THOMAS JEFFERSON: FAMILY SECRETS

A lawyer defends the tarnished legacy of Thomas Jefferson in this biography.

Jefferson, this book argues, “has been subjected to pernicious stereotypes that grossly impede our complete understanding of the man,” as contemporary historians have held a “relentless focus on his views on slavery” and his “alleged affair with Sally Hemings.” Using the lens of Jefferson’s grandchildren Thomas Jefferson Randolph and Ellen Randolph Coolidge to explore the leader’s final years, Hyland paints the Founding Father and former president as a man of “towering character” with “massive powers of self-control.” Such hagiographic depictions of Jefferson, which run contrary to the near consensus of academic historians, abound in this volume despite occasional, offhand lines that assert “Jefferson was no saint.” An attorney and a contributor to the Federalist Society, Hyland serves on the board of directors of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, an organization founded to promote the leader’s legacy and combat the findings of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. The foundation’s DNA work concluded that Jefferson was most likely the father of Hemings’ children. A skilled litigator, the author is an adept storyteller and defends Jefferson’s legacy with a confident narrative. This, combined with ample photographs and reproductions of paintings, makes for an engrossing read. But to historians well versed in the Jefferson family saga, the book’s research isn’t likely to win many converts. While primary sources related to Jefferson’s grandchildren are used, most footnotes disappointingly rely heavily on secondary sources and rehash familiar stories of the statesman’s life. And while lamenting the influence of “critical race theory” in tainting recent scholarship on Jefferson, the volume displays an obsession with the man’s “abject courage, love, sacrifice, and wisdom” that creates its own politically motivated narrative. The work fails to convincingly address the paradox of a freedom-loving owner of enslaved people other than to note how Jefferson’s views on the topic were “evolving” in his later years. From this skewed perspective, the book’s analysis of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, for instance, highlights his moral quandaries about slavery yet ignores the work’s explicitly racist passages that discuss in detail his belief in Black intellectual and emotional inferiority.

An engaging but uneven account of a controversial Founding Father.