Jefferson the contradiction.(Thomas Jefferson: Author of America)(Book Review)

Thomas Jefferson: Author of America By Christopher Hitchens Harper Collins, 208 pages, $19.95

In September 2004, Atlas Books joined forces with Harper Collins to produce a collection of short biographies that would pair notable authors with eminent figures in history. In the final sentence of their latest installment, the always-provocative Englishman Christopher Hitchens concludes by reminding his readers that "history is a tragedy and not a morality tale." And that's exactly how Hitchens examines the life of Thomas Jefferson.

Despite Hitchens' credentials as one of America's most prominent social critics, he is not a historian. But "anyone who writes about America is writing about Thomas Jefferson in one way or another," he notes, and his training has brought him the tools to offer an interesting, insightful, and thoroughly enjoyable look at the "author of America."

In recent years it has become fashionable for historians to demonize Jefferson--along with the rest of our founding fathers--as a slave-owning, aristocratic hypocrite whose actions were driven by greed and self-interest. This reversed earlier efforts that often painted Jefferson as a flawless figure in American history. Hitchens falls into neither trap.

He creates a narrative where contradiction and human compromise abound, Jefferson is the author of history's most enduring words on human liberty: "All men are created equal." Yet he owned more than 200 slaves, none of whom were set free (except for the children he is said to have fathered with Sally Hemmings) until his death.

When President John Adams proposed to expand America's armed forces and create a navy, Jefferson campaigned against such a move both for reasons of expense and to avoid the precedent of a standing army. Yet in one of his first decisions as President, Jefferson dispatched American armed forces around the globe to confront the Barbary States of North Africa. And Jefferson did not "inform Congress until the warships had sailed far enough to be effectively beyond recall." It goes without saying that Jefferson couldn't claim ignorance of the Constitution's stipulation that only Congress can declare war.

When Napoleon offered Jefferson the opportunity to purchase all of France's American territory for only $15 million, doubling the physical size of the nation, Jefferson "gave the Constitution a close reading" to seek authorization for such a move. Failing to find any, he decided to take the offer anyway.