Pros: Excellent writing, penetrating analysis, interesting format, doesn't shy away from Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings
Cons: It was so good, it left me wanting more.
The Bottom Line: An excellent and important work about the prodigal Founding Father, though not quite comprehensive and therefore perhaps not the best choice for an introductory work on Jefferson.
lyagushka's Full Review: E. M. Halliday - Understanding Thomas Jefferson
Understanding Thomas Jefferson by E. M. Halliday, is not quite a history book and not quite a straight-ahead biography of this founding father and third president of the United States. Instead, Halliday presents and interesting and sometimes gossipy mixture of biography, social history and criticism. Most unusually for a history writer with academic leanings, Halliday names names and pulls no punches in discussing earlier biographies of Jefferson. All in all, the author takes the reader on an unorthodox but illuminating tour of Jefferson's life.
Understanding Thomas Jefferson is divided into two main sections. The first of these is a very concise biographical overview of Jefferson's life which oddly avoids much discussion of politics in general and his two terms as president in particular. Halliday focuses instead on signal events and situations in Jefferson's life that he believes must have shaped his character and his beliefs. Among these events are the death of his father while Jefferson was still a juvenile and his lack of elder brothers, the course of study he pursued and those he studied under, his early attempts at romance, his marriage to Martha Jefferson, their children, her early death and the economic realities he inherited with his own and his wife's estates. His early childhood is covered very briefly. The author focuses primarily upon his adolescence to his early adult years.
Halliday then devotes much time to Jefferson's time in Paris as a negotiator for European commercial treaties. He examines the vast social differences between liberal Paris and the bluenose communities of the colonies, and the effect such a change of atmosphere must have had on a man who wanted to consider himself both worldly and cultivated. He also closely examines Jefferson's vague and unconsummated Parisian romance with Mrs. Maria Cosway and the letters that passed between them.
The second half of the book is primarily an analysis of contemporary written sources on Jefferson and commentary about previous biographies. In the first chapters of this section Halliday elucidates and comments on a several pieces from Jefferson's voluminous assorted writings. His analyses of these texts, among them several personal letters, his "syllabus" on the New Testament, the Declaration of Independence, his book Notes on Virginia, the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and the epitaph he composed for his own tombstone, are a thorough pleasure to read and very enlightening too.
Towards the end of the book, Halliday delivers several tongue-lashings to previous biographers who refused to even consider the possibility that Jefferson engaged in a lengthy, monogamous and fruitful sexual affair with the slave woman Sally Hemings, who was the half-sister of Jefferson's beloved and short-lived wife, Martha. His harshest criticisms are reserved for those who attacked the solid research of Dr. Fawn Brodie, the first American scholar who dared to take seriously the rumor that Jefferson fathered children by one of his own slaves before DNA evidence ended the debate. Because of her work, which was published in 1974, and which Halliday considers the most original biography of Jefferson in the last century, Dr. Brodie was ridiculed, excoriated and shunned by other Jeffersonian historians. She died in 1981, too early to see her research vindicated by DNA testing completed in 1998. Halliday, of course, has the benefit of publishing after the results of these tests were published.
Recent biographers have tended to shroud Jefferson in an intellectual mystique, calling his personality impenetrable. To Joseph Ellis he is the American Sphinx. To Merrill Peterson he is enigmatic. Halliday however takes a very different stance and asserts that the man is understandable if seen within the proper context of his era and his personal circumstances.
Granted, there are glaring discrepancies between Jefferson's words and actions, between his outward appearance and his private realities. The man who penned the famous lines about all men being created equal owned hundreds slaves and freed only a handful of them in his will. An outspoken critic of miscegenation, he was nonetheless sexually attracted to his slave and fathered at least six children by her. Halliday uses Jefferson's own words to elucidate the apparent contradictions in his thoughts and life. It can't be said that Halliday manages to dispel the appearance of hypocrisy in Jefferson, but he does make it easier to understand how Jefferson managed to rationalize these contradictions in his own mind and how he might have come to make the decisions he did.
