Jefferson's Second Revolution PDF Download

Author: Susan Dunn
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618131648
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Discusses the constitutional crisis that ensued when the presidential election of 1800 resulted in a tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, a situation that Congress was supposed to resolve.

Author: Harlow Giles Unger
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 162045873X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
The Declaration of Independence liberated one continent from domination by another, but the Constitution revolutionized the world--by entrusting citizens with rights never before in history granted to ordinary people. Far from the genteel unity implied by the Constitution's opening words "We the People," the struggle to create and ratify this powerful document was as difficult as the fight for independence from Britain had been. The road to independence had led straight to hell. America was ablaze in anarchy and civil strife. As civil war threatened, George Washington called for a new constitution creating a powerful new federal government to restore order. For the majority of Americans, the new Constitution drafted in Philadelphia seemed a disaster, creating a new American government with the same powers of taxation as the former British government and led by a president with powers to succeed himself indefinitely and become a monarch. Former Virginia governor Patrick Henry cried out against such a central authority that could stifle state sovereignty: "Liberty will be lost and tyranny will result." George Washington countered, calling Henry an enemy of liberty. The ratification process began and, over the next nine months, America warred with itself, as each state joined in what became American's "second revolution." Just as the first revolution had brought Americans together, the second threatened to rip the nation apart, as Washington's Federalists battled Henry's Antifederalists. Mobs ran riot in the streets of Philadelphia, New York, and Providence. The wealthy elite supported the new Constitution and a strong central government, while a majority of ordinary people opposed both, and populist leaders such as Henry and New York governor George Clinton geared for violent conflict between the states to preserve state sovereignty. By mid-March 1788, eight of the nine states required for ratification of he Constitution had ratified. But Virginia, the largest and the wealthiest state, stood firm with New York against union, and without them the new nation would be as fragile as the parchment on which the Constitution had been written. With the fate of the country in the balance, Washington could only hope for a miracle to save the nation from all-out civil war and disunion. In America's Second Revolution, award-winning author Harlow Giles Unger tells the gripping story of that miracle, the harrowing events that led up to it, and the men who made it possible. Rich and powerful, they displayed humor, sarcasm, fire, brilliance, ignorance, hypocrisy, warmth, anger, bigotry, and hatred. Their struggle pitted friend against friend, brother against brother, father against son. But, in the end, they helped create a new government, a new nation, and, ultimately, a new civilization.

Author: Andrew Burstein
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812979001
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 850

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Book Description
“[A] monumental dual biography . . . a distinguished work, combining deep research, a pleasing narrative style and an abundance of fresh insights, a rare combination.”—The Dallas Morning News The third and fourth presidents have long been considered proper gentlemen, with Thomas Jefferson’s genius overshadowing James Madison’s judgment and common sense. But in this revelatory book about their crucial partnership, both are seen as men of their times, hardboiled operatives in a gritty world of primal politics where they struggled for supremacy for more than fifty years. With a thrilling and unprecedented account of early America as its backdrop, Madison and Jefferson reveals these founding fathers as privileged young men in a land marked by tribal identities rather than a united national personality. Esteemed historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg capture Madison’s hidden role—he acted in effect as a campaign manager—in Jefferson’s career. In riveting detail, the authors chart the courses of two very different presidencies: Jefferson’s driven by force of personality, Madison’s sustained by a militancy that history has been reluctant to ascribe to him. Supported by a wealth of original sources—newspapers, letters, diaries, pamphlets—Madison and Jefferson is a watershed account of the most important political friendship in American history. “Enough colorful characters for a miniseries, loaded with backstabbing (and frontstabbing too).”—Newsday “An important, thoughtful, and gracefully written political history.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Author: Joseph J. Ellis
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375727469
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER Following Thomas Jefferson from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, Joseph J. Ellis unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. He gives us the slaveholding libertarian who was capable of decrying mescegenation while maintaing an intimate relationship with his slave, Sally Hemmings; the enemy of government power who exercisdd it audaciously as president; the visionarty who remained curiously blind to the inconsistencies in his nature. American Sphinx is a marvel of scholarship, a delight to read, and an essential gloss on the Jeffersonian legacy.

Author: John Ferling
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608195430
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
One of America's foremost historians brilliantly brings to life the fierce struggle - both public and, ultimately, bitterly personal - between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton - two rivals whose opposing visions of what the United States should be continue to shape our country to this day.

