Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

Jefferson and his fellow American Revolutionaries took the positions they did—positions that led to war in 1775 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776—partly because they saw themselves as Englishmen who were being denied a full share of the benefits of the lessons of English life. In the decade between 1764 and 1774—between a protest over taxation to the eve of revolution—Jefferson and like-minded Americans were guarding against the abridgement of the personal liberties or of the representation Englishmen had won for themselves as a result of the Glorious Revolution.21 Every proposal from London, every thought of a tax, every sign of imperial authority, raised fears of tyranny in America, for such proposals, taxes, and expressions of authority in the seventeenth century had produced such tyranny in the mother country during the Civil War and the Restoration.