The definitive life of Jefferson in one volume, this biography relates Jefferson's private life and thought to his prominent public position and reveals the rich complexity of his development. As Peterson explores the dominant themes guiding Jefferson's career--democracy, nationality, and enlightenment--and Jefferson's powerful role in shaping America, he simultaneously tells the story of nation coming into being.

Dumas Malone wrote his first 15,000 word essay about Jefferson for the scholarly Dictionary of American Biography. This reprint is Malone's own revision of that essay, made after his decades of study of a remarkable American.

Who was the "real" Thomas Jefferson? If this question has an answer, it will probably not be revealed reading the many accounts of his life. For two centuries biographers have provided divergent perspectives on him as a man and conflicting appraisals of his accomplishments. Jefferson was controversial in his own time, and his propensity to polarize continued in the years after his death as biographers battled to control the commanding heights of history. To judge from their depictions, there existed many different Thomas Jeffersons. The essays in this book explore how individual biographers have shaped history—as well as how the interests and preoccupations of the times in which they wrote helped to shape their portrayals of Jefferson. In different eras biographers presented the third president variously as a proponent of individual rights or of majority rule, as a unifier or a fierce partisan, and as a champion of either American nationalism or cosmopolitanism. Conscripted to serve Whigs and Democrats, abolitionists and slaveholders, unionists and secessionists, Populists and Progressives, and seemingly every side of almost every subsequent struggle, the only constant was that Jefferson’s image remained a mirror of Americans’ self-conscious conceptions of their nation’s virtues, values, and vices. Thomas Jefferson’s Lives brings together leading scholars of Jefferson and his era, all of whom embrace the challenge to assess some of the most important and enduring accounts of Jefferson’s life. Contributors:Jon Meacham, presidential historian * Barbara Oberg, Princeton University * J. Jefferson Looney, Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello * Christine Coalwell McDonald, Westchester Community College * Robert M.S. McDonald, United States Military Academy * Andrew Burstein, Louisiana State University * Jan Ellen Lewis, Rutgers University * Richard Samuelson, California State University, San Bernardino * Nancy Isenberg, Louisiana State University * Joanne B. Freeman, Yale University * Brian Steele, University of Alabama at Birmingham * Herbert Sloan, Barnard College * R. B. Bernstein, City College of New York * Francis D. Cogliano, University of Edinburgh * Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University * Gordon S. Wood, Brown University

People familiar with Jefferson's deism, Unitarianism and enthusiasm for Bible study do not seem to appreciate the importance of his religious beliefs to his political beliefs.

Drawing heavily from the original letters and papers of Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries, this resource chronicles the world of the Founding Father who wrote the Declaration of Independence. From his early critiques of the colonial policies of Great Britain and King George III to his governmental roles as the first secretary of state, the minister to France, and the third president of the United States, Jefferson's groundbreaking achievements are described in historical context. The contradictions in Jefferson's character--most notably the fact that he owned 600 slaves in his lifetime despite penning the immortal phrase "all men are created equal"--are also explored, giving kids a full picture of this skilled politician. Creative activities that invite children to experience Jefferson's colonial America include designing a Palladian window, building a simple microscope, painting a "buffalo robe," and dancing a reel.

An ambitious, perceptive portrayal of a complex man, this bestselling biography breaks new ground in its exploration of Jefferson's inner life. "Brodie has humanized Jefferson without in the least diminishing him".--Wallace Stegner. Photos.

Jefferson regarded Jesus as a moral guide rather than a divinity. In his unique interpretation of the Bible, he highlights Christ's ethical teachings, discarding the scriptures' supernatural elements, to reflect the deist view of religion.

Prepared in 1821. Apparently first published in the Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies, from the papers of Thomas Jefferson, Charlottesville, 1829.