Beyond Jefferson

A global history of how Thomas Jefferson's descendants navigated the legacy of the Declaration of Independence on both sides of the color line The Declaration of Independence identified two core principles-independence and equality-that defined the American Revolution and the nation forged in 1776. Jefferson believed that each new generation of Americans would have to look to the "e;experience of the present"e; rather than the "e;wisdom"e; of the past to interpret and apply these principles in new and progressive ways. Historian Christa Dierksheide examines the lives and experiences of a rising generation of Jefferson's descendants, Black and white, illuminating how they redefined equality and independence in a world that was half a century removed from the American Revolution. The Hemingses and Randolphs moved beyond Jefferson and his eighteenth-century world, leveraging their own ideas and experiences in nineteenth-century Britain, China, Cuba, Mexico, and the American West to claim independence and equal rights in an imperial and slaveholding republic.