as, among other things, a horticulturist, political leader, architect, archaeologist, paleontologist, musician, inventor, and founder of the University of Virginia. When President John F. Kennedy welcomed 49 Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962 he said, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”[5] To date, Jefferson is the only president to serve two full terms in office without vetoing a single bill of Congress. Jefferson has been consistently ranked by scholars as one of the greatest of U.S. presidents.

 

Early life and education

Childhood 

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743[2] into a family closely related to some of the most prominent individuals in Virginia, the third of ten children. Two died in childhood.[6] His mother was Jane Randolph, daughter of Isham Randolph, a ship’s captain and sometime planter, first cousin to Peyton Randolph, and granddaughter of wealthy English and Scottish gentry. Jefferson’s father was Peter Jefferson, a planter and surveyor in Albemarle County (Shadwell, then Edge Hill, Virginia.) He was of possible Welsh descent, although this remains unclear.[7] When Colonel William Randolph, an old friend of Peter Jefferson, died in 1745, Peter assumed executorship and personal charge of William Randolph’s estate in Tuckahoe as well as his infant son, Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. That year the Jeffersons relocated to Tuckahoe where they would remain for the next seven years before returning to their home in Albemarle. Peter Jefferson was then appointed to the Colonelcy of the county, an important position at the time.[8]

Education

In 1752, Jefferson began attending a local school run by William Douglas, a Scottish minister. At the age of nine, Jefferson began studying Latin, Greek, and French. In 1757, when he was 14 years old, his father died. Jefferson inherited about 5,000 acres (20 km²) of land and dozens of slaves. He built his home there, which eventually became known as Monticello.[citation needed]

After his father’s death, he was taught at the school of the learned minister James Maury from 1758 to 1760. The school was in Fredericksville Parish near Gordonsville, Virginia, twelve miles (19 km) from Shadwell, and Jefferson boarded with Maury’s family. There he received a classical education and studied history and science.[citation needed]

In 1760 Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg at the age of 16; he studied there for two years, graduating with highest honors in 1762. At William & Mary, he enrolled in the philosophy school and studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy under Professor William Small, who introduced the enthusiastic Jefferson to the writings of the British Empiricists, including John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton (Jefferson called them the “three greatest men the world had ever produced”).[9] He also perfected his French, carried his Greek grammar book wherever he went, practiced the violin, and read Tacitus and Homer. A keen and diligent student, Jefferson displayed an avid curiosity in all fields and, according to the family tradition, frequently studied fifteen hours a day. His closest college friend, John Page of Rosewell, reported that Jefferson “could tear himself away from his dearest friends to fly to his studies.”[citation needed]

While in college, Jefferson was a member of a secret organization called the F.H.C. Society. He lodged and boarded at the College in the building known today as the Sir Christopher Wren Building, attending communal meals in the Great Hall, and morning and evening prayers in the Wren Chapel. Jefferson often attended the lavish parties of royal governor Francis Fauquier, where he played his violin and developed an early love for wines.[10] After graduating in 1762 with highest honors, he read law with William & Mary law professor George Wythe and was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1767.[citation needed]

After college

On October 1, 1765, Jefferson’s oldest sister Jane died at the age of 25.[11] Jefferson fell into a period of deep mourning, as he was already saddened by the absence of his sisters Mary, who had been married several years to Thomas Bolling, and Martha, who had wed earlier in July to Dabney Carr.[11] Both had moved to their husbands’ residences, leaving younger siblings Elizabeth, Lucy, and the two toddlers as his companions. Jefferson was not comforted by the presence of Elizabeth or Lucy as they did not provide him with the same intellectual stimulation as his older siblings had.[11]

Jefferson would go on to handle many cases as a lawyer in colonial Virginia, managing more than a hundred cases each year between 1768 and 1773 in General Court alone, while acting as counsel in hundreds of cases.[12] Jefferson’s client list included members of the Virginia’s elite families, including members of his mother’s family, the Randolphs.[12]

 Monticello

Montecello depicted on 1956 regular issue

In 1768 Thomas Jefferson started the construction of Monticello, a neoclassical mansion. Starting in childhood, Jefferson had always wanted to build a beautiful mountaintop home within sight of Shadwell.[13][14] Jefferson went greatly in debt on Monticello by spending lavishly to create a neoclassical environment, based on his study of the architect Andrea Palladio and The Orders. [15]

Monticello was also Thomas Jefferson’s slave plantation. Throughout a period lasting seventy years, Thomas Jefferson owned over 600 slaves. Many of the slaves at the Monticello plantation intermarried amongst each other and produced children. Jefferson only paid a few of his trusted slaves in important positions for work done or for performing difficult tasks like cleaning chimneys or privies. Although there are no direct workday references, Jefferson’s slaves probably worked from dawn to dusk, with shorter or longer days according to the season. Fragmentary records indicate a rich spiritual life at Monticello slave quarters, incorporating both Christian and African traditions. Although there is no record that Jefferson instructed slaves in grammar education, several enslaved men at Monticello could read and write.[16]

Towards revolution

Besides practicing law, Jefferson represented Albemarle County in the Virginia House of Burgesses beginning in 1769. Following the passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament in 1774, he wrote a set of resolutions against the acts, which were expanded into A Summary View of the Rights of British America, his first published work. Previous criticism of the Coercive Acts had focused on legal and constitutional issues, but Jefferson offered the radical notion that the colonists had the natural right to govern themselves.[17] Jefferson also argued that Parliament was the legislature of Great Britain only, and had no legislative authority in the colonies.[17] The paper was intended to serve as instructions for the Virginia delegation of the First Continental Congress, but Jefferson’s ideas proved to be too radical for that body.[17] Nevertheless, the pamphlet helped provide the theoretical framework for American independence, and marked Jefferson as one of the most thoughtful patriot spokesmen.[citation needed]

 Drafting a declaration

Jefferson served as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress beginning in June 1775, soon after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. When Congress began considering a resolution of independence in June 1776, Jefferson was appointed to a five-man committee to prepare a declaration to accompany the resolution. The committee selected Jefferson to write the first draft probably because of his reputation as a writer. The assignment was considered routine; no one at the time thought that it was a major responsibility.[18] Jefferson completed a draft in consultation with other committee members, drawing on his own proposed draft of the Virginia Constitution, George Mason‘s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and other sources.[19]

Political career from 1774 to 1800

Rudolph Evans’ statue of Jefferson with excerpts from the Declaration of Independence to the right

Jefferson showed his draft to the committee, which made some final revisions, and then presented it to Congress on June 28, 1776. After voting in favor of the resolution of independence on July 2, Congress turned its attention to the declaration. Over several days of debate, Congress made a few changes in wording and deleted nearly a fourth of the text, most notably a passage critical of the slave trade, changes that Jefferson resented.[20] On July 4, 1776, the wording of the Declaration of Independence was approved. The Declaration would eventually become Jefferson’s major claim to fame, and his eloquent preamble became an enduring statement of human rights.[20]

 State legislator

In John Trumbull‘s painting Declaration of Independence, the five-man drafting committee is presenting its work to the Continental Congress. Jefferson is the tall figure in the center laying the Declaration on the desk.

In September 1776, Jefferson returned to Virginia and was elected to the new Virginia House of Delegates. During his term in the House, Jefferson set out to reform and update Virginia’s system of laws to reflect its new status as a democratic state. He drafted 126 bills in three years, including laws to abolish primogeniture, establish freedom of religion, and streamline the judicial system. In 1778, Jefferson’s “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge” led to several academic reforms at his alma mater, including an elective system of study—the first in an American university.[citation needed]

While in the state legislature Jefferson proposed a bill to eliminate capital punishment for all crimes except murder and treason. His effort to reform the death penalty law was defeated by just one vote,[21] and such crimes as rape remained punishable by death in Virginia until the 1960s.[22] He succeeded in passing an act prohibiting the importation of slaves but not slavery itself.[citation needed]

Governor of Virginia

Jefferson served as governor of Virginia from 1779–1781. As governor, he oversaw the transfer of the state capital from Williamsburg to the more central location of Richmond in 1780. He continued to advocate educational reforms at the College of William and Mary, including the nation’s first student-policed honor code. In 1779, at Jefferson’s behest, William and Mary appointed George Wythe to be the first professor of law in an American university. Dissatisfied with the rate of changes he wanted to push through, he later became the founder of the University of Virginia, which was the first university in the United States at which higher education was completely separate from religious doctrine.

