Pulitzer Prize-winner Jon Meacham's biography Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power is probably as interesting for what it tells us about ourselves and the age we live in as it is about the life of and times of the much revered founding father. Instead of focusing on the everyday biographical details of a very long and rich life which with current historical information might well have gone beyond even the monumental six volumes of Dumas Malone, Meacham paints with broader strokes. His main concern is with Jefferson's ideas and how he was able to able to implement them even in an atmosphere as patently partisan as our own. Thomas Jefferson's practice of the art of power is nothing less than an object lesson for anyone who would aspire to affect the course of events in a democratic society.
From Meacham's point of view, that Jefferson may not have always lived up to the ideals he professed is less important than what he managed to accomplish. Though he didn't quite manage to practice what he preached about freedom and equality when it came to his own household, what it may speak to his personal shortcomings pales in the context of his political achievement. Certainly Meacham talks about Jefferson's treatment of his own slaves and his relationship with Sally Hemmings and the children he fathered with her. He recognizes they are blots, but argues that they are the flaws of the time. Nonetheless they are blots, and Meacham's argument that it is unfair to judge a man's actions by the standards of our time is at the least problematical.
That Jefferson was willing to relax his scruples about executive power and centralized government when he became the executive in power is less a sign of hypocrisy than a recognition that effective government sometimes requires action at odds with philosophical belief. Centralized power that produced something like the Alien and Sedition Act is bad; centralized power that effected the Louisiana Purchase is good. That the Alien and Sedition Act was a bad idea and the Louisiana Purchase a good one is true enough, but to make a judgment about centralized power based on that truth is to base that judgment upon what are at least by some lights morally questionable grounds. Do the ends justify the means?
Article comments
1 - Linda
Hi---I liked your review, but one correction. Jon Meacham didn't win the Pulitzer for this book. He won in 2009 for his Andrew Jackson book. The 2013 Pulitzers (for works published in 2012) will be announced next April and maybe Meacham will win for his Jefferson book then. He's a terrific writer.
2 - Jack Goodstein
Thanks for the correction, I should have said "Pulitzer Prize winning biographer, Jon Meacham's "Thomas Jefferson. . . ."
Jack
3 - Jon Sobel
Editor's note: correction made to article. Meacham won the Pulitzer not for this book but for a different one.
4 - Igor
Here's another opinion on Meachams biography: The New Republic.
THE SUBTITLE OF Jon Meacham’s massive new life of Thomas Jefferson promises a probing exploration of how-he-did-it, the ways and means of power politics. Since Jefferson is generally perceived more as a philosopher-king than a Tammany pol, such an examination, coming from a highly regarded biographer and political commentator, should yield fresh insights into the Sphinx. But Meacham has chosen storytelling over analysis, offering up a genial but meandering narrative. There is some meat in the book, but finding it requires dexterity and doggedness, checking the endnotes after every ten pages or so to see what is missing from the passing panorama. Meacham has read the scholarly literature on Jefferson, some of it critical, but doesn’t let enough of this debate intrude on the storytelling, which nearly always puts Jefferson in the best possible light.
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It's a very interesting review.
5 - Pat
End does not justify the means. I lived in Williamsburg and visited Colonial frequestly.Question:two points in the book. 1.Tour guides report the House of Burgess when disbanded went to Bruton Parish church, not the Raleigh Tavern. 2. A room in the Carter Plantation on the James has a refusal room as claimed to be the room Jefferson was refused by his 1st love. Not in Raleigh Tavern. What is fact?
6 - MMM
Just started this tome; very helpful review. Igor, your link from New Republic was the best critique I've seen.
Meacham's pals loved this book-me, not so much.