Thomas Jefferson--The Art of Power by Jon Meacham

Despite the subtitle, this book accomplishes something more impressive than dissecting Jefferson's political skills—it goes about explaining his greatness, a different task from chronicling a life, though he does that, too.

One thing about Jefferson is that he was at the center of American public life between 1776 and 1826, so the biography goes  through every important event in that critical half-century.   While Meacham adroitly weaves together his narrative, we're learning how the summoning of the Estates-General in France led to revolution. Although he covers Jefferson's life comprehensively, he doesn't dwell on the more problematic Jeffersonian initiatives such as the treason trial of Aaron Burr or the Embargo of 1807.

Any author who elects to focus on what made Jefferson a great historical figure has to deal with the disfiguring features in his life: his status as a slave-holder and the likelihood that he sired children by his slave Sally Hemings.  He doesn’t focus much on the thing that I found most fascinating—Sally Hemings was Jefferson’s beloved wife Patsy’s  ½ sister.  Upon the death of Patsy’s father, the children of his slave-mistress were moved into the Jefferson household, and they held positions of prominence.  It is not clear why she so honored her father in this way, but she did.  When Patsy died, Jefferson was 38 years old—and she made him swear on her death bed to not remarry.  Jefferson was known as a man who loved his wife and children—but he also loved women.  Could Sally Hemings have had qualities that reminded Jefferson of his wife?  If that is the case, while he treated her well, she was still his slave, and he was never a father to his children by her—who were ¾ white, as well as being closely related to his own children (sharing 37.5% of their genes).

Not given to psychologizing (unlike myself), Meacham takes us into the overarching motivations and predictable reactions of Jefferson by closely analyzing his pattern of behavior. Thrust into the role of slave master and man of the family at age 14 when his father died, Jefferson tolerated no opposition from his subordinates, but, among his political colleagues, he used hospitality to grease the way to his goals. His aversion to contention was his powerful political tactic. Meacham shows how Jefferson's melding of an unrelenting drive to achieve his republican goals with a pragmatic response to the possibilities of the moment worked for him again and again.

What remains mysterious is how Jefferson acquired the reforming principles that guided his career. What was the source of his faith in ordinary men? Many of his contemporaries believed in liberty and self-government. Yet they found his convictions about the masses' capacity to take care of themselves so bizarre that they had to call Jefferson a hypocrite. The mystery deepens when you consider that the most conservative electorate in the United States — the planters of Virginia — repeatedly elected to high office this cerebral, provocative statesman for the people.