Virginia was invaded twice by the British led first by Benedict Arnold and then by Lord Cornwallis during Jefferson’s term as governor. He, along with Patrick Henry and other leaders of Virginia, were but ten minutes away from being captured by Banastre Tarleton, a British colonel leading a cavalry column that was raiding the area in June 1781.[23] Public disapproval of his performance delayed his future political prospects, and he was never again elected to office in Virginia.[24] He was, however, appointed by the state legislature to Congress in 1783.

 Member of Congress

See also: Plan for Establishing Uniformity in the Coinage, Weights, and Measures of the United States

The Virginia state legislature appointed Jefferson to the Congress of the Confederation on 6 June 1783, his term beginning on 1 November. He was a member of the committee set up to set foreign exchange rates, and in that capacity he recommended that the American currency should be based on the decimal system.

Jefferson also recommended setting up the Committee of the States, to function as the executive arm of Congress when Congress was not in session.

He left Congress when he was elected a minister plenipotentiary on 7 May 1784. He became Minister to France in 1785.

Minister to France

Memorial plaque on the Champs-Élysées, Paris, France, marking where Jefferson lived while he was Minister to France. The plaque was erected after World War I to commemorate the centenary of Jefferson’s founding of the University of Virginia.

Because Jefferson served as minister to France from 1785 to 1789, he was not able to attend the Philadelphia Convention. He generally supported the new constitution despite the lack of a bill of rights and was kept informed by his correspondence with James Madison.

While in Paris, he lived in a home on the Champs-Élysées. He spent much of his time exploring the architectural sites of the city, as well as enjoying the fine arts that Paris had to offer. He became a favorite in the salon culture and was a frequent dinner guest of many of the city’s most prominent people. In addition, he frequently entertained others from French and European society. He and his daughters were accompanied by two slaves of the Hemings family from Monticello. Jefferson paid for James Hemings to be trained as a French chef (Hemings later accompanied Jefferson as chef when he was in Philadelphia). Sally Hemings, James’ sister, had accompanied Jefferson’s younger daughter overseas. Jefferson is believed to have begun his long-term relationship with Sally Hemings in Paris. Both the Hemings learned French during their time in the city.[25]

From 1784 to 1785, Jefferson was one of the architects of trade relations between the United States and Prussia. The Prussian ambassador Friedrich Wilhelm von Thulemeyer and John Adams, both living in the Hague, and Benjamin Franklin in Paris, were also involved.[26]

Despite his numerous friendships with the social and noble elite, when the French Revolution began in 1789, Jefferson sided with the revolutionaries.

Secretary of State

After returning from France, Jefferson served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington (1790–1793). Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton began sparring over national fiscal policy, especially the funding of the debts of the war, with Hamilton believing that the debts should be equally shared, and Jefferson believing that each state should be responsible for its own debt (Virginia had not accumulated much debt during the Revolution). In further sparring with the Federalists, Jefferson came to equate Hamilton and the rest of the Federalists with Tories and monarchists who threatened to undermine republicanism. He equated Federalism with “Royalism,” and made a point to state that “Hamiltonians were panting after…and itching for crowns, coronets and mitres.”[27] Jefferson and James Madison founded and led the Democratic-Republican Party. He worked with Madison and his campaign manager John J. Beckley to build a nationwide network of Republican allies to combat Federalists across the country.

Jefferson strongly supported France against Britain when war broke out between those nations in 1793. Historian Lawrence S. Kaplan notes Jefferson’s “visceral support for the French cause,” while agreeing with Washington that the nation should not get involved in the fighting.[28] The arrival in 1793 of an aggressive new French minister, Edmond-Charles Genêt, caused a crisis for the Secretary of State, as he watched Genêt try to violate American neutrality, manipulate public opinion, and even go over Washington’s head in appealing to the people; projects that Jefferson helped to thwart. According to Schachner, Jefferson believed that political success at home depended on the success of the French army in Europe:[29]

Thomas Jefferson, aquatint by Tadeusz Kościuszko

Jefferson still clung to his sympathies with France and hoped for the success of her arms abroad and a cordial compact with her at home. He was afraid that any French reverses on the European battlefields would give “wonderful vigor to our monocrats, and unquestionably affect the tone of administering our government. Indeed, I fear that if this summer should prove disastrous to the French, it will damp that energy of republicanism in our new Congress, from which I had hoped so much reformation.”

Break from office

Jefferson at the end of 1793 retired to Monticello where he continued to orchestrate opposition to Hamilton and Washington. However, the Jay Treaty of 1794, orchestrated by Hamilton, brought peace and trade with Britain – while Madison, with strong support from Jefferson, wanted, Miller says, “to strangle the former mother country” without going to war. “It became an article of faith among Republicans that ‘commercial weapons’ would suffice to bring Great Britain to any terms the United States chose to dictate.” Jefferson, in retirement, strongly encouraged Madison.[30]

Election of 1796 and Vice Presidency

As the Democratic-Republican candidate in 1796 he lost to John Adams, but had enough electoral votes to become Vice President (1797–1801). He wrote a manual of parliamentary procedure, but otherwise avoided the Senate.

With the Quasi-War, an undeclared naval war with France, underway, the Federalists under John Adams started a navy, built up the army, levied new taxes, readied for war, and enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. Jefferson interpreted the Alien and Sedition Acts as an attack on his party more than on dangerous enemy aliens; they were used to attack his party, with the most notable attacks coming from Matthew Lyon, a representative from Vermont. Jefferson and Madison rallied support by anonymously writing the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which declared that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it by the states. The Resolutions meant that, should the federal government assume such powers, its acts under them could be voided by a state. The Resolutions presented the first statements of the states’ rights theory, that later led to the concepts of nullification and interposition.

Election of 1800

Main article: United States presidential election, 1800

Working closely with Aaron Burr of New York, Jefferson rallied his party, attacking the new taxes especially, and ran for the Presidency in 1800. Consistent with the traditions of the times, he did not formally campaign for the position. Before the passage of the Twelfth Amendment, a problem with the new union’s electoral system arose. He tied with Burr for first place in the electoral college, leaving the House of Representatives (where the Federalists still had some power) to decide the election.

After lengthy debate within the Federalist-controlled House, Hamilton convinced his party that Jefferson would be a lesser political evil than Burr and that such scandal within the electoral process would undermine the still-young regime. The issue was resolved by the House, on February 17, 1801, after thirty-six ballots, when Jefferson was elected President and Burr Vice President. Burr’s refusal to remove himself from consideration created ill will with Jefferson, who dropped Burr from the ticket in 1804 after Burr killed Hamilton in a duel.

However, Jefferson’s win over the Federalist John Adams in the general election was derided in its time for how the electoral college was set up under the three-fifths compromise at the Constitutional convention. Jefferson owed part of his election to the South’s inflated number of Electors due to slave-holdings, which meant that twelve of Jefferson’s electoral votes—his margin of victory—were derived from citizenry who were denied the vote and their full humanity.[31][32] After his election in 1800, Jefferson was derided as the “Negro President”, with critics like the Mercury and New-England Palladium of Boston writing on January 20, 1801, that Jefferson had the gall to celebrate his election as a victory for democracy when he won “the temple of Liberty on the shoulders of slaves.”[32][33]

Presidency 1801–1809

Main article: Presidency of Thomas Jefferson

During Jefferson’s presidency many federal taxes were repealed, and he sought to rely mainly on customs revenue. He pardoned people who had been imprisoned under the Alien and Sedition Acts, passed in John Adams’ term, which Jefferson believed to be unconstitutional. He repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801 and removed many of Adams’ “midnight judges” from office, which led to the Supreme Court deciding the important case of Marbury v. Madison. He began and won the First Barbary War (1801–1805), America’s first significant overseas war, and established the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1802.

Jefferson bust at Louisiana State Exhibit Museum in Shreveport commemorates the Louisiana Purchase.

In 1803, despite his misgivings about the constitutionality of Congress’s power to buy land, Jefferson bought Louisiana from France, doubling the size of the United States. The land thus acquired amounts to 23 percent of the United States today.[34]

In 1807, his former vice president, Aaron Burr, was tried for treason on Jefferson’s order, but was acquitted. During the trial Chief Justice John Marshall subpoenaed Jefferson, who invoked executive privilege and claimed that as president he did not need to comply. When Marshall held that the Constitution did not provide the president with any exception to the duty to obey a court order, Jefferson backed down.

