Thomas Jefferson Author of America

Short critical portrait of a grand hypocrite. where Locke had spoken of "life, liberty, and property" as natural rights, Jefferson famously wrote "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"... given the advantageous social position occupied by the delegates at Philadelphia, it is very striking indeed that [this] should have taken precedence over property. I was worried that Hitchens might have gone soft over his adopted land but it's full of this kind of thing: A bad conscience, evidenced by slovenly and contradictory argument, is apparent in almost every paragraph of his discourse on [slavery]. as well as his humourlessness, adultery, self-service, self-pity, horrendous partisanship, and, surprisingly, bloody ruthlessness. Jefferson: what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it's natural manure. (He was pro-Jacobin for a terribly long time.) --- Try and judge him fairly. How did his actions (not his words lol) compare to the prevailing spirit?: * Democracy: Well above average, even revolutionary US average. * Slaves: Hard to say. Inherited 200. Freed only 7. Tried to write a condemnation of slavery into the Declaration. Wrote a bill banning slavery in new states, narrowly lost the vote. "Even as he yearned to get rid of them, he refused to let them go" * Native Americans: Average, bad. * Freedom of speech: Average. Had paid shills in the gutter press throughout his career, and prosecuted enemy journalists for Sedition. * Freedom of religion: Well above average. * Women: Average, bad. * Working-class: Above average in intention, protecting the "plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry". Pretty populist, constantly ranting about bankers and tipping the political balance away from cities. Jefferson: The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. His fear of a freedmen uprising apparently paralysed him. The conventional wisdom around 1800 was that you couldn't just free the slaves, you'd also have to deport them (to e.g. Sierra Leone like the British) to prevent them taking their rightful vengeance on the planters. His turning on the Haitians for similar reasons is one of the saddest and dumbest moments in a life of compromise. --- Whatever view one takes of Burke's deepening pessimism and dogmatic adherence to the virtues of Church and King, the fact is that after the summer of 1791 the Jacobins did their best to prove him right. Deleted scene from the Declaration of Independence: [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And Hitchen's final exceptionalist thought: The French Revolution destroyed itself in Jefferson's own lifetime. More modern revolutions have destroyed themselves and others. If the American Revolution, with its... gradual enfranchisement of those excluded or worse at its founding, has often betrayed itself at home and abroad, it nevertheless remains the only revolution that still retains any power to inspire."

Written as if from the perspective of a good friend or child of Jefferson’s, Hitchens’s biography feels straightforward and honest, if generous, to the life and thoughts of this Founding Father. The prose is interesting and varied, while never revealing any hidden bias on the part of Hitchens; on the contrary: he’s forthright with his thoughts, noted in parentheticals. The book’s brevity requires a summary-style treatment of Jefferson and the various plots and intrigues of his life, though, which necessitates omission of details that would, I think, greatly improve the reader’s understanding of the events in which Jefferson found himself and perhaps more of why he acted the way he did. I enjoyed the lack of overt pull from Hitchens, though, and the effortless lessons about Jefferson from the perspective of an admirer.