Thomas Jefferson: The Reader and Writer

We the People

National Constitution Center

News, News Commentary, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2022

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Historians Andrew Browning, author of Schools for Statesmen: The Divergent Educations of the Constitutional Framers; Nancy Isenberg, author of Madison and Jefferson; and Thomas Kidd, author of Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh, explore Thomas Jefferson’s life and legacy through the lens of his own education and what he read—and how those influences shaped the American idea. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates. Stay Connected and Learn More Continue the conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly. Please subscribe to Live at the National Constitution Center and our companion podcast We the People on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. To watch National Constitution Center Town Hall programs live, check out our schedule of upcoming programs. Register through Zoom to ask your constitutional questions in the Q&A or watch live on YouTube.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president, CEO of the National Constitution Center, and welcome to We The People, a weekly show of constitutional debate.
0:11.0	The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan
0:13.7	nonprofit chartered by Congress to increase awareness and understanding of
0:17.7	the Constitution among the American people. We recently convened a great panel on the education of Thomas Jefferson.
0:26.0	How did it influence the Declaration of Independence and how did the education of the other founders influence their political and moral philosophy.
0:35.0	Our guests were Andrew Browning, author of Schools for Statesman,
0:40.0	the Divergent education of the constitutional framers.
0:43.0	Nancy Eisenberg, the T Harry Williams professor of history at Louisiana State University and
0:47.1	author of Madison and Jefferson.
0:49.4	And Thomas Kidd, a research professor of church history at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary,
0:54.0	an author of the new book Thomas Jefferson, A Biography of Spirit and Flesh.
0:58.0	The program streamed live on October 28, 2022. Enjoy the show.
1:04.0	Welcome to the National Constitution Center
1:07.0	and to today's convening of America's Town Hall.
1:10.0	Welcome, Andrew, Nancy, and Thomas. So looking forward to the conversation, and I want to begin as you teach our audience about Jefferson's intellectual influences with a letter that Jefferson wrote and would send to the sons of friends who were going to law school when he was older.
1:29.0	He sent this to a young friend called Bernard Moore. He sent a version of this reading list to Robert
1:35.2	Skipworth. Friends can find it online at the Founders Archive, but in this letter he
1:42.4	sets out a syllabus for what Bernard Moore should read
1:45.8	starting in the morning and going to the afternoon, and in particular his recommendations
1:51.2	about ethics and natural religion are really interesting about what Jefferson's own influences were.
1:57.0	He recommends Locks, essay concerning human understanding, Condersay, he also recommends Hutchison's introduction to moral philosophy and Lord
2:07.0	Cames on natural religion from the Scottish Enlightenment, and then a bunch of classical
	...

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