Jefferson’s reputation was damaged by the Embargo Act of 1807, which was ineffective and was repealed at the end of his second term.

In 1803, President Jefferson signed into law a bill that excluded blacks from carrying the U.S. mail. Historian John Hope Franklin called the signing “a gratuitous expression of distrust of free Negroes who had done nothing to merit it.” [35]

On March 3, 1807, Jefferson signed a bill making slave importation illegal in the United States.[36][37]

Administration, Cabinet and Supreme Court appointments 1801–1809

The Jefferson Cabinet  
Office Name Term
 
     
     
   
 
     
 
     
   
 
     
 
     
   
   
 
Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Stoddert 1801
Robert Smith 1801–1809
       

 

Associate Justice

States admitted to the Union:

  • Ohio – March 1, 1803
 Painting of Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale (1805)

 

 

Father of a university

Also see: History of the University of Virginia

The Lawn, University of Virginia

After leaving the Presidency, Jefferson continued to be active in public affairs. He also became increasingly concerned with founding a new institution of higher learning, specifically one free of church influences where students could specialize in many new areas not offered at other universities. Jefferson believed educating people was a good way to establish an organized society, and felt schools should be paid for by the general public, so less wealthy people could obtain student membership as well.[38] A letter to Joseph Priestley, in January 1800, indicated that he had been planning the University for decades before its establishment.

His dream was realized in 1819 with the founding of the University of Virginia. Upon its opening in 1825, it was then the first university to offer a full slate of elective courses to its students. One of the largest construction projects to that time in North America, it was notable for being centered about a library rather than a church. No campus chapel was included in his original plans. Until his death, Jefferson invited students and faculty of the school to his home.

Jefferson is widely recognized for his architectural planning of the University of Virginia grounds, an innovative design that is a powerful representation of his aspirations for both state sponsored education and an agrarian democracy in the new Republic. His educational idea of creating specialized units of learning is physically expressed in the configuration of his campus plan, which he called the “Academical Village.” Individual academic units are expressed visually as distinct structures, represented by Pavilions, facing a grassy quadrangle, with each Pavilion housing classroom, faculty office, and homes. Though unique, each is visually equal in importance, and they are linked with a series of open air arcades that are the front facades of student accommodations. Gardens and vegetable plots are placed behind and surrounded by serpentine walls, affirming the importance of the agrarian lifestyle.

His highly ordered site plan establishes an ensemble of buildings surrounding a central rectangular quadrangle, named The Lawn, which is lined on either side with the academic teaching units and their linking arcades. The quad is enclosed at one end with the library, the repository of knowledge, at the head of the table. The remaining side opposite the library remained open-ended for future growth. The lawn rises gradually as a series of stepped terraces, each a few feet higher than the last, rising up to the library set in the most prominent position at the top, while also suggesting that the Academical Village facilitates easier movement to the future.

Stylistically, Jefferson was a proponent of the Greek and Roman styles, which he believed to be most representative of American democracy by historical association. Each academic unit is designed with a two story temple front facing the quadrangle, while the library is modeled on the Roman Pantheon. The ensemble of buildings surrounding the quad is an unmistakable architectural statement of the importance of secular public education, while the exclusion of religious structures reinforces the principle of separation of church and state. The campus planning and architectural treatment remains today as a paradigm of building of structures to express intellectual ideas and aspirations. A survey of members of the American Institute of Architects identified Jefferson’s campus as the most significant work of architecture in America.

The University was designed as the capstone of the educational system of Virginia. In his vision, any citizen of the state could attend school with the sole criterion being ability.

Death

Jefferson’s gravesite

Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. He died a few hours before John Adams, his compatriot in their quest for independence, then great political rival, and later friend and correspondent. Adams is often rumored to have referenced Jefferson in his last words, unaware of his passing.[39] Jefferson is considered to have died from a number of conditions in his old age: toxins in his blood and uremia from nephropathy, severe diarrhea, and pneumonia. Problems urinating from a urinary tract infection, while a symptom of kidney disease, have made some consider that Jefferson died from undiagnosed prostate cancer.[40][unreliable source?]

Although he was born into one of the wealthiest families in North America, Thomas Jefferson was deeply in debt when he died. Jefferson’s trouble began when his father-in-law died, and he and his brothers-in-law quickly divided the estate before its debts were settled. It made each of them liable for the whole amount due – which turned out to be more than they expected.

Jefferson sold land before the American Revolution to pay off the debts, but by the time he received payment, the paper money was worthless amid the skyrocketing inflation of the war years. Cornwallis ravaged Jefferson’s plantation during the war, and British creditors resumed their collection efforts when the conflict ended. Jefferson suffered another financial setback when he cosigned notes for a relative who reneged on debts in the financial Panic of 1819. Only Jefferson’s public stature prevented creditors from seizing Monticello and selling it out from under him during his lifetime.

After his death, his possessions were sold at auction. In 1831, Jefferson’s 552 acres (223 hectares) were sold to James T. Barclay for $7,000, equivalent to $143 thousand today.[41] Thomas Jefferson is buried on his Monticello estate, in Charlottesville, Virginia. In his will, he left Monticello to the United States to be used as a school for orphans of navy officers. His epitaph, written by him with an insistence that only his words and “not a word more” be inscribed (notably omitting his service as Governor of Virginia, Vice-President and President), reads:

“HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSONAUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCEOF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

AND FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.”

Below the epitaph, on a separate panel, is written

BORN APRIL 2. 1743. O.S.DIED JULY 4. 1826.

The initials O.S. are a notation for Old Style and that is a reference to the change of dating that occurred during Jefferson’s lifetime from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar under the British Calendar (New Style) Act 1750.[42]

Appearance and temperament

Jefferson was a thin, tall man, who stood at approximately six feet and remarkably straight.[43]

“The Sage of Monticello” cultivated an image that earned him the other nickname, “Man of the People.” He affected a popular air by greeting White House guests in homespun attire like a robe and slippers. Dolley Madison, wife of James Madison (Jefferson’s secretary of state), and Jefferson’s daughters relaxed White House protocol and turned formal state dinners into more casual and entertaining social events.[44] Although a foremost defender of a free press, Jefferson at times sparred with partisan newspapers and appealed to the people.[45]

Jefferson’s writings were utilitarian and evidenced great intellect, and he had an affinity with languages. He learned Gaelic to translate Ossian, and sent to James Macpherson for the originals.

As President, he discontinued the practice of delivering the State of the Union address in person, instead sending the address to Congress in writing (the practice was eventually revived by Woodrow Wilson); he gave only two public speeches during his Presidency. Jefferson had a lisp[46] and preferred writing to public speaking partly because of this. He burned all of his letters between himself and his wife at her death, creating the portrait of a man who at times could be very private. Indeed, he preferred working in the privacy of his office than the public eye.[47]

Interests and activities

Jefferson was an accomplished architect who was extremely influential in bringing the Neo-Palladian style—popular among the Whig aristocracy of Britain—to the United States. The style was associated with Enlightenment ideas of republican civic virtue and political liberty. Jefferson designed his home Monticello near Charlottesville, Virginia. Nearby is the University of Virginia, the only university ever to have been founded by a U.S. president. Jefferson designed the architecture of the first buildings as well as the original curriculum and residential style. Monticello and the University of Virginia are together one of only four man-made World Heritage Sites in the United States of America.

Jefferson also designed Poplar Forest, near Lynchburg, in Bedford County, Virginia, as a private retreat from his very public life. Jefferson contributed to the design of the Virginia State Capitol, which was modeled after the Maison Carrée, an ancient Roman temple at Nîmes in southern France. Jefferson’s buildings helped initiate the ensuing American fashion for Federal architecture.

Jefferson invented many small practical devices, such as a rotating book stand and (in collaboration with Charles Wilson Peale) a number of improvements to the polygraph, a device that made a copy of a letter as he wrote the original.[48] Monticello included automatic doors, the first swivel chair, and other convenient devices invented by Jefferson. His interest in mechanical drawing devices included the use of the physiognotrace. In 1802, Charles Willson Peale sent a watercolor sketch of this instrument to Thomas Jefferson,[49] along with a detailed explanation. The drawing now sits with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress. In 1804, Charles Fevret de Saint-Memin created an oval silhouette likeness of Jefferson using the physiognotrace, which became one of the best known likenesses of Jefferson in his day.[50]

Jefferson’s interests included archeology, a discipline then in its infancy. He has sometimes been called the “father of archeology” in recognition of his role in developing excavation techniques. When exploring an Indian burial mound on his Virginia estate in 1784, Jefferson avoided the common practice of simply digging downwards until something turned up. Instead, he cut a wedge out of the mound so that he could walk into it, look at the layers of occupation, and draw conclusions from them.

