Jeffersonian America Research Articles

Slavery and the democratic conscience: political life in Jeffersonian America

Slavery and the democratic conscience: political life in Jeffersonian America

Citizens of a Common Intellectual Homeland: The Transatlantic Origins of American Democracy and Nationhood by Armin Mattes

Reviewed by: Citizens of a Common Intellectual Homeland: The Transatlantic Origins of American Democracy and Nationhood by Armin Mattes Hannah Spahn Citizens of a Common Intellectual Homeland: The Transatlantic Origins of American Democracy and Nationhood. By Armin Mattes. Jeffersonian America. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2015. Pp. [xiv], 266. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8139-3804-2.) What may be most striking in a first perusal of this compelling history of the conceptual origins of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835–1840) is Armin Mattes’s innovative approach, which can roughly be described as the unlikely but happy marriage between German conceptual history and an updated version of a much older method, one admired by the [End Page 662] eighteenth-century revolutionaries themselves. Following Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history), on the one hand, Mattes presents a clear-sighted historical analysis of key political terms of the revolutionary period, including democracy, aristocracy, equality, and nation. And on the other hand, Mattes employs a historiographical tool familiar since the days of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, pairing and comparing two political thinkers from each side of the water (the Atlantic, in Mattes’s case) to shed light on the interdependent, transnational nature of these concepts. The four chapters resulting from this methodological union find instructive connections not only between men directly engaged in dialogue, such as Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson and Antoine Destutt de Tracy, but also between thinkers whose conversation depended on the mediation of a third party, as in the case of Friedrich Gentz and John Adams (who read Gentz in John Quincy Adams’s translation), and between James Madison and Immanuel Kant, who were not biographically connected, but in whose cosmopolitan peace plans Mattes identifies parallels reaching down even to stylistic features—such as their respective reflections on governments of “angels” (p. 113). In these chapters, which can be read individually but also build on one another, the intellectual lives of Mattes’s modern Greeks and Romans yield many stimulating insights. Analyzing Paine’s conception of individual equality, for instance, Mattes offers a convincing new explanation for the absence of systematic references to democracy before the second part of Paine’s Rights of Man (1791). Mattes’s account of the changing nature of aristocracy in the revolutionary period, to take another example, does not grant Burke his customary place at the center of an emerging modern conservatism, but instead reconstructs a heterogeneous “rational” line of early conservative thought in the writings of John Adams and Kant’s former student and Burke’s translator, Gentz (p. 66). Meanwhile, as Mattes argues in his careful discussion of the shared roots of modern concepts of democracy and nation in Tracy’s and Jefferson’s thought, the reinterpretation of these terms through the lens of the French Revolution generated the “new political language” that became the conceptual groundwork of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (p. 142). Tocqueville’s work, which also provides the title quotation for Mattes’s study, should accordingly be viewed as “an important milestone rather than a beginning…in the development of a modern concept of democracy” (p. 185). The great precision and clarity that characterize the arguments throughout Citizens of a Common Intellectual Homeland: The Transatlantic Origins of American Democracy and Nationhood make it quite unlikely that Mattes’s own intellectual homeland, as presented in this book, can fail to attract numerous future citizens. Hannah Spahn University of Potsdam Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association

Amelioration and Empire: Progress and Slavery in the Plantation Americas by Christa Dierksheide

Amelioration and Empire: Progress and Slavery in the Plantation Americas. By Christa Dierksheide. Jeffersonian America. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2014. Pp. [xvi], 279. $45.00, ISBN 978-0 8139-3621-5.) Just as World War II is often dubbed a war, the clash between abolitionists and defenders of slavery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is often imagined as a rare conflict with clear forces of good and evil. In Amelioration and Empire: Progress and Slavery in the Plantation Americas, Christa Dierksheide problematizes simple duality, asserting British and American pro- and antislavery advocates actually shared much in their visions of slavery and empire. Both factions, Dierksheide maintains, promoted for slaves--defined as gradual improvement--as part of envisioning empire as a positive, civilizing force for humanity (p. 1). One side just anticipated amelioration within slavery, the other through abolition. The book focuses primarily on slaveholder ideologies. Part 1 highlights Virginia, with a chapter focused on Thomas Jefferson's argument ameliorating slavery would supposedly prepare enslaved peoples for abolition in some distant future. Chapter 2 turns to antebellum Virginia and the debates between slaveholders Thomas Dew and John Hartwell Cocke, stressing while Dew defended slavery and Cocke pushed abolition and colonization, both advocated amelioration; Dew just believed reform made slavery acceptable. Part 2 traces a similar trajectory among slaveholders in South Carolina. In the early national period, Henry Laurens was inspired by his emerging national identity to seek amelioration for slaves with an eye toward future emancipation. By contrast, William Harper and other slaveholders argued slavery should be improved but not abolished. In both Virginia and South Carolina, Dierksheide argues, the antislavery amelioration of the Revolutionary era unwittingly paved the way for antebellum arguments reforming slavery made abolition unnecessary. Clear and concise, these sections on U.S. slaveholders offer nuanced readings of their principal characters, demonstrating pro- and antislavery activists were not binary opposites (p. 2). Both sides were condescendingly paternalistic toward enslaved people, and both advocated reforms. It is less clear whether Dierksheide is correct in asserting that historians have so long supposed pro- and antislavery thinkers to inhabit entirely opposite poles (p. …

