Book description
In 1821, at the age of seventy-seven, Thomas Jefferson decided to
"state some recollections of dates and facts concerning
myself." His ancestors, Jefferson writes, came to America from
Wales in the early seventeenth century and settled in the Virginia
colony. Jefferson's father, although uneducated, possessed a
"strong mind and sound judgement" and raised his family in
the far western frontier of the colony, an experience that contributed
to his son's eventual staunch defense of individual and state rights.
Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary, entered the
law, and in 1775 was elected to represent Virginia at the Continental
Congress in Philadelphia, an event that propelled him to all of his
future political fortunes. Jefferson's autobiography continues through
the entire Revolutionary War period, and his insights and information
about persons, politics, and events-including the drafting of the
Declaration of Independence, his service in France with Benjamin
Franklin, and his observations on the French Revolution-are of immense
value to both scholars and general readers. Jefferson ends this
account of his life at the moment he returns to New York to become
secretary of state in 1790.
Complementing the other major autobiography of the period,
Benjamin Franklin's, The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson,
reintroduced for this edition by historian Michael Zuckerman, gives us
a glimpse into the private life and associations of one of America's
most influential personalities. Alongside Jefferson's absorbing
narrative of how compromises were achieved at the Continental Congress
are comments about his own health and day-to-day life that allow the
reader to picture him more fully as a human being. Throughout,
Jefferson states his opinions and ideas about many issues, including
slavery, the death penalty, and taxation. Although Jefferson did not
carry this autobiography further into his eventual presidency, the
foundations for all of his thoughts are here, and it is in these pages
that Jefferson lays out what to him was his most important
contribution to his country, the creation of a democratic republic.
Paul Leicester Ford (1865-1902) was an American historian, novelist,
and bibliographer. He is the author of The True George Washington and
Essays on the Constitution of the United States, among other works.
Michael Zuckerman is Professor of History at the University of
Pennsylvania. He is the author of Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns
in the Eighteenth Century and coeditor with Willem Koops of Beyond the
Century of the Child: Cultural History and Developmental Psychology,
also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
