I assume you’re talking about the Louisiana Purchase, right?
I mean, I think you can see that Jefferson himself struggled with this decision, seeing that there was no way to purchase without expanding federal powers. I feel like he KNEW he was being hypocritical, but he also knew that this was a huge chance to get a VERY LARGE chunk of land. Most of current America was bought then. I think he feared that he would be viewed in a negative light for his hypocricy, but the ends (buying large tracts of land cheaply) easily justified the means (having to go back on what he preached for years).
Huge ego. His own daughter said “My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.”
A lot of people think his childhood asthma was psychosomatic. Roosevelt got a lot of extra attention because of his illness and family members noticed he only had attacks when his father was home to take notice.
Individually, pushing through the New Deal and being CIC through most of WW2 are both pretty monumental achievements. Having done both together puts him at the top of my list.
Not simply because he was the founder of Providence, but because he had the nerve to create a society not only separating Church and State, but also freedom of religion - both a first in modern history. He wasn’t the first to think it, but he was the first to implement it.
He did it during one of the most fanatically religious times and regions of the world - 1600s New England when the Puritans were just this side of rule by torture, especially in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. One had to be completely devoted to the Church or suffer the Wrath of God (floggings, weights, loss of land, death, etc.) to simply have a voice, own land, get married, etc. His beliefs of separation got him banished from the colony, but ironically he was one of the most devoted to the church.
Not once, but twice he went back to England, to first get a charter, then to have it reaffirmed. The first time he was nearly arrested and could have faced death for his ‘radical influence’ when he previously lived in England. The amazing thing was he was able to have written into the charter religious freedom and separation of church and state during an incredibly tense time in England when King Charles II and Parliament were warring over which religion would be the Church of England.
His relations with the Indians of the area were instrumental in many agreements and averted some wars.
It’s tough to put it all in a post, but most important to us today - Parts of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were directly inspired by Williams’ books and letters.
But a lot of people misunderstand Williams. Yes, he believed in separating church and state - but he did it for the sake of the church. He believed that running a government corrupted a church. He felt that the church should keep itself isolated from secular affairs so it could remain pure. Most of the other puritans in Massachusetts had a more laid back attitude on this issue and felt that Williams was something of a fanatic on the issue of protecting the purity of the faith.
Granted, I can respect the fact that Williams lived up to his ideals. A lot of people who complained about the connection between church and state would have turned around when they were in a position to run their own theocracy. Williams stood by his principles. And I respect the fact that Williams treated settlers and natives as having equal rights.
Thanks for that…I considered bringing this up, but thought I should stick to the importance of his work. But yes, your addendum is accurate of Williams. He did do it for the purity of the church, but he also felt it important for anyone to believe what they wanted in their own way. Granted he did question the Quakers, while not stopping them from entering Rhode Island like the other colonies, he still internally struggled with it for most of his later years.
As an added thought - he also set up his colony where every ‘head of household’ had a vote in all things civil. Maybe not the first in the overall aspect, but the fact that a widow - by circumstance a head of household - did get to vote, a first in the modern world.
An interesting side note - he was once a Congregationalist, then a Baptist (he founded the first Baptist church in America), he eventually became a ‘Seeker’ - essentially waiting for Christ to return to re-establish the church.
Sorry if this became a hijack - back to the thread at hand.
Yeah, I recall a thread we had about a year ago where we were discussing the balance of political power between the various legislative bodies of Republican Rome and I thought, “This conversation just wouldn’t be the same on 4chan.”
This one is easy, and I’m rather shocked no one has mentioned his name with all the nominations for Washington and Jefferson. Alexander Hamilton. For better or worse, the USA we live in today is a direct result of his vision. 3 enormous examples include:
He was the primary author of the Federalist Papers which were the primary source of information and support for an unpopular Constitution. Without his persuasive and eloquent words it’s unlikely the document at the core of our national identity ever gets ratified.
He established the US Dollar as a world powerhouse by insisting that we pay back loans from the Revolutionary War. Could we have become the economic powerhouse of the past 100 years without the full faith and credit reputation he built?
He and Jefferson often butted heads during Washington’s presidency. Ultimately, it was Hamilton’s advice that won out. For example, the Federal government holding sway over the state governments was a hotly contested debate that Hamilton ultimately won out on. Had Jefferson’s vision come true we would live in a dramatically different country, one that likely would not have had the cohesion to survive the Civil War.
It’s the man on the ten dollar bill my friends. He may not have held elected office or won the big battle or delivered the big speech, but he was the architect behind the ideals and institutions that have held sway for over 200 years.
To throw out a name that is vastly influential yet always unacknowledged in discussions like these is the creator of the modern multi-national corporation (American-style) John D. Rockefeller.
But the real answer is likely Washington, Hamilton, or Lincoln. If I had to pick a scientist/inventor type I would go with Edison easily over Tesla/Bardeen-Shockley-Brittain/Gates/Jobs.
Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson ARE the top 3 but I am going down both sides of the aisle for some honorable mentions:
Ronald Reagan - yeah SDI was kind of silly (but lead to some advancements), but his hardline against the “Evil Empire” did strengthen our nation and he was a powerful leader at a time when it was most needed. Can you honestly see a Jimmy Carter having any success during the cold war?
Reagan’s actions spread democracy to to the eastern bloc and averted nuclear war. I know some think he was evil and disagree, but this is IMO right?
JFK - He put us on the moon and brought us back from the very brink of nuclear war. Kennedy presided over our nation at a very difficult time. Civil Rights, start of the cold war, space race, Vietnam. I could argue that this was perhaps the single most difficult time since the American Revolution and he was the right man for the job and was 10x the leader Johnson would ever be.
Honestly… I think Bill Gates has to be in that conversation. If you want to look for a person who has changed the course of America and how we work, live, communicate, think, discuss…etc… Bill Gates changed all of that, and in a very short amount of time.
Now, he did it but crushing competition and forcing his OS down our throats, but because he did that we finally had a uniformed platform to communicate and work on, and everyone who came after had to ensure that anything they did worked with Windows.
If you have no idea what an autoexec.bat file is, or ever had to change DOS memory settings to just play a freakin game… trust me, it sucked.
Think of the sheer number of jobs created with the windows explosion. Everything from MCSE folks to network teams to developers, hell even PC companies took off as they could now sell PC’s on a single platform that anyone and everyone could use.
Without that impact the 'net as we know it today wouldn’t exist if a simple uniformed platform hadn’t be delveloped and deployed to the public it would still be the domain of the geek/nerds populations.
My vote is also for Washington. If we take “important” to mean the person who would be hardest to replace it’s him. The US Revolution largely happens without diverting course if you remove anyone but him.
I’m another who’s going to throw cold water on Jefferson’s nomination. The DoI was, at the time, a minor pro forma document. The assembly thought so little of it that the job of writing it was assigned to a new, junior member (Jefferson) with a little oversight from Adams and Franklin. The revolution moves forward without any difference no matter who writes it.
It is only later when Americans are looking for ways to celebrate the 25th anniversary that the DoI begins to grow in importance. Jefferson added soaring poetry to the DoI but that doesn’t make him that important.
