Tag: Harrison Gray Otis

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Thomas Jefferson and the Conditions of Good History: Writing About the American Revolution

Thomas Jefferson has a Thucydidean, or fact-based, approach to the praxis of history. Evidence of that approach appeared early in his life, in his Literary Commonplace Book. There, Jefferson, quoted Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke (1678–1751), who wrote of history, rightly practiced. For history to be authentic, Jefferson, continuing to copy Bolingbroke, added that “these […]

by M. Andrew Holowchak