Sons of the father: George Washington and his proteges

Sons of the Father: George Washington and His Proteges. Edited by Robert M. S. McDonald. Jeffersonian America. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2013. Pp. [xxx], 285. Paper, $25.00, ISBN 978-0-8139-3650-5; cloth, $35.00, ISBN 978-0-8139-3438-9.) Sons of the Father: George Washington and His Prote'ge's is an unusually well focused collection and an appropriate Festschrift for the late University of North Carolina historian Don Higginbotham, who spent much of his career examining George Washington's military leadership. Each of these essays, originally presented at a 2010 conference honoring Higginbotham, focuses on Washington's relationship with a fictive son. As noted in the preface, the ten men included in the volume were not always Washington's closest associates; however, all are important figures in that their interactions with him provide glimpses into different aspects of Washington's capacities for management, motivation, control, and the cultivation of talent (p. xv). Some, such as Captain Robert Kirkwood of Delaware and the rifleman Daniel Morgan (subject of one of Higginbotham's early books) had little or no direct interaction with Washington. Others, such as Alexander Hamilton, the Marquis de Lafayette, Nathanael Greene, and Henry Knox are obvious candidates for inclusion. A third group, including Anthony Wayne, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and Gouvemeur Morris, are less obvious candidates but fascinating characters in their own right. It is harder to arrive at the sum of the parts. Most of the essays reveal more about the than about the father or, as in Brian Steele's thoughtful examination of Jefferson and Washington's relationship, more about the fictive father constructed during the early republic than the actual Washington. One thing that the essays do not reveal is how Washington was able to choose so many excellent subordinates, although Jack P. Greene's afterword cautions that, given the development of the colonies during the eighteenth century, it is no surprise that such individuals existed here. Taken together, the most notable aspects of Washington's personality illuminated by the essays are his remoteness, his sense of loyalty, and his nationalism. Many of the subjects, including Wayne and Greene, suffered from Washington's lack of warmth, although the quest for affection and approval may also have driven his sons to further achievements. The contrast between Washington's coldness toward his American sons and his relationship with Lafayette is so enormous that Stuart Leibiger's suggestion that Washington's tears of joy at Lafayette's return to America may have been among those staged theatrical moments at which Washington excelled seems credible (p. 224). After all, in addition to being a fictive son, Lafayette also personified the rebels' vital French alliance. Despite his remoteness, Washington was remarkably understanding and loyal to his proteges. In an essay on Washington's mentors during the Seven Years' War, Fred Anderson asks, Did Washington's struggles with his own temper, touchy sense of honor, tendency to insubordination, and relentless ambition help him recognize the importance of assisting the men who served under him in the Revolution to govern those same impulses? …

Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West

Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and Opening American West. Edited by Matthew L. Harris and Jay H. Buckley. (Norman: University Oklahoma Press, 2012. Pp. 256. Cloth, $29.95.)Reviewed by Adam JortnerIn 1813, when Thomas Jefferson described Meriwether Lewis as of courage undaunted, he effectively buried Zebulon Pike, who had died a few months earlier. Jefferson's canonization Lewis and Clark stuck Pike with second fiddle (along with Thomas Freeman, William Duncan, George Hunter, and many others). A new volume, edited by Matthew L. Harris and Jay H. Buckley, offers several attempts at reassessing historical significance Pike's journeys.That is not easy: Pike's career took a series missteps. In his 1806 trek across Great Plains, Pike was arrested by Spanish forces and told his captors he was lost - not a great legacy for an explorer. Worse, when he returned to States, he found himself pegged with treason. Pike had accepted his explorer's commission from scurrilous James Wilkinson, American general on Spanish payroll who likely conspired with and then tattled on Aaron Burr. The explorer was cleared charges in murky Burr conspiracy, but Wilkinson's bad behavior smeared Pike's reputation: Congress refused to grant Pike funds to compensate him for his interrupted journey discovery, and he died in American assault on York in 1813.This confused legacy does not dissipate in this collection essays; authors themselves seem puzzled over exact nature Pike's contributions. Most seven essays agree that Pike exemplified certain cultural and political forces at work in Jeffersonian America, but Pike's specific contributions are hazy. As James P. Ronda admits in his piece on Pike and empire, Historians . . . have paid much attention to origins Pike's second expedition and his various geographic bewildermerits. But in larger story empire in West, these are sideshows (75). Indeed, Pike's insignificance becomes an unintentional theme in volume. Jared Orsi's environmental history Pike summarizes larger historiographical argument how modern states control resources by standardization; Pike's own role in this process, however, was very small but telling (156). Orsi's case is that Pike ordered a group Pawnees to swap their Spanish flag for an American one, then retreated in face opposition - not much a moment in environmental history. Leo E. Olivia's essay acknowledges role Facundo Melgares New Spain in shaping Pike's 1810 Account journeys, but cannot determine extent Melgares's influence (179). That Account probably contributed to construction Santa Fe Trail and opening U.S.-Mexican trade. Yet if Olivia is right, credit goes to Melgares, not Pike - for Melgares not only shaped Account, but also welcomed American traders in 1821, when he had become governor at Santa Fe. Pike comes in second yet again.John Logan Allen finally solves Pike's Salieri complex; in a short essay on Pike and American science, Allen argues that it is Pike's mistakes that made him important. Pike's 1810 Account included despairing descriptions Great Plains, and thus gave rise to myth Great American Desert. More importantly, Pike's publications insisted that all American rivers flowed from the pyramidal height-of-land - a single source from which flowed Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, and Red Rivers. …

