The Declaration of Independence is Thomas Jefferson's most enduring contribution, but his many lesserknown declarations offer essential lessons for what it takes to keep American democracy alive. Thomas Jefferson spent his life writing declarations. He believed that the written word could shape democracy, and he worked tirelessly to do so. Ironically, Jefferson's authorship of the Declaration has stood in the way of our understanding his many contributions to the practice of American democracy by way of his other declarations. Renowned Jefferson scholar Jeremy D. Bailey shows how the founder wrestled with three fundamental and enduring problems in American democracy. The first is the freedom of the press and the problem of disinformation in electoral politics, or what Jefferson called "false opinions in league with false facts." The second is the tension between the necessity of westward expansion and the desirability of some protection of the natural right of Native nations to own their lands. And the third is the question of slavery, and whether the United States could ever bring an end to the peculiar institution. These questions highlight timeless tension between the philosophical ideals and practical imperatives of democratic politics. Jefferson was uniquely equipped, philosophically and politically, to address these difficulties, but our understanding of Jefferson, and of his successes and failures, is surprisingly incomplete. The Other Declarations gives us a fuller picture of one of our most consequential founders.
Jeremy D. Bailey is Professor of Humanities at the Hamilton School at the University of Florida and formerly held the Sanders Chair in Law and Liberty at the University of Oklahoma. Among many books, he is the author of Thomas Jefferson and Executive Power and The Idea of Presidential Representation: An Intellectual and Political History.
"Jeremy Bailey's insightful analysis uncovers the multitudinous ways Thomas Jefferson leveraged public addresses, legislation, letters, and other documents to plant the seeds of Revolutionary republicanism and representative democracy. Jefferson had faith in the power of words to propagate America's founding principles and spread the 'happy influence of reason and liberty over the face of the earth.'"-Robert M. S. McDonald, author of Confounding Father: Thomas Jefferson's Image in His Own Time "Well done, very well-written, well-informed, well-grounded in the history and scholarship. It should be of interest to the general reader as well as the scholar in this 250th anniversary year."-Michael Zuckert, coauthor of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Founding of America "What does it mean to be a people? Americans traditionally look back to the Declaration of Independence to answer that question. We should also listen to what Thomas Jefferson had to say in the many Other Declarations Jeremy Bailey brings to our attention in his important and illuminating new book. From the very beginning, nationhood has been a work-in-progress, Bailey's Jefferson teaches us, the elusive, necessarily imperfect 'union of sentiment' the third president envisioned in his Second Inaugural Address. The Other Declarations: Thomas Jefferson and the Language of American Democracy is essential reading at yet another critical moment in our national history."-Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History, Emeritus, University of Virginia, coauthor of Thomas Jefferson Survives: American Independence in His Time and Ours
