Beyond Jefferson: The Hemingses and Randolphs and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America 

In the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson repeated an important phrase-later edited out by Congress-in the first two paragraphs: “equal & independent.”
Equality and independence-for nations and for individual Americans-were entwined and definitive principles that would influence and direct successive generations of U.S. citizens as they sought to perfect the republican project after 1776. But, he cautioned, each new generation would have to look to its own “reason and experience”-not that of the Founders in the Revolutionary era-to interpret and apply those principles in new and more progressive ways.
This critical idea-of enduring principles harnessed to changing circumstances-defined the United States in the long nineteenth century. And it allowed the rising generation of Jefferson’s own family members to redefine equality and independence within a historical context that was at least a half century removed from the American Revolution. The question of how to better secure or preserve these Founding era principles remained pressing questions for the Hemingses and Randolphs, yet their answers varied widely, reflecting the “experience of the present” rather than the “wisdom” of the past.

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