“Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America”(1)

A recent glance at the results of a computer generated search for the entry “Thomas Jefferson Biography,” indicates that it is increasingly difficult — if not impossible — to say anything “new” about the third president of the United States.(2) Indeed, in reading any new biography of Thomas Jefferson, one is more likely to gain new insights into the biographer than the ostensible subject. Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, is a case in point.(3)

As for the methodology, Hitchens’ interest in Thomas Jefferson started in 1970, through Oxford University’s Atlantic Crossing Scholarship. As for primary sources, Hitchens consulted Princeton University Press’s, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, and the papers in the Jefferson Room in the Library of Congress. Unfortunately, Hitchens or Harper Collins Publishing did not include foot- or end- note citations, and readers are left to assembling their own index. A helpful narrative bibliography, however, is provided in the opening acknowledgments.

The logistics involved in scrutinizing secondary Jefferson sources is, in the words of Hitchens, “near impossible to undertake.”(4) Even so, he defers readers to several works that explore aspects of Jefferson’s life more thoroughly. This includes Annette Gordon-Reed’s study of Jefferson’s relationship with his slave, the westward expansion continued by The Corps of Discovery, and treatments of “the much-neglected subject of the Barbary war.”(5) It is these three subjects that this review is concerned with.

Hitchens approaches the relationship between Sally Hemings and Jefferson similar to the way it is argued by Gordon-Reed.(6) Although legally his “property,” Hitchens says Sally “was, from childhood, something more like a privileged housemaid.”(7) Sally shared the intimate moment when Jefferson’s wife (paternally Sally’s half-sister), Martha, succumbed to mortality, and “In status… was barely a slave.”(8) Still, it is necessary to note that even a half-sister of Martha, and nearly an equal around Monticello in status, Sally was still a slave. Hitchens does remark that Sally “was by descent and in appearance very nearly white.”(9) This, in addition to being Martha’s half-sister, could also be the cause of Jefferson’s affection toward her. Jefferson the widower quite possibly saw a vestige of his deceased wife in Sally. But Hitchens does not make this case.

In this, Jefferson still believed in racism. Hitchens hints at Jefferson’s racist worldview, but resists bringing considerable attention to it. Instead, like Gordon-Reed, Hitchens cross-examines the “standard” Jefferson biographers for ignoring or dismissing this relationship for so long. Perhaps Hitchens avoided a thorough discussion of Jefferson’s racism largely because Jefferson was a man of his time. Perhaps this is also because Hitchens believes that, today, the idea of “race” will only disappear by disapproving of it as a logical — and hence legitimate — construct.(10)

As for westward expansion and The Corps of Discovery, Hitchens utilizes a 1940 poem by W.H. Auden — entitled, “New Year Letter” — that symbolized how Europeans and Anglo-Americans understood the myth of the “Virgin Land.”(11) The purchase of Louisiana and the Lewis and Clark expedition was “the most ambitious adventure of Enlightenment exploration that had ever been conceived, let alone attempted.”(12) Yet in quoting Auden, Hitchens refrains from noting any of the prominent historians — Richard Hofstadter, Bernard DeVoto, Henry Nash Smith, Leo Marx, or the ubiquitous Frederick Jackson Turner — who articulated at length what westward expansion meant. That Hitchens chose Auden to symbolize America’s belief in “Manifest Destiny” demonstrates his literary leanings. And like Auden, Hitchens is a Brit-turned-American.

While American historians concerned themselves with expansion beyond the Allegheny Mountain Range, Hitchens keeps Jefferson’s Mediterranean dealings with commerce and piracy in mind, too. The Barbary Wars demonstrated America’s first conflict with the militant variety of Islam. Like Hitchens, Jefferson made his skepticism toward organized religion known, and both individuals argue for secularist humanism to confront, challenge, and defy the monarchies, theocracies, and despots of the world.(13)

In conclusion, this addition to Jeffersonian historiography serves three purposes. The first is that if offers another addition to the secondary sources on Jefferson. In doing this, it also directs readers to arguments that have characterized the scholarly dialog regarding Jefferson, and equally important, it re-ignites the important discussions that scholars have often ignored. Finally, Hitchens gives the reader a glimpse of what has influenced himself and his interpretations of America, and the world. This is a process that antedates, and extends beyond, a central figure of the 18th century Enlightenment that is Thomas Jefferson, and demonstrates how biographers are influenced by the individuals they study.
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End-notes:

1.) The reviewer thanks a couple compatriots (they know who they are) for commenting on earlier drafts.

2.) A March 20, 2008 Amazon.com search engine yielded 1,431 results for “Thomas Jefferson Biography.”

3.) Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2005).

4.) Ibid, xii.

5.) Ibid, xii.

6.) Annette Gordon Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1998).

7.) Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson (2005), 59.

8.) Ibid, 61.

9.) Ibid, 61.

10.) For Hitchens’ scorn toward the construct of race, also see his Letters to a Young Contrarian (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 110-111. For his disdain toward politicians who cater to the construct of race, see “Fool Me Thrice: It Should Be No Surprise That the Clintons Are Playing the Race Card” in his January 28, 2008 Slate.com article.

11.) Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson (2005), 149.

12.) Ibid, 5.

13.) See Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007).