ABSTRACT
Jefferson's apotheosis, the sudden rush of feeling about him after his death which made a hero out of him, almost a god, was mainly due to the awe aroused by the extraordinary timing and concurrence of his death along with that of Adams. A people who had always believed in America's mission, and in the constant presence of the guiding Providential hand over the nation's destiny, found in the deaths a striking confirmation of God's design. Jefferson was statesman and politician as well as intellectual; he was pragmatist as well as ideologue; he was many-faceted, to match the growing consciousness of America as a noncolonial political and social structure. As for Lincoln, his role was to restate what was usable in Jefferson's thought in the light of the tragic experience of slavery and a civil war. The two men were poles apart in personality: Jefferson was polished, labyrinthine, cosmopolitan, rationalist, Utopian, where Lincoln was rugged, self-taught, plebeian, mystical, and tragic.