The Limits of Jefferson Scholarship

The Limits of Jefferson Scholarship Garrett Ward Sheldon (bio) Maurizio Valsania . The Limits of Optimism: Thomas Jefferson's Dualistic Enlightenment. University of Virginia Press, 2011. vii + 207 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00 (cloth); $25.00 (paper). This new book on Jefferson's political thought is written by a professor at the University of Torino, Italy, and published by "Mr. Jefferson's University" Press. Professor Valsania was a Visiting Fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies in Charlottesville, and this volume is published in a series entitled "Jeffersonian America" edited by Jan Ellen Lewis, Peter Onuf, and Andrew O'Shaughnessy. The book's thesis is that Jefferson's political thought deviated from the commonly believed Enlightenment optimism, rationalism, faith in progress, etc. This is an important subject and a potentially great contribution to our understanding of Jefferson, Early American political thought, and modern Western philosophy and history. Such an interesting and important thesis deserves a thorough, careful, and thoughtful study. Unfortunately, this book does not provide that. Instead, Professor Valsania presents, in increasingly florid language and wildly extravagant (and often incomprehensible) style, a simple statement of his thesis, requiring about five pages, and then proceeds to repeat it with ever more effusive, exaggerated idiolect to almost 200 pages. It is as if the author thinks an ever more excessive, extreme, and "poetical" expression of his theme, without the attending scholarly rigor and depth, will convince us of its validity and "dialectical" genius. Michael Zuckerman, a leading scholar of the Founding, describes this perhaps too tactfully in his prepublication blurb as "a distinctive point of view . . . and striking turns of phrase." Let's look at one of those striking turns of phrase: "Although the Enlightenment was a culture of performance, it was not an easy task to perform. Some compensatory beliefs were needed, and I suspect Jefferson harnessed his unabated version of optimism to this purpose. Was this just a trick? Was Jefferson sincere in his quite precritical optimism? Why did he boast this way? These are very difficult problems to sort out." [p. 54] [End Page 50] Yes. And the purpose of scholarship is—with thorough, careful research and reasoned thought—to "sort them out" and present them to the intellectual community in clear, coherent, and persuasive prose. Professor Valsania's book does not do this minimal requirement of a scholarly work. Instead, he presents a confused, rambling, at times frenetic outpouring of incoherent, emotional meditations that are disjointed, fragmented, and self-indulgent. If the book had been entitled "A European Historian's Stream of Consciousness on Life, Modernism, Post-Modernism, Hegelian Dialectics, and, By The Way, A Little on Jefferson" it would have been a more accurate description of the book. As it is, this is a sad example of the decline of academic scholarship, writing, and publishing in our own time. Even the syntax fails to come up to normal academic standards. "Wood's story is an excellent story on the whole" (p. 117). "Let me start with the old Jefferson" (p. 116). The author also frequently employs the first-person diction fitting for a memoir, but inappropriate to an academic work ("I am quite convinced that Jefferson was not unique as a traveler, but his travel certainly was," p. 15); and he seems addicted to putting often inconsequential words in quotes, perhaps to denote irony, a hidden philosophy, or some secret knowledge. For example on page 34: "The success of the Revolution demonstrated to Jefferson that the past was somehow always 'wrong' when compared to the new present." Or "even today, the 'appalling ocean' lying beyond the verdant land has many facets and elicits different answers" (p. 7) One struggles to comprehend this and many similarly flamboyant sentences in this curious book. Professor Valsania, one imagines, is a charismatic and entertaining speaker, but such jocularity does not always translate easily to written scholarship. Balancing sober judgment with artistic flourishes has always been difficult, as evinced by Marx (Groucho, not Karl). Some might try to explain and excuse these stylistic infelicities to a non-primary-English-speaking scholar; but other European Jefferson scholars write clearly and cogently, and with genuine brilliance and insight (one thinks of...

Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (review)

Reviewed by: Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West Adam Jortner (bio) Keywords Thomas Jefferson, Zebulon Pike, Expeditions, Facundo Melgares, Great Plains Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. Edited by Matthew L. Harris and Jay H. Buckley. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. Pp. 256. Cloth, $29.95.) In 1813, when Thomas Jefferson described Meriwether Lewis as “of courage undaunted,” he effectively buried Zebulon Pike, who had died a few months earlier. Jefferson’s canonization of Lewis and Clark stuck Pike with second fiddle (along with Thomas Freeman, William Duncan, George Hunter, and many others). A new volume, edited by Matthew L. Harris and Jay H. Buckley, offers several attempts at reassessing the historical significance of Pike’s journeys. That is not easy: Pike’s career took a series of missteps. In his 1806 trek across the Great Plains, Pike was arrested by Spanish forces and told his captors he was lost—not a great legacy for an explorer. Worse, when he returned to the States, he found himself pegged with treason. Pike had accepted his explorer’s commission from the scurrilous James Wilkinson, the American general on the Spanish payroll who likely conspired with and then tattled on Aaron Burr. The explorer was cleared of charges in the murky Burr conspiracy, but Wilkinson’s bad behavior smeared Pike’s reputation: Congress refused to grant Pike funds to compensate him for his interrupted journey of discovery, and he died in the American assault on York in 1813. This confused legacy does not dissipate in this collection of essays; the authors themselves seem puzzled over the exact nature of Pike’s contributions. Most of the seven essays agree that Pike exemplified certain cultural and political forces at work in Jeffersonian America, but Pike’s specific contributions are hazy. As James P. Ronda admits in his piece on Pike and empire, “Historians . . . have paid much attention to the origins of Pike’s second expedition and his various geographic bewilderments. [End Page 159] But in the larger story of empire in the West, these are sideshows” (75). Indeed, Pike’s insignificance becomes an unintentional theme in the volume. Jared Orsi’s environmental history of Pike summarizes the larger historiographical argument of how modern states control resources by standardization; Pike’s own role in this process, however, was “very small but telling” (156). Orsi’s case is that Pike ordered a group of Pawnees to swap their Spanish flag for an American one, then retreated in the face of opposition—not much of a moment in environmental history. Leo E. Olivia’s essay acknowledges the role of Facundo Melgares of New Spain in shaping Pike’s 1810 Account of the journeys, but “cannot determine” the extent of Melgares’s influence (179). That Account probably contributed to the construction of the Santa Fe Trail and the opening of U.S.–Mexican trade. Yet if Olivia is right, the credit goes to Melgares, not Pike—for Melgares not only shaped the Account, but also welcomed American traders in 1821, when he had become governor at Santa Fe. Pike comes in second yet again. John Logan Allen finally solves Pike’s Salieri complex; in a short essay on Pike and American science, Allen argues that it is Pike’s mistakes that made him important. Pike’s 1810 Account included despairing descriptions of the Great Plains, and thus gave rise to the myth of the Great American Desert. More importantly, Pike’s publications insisted that all American rivers flowed from “the pyramidal height-of-land”—a single source from which flowed the Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, and Red Rivers. Pike’s mistakes went into William Clark’s later maps—which perpetuated the height-of-land myth for the next thirty years (94–96). Pike shaped western exploration because he was wrong. The Pawnee and Osage Indians with whom Pike (unsuccessfully) dealt could have given the explorer better intelligence concerning geography. Though all the essays mention Pawnee and Osage relations with the United States, no essay is specifically devoted to Indian politics or culture, a curious omission. In part, the lacuna may be due to source limitations: Virtually every essay employs...

Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy (review)

Mr. Jefferson's Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Policy. By Robert M. Owens. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. Pp. 344. Cloth, $34.95.)Reviewed by Jay SextonRobert Owens opens his important study of William Henry Harrison with the 1807 Chesapeake-Leopard affair. Like many of his compatriots, Harrison viewed British aggression on the high seas as part of broader plot undermine the American republic. Fear of Britain was also the prism through which Harrison viewed Native Americans: Convinced that hostile British agents lurked behind every tree, Harrison viewed the Indian problem in the Northwest not as the result of America's aggressive westward expansion and his bullying negotiating tactics, but rather as an extension of the young republic's ongoing struggle against Britain. Harrison contended that the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe proved to our enemies that the spark of '76 is not yet extinguished (223). Yet Owens makes clear that Anglophobia was versatile language and concept. At times Harrison exploited America's Anglophobic culture undermine his political opponents. And hatred of the old country did not preclude emulation of it: That unstable cocktail of admiring British tradition and hating British rule always lay just beneath the surface for Americans in the early Republic (xvi).This book focuses on Harrison's early career in the Indiana Territory, where he served as territorial governor from 1801-12. It makes good use of the recently microfilmed papers of Harrison edited by Douglas Clanin and the Indiana Historical Society. Owens sets out produce cultural biography (xvi) that situates Harrison's early military and political activities in the context of Jeffer sonian America. The book does good job of zooming in on Harrison and then stepping back place his life and actions in the broader canvas of early America. Nonetheless, the most interesting parts of the book are those that deal with Harrison himself. Owens shows how, in contrast the cider-drinking commoner portrayed in the 1840 election, Harrison was at heart Virginia aristocrat who sought more than anything establish his position in the social and political hierarchy. He wanted, he needed, be among the sociopolitical elite (41). It was this quest that took Harrison westward, where he quickly established his credentials while serving under General Anthony Wayne. It was not long before he had promising political career before him, as well as planter-style home, Grouseland, in Vincennes, Indiana. But like many of the Virginia planters he sought mimic, Harrison fell into debt, leading him engage in a veritable orgy of land sales and purchases (74) and get-rich-quick ventures such as studhorse business.Harrison's aristocratic tendencies at times put him at odds with the increasingly democratic and populist politics of the West. His many moves consolidate personal power in Indiana - he stacked the territorial legislature with his supporters and aggressively used his powers of patronage - made him polarizing figure in Indiana politics. No issue was more controversial than Harrison's efforts introduce slavery into the Indiana Territory, measure he argued was necessary attract migrants. …

Peter S. Onuf and Nicholas P. Cole , editors. Thomas Jefferson, the Classical World, and Early America . (Jeffersonian America.) Foreword by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughessy. Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press . 2011 . Pp. x, 314. Cloth $45.00, e-book $45.00.

Peter S. Onuf, Nicholas P. Cole, editors. Thomas Jefferson, the Classical World, and Early America. (Jeffersonian America.) Foreword by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughessy. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. 2011. Pp. x, 314. Cloth $45.00, e-book $45.00 Get access Peter S. Onuf and Nicholas P. Cole, editors. Thomas Jefferson, the Classical World, and Early America. (Jeffersonian America.) Foreword by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughessy. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. 2011. Pp. x, 314. Cloth $45.00, e-book $45.00. The American Historical Review, Volume 117, Issue 1, February 2012, Page 313, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.117.1.313 Published: 01 February 2012

ReviewEmpires of the Imagination: Transatlantic Histories of the Louisiana Purchase. Jeffersonian America Series. Edited by Peter J. Kastor and François Weil.(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009. 370 pp. Charts, tables, notes, index. $40.00.)

Review<b><i>Empires of the Imagination: Transatlantic Histories of the Louisiana Purchase</i></b>. Jeffersonian America Series. Edited by Peter J. Kastor and François Weil.(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009. 370 pp. Charts, tables, notes, index. $40.00.)

Confucian China and Jeffersonian America: Beyond Liberal Democracy

This paper begins by reviewing the ancient Chinese worldview, one imbued with cultural particularism wherein the Middle Kingdom identified itself as the centre of the universe. I then distinguish the ways in which historically the Confucian East and Christian West have respectively exerted cultural hegemony. I next analyse China's rebuffing of liberal democracy, and how the CCP's retention of one-party rule has generated concerns about its legitimacy. I conclude by showing that China and America each possess moral traditions – specifically Confucianism and Jeffersonian Deism – that have overlapping outlooks. Both maintain a worldview that disavows extremism. Based on this broader philosophical-religious analysis, I argue that contentions over liberal democracy notwithstanding, China and America share moral ideals vital for confronting some of today's exigencies.

