Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson still lives, John Adams reportedly mumbled shortly before Adams died on July 4, 1826. But unknown to Adams, Jefferson had died at about the time he uttered those words. The deaths of these two leading revolutionary-era statesmen on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence suggested providential guidance for the American republic and helped shape the legacy of these two men. Francis D. Cogliano's Thomas Jefferson unravels exactly how the declaration's author attempted to craft his own historical reputation. Beginning with Jefferson's concepts about history and historical thought, Cogliano reveals that Jefferson viewed his legacy as intertwined with the success of the republican experiment. Believing that he had a political, moral, and personal stake in how the history of the American Revolution and its aftermath would be conveyed to future generations, Jefferson collected documents, books, newspapers, and other materials so that later historians could construct an appropriate version of the past. He also preserved a massive documentary legacy, consisting of some twenty-five thousand letters sent to him and copies of more than eighteen thousand letters he wrote. Jefferson believed that those primary sources would shape his posthumous reputation and preserve his vision of the era. Yet he did not publish his papers during his lifetime, nor did he offer instructions for how his carefully organized archive should be handled after his death. His papers fell into the hands of collectors across the country, not being reunited until the publication of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (33 vols. to date, 1950-), a massive project ongoing since the 1940s

Art history · Cartography · Declaration · Declaration of independence · Fell · Independence (probability theory · Memoir · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Reputation · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Classics · History · Law

• The Image of Absence

  Laura F Klein, Lauren F Klein•American Literature•2013

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