Talk:Thomas Jefferson

Typo in Slaves and Slavery section

Since the article is semi-protected I cannot fix the error myself so instead I will just highlight it here

"In 1871, Jefferson's friend, General Tadeusz Kościuszko died and left a bequest of nearly $20,000 to free slaves, including Jefferson's slaves, and purchase land and farming equipment that would enable the freed slaves to start new lives."

This should read 1817, as the source attests. Thanks. :)

 Done Thank you for pointing out the error. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes. Yopienso (talk) 06:52, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Dictionary of American Biography source

I found a "new" source on Jefferson that I believe would be good for the article. The source comes from Dictionary of American Biography (1933) edited by Dumas Malone. Although slavery is rarely mentioned, the article gives an accurate assessement concerning Thomas Jefferson and may help give a better understanding of Thomas Jefferson. The article on Jefferson begins on page 17 and ends on page 35. One interesting assessment of Jefferson is that he viewed Hamiltion and an enemy, and his antagonism towards Hamilton was held with religious fevor. Cmguy777 (talk) 16:27, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

• Jefferson, Thomas Dictionary of American Biography (1933) Cmguy777 (talk) 16:27, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 2 April 2013

I find, in reference to election of 1800:

"He had worked closely with Aaron Burr, and after rallying support for his party Jefferson and Burr received the most electoral votes, but since neither had a majority, the election was decided in the Federalist-dominated House of Representatives."

Try this instead: "He had worked closely with Aaron Burr, and after rallying support for his party Jefferson, along with Burr, received a majority of electoral votes, but because they were tied (the electoral voting at the time did not disinguish between President and Vice President), the election was decided in the outgoing Congress, by the Federalist-dominated House of Representatives."

This assumes "rallying support for his party" refers to Jefferson. Also, I have corrected "neither had a majority"; each had 73 electoral votes, which was a majority but, under the laws of that time, left undecided who would be President and who would be Vice President. So, also under the laws of that time, the election went into the outgoing House of Representatives; the 22nd Amendment now has it that if Congress gets involved in something like this, it would be the new Congress, not the old one.

128.63.16.20 (talk) 20:25, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

 Not done: If they both got the same amount of votes, then neither would have a majority. Mdann52 (talk) 12:42, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Do you understand the Electoral College (and what I am saying in the paragraph you are reading)? Each elector votes for TWO candidates, and 73 votes was a majority of the electors at that time. If you look up the 1796 presidential election, you will see John Adams getting 71 electoral votes, and there were a total of 276 electoral votes cast (that would mean 138 electors). The Constitution does provide that the winning presidential candidate must have received votes from a majority of the electors; try reading that. Maybe you want to reconsider the change, which I am amending to what is in April 16 edit request.

Citations in the "Election of 1796 and Vice Presidency" Section

Net-buoy (talk) 07:02, 13 April 2013 (UTC)I went to check citations for fn 77 and 78 and found that in my copy of Chernow (2004) Penguin Press the cited text is at 573-574. This is confirmed as well here: http://books.google.com/books?id=y1_R-rjdcb0C&pg=PA573#v=onepage&q&f=false Can someone confirm whether the pages from the wrong edition were cited (as the course notes both the earlier and later edition.)

Edit request on 16 April 2013

As noted in the April 2 edit request, I am amending the request to the following:

"He had worked closely with Aaron Burr, and after rallying support for his party Jefferson, along with Burr, received votes from a majority of the electors, but Jefferson and Burr were tied (the electoral voting at the time did not disinguish between President and Vice President). Therefore, the election was decided in the outgoing Congress, by the Federalist-dominated House of Representatives."— Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.63.16.20 (talk • contribs) 14:02, 16 April 2013‎ (UTC)

 Done--JayJasper (talk) 17:40, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Minor change requested in the slavery section

A very minor issue is present in the 3rd and 4th-to last paragraphs of the Slaves and Slavery section, where the last sentences are nearly identical and have slightly different inline citations.

70.110.17.199 (talk) 06:56, 13 May 2013 (UTC)