Beyond Jefferson

A global history of how Thomas Jeffersons descendants navigated the legacy of the Declaration of Independence on both sides of the color line The Declaration of Independence identified two core principlesindependence and equalitythat defined the American Revolution and the nation forged in 1776. Jefferson believed that each new generation of Americans would have to look to the experience of the present rather than the wisdom 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 Jeffersons 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.