The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson
The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson

Author: Thomas Jefferson

Publisher: Modern Library

Published: 1998-11-10

Total Pages: 738

ISBN-13: 0375752188

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“Jefferson aspired beyond the ambition of a nationality, and embraced in his view the whole future of man.”—Henry Adams Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) left a vast literary legacy in the form of journal entries, notes, addresses, and seventy thousand letters. This extraordinary volume represents many of his most important contributions to American political thought. It features his Autobiography, which contains the original and revised versions of the Declaration of Independence; the Anas, or Notes (1791–1809); Biographical Sketches; selections from Notes on the State of Virginia, the Travel Journals, and Essay on Anglo-Saxon; a portion of his public papers, including his first and second inaugural addresses; and more than two hundred letters. Taken together, these writings offer indispensable insight into the mind of the man who was instrumental in formulating and guiding this nation’s principles. From the Preface: This selection from the writings of Thomas Jefferson is planned to be a comprehensive presentation of his thought. The greatest amount of space has been allotted to his letters, in the belief that they are of primary importance in revealing the man and his intellect. Jefferson’s two original full-length works, the Notes on Virginia and the Autobiography, are given virtually complete. Along with his best-known public papers, selections from his minor writings are also included. Together, all these serve to depict the man who more aptly than any of his countrymen might be called the American Leonardo.

Rediscovering the Democratic Purposes of Education
Rediscovering the Democratic Purposes of Education

Author: Lorraine McDonnell

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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Education theorists, demonstrating that a democratically informed education is not an outmoded idea, establish intellectual foundations for revitalizing American schools and offer ideas for how the educational process can become more democratic. An initial series of articles reexamines the original premise of American education as articulated by thinkers like Jefferson and Dewey. A second set identifies flaws in how schools are currently governed and offers models for change. The final group analyzes the implications for education posed by value conflicts arising over the twin strands of a democracy: socialization and governance. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

China’s Local Councils in the Age of Constitutional Reform, 1898–1911
China’s Local Councils in the Age of Constitutional Reform, 1898–1911

Author: Roger R. Thompson

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-03-23

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1684173019

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"Dazzled by the model of Japan’s Western-style constitutional government, Chinese officials and elite activists made plans to establish locally elected councils. By October 1911, government agencies had reported the establishment of about 5,000 councils. Throughout the period, data on self-government reforms collected from localities were compiled in provincial capitals, then collated, summarized, and archived in Beijing. Simultaneously, directives were being sent from the capital to the provinces. From this wealth of previously unexamined material, Roger R. Thompson draws a portrait-in-motion of the reforms. He demonstrates the energy and significance of the late-Qing local-self-government movement, while making a compelling case that it was separate from the well-studied phenomenon of provincial assemblies and constitutionalism in general."

Presidents Above Party
Presidents Above Party

Author: Ralph Ketcham

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2013-04-01

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 0807839361

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George Washington's vision was a presidency free of party, a republican, national office that would transcend faction. That vision would remain strong in the administrations of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams, yet largely disappear under Andrew Jackson and his successors. This book is a comprehensive and pathbreaking study of the early presidency and the ideals behind it. Ralph Ketcham examines the roots of nonpartisan leadership in Western thought and the particular influences on the founding fathers. Intellectual and political profiles of the first six presidents and their administrations emphasize the construction each put on the office, the challenges he faced, and the compromises he did and did not make. The erosion of nonpartisanship under Andrew Jackson is presented as a counterpoint that helps define the early presidency and the permanent transition from it. Addressing the thoughtful citizen as well as the scholar, the author poses the fundamental questions about presidential leadership, then and now. The best study of the early presidency, this book is an intellectual portrait of the age that will challenge received notions of American history.

Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an
Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an

Author: Denise Spellberg

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0307388395

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In this original and illuminating book, Denise A. Spellberg reveals a little-known but crucial dimension of the story of American religious freedom—a drama in which Islam played a surprising role. In 1765, eleven years before composing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson bought a Qur’an. This marked only the beginning of his lifelong interest in Islam, and he would go on to acquire numerous books on Middle Eastern languages, history, and travel, taking extensive notes on Islam as it relates to English common law. Jefferson sought to understand Islam notwithstanding his personal disdain for the faith, a sentiment prevalent among his Protestant contemporaries in England and America. But unlike most of them, by 1776 Jefferson could imagine Muslims as future citizens of his new country. Based on groundbreaking research, Spellberg compellingly recounts how a handful of the Founders, Jefferson foremost among them, drew upon Enlightenment ideas about the toleration of Muslims (then deemed the ultimate outsiders in Western society) to fashion out of what had been a purely speculative debate a practical foundation for governance in America. In this way, Muslims, who were not even known to exist in the colonies, became the imaginary outer limit for an unprecedented, uniquely American religious pluralism that would also encompass the actual despised minorities of Jews and Catholics. The rancorous public dispute concerning the inclusion of Muslims, for which principle Jefferson’s political foes would vilify him to the end of his life, thus became decisive in the Founders’ ultimate judgment not to establish a Protestant nation, as they might well have done. As popular suspicions about Islam persist and the numbers of American Muslim citizenry grow into the millions, Spellberg’s revelatory understanding of this radical notion of the Founders is more urgent than ever. Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an is a timely look at the ideals that existed at our country’s creation, and their fundamental implications for our present and future.

