Thomas Jefferson

As a rule, however, Jefferson did not discuss the president's constitutional authority and conspicuously avoided connecting his assertions of power—such as challenging the Barbary pirates, purchasing the Louisiana Territory, and spending unappropriated funds to prepare for war—to provisions in the Constitution. --Joseph M. Bessette, Hail to the Chief, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2009, review of Thomas Jefferson and Executive Power, by Jeremy D. Bailey


After the British in 1814 torched the Library of Congress, the U.S. government acquired from Jefferson his personal collection of 6,487 volumes, twice as many as had been lost in the blaze and, at the time, the largest assemblage of books in the western hemisphere. --Kevin J. Hayes, Light and Liberty, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2009, review of The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson, by Kevin J. Hayes

For the other slaves at Monticello, Jefferson’s death in 1826 was a catastrophe. To settle his enormous debts, his estate, including well over 100 slaves, was auctioned, destroying the families he had long tried to keep intact. --Eric Foner The Master and the Mistress, The New York Times, October 3, 2008, review of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed

In any society that we can call sane or decent, Martin Hemings would have been Thomas Jefferson's brother-in-law; in 18th-century Virginia, he was his property. When the relationship between the men went bad and erupted in a quarrel, as seems to have happened sometime in 1792, Jefferson did not have to make up with his relative or pretend to like him or even figure out a way to avoid him. Instead, he sold him. --Adam Kirsch, A Peculiar Association: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, The New York Sun, September 24, 2008, review of The Hemingses of Monticello, by Annette Gordon-Reed

For decades, on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, the gavelling off of Thomas Jefferson’s children was a story that was either too awful to be true or too useful to be proved false. --Jill Lepore, President Tom’s Cabin: Jefferson, Hemings, and a disclaimed lineage, The New Yorker, September 22, 2008, review of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Jill Lepore (via Arts & Letters Daily)


An imaginary attack ad for the Federalist party in 1800 smearing Thomas Jefferson. From the PBS documentary "Vote for Me: Politics in America", 1800 Anti-Thomas Jefferson Negative TV Ad, October 16, 2007, YouTube

Monticello’s Shadows by Myron Magnet, What Jefferson’s fabled home reveals about the Founding Father’s mind and heart, City Journal, Autumn 2007

The Jefferson Bottles: How could one collector find so much rare fine wine? by Patrick Radden Keefe, The New Yorker, September 3, 2007
(via Arts & Letters Daily)

Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates by Christopher Hitchens, City Journal, Spring 2007 (via Arts & Letters Daily)

Three-Fifths Historian, review by Ken Alexander of 'Negro President': Jefferson and the Slave Power, by Garry Wills, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2004

Publick Religion: Adams v. Jefferson, by John Witte, Jr., First Things, March 2004

Conquistador of Reason, review by Wilfred M. McClay of Jefferson’s Demons: Portrait of a Restless Mind, by Michael Knox Beran, First Things, March 2004

The Dualities of Thomas Jefferson, reviews by George McKenna, First Things, June/July 2000

Jefferson on race & revolution, by Hadley Arkes, on The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson & the French Revolution, 1785–1800 by Conor Cruise O’Brien, The New Criterion, January 1997

Friends & founders, by Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., a review of The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson & James Madison edited by John Morton Smith, The New Criterion, May 1995