Thomas Jefferson enjoyed his fish pond at Monticello. It was about three feet (1 m) deep and mortar lined. He used the pond to keep fish which were recently caught as well as to keep eels fresh. Recently restored, the pond can be seen from the west side of Monticello.

In 1780, he joined Benjamin Franklin’s American Philosophical Society. He served as president of the society from 1797 to 1815.

Jefferson was interested in birds. His Notes on Virginia contains a list of the birds found in his home state, though there are “doubtless many others which have not yet been described and classed.” He also comments that the drawings of Virginia birds by the English naturalist Mark Catesby “are better as to form and attitude, than colouring, which is generally too high.”

Letter from Jefferson to General George Rogers Clark asking Clark to crate fossils he discovered at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, for shipment to a New Orleans collector. The following year Jefferson offered the archaeological finds to the National Institute of Paris, France

Jefferson was an avid wine lover and collector, and a noted gourmet. During his years in France (1784–1789), he took extensive trips through French and other European wine regions, and bought wine to send back to the United States. He is noted for the bold pronouncement: “We could in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good.” While there were extensive vineyards planted at Monticello, a significant portion were of the European wine grape Vitis vinifera and did not survive the many vine diseases native to the Americas.

In 1801, he published A Manual of Parliamentary Practice that is still in use. In 1812, Jefferson published a second edition.

After the British burned Washington, D.C. and the Library of Congress in August 1814, Jefferson offered his own collection of books to the nation. In January 1815, Congress accepted his offer, appropriating $23,950 for his 6,487 books. The foundation was laid for a great national library. Today, the Library of Congress‘ website for federal legislative information is named THOMAS, in honor of Jefferson.[51] In 2007, Jefferson’s two-volume 1764 edition of the Qur’an was used by Rep. Keith Ellison for his swearing in to the House of Representatives.[52]

Political philosophy and views

In his May 28, 1818, letter to Mordecai Manuel Noah, Jefferson expressed his faith in humanity and his views on the nature of democracy.

Jefferson was a leader in developing republicanism in the United States. He insisted that the British aristocratic system was inherently corrupt and that Americans’ devotion to civic virtue required independence. In the 1790s he repeatedly warned that Hamilton and Adams were trying to impose a British-like monarchical system that threatened republicanism. He supported the War of 1812, hoping it would drive away the British military and ideological threat from Canada.

Jefferson’s vision for American virtue was that of an agricultural nation of yeoman farmers minding their own affairs. His agrarianism stood in contrast to the vision of Alexander Hamilton of a nation of commerce and manufacturing, which Jefferson said offered too many temptations to corruption. Jefferson’s deep belief in the uniqueness and the potential of America made him the father of American exceptionalism. In particular, he was confident that an underpopulated America could avoid what he considered the horrors of class-divided, industrialized Europe.

Jefferson’s republican political principles were heavily influenced by the Country Party of 18th century British opposition writers. He was influenced by John Locke (particularly relating to the principle of inalienable rights). Historians find few traces of any influence by his French contemporary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[53]

Banks and bankers

His opposition to the Bank of the United States was fierce: “I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”[54] Nevertheless Madison and Congress, seeing the financial chaos caused by the War of 1812, disregarded his advice and created the Second Bank of the United States in 1816.

Jefferson wrote many letters to colleagues where he often defined his views about the banking cartel of the day. Among the most definitive is his letter of May 28, 1816, to John Tyler

The system of banking we have both equally and ever reprobated . I contemplate it as a blot left in all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens. [55]

– Thomas Jefferson, 1816

Individual rights

Jefferson believed that each individual has “certain inalienable rights”. That is, these rights exist with or without government; man cannot create, take, or give them away. It is the right of “liberty” on which Jefferson is most notable for expounding. He defines it by saying, “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”[56] Hence, for Jefferson, though government cannot create a right to liberty, it can indeed violate it. The limit of an individual’s rightful liberty is not what law says it is but is simply a matter of stopping short of prohibiting other individuals from having the same liberty. A proper government, for Jefferson, is one that not only prohibits individuals in society from infringing on the liberty of other individuals, but also restrains itself from diminishing individual liberty.

Jefferson’s commitment to equality was expressed in his successful efforts to abolish primogeniture in Virginia, the rule by which the first born son inherited all the land.[57]

Jefferson believed that individuals have an innate sense of morality that prescribes right from wrong when dealing with other individuals—that whether they choose to restrain themselves or not, they have an innate sense of the natural rights of others. He even believed that moral sense to be reliable enough that an anarchist society could function well, provided that it was reasonably small. On several occasions, he expressed admiration for the tribal, communal way of living of Native Americans:[58] Jefferson is sometimes seen as a philosophical anarchist.[59]

He said in a letter to Colonel Carrington: “I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government, enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments.” However, Jefferson believed anarchism to be “inconsistent with any great degree of population”.[60] Hence, he did advocate government for the American expanse provided that it exists by “consent of the governed”.

In the Preamble to his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote:

We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles & organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.[61]

Jefferson’s dedication to “consent of the governed” was so thorough that he believed that individuals could not be morally bound by the actions of preceding generations. This included debts as well as law. He said that “no society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation.” He even calculated what he believed to be the proper cycle of legal revolution: “Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen years. If it is to be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.” He arrived at 19 years through calculations with expectancy of life tables, taking into account what he believed to be the age of “maturity”—when an individual is able to reason for himself.[62] He also advocated that the national debt should be eliminated. He did not believe that living individuals had a moral obligation to repay the debts of previous generations. He said that repaying such debts was “a question of generosity and not of right.”[63]

States’ rights

Jefferson’s very strong defense of States’ rights, especially in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, set the tone for hostility to expansion of federal powers. However, some of his foreign policies did strengthen the government. Most important was the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, when he used the implied powers to annex a huge foreign territory and all its French and Indian inhabitants. The population was estimated to be 97,000 as of the 1810 census.[64] His enforcement of the Embargo Act of 1807, while it failed in terms of foreign policy, demonstrated that the federal government could intervene with great force at the local level in controlling trade that might lead to war.

Carrying of arms

Jefferson copied many excerpts from the various books he read into his “Legal Commonplace Book.”[65] One passage he copied which touches on gun control was from Cesare Beccaria‘s Essay on Crimes and Punishments. The passage, which is written in Italian, discusses the “false idea of utility” (false idee di utilità) which Beccaria saw as underlying some laws. It can be translated, in part, as:

A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility … who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it.

The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. … It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.[66]

Jefferson’s only notation was, “False idee di utilità.”[66] It isn’t known whether Jefferson agreed with the example Beccaria used, or with the general idea, or if he had some other reason for copying the passage.

Corporations

Jefferson in 1816 wrote to George Logan,

In this respect England exhibits the most remarkable phenomenon in the universe in the contrast between the profligacy of it’s government and the probity of it’s citizens. And accordingly it is now exhibiting an example of the truth of the maxim that virtue & interest are inseparable. It ends, as might have been expected, in the ruin of it’s people, but this ruin will fall heaviest, as it ought to fall on that hereditary aristocracy which has for generations been preparing the catastrophe. I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.[67]

Judiciary

Trained as a lawyer, Jefferson was a gifted writer but never a good speaker or advocate and was never comfortable in court. He believed that judges should be technical specialists but should not set policy. He privately felt the 1803 Supreme Court ruling in Marbury v. Madison was a violation of democracy, for it made the Supreme Court the final decision-maker on the Constitution. He lacked enough support in Congress to propose a Constitutional amendment to overturn it.[68] Jefferson continued to oppose the doctrine of judicial review:

To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.[69]

Rebellion to restrain government and retain individual rights

After the Revolutionary War, Jefferson advocated restraining government via rebellion and violence when necessary, in order to protect individual freedoms. In a letter to James Madison on January 30, 1787, Jefferson wrote, “A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical…It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”[70] Similarly, in a letter to Abigail Adams on February 22, 1787 he wrote, “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.”[70] Concerning Shays’ Rebellion after he had heard of the bloodshed, on November 13, 1787 Jefferson wrote to William S. Smith, John Adams’ son-in-law, “What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”[71] In another letter to William S. Smith during 1787, Jefferson wrote: And what country can preserve its liberties, if the rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.[70]

