This week, Thomas Jefferson Hour creator Clay S. Jenkinson presents part two in a series of biographical shows about the life of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson's young life is discussed including his early education and the formation of his character. Mentioned is a letter Jefferson wrote on February 1, 1770 to John Page about Dabney Carr's modesty. The relevant piece is this:
"This friend of ours, Page, in a very small house, with a table, half a dozen chairs, and one or two servants, is the happiest man in the universe. He possesses truly the art of extracting comfort from things the most trivial. Every incident in life he so takes to render it a source of pleasure. With as much benevolence as the heart of man will hold, but with an utter neglect of the costly apparatus of life, he exhibits to the world a new phenomenon in philosophy, the Samian sage in the tub of the Cynic."
#1164 Jefferson 102
Jefferson 101 is a series of biographical shows about the life of Thomas Jefferson that ran from 2016 to 2017.
Jefferson was a pragmatic utopian, and a utopian pragmatist.
I’m a devoted American patriot. I love this country, but I want it to be more like the country I love than the disillusioned, vulgar, and divisive place it has become.
"Two seraphs await me long shrouded in death; I will bear them your love on my last parting breath."
— Thomas Jefferson, July 1826
We conclude our Jefferson 101 biographical series by discussing his final days at Monticello, his legacy, and the deaths of both Jefferson and John Adams on July 4th, 1826 — the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.