Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood

Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood. By Peter S. Onuf. (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 2000. Pp. xi, 250. $27.95.) Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Memorial Foundation Professor of History at University of Virginia and past SHEAR president, tells readers in introduction Jefferson's Empire that he is an antibiographer who seeks to take a fresh look at what we think we already know so well (10-11). Onuf s latest book is firmly anchored in scholarship of both early national period and Jeffersoniana and draws directly from Jefferson's writings construct the large contours of Jefferson's political philosophy (3), beginning with American Revolution. According Onuf, Jefferson believed he made his greatest contributions his country by articulating widely shared principles, grounded in nature and self-evident common understanding, on which its republican government was founded (105). The American was necessary, in Jefferson's mind, because British was insufficiently republican. Because British had no constitution that defin[ed] spheres of authority and secure[ed] rights of colonies and colonists (8), operated through rule of force rather than rule of law. As Americans opposed centralized operation of but settled their lands within expansive scope of their royal charters, they invent[ed] themselves as a (6) bound together by ties of interest and affection (2)-that is, land and liberty. This empire of liberty united classical ideals of virtue and modern, libertarian beliefs in equal rights of individuals and equality among their state-republics (7-8, 38). Constant territorial expansion thereby guaranteed a lasting union of self-governing republics (58), cemented with ratification of United States Constitution. But by 1790s, saw his revolutionary legacy-his of liberty-as endangered from within by monarchists who undermined federal and republican principles on which nation rested. New England Federalists (especially those living in Massachusetts) refused give up foreign attachments Great Britain and tried break limits Constitution imposed on central government's powers. In election of 1800, American people foiled Federalist schemes by reaffirming their commitment nation that they had formed in and sealed in more perfect union established by Constitution. During War of 1812 and Missouri crisis of 1820, New England Federalists again brought nation brink of destruction. In 1813 and 1814, welcomed a war with New England purif[y nation] of last vestiges of monarchical corruption... [and] redeem promise of American Revolution (123). In 1820, he despaired that New England was again wrecking constitutional sovereignty and equality of respective states (116) and morosely obsessed that disunion and counter-revolution threatened legacy of American Revolution, and of his whole political career (129). In thinking for revolutionary generation and working guarantee its federal and republican principles, squarely took on intellectual problem posed by existence of people within American nation who did not share in common experiences of Americans: Indians and blacks. saw no place for Native Americans as members of distinctive cultures in his expanding republic because they occupied land destined for Americans, because most tribes allied themselves with British during American Revolution, and because Indian males inflicted an `unjust drudgery' on their women (29). …