...Historical Book Review: American Sphinx Thomas Jefferson stands as one of the greatest giants of American history symbolizing the vision that founded this nation whose soul and achievements have been searched and researched numerous times. In the biography American Sphinx authored by Joseph J Ellis, Jefferson’s life is evaluated at key points in his life rather than following the traditional biography format. Unlike the usual historical texts, Ellis focus delves deeper into capturing Jefferson’s character in 5 different episodes in his career covering twenty-seven years of his life. However, despite having strict chronological chapters, Ellis struggles stay within the bounds leaving many to believe the reading is cumbersome. Ellis declares that it is his “goal to catch Jefferson at propitious moments in his life, to zoom in on his thoughts and actions during those extended moments, [and] to focus on the values and convictions that reveal themselves in these specific historical contexts”. (Ellis, xi)...
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...September 9, 2014 Thomas Jefferson: An American Icon Thomas Jefferson is one of the most important historical icons in American history. His legacy not only resides in his actions during his presidency, but also in his contributions to the nation before and after his terms in office. One of his most famous contributions to the nation was his role in drafting the Declaration of Independence that served as a formal declaration for the U.S. to separate from Britain and become a separate nation. It was because of this document that the U.S is the nation it is today and it will serve as a permanent reminder of his hard work and dedication to the country. However, more is to be learned of Jefferson for his actions helped shape and change the American ways of life forever. Beginning with his election in 1800, Jefferson’s election was a landmark of world history as it was the first time that a peaceful transfer of power from one party to another in a modern republic took place. While delivering his inaugural address on March 4, 1801, Jefferson spoke to the fundamental commonalities uniting all Americans despite their partisan differences. He is quoted as saying, "Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.” He goes on to state, “We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists." But what made president Jefferson's first term in office so remarkably successful and productive was Jefferson’s ability to strip...
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...Thomas Jefferson was who authored extraordinary words and it was there words that changed a nation. Jefferson’s ability to write made him prominent author of write the Declaration of Independence, (among other significant works). Jefferson’s writings reflected on the rights of mankind and what rights a government must offer its people. His use of words to fight for Human rights makes him one of the greatest American Hero’s. Thomas Jefferson’s writings on basic human rights caused a radical shift in American Colonist thoughts and these stunning ideas would influence the Americans to break away from Great Britain. “As a boy, Thomas Jefferson’s was shy and often tongue-tied…Preferred the company of books to that of most people.” (Wilmore, 1) These were words to describe the young Jefferson; his childhood would prove to be a key in shaping the man, who through his words would change a nation. Jefferson was born on April 13th 1743, in Shadwell Virginia. During his childhood he would spend 15 hours each day reading and writing, this would prove to make his writing skills at a high level (1). As he grew into an adult he would study law in his home of Virginia at the William and Mary College at Williamsburg (Bottorff, 15). During this time he would become a member of the Whig party and would advocate for the rights and liberties of mankind (Peterson, 1). It was in his childhood and as turned into an adult which he learned how to write and how to express his political views through words...
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...Jefferson’s Purchas and the United States Government The Louisiana Purchase was a great event in the history of the United States. From this one act the size of the nation was more than doubled and one of the greatest enemies of America, “Napoleon” was removed as a threat. More than ever, the Louisiana Purchase was the greatest achievement of the president Thomas Jefferson. Because adding the new territory to the United States Jefferson held new land for the expansion of future Americans. Also, Jefferson felt that the purchase of Louisiana would ensure the rustic nature of the United States and prevent the degeneration which had befallen classical Republican governments. Jefferson was sure that the Louisiana territory would promote the development of an honorable Republican population. Due to these reasons I will show how Jefferson was justified in his purchasing of the Louisiana territory. Napoleon Bonaparte’s decision to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States doubled the size of the USA and secured the port of New Orleans. This expanded trade for states bordering the Mississippi. Napoleon must have started to realize he would have quite a battle on his hands if he were to advance troops on the soil of North America. Louis-Andre Pichon was in charge of all general affaires to the United States from 1801 to 1805. He sent regular messages to Napoleon regarding the feelings of Americans on various topics of French interest, especially ones dealing about the Louisiana...
