{"id":149,"date":"2012-03-01T07:14:13","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T07:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/?p=149"},"modified":"2012-03-22T02:32:53","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T02:32:53","slug":"thomas-jefferson-enemy-of-the-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/1800\/thomas-jefferson-enemy-of-the-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Jefferson &#8211; Enemy of the Constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Against Jefferson, 1800.dv\" width=\"584\" height=\"438\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BvZcWlbVTUc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Against Jefferson Explanation<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thomas Jefferson, while campaigning a second time to become the President of the United States, faced three main criticisms from the opposition.\u00a0 First, his religious practices were questioned.\u00a0 Not a practicing Christian, but instead a professed Deist, many Americans worried that trouble could come from putting a \u201cnon-believer\u201d in charge of the nation.\u00a0 <!--more-->And while Jefferson did definitely believe in some sort of divine being, many of the smear tactics used during the campaign described him as an atheist without a moral compass.\u00a0 The first quote used in the video, that \u201c[Electing Jefferson will] destroy religion, introduce immorality, and loosen all the bonds of society,\u201d comes from <em>Serious Considerations on the Election of a President: Addressed to the Citizens of the United States<\/em>, written in 1800 by William Linn, a Dutch Reformed Minister from New York City.\u00a0 The quote directly after that also addresses Jefferson\u2019s religiosity, and it specifically questions his Sabbath practices.\u00a0 This is an illusion to a function held in Jefferson\u2019s honor on a Sunday in Fredericksburg, VA\u2212 an event that angered some devout Christian Americans.\u00a0 Jefferson was quite vulnerable to questions regarding his religious practices, and the opposition never hesitated to stretch the truth to sully his reputation.\u00a0 I tried to capture that aspect of the time with the first part of the video.<\/p>\n<p>Jefferson\u2019s support of the French Revolution\u2212 and the implications of that support\u2212 was another topic that the would-be elect was criticized about.\u00a0 The next two quotes and images in the video capture the latter critique.\u00a0 The first quote comes from the <em>Connecticut Courant<\/em> on August 1, 1800, in a piece written by an author of the penname Burleigh.\u00a0 This quote appears on top of a political cartoon showcasing Jefferson, on the right side of the screen, attempting to stop the wheels of George Washington\u2019s carriage\u2212 metaphorically clogging the \u201cwheels of freedom.\u201d\u00a0 The next quote comes from the correspondence between R. Hooe and Colonel Leven Powel, two Americans, also in 1800.\u00a0 In it, Hooe worries that Jefferson will fully adopt French politics, and in doing so he will create Civil War and Ruin in the United States.\u00a0 To emphasize this criticism of Jefferson, I laid the quote over a picture of a young Napoleon Bonaparte.\u00a0 The man who led the French military at that time, Napoleon was a character that many Americans disliked, and they would grow to dislike him even more. \u00a0To fully capture the distaste some Americans had for Jefferson\u2019s \u201cFrancophilia,\u201d I used the French National Anthem\u2212 written in 1792\u2212 as the background music to the video.\u00a0 Americans during this time would most likely recognize the tune, and many would associate it with the bloody nature of the French Revolution.\u00a0 Many of Jefferson\u2019s detractors asserted that he supported the gory acts of the French Revolution.\u00a0 Though he, in reality, did not, this still was a huge criticism of Jefferson during the campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The third key critique of Jefferson was his connection to a regional faction, the Republican Party.\u00a0 To get this point across, I used a quote from a personal correspondence from Ames to Wolcott, in January of 2012.\u00a0 By far the most hyperbolic quote I found about Jefferson, it punctuates my video.\u00a0 It worries that Jefferson\u2019s leadership will completely corrupt the country, and it states that a Civil War under Jefferson would be inevitable.\u00a0 It uses extremely strong language and vivid imagery, referencing atrocities like murder, robbery, and rape.\u00a0 Like all of the quotes I used in the video, it expresses a very skewed point of view of Jefferson\u2019s potential as President.\u00a0 But this skewed viewpoint did exist during the campaign, and Jefferson\u2019s opposition did constantly allude to these criticisms in order to smear his reputation and lessen his chances for victory.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Against Jefferson Explanation \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thomas Jefferson, while campaigning a second time to become the President of the United States, faced three main criticisms from the opposition.\u00a0 First, his religious practices were questioned.\u00a0 Not a practicing Christian, but instead a professed &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/1800\/thomas-jefferson-enemy-of-the-constitution\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26626],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-26626"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}