User:Shaquandra01/sandbox

Wikipedia's Thomas Jefferson: Author of America article for ENGL2131.01

Analysis of Article

"Thomas Jefferson was born April 13, 1743, on an estate called Shadwell, County of Albemarble, in the English colony of Virginia. Throughout his long life Jefferson obtained lots of education. In the spring of 1760, then, young Jefferson entered the College of William and Mary, at Williamsburg, near the Atlantic Coast. With such a brilliant example to follow, Jefferson graduated from the College in 1762. Still not quite the well rounded gentleman, and still not decided on a career, Jefferson (with help of Dr. Small) entered upon the reading of the law. In these same years Jefferson pursued other interests too, including music. Throughout his long life he continued to cultivate such relationships as he had with (his teachers) Fauquier, Small, and Wythe, to play his violin, and to live in general a life of high culture. Small and Wythe also influenced Jefferson in other ways, however. In religion and in politics, they freed his mind of orthodoxy and conservatism. Falling away from his Anglican background, Jefferson inclined toward Deism and secularism.. And from his quasi aristocratic political position he moved profoundly into the ranks of democracy. Of course, his own reading and observations also helped effect these changes; yet his two mentors urged him on more rapidly and more surely toward liberalism than would have been the case without them.There remained three more steps to take in order that Jefferson become the complete Colonial gentleman. One of these was to enter into public service. In 1769 he was elected a Burgess. As a member of Virginia's legislative body-the House of Burgesses, sitting at Williamsburg-he was very active. Little could he have dreamed that, for some forty years to follow, he would serve the people in various stations of government, even ascending as leadership in a new nation that he himself would help to create". 1'Jefferson was primarily a social and moral philosopher. Like most of the French encyclopaedists, materialists, and ideologists,rly and he found intellectual progress impeded everywhere by social and moral problems, and he judged that everything waited upon the solution of these problems. What Jefferson valued in knowledge, apart from his deep enjoyment of historical writing, was scientific discovery and description. It is relevant to quote, as an example, Jefferson's concept of the connection between free society and the sciences. With a background of free government linked reciprocally to free ideas and inventions, Jefferson had the "first principles" needed for his kind of "system". Jefferson's interpretation of natural rights is not constant, nor is it clearly formulated, but rarely is it superficial. To what extent is the doctrine of the American Declaration of Independence characteristic of Jefferson's version of the natural rights theory? Let us first recall Jefferson's original version of the Declaration of Independence, which, before Congress made its modifications, read:

...that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it...

And an entire passage concerned with slavery, which was later omitted, charged: He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.....Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce" . "In the long run Jefferson was an optimist about mankind and its future". "On that day July Fourth, 1826,...died that same day". Scarcely two weeks before he died-and this is practically his last important utterance-he recalled in a letter to the citizens of Washington who had invited him to attend the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, how proud he was that his fellow citizens, after fifty years, continued to approve the choice made when the Declaration was adopted"

Reading List

1. Bottorff, William K. Thomas Jefferson. Boston: Twayne, 1979. Print.
2. Koch, Adrienne. The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson. Gloucester, MA: P. Smith, 1957. Print.
3. Beloff, Max. Thomas Jefferson and American Democracy. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1948. Print.
4. Chinard, Gilbert. Thomas Jefferson, The Apostle of Americanism. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 1957. Print.

Original

Thomas Jefferson: Author of America is a short biography of Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States (1801–09) and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), by author, journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens.

It was released as a part of Harper Collins' Eminent Lives series of "brief biographies by distinguished authors on canonical figures."[1][2]

Revised

Thomas Jefferson: Author of America is a short biography of Thomas Jefferson. He was the third President of the United States from 1801–1809 and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776). It was written by author, journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens.

It was released as a part of Harper Collins' Eminent Lives, series of "brief biographies by distinguished authors on canonical figures."[1][2]

Original Contribution

Thomas Jefferson was known as the Author of America. He was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. "Thomas Jefferson once said that he wished to be remembered for only three things: drafting the Declaration of Independence, writing and supporting the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786),and founding the University of Virginia"( Vol. A pg 659).