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...Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1773 his birth place was Charlottesville, Virginia right outside the western edge of Great Britain’s empire. Thomas Jefferson was born into one of the most prominent families in Virginia. Jane Randolph Jefferson his mother, was a member of the Randolph clan. Peter Jefferson his father was a very skilled farmer and cartographer who created the first accurate map of the Province of Virginia. Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd born out of ten siblings. When Thomas Jefferson was a young boy his favorite activities were playing in the woods, practicing the violin and reading. At the age of nine his formal education started by studying Latin and Greek at a local private school run by William Douglas. At the age of 14, in 1757, he took up more study of the classical languages and literature and mathematics by James Maury. In 1760 Jefferson left home to attend the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. Three years at William and...
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...Thomas Jefferson was a father, gardener, designer, thinker, writer of the Declaration of Independence, and the third president of the United States of America. The Jeffersonian presidency was a dark, but essential, era for America. Regardless of his best intentions, Jefferson’s presidency caused much harm to the United States. The main reason for this was because Jefferson constantly contradicted his beliefs when he purchased the Louisiana Territory, during the War with Tripoli. Despite his constant hatred for the Hamiltonian ideals, he did nothing to repeal them. Thomas Jefferson’s time in office was completely hypocritical, as he repeatedly went against his own beliefs. To begin with, Jefferson went against his Democratic-Republican ideals...
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...Do you know anything about Thomas Jefferson? No. Is it a sham? Well you're in luck, because today you are going to learn about his accomplishments, accomplishments, failures, shortcomings or challenges, and what my thoughts are about Thomas Jefferson. My sources are Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and Thomas Jefferson and the Barbary War. Thomas Jefferson has 3 major accomplishments, let’s get into them. Number one is the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of Independence made a statement by the words and ideas in the Declaration impacting human rights around the world. Next Number 2 Religious Freedom, for Jefferson, whose uncommon religious views were a matter of heated discussion, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was one...
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...prosperous event in American history. As in The Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Jefferson once said, “This little event, of France’s possessing herself of Louisiana is the embryo of a tornado which will burst on the countries on both sides of the Atlantic and involve in its effects their highest destinies” (Zurn 101). Without the Louisiana Purchase, the U.S. would not have grown and prospered into the nation it is today without the territory’s exploration, discovery, mobility, and political debate. To begin, after months’ of negotiation, the acquisition of the Louisiana territory led to the largest enthusiasm for expansion the U.S....
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...Thomas Jefferson By Juan Garcia Introduction The third president of the United States, Jefferson is most famous as the author of the Declaration of Independence, a document that served as a profound expression of his own beliefs on equality and natural rights, as well as a concise articulation of the revolutionary impulses of an emerging nation. Long revered as one of America's founding fathers, Jefferson remains the subject of intense scholarly debate in the twenty-first century. Of particular interest to current critics and historians are his views on the separation of church and state, and the inconsistency between his well-documented belief in individual liberty and his status as a slave owner. His views on Native Americans, African-Americans, and women are considered at odds with the principle of universal equality he claimed in the Declaration to be “self-evident.” Biographical Information Jefferson was born at Shadwell, in Goochland (now Albemarle) County, Virginia. His father was a self-made man and an early settler of the Virginia wilderness, and his mother was a member of a prominent Colonial family, the Randolphs. Jefferson attended private schools and the College of William and Mary, where he studied law, science, literature, and philosophy. He was admitted to the bar in 1767 and practiced law for two years. In 1769 he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses. During that same year he designed and began building Monticello, his famous family home, in...
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...Timeline of Jefferson’s life Year Event 1743 -Thomas Jefferson born at Shadwell 1760-1762- Thomas Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary 1762- Started to study law with George Wythe 1767-admitted to practice law before the General Court. 1768- Elected to House of Burgesses. 1772- Married Martha Wayles Skelton 1774- Wrote a summary view of the Rights of British America, and retired from legal practice. 1775- Elected to continental congress. 1776- Drafted declaration of independence, elected to Virginia house of delegates, and appointed to revise Virginia laws. 1777- Drafted Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, passed by General Assembly in 1786. 1778- Drafted the Bill of the More General Diffusion of knowledge....