Finally, Halliday shares his opinions of some works of historic fiction that take Jefferson as a main character. He has little praise for most of them and is strongly critical of Merchant and Ivory's film Jefferson in Paris and Barbara Chase-Riboud's novel, Sally Hemings. He does have positive things to say about Max Byrd's 1993 novel, Jefferson.
Understanding Thomas Jefferson includes a number of illustrations in black and white, among them newspaper articles, photographs of sculpted busts and Monticello, engravings, personal letters, accounts and diagrams in Jefferson's own hand and a few paintings. The book also contains endnotes and an index.
Halliday employs a writing style that is highly sophisticated yet readable. There were quite a number of words in this book that I needed to look up in the dictionary, yet his sentence structure remains fluid and absorbing. I never found myself losing the thread of his arguments or distracted by convoluted grammar. When it came to discussion of other biographies of Jefferson Halliday waxed ferocious and very cutting. This was a bit of a surprise to me, but it certainly made the point that Halliday cares deeply about the historical record and his subject.
I noticed that the author also allows a good deal of speculation to creep into the work, but he is always careful to make it clear what is known factually and what is his own conjecture. His suppositions are always presented within the sometimes thin framework of fact that supports them. And far from shading his presentation of fact to sway his readers, Halliday frequently presents material that could be seen as arguing against his theories.
On more than one occasion Halliday makes reference to the seasons and their effects on human moods. For instance, he writes, "The sexy Virginia summertime was in full flower when Jefferson started his promised visits..." And: "September in Paris, while less celebrated in love songs than April, can be a wonderfully sexy time of year. The leaves of the chestnuts are starting to turn yellow and red; the sun warms the cool air to a caressing temperature..." I found such sensual observations remarkable in the writing of a historian.
So often when reading biographies of great men it is patently obvious that the biographers have fallen under the sway of their subjects. This is not a feature of Halliday's work on Jefferson. If anything he is a very reluctant defender of Jefferson. It is quite clear that Halliday sees Jefferson as an imperfect human being who entertained lofty ideals and refined thoughts, but was never quite able to live up to them.
Shortcomings
If there is anything to criticize in Understanding Thomas Jefferson, it would have to be the relative brevity of the text. Halliday's insights and commentary are so interesting and such a pleasure that I wished he had gone on at greater length. In fact, I suspect that had I not already read separate biographies of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and John Adams (see below), I would have lacked much necessary background to fully appreciate Halliday's points. My sense is that this book would not be the best choice for readers who are completely unfamiliar with either the time period or Jefferson. But on the other hand, since I haven't read any other books specifically about him, I don't know which biography I could recommend as a starting point.
One other complaint I have is that Halliday repeatedly makes reference to the DNA testing and the results that proved conclusively that Jefferson fathered numerous children by Sally Hemings. I have no doubt about the accuracy of his report on this matter, but I would have liked to know more about the circumstances of these tests. Whose DNA was tested? What exactly do the results prove? When were they carried out and by whom? These are the little things that I prefer to read about in detail.
Final Thoughts
I'm glad to have read Halliday's work. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who has read any previous biography of Thomas Jefferson, particularly any who have read a biography which ignores or denies the Hemings relationship. Those with some background in early American history will probably find this book of great value and interest as well. As I mentioned earlier, I'm afraid Understanding Thomas Jefferson would not be the best introduction to either the man or his era.
To those interested in early American history, I would also highly recommend:
• Patriarch - Richard Norton Smith's excellent volume on George Washington's presidency
• The First American: Benjamin Franklin - a superlative biography on America's premier elder statesman
• Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero - for those interested in reading just a bit further afield
• John Adams - McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of our unsung second president
• Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams - Lynne Withey's examination of a very hands-on First Lady
• A Midwife's Tale - a fascinating look at life in pre-revolutionary Maine based on the journal of midwife
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