Sally Hemings, Founding Mother

Sally Hemings, Founding Mother Martha Hodes (bio) Clarence E. Walker . Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009. xii + 128 pp. Notes and index. $22.95. The genetic evidence linking Sally Hemings' son Eston to Thomas Jefferson forever changed the landscape of Jefferson scholarship, and yet more than ten years on, the debates have hardly vaporized. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns Monticello, embraced Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children in 2000, but a minority opinion stubbornly stuck by Jefferson's single cloaked denial and the denials of descendants claiming that "historical accuracy should never be overwhelmed by political correctness." The next year, the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society (founded shortly after the Thomas Jefferson Foundation concurred with the DNA-based conclusions) sponsored a commission that refuted the scientific evidence, and published The Jefferson-Hemings Myth: An American Travesty, an essay collection of considerable convolution and belligerence. In 2002, the Monticello Association (the organization open to all lineal descendants of Jefferson) voted to bar descendants of Sally Hemings from membership.1 Political correctness, indeed. In Thomas C. Holt's assertion that "the powerful will always have the upper hand in defining and enforcing 'correctness,'" we find a better invocation of that phrase, and in Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, Clarence E. Walker likewise inverts the accusation leveled by the minority dissenters, instead recognizing political correctness as a weapon of dismissal against any "decentering of white Americans as the central agents of American history" (p. 93).2 The problem of Sally Hemings in American history comes intertwined with the problems of slavery and freedom; race and racism; and race, sex, and love. Walker takes up all of these challenges, ultimately offering a revised story of national origins: the United States, he contends, was a "mixed-race" nation from the start, "in which Jefferson and Hemings, as a mixed-race couple, rather than George and Martha Washington, should be considered the founding parents" (p. 2). Revising the founding myth is no longer an original enterprise of course, and like others, Walker wants to place slavery [End Page 437] squarely into the master narrative. But more than that, Walker wants to place sex between people of European descent and people of African descent at the heart of the republic's creation. Easily a one-sitting read, Mongrel Nation is divided into two chapters, "Sexuality" and "Character and History, or 'Chloroform in Print'" (the last phrase taken from Mark Twain's Roughing It, invoked to mean "an anesthetic designed to blot out the place of race, slavery, and sex in Jefferson's world and, more broadly, in the national myth" [p. 92]). Reading the book from start to finish feels a bit like listening to an erudite—if sometimes irreverent and slightly rambling—soliloquy, a kind of "My Dinner with Clarence Walker."3 At one point, inside a couple of pages, we hear about passing and Philip Roth, then about W. E. B. Du Bois, then Hayden White and De Tocqueville, all as a lead-up to a point about "the hegemony of whiteness" in Jeffersonian America (p. 38). Statements that might be book-defining arguments are sprinkled throughout, often without sustained discussion, much as in a breathless monologue by a thoroughly engaging colleague. To begin with, Walker wants us to understand Hemings and Jefferson in a transnational context. Why, he asks, should the United States be exempt from the acknowledgement that colonial settler societies were "racially creolized" from the start? Walker's answer lies in the "deification of Jefferson" and the anxiety of some white Americans "about interracial sex and its role in the creation of the American people" (p. 2). It occurred to me here that even the Jefferson apologist John Chester Miller noted—more than thirty years ago—that there was "nothing inherently implausible" in the Hemings affair, since it was "not uncommon for slaveowners to make slave women their concubines." (Sally Hemings herself was the daughter of Jefferson's father-in-law and the enslaved Elizabeth Hemings, making her the half-sister of Jefferson's wife.) Unlike Walker, though, Miller also fumed that if Jefferson did...

:“Let a Common Interest Bind Us Together”: Associations, Partisanship, and Culture in Philadelphia, 1775–1840.(Jeffersonian America.)

:“Let a Common Interest Bind Us Together”: Associations, Partisanship, and Culture in Philadelphia, 1775–1840.<i>(Jeffersonian America.)</i>

:Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West.(Jeffersonian America.)

:Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West.<i>(Jeffersonian America.)</i>

Two Centuries of Lewis and Clark: Reflections on the Voyage of Discovery by William L. Lang, Carl Abbott, Roberta Conner, Christopher Zinn

