Jefferson The Virginian: Jefferson and His Time (1) - Livres de poche

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY S 1948 s s COPYRIGHT 1948 BY DUMAS MALONE ALI-RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS THEREOF IN ANY FORM Published April 1948 Reprinted April 1948 Reprinted May 1948 Published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Limited PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE Detail from the Painting by Jolm Tmmlntll Jefferson, the tallest among the five committeemen facing the President and Secretary of Congress, was painted from life about 1787, while in Paris This work as a whole is for ELISABETH GIFFORD MALONE This Volume is for THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA Introduction ABOUT twenty years ago I promised myself that I would write a big jfJL book about Thomas Jefferson someday. I was teaching history at the University of Virginia, which he founded, and any time that I wanted to I could look up and see Monticello in the dim distance. In the community they continued to repeat a remark of a discerning Ex-President of the United States who had once lectured there. In that place, said William Howard Taft, they still talked of Mr. Jefferson as though he were in the next room. He was there, unquestionably, whether or not any of us really understood what he was saying and in youthful presumptuousness I flattered myself that sometime 1 would fully comprehend and encompass him. I do not claim that I have yet done so, and I do not believe that I or any other single person ever can. Nobody can live Jeffersons long and eventful life all over again, and nobody in our age is likely to match his universality I have mot devoted all these intervening years to him. Until his two hundredth anniversary in 1943, mylongest period of concentrated at tention vfcs about six months otherwise I worked on him only as occa sion offered, and occasion offered considerably less time than I had expected, My total labors added up to a good many months but they suffered from the fact that they were discontinuous, I wrote a few things about him, but others wrote more, and my small contributions now seem hardly worth mentioning Since 1943 I have been able to give most of my time to him, under circumstances which call for grateful acknowledgment elsewhere. As a result, here is a volume covering the first major period of his life-Another, covering a second period, is just behind It, and, God willing, there will eventually be two more after these. I have entitled the work as a whole Jefferson and His Time, and am venturing to call it a comprehensive biography, hoping that it will seem reasonably commensurate with the achievements and the stature of the man. There can be no possible question that Jefferson deserves extended and careful treatment. The memorial in Washington which was dedi cated on his two hundredth anniversary is tangible evidence of his rec ognized membership in the trinity of American immortals, along with Viil INTRODUCTION George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Others may deserve to stand beside them, but the supreme eminence of these three is practi cally unchallenged at the present time. Washington is the major sym bol of the independent Republic itself, Lincoln of the preserved Union, but Jefferson surpassed both of them in the rich diversity of his achieve ments. No historic American, except possibly Benjamin Franklin, played so notable a part in so many important fields of activity andthought government, law, religion, education, agriculture, architecture, science, philosophy. Jefferson did not have Franklins spicy wit and docs not offer quite such delightful companionship, but it is doubtful if any other public man in all our annals is equally interesting to so many sorts of minds...