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American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, by Joseph J. Ellis

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Amazon.com Review

Well timed to coincide with Ken Burns's documentary (on which the author served as a consultant), this new biography doesn't aim to displace the many massive tomes about America's third president that already weigh down bookshelves. Instead, as suggested by the subtitle--"The Character of Thomas Jefferson"--Ellis searches for the "living, breathing person" underneath the icon and tries to elucidate his actual beliefs. Jefferson's most ardent admirers may find this perspective too critical, but Ellis's portrait of a complex, sometimes devious man who both sought and abhorred power has the ring of truth.

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From Publishers Weekly

Penetrating Jefferson's placid, elegant facade, this extraordinary biography brings the sage of Monticello down to earth without either condemning or idolizing him. Jefferson saw the American Revolution as the opening shot in a global struggle destined to sweep over the world, and his political outlook, in Ellis's judgment, was more radical than liberal. A Francophile, an obsessive letter-writer, a tongue-tied public speaker, a sentimental soul who placed women on a pedestal and sobbed for weeks after his wife's death, Jefferson saw himself as a yeoman farmer but was actually a heavily indebted, slaveholding Virginia planter. His retreat from his early anti-slavery advocacy to a position of silence and procrastination reflected his conviction that whites and blacks were inherently different and could not live together in harmony, maintains Mount Holyoke historian Ellis, biographer of John Adams (Passionate Sage). Jefferson clung to idyllic visions, embracing, for example, the "Saxon myth," the utterly groundless theory that the earliest migrants from England came to America at their own expense, making a total break with the mother country. His romantic idealism, exemplified by his view of the American West as endlessly renewable, was consonant with future generations' political innocence, their youthful hopes and illusions, making our third president, in Ellis's shrewd psychological portrait, a progenitor of the American Dream. History Book Club selection. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product details

Hardcover: 384 pages

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; 1st edition (February 4, 1997)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0679444904

ISBN-13: 978-0679444909

Product Dimensions:

6.7 x 1.4 x 9.6 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.1 out of 5 stars

248 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#102,324 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

There is some legitimacy for questioning Joseph Ellis' scholarship of Jefferson independently of his personal veracity. Does his analysis itself hold up to scrutiny?In at least one significant sense, no, it doesn't. The genetic connection between Jefferson and Sally Hemings of which Ellis is assured is anything but, which Professor Ellis surely knows himself since one of his co-authors on the inflammatory 1998 report "Jefferson Fathered Slave's Last Child" was the author of the DNA study itself, and who publicly stated as much himself.Eugene Foster told the journal Nature that his study found only that Thomas Jefferson *could* have been the father of Eston Hemings, not that he was. He pointed out that in fact the type of testing done was incapable of proving such a thing. All the DNA analysis revealed was that *some* Jefferson male very likely fathered a child by Sally Hemings. Since DNA comparisons were made with regard to Jefferson's uncle, not Jefferson himself, over two dozen Jefferson males living at the time were possible candidates, several of whom were present at Monticello during the time Hemings conceived her last son.Contemporary evidence points strongly to Randolph Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson's brother, who had such a close acquaintance with the slave community at Monticello that they referred to him as "Uncle Randolph." Some of the same evidence can be seen to point to Thomas Jefferson as the father, but such an interpretation requires one to believe that the forty-four-year-old U.S. ambassador to France chose to have an affair with the teenaged slave half-sister of his wife who by more than one account was incapable of taking care of herself, much less the ambassador's daughters to whom she was charged. You be the judge.So what does this say about Joseph Ellis' scholarship? Clearly for him to declare as he has that "Now we know," concerning the truth of the Jefferson/Hemings relationship, is irresponsible and injudicious at best, since such an assertion is factually incorrect. When combined with his own personal prevarications and embellishments, such a willingness to bend facts to support a purely subjective opinion makes trusting his judgement in accurately reporting and adjudging history and historical figures much more difficult. I, for one, am now deeply skeptical of his work, and believe others should be, too. That he writes well isn't in question. That he's right, is.

First of all, this is not your standard biography. Let's just get that out of the way right at the beginning. If you want to learn about the complete life of Jefferson, don't come here. Instead, this book is an attempt at a detailed look at the evolving character, changing thoughts, and driving opinions of Thomas Jefferson at various points in his life. It opens with Jefferson's most famous achievement, the writing of the Declaration of Independence. What was the man's worldview at the time of this writing? What were his motivations and passions? How did his view of the past effect the way he thought about his present? How did the circumstances in his life at that moment affect the words that he wrote into what is essentially our country's birth certificate? These are the kinds of questions that are explored in this book. The book then jumps ahead several years to Jefferson's time in Paris during the Revolutionary war. Then the Jefferson's retirement during Washington's second term as president. Then to Jefferson's own first term as President. Then, to his final retirement. And at each stop along the way, the same questions that are listed above are explored again.Mr. Ellis does an impressive job of attempting to get into the mind of a most elusive man. By the author's own admission, Thomas Jefferson is a confusing character, perhaps the most confusing person in American history. The man who clearly stated that all men are created equal held on to hundreds of slaves. The man who tried to cry against the slave trade as a moral evil had no problem in selling off some of his own slaves. The man who would write and preach about moral purity would have a decades-long obsession with another man's wife. The man who saw it absolutely necessary to limit the power of the federal government would find a way to excuse the exercise of more federal power than any of his presidential predecessors during the episode of the Louisiana Purchase. But the author takes great pains to portray how each one of these and many other seeming contradictions in Jefferson's life were accompanied by huge amounts of internal intellectual and moral questionings. It would be extremely rare to see Jefferson proceeding with any huge decision until he had wrestled with it in his mind and found a way to make it fit with his own personal set of convictions. While others might, a frequently did, spot contradictions in his character, he himself was convinced that his actions did not contradict themselves but rather that he always acted in accordance with what was right in his own eyes.And ultimately, this is how normal people act. We don't always do what we or other people expect, but we usually do what we think is right. The author consistently shows that Jefferson would constantly do what he believed to be right, even if it was sometimes based on a worldview that was not entirely compatible with the real world. But I will say no more on that. I don't want to spoil the entire book for you.I walk away from this book satisfied that I have a greater understanding of the character and thinking of one of the greatest American's ever. The only reason this book gets four rather than five stars is that it does get repetitious looking at the same set of questions over and over again during the different time periods of Jefferson's life. However, since these questions serve to support the author's argument, you cannot really fault him for continuously referring to them.

American Sphinx presents an insightful portrayal of not only one of America's most beloved founding fathers, but of the politics and political figures that influenced the times and the founding of America. Unlike other biographies I started and abandoned about Jefferson, American Sphinx is not written as a text book, but rather more as psychological drama offering a deeper understanding of the philosophies behind the shaping of America's political system, with reverberations that continue today.

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