not adequately explained, and there is little mention of the inter-and intratribaldisputes overwho could fishatCelilo,which was a "usual and accustomed place" ? as fishing siteswere identifiedin the treaties ? foronly some of the people who ultimatelyclaimed rightsthere. The treaty fisheryand thecommunityboth survived the dam, although in diminished form, and theirpersistence deservesmore attention than itreceiveshere.To be fair, Cone's documentary ismore awork of advocacy than of history. It asksviewers to reconsider theColumbia's future aswell as itspast, offeringa useful introduction forsecondary school and college teachers look ingto raise the issueof riverdevelopment. One merely wishes thatCone had told the storyina more compelling way. Andrew Fisher The College of William andMary, Williamsburg TWO CENTURIES OF LEWIS AND CLARK:REFLECTIONS ON THE VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY by William L. Lang andCarlAbbott with a conversation with Roberta Conner and ChristopherZinn Oregon Historical Society Press, Portland, 2004. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 158pages. $18.00 paper. The number of new Lewis and Clark books published during the bicentennial would fill a large bookcase. What sets Two Centuries of Lewis and Clark apart from the crowd is that two leading historians of the West assess the long-term significance of theExpedition. The introductory chapterby William L. Lang, pro fessor of history at Portland StateUniversity, dissects the well-known celebratory narra tive to ask questions about what it meant for the new nation represented by Jeffersonian America to explore a foreign country domi nated by various Indian nations living along theMissouri, Snake, and Columbia rivers. In particular,Lang directs readers' attention to the diplomacy of Lewis and Clark. In the end, Lang reaffirmsthat"the signifi cance of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and its personnel is an open and contested matter. Those who find it preeminently a story of adventure, achievement, and nationalistic ac complishment have plentyofdrama to support theirviewpoint. Those who see it as part of a long history of paternalistic and damaging engagementswith Indian people in theNorth west can cite incidentupon incidentwhere the explorers appear arrogant and dismissive of native peoples" (p. 56). Carl Abbott, professor of urban studies and planning atPortland StateUniversity,examines the significanceof theExpedition fromtheper spectiveof theLewis and Clark Exposition, the world's fairheld inPortland to commemorate thecentennial of thevoyage ofdiscovery. What he finds is that littleof the 1905 fairwas truly about Lewis and Clark. If anything, itwas a commercial exploitation of Lewis and Clark in an efforttopromote thePacificNorthwest. The Lewis and Clark Expedition servedmerely as a way to direct popular attention to the region and its claims of greatness. Boosterism ran rampant inOregon and Washington at the start of thetwentiethcentury,and so thenarrative of theLewis and Clark Expedition was transmuted to suit theneeds of regional promoters. Can itbe said that two centuries afterLewis and Clark, even regional boosterism has been elbowed aside by a variety of entrepreneurs determined only tomake a fast buck from anything associated with thenames Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea ? from candy bars to quickie guide books to the trail? I think itcan, with a particularly outrageous example being amap of theOregon Trail on a postcard sold to unwary tourists as a map of the route of Lewis and Clark. The thirdportion ofTwo Centuries ofLewis and Clark, and in some ways themost lively because of its conversational format, is an ex tended discussion of themeaning(s) of Lewis 4^4 OHQ vol. 107, no. 3 and Clark with Lang,Abbott, Roberta Conner, and Christopher Zinn, executivedirectorof the Oregon Council for theHumanities and for mer professor ofAmerican literature. Conner, who is amember of theConfederated Tribes of theUmatilla Indian Reservation and vice president of theNational Lewis and Clark Bi centennial Council Board ofDirectors, brings to the roundtable discussion a valuable Native American perspective thathelps explain why the Lewis and Clark commemoration (not a "celebration" for Indians, Conner is quick to explain) did not degenerate into the ugly accusations of genocide thatmarred the 1992 Columbian Quincentennial. All conversation alists agree that it isverydifficultto convey to Americans the multifaceted dimensions of the Lewis and Clark storybecause of thepopular and abiding appeal of the triumphalist nar rative. That narrative helped make Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage a best seller. Two Centuries ofLewis and Clark isa valu able book forreaders already familiarwith the dominant narrative of...

Phillip Hamilton. &lt;italic&gt;The Making and Unmaking of a Revolutionary Family: The Tuckers of Virginia, 1752–1830&lt;/italic&gt;. (Jeffersonian America.) Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 2003. Pp. xi, 250. $35.00

Phillip Hamilton. The Making and Unmaking of a Revolutionary Family: The Tuckers of Virginia, 1752–1830. (Jeffersonian America.) Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 2003. Pp. xi, 250. $35.00 Hamilton Phillip. The Making and Unmaking of a Revolutionary Family: The Tuckers of Virginia, 1752–1830. (Jeffersonian America.) Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 2003. Pp. xi, 250. $35.00. Marjoleine Kars Marjoleine Kars University of Maryland, Baltimore County Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 109, Issue 3, June 2004, Pages 896–897, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/109.3.896 Published: 01 June 2004

