Monticello Blog

Peter Onuf, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia (and a great friend of Monticello) wrote a thought-provoking piece about the nature of Americans' views of liberty from the earliest days of the republic.

If you know anything about Jefferson you will know that nothing is more guaranteed to elicit a long impassioned screed than an infringement on intellectual freedom. Stand back!

I wasn't aware that Jefferson thought about intelligent design, but as we all know, if you use Thomas Jefferson's name in your argument, you automatically win. Double points for including a relevant quotation.

Economists have not-as a general rule-been kind to Jefferson or his financial legacy, preferring instead Hamilton for stabilizing the nation’s weak post-war finances and Adams for avoiding costly commercial or military conflict. They have a point, and even sympathetic historians have been hard pressed to justify Jefferson’s trade policies and occasionally irrational fears of the banking system and paper money.

Last September, I received a question from someone looking for a Jefferson letter titled, "The Value of Constitutions." Jefferson didn't usually bother to give his letters titles, so this was a bit puzzling. I finally figured out that this letter had been published in a volume edited by Edward Dumbauld, chapter 4 of which was titled, "The Value of Constitutions." It seemed pretty obvious that somewhere along the way, someone had quoted from the letter and attached the chapter title in such a way that people assumed that it was the title of the letter. Whoopsies.

I'm eagerly delving into a book that arrived just today: Antonio Molina, Patriarch of the Anthony Mullins Family: An American History, compiled by Marjorie O'Brien Casteel. Who is Antonio Molina, AKA Anthony Mullins (or "little Anthony," as Jefferson called him)?

Did Jefferson really have Asperger's Syndrome? Nope.

In honor of Presidents' Day, I tried really hard to think of some Abraham Lincoln-themed material for this post, but the best I could come up with was a blurb about a work of fiction set during George Washington's presidency.

The arrival of our annual issue of the Magazine of Albemarle County History is always eagerly awaited. This year's issue has some special visual goodies: possibly the first photographs ever taken of Monticello.

It is claimed, by websites and other sources various and sundry, that Thomas Jefferson, upon hearing of a meteorite crash in Connecticut in 1807 and its subsequent reportage by two professors at Yale, scoffed that it "was easier to believe that two Yankee professors could lie than to admit that stones could fall from heaven."