Founding Fathers
Thomas Jefferson
- What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.
Re-Created Library Speaks Volumes About Jefferson
In Thomas Jefferson’s day, the books he lovingly collected were almost as famous as he was.
Leather-bound tomes on topics as varied as whist, beekeeping and philosophy were gathered from across Europe and colonial America, then brought to Monticello to help fulfill Jefferson’s vow to amass the whole of human knowledge. They eventually became the foundation for the Library of Congress, although two-thirds were lost in a fire in 1851.
For the past decade, a small group of rare book experts has sought to re-create Jefferson’s library, scouring antiquarian book collections on two continents to acquire thousands of volumes. The entire collection of more than 6,000 volumes — some originals and some replacements — will go on display tomorrow at the Library of Congress, looking much as it would have 200 years ago.
“These are the books that made America,” said Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress.
The Bill of Rights
On September 25, 1789, the First Federal Congress of the United States proposed to the state legislatures twelve amendments to the Constitution. The first two, concerning the number of constituents for each Representative and the compensation of Congressmen, were not ratified. Articles three through twelve, known as the Bill of Rights, became the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution and contained guarantees of essential rights and liberties omitted in the crafting of the original document.
