Friday, July 2, 2010

3 comments:

King of Ireland said...

Brad,

Some Hollywood influences seem to be in play here. They should not have been shocked nor in awe. These same arguments had been around for 500 years. As we know from the similarity of the words of Jefferson to those of Aquinas and Bellarmine.

This was nothing new or unexpected. It was part of a long tradition of Christian resistance to tyranny.

Josh Hoisington said...

I don't think they seemed shocked or awed--Franklin rips into it almost immediately which is not really a sign of reverence. That miniseries certainly has its problems, but I feel like this scene is pretty good. When Adams says that it is unexpected, I take to mean he thinks Jefferson went beyond the scope of his assignment, not that the sentiments therein were new. Dillane as Jefferson was one of the highlights of the miniseries for me, but alas, we'll never really know what it was like to be in the committee of five.

Tom Van Dyke said...

I was reading somewhere that Adams left the gruntwork to Jefferson and went to the convention to do some arguing. Later, Adams regretted it with a bit of jealousy, as it put Jefferson much higher in the American pantheon.