The Jeffersonian vision, 1801–1815
The Jeffersonian vision, 1801–1815

Author: William Nester

Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.

Published: 2013-01-31

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1597976768

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The Jeffersonian Vision, 1801–1815 reveals how the nation's leaders understood and asserted power during those crucial years between Thomas Jefferson's inauguration as the third president and the firing of the last shots at the battle of New Orleans. Seeking to overcome the bitter political animosities that had plagued the years leading up to his presidency, Jefferson declared in his inaugural address that we are all Federalists, we are all Republicans. His words proved to be prescient. The Republican Party, soon to be renamed the Democratic Party, would dominate American politics for another half century. Most Americans laud Jefferson's presidency for the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, which extended the United States westward to the Rocky Mountains, and for the launch of the Lewis and Clark expedition, which journeyed to the Pacific Ocean and back. But critics then and since have blasted Jefferson and his immediate successor, James Madison, for a series of ideologically driven blunders. Jefferson envisioned a largely autarkic nation with yeoman farmers serving as its economic and political backbone. That notion was at odds with an America whose wealth was increasingly gleaned from foreign markets. The Republican policy of wielding partial or complete trade embargos as a diplomatic weapon repeatedly backfired, inflicting grievous damage on America's economy and culminating with an unnecessary war with Britain that was devastating to America's power and wealth, if not its honor. Despite their philosophical and political differences, Federalists and Republicans alike proved capable enough at the art of power when they headed the nation. They implemented a spectrum of mostly appropriate means, first to win independence and then to consolidate and eventually expand American wealth and territory. Readers today will recognize the roots of red state/blue state conflict in these earliest competing visions of the roots of American power—and of what America might be.

Faith and the Founders of the American Republic
Faith and the Founders of the American Republic

Author: Daniel L. Dreisbach

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 0199843333

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The role of religion in the founding of America has long been a hotly debated question. Some historians have regarded the views of a few famous founders, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Thomas Paine, as evidence that the founders were deists who advocated the strict separation of church and state. Popular Christian polemicists, on the other hand, have attempted to show that virtually all of the founders were pious Christians in favor of public support for religion. As the essays in this volume demonstrate, a diverse array of religious traditions informed the political culture of the American founding. Faith and the Founders of the American Republic includes studies both of minority faiths, such as Islam and Judaism, and of major traditions like Calvinism. It also includes nuanced analysis of specific founders-Quaker fellow-traveler John Dickinson, prominent Baptists Isaac Backus and John Leland, and Theistic Rationalist Gouverneur Morris, among others-with attention to their personal histories, faiths, constitutional philosophies, and views on the relationship between religion and the state. This volume will be a crucial resource for anyone interested in the place of faith in the founding of the American constitutional republic, from political, religious, historical, and legal perspectives.

Putting Ideas to Work
Putting Ideas to Work

Author: Mark Mattern

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2006-07-08

Total Pages: 473

ISBN-13: 1461641594

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In this innovative new text, Mark Mattern offers a unique alternative to the traditional approaches to the study and teaching of political philosophy. Rather than approaching it solely as a world of abstractions, Putting Ideas to Work emphasizes its practical task. Political ideas drawn from historical and analytical political philosophy are used to help rethink current public problems and imagine potential solutions to them. Putting Ideas to Work is organized around five central tensions in political theory and practice: individual and community, freedom and equality, justice and political order, democracy and capitalism, and power and citizenship. Each section begins with a description and analysis of several contemporary public problems arising from these tensions. Key political thinkers are then drawn upon to help understand the genesis of the public problems, and to offer alternative ways of thinking about them. The text is anchored throughout to an idea of strong democracy that functions as a standard against which theory and practice are measured.

Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age
Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age

Author: Ross Thomson

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2009-05-08

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 0801896622

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The United States registered phenomenal economic growth between the establishment of the new republic and the end of the Civil War. Ross Thomson's fresh study accounts for the unprecedented technological innovations that helped propel antebellum growth. Thomson argues that the transition of the United States from an agrarian economy in 1790 to an industrial leader in 1865 relied fundamentally on the spread of technological knowledge within and across industries. Essential to this spread was a dense web of knowledge-diffusing institutions—new occupations and industries, the patent office, machine shops, mechanics’ associations, scientific societies, public colleges, and the civil engineering profession. Together they composed an integrated innovation system that generated, disseminated, and employed new technical knowledge across ever-widening ranges of the economy. To trace technological change in fourteen major industries and the economy as a whole, Thomson analyzes 14,000 patents, the records of two dozen machinery firms, census data for 1,800 companies, and hundreds of business directories. This exhaustive research leads to his interesting interpretation of technological diffusion and development. Thomson's impressive study of the infrastructure that fueled and supported the young country’s economic and industrial successes will interest students of economic, technological, and business history.