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.”

Jefferson, Madison, and the Making of the Constitution

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Broadwater
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Early Period ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Constitutional Thought

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, “Father of the Constitution,” were two of the most important Founders of the United States as well as the closest of political allies. Yet historians have often seen a tension between the idealistic rhetoric of the Declaration and the more pedestrian language of the Constitution. Moreover, to some, the adoption of the Constitution represented a repudiation of the democractic values of the Revolution. In this book, Jeff Broadwater explores the evolution of the constitutional thought of these two seminal American figures, from the beginning of the American Revolution through the adoption of the Bill of Rights. In explaining how the two political compatriots could have produced such seemingly dissimilar documents but then come to a common constitutional ground, Broadwater reveals how their collaboration ---and their disagreements---influenced the full range of constitutional questions during this early period of the American republic.

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.

MONTESQUIEU'S NATURAL RIGHTS CONSTITUTIONALISM

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Rahe
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
American Constitution ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The One

AbstractWhen Woodrow Wilson, in the course of his campaign for the Presidency in 1912, attacked Thomas Jefferson and Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, he knew what he was about—for the constitutionalism articulated by the latter and embraced, in turn, by the Framers of the American Constitution was a systematic attempt to put into practice something very much like the first principles spelled out in the Declaration of Independence. Montesquieu was not a doctrinaire. He feared that, in his own country and elsewhere, revolution would eventuate in the establishment of a despotism, and so he gently, quietly promoted unobtrusive reform. But the cautious, prudential political science that he outlined in his Spirit of Laws was anything but value-free. If the American framers found his legislative science of use, it was because the hatred of despotism and love for liberty animating its author was grounded in an account of natural right closely akin to the one, espoused in John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, that had inspired their revolution.

A Political Age

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Mitchell Sommers
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Political Events ◽  
London Corresponding Society

This chapter places Ebenezer and Manoah Sibly in the dramatic political events of their day, especially the American and French Revolutions, and the Treason Trials of the 1790s. Ebenezer is frequently cited as a radical Whig, who opposed slavery and supported the American Revolution and other radical causes. Little is said about Manoah’s politics, other than that as a New Church minister, he was of necessity a loyalist. However, a close examination of Ebenezer’s writing, and especially the timing of the publication of his comments on the American and French Revolutions, reveals him as much more moderate than has been asserted, especially in discussions of his nativity for the Declaration of Independence. On the other hand, Manoah’s work as shorthand taker for the London Corresponding Society and acceptance of Swedenborg’s dramatically radical theology reveal him as a profoundly radical thinker—and one who was moved to act on his convictions.

scholarly journals Race and Politics in the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-179
Author(s):  
Howard A. Palley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Pursuit Of Happiness ◽  
George Washington ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
Race And Politics ◽  
Inalienable Rights

Abstract The Declaration of Independence asserts that “All men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Nevertheless, the United States, at its foundation has been faced with the contradiction of initially supporting chattel slavery --- a form of slavery that treated black slaves from Africa purely as a commercial commodity. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom had some discomfort with slavery, were slaveholders who both utilized slaves as a commodity. Article 1 of our Constitution initially treated black slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportioning representation in order to increase Southern representation in Congress. So initially the Constitution’s commitment to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” did not include the enslaved black population. This essay contends that the residue of this initial dilemma still affects our politics --- in a significant manner.

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