Self-esteem

In a letter to Francis Hopkinson of March 13, 1789, Jefferson wrote: “I never had an opinion in politics or religion which I was afraid to own. A costive reserve on these subjects might have procured me more esteem from some people, but less from myself.”[72]

Women in politics

Jefferson was not an advocate of women’s suffrage; author Richard Morris wrote, “Abigail Adams excepted, Jefferson detested intellectual women. Annoyed by the political chatter of women in Parisian salons, he wrote home expressing the hope that ‘our good ladies … are contented to soothe and calm the minds of their husbands returning ruffled from political debate.’” While President, Jefferson wrote that “The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I.”[73]

Religion

Further information: Thomas Jefferson and religion

The religious views of Thomas Jefferson diverged widely from the orthodox Christianity of his day. Throughout his life Jefferson was intensely interested in theology, biblical study, and morality. He is most closely connected with the religious philosophy of Deism, and Unitarianism. He is reported to have said, “Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”[74][75]

Native American policy

Jefferson was the first President to propose the idea of a formal Indian Removal plan.[76][77]

Andrew Jackson is often erroneously credited with initiating Indian Removal, because Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, during his presidency, and also because of his personal involvement in the forceful extermination and removal of many Eastern tribes.[76] But Jackson was merely legalizing and implementing a plan laid out by Jefferson in a series of private letters that began in 1803 (for example, see letter to William Henry Harrison below).[76]

Jefferson’s first promotions of Indian Removal were between 1776 and 1779, when he recommended forcing the Cherokee and Shawnee tribes to be driven out of their ancestral homelands to lands west of the Mississippi River.[76]

His first such act as president, was to make a deal with the state of Georgia that if Georgia were to release its legal claims to discovery in lands to the west, then the U.S. military would help forcefully expel the Cherokee people from Georgia. At the time, the Cherokee had a treaty with the United States government which guaranteed them the right to their lands, which was violated in Jefferson’s deal with Georgia.[76]

Acculturation and assimilation

Jefferson’s original plan was for Natives to give up their own cultures, religions, and lifestyles in favor of western European culture, Christian religion, and a sedentary agricultural lifestyle.[76][77]

Jefferson’s expectation was that by assimilating them into an agricultural lifestyle and stripping them of self-sufficiency, they would become economically dependent on trade with white Americans, and would thereby be willing to give up land that they would otherwise not part with, in exchange for trade goods or to resolve unpaid debts.[78] In an 1803 letter to William Henry Harrison, Jefferson wrote:

To promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands…. In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us a citizens or the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. The former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole course of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only. Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi, as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation.[78]

Forced removal and extermination

In cases where Native tribes resisted assimilation, Jefferson believed that they should be forcefully removed from their land and sent west.[76] Tribes that joined the British in the War of 1812 and massacred American settlements had to be fought against. As Jefferson put it in a letter to Alexander von Humboldt in 1813:

You know, my friend, the benevolent plan we were pursuing here for the happiness of the aboriginal inhabitants in our vicinities. We spared nothing to keep them at peace with one another. To teach them agriculture and the rudiments of the most necessary arts, and to encourage industry by establishing among them separate property. In this way they would have been enabled to subsist and multiply on a moderate scale of landed possession. They would have mixed their blood with ours, and been amalgamated and identified with us within no distant period of time. On the commencement of our present war, we pressed on them the observance of peace and neutrality, but the interested and unprincipled policy of England has defeated all our labors for the salvation of these unfortunate people. They have seduced the greater part of the tribes within our neighborhood, to take up the hatchet against us, and the cruel massacres they have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach.[79]

Jefferson believed assimilation was best for Indians; second best was removal to the west. The worst possible outcome would happen if Indians attacked the whites.[80] He told his Secretary of War, General Henry Dearborn (who was the primary government official responsible for Indian affairs): “if we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississipi.”[81]

On slavery

2006–present

Main article: Thomas Jefferson and slavery

Jefferson was not an abolitionist, and he owned many slaves over his lifetime. Biographers point out that Jefferson was deeply in debt and had encumbered his slaves by notes and mortgages; he could not free them until he was free of debt, which never happened.[82] As a result, Jefferson seems to have suffered pangs and trials of conscience. His claimed ambivalence was also reflected in his treatment of those slaves who worked most closely with him and his family at Monticello and in other locations. He invested in having them trained and schooled in high quality skills.[83] He wrote about slavery, “We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”[84]

He sponsored and encouraged Free-State advocates like James Lemen.[85] According to a biographer, Jefferson “believed that it was the responsibility of the state and society to free all slaves.”[86] In 1769, as a member of the House of Burgesses, Jefferson proposed for that body to emancipate slaves in Virginia, but he was unsuccessful.[87] In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson condemned the British crown for sponsoring the importation of slavery to the colonies, charging that the crown “has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere.” However, this language was dropped from the Declaration at the request of delegates from South Carolina and Georgia because it was obvious that these slave owners did not oppose slavery; neither did Jefferson, Washington or the dozens of other slave owners.

In 1778 the legislature passed a bill he proposed to ban further importation of slaves into Virginia, and he said it “stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication.” Many slave owners opposed the slave trade, while supporting slavery. The two were distinct institutions. [88]

Though Jefferson supported the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, it was not an anti-slavery law; it was supported by slave owners because it contained a fugitive slave clause (they could recover runaway slaves), and it would not affect the number of slave to free state House Representatives in the Congress because they knew that the Southwest Ordinance of 1790 would guarantee slavery south of the river Ohio.[89]

In 1807, as President, he signed a bill abolishing the slave trade. This was not a form of abolition. The slave trade was an embarassment and other nations like Great Britian were doing the same, whilst maintaing slave plantations and slavery.

Jefferson seems to attack the institution of slavery in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1784):

There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.[90]

In this same work, Jefferson advanced his suspicion that black people were inferior to white people “in the endowments both of body and mind.”[91] However, he also wrote in the same work that black people could have the right to live free in any country where people judge them by their nature, and not as just being good for labor.[92] He also wrote, “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. [But] the two races…cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.”[44] According to historian Stephen Ambrose: “Jefferson, like all slaveholders and many other white members of American society, regarded Negroes as inferior, childlike, untrustworthy and, of course, as property. Jefferson, the genius of politics, could see no way for African Americans to live in society as free people.” At the same time he trusted them with his children, with preparation of his food and entertainment of high-ranking guests. So clearly he believed that some were trustworthy.[93] For a long-term solution Jefferson believed that slaves should be freed then deported peacefully to African colonies. Otherwise, he feared war and that in his words, “human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. We should in vain look for an example in the Spanish deportation or deletion of the Moors. This precedent would fall far short of our case.”[94]

But on February 25, 1809, Jefferson repudiated his earlier view, writing in a letter to Abbé Grégoire:

Sir,—I have received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind to send me on the “Literature of Negroes.” Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunity for the development of their genius were not favorable and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making toward their re-establishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family. I pray you therefore to accept my thanks for the many instances you have enabled me to observe of respectable intelligence in that race of men, which cannot fail to have effect in hastening the day of their relief; and to be assured of the sentiments of high and just esteem and consideration which I tender to yourself with all sincerity.[95]

In August 1814 Edward Coles and Jefferson corresponded about Coles’ ideas on emancipation: “Your solitary but welcome voice is the first which has brought this to my ear, and I have considered the general silence which prevails on this subject as indicating an apathy unfavorable to every hope.[96]

In 1817, as Polish general and American war of independence rebel Tadeusz Kościuszko died, Jefferson was named by Kościuszko as the executor of his will, in which the Pole asked that the proceeds from the sale of his assets be used to free, among others, Jefferson’s slaves. Jefferson, 75 at the time, did not free his slaves and pleaded that he was too old to take on the duties of executor; at the same time energetically throwing himself into the creation of the University of Virginia.[97] Some historians have speculated that he had qualms about freeing slaves.[98]

The downturn in land prices after 1819 pushed Jefferson further into debt. Jefferson finally emancipated his five most trusted slaves (two, his mixed-race sons through Sally Hemings confirmed 1998 DNA tests) and petitioned the legislature to allow them to stay in Virginia. After his death, his family sold the remainder of the slaves by auction on the lawn of his estate[97] to settle his high debts.[99]

Monuments and memorials

Further information: List of places named for Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson has been memorialized in many ways, including buildings, sculptures, and currency. The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. on April 13, 1943, the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth. The interior of the memorial includes a 19-foot (6 m) statue of Jefferson and engravings of passages from his writings. Most prominent are the words which are inscribed around the monument near the roof: “I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man”.[100]

His original tombstone, now a cenotaph, is now located on the campus in the University of Missouri‘s Quadrangle.

