\u201cJefferson survives.\u201d These, it is said, were John Adams\u2019 last words, as he died\u2014as did Jefferson\u2014on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That document, write historians Onuf and Cogliano in this distillation of their popular seminar for schoolteachers, was heavily edited by a committee of the Continental Congress, introducing certain ambiguities and deleting a key passage in which Jefferson lay blame for slavery on King George III\u2014editing that, Jefferson believed, \u201cfatally compromised the integrity of the Declaration [Congress] finally adopted.\u201d The irony, of course, is that Jefferson himself was slaveholder to the end of his life, which has led to his being canceled in many progressive quarters, leaving it to the right wing to claim Jefferson as their own. This is overreach, the authors suggest, for although Jefferson held out for states\u2019 rights and mistrusted a too-powerful central government, he, of course, supported the creation of a federal union in the first place, one that constituted a nation. Whether on the left or right, the authors worry that Jefferson \u201cseems to have lost his relevance.\u201d They argue that Jefferson\u2019s central question\u2014\u201cAre we capable of governing ourselves?\u201d\u2014remains central today, particularly in a time of authoritarianism and a seemingly imperial government in the place of a polity whose power derives from the consent of the governed. The authors emphasize other aspects of Jeffersonian thought, including the thesis that it is up to each generation to preserve the nation for the generations to follow: \u201cThe success and survival of America\u2019s republican experiment depended on the spirit that animates each generation and brings abstract principles to life.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cJefferson survives.\u201d These, it is said, were John Adams\u2019 last words, as he died\u2014as did Jefferson\u2014on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That document, write historians Onuf and Cogliano in this distillation of their popular seminar for schoolteachers, was heavily edited by a committee of the Continental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}