Happy Birthday to my first historical love. <3
I wish I could find the portrait I had to draw of him in 5th grade. It was atrocious.
(via aestatedomus)
Christie’s Americana Week sale takes place January 21-25 at Rockefeller Plaza in New York. The sale includes a unique watch key owned by Thomas Jefferson. The key contains a lock of his wife’s hair and is inscribed “Martha W. Jefferson Born 19 Oct. 1748, Died 6 Sept. 1782.” Jefferson, who never remarried, pledged to always remember his wife. It is believed that Jefferson commissioned this watch key as a means of fulfilling that promise.
(via aestatedomus)
(Source: mrflanksteak, via ladybutternut-deactivated201203)
Monticello Snow, March 5, 2012
(via fuckyeahjefferson)
"As to the love of liberty and country you have given no stronger proofs of being actuated by it than I have done. Cease then to arrogate to yourself and to your party all the patriotism and virtue of the country."
— Alexander Hamilton directed to Thomas Jefferson, ‘Objections and Answers respecting the Administration of the Government’, August 18, 1792 (via publius-report)
Hamilton Trolls Jefferson, Results In What You Would Expect
“But Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but for a monarchy bottomed on corruption; In proof of this I will relate an anecdote, for the truth of which, I attest the God who made me. Before the President set out on his southern tour in April, 1791, he addressed a letter of the fourth of that month, from Mount Vernon, to the Secretaries of State, Treasury and War, desiring that if any serious and important cases should arise during his absence, they would consult and act on them. And he requested that the Vice President should also be consulted. This was the only occasion on which that officer was ever requested to take part in a cabinet question. Some occasion for consultation arising, I invited those gentlemen (and the Attorney General, as well as I remember,) to dine with me, in order to confer on the subject. After the cloth was removed, and our question agreed and dismissed, conversation began on other matters, and by some circumstance, was led to the British constitution, on which Mr. Adams observed, ‘purge that constitution of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation, and it would be the most perfect constitution ever devised by the wit of man.’ Hamilton paused and said, ‘purge it of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation, and it would become an impracticable government: as it stands at present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most perfect government which ever existed.’ And this was assuredly the exact line which separated the political creeds of these two gentlemen.”
Thomas Jefferson, Anas.
Along with the Caesar incident, I get the distinct feeling Hamilton lacked the part of his brain that deters really bad decisions: ‘Should I really say this to this person? No? Say it anyway. It’ll be a riot.’
"Mr. Jefferson has hitherto been distinguished as the quiet, modest, retiring philosopher; as the plain, simple, unambitious republican. He shall not now, for the first time, be regarded as the intriguing incendiary, the aspiring turbulent competitor.
How long it is since that gentleman’s real character may have been divined, or whether this is only the first time that the secret has been disclosed, I am not sufficiently acquainted with the history of his political life to determine; but there is always a ‘first time’ when characters studious of artful disguises are unveiled; when the visor of stoicism is plucked from the brow of the epicurean; when the plain garb of Quaker simplicity is stripped from the concealed voluptuary; when Cæsar coyly refusing the proffered diadem, is seen to be Cæsar rejecting the trappings, but tenaciously grasping the substance of imperial domination.
"— Alexander Hamilton, ‘Catullus’, September 29, 1792. And Jefferson did show everyone he was a simple republican farmer. By running for president. Neither Hamilton nor Adams bought it. (via publius-report)
President Thomas Jefferson’s message to Congress communicating the discoveries of the explorers Lewis and Clark, 02/19/1806
Three years earlier President Jefferson had approached Congress via secret message to request funding for the expedition.
"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."
— Thomas Jefferson (via completeculture)
(via fuckyeahjefferson)
“A sculpture of Thomas Jefferson and names of his slaves greet visitors at the National Museum of American History in Washington.”
Photo by Andrew Councill
Source: New York Times »
(via tiedtothewhippingpost)
In this secret message of January 18, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson asked Congress for $2,500 to explore the West—all the way to the Pacific Ocean. At the time, the territory did not belong to the United States. Congress agreed to fund the expedition that would be led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
(via aestatedomus)
Jefferson’s copy of The Federalist, sent by Angelica Church who had received it from her sister Elizabeth Hamilton.
“My beloved husband wrote the outline of his papers in the Federalist on board of one of the North river sloops while on his way to Albany, a journey (or rather a voyage) which in those days usually occupied a week. Public business so filled up his time, that he was compelled to do much of his studying and writing while traveling.”
Elizabeth Hamilton, A Godchild of Washington.
(via annie-wyatt)
"Perhaps myself the first, at some expense of popularity, to unfold the true character of Jefferson, it is too late for me to become his apologist. Nor can I have any disposition to do it. I admit that his politics are tinctured with fanaticism, that he is too much in earnest in his democracy, that he has been a mischievous enemy to the principle measures of our past administration, that he is crafty & persevering in his objects, that he is not scrupulous about the means of success nor very mindful of truth, and that he is a contemptible hypocrite. But it is not true as is alleged that he is an enemy to the power of the Executive, or that he is for confounding all the powers in the House of R[epresentative]s. It is a fact which I have frequently mentioned that while we were in the administration together he was generally for a large construction of the Executive authority, & not backward to act upon it in cases which coincided with his views."
— Alexander Hamilton to James Bayard, January 16, 1801. Hamilton helps get Jefferson elected because for all of his purposed disinterestedness, with his love of fame Jefferson was predictable. (via publius-reporter)
"For Jefferson, Hamilton was not so much an individual as an archetype of monarchism and corruption; and what was at stake in the conflict with Hamilton was nothing less than the survival of republicanism. For Hamilton, Jefferson always remained recognizably an individual, with his own peculiar blend of virtues and flaws. Moreover, Hamilton’s view of Jefferson’s politics was never as extreme as Jefferson’s view of Hamilton’s politics. Jefferson accused Hamilton of deliberately aiming to subvert the Constitution in the interests of a foreign power (England). Hamilton - while he disagreed with Jefferson’s constitutional ideas - did not question Jefferson’s basic loyalty to the Constitution and recognized that Jefferson’s enthusiasm for revolutionary France was limited by his commitment to upholding American sovereignty."
— James H. Read, “Alexander Hamilton’s View of Thomas Jefferson’s Ideology and Character,” The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton. I like this description because I think it cuts to the point: Hamilton knew Jefferson would put his ambitions and desire for fame ahead of any real supposedly Jacobin tendencies, which is why he chose him over Burr. Though he may have honestly believed it, Jefferson created a boogieman and wrote in far more extremist (and combined with Hamilton’s indiscretions, more influencing) tones, making him the superior politician. (via publius-reporter)
