Dumas Malone's "Jefferson the Virginian"

I’ve finished the first volume of Dumas Malone’s biography of Jefferson, Jefferson the Virginian, that my Dad sent me the other week, and therefore I feel like I’m an expert and will share my opinions of both the book and the man.

My first impression of the book was that it was much more difficult to read than was Edmund Morris’s biography of Teddy Roosevelt. Malone runs into real problems of scarcity of source material, whereas Morris never really lacked for that, especially considering how skillfully Roosevelt manipulated public opinion. And he wrote this volume 60 years ago, so even Malone’s words sound more foreign to me than do Morris’s. Forgiving him that, I’d say that the first volume was well done, but seemed to rush through the more interesting parts (the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, for one) in favor of the less interesting parts (an entire chapter on the writing of Notes on the State of Virginia?).

Jefferson’s abilities, so far as I can tell at this point, definitely lay in the power of his thoughts and ideas. He wasn’t the most capable administrator or even the most nimble legislator, but time after time his ideas were proved correct. He must have felt satisfied by that, but he never held it against anyone.

What’s also impressive is Jefferson’s insistence on expanding suffrage and giving more power to ordinary people, even though as a member of the Southern aristocracy he had much to lose from such an arrangement. For many of Jefferson’s aristocratic peers, Britain’s primary transgression was in not allowing them to govern themselves the way they wanted to. For Jefferson the problem was on a much higher level, having to do with the nature of government and human relations. That Jefferson was so willing to sacrifice his class’s position in society by creating a meritocracy rather than an aristocracy is very admirable.