Volume 21, Number 8 · May 16, 1974
An Un-American Politician?
By Garry Wills
Jefferson the President: Second Term, 1805-1809
(Volume Five of "Jefferson and His Time") Dumas Malone
Little, Brown, 704 pp., $14.50
Volume Nineteen of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson just appeared from the Princeton University Press. It covers three months of the year 1791, when Jefferson was secretary of state—when he was, by comparison with some later years, on the periphery of national events. A Jefferson scholar has surmised, 'If Julian Boyd [the series editor] keeps to the same standards of inclusiveness, it will take him a full volume just to get through one week of Jefferson's more difficult times as President.' And though it takes Volume Nineteen 646 pages to cover these three months, Volume Eighteen spent 688 pages on the preceding three. This suggests one great difficulty in coming to grips with Jefferson, the too little that we too often get from his too much. The man articulated himself into mystery, becoming dark with argument—by his very density of clarification and self-explanation, his endless lucubrations: lucus a non lucendo.
Review, 3353 words
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