Volume 40, Number 9 · May 13, 1993
Jefferson at Home
By Gordon S. Wood
Jeffersonian Legacies
edited by Peter S. Onuf
University Press of Virginia, 478 pp., $18.95 (paper)
President William Jefferson Clinton began his administration by invoking the memory of Thomas Jefferson. Not only did he launch his inaugural week at Jefferson's home, Monticello, but he followed Jefferson's route to the White House and cited him in his inaugural address. It is not surprising that Clinton should have tried to use Jefferson as a symbol of his desire for change. Jefferson was after all the presumed founder of the Democratic Party and has long been seen as a champion of liberal causes. But Jefferson does not belong just to the Democratic Party. Republican Governor William Weld of Massachusetts calls himself a Jeffersonian. And President Reagan repeatedly called upon Jefferson in order to justify his attempts to reduce the size of the federal government; indeed, he urged us all to 'pluck a flower from Thomas Jefferson's life and wear it in our soul forever.'
Review, 4667 words
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