Book Review

The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson

It's short and incomplete, but I was aware of that when I bought it. I don't think Jefferson was much interested in putting down his life's works for posterity. Perhaps if he'd started this memoir before the age of 77 he may have gotten more written. That's not to say I'm disappointed in any way though. I chose this edition instead of a biography because I simply don't trust authors to write about the founding fathers, Jefferson in particular, without heavy bias against them. Although I admit the biography I have of James Madison by Ralph Ketchum is pretty good. 

The cons include, as previously stated, that it's evident that Jefferson didn't care to write about himself. So there aren't a lot of details about his childhood and young life. He mentions where he was born, what his father did for a living, the schools he attended, and his marriage with no more sentimentality than one would place in bullet points. However, when he does offer a personal opinion of a mentor or a fellow statesman as well as his notation of the death of his wife, you get a great teaser of what his personality must have been like and makes me wish he'd taken the time to offer a more passionate description of events. Annoyingly, his most animated writing is reserved for his time spent in France. As a Gallophile, he goes into great detail about the early days of France's revolution, his opinion of how he would've acted to prevent the downward turn it took, and his desire to go back and witness it in real time as it was going on. He spends so much time on this that he doesn't even make it to his own presidency or even vice presidency and just gives a brief mention of accepting the role of Washington's Secretary of State.

But the pros outweigh all of this. It's kind of like seeing a diary of our Revolution as it was happening from the viewpoint of the congress as opposed to the battlefield which is certainly different. He offers the unedited edition of the Declaration of Independence in this small volume with the parts stricken out and the parts added in shown in different typefaces. You see a lot of the same arguments that were laid out in the Federalist Papers for how the new government is to be set up with opposing arguments stated by other people in the discussions he had during different sessions. It's fascinating to read about the debate and thought process that went into a monetary system or a redesign of the prison system... things you don't usually think about when speaking of our Revolutionary War. 

I do recommend it but I also think the best way to research Jefferson further is to look into all of his correspondences, many of which have been saved. Not just his personal correspondence with John Adams, but other letters to other people of note in that time. There's a volume out there that has all of these and I may look into it sometime.