Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801-1805

Good gracious, this volume covering Jefferson's first term goes at a million miles an hour. It only covers four years, but they were surely event-filled. The same period in single-volume biographies usually covers only a chapter or two. But there's a lot. However, at the same time, I somehow don't know if this book needed to be this long. At times I enjoy the leisurely pace at which Dumas writes, but when I look back at the long book I just read and realized it just covered four years, it's a little mind-boggling.

As continues to be the case through all these biographies, I don't know that I have a fully formed impression of who Jefferson is as a human. He is so aloof, and so frequently moves against the principles and values that he promotes in his writings, philosophy, theoretical declarations that he's so known for, it's difficult to get a read on the guy. He obviously knew that he was going to be well-known throughout this country's history, so it seems that every one of his letters and diaries and journals were written to obscure what is really going on inside of him in favor of what he wants posterity to think of him.

And what further obscures this is that Dumas continues to act as Jefferson's chief apologist to explain and expound upon this man whom he has already deemed to be worthy, good, and righteous.

Nevertheless, it is a fascinating time which is covered in this book. It was the real beginning of party politics in America, where the President was also buying into the machinations and movements of the party spirit. Our first two presidents were very intentional and self-conscious about not giving in to party passions, and deliberately went against them when they could. You could not look at the actions and platforms of Washington and Adams and say they neatly fit either of the emerging parties.

Jefferson, however, is different. He was the first president nominated and elected on the basis of party platforms and affiliations. What's a bit frustrating in these volumes by Dumas is that he vividly portrays the partisanship of every single person and part of the national political culture and institutions, but seems to believe that Jefferson transcends and floats above them. Then when people just happen to do the things he wants or when he makes moves that absolutely further entrench and empower his party and destroy the other, Dumas writes about it as if he was just following his own ideals and trying to be a good president while all these other people were taking advantage of it for their own partisan gain.

Reading other biographies, though, it is clear that Jefferson was rabidly partisan and would sometimes do things just for the sake of party even if it went against his own previously expressed principles. Indeed, much of the Federalist criticisms levied at Jefferson were that he was hypocritical to the very Declaration of Independence he wrote.

This volume covers some exciting events in America's history, including the conflict with the Barbary pirates, the Louisiana purchase, and the removal of Aaron Burr from the vice presidential spot for the 1804 election (although admittedly, this was a much less dramatic affair than one would assume, even without having seen the musical “Hamilton”). And I'll be honest: I'm a little split in how what I think of how Dumas covers these events.

Dumas is good about telling these stories in excruciating detail, at points going day by day, and admirably juggles the acts of different people happening concurrently (especially when it comes to the Louisiana purchase). The artistic side of my brain was a little frustrated that he did not add some novelistic flair and drama to these inherently dramatic ordeals. More contemporary biographers have had fun writing these stories of espionage, war, and intrigue in ways that are far more gripping.

And yet, my more analytical side really does appreciate the way Dumas captures how relatively mundane these things were for the real people as they were happening, and how they were more stressful than exciting for those involved. History often just isn't that dramatic when experienced in real time.

So if you want some of the most comprehensive accounts of these events and their accompanying political intrigues and constitutional arguments, and have an ability to import your own sense of drama into receiving those facts, then you can't do much better than this. But if you need someone to get you excited about history, then maybe look elsewhere.

I will end with my biggest frustration of this particular volume. More than any other, this one seems to have no awareness of any existence of the world other than Thomas Jefferson.

In the introduction, Dumas explicitly says that he wrestles with this. He points out that for biographers, it's always a balancing act, but in the end he had to err on the side of this being the history of one man and not the history of an entire country. But still, the country is just as much a product of Jefferson's person and presidency as he is a product of the country itself. And so throughout the book Dumas makes very odd decisions on the secondary people and events he chooses to zoom in on and those he chooses to ignore all together.

Aaron Burr, for example, is one of the most important people in the political life of Thomas Jefferson, and his actions dramatically shape and guide Jefferson's story for over a decade, and yet Dumas seems to go out of his way to say as little about Burr as a person as possible, perhaps out of a fear that if he starts going down the Aaron Burr rabbit hole he may never come out. (Luckily, the next volume that covers Jefferson's second term will force his hand to discuss Burr at length.)

Yet even as Dumas says so little about Aaron Burr, he goes so much in depth into the impeachment trial of judge Samuel Chase, going through Chase's individual opinions on each partisan thing that contributed to his impeachment, and goes through every partisan move surrounding the impeachment and the speeches and the charges over each day of his trial.

And yet Dumas himself makes it clear that Jefferson was intentional to not have anything to do with this trial. The President made no comments about it, neither public nor private, he was not present for the trial, and he played no role in the impeachment being considered nor tried.

Other than being a headache for his own political party, the impeachment literally has nothing to do with Thomas Jefferson. Yet Dumas chooses to focus in on the granular minutiae and ignore other people and events that were far more influential in Jefferson's life.

Previous volumes have had a lot of information about the world at large–America's earliest days and the cultural and philosophical forces and people that created Thomas Jefferson.

This volume, however, has none of that. You pretty much just follow Jefferson and his discussions with his cabinet members and his partisans arguing in the media. We have no idea who is managing Monticello while he is gone and how that's going. We have no insight into the continuing building and development of Washington DC and how that might be a shaping the politics there. We aren't even given insight into Jefferson's finances or personal relationships and friendships at this time. It's just the political story of Thomas Jefferson for these four years, and an overtly biased apologetic for him at that.

Some sort of eye towards the broader world and how they are experiencing Jefferson's presidency would go a long way in giving insight to the man himself and how aware he was or not of his place in the world. But there's literally no discussion along those lines in this entire volume.

Still, this is still the most comprehensive account of these years of Jefferson's life that have ever been written, and for that they are still valuable, even if I do feel that this is perhaps the weakest volume I've read so far. I'm hopeful for the next one though.