It’s amazing how much Bernstein is able to cover in his little book. He outlines Jefferson’s political and personal career, his ideologies, his successes, and his failures. His footnotes and bibliography are a great starting point for further research. There really aren’t any wasted words here, and it’s a testament to Bernstein’s skills that he’s able to stay focused and lively from start to finish.

Bernstein argues that Jefferson’s lasting legacy, for all his importance as a political figure, is his writings. Besides the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson provided major contributions to various state constitutions and statutes. Beyond all that, if it weren’t enough, there are his letters: tens of thousands of them, correspondence with the leading figures of the day. If Hamilton’s writings summed up the case for a strong federal government, Jefferson laid the case for local democracy, based on a free and well educated citizenry. Just as Jefferson and Hamilton were political rivals in their day, their intellectual descendents have been battling for the American vote ever since.

That Jefferson, a member of Virginia’s privileged planter class, was such a proponent of democracy is, as has often been noted, somewhat ironic. Bernstein outlines the factors led Jefferson in that direction. Jefferson’s time in Europe convinced him that any aristocracy would lead to a society of vast poverty and ignorance led by the privileged few. In particular, Jefferson saw the huge underclasses of Paris and London as proof that a society could not have a large urban population at its core. Instead, Bernstein argues that Jefferson’s long stay in Europe led him to a romanticized view of rural Virginia, full of strongly independent farmer-citizens who were much more capable of running their own affairs than an aristocracy ever could be. Additionally, Jefferson held a personal theology at odds with those of established churches. His struggles against state-established religion reinforced his inclination to trust local voters more than central power.

Bumping up hard against Jefferson’s democratic political ideology is his equally strongly held views that Blacks and women were unfit actors in the public square. With the exception of the formidable Abigail Adams, Jefferson avoided political discourse with women. In a similar vien, he was convinced that free Blacks could never be a part of American political life; he thought they would be too angry with White slaveholding society to ever co-exist as equals. Nonetheless, Jefferson was not a proponent of slavery and sought to limit its spread whenever he could.