Abstract

What were the early sources of Jefferson's sanguine and fervent republican beliefs? This work traces Jefferson's thought through a study of the theorists whose writings he read and by a discussion of his own writings, with an emphasis on the influence of his two most influential teachers, William Small and George Wythe. ;There are many excellent analyses of Jeffersonian thought, including Adrienne Koch's The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, Douglas Adair's "The Intellectual Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy", and Lance Banning's The Jeffersonian Persuasion among others cited in the dissertation. There are indispensable biographies of the young Thomas Jefferson, including volume one of the definitive six-volume work by Dumas Malone. This work attempts to combine the two approaches and to demonstrate how these powerful ideas intersected with their environment. ;Recent historiography has corrected the earlier emphasis upon the preponderant influence John Locke's writings had on the founding fathers but this paper shows that, while the Scottish Enlightenment was indeed critical, Lockean ideas were pervasive in Jeffersonian concepts. Further, Scottish Enlightenment premises, the writings of the European philosophies, and those of the English opposition "radicals" all intersected in significant ways and were heavily informed by Lockean ideas. ;Because religious and political oppression were inseparable to Jefferson, and because his bold struggle for religious freedom was one of his great achievements, this thesis also analyzes Jefferson's own religious beliefs. It disputes the theory that Jefferson had a religious conversion in the White House and maintains that his religious ideas were shaped early by such anticlerical writings as those of Rapin, Milton, and Bolingbroke. ;Jeffersonian thought is distinctive in its belief that a minimalist government, based upon the wide participation of an educated but wary citizenry, can be reconciled with the common good. Jefferson extracted what he believed to be the best of the ideas of the theorists, rejected others, and recombined them to fashion his own unique synthesis. I have tried to select among the wide expanse of Jefferson's readings those political works that influenced him in those areas