Author: Gary Nash
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786746483
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Friends of Liberty tells the remarkable story of three men whose lives were braided together by issues of liberty and race that fueled revolutions across two continents. Thomas Jefferson wrote the founding documents of the United States. Thaddeus Kosciuszko was a hero of the American Revolution and later led a spectacular but failed uprising in Poland, his homeland. Agrippa Hull, a freeborn black New Englander, volunteered at eighteen to join the Continental Army. During the Revolution, Hull served Kosciuszko as an orderly, and the two became fast friends. Kosciuszko's abhorrence of bondage shaped histhinking about the oppression in his own land. When Kosciuszko returned to America in the 1790s, bearing the wounds of his own failed revolution, he and Jefferson forged an intense friendship based on their shared dreams for the global expansion of human freedom. They sealed their bond with a blood compact whereby Jefferson would liberate his slaves upon Kosciuszko's death. But Jefferson died without fulfilling the promise he had made to Kosciuszko-and to a fledgling nation founded on the principle of liberty and justice for all.

Author: John E. Ferling
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195150841
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
Setting the World Ablaze tells the story of the American Revolution and of three Founders who played crucial roles in winning the War of Independence and creating a new nation: George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. A leading historian of the Revolutionary era, Ferling draws upon an unsurpassed command of the primary sources and a talent for swiftly moving narrative to give us intimate views of each of these men. He provides both an overarching historical picture of the era and a gripping sense of how these conservative men--successful members of the colonial elite--were transformed into radical revolutionaries.

Author: Merrill D. Peterson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199840520
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1106

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Book Description
The definitive life of Jefferson in one volume, this biography relates Jefferson's private life and thought to his prominent public position and reveals the rich complexity of his development. As Peterson explores the dominant themes guiding Jefferson's career--democracy, nationality, and enlightenment--and Jefferson's powerful role in shaping America, he simultaneously tells the story of nation coming into being.

Author: Dan Sisson
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1609949870
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
An insightful assessment of Jefferson’s defeat of Adams in the 1800 election, and how it represented a blow against elitism and authoritarianism. In this brilliant historical classic, Dan Sisson provides the definitive window into key concepts that have formed the backdrop of our democracy: the nature of revolution, stewardship of power, liberty, and the ever-present danger of factions and tyranny. Most contemporary historians celebrate Jefferson’s victory over Adams in 1800 as the beginning of the two-party system, but Sisson believes this reasoning is entirely the wrong lesson. Jefferson saw his election as a peaceful revolution by the American people overturning an elitist faction that was stamping out cherished constitutional rights and trying to transform our young democracy into an authoritarian state. If anything, our current two-party system is a repudiation of Jefferson’s theory of revolution and his earnest desire that the people as a whole, not any faction or clique, would triumph in government. Sisson’s book makes clear that key ideas of the American Revolution did not reach their full fruition until the “Revolution of 1800,” to which we owe the preservation of many of our key rights. With contributions by Thom Hartmann that bring out the book’s contemporary relevance, this fortieth anniversary edition contains new insights and reflections on how Jefferson’s vision can help us in our own era of polarization, corruption, government overreach, and gridlock

Author: Tom Chaffin
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1250113741
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
In a narrative both panoramic and intimate, Tom Chaffin captures the four-decade friendship of Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette. Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette shared a singularly extraordinary friendship, one involved in the making of two revolutions—and two nations. Jefferson first met Lafayette in 1781, when the young French-born general was dispatched to Virginia to assist Jefferson, then the state’s governor, in fighting off the British. The charismatic Lafayette, hungry for glory, could not have seemed more different from Jefferson, the reserved statesman. But when Jefferson, a newly-appointed diplomat, moved to Paris three years later, speaking little French and in need of a partner, their friendship began in earnest. As Lafayette opened doors in Paris and Versailles for Jefferson, so too did the Virginian stand by Lafayette as the Frenchman became inexorably drawn into the maelstrom of his country's revolution. Jefferson counseled Lafayette as he drafted TheDeclaration of the Rights of Man and remained a firm supporter of the French Revolution, even after he returned to America in 1789. By 1792, however, the upheaval had rendered Lafayette a man without a country, locked away in a succession of Austrian and Prussian prisons. The burden fell on Jefferson, along with Lafayette's other friends, to win his release. The two would not see each other again until 1824, in a powerful and emotional reunion at Jefferson’s Monticello. Steeped in primary sources, Revolutionary Brothers casts fresh light on this remarkable, often complicated, friendship of two extraordinary men.