ESCP Europe

Thomas Jefferson may be the most important American president ; he is certainly the most elusive. He has, at different times, been claimed by Southern secessionists and Northern abolitionists, New Deal liberals and neo-conservatives. Now the author restores the enigmatic national icon to human dimensions, with insight, and sympathy. Following his subject from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, he unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. He gives us the slaveholding libertarian who was capable of decrying miscegenation while maintaining an intimate relationship with his slave ; the enemy of government power who exercised it audaciously as president ; the visionary who remained curiously blind to the inconsistencies in his nature.