Thomas Jefferson

Malone, Dumas. Thomas Jefferson: A Brief Biography. Chapel Hill: University of North

Carolina Press, 2001.

Thomas Jefferson is often seen as one of our most complex and contradictory founding fathers. Jefferson was the author of "The Declaration of Independence," and a man who owned slaves. He was a connoisseur of European philosophy, culture, and art, yet he engineered America's split from England. He was one of the few presidents to study the Native Americans while president, yet he was also ruthless in his suppression of the tribes when he held the reigns of power and wished to extend America's control over the Louisiana territory (46).

Dumas Malone's biography pays tribute to Jefferson's many intellectual and practical gifts. He shows how Jefferson was a man of high ideals. Jefferson changed the phrase of the philosopher Thomas Locke, that all men were entitled to "life, liberty, and property," to the "pursuit of happiness," laying the foundation for the American principle of self-determination in life and government (16). For Jefferson, severing from England was never merely economic in its intention, rather he envisioned an entire separation of church and state, a secular and truly republican nation run by a "natural aristocracy of talent and virtue" elected by the "enlightened" (17).

However, Malone seems determined to ignore the more unsavory aspects of Jefferson's reputation. Malone states categorically that Jefferson's "illicit relations" with is slave Sally Heurings is "wholly out of character" and there is no evidence it took place (42). Malone's determination to cast no aspersions on Jefferson's reputation is also obvious in his choice of language. He describes Jefferson's slaves welcomed Jefferson "tumultuously" (implying they were happy) when the Founding Father returned from a journey (24). Ultimately, because the book is so insistent on focusing on Jefferson the hero, the humanity of this man who was both of his time and ahead of his time is lost.