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...History Abstract This paper will tell how the Louisiana Purchase came to be and how the U.S. acquired it. It will tell of the short and long-term consequences of acquiring this territory. It will tell of Thomas Jefferson and the political aspects of this purchase. This paper will discuss The Lewis and Clark expedition briefly and will have a summary of all the facts in its conclusion. A Good Price for Good Land The Louisiana Purchase is certainly one of the largest land deals in modern history, and also one of the best overall land deals one could ever hope for. As part of American history, it is the best thing that could have happened to a country who needed the space and who could not reject the price. Acquired in 1803 the United States paid $15 million dollars for well over 800,000 square miles of undiscovered land. That averages out to less than 5 cents per acre. At that price people would be lining up today to get as many acres as possible. For that matter, people still would be lined up to buy the whole thing even at today’s price of $283 million dollars. Could you imagine calling it The Oprah Purchase? The Louisiana Purchase was a very nice deal, and one the U.S. could not afford to pass up. The deal was arguably the greatest achievement of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, but it also was a problem for him. Jefferson was anti-federalist and while he may have written or played a part in the Declaration of Independence, he most certainly did not write the Constitution...
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...The Thomas Jefferson Building, containing some of the richest public interiors in the United States, is a collection of the work of classically trained American sculptors and painters of the American Renaissance, in programs of symbolic content that exhibited the progress of civilization, personified in Great Men and culminating in the American official culture of the Gilded Age. The Library of Congress began in 1800 with a small portion to buy reference books. Unlike Philadelphia or New York where Congress had previously met, there were no libraries in the city of Washington so one was created out of necessity. To replenish the collection that was destroyed by the British during the War of 1812, Congress purchased Thomas Jefferson's 6,487...
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...first child with in 1961. Shortly after, Morrison joins a writers club on campus, where she begins what would become her first novel, The Bluest Eyes. In 1963, Morrison decided to leave Howard University, in order to spend time with her family traveling during the summer. Upon returning to America, her husband decided to move to his birthplace, Jamaica, despite Morrison being pregnant once again with their child. Before the birth of their second child, she moved back to Ohio the live with her family, until moving to Syracuse, New York the following year. Morrison first worked as a senior editor before working for Random House, a publishing company, as an editor. Morrison has earned impressively long list of nominations, awards, and achievements which include: Sula (1973) earned a nomination for the American Book award, Song of Solomon (1977) earned Morrison a feature in a book-of-the-month club (which had not happened to an African-American author for almost four decades), she was appointed to the Nation Council of the Arts in 1980, Beloved (1987) received several literary awards (most notably the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), in 1993 she became the first African-American woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature, and she also earned high praises for her novels Love (2003) and A Mercy (2008). (“Toni Morrison Biography”) Crazy Horse Crazy Horse, his real name being Tashunka Witco, was born in 1840 near today’s Rapid City, South Dakota. Crazy Horse was a part of Lakota...
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...order of nature and how human life is nestled in and depends on that order. For example, life (& its preservation) depends on observing the necessities and limitations of nature, how we are dependent on food, shelter, parents and a community and the satisfying of other natural needs for life to exist, continue and prosper. The most prominent philosophers & political thinkers in this line of thought include the following: ancient - Plato, Aristotle, & later Cicero & other Roman statesmen; medieval - St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas & other thinkers in the Judeo-Christian tradition; modern - John Locke, & of course Thomas Jefferson & the “founding fathers” of the American republic. According to almost all of these authors, the natural order ultimately depends upon a first ordering principle that established the relation between man and nature. That first principle is commonly referred to as God or Creator, as indicated, for example, in the opening of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. One line of reasoning introduced by Plato is based on the law of the Division of Labor. This law holds that given our natural needs, it is most efficient, effective & conducive to our flourishing for each of us to specialize by developing our skills & talents, and exchange the product of our labors with one another for the overall good of the community. This presupposes an order in nature & between man and nature that exhibits a universal,...
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...order of nature and how human life is nestled in and depends on that order. For example, life (& its preservation) depends on observing the necessities and limitations of nature, how we are dependent on food, shelter, parents and a community and the satisfying of other natural needs for life to exist, continue and prosper. The most prominent philosophers & political thinkers in this line of thought include the following: ancient - Plato, Aristotle, & later Cicero & other Roman statesmen; medieval - St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas & other thinkers in the Judeo-Christian tradition; modern - John Locke, & of course Thomas Jefferson & the “founding fathers” of the American republic. According to almost all of these authors, the natural order ultimately depends upon a first ordering principle that established the relation between man and nature. That first principle is commonly referred to as God or Creator, as indicated, for example, in the opening of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. One line of reasoning introduced by Plato is based on the law of the Division of Labor. This law holds that given our natural needs, it is most efficient, effective & conducive to our flourishing for each of us to specialize by developing our skills & talents, and exchange the product of our labors with one another for the overall good of the community. This presupposes an order in nature & between man and nature that exhibits a universal,...
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