Jefferson, together with George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, was chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and approved by President Calvin Coolidge to be depicted in stone at the Mount Rushmore Memorial.[101]

Jefferson’s portrait appears on the U.S. $2 bill, nickel, and the $100 Series EE Savings Bond.

Recent memorials to Jefferson include the commissioning of the NOAA ship Thomas Jefferson in Norfolk, Virginia on July 8, 2003, in commemoration of his establishment of a Survey of the Coast, the predecessor to NOAA’s National Ocean Service; and the placement of a bronze monument in Jefferson Park, Chicago at the entrance to the Jefferson Park Transit Center along Milwaukee Avenue in 2005.

Marriage and Family

Acknowledged Wife and Children

In 1772, at age 29 Jefferson married the 23-year-old widow Martha Wayles Skelton. They had six children: Martha Jefferson Randolph (1772–1836), Jane Randolph (1774–1775), a stillborn or unnamed son (1777), Mary Jefferson Eppes (1778–1804), Lucy Elizabeth (1780–1781), and another Lucy Elizabeth (1782–1785). Martha died on September 6, 1782, after the birth of her last child. Jefferson never remarried.

Alleged mixed-race children

Jefferson is alleged to have had a long-term, intimate relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, a quadroon, who was believed to have been a half-sister to Jefferson’s late wife. She had six children, four of whom survived to adulthood and were freed or allowed to escape by Jefferson. They were presumably seven-eights white by ancestry.[103]

During the administration of President Jefferson allegations were initiated by former employee James T. Callender after being denied an appointment that Jefferson had fathered several children with Hemings after his wife’s death. Late twentieth-century DNA testing (see Jefferson DNA data) indicated that a male in Jefferson’s line was the father of at least one of Sally Hemings’s children but do not specifically identify Thomas Jefferson and the allegations remain unproven. Jefferson commented on the matter in a private letter in 1816:[104]

I should have fancied myself half guilty had I condescended to put pen to paper in refutation of their falsehoods, or drawn to them respect by any notice from myself.

Information regarding DNA results and historians’ assessments is covered at length in the Sally Hemings page.

 Writings

See also

Book:Presidents of the United States (1789–1860)
Books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

