Thomas Jefferson is one of three presidents honoured in Washington, DC, yet the reasons for his presence there beside Washington and Lincoln are not altogether obvious. Retrospectively he appears as the personification of the Enlightenment spirit embodied in American nationalism. In this inaugural lecture, Professor Appleby argues, however, that his enduring importance emerged because he offered a view of the world and America's place in it which both created and mediated the central tensions in American nationhood. These tensions emerged because the American claim to represent universal values promoted a new kind of prejudice against differences. Tensions also developed from the expectation of a natural compatibility between equality and liberty when in fact the exercise of the latter diminished the former.
- ISBN10 019952257X
- ISBN13 9780199522576
- Publish Date 1 October 1991
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 19 January 1999
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 28
- Language English