50 years to the day after the signing of the declaration of independence. Same day John Adams, the only other surviving founding father, bit the dust. Quite an amazing coincidence.
The two had been in long correspondence with each other, and, though this part of the story is perhaps apocryphal, Adams' last words were allegedly: "Jefferson survives," not knowing that TJ had actually just died a few hours earlier, making Adams the last surviving father of the revolution.
Many of the acts of the resistance and various battles Tecumseh engaged in were during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, though the war that bears his name happened during Madison's term, and the president most famously associated with that war was William Henry Harrison who fought against the Shawnee.
great quiz and just finished with his presidency in APUSH so knew alot! but you shoulda included a question about The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom because he personally considered that his biggest accomplishment
I'm glad you enjoyed the quiz and I also really wanted to include something about the statute. It's carved on his tombstone after all and I know how important it was to him. I just couldn't think of a question pertaining to it that would be easy to phrase, with an obvious and not-too-esoteric answer. But thanks for bringing it up in the comments, anyway.
I also used to have a question on here about his founding of the University of Virginia, which was unique and significant as it was one of the earliest (perhaps earliest?) universities founded both on purely secular principles (many older universities were attached to the clergy) AND on the basis or a meritocracy, where students would be accepted and advance based on their ability not on their class or social status. I guess QuizMaster removed that question, perhaps deeming it too much of a give-away for the home state question?
something else that might be worthy of mentioning: Jefferson was an avid collector of books in a time when they were rare and expensive, and a voracious reader. In 1814 the British burned down the White House and also destroyed the original collection of the Library of Congress. Jefferson, who then possessed the largest collection of books in the country, sold his library to Congress for around $30,000. So, the current library of Congress got its start thanks to Jefferson.
I went to visit what was left of the original collection which is on display in Washington. It includes a very rare early translation of the Quran. Another question QM removed was the quotation "I cannot live without books."
The 1807 act in question threw me as well. And I'm a professor of early American history, so shame on me. All I could come up with was the Embargo Act, so I tried everything from "Foreign goods" to "Contraband," etc. I'm not sure if it's possible to change the question without giving away the answer, but that one is especially tricky. Great quiz!
I was disappointed that "purfuit of happinefs" wasn't accepted. As for Ms. Hemings, it's most likely that the baby daddy was TJ's brother, Randolph. She stopped having babies in 1809, when TJ retired. But "Uncle Randy" got married that year, too, and now had a wife at home.
Most people don't realize how much older Bill's brother is or how long the Clintons have been in politics. Another little known fact: the legislative branch used to be Tri-Cameral, with the House, the Senate, and the Parliament Funkadelic.
Sally Hemings was around 14 when she, an enslaved woman, first became pregnant. The word you're looking for to describe her status is emphatically not "mistress."
Because "mistress" connotes a relationship of mutuality (if not respectability). Hemings was a young teenager and a slave; her ability to have agency over her life and body was dramatically and grotesquely limited, by definition. Presumably you've heard this before; it's a common point.
That common point has only started to have been made recently by people with a particular political axe to grind, projecting their own values and prejudices backward in time. From what little we know about the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings, it seems to have been consensual. 14 year olds are not without agency; imagining them to be helpless children is another recent cultural innovation. And the relationship began in Paris where Hemings was legally a free woman. She could have chosen to not return with him to Monticello. Jefferson freed all of Sally's children, and after his death in 1826 Hemings was allowed to leave and go live with two of her children in Charlottesville. If there's anything grotesque here, IMO, it would be to label as rape what seems to have been a relationship of mutual affection and respect, out of a contemporary and fashionable desire to vilify prominent "white" figures in American history.
The truth is we don't precisely know what the relationship was between Hemings and Jefferson, but between "mistress" and "rape victim," mistress is obviously the more neutral term. If what you are really concerned with is inappropriate connotations.
It's true, I'm quite willing to project my own values and prejudices - specifically, my "prejudice" against chattel slavery - on the past. Your inability to acknowledge the basic structural reality of the Heming/Jefferson relationship - she was actually, literally, his movable property - is....odd (though not uncommon, I'm aware). And your assumption that her return to the US with Jefferson is likely a matter of her agency - as opposed to, to just toss out a few possibilities, her age, her pregnancy, Jefferson's reported intention to free her and her children, her desire to be near her family, etc - is revealing. Though, alas, also not uncommon! Presumably we could both admire Jefferson's political philosophy AND call grotesque his participation in the institution of chattel slavery - no, the ostensible "mislabeling" of their relationship is in any case not the most grotesque thing here - but, as the kids say, your mileage may vary.
Women throughout most of history had little or no agency. Abigail Adams was 15 years old when she met John Adams. Are you going to say she was not John Adams' wife because wife implies mutuality and equal partnership according to our modern sensibilities? And annul their marriage because in 2020 the legal marriage age in Massachusetts is higher than that? No. Of course not. How revealing. And I'm making no assumptions here, you are.
You should have included the rest of the quote about questioning the existence of a God. The context makes a difference. “Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”
Any extra words around a piece of quoted text provide context. That doesn't mean that the context makes a difference to the quoted text. It means one thing without context. It means the same thing with context.
You actually ended the quote mid-sentence. Not very responsible. The rest of the sentence at least provides a reason he even wrote what you used as a quote.
However, the very uncreatively named Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves, signed into law the same year, had a more narrow focus.
I went to visit what was left of the original collection which is on display in Washington. It includes a very rare early translation of the Quran. Another question QM removed was the quotation "I cannot live without books."