I think that he was an optimist, but I think he understood that the world was never going to fully conform to what we wanted it to be. And part of my argument in this book, and it’s the one thing on which Gordon Wood and I strongly disagree, Gordon Wood, the great historian at Brown, has written that Jefferson had no tragic sensibility whatsoever. But even with that as an accepted reality, Jefferson, I believe, had far more contact, as you say, with death, and therefore, with tragedy. And death was, as we all know, far more common then, and people lost children, they lost spouses. And you know, as you say, it was a compounding problem. JM: You know, the scene the weeks after he loses his wife are truly remarkable, because his friends outside Albemarle County were hearing rumors that he was suicidal, that he was so bereft. I mean, he’d lived in a sort of state of constant sorrow. And I will point out to the audience that by the time he was a relatively young man, he’d lost his father young, but he lost not only his mother, but his oldest and closest sister, Jane, his wife, Patty, three children, and his best friend when he was a young man. But I begin by saluting you, because what I didn’t know, and I thought I’d read pretty widely, is how deeply acquainted with grief he was. And there was lots in the indictment, Francophile and Anglophobic, and all the other things. He was an anti-anti-federalist in some respects. He took advantage of his slaves, as you discuss in detail with Sally Hemmings in the course of the book. HH: Well now, I would summarize the case against Jefferson as that he was somewhat paranoid, he was a slave owner, of course. JM: So whether it’s David McCullough or Ron Chernow, and I just thought that someone needs to step in and make at least a modest brief for the old boy. Part of it, also, is that there have been so many wonderful books where Jefferson comes off badly. You know, we have arguments about big government and small government, but it’s really a matter of degree not of kind, as you know.

You know