Notes

  1. ^ “The Thomas Jefferson Papers Timeline: 1743 -1827″. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjtime1.html. Retrieved 2009-07-19. 
  2. ^ a b The birth and death of Thomas Jefferson are given using the Gregorian calendar. However, he was born when Britain and her colonies still used the Julian calendar, so contemporary records record his birth (and on his tombstone) as April 2, 1743. The provisions of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, implemented in 1752, altered the official British dating method to the Gregorian calendar with the start of the year on January 1 – see the article on Old Style and New Style dates for more details.
  3. ^ Robert W. Tucker, and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (1990)
  4. ^ Jefferson, Thomas (January 1, 1802). “Jefferson’s Wall of Separation Letter”. U.S. Constitution Online. http://www.usconstitution.net/jeffwall.html. Retrieved April 13, 2008. 
  5. ^ April 29, 1962 dinner honoring 49 Nobel Laureates (Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations, 1988, from Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1962, p. 347).
  6. ^ “Facts on Thomas Jefferson”. Revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com. 1943-04-13. http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/facts-on-thomas-jefferson.html. Retrieved 2010-02-04. 
  7. ^ Thomas Jefferson Encylopedia – Welsh Ancestry. Retrieved June 2, 2010.
  8. ^ Henry Stephens Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson
  9. ^ Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson: Writings, p. 1236
  10. ^ Thomas Jefferson on Wine by John Hailman, 2006
  11. ^ a b c Henry Stephens Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson. p 41
  12. ^ a b Henry Stephens Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson. p 47
  13. ^ Thomas Jefferson p.214
  14. ^ TJ to John Minor August 30, 1814 Lipscomb and Bergh, WTJ 2:420-21
  15. ^ ArchitectureWeek. “The Orders – 01″. http://www.architectureweek.com/topics/orders-01.html. Retrieved 2009-07-20. 
  16. ^ “nMonticello”. Plantationdb.monticello.org. http://plantationdb.monticello.org/. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  17. ^ a b c Merrill D. Peterson, “Jefferson, Thomas”; American National Biography Online, February 2000.
  18. ^ Ellis, American Sphinx, 47–49.
  19. ^ Maier, American Scripture. Other standard works on Jefferson and the Declaration include Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (1978) and Carl L. Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (1922).
  20. ^ a b Ellis, American Sphinx, 50.
  21. ^ “Part I: History of the Death Penalty”. Deathpenaltyinfo.org. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=15&did=410. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  22. ^ “Virgina Executions”. Rob Gallagher. http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/execution/VIRGINIA.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  23. ^ Bennett, William J. (2006). “The Greatest Revolution”. America: The Last Best Hope (Volume I): From the Age of Discovery to a World at War. Nelson Current. p. 99. ISBN 1-59555-055-0
  24. ^ Ferling 2004, p. 26
  25. ^ Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008
  26. ^ The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States of America. Books.google.com. http://books.google.com/books?id=dmgUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA218&lpg=PA218&dq=Thulemeier+Magdeburg&source=bl&ots=88_moQefOS&sig=78Uawff9ApALaQjVjOix13xjBug&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPA307,M1. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  27. ^ Ferling 2004, p. 59
  28. ^ “Foreign Affairs,” in Peterson, ed. Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Encyclopedia (1986) p 325
  29. ^ Schachner 1951, p. 495
  30. ^ Miller (1960), 143–4, 148–9.
  31. ^ An American History Lesson For Pat Buchana, Kenneth C. Davis, Huffington Post, July 18, 2009.
  32. ^ a b Thomas Jefferson, the ‘Negro President’, Gary Willis on The Tavis Smiley Show, February 16, 2004.
  33. ^ Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power, Review of Garry Willis’s book on WNYC, February 16, 2004.
  34. ^ “Table 1.1 Acquisition of the Public Domain 1781–1867″ (PDF). http://www.blm.gov/natacq/pls02/pls1-1_02.pdf. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  35. ^ [John Hope Franklin, Race and History: Selected Essays 1938–1988 (Louisiana State University Press: 1989) p. 336] and [John Hope Franklin, Racial Equality in America (Chicago: 1976), p. 24-26]
  36. ^ Martin Kelly. “Thomas Jefferson Biography – Third President of the United States”. http://americanhistory.about.com/od/thomasjefferson/p/pjefferson.htm. Retrieved 2009-07-05. 
  37. ^ Robert MacNamara. “Importation of Slaves Outlawed by 1807 Act of Congress”. http://history1800s.about.com/od/slaveryinamerica/a/1807slaveact.htm. Retrieved 2009-07-05. 
  38. ^ “Jefferson on Politics & Government: Publicly Supported Education”. Etext.lib.virginia.edu. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1370.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  39. ^ Jefferson Still Survives. Retrieved on 2006-12-26.
  40. ^ wiki.monticello.org Jefferson’s Cause of Death. Retrieved 2010-06-12.
  41. ^ Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–2008. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Retrieved March 8, 2010.
  42. ^ “Monticello Report: The Calendar and Old Style (O. S.)”. Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello.org). 2007. http://www.monticello.org/reports/life/old_style.html. Retrieved 2007-09-15. 
  43. ^ Monticello Report: Physical Descriptions of Thomas Jefferson. Retrieved September 14, 2007.
  44. ^ a b “‘Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)’ at the University of Virginia”. Americanpresident.org. http://www.americanpresident.org/history/thomasjefferson/biography/FamilyLife.common.shtml. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  45. ^ “Thomas Jefferson”. Spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk. 1999-09-22. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWjefferson.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  46. ^ “Thomas Jefferson: Silent Member”. http://www.awesomestories.com/biography/thomas_jefferson/thomas_jefferson_ch1.htm. Retrieved 2007-07-23. 
  47. ^ “‘American Sphinx’ by Joseph J. Ellis at”. Futurecasts.com. http://www.futurecasts.com/Ellis,%20Jefferson,%20American%20Sphinx.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  48. ^ “”Jefferson’s Inventions”". Cti.itc.virginia.edu. http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~meg3c/classes/tcc313/200Rprojs/jefferson_invent/invent.html. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  49. ^ Physiognotrace http://lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=2539
  50. ^ “The Jefferson Encyclopedia”. Wiki.monticello.org. 2009-12-18. http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Jefferson_Oval_Portrait_by_Memin_(Physiognotrace). Retrieved 2010-04-23. 
  51. ^ Ellis, Joseph J. (1994). “American Sphinx: The Contradictions of Thomas Jefferson”. Library of Congress. http://thomas.loc.gov/
  52. ^ Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts (January 1, 2007). “But It’s Thomas Jefferson’s Koran!”. Washington Post: p. C03. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/03/AR2007010300075.html. Retrieved January 3, 2007. 
  53. ^ J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (1975), 533; see also Richard K. Matthews, The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson, (1986), p. 17, 139n.16.
  54. ^ Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor May 28, 1816, in Appleby and Ball (1999) p 209); also Bergh, ed. Writings 15:23
  55. ^ Monticello, May 28, 1816: (better source required)
  56. ^ Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany, April 4, 1819 in Appleby and Ball (1999) p 224.
  57. ^ Brown 1954, pp. 51–52
  58. ^ “Notes on Virginia”. Etext.lib.virginia.edu. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefVirg.html. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  59. ^ Adler, Mortimer Jerome (2000). The Great Ideas. Open Court Publishing. p. 378. 
  60. ^ Letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
  61. ^ “Professor Julian Boyd’s reconstruction of Jefferson’s “original Rough draft” of the Declaration of Independence”. Loc.gov. 2005-07-06. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  62. ^ Letter to James Madison, September 6, 1789
  63. ^ Letter to James Madison, September 6, 1789; Daniel Scott Smith, “Population and Political Ethics: Thomas Jefferson’s Demography of Generations,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 56, No. 3 (Jul., 1999), pp. 591–612 in jstor
  64. ^ [1]
  65. ^ “The Thomas Jefferson Papers”. Library of Congress. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjser5.html. Retrieved 2010-05-05. 
  66. ^ a b “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…(Quotation)”. Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia. http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Laws_that_forbid_the_carrying_of_arms…(Quotation). Retrieved 2010-05-05. 
  67. ^ Ford, ed, Paul Lester (1899). The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol X, 1816–1826. New York, London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. http://www.archive.org/stream/writingsofthomas10jeffiala/writingsofthomas10jeffiala_djvu.txt
  68. ^ Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation p. 699
  69. ^ Letter to William C. Jarvis, 1820
  70. ^ a b c Melton, The Quotable Founding Fathers, 277.
  71. ^ Letter to William Smith, November 13, 1787
  72. ^ “Encyclopædia Britannica’s Guide to American Presidents”. Britannica.com. http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9116912. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  73. ^ Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny, p. 133, Richard B. Morris, 1973, Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.
  74. ^ Jefferson to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787
  75. ^ Charles Sanford, The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson (1987).
  76. ^ a b c d e f g Miller, Robert (July 1, 2008). Native America, Discovered and Conquered: : Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and Manifest Destiny. Bison Books. p. 90. ISBN 978-0803215986
  77. ^ a b Drinnon, Richard (March 1997). Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806129280
  78. ^ a b Jefferson, Thomas (1803). “President Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, Governor of the Indiana Territory,”. http://courses.missouristate.edu/ftmiller/Documents/jeffindianpolicy.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-12. 
  79. ^ “Letter From Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt December 6, 1813″. http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl224.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-12. 
  80. ^ Bernard W. Sheehan, Seeds of extinction: Jeffersonian philanthropy and the American Indian‎ (1974) pp 120–21
  81. ^ James P. Ronda, Thomas Jefferson and the changing West: from conquest to conservation (1997) p. 10; text in Moore, MariJo (2006). Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust. Running Press. ISBN 978-1560258384. http://books.google.com/books?id=3oNPH4-ovFcC&pg=PA208&lpg=PA208&dq=Thomas+Jefferson+dearborn+hatchet&source=bl&ots=H7cwLd-MIA&sig=-Yro3VMQ2KKmoaQSeOl52Ndte1Q&hl=en&ei=EpG5SdXaLpK2sAOZpNAt&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result
  82. ^ Herbert E. Sloan, Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt (2001) pp. 14–26, 220–1.
  83. ^ Hitchens 2005, p. 48
  84. ^ Miller, John Chester (1977). The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. New York: Free Press, p. 241. The letter, dated April 22, 1820, was written to former Senator John Holmes of Maine.
  85. ^ Macnaul, W.C. (1865). The Jefferson-Lemen Compact.
  86. ^ “Willard Sterne Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Life. p 593.
  87. ^ The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes at the Library of Congress.
  88. ^ [Ordinance of 1787] Lalor Cyclopædia of Political Science
  89. ^ “Student’s guide to landmark … – Google Books”. Books.google.com. http://books.google.com/books?id=XbzhWvjCxc0C&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=%22fugitive+slave+act%22+1793+original&source=bl&ots=1L3n-Z1HUr&sig=PN7rLclSxqyxZbcUmzexP86iwEY&hl=en&ei=9o33SvjKAYT6kAW4xLCkAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=15&ved=0CFcQ6AEwDg#v=onepage&q=northwest%20ordinance%20tobacco%20&f=false. Retrieved 2010-06-25. 
  90. ^ Notes on the State of Virginia, Ch 18.
  91. ^ Notes on the State of Virginia Query 14
  92. ^>{{cite web|url=http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefVirg.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=18&division=div1 |title=’Jefferson, Thomas, 1743–1826.
  93. ^ Flawed Founders by Stephen E. Ambrose.
  94. ^ Hitchens 2005, pp. 34–35
  95. ^ Letter of February 25, 1809 from Thomas Jefferson to French author Monsieur Gregoire, from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (H. A. Worthington, ed.), Volume V, p. 429. Citation and quote from Morris Kominsky, The Hoaxers, pp. 110–111.
  96. ^ Twilight at Monticello, Crawford, 2008, Ch 17, p.101
  97. ^ a b Why we should all regret Jefferson’s broken promise to Kościuszko, Nash&Hodges http://hnn.us/articles/48794.html
  98. ^ For your freedom and ours, the Kościuszko squadron, Olson&Cloud, pg 22–23, Arrow books ISBN 0-09-942812-1
  99. ^ Peterson 1975, pp. 991–992, 1007
  100. ^ Office of the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER), of the National Park Service, Library of Congress (September 1994). “Documentation of the Jefferson Memorial”. http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/dc/dc0400/dc0473/sheet/00001a.tif. Retrieved 2009-09-04. 
  101. ^ National Park Service. “Carving History”. Mount Rushmore National Memorial. http://www.nps.gov/archive/moru/park_history/carving_hist/carving_history.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-04. 
  102. ^ Scott Stamp Catalog, Index of Commemorative Stamps
  103. ^ “”John Wayles Paternity””. Wiki.monticello.org. 2009-05-19. http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/John_Wayles. Retrieved 2009-09-02. 
  104. ^ [2][dead link]

[edit] References

[edit] Primary sources

  • Thomas Jefferson: Writings: Autobiography / Notes on the State of Virginia / Public and Private Papers / Addresses / Letters (1984, ISBN 978-0-940450-16-5) Library of America edition. There are numerous one-volume collections; this is perhaps the best place to start.
  • Thomas Jefferson, Political Writings ed by Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball. Cambridge University Press. 1999 online
  • Lipscomb, Andrew A. and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds. The Writings Of Thomas Jefferson 19 vol. (1907) not as complete nor as accurate as Boyd edition, but covers TJ from birth to death. It is out of copyright, and so is online free.
  • Edwin Morris Betts (editor), Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book, (Thomas Jefferson Memorial: December 1, 1953) ISBN 1-882886-10-0. Letters, notes, and drawings—a journal of plantation management recording his contributions to scientific agriculture, including an experimental farm implementing innovations such as horizontal plowing and crop-rotation, and Jefferson’s own moldboard plow. It is a window to slave life, with data on food rations, daily work tasks, and slaves’ clothing. The book portrays the industries pursued by enslaved and free workmen, including in the blacksmith’s shop and spinning and weaving house.
  • Boyd, Julian P. et al., eds. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. The definitive multivolume edition; available at major academic libraries. 31 volumes covers TJ to 1800, with 1801 due out in 2006.
  • The Jefferson Cyclopedia (1900) large collection of TJ quotations arranged by 9000 topics; searchable; copyright has expired and it is online free.
  • The Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606–1827, 27,000 original manuscript documents at the Library of Congress online collection
  • Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), London: Stockdale. This was Jefferson’s only book
  • Cappon, Lester J., ed. The Adams-Jefferson Letters (1959)
  • Howell, Wilbur Samuel, ed. Jefferson’s Parliamentary Writings (1988). Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice, written when he was vice-President, with other relevant papers
  • Melton, Buckner F.: The Quotable Founding Fathers, Potomac Books, Washington D.C. (2004).
  • Smith, James Morton, ed. The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, 1776–1826, 3 vols. (1995)

