Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty by John B. Boles (review)

On April 29, 1962, while hosting a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners from the western hemisphere, President John F. Kennedy memorably remarked, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” John B. Boles’s biography brilliantly attests to the accuracy of Kennedy’s comment. It is no exaggeration to say that during his eighty-three years (1743–1826), Thomas Jefferson sought to know everything about everything, and he came as close as seems humanly possible to that goal. Yet, while he was primarily an intellectual who loved ideas and books, Jefferson also contributed mightily to the “real-world” business of creating the United States.

Boles deftly explains how Jefferson shaped the new nation in ways so numerous that only two of the most vital can be mentioned as examples in a brief review. First, the Declaration of Independence, by stating that the protection of individual life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the proper purpose of government, gave the United States undying liberal ideals. Jefferson would have been the first to admit that his nation, and he himself, did not live perfectly up to the ideal of equal human rights. But over the years, his eloquent promise has led the United States to advance a great deal toward making that idealistic goal a reality. The Louisiana Purchase as described by Boles provides a second example. New England Federalists strongly opposed the 1803 agreement with France, arguing that the Constitution did not authorize adding new territory to the United States, and Jefferson, a proclaimed strict constructionist, worried about the constitutionality of the action. The purchase, however, doubled the size of the nation and assured control of the Mississippi River, so the president argued that the power to make treaties implied the right to use them to acquire new territory. Only a fool would have passed up such an opportunity to secure the future security of the United States because of what amounted to a constitutional quibble; fortunately, Jefferson was no fool.

The Louisiana Purchase gave the United States a boundary with Spanish territory in the Southwest and led to Jefferson’s most important contacts with Texas. Boles briefly discusses the Dunbar-Hunter and Freeman expeditions on the Red and Arkansas Rivers in 1805–1806 and Zebulon Pike’s explorations in 1806–1807, but he notes that they received far less attention than the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery’s adventures in the Missouri River Valley and the Northwest. Boles also describes how Jefferson, always the expansionist, considered the possibility that the western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase extended to the Rio Grande but due to complications, both domestic and foreign, was unable to acquire from Spain even the small area centering on Baton Rouge called West Florida.

As should be expected of a Jefferson biographer writing in the early twenty-first century, Boles emphasizes issues related to slavery. Jefferson, he writes, “has seen his reputation wane due to his views on race, the revelation of his relationship with Sally Hemings, and his failure to free his own slaves” (2). Boles points out that Jefferson considered slavery an evil and often suggested stopping its spread, but that he was unwilling to rid himself of the institution as did an Albemarle County, Virginia, neighbor, Edward Coles, who freed his slaves in 1819. Of course, Coles had to move to Illinois to emancipate his slaves, and the action changed everything in his life. There is no record that Jefferson ever considered such a step; moreover, he never accepted racial equality and always feared that blacks and whites could not live together in peace. He saw no urgency in ending slavery, preferring to believe, Boles writes, “that in God’s good time, emancipation would somehow be effected. In no other aspect of his life does Jefferson seem more distant...