- More on Henry Wiencek, whose book, Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves, is now available. Annette Gordon-Reed (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello) comes to Jefferson’s defense. She writes that Wiencek misunderstands a great deal and what he thinks is new, is not. Basically she says the book cannot be trusted. See Slate,
Jefferson Was Not a Monster
(19-Oct-2012).
The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson: Rebutted
The First Congress faced a unique challenge, and those congressmen and senators who gathered in New York in the spring of 1789 were awed by what lay ahead of them. Not only would members of the Congress have to pass some promised amendments to the new Constitution, but they would have to fill out the bare framework of a government that the Philadelphia Convention had created, including the organization of the executive and judicial departments. Some therefore saw the First Congress as something in the nature of a second constitutional convention.
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009)