The Essential Thomas Jefferson

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 255-255
Author(s):  
Stephen L. Newman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Publishing Company ◽  
Graduate Courses ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
British America ◽  
Public Papers

The Essential Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough, ed., Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2006, pp. xxxvii, 287.This is a useful collection of Jefferson's political writings well suited to undergraduate and graduate courses in political theory and especially in American political thought. There are twelve public papers and addresses (including “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” and, of course, the Declaration of Independence, excerpts from the “Notes on Virginia,” and 44 letters to various correspondents. This compares favourably with an older and larger anthology edited by the distinguished Jefferson scholar Merrill Peterson (The Portable Thomas Jefferson, New York: Viking, 1975), which features roughly the same number of public papers and addresses but also contains the “Notes on Virginia” in its entirety and some 75 letters. While the Peterson volume is more inclusive, Yarbrough's decision to excerpt the “Notes” is understandable, given how few chapters bear directly on political questions, and the selected correspondence provides an ample survey of Jefferson's views on a variety of topics.

Relief in the Premises: Divorce as a Woman's Remedy in New York and Indiana, 1815–1870

1990 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma Basch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Pros And Cons ◽  
Domestic Affairs

When Thomas Jefferson assessed the pros and cons of legalizing divorce before the American Revolution, he came out firmly on the side of divorce. “No partnership,” he declared, in a rationale that prefigured the Declaration of Independence, “can oblige continuance in contradiction to its end and design.” Among the few misgivings he had, however, was the problem of dividing marital assets, and while he was convinced a man could get a wife at any age, he was concerned that a woman beyond a certain age would be unable to find a new partner. Yet he envisioned divorce as a remedy for women. A husband, he noted, had “many ways of rendering his domestic affairs agreeable, by Command or desertion,” whereas a wife was “confined & subject.” That he assessed divorce as a woman's remedy while representing a client intent on blocking a wife's separate maintenance is not without irony. Still, in a world where the repudiation of a spouse was a husband's prerogative, he believed that the freedom to divorce would restore “to women their natural right of equality.”

What Kind of Book is The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution?

2018 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Consciousness ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Early American ◽  
The Relationship

Most scholarship on the ideology of the American Revolution asks the question: “What did American patriots think about politics”? But The Ideological Origins asks instead: “ How did patriots think about politics”? At issue here is the distinction between political theory and political consciousness. Once we get this distinction properly into view, we can rethink the relationship between two great, and apparently rivalrous, historiographies on early American political thought.

African American political thought reimagined: A review of African American Political Thought: A Collected History

2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110387
Author(s):  
Adom Getachew
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
American Political Thought

This review essay surveys the contributions of the new edited volume African American Political Thought: A Collected History. The thinker-based approach to the study of African American political thought advanced in the volume highlights the ways in which thinkers reformulate the central political questions of the intellectual tradition and constitute the canon through the citation and invocation of earlier figures. It also draws attention to the rhetorical, strategic, and tactical dimensions of their political thought. The volume sets a new standard for study of African American political thought and makes a persuasive case for the tradition’s important contributions to political theory broadly. However, by tying its significance too closely to its interventions within American political thought, the volume inadvertently minimizes the global resonances of African American political thought.

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