[edit] Biographies

  • Appleby, Joyce. Thomas Jefferson (2003), short interpretive essay by leading scholar.
  • Bernstein, R. B. Thomas Jefferson. (2003) Well regarded short biography.
  • Burstein, Andrew. Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello. (2005).
  • Cunningham, Noble E. In Pursuit of Reason (1988) well-reviewed short biography.
  • Crawford, Alan Pell, Twilight at Monticello, Random House, New York, (2008)
  • Ellis, Joseph. “American Sphinx: The Contradictions of Thomas Jefferson”. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjessay1.html
  • Ellis, Joseph. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (1996). Prize winning essays; assumes prior reading of a biography.
  • Hitchens, Christopher (2005), Thomas Jefferson: Author of America , short biography.
  • Malone, Dumas. Jefferson and His Time, 6 vols. (1948–82). Multi-volume biography of TJ by leading expert; A short version is online.
  • Onuf, Peter. “The Scholars’ Jefferson,” William and Mary Quarterly 3d Series, L:4 (October 1993), 671–699. Historiographical review or scholarship about TJ; online through JSTOR at most academic libraries.
  • Padover, Saul K. Jefferson: A Great American’s Life and Ideas
  • Pasley, Jeffrey L. “Politics and the Misadventures of Thomas Jefferson’s Modern Reputation: a Review Essay.” Journal of Southern History 2006 72(4): 871–908. Issn: 0022-4642 Fulltext in Ebsco.
  • Peterson, Merrill D. (1975). Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation.  A standard scholarly biography.
  • Peterson, Merrill D. (ed.) Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography (1986), 24 essays by leading scholars on aspects of Jefferson’s career.
  • Randall, Henry Stephens (1858). The Life of Thomas Jefferson (volume 1 ed.). 
  • Schachner, Nathan (1951). Thomas Jefferson: A Biography.  2 volumes.
  • Salgo, Sandor (1997). Thomas Jefferson: Musician and Violinist.  Abook detailing Thomas Jefferson’s love of music.

Academic studies

  • Ackerman, Bruce. The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy. (2005)
  • Adams, Henry. History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson (1889; Library of America edition 1986) famous 4-volume history
    • Wills, Garry, Henry Adams and the Making of America (2005), detailed analysis of Adams’ History
  • Banning, Lance. The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (1978)
  • Brown, Stuart Gerry (1954). The First Republicans: Political Philosophy and Public Policy in the Party of Jefferson and Madison
  • Channing; Edward. The Jeffersonian System: 1801–1811 (1906), “American Nation” survey of political history
  • Dunn, Susan. Jefferson’s Second Revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism (2004)
  • Elkins, Stanley and Eric McKitrick. The Age of Federalism (1995) in-depth coverage of politics of 1790s
  • Fatovic, Clement. “Constitutionalism and Presidential Prerogative: Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian Perspectives.” : American Journal of Political Science, 2004 48(3): 429–444. Issn: 0092-5853 Fulltext: in Swetswise, Ingenta, Jstor, and Ebsco
  • Ferling, John (2004). Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800
  • Finkelman, Paul. Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (2001), esp ch 6–7
  • Hatzenbuehler, Ronald L. “I Tremble for My Country”: Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Gentry, (University Press of Florida; 206 pages; 2007). Argues that the TJ’s critique of his fellow gentry in Virginia masked his own reluctance to change
  • Hitchens, Christopher (2005). Author of America: Thomas Jefferson. HarperCollins. 
  • Horn, James P. P. Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf, eds. The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic (2002) 17 essays by scholars
  • Jayne, Allen. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy and Theology (2000); traces TJ’s sources and emphasizes his incorporation of Deist theology into the Declaration.
  • Roger G. Kennedy. Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase (2003).
  • Knudson, Jerry W. Jefferson and the Press: Crucible of Liberty. (2006)
  • Lewis, Jan Ellen, and Onuf, Peter S., eds. Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, Civic Culture. (1999)
  • McDonald, Forrest. The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson (1987) intellectual history approach to Jefferson’s Presidency
  • Matthews, Richard K. “The Radical Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson: An Essay in Retrieval,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXVIII (2004)
  • Mayer, David N. The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (2000)
  • Onuf, Peter S. Jefferson’s Empire: The Languages of American Nationhood. (2000). Online review
  • Onuf, Peter S., ed. Jeffersonian Legacies. (1993)
  • Onuf, Peter. “Thomas Jefferson, Federalist” (1993) online journal essay
  • Perry, Barbara A. “Jefferson’s Legacy to the Supreme Court: Freedom of Religion.” Journal of Supreme Court History 2006 31(2): 181–198. Issn: 1059-4329 Fulltext in Swetswise, Ingenta and Ebsco
  • Peterson, Merrill D. The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (1960), how Americans interpreted and remembered Jefferson
  • Rahe, Paul A. “Thomas Jefferson’s Machiavellian Political Science”. Review of Politics 1995 57(3): 449–481. ISSN 0034–6705 Fulltext online at Jstor and Ebsco.
  • Sears, Louis Martin. Jefferson and the Embargo (1927), state by state impact
  • Sloan, Herbert J. Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt (1995). Shows the burden of debt in Jefferson’s personal finances and political thought.
  • Smelser, Marshall. The Democratic Republic: 1801–1815 (1968). “New American Nation” survey of political and diplomatic history
  • Staloff, Darren. Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding. (2005)
  • Taylor, Jeff. Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy (2006), on Jefferson’s role in Democratic history and ideology.
  • Tucker, Robert W. and David C. Hendrickson. Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (1992), foreign policy
  • Urofsky, Melvin I. “Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall: What Kind of Constitution Shall We Have?” Journal of Supreme Court History 2006 31(2): 109–125. Issn: 1059-4329 Fulltext: in Swetswise, Ingenta and Ebsco
  • Valsania, Maurizio. “‘Our Original Barbarism’: Man Vs. Nature in Thomas Jefferson’s Moral Experience.” Journal of the History of Ideas 2004 65(4): 627–645. Issn: 0022-5037 Fulltext: in Project Muse and Swetswise
  • Wagoner, Jennings L., Jr. Jefferson and Education. (2004).
  • Wiltse, Charles Maurice. The Jeffersonian Tradition in American Democracy (1935), analysis of Jefferson’s political philosophy
  • PBS interviews with 24 historians

Religion

  • Gaustad, Edwin S. Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson (2001) Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, ISBN 0-8028-0156-0
  • Sanford, Charles B. The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson (1987) University of Virginia Press, ISBN 0-8139-1131-1
  • Sheridan, Eugene R. Jefferson and Religion, preface by Martin Marty, (2001) University of North Carolina Press, ISBN 1-882886-08-9
  • Edited by Jackson, Henry E., President, College for Social Engineers, Washington, D. C. “The Thomas Jefferson Bible” (1923) Copyright Boni and Liveright, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. Arranged by Thomas Jefferson. Translated by R. F. Weymouth. Located in the National Museum, Washington, D. C.
 
 
Preceded by
John Adams
Political officesPresident of the United States
March 4, 1801 – March 4, 1809
Succeeded by
James Madison
Vice President of the United States
March 4, 1797 – March 4, 1801
Succeeded by
Aaron Burr
Preceded by
John Jay
as United States Secretary for Foreign Affairs
United States Secretary of State
Served under: George Washington
March 22, 1790 – December 31, 1793
Succeeded by
Edmund Randolph
Preceded by
Patrick Henry
Governor of Virginia
1779 – 1781
Succeeded by
William Fleming (acting);
Thomas Nelson, Jr. (elected)
 
 
New political party Democratic-Republican Party presidential candidate
1796¹, 1800, 1804
Succeeded by
James Madison
 
Preceded by
Benjamin Franklin
United States Minister Plenipotentiary to France
1785 – 1789
Succeeded by
William Short