Bloomsbury
Review by Brian Tanguay
It’s fair to say that Thomas Jefferson fascinates historians. The sheer number of biographies of America’s third president is staggering, and one might wonder what more remains to be written about. The first major biography of Jefferson was a three-volume effort by Henry S. Randall, published in 1858. Dumas Malone published six volumes about Jefferson between 1948 and 1981. Fawn M. Brodie wrote an influential “intimate history” in 1974. Andrew Burstein has written or co-authored several volumes, and his latest work, Being Thomas Jefferson, is billed as another intimate history. “I have spent a sizable chunk of my career with Jefferson,” writes Burstein in the Introduction, “and have at length arrived at a place where I feel I can tackle the largest questions that have hamstrung a slew of professional historians.”
When writing or talking about America’s Founding Fathers, it’s now almost obligatory to first acknowledge the fact that many of them owned slaves. This was true of George Washington, who owned and sold slaves and famously emancipated his human property in his last will and testament. Thomas Jefferson inherited slaves, and, as is now well-documented, fathered several children with one of them, Sally Hemmings. Burstein addresses these circumstances forthrightly. For all the soaring language in the Declaration of Independence about all men being created equal, Thomas Jefferson was a white supremacist who believed Black people were inherently inferior to whites and would forever be so. For all Jefferson’s philosophical musings, his interest in ideas, natural science and architecture, and his visions of exploring the American frontier and expanding the country, he was still a man of his time and place. Life was experienced differently then. As Burstein notes, “Modern cultural conditioning is unrelatable to that of 250 years ago, when sudden early death afflicted virtually every household and medical options were few, when communication across distance was slow and handwritten and competed with word of mouth in ways that are hard for us to assess.”
The cultural conditioning of white slave owners is central to Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings. One can assume that Jefferson exploited his young servant, took advantage of her subordinate and dependent position for his own pleasure. Sally Hemings left no written artifacts to suppose otherwise. But the history of slavery makes clear that Jefferson’s behavior was hardly unique. Burstein makes no attempt to justify or condone Jefferson’s behavior, but he does place it in context.
Jefferson was first and foremost a Virginian, like George Washington, and his close friends James Madison and James Monroe. The plantation economy of Virginia depended on slave labor. Virginians dominated the early political life of the United States, though not always harmoniously. Jefferson’s relationships with Washington, and in particular with Patrick Henry, were strained. Protecting the rights and prerogatives of his home state was central to Jefferson’s political outlook, which placed him at odds with his staunchest political rival, Alexander Hamilton, who favored a strong central executive with monarchical authority. The pair sparred as members of Washington’s cabinet — leading Washington to despise Jefferson — and in the partisan newspapers of the day. Hamilton was arrogant and full of bravado, a skilled infighter who lacked Jefferson’s privileged and genteel upbringing and advantages. Jefferson habitually recruited others to battle on his behalf as this allowed him to sustain his reputation and image as a figure of detached calm — the cool-headed philosopher from his hilltop at Monticello. Burstein shows, however, that Jefferson was no less ambitious than Hamilton; the two had very different personalities and ways of pursuing their aims, but each considered himself a consequential figure.
This endless push and pull, between Jefferson’s desire for a tranquil, studious life at Monticello, and his belief that he had a critical role to play in the young United States, lies at the heart of this book, and Burstein succeeds in providing an intimate look at Jefferson’s attitudes and predispositions. It’s fortunate that Jefferson committed so much of his inner life to paper. Thus we know the extent to which the serenity of the mountaintop at Monticello vied with the pull of the political arena and the major events that would shape the country for decades to come. At home Jefferson was haunted by the early deaths of children and his wife Martha (also known as Patty), and his dear friend Dabney Carr; he was profligate with money, living beyond his means year after year and amassing large debts that would plague his heirs. Though Jefferson had many friends he was also by nature secretive. His views on women were entirely conventional, and in fact he worried that American women might one day exercise the same freedoms that French women did. As Burstein notes, Jefferson’s “most cherished world was a private world of his own design, where he loved and where he bore the losses of the ones he loved.”
Jefferson lived eighty-three years, an exceedingly long life by the standards of his time. He privileged knowledge over religious faith, and the years he spent as a diplomat in Paris shaped his sense of the broader world. In our time, when information moves instantaneously and performative certitude prevails over facts, this book reminds us of how complicated and often contradictory human beings can be. Jefferson was certainly both. The cultural historian must do what the culture rarely allows, and that is to pause. A good long pause is necessary before, as Burstein phrases it, “imposing judgment upon people whose views were shaped under different circumstances than those we face today.”