Jeffersonian America, by Peter S. Onuf and Leonard J. Sadosky

<i>Jeffersonian America</i>, by Peter S. Onuf and Leonard J. Sadosky

The story of America: freedom and crisis from settlement to superpower

Exploration and conquest - Cortes and Moctezuma American profile - Francesco-Giuseppe Bressani, James Axtell. The plantation colonies - the founding of Jamestown American profile - Squanto, Elliott West. Puritan New England - the witches of Salem American profile - Anne Hutchinson, Ann Braude. The American Revolution - the Boston massacre American profile - Samuel Adams, Jack N. Rakove. The new republic - the constitutional convention. Jeffersonian America - the Lewis and Clark expedition American profile - John Marshall, Joseph J. Ellis. Jacksonian America - the people's inauguration. Slavery in the Antebellum South - Nat Turner's revolt American profile - William Lloyd Garrison, Ira Berlin. Social reform in Antebellum America - the Seneca Falls Convention American profile - Harriet Beecher Store, Joan Hedrick. The deepening sectional conflict - the compromise of 1850 American profile - Matthew C. Perry, John W. Dower. The road to civil war - John Brown's raid American profile - Harriet Tubman, Catherine Clinton. Civil war and reconstruction - Sherman's march to the sea American profile - Thaddeus Stevens, Eric Foner. The American West - the Battle of the Little Bighorn American profile - Quanah Parker, Elliot West. The gilded age - the Pullman Strike American profile - John Fiske, David Levering Lewis. The crisis of the 1890s - the 1896 election. Becoming a world power - the Filipino revolt American profile - Henry Cabot Lodge, Thomas Fleming. The progressive era - the triangle fire American profile - Theodore Roosevelt, Michael Barone. The new era - Lindbergh's flight American profile - Robert A. Millikan, Daniel J. Kevles. The new deal - the hundred days American profile - Jim Braddock & Joe Louis, Geoffrey C. Ward. World War II - the attack of Pearl Harbour American profile - Wendell L. Willkie, Robert Dallek. The Cold War at home - the Hiss-Chambers Case American profile - Lillian Hellman, Alice Kessler-Harris. Pax Americana - the Cuban Missile Crisis American profile - George F. Kennan, Robert Dallek. The sixties - the march on Washington American profile - Coya Knutson, Richard Reeves. The seventies - the Watergate Crisis American profile - Jimmy Carter, William E. Leuchtenburg. The end of the Cold War - the last days of the Soviet Union. A new millennium - September 11, 2001.

&lt;sc&gt;Jeffrey L. Pasley&lt;/sc&gt;. &lt;italic&gt;“The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic&lt;/italic&gt;. (Jeffersonian America.) Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 2001. Pp. xviii, 517. $37.50

Jeffrey L. Pasley. “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic. (Jeffersonian America.) Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 2001. Pp. xviii, 517. $37.50 Get access Pasley Jeffrey L.. “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic. (Jeffersonian America.) Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 2001. Pp. xviii, 517. $37.50. David Paul Nord David Paul Nord Indiana University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 108, Issue 1, February 2003, Pages 191–192, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/108.1.191 Published: 01 February 2003

The Jeffersonian Triumph and American Exceptionalism

In his first major public address in January 1838, Abraham Lincoln made an extraordinary claim for exceptionalism. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.... If destruction be lot, must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, must live through all time, or die by suicide.1 I doubt that any other sober statesman for any other major power could have made a comparable claim for his nation. Even though Lincoln overestimated the time span of the invulnerability of the United States-he did not foresee the age of the intercontinental ballistic missile-he was fundamentally correct about the century after about 1820. No combination of hostile powers could seriously threaten the United States so long as the Union remained intact. Ironically, Lincoln even got the chance to confirm his own hypothesis when he guided the Union through the most terrible crisis in its history. The secession of the southern states prompted France to intervene in Mexico and bring the European balance of power back into this hemisphere. Union victory convinced France to withdraw and restored hegemony on this side of the Atlantic. Lincoln's insight was fundamentally correct for his own day. That achievement was a Jeffersonian accomplishment, ratified by Whigs like Lincoln. It consisted of three interrelated parts: a commitment to indefinite continental expansionism, manipulation of Europe's detested balance of power to achieve hegemony for the United States at least in North America and perhaps in the whole western hemisphere, and a determination to accomplish these goals without building a centralized warmaking government in the United States. A fourth component of the Jeffersonians' achievement, the destruction of an incipient (Federalist) ruling class, was equally important to them and quite without precedent in their own day, but it became over time less of a badge of exceptionalism as other nations began to follow the same path. This aspect of Jeffersonian America not be further discussed in this essay.2 The Jeffersonians' main weapon in this quest would be the ordinary citizens of the Republic, and in their hands even the word American became powerful ammunition. As shapers of the first nation in this hemisphere to win its independence from Europe, they called themselves Americans and made their claim stick by forcing their opponents to use it too. The loyalist J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur conceded the point when he became one of the first to inquire, What is an American? So did the settlers of Upper Canada when they insisted they were not Americans. And by the 1790s, the residents of the Spanish borderlands routinely referred to their neighbors as Americanos. This essay use the word while urging readers not to forget that it was never a neutral term.3 For Jefferson and his followers this project had its soft side and its hard side. The soft version, the Empire for liberty, he proclaimed as early as 1780 in his instructions to George Rogers Clark and reaffirmed in a long letter to James Madison almost thirty years later. Expressing confidence in 1809 that the Floridas and Cuba would soon be annexed and that Canada would come into our confederacy, which would be of course in the first war, he proclaimed that then we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation: and I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self government.4 Indians, blacks, and Spaniards experienced the hard side of these formulations. When the Cherokees launched hostilities against Virginia in 1776, Jefferson hoped they will now be driven beyond the Missisipi and that this in future be declared to the Indians the invariable consequence of their beginning a war. …