Understanding Thomas Jefferson [Hardcover]

E. M. Halliday (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 6, 2001

Recent biographies of Thomas Jefferson have stressed the sphinxlike puzzles of his character -- famous champion of freedom yet lifelong slaveholder, foe of Miscegenation yet secret lover of a beautiful slave for thirty years, aristocrat yet fervent advocate of government by the people. E. M. Halliday's absorbing, compact, and lucid portrait recognizes these and other puzzles about this great founder, but shows us how understandable they can be in the light of his personal and social circumstances and common human experience.

Here are all the pivotal episodes of Jefferson's life: the writing of the Declaration of Independence, his years in Paris, his feud with Alexander Hamilton, the surprising Louisiana Purchase, and his post presidential reconciliation with John Adams. But Halliday's account takes readers deeper, into Jefferson's personal, private life, exploring his childhood, his literary taste, and his unconventional religious thinking and moral philosophy. Here, too, are his adamant opinions on women, the evolution of his ideas on democracy and freedom of expression, and fresh insights into his long relationship with Sally Heimings.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Thomas Jefferson's life seems to be riddled with contradictions: he wrote "all men are created equal" yet owned hundreds of slaves; he feared mixing the races yet fathered children with a partially black slave. Joseph J. Ellis took this Jefferson-as-enigma approach in American Sphinx, which won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1997. E.M. Halliday, however, argues that "the 'sphinx' approach tends to mystify rather than enlighten" and attempts to reconcile some of the contradictions in Understanding Thomas Jefferson.

Halliday starts off with a comprehensive sketch of Jefferson's life, from his father's death when he was 14 to his own death on July 4, 1826. Halliday describes Jefferson's college days, his passionate marriage, his trip to Paris, and, of course, his relationship with Sally Hemings, his slave and concubine.

Halliday's analysis of the Jefferson-Hemings affair is refreshing, given that many biographers have felt Jefferson lost all interest in sex after his wife's death (or, to quote Nick Nolte, who played the man in Jefferson in Paris, "The historians like to think that after Jefferson's wife died, his dick fell off"). Halliday lays out all the evidence, also noting that "most biographers have paid insufficient attention ... to the probability that some of her traits, of both appearance and character, were reminiscent of her half sister, Jefferson's greatly beloved wife." He then criticizes the "blinkered historians" who ignored or dismissed ample evidence of the affair--that is, before DNA testing proved that Jefferson fathered at least one of Hemings's children.

A series of related essays follows the biography, including a clear-eyed view of the relationship between history and fiction. Throughout the book, Halliday writes in a chatty, almost gossipy tone, noting the Marquis de Lafayette's "formidable expanse of forehead," describing Jefferson's "tall, lean but muscular figure," musing that "September in Paris, while less celebrated in love songs than April, can be a wonderfully sexy time of year." Entertaining, informative, and eminently readable, Understanding Thomas Jefferson will leave readers feeling that they do. --Sunny Delaney

From Library Journal

This book has great merits as well as great flaws. Its merits include the author's commonsense, balanced approach to his subject, his solid grasp of the material, and his effervescent style. Halliday, a longtime editor at American Heritage and author of previous works on the poet John Berryman and on the Allied invasion of Soviet Russia in 1918 19, persuasively argues that historians Andrew Burstein (The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist, 1995) and Joseph J. Ellis (American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson) are wrong to claim that Jefferson was a bundle of unfathomable contradictions and mysteries. Halliday maintains that many of Jefferson's apparent contradictions are understandable, given his position in society and the era in which he lived. Despite Jefferson's failings in his views on blacks and women, Halliday says that his championship of human liberty gives him a deserved place on Mount Rushmore. The book's most serious flaw is its scope. Over half of the book is devoted to Jefferson's sex life (or lack thereof), particularly with his slave Sally Hemmings; this preoccupation is compounded by the author's overuse of words like erotic. (In two places he even notes that the weather was "sexy.") The book says almost nothing about Jefferson's work in the Continental Congress or his two terms as President. Recommended for larger public libraries. T.J. Schaeper, St. Bonaventure Univ., New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (February 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060197935
• ISBN-13: 978-0060197933
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,019,385 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing speculation, but is it history?, April 23, 2001

By 

R. Tompson "randyt5194" (720 mps from home) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Understanding Thomas Jefferson (Hardcover)

I can't improve on the scathing reviews by the experts. I can underscore the lack of solid evidence and lackaday assembly of the few facts there are.

Try to find one crisp summary of Mr. Halliday's thesis anywhere in this book. You won't. Instead, you'll find a lazy summer day's read, drifting down a river of possibles. A little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit more back over here, some different stuff there... Who edited this thing for him?

Along those same lines, the book's organization could use some work. The "essays" making up the second half of the book are as muddled as the "history" of the first half. They should get their own "Part II" instead of simply having different chapter names.

Throughout, compute the ratio of "might/could have/may" to "did/was/had" and you'll understand how imprecise a view of Jefferson this is. Halliday himself muses on the transience of historical understanding. Better for him to take it to heart, and focus on the hard facts than try to read sheep's entrails to discern what might have been.

Certainly Jefferson deserves better than this! Certainly American Heritage deserves better than this!

By the way, wouldn't this suffice, instead of 250 pages of gumming the subject to death?: 1. TJ had a 10-year, very sexual marriage to Martha. He may have promised her on her deathbed not to remarry. 2. Sally Hemings was Martha's half-sister. 3. Perhaps out of family relation and resemblance, or perhaps out of his horniness and her availability, Tom/Sally were perfect for each other. 4. Why else would TJ have freed her offspring? He freed none of his other slaves; instead they were sold after his death to cover his debts.

Buy the book. Read the book. Don't believe you "understand" TJ any better after having done so.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A disappointingly Freudian treatment of Jefferson, May 6, 2001

By 

Michaela (Mickey) Schlegel (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding Thomas Jefferson (Hardcover)

When I first picked up Understanding Thomas Jefferson to read, I was most aware of E.M. Halliday's credentials as a writer, and I had very high expectations. In a few respects the book delivered, especially in its attack upon best-selling historian Joseph J. Ellis for his implication that Jefferson opted for celibacy after his wife died. Jefferson was then not yet 40, in remarkable physical condition, and enjoyed being among women.

However, Mr. Halliday pushed his Freudian analysis a bit far and made that and his forays into existentialist behavior the principal bases for our supposed "understanding" of the complex Thomas Jefferson. The narrowness of the author's approach to judgment was a letdown.

So long as the author was entering the realm of reasonable speculation, I would have thought he might pay considerably more attention to the influence of Jefferson's father, Peter, and that of other strong males, mentors, and intellectual companions of both sexes in Jefferson's life.

Surprisingly, though, Mr. Halliday was not quite so thorough in his examination of the available Jefferson literature as one could hope. As a result, he made a few important factual missteps and left several doors unopened.

I happened to catch an interview of the author on C-Span after I read his book and heard him compound errors by tossing an 1815 Jefferson observation into the mix of factors leading him to Sally Hemings in the late 1780s.

On the whole this book was a disappointing treatment of Jefferson which left me no more understanding of the Sage of Monticello at the finish than I was at the beginning.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars If you could read one book on Jefferson, don't choose this one!, May 8, 2006

By 

kdave21 "kdave21" (iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding Thomas Jefferson (Paperback)

I started out very excited by this book. Based on my readings, I was convinced that Jefferson had had a liason with Hemmings, unquestionably based on the circumstanital evidence. (I did not know about the DNA testing at the time). I was looking forward to this book because I knew Halliday thought it to be fact, and I didnt want a biographer who masked over real history. It started out as an easy read. It quickly disintegrated into a book of sleazy guesswork and disjointed facts. I knew more about Jefferson's sex life than I did his presidency. I cant remember EVEN ONE mention of who his vice president was. Did he even talk about the election? Not that I recall. I do remember Halliday speculating about whether Jefferson masturbated. (forgive the image but you get the idea now of what Im talking about). The time chronology is all over the place, nothing is in order. The tone changes chapter by chapter. One minute he is talking about Hemmnings, the next chapter is spent degrading all the other authors who have written about Jefferson, of course none of them have it right according to Halliday. I have never seen an author so unprofessional to spend an ENTIRE chapter (entitled "Blinkered Historians) on why the other biographers were wrong. In retrospect, even if David Ellis did have it wrong about the Hemmings affair (which he did), I feel my time would have been spent much more wisely reading him, even if it is a little harder to read. I also fealt that Hallidays own personal beliefs and interests seeped into the book. Because some parts of the book were not credible, I wasnt sure what to believe. Examples, the specuations about the sexual details. Another example was when he claimed Adams believed that government and power should be intrusted to the aristocratic and the rich families of America. That is really not true, while Adams did belive that the federal gov't needed certain powers, he did not believe in elite rule. He was criticized for being a monarchist in his time, but that was really nothing more than politics, he believed in a multi-faceted gov't. Okay so that was a tangent, long story short, I fealt that I walked away much less enlightend about jefferson than I had hoped.