Sean Wilientz focuses heavily on the political career of Thomas Jefferson and his Presidency in chapter 4 of The Rise of American Democracy.<\/i> Jefferson, while no doubt a great political figure who played a tremendous role in the development of the United States of America in its early years, is sometimes considered a somewhat controversial figure.\u00a0 In learning about him in the past, I knew that his strategy for dealing with Native Americans in his pre-presidential days, relationships with slaves and the somewhat aggressive style in which he often dealt with the opposing Federalist Party made him a polarizing political figure. On top of that, he has also been accused of being a hypocrite because of his decision to go through with the Louisiana Purchase without a vote after years of fighting for individual citizen rights. Wilentz, however, seems to be a big fan of Jefferson. He negatively describes Jefferson\u2019s main political opponent John Adams and positively describes the way Jefferson fought against the Alien and Sedition Acts that he believed were certainly \u201cunconstitutional\u201d while Adams was President. Throughout chapter 3, Wilienz seems to admire the way Jefferson battled against the Federalists, ultimately winning and taking the Presidency in the election of 1800.<\/p>\n

In chapter 4, Wilenz further approves of the job Jefferson does as President, highlighting the diplomatic way Jefferson dealt with the French to avoid war, the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Louisiana Purchase. His emphasis on westward expansion was huge, something that greatly benefited the United States in the long run. @systrauss talks about this more in her blog post (http:\/\/sites.davidson.edu\/his141\/the-beginnings-of-western-expansion\/). Wilentz\u2019s most glowing description of Jefferson comes on page 66 when he describes him as a man who had the \u201cintellectual breadth and the personal prestige that helped [him] hold together the querulous Republicans and sink Federalism into the abyss\u201d (Wilentz). I liked Wilentz\u2019s writing, but personally I thought he was too biased towards President Jefferson. While he highlights the goods of his presidency he barely touches on some of the bad. In the bottom paragraph of page 65 he gives Jefferson credit for his handling of the government and how successful he was in having his legislation passed by Congress. He doesn\u2019t mention however that some of that legislation had adverse affects on the country. For instance, the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 only further irritated the British and drew the two nations closer to war (Wilentz, 69). Ultimately, the two countries would go to war just three years after Jefferson left office. I think Wilientz could have done a better job of addressing the impact Jefferson\u2019s presidency had on the War of 1812, a war he divulges into in Chapter 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sean Wilientz focuses heavily on the political career of Thomas Jefferson and his Presidency in chapter 4 of The Rise of American Democracy. Jefferson, while no doubt a great political figure who played a tremendous role in the development of the United States of America in its early years, is sometimes considered a somewhat controversial … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Post-Midterm Blog Post #1- President Jefferson”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,134,176,326],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alien-and-sedition-acts","tag-federalists","tag-jefferson","tag-wilentz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}