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The Genius of Thomas Jefferson

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Abraham Lincoln admired him. So did Franklin Roosevelt. So did John F. Kennedy. Dozens of other presidents expressed similar sentiments. They were talking about Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president. Carol Swain explores why their praise was so well deserved.

#thomasjefferson #ushistory #foundingfathers

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Script:

There’s a reason why Thomas Jefferson’s face is on our coinage; why his sculpted head is on Mount Rushmore; and why there is a magnificent memorial in his honor in Washington, DC.

As British historian Paul Johnson put it in A History of the American People, “…no one did more than [Jefferson] did to create the United States of America.”

Born on April 13, 1743, in Shadwell, Virginia, Jefferson early on displayed an intellectual curiosity that would never be quenched.

He devoured books on history, science, math, and philosophy, while learning Latin, Greek, and French. He would eventually amass a personal library of 6,500 volumes, declaring, “I cannot live without books.”

There was virtually no subject which he didn’t find fascinating and didn’t try to master. Most of the time, he succeeded.

He graduated from college in just two years with a plan to practice law. At age 25, he won a seat in Virginia’s House of Burgesses—Virginia’s colonial equivalent of a House of Representatives—entering politics just as the American colonies were beginning to challenge British rule.

Although Jefferson was not a gifted speaker, he was a genius with words.

This gift did not go unnoticed.

John Adams and Benjamin Franklin—no rhetorical slouches themselves—asked him to write the first draft of America’s Declaration of Independence.

Their confidence was richly rewarded. Jefferson’s assertions that “all men are created equal,” and that “nature’s God… The Creator” had granted them “inalienable” rights formed the cornerstones of the American experiment.

Jefferson was not yet 34.

In 1790, President Washington appointed him to be the new nation’s first Secretary of State, one of the two key posts in Washington’s cabinet. The other post was Secretary of the Treasury to which Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton.

The two became bitter rivals. Jefferson distrusted Hamilton’s belief in a powerful central government; Hamilton thought Jefferson was an impractical dreamer.

Both misunderstood the other. This was probably inevitable given their strong convictions and considerable egos. And although it’s true that Jefferson was a lofty political theorist, he was also a cunning politician.

His hardball tactics angered or alienated people who had once been close allies—most notably John Adams.

After defeating Adams in a contentious election in 1800, Jefferson served two terms as America’s third president—a tenure historians still consider among the most consequential and successful in American history.

He reduced the scope and reach of the federal government—cutting taxes, lowering spending, and retiring half of the national debt.

This was the small-government Jefferson in action. But he had no problem exercising vigorous executive authority when he felt it was necessary. Nowhere is this better expressed than his greatest accomplishment as president: the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, or just four cents an acre.

In one fell swoop, Jefferson orchestrated a deal that doubled the size of the United States, incorporating territories of what are now fifteen states, while also eliminating the presence of a powerful European empire from North America.

After completing two terms, Jefferson, following Washington’s example, stepped down from the first office.

He spent the last seventeen years of his life at his beloved home, Monticello, an estate he built not far from his birthplace.

There, he not only founded the University of Virginia, but repaired his relationship with his long-lost friend, John Adams. They began a fabled correspondence that continued nearly to the end of their lives.

Remarkably—if one is so inclined, one might even say providentially—Jefferson and Adams died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

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38 Comments

  1. Very well said! What Jefferson did in the Declaration, was to give a promissory note to future generations that would ultimately abolish slavery. Why didn't he just end it in the Declaration? If he did,
    the 13 colonies would not have ratified the Decleration & you needed a unanimous vote. Remember, slavery was here over a 100 years before the U.S. was born sanctioned by England.
    This fact is often overlooked.

  2. America needs a new direction. Antifa, and blm, are tearing down statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, and erecting monuments to petty criminals like George Floyd. These uneducated morons will never realize how lucky they are to be born in this country.

  6. Thomas Jefferson penned, " all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." except for black people, Native Americans, women, Asian people, mixed children of Thomas Jefferson, poor white men, Muslins, Jews, and anybody that don't look like him.

  7. This "don't judge people by today's standards" has become a tired trope and cliche. 1) It is an "appeal to popularity" fallacy, legitimizing behavior just because is was endemic to a time and people. 2) It implies that somehow morality is more evolved today than back then, which isn't necessarily true. 3) It is a subtle way of canceling people who may have genuine and substantive opinions in order to sustain a preferred narrative.

    Here's an example of item 2 above.
    Take a guess who said this: “Would anyone believe that I am master of slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general INCONVENIENCE of living without them. I will not, I cannot justify it. However culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my duty, commitment, and responsibility, to virtue as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and to lament my want of conformity to them.” (emphasis added)

    It is the same person who said, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of CHAINS and SLAVERY? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” (emphasis added)

    Patrick Henry was willing to die for HIS liberty, but wasn't willing to release his slaves because of… inconvenience?

    “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” ~Gandhi

    Why is it that @PragerU does not have a video on Edward Coles? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS8NVGmcLes
    Wouldn't he be a great prototype of what was right about America during her founding?

  9. Swain fogot to include another famous Jefferson quote. Often overlooked.
    It goes: Once you go black you never go back!!!! (say this at Monticello and you'll be escorted off the grounds immediately!!!!🤣🤣)

  13. "No one did more for shaping the United States than Thomas Jefferson."
    Seems funny then that you completely ignored his words about separation of church and state in your diatribe on the founding fathers and Jefferson’s intent behind the first Amendment. Only teaching history that’s convenient it seems, but that’s fine. I can’t think of a single real person in my life who take you to be a source of education.

  22. Thomas Jefferson was no genius! He was a child of the enlightenment. Least religious. He was hypocritical , he wrote that People in Africa had sex with orangutans . He didn’t like the president having so much power . Until he became president then he took advantage of his office . He spent his whole family fortune on living the high life . They had to take up a lottery when he died to pay his substantial debts and that wasn’t enough to cover . He never freed his slaves when he died . And there’s alit more . Read the John Adams book , they were friends and there s a lot of letters between them and Abigail as well . She stoped being friends when she found out that Jefferson was undermining his friend Adams . To keep him from being re-elected. He was a weak and flawed character in my opinion . As an American delegate he was working with the French to draft a constitution. Which did not make president Adams very happy. Jefferson was Americas first liberal left wing presidents . There was much more questionable acts he did even before he was president.

  28. He wrote the Jefferson bible, and the Founding Fathers were mostly deists..yet you revere them and claim that America is a "nation built upon 'Judeo-Christian' values". PragerU is a demagogue channel for nuts..

  29. Lincoln gave credit to Jefferson since he clearly and very early in the document wrote "All men are created equal". This is regardless of the fact that their backgrounds and economic family status and physical or mental traits are diverse. I say diverse instead of superior and inferior in this case.

    Lincoln gave credit to Jefferson to giving 'hope' to the rest of the world since he seems to have a 'resounding' universal truth that all men are equal in the eyes of God, regardless of the hand they are dealt. All men are equally inheritors of sin, but they are also equally loved by God.

  34. When they took down a statue of Lincoln in Boston, I knew that Americans had forgotten the meaning of gratefulness. If the statue was so objectionable, they could have taken out the slave from that monument and left the President. This was a man who took the phrase, "All men are created equal" to the next level, literally. That monument was built and funded by the Black people. The BLM protestors took down the statue of a man who truly believed that Black lives mattered.