Thomas Jefferson · Politics
Jefferson trusted ordinary people to govern themselves more than any founder - through an educated citizenry, small self-governing wards, and a vision of a republic of independent farmers.
Among the American founders, Jefferson stands out for the depth of his faith in ordinary people. Where many of his contemporaries feared the masses and designed institutions to restrain them - Hamilton openly distrusted ‘the people’ as a great beast, and even Madison built the Constitution to filter and check popular passions - Jefferson believed that the people, given knowledge and freedom, could be trusted to govern themselves, and that the chief danger to liberty came not from the people but from the few who would rule them. This trust was not naive; Jefferson knew people could be misled and that majorities could oppress. But he held that the cure for the abuses of democracy was more democracy and better-informed citizens, not less democracy and more control from above.
This faith shaped everything in his political vision. He championed broad suffrage and frequent elections; he wanted power kept as close to the people as possible; he insisted that an informed public opinion was the ultimate safeguard of freedom; and he was willing to tolerate a degree of disorder as the price of liberty, famously remarking that a little rebellion now and then was a good thing and that the tree of liberty must occasionally be refreshed. Where others saw the people as a threat to be managed, Jefferson saw them as the rightful and capable sovereigns of their own affairs - and he devoted much of his thought to working out the conditions under which that sovereignty could be made real and safe.
Jefferson’s ideal republic was a nation of independent small farmers - yeomen who owned their own land, worked it with their own hands, and depended on no master for their livelihood. He had a striking reason for this preference, rooted in his theory of what makes a person fit for self-government. The independent farmer, owning his own land and producing his own subsistence, is beholden to no one; he can vote his conscience and judge public affairs freely, because no employer, landlord, or creditor holds power over his bread. Economic independence, Jefferson believed, was the foundation of political independence - and political independence was the foundation of a free republic.
This is the opening of the lesson. The rest — the dialogue, the primary source, and the recall — is in the app.
You learned that Jefferson grounded democracy in the virtue and independence of ordinary citizens. In your own words, why did he think small farmers made the best republicans, and why education was essential?
Leads to Alexis de Tocqueville.
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