“I think that’s what Jefferson’s attitude was: ‘I’d rather not, but I’m probably the best person to do it.’”
We return to our Jefferson 101 series this week with an episode about Jefferson’s road to the White House. Over the past few months, we've carried Jefferson from his birth in Virginia in 1743 right up to the brink of the time when he became the third president of the United States. We take for granted how our elections work. Back then, they didn't really have a blueprint: no conventions, no caucuses, no primaries, no debates. It was an informal system and we try to sort out how a reluctant person like Jefferson winds up being the president.
This is Jefferson 119.
Further Reading
- Jefferson's Body: A Corporeal Biography by Maurizio Valsania
- Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
- Founders Online: From Thomas Jefferson to Stevens Thomson Mason, 11 October 1798: "for my own part I consider these laws as merely an experiment on the American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the constitution."
- Founders Online: To Thomas Jefferson from John Page, 21 June 1798: "I think a Party is necessary in a free State to preserve its Freedom—The truely virtuous should firmly unite & form a Party capable at all Times of frustrating the wicked Designs of the Enemies of the Doctrine of Equallity & the Rights of Man."
What Would Jefferson Do?
“We were eager for immigrants to come from Europe. In the beginning, we had a very favorable and generous immigration system.”
Tune in to your local public radio or join the 1776 Club to hear this episode of What Would Thomas Jefferson Do?
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.