Professor Joseph Ellis Thomas Jefferson November 1, 2000 Do Lesson Plan Read and Listen Online Session

Jefferson's career and accomplishments are extraordinary: Author of the Declaration of Independence, delegate to the Second Continental Congress, governor of Virginia, ambassador to France, vice president and president of the United States, builder of Monticello, inventor, wine connoisseur, founder of the Republican (today's Democratic) party, mainspring behind the Lewis and Clark expedition, man whose books served as the collection that began the Library of Congress, and founder of the University of Virginia.

But was Jefferson a hero or a hypocrite? Ask Professor Ellis, winner of the National Book Award in 1997 for American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson.

Like the Sphinx, Jefferson proves enigmatic -- a complex and often contradictory figure. On the one hand, Jefferson passionately argued for personal freedoms, yet owned slaves; promoted revolution in America, but did not take up arms himself; advocated no government debt, yet worked up tremendous debt building Monticello; as vice president publicly supported President John Adams but played dirty politics by privately subverting Adams's agenda.

In fact, dirty politics was the subject of a recent Ellis article entitled, "The first Democrats: How the two-party system was born amid backroom deals, lying politicians, and a scandal-hungry press," that appeared as the cover story of the August 21st issue of U.S. News & World Report.

Another fascinating article that Ellis coauthored, this one on whether Jefferson fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings, appeared in Nature magazine. The piece accompanied the release of the DNA study of Jefferson/Hemings descendents. Professor Ellis also worked as a consultant and appeared on Ken Burns famous PBS documentary Thomas Jefferson.

Ellis's expertise extends beyond the world of Jefferson.

Founding Brothers: Stories of the Early Republic will be released in October and is the latest of Professor Ellis's many works focusing on the revolutionary period. Join him to uncover the secrets of this era and unmask the controversies that shroud the legacies of our earliest leaders. Ellis is a rare breed of scholar - one who writes engagingly and with clarity.

Ellis is the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts. He is nationally recognized as a scholar of American colonial history up to the early decades of the republic, but also teaches classes on Vietnam and American culture and 20th century foreign policy.

A former Army officer, Ellis also taught at West Point and Yale. He has lectured at the Army War College and West Point on Vietnam and on the education of officers in the post cold war era. His book, West Point and the Profession of Arms covers this topic.

Joseph Ellis received his B.A. from the College of William and Mary and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. He has been teaching at Mt. Holyoke since 1972 and served as Dean of Faculty from 1980-90. He has received the Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Research Fellowships and an honorary degree from The College of William and Mary.