I try very hard not to bring any historical figure into my current day’s morality and civic sensibilities (Joseph Ellis calls this presentism, the perfect word for that notion) – I try to see the man or woman for all that they were given their particular environment. Rather than take-up one of the many volumes of biography on Jefferson I was most interested in understanding the man, his character, in light of his times. Was he being unfair to our third President, or was he showing the man for who he really was, just as he was doing with Alexander Hamilton? It was time to turn to a book specifically on Jefferson. I’ll reserve more about that work for a review to be written later under that book’s entry – the importance here is that it painted Jefferson in such a terrible light that I couldn’t imagine that Chernow would be so even-handed with Hamilton but turn the blade on Jefferson. It is a masterful work of research, writing and – most importantly – proper distance from the biographer’s subject. Several friends had recommended Chernow’s bio I wasn’t disappointed. Was he the late 18th / early 19th century version of our 21st century John Muir? What was really behind the mask – I wanted to learn more.īefore taking up a direct source on Jefferson I turned to his greatest enemy, Alexander Hamilton, an historical figure I knew vaguely.
I’ve had this issue with Ambrose before (and I know enough about his writing to stay away from his excoriated Eisenhower bio), and while I enjoyed his bio of Meriwether Lewis, it was his portrayal of Thomas Jefferson that had me scratching my head.
It started when I was reading Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage, this niggling feeling of discomfort I get when reading a book when the author seems to be taking opportunities to lionize his/her subjects – or at the very least, portraying them in a simplistic, single facet.
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