Thomas Jefferson's "Unfinished Revolution"

In my visit last month to the great Commonwealth of Virginia, I had the opportunity to visit two historic sites:  Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest and Appomattox Court House, the site of Robert E. Lee's surrender.  As fate would have it, the two visits both touched on the theme of Jefferson's Unfinished Revolution.

Poplar Forest, near Lynchburg, was Jefferson's second home, built during his Presidency as a retreat from the crowds at Monticello, near Charlottesville.  Like all of his architectural projects, by design, Poplar Forest was unfinished: a work in progress that Jefferson built and rebuilt.  A planned second wing was never begun.

Appomattox Court House, of course, is where the Civil War ended in April 1865.  The collection of period buildings surrounding McLean House, site of the surrender, has been turned into a National Park.  (The present day town of Appomattox is located a few miles away).  While in the Park's book store, I purchased April 1865: The Month That Saved America, by Jay Winik.  The book discusses the climatic month of the war's end and its immediate aftermath.

Reading the book on the plane ride back to Minnesota, I was surprised and delighted to discover that the book's Prelude ("A Nation Delayed") was all about Thomas Jefferson (even mentioning Poplar Forest).  The prelude focuses on the fundamental contradiction in Jefferson's life:  that the man who wrote "all men are created equal" could be a life-long owner of slaves.  A contradiciton that was finally resolved with the war's end.

But it was this passage that caught my eye,

"Until his dying days, [Jefferson] regularly propounded local self-government above all else, supporting states' rights against the Union, county rights against the states, township rights against the county, and private rights against all.  He pushed for the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, limiting federal power in favor of the states."

That Jeffersonian vision of government from the bottom up has never been realized in this nation.  The "Ward Republics" that he wanted to see established at the neighborhood level have never come to pass.  Instead, what we have is top-down government, starting at the federal level, which each tier dominating the one "below" it.

I'm calling this failure to structure government from the bottom up the "unfinshed revolution" of Thomas Jefferson.  The mission of this blog is to advocate for its completion.