Monticello Blog

Today was the grand opening of the new Monticello Visitor Center & Smith Education Center, and we are sooooooo tired right now.

In the latest issue of Common-Place ("The Journal We Don't Pay For"), Alison L. LaCroix relates how she, another professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and some intrepid law students tried to get inside the legal minds of the Founding Fathers by reading the same fiction they read.

Does the 44th share the view of the third? Is the presidency a "splendid misery?"

Did Jefferson really have Asperger's Syndrome? Nope.

In his inaugural address, Barack Obama called on Americans to remain hopeful of America's promise, calling to mind Jefferson's words from the Declaration of Independence:

On the election of the United States' first African-American president

man ... feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day... --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Cabell, February 2, 1816

"A nation, by establishing a character of liberality and magnanimity, gains in the friendship and respect of others more than the worth of mere money." --Thomas Jefferson, Special Message, January 13, 1806.

Advocates of "strong" or "participatory" democracy invoke Jefferson's letters to Joseph C. Cabell and Samuel Kercheval, usually acknowledging that they refer to local self-government in what Jefferson calls "ward republics," but without grasping the fuller implications of Jeffersonian federalism.

Well, I've missed our President's actual inauguration by several days, but I'd like to belatedly commemorate the occasion by offering an intriguing historical tidbit about - yes! - Jefferson's first inauguration.