“History,” he wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia, “by apprising [the people] of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every guise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.” The fate of freedom—the fate of everything—lay, Jefferson believed, in the broad populace.
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