Customer Reviews

Understanding Thomas Jefferson

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book is a very easy to read seemingly well documented work but it will not provide the reader with Thomas Jefferson in historical context. If your interest is in what Mr. Jefferson accomplished during his life and the many great achievements that he participated in on behalf the formation of the United States I would pass up this work. If your interest lies in his carnal side and his personal sexual history this might be more your speed. Had I known this was the piece of fluff that it turned out to be I would not have wasted my money on this work. This book would probably be a good basis for daytime TV couch potato fare. It is hardly a good work of historical content and most likely would have been rejected by any Masters level thesis committee. Most of this book could be condensed into one chapter.
On a number of occasions Mr Halliday lets his own personal political bias color his image of Mr. Jefferson pushing this work even further from the vein of relevant history.
I picked up this work based upon the recommendations on the inside cover. I have always been impressed with the historical works of Mr. Ambrose but I believe that there must have been more to his review.

"The past is never fully recoverable, and any history will indeed be fictional to some extent," writes Halliday in the closing chapter of his book "Understanding Thomas Jefferson." Oh the irony...

Halliday's book reminded me, through the first half, of reading an (almost) trashy novel in which he goes on for greath lengths about Jefferson and his sexuality writing about Jefferson's infatuation with "Belinda" to his ten year romance with his wife Martha (in which Halliday writes that he literally "loved her to death"), to Maria Cosway and Sally Hemings and her arrival in France. Halliday seems to (conveniently) forget that Tom Woodson, Sally's first child conceived in Paris, has been shown through DNA testing that he is not Jefferson's son. Thus, throughout most of the part in describing the "affair" between Hemings and Jefferson in Paris, Halliday draws upon massive speculation and an abounding amount of "what ifs", "could haves", "perhaps", and "maybes".

It is this theme of Jefferson and women that repeatedly appears throughout the book. Just as the reader thinks that he is now reading about Jefferson's political ideology or moral philosophy, Halliday always manages to somehow fit in a sentence or two concerning Sally Hemings or Jefferson's ideal woman. He seems bent on convincing the reader that Jefferson was a very sexual character who was a follower of "Nature" and so forth that often times, I wanted the throw the book across the room (or the bus) out of frustration of constant reminders of the author's insistence of Jefferson's "urges."

The book does go into other aspects of Jefferson's life, occasionally touching on his family life (of course, without speculation as to why his daughter Patsy married so quickly upon arriving at Monticello from France -- could it be because of Sally Hemings?) and his thoughts upon organized religion, morals, and philosophy, including writing about Jefferson and his "Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth." Halliday describes Jefferson's political struggle against Alexander Hamilton, but fails to mention the falling about between Jefferson and Adams. Of course, Halliday couldn't possibly write a book without mentioning Abigail Adams -- of course he does, and mentioning her often leads back into more about Jefferson and his love of "beautiful women".

This book did not make me feel that I had understood Jefferson any further from what I had previously read. It was entertaining at times, but Halliday's gossip-like tone grew tiresome and weary.

Read this book, but don't take everything for face value. To get to know Jefferson, keep reading, keep researching, and form your own opinions. Just make sure they're not Halliday's.

Mr. Halliday's book starts on the first line of the jacket by presenting something that IS NOT accurate. It states that "Thomas Jefferson foe of miscegenation yet secret lover of a beautiful slave for thirty years", must set the tone for his entire book. As a past editor of American Heritage we would assume that the man is giving us the benefit of his vast knowledge of the subject at hand and we should all believe his assessment. Mr. Halliday knows well about the results of the DNA Study, however he does not feel compelled to tell the reader that there was NO Jefferson/Woodson match. In fact, I can find no reference to Dr. E.A. Foster's thoughts and statement on the DNA Study. Like Fawn Brodie, for whom he dedicates the book to, there are much to many, "could easily have", "he may well have been", "there is reason to think", "there would seem", "it is very conceivable", "might have been", "apparently", "hard to avoid the conclusion", you get the idea. Unless I am mistaken,

Mr. Halliday OMITS from Mr. Jefferson's acknowledgement about the Walker affair, that in letters to his Secretary of the Navy, Robert Smith and his Attorney General, Levi Lincoln, that that was the only rumor that he would conseed is true among all the rumors spread about him, thus this was a blanket denial. Mr. Halliday has taken his well worn material from recognized books about Jefferson that have been hashed and rehashed over the years. He also makes reference to Annette Gordon-Reed's book, "Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, An American Controversy", but does not tell the reader that she states in her updated version, "The DNA test does not prove that the descendant of Eston Hemings was a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson."

