Sunday, March 8, 2015

380. Thomas Jefferson and A Chinese Peom in Shijing


In the section, “Poems of Nation,” of his Scrap book,  Thomas Jefferson included certain commentary on his presidency. The “Poems of Nation” shows that Jefferson viewed his legacy as intertwined with the success of the republican experiment.
 
Believing that he should help the United States to maintain its political, moral, and personal values in the history of the America Revolution, Jefferson collected documents, books, newspapers, and other materials so that later historians could construct an a right and comprehensive American revolutionary history.
 
Jefferson was very serious about preserving his personal legacy. His inclusion of the ancient Chinese poem in his scrapbook shows that Jefferson valued Confucian moral principles highly and used some of the principles to build new nation in the new land with rich natural resources. With the help of Confucian moral philosophy, Jefferson was confident that he could achieve his goal of bringing up a new virtue for the United States in its forming time.


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