A Jeffersonian American Patriot is a State Patriot
One day in January 1811, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a French man of letters whose book he so much admired that he translated it into English and saw to its American republication. Along the way, he explained to the Frenchman why there had been such a difference between the outcomes of their countries’ revolutions. “The true barriers [defenses] of our liberty in this country,” Jefferson instructed, “are our State governments; and the wisest conservative power ever contrived by man, is that of which our Revolution and present government [the Federal Government] found us possessed.”
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