please please help me out. Do you think Thomas Jefferson personified the ideal agrarian american?

Question

because i have to write an essay...like now...about how he changed the world. i was thinking about saying he gave america an identity when they were in the adolescent anti-british phase.

do you have anything to say on his effects on slavery or treatment toward native americans?

haha; i'm soooo not going to fail!

i rock the eleventh hour like nobody's business.

okay, i know jefferson wasn't REALLY the ideal agrarian, but we only know this in hindsight. AT THE TIME, people rejoiced in the "jefersonian", agrarian, virtuous life. so would it make sense to say that TO THE PEOPLE OF HIS TIME, Jefferson helped identify his country with a common passion?

Answer 1

Thomas Jefferson defies easy explanations and if you wish to worship Jefferson it is best not to stare at him too intently. As an idealistic youth I thought Jefferson was a 'wow' but now that I have read dozens upon dozens of books about the Birth of America and its early years of development must confess to sadness regarding Jefferson.
Yes Jefferson loudly proclaimed his love for an 'Agrarian Nation,' a nation of farmers - - - in an odd way Thomas Jefferson was channeling the sit-com 'Green Acres.' It was an idealized dream with no basis in reality. The reality was that Thomas Jefferson's 'farm, his plantation was chronically poor, mismanaged, frequently teetering on the edge of disaster, Jefferson experimented with a variety of crops but it was a haphazard affair - - - - even Jefferson's closest friends snickered at his efforts to make Monticello a showcase for farming methods.

As for Slavery - - - Jefferson retreated to the issue that Slaves were Property and clung to the idea that to take away one's property was stealing therefore 'keep your hands off my darkies.'

Jefferson's main claim to changing the world were his essays on the State of Virginia, his writing of the Declaration of Independence which can be best describe as condensing a variety of ideas into a single sheet format that spoke eloquently of the reasons for granting America its freedom, and finally his founding of the University of Virginia. As an architect Jefferson had merit, Monticello is a fascinating place, and his plans for the University of Virginia.

Now that would make a good essay. Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia. His game plan for educating American youth did produce positive gains and would definitely put your essay ahead of the pack. Trust me your teacher would be thrilled.

http://www.virginia.edu/academicalvillage/
"" For Thomas Jefferson, learning was an integral part of life. The "academical village" is based on the assumption that the life of the mind is a pursuit for all participants in the University, that learning is a lifelong and shared process, and that interaction between scholars and students enlivens the pursuit of knowledge. """
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/University_of_Virginia.html
http://www.monticello.org/reports/quotes/uva.html
"""University of Virginia: Jefferson Quotations

1820 Dec. 26. "This institution of my native state, the hobby of my old age, will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind, to explore and to expose every subject susceptible of it's contemplation." (to Destutt de Tracy, Ford.12.181)

1820 Dec. 27. "This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." (to William Roscoe, L&B.15.303)

1820 Aug. 14. "...an establishment which I contemplate as the future bulwark of the human mind in this hemisphere." (to Thomas Cooper, L&B.15.264)

1821 Feb. 15. "I had hoped...that we should open with the next year an institution on which the fortunes of our country may depend more than may meet the general eye. The reflections that the boys of this age are to be the men of the next; that they should be prepared to receive the holy charge which we are cherishing to deliver over to them; that in establishing an institution of wisdom for them, we secure it to all our future generations; that in fulfilling this duty, we bring home to our own bosoms the sweet consolation of seeing our sons rising under a luminous tuition, to destinies of high promise." (to Gen. James Breckinridge, L&B.15.314)

1821 Mar. 9. "It is the last act of usefulness I can render, and could I see it open I would not ask an hour more of life." (to Spencer Roane, L&B.15.326)

1825 Mar. 25. "I hope [the University of Virginia] will prove a blessing to my own state, and not unuseful perhaps to some others." (to Edward Livingston, L&B.16.115)""


Pax----------------------------

Answer 2

No, I don't, and Jefferson didn't either. The agrarian ideal didn't include slavery. Jefferson was profoundly uneasy about this.

If you want to talk about how Jefferson changed the world, I think there's only one way to go. All the best ideas of the Enlightenment were condensed into the Declaration of Independence, Jefferon's finest work. The American Revolution was the first time a dependent colony stood up for the dignity of the indivdual, the right to liberty, and the belief that herditary rulers are no better than the rest of us. It was an earthshaking moment, and Jefferson's words inspired millions of people around the world to throw off their own shackles and stand up for self-determination. Jefferson's Declaration was the beginning of the end of the colonial era.

Answer 3

I think you are doing a good job thinking this through. If you have ever been to Monticello it would amaze you. If you haven't, get a book from your library about Monticello and study it. Monticello embodies Jefferson's true genius. He built the house and the plantation to provide the best use of space possible. It is not a huge house, just a remarkable one. He provided a covered area for the food to be brought to the dining room which protected both the food and the servants from the weather.

He did not like slavery. He was realistic enough to know that just freeing people who were totally dependent on him and putting them on their own wasn't a good solution for them. He was realistic about his own finances and the economic structure he lived in to know that freeing his slaves would sink them, and him.

You need to check it out, but I believe at his death he did free at least some of his slaves.

The accusation about rape does not stand the light of good scholarship very well. And he seems to have treated his slaves as well as he was able.

I don't think it matters whether he was putting together the ideas of the whole congress or his own, but point is he did a good job of it.

Those who are angry or contemptuous because he wasn't perfect are being adolescent in their thinking. He was a man.

But quite honestly, I don't think his impact on the world had to do with either his place as a founding father or his agricultural.

I think his greatest effect on the world was the "Lewis and Clark Expedition", and with it, the Louisiana Purchase.

These two things opened up the West to the U.S. for settlement. And by doing this he truly affected the development of the U.S. as a nation.

Keep on keeping on, girl. You are thinking!!!!!!!!!!! That is a great thing in and of itself. You are struggling with a huge field and topic but you are really struggling with it.

My hat's off to you.

Maggie

Answer 4

Thomas Jefferson was so far from ideal that one laughs. Read some accurate biographies of him and not the hero pap they give you in school. I think his greatest affect on slavery was that he increased his own slave population by the children he fathered with Sally Hemmings, one of his slaves.

This is not to say he didn't do some good things, but he was just a man and plagued by all the faults that most men have.
I have no idea of his feelings about Native Americans, but it was probably more sympathetic than Andrew Jackson's. (That's a joke; anyone who didn't advocate killing them all would have had better feelings than Jackson, who probably did.)

Answer 5

Read some actual biographies of Jefferson and you will see that he is so far over-rated as a founding father, that we should erase him from it.

Jefferson did not write the Declaration of Independence, he drafted it from the ideas of other men, here is an excerpt from a letter John Adams wrote to Timothy Pickering on the drafting of the DoI:

"As you justly observe, there is not an idea in it but what had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before. The substance of it is contained in the declaration of rights and the violation of those rights in the Journals of Congress in 1774. Indeed, the essence of it is contained in a pamphlet, voted and printed by the town of Boston, before the first Congress met, composed by James Otis, as I suppose, in one of his lucid intervals, and pruned and polished by Samuel Adams."

In fact, when the Congress edited his draft of the DoI, Jefferson disowned it as his own work, saying that they had destroyed it all.

whale

Answer 6

Let's see Jefferson was bankrupt for most of his life. Just like many an American farmer.

So broke Neil Young and Willie Nelson want to travel back in time and perform a benefit concert for him.


Oh and Jefferson apparently liked a good raping, according to the genetic data on descendents of his slaves. If seeing deliverance taught me anything about agrarian Americans, they like a nice raping.

Answer 7

hahaha, you have to resort to Yahoo Answers for your homework. You're going to fail, sister.