Thomas Jefferson's Western Expansion

THOMAS JEFFERSON AS PRESIDENT

Thomas Jefferson was a statesman, a scholar and enjoyed the philosophies of ancient Greeks. Jefferson was also an architect, which would serve him well as the third president of the United States of America. Jefferson’s vision was laid out in the Declaration of Independence and in his inauguration. Every person possessed certain inherent natural rights, which he defined as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This was the “Jeffersonian,” of Thomas Jefferson.

The presidency of Jefferson reversed the way politics were done. Jefferson’s first statement of the coming changes started with his inauguration. Jefferson shed the traditional elegance on March 4, 1801, by walking to the Capitol, rather than riding in coach and

“Jefferson’s Western Expansion was a social threat to the Federalist social order and stability” (Davidson, p. 307). The Federalist had bought large plots of land and kept the land until profits were high. The Federalist then sold that land to farmers for profit. Jefferson passed an act to sell federal land for two dollars an acre. The act required land buyers to buy large plots of land and eventually the act changed to smaller plots giving more access to own land for farmers.
Jefferson viewed the West as a means to preserve the values of an agrarian republic” (Davidson, p. 307). In the Louisiana Purchase, no one really knew were the boundaries of Louisiana where. However, the purchase provided much needed and immense area for the growing nation” expansion. Lewis and Clark were sent out on a secret expedition mapping out the new territory.
Jefferson was a man of scholarly convictions. Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal” (The Declaration of Independence, n.d.), even though he was himself a slave owner. In the issues regarding slavery he was at best vascillatory. He guided the country away from the Federalist view of aristocracy and turned to the common man and the