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Nov. 2003. 288p. index. Houghton, $25 (0-618-34398-9). 326.
Bashing Thomas Jefferson threatens to become a national pastime. Many of the recent attacks on Jefferson, particularly those by Joseph Ellis, are unfair and mean spirited. However, Pulitzer Prize--winning historian Wills is an unabashed admirer of Jefferson. So, his analyses of some of Jefferson's actions as secretary of state, president, and the "sage of Monticello" after his presidency cannot be easily dismissed. Wills begins with the premise that the "three-fifths compromise" at the Constitutional Convention ensured southern slave-state domination of the Federal government until the eve of the Civil War. With slave populations counted, southern states were granted "unfair" representation in the House of Representatives. They also had inflated power in the electoral ...