Peter Onuf – författare

In Jefferson and the Virginians, renowned scholar Peter S. Onuf examines the ways in which Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Virginians, George Washington, James Madison, and Patrick Henry, both conceptualized their home state from a political and cultural perspective, and understood its position in the new American union. The conversations Onuf reconstructs offer glimpses into the struggle to define Virginia, and America, within the context of the upheaval of the Revolutionary War. Onuf also demonstrates why Jefferson's identity as a Virginian obscures more than it illuminates about his ideology and career.Onuf contends that Jefferson and his interlocutors sought to define Virginia's character as a self-constituted commonwealth and to determine the state's place in the American union during an era of constitutional change and political polarization. Thus, the outcome of the American Revolution led to ongoing controversies over the identity of Virginians and Americans as a ""people"" or ""peoples""; over Virginia's boundaries and jurisdiction within the union; and over the system of government in Virginia and for the states collectively. Each debate required a balanced consideration of corporate identity and collective interests, which inevitably raised broader questions about the character of the Articles of Confederation and the newly formed federal union. Onuf's well-researched study reveals how this indeterminacy demanded definition and, likewise, how the need for definition prompted further controversy.

One of the finest historians of her generation, Jan Ellen Lewis transformed our understanding of the early U.S. Republic. Her groundbreaking essays defined the emerging fields of gender and emotions history and reframed traditional understandings of the founding fathers and the U.S. Constitution. As significant as her work was within each of these subfields, her most remarkable insights came from the connections she drew among them. Gender and race, slavery and freedom, feelings and politics ran together in the hearts, minds, and lives of the men and women she studied. Lewis's brilliant research revealed these long-buried connections and illuminated their importance for America's past and present.Family, Slavery, and Love in the Early American Republic collects thirteen of Lewis's most important essays. Distinguished scholars shed light on the historical and historiographical contexts in which Lewis and her peers researched, wrote, and argued. But the real star of this volume is Lewis herself: confident, unconventional, erudite, and deeply imaginative.