In one of the earlier pages he again sets the scene that Jefferson is guilty by saying, "how could a man assert his disgust for sexual mixing of the races have taken as his concubine one of his own, the very young and beautiful Sally Hemings." My over 28 years of research as Jefferson Family Historian and one who assisted Dr. E. A. Foster with the DNA Study, have found NOTHING to indicate that Mr. Jefferson fathered any Hemings child. He takes two of our greatest Jefferson researchers, Merrill Peterson and Dumas Malone to task for giving the public the benefit of their vast knowledge by supporting the fact that Jefferson is innocent of the charges. Mr. Halliday chooses to bring the owners of Monticello, The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, formerly known as The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation who have decided to DROP the "Memorial" from their title, into the fiasco by stating that they had accepted the fact that Sally and her master had a long time love affair.

At this point I wish to enlighten the reader that ALL sides of an issue must be presented so a new book will be out in May, "The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Tragedy" (available from Amazon.com), and so will a Scholars Commission Report researched and studied by 16 or more well known professors, NOT employees of Monticello but volunteer scholars who wish to give the public the benefit of their unbiased research. The book also states that Thomas Jefferson Randolph (Jefferson's grandson), wispy story that the Carr brothers had admitted to fathering some of Sally's children but now the DNA had completely blown away that story. Now if the author were such a careful and observant researcher he would know that only one DNA sample from the Hemings matched, there was NO available data for the four other children. My research reveals that they could be guily for some of the earlier ones. I also note an absence of any reference to Mr. Jefferson's brother, Randolph, and his 5 sons who are prime suspects. As Jefferson Family Historian, I have found the grave of Madison Hemings son, William, (a valuable and prime source of DNA) BUT the Madison Hemings descendants are happy with oral family history and WILL NOT give permission for exhumation. The Monticello researcers would not seek this very valuable information either and did not tell the public of it's availability. You will notice that Mr. Halliday does not mention this either. There are many other statements mentioned that tend to degrade Mr. Jefferson in the eyes of the public. We should NEVER place all our history in the hands of "authorities", some academia, some foundations and some writers. Politically correct historical revisionists are prevelant on many scenes. BUY THE BOOK........we must hear both sides of the issue.........let the reader decide.

Herbert Barger Jefferson Family Historian

E.M. Halliday's psycho-biography and its premises about Jefferson's character rest largely on a falsehood--that Dr. Eugene Foster's DNA tests proved that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally's Hemings' first child in Paris, as well as her other children. Foster's letter to the N.Y. Times corrected the record, "the genetic findings [we] reported...do not prove that Thomas Jefferson was the father of one of Sally Hemings' children. We never made that claim." The DNA in fact proved that 1) Sally Hemings' first child (Paris) was not a Jefferson--two DNA tests on a Hemings descendant proved it conclusively, and 2) Sally's last child, Eston, could have been fathered by any of 25 Jefferson males, including Jefferson's brother Randolph, who was known to spend late nights playing his fiddle and dancing in the slave quarters.

As for the Madison Hemings newspaper article, scholars have always considered the evidence as hearsay, not uttered by Madison until fifty years after Jefferson's death, and the nature of the article flawed and unqualified to stand on its own.

The verdict is still out on Jefferson-Hemings, but an in-depth report on the issue will be released by the Scholars Commission on April 13, Jefferson's 258th birthday. The Commission includes Jefferson and presidential scholars, including Doctors Forrest McDonald, Willard Sterne Randall, Harvey C. Mansfield and Robert H. Ferrell.

If you're looking for a good, all around biography of Thomas Jefferson, this is not the book for you. "Understanding Thomas Jefferson" attempts to do exactly what the title suggests-understand Thomas Jefferson, but as a human being rather than as a statesman. E. M. Halliday's thesis is that virtually every standard biography of Thomas Jefferson describes him as a complex individual and highlights the contradictions in his life that border on hypocrisy (maybe even cross that border), but few try to put them in perspective.

This book attempts to do just that. Much of it (especially the first part of the book) deals with Jefferson's relationships with the women in his life. Admittedly, much of it is conjectural, because there's not much documentation extant. For example, Jefferson burned all his correspondence with his wife and mother. But Halliday has done a lot of research and puts his conjectures in context with documented events in Jefferson's life as well as with the social norms in which he lived.

If the author attacks the renowned Jefferson biographers (e.g., Dumas Malone and Joseph Ellis) for concluding that Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings was a myth, the criticism is well deserved. I read Joseph Ellis's biography "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson" when it was first published in 1997 and was astonished with his conclusion (in the Appendix of the book) that the "rumors" about Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings were not true. Now, this was the first biography I had ever read about Thomas Jefferson, so after having read what Ellis himself had written, I was shocked that he could come to that conclusion.

If you find Thomas Jefferson to be a fascinating individual (as I do) and have already read some mainstream history/biography about him, then you will probably enjoy this book immensely (as I have). It's different, it's conjectural, and that's its appeal.

A word of warning from the get-go: E. M. Halliday's "Understanding Thomas Jefferson" is not your standard biography of our third president. It does not fawn, nor does it marbleize Jefferson as some untouchable, unknowable, walking mystery so impenatrable that none but the most scholarly of biographers dare touch him.

What you come away with from this book is a sense that you know Jefferson just a bit better or, barring that, you at least have had a light shown upon areas of his life not heretofore illuminated for fear that doing so might "cut him down to size", make him merely mortal.

Halliday takes us through just about all the phases of Jefferson's life, from his youthful years, through his marriage, his various relationships with the three main women in his life (outside of his daughters): his wife, Martha, Maria Cosway and Sally Hemings. He shows us Jefferson's stormy relationship with Alexander Hamilton while the former served as Secretary of State and the latter Secretary of the Treasury in Washington's cabinet.

He unsparingly comments on previous, "god-like" biographers of Jefferson, including Dumas Malone and Merrill Peterson, pointing out their (to him) flaws and blindnesses (especially on the subject of Sally Hemings). He steers the reader in other directions of thought that these men did not see fit to address, which failure, as Halliday would have it, presents an incomplete picture of their celebrated subject and cheats posterity of a history which is "meaningful".

There are blunt discussions and speculations upon the nature of Jefferson's sexual development, both before, during and after his ten years of relative marital bliss with Martha Wayles Skelton. If you are someone who just cannot abide the thought that Jefferson had a sexual and, apparently, long-term and loving relationship with Sally Hemings (despite acknowledged DNA evidence to the contrary), or who thinks that after Martha Jefferson's death, her husband turned off his sexual desires like one turns off a kitchen faucet and became an emotionless stone statue, then perhaps this book might not be your cup of tea.

Try it anyway. Mr. Halliday makes his case rationally, calmly and gradually, debunking a few things and confirming others along the way, for example, rendering the supposedly "long-lasting" passion of Jefferson for Maria Cosway (the married English lady with whom he flirted - and we really don't know what else - while he was ambassador in Paris) much shorter than it actually was, primarily because ... well, Maria was apparently a bit of a fluff-head. And you can well imagine that Jefferson, of all people, with his love of learning and books and education, could not long have endured a ditzy female.

If you had read nothing about Jefferson, and wanted to use this as a first introduction to the man, I'd discourage it, recommending that you read at least one other "mainstream" conventional biography before reading E. M. Halliday's work in order to see the sharp contrast between the two resources. If you approach Thomas Jefferson in that fashion, then Halliday's honesty and open style, as well as his obvious desire that history consider all aspects of its subject, no matter how unthinkable or "forbidden", will become, I believe, quite appealing.

You will find this book a refreshing look at one of the most respected figures in American history, no less so because he is examined unsparingly and who, while found wanting in some aspects of his life, emerges less of an enigma and more of an "every man" than most biographies of Jefferson would have you to believe.

As a self styled Jefferson "scholar", I found the book fascinating, thought provoking and enlightening. I agree with the editorial comments that there is a heavy emphasis on Jefferson's sex life; the emphasis was there, but perhaps it would be better called his "love" life in the truest sense of that word. I've read and studied the other books the auther cites and wonder now how so many of us, for so long, accepted the academic view that the man was non-sexual. We made a priestly nun out of a real man, and thought we must be right. How much racism played into that belief, I can't tell. Who among us can rate our own racism and separate it from our culture and our time? And which of us can separate our home/love/erotic life from the actions, large and small, that make up our professions, careers, beliefs, actions? I've often felt that Nixon's follies could have/would have been far different if his sex/love life (whatever it was) had been different.

Now it is possible for me to consider the TRAGEDY of the life of Jefferson and Sally Hemmings....there must have been "love" (however that is defined for that age, that culture, that understanding) between the two for it to have lasted a lifetime! And never, never to be able to speak of it to a soul! Maybe THAT'S what made him want to go home again and again and again. The mountain, the fascinating building, the horticulture, surely, but the woman too!

Halliday's book brings an "understanding" of that.

My criticism of the book would be that Halliday is TOO conversational, TOO gossipy; he seems too ready to apply today's views of sex/eroticism to the culture of the 18th Century. Since the book IS chiefly about the man's erotic life, it would have added to our knowledge to have included further studies of the sexual, cultural differences these two centuries have made in our understanding of human nature.

...also far too much on Laurence Sterne.

But all in all, a must book for those who have an abiding interest in Jefferson and what made him tick.