Jay Cost Residency: The Founding In Perspective — Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson was the living embodiment of contradiction. The author of the Declaration of Independence, he sired many children with his enslaved house servant. A man who professed a desire simply to retire from politics, he was the ultimate political operator. And when Alexander Hamilton proposed a series of policies to establish a mercantile republic in 1790, the mantle of opposition fell upon Jefferson, who would scheme and plot over the next decade until finally his agrarian vision of the republic was vindicated. This event is part of "The Founding in Perspective: Visiting Speaker Week-in-Residency Series Examining 'The American Founding from the Perspective of Those Who Lived Through It'" The lectures examine the period from the perspective of each individual to appreciate the full complexity of the American Founding, the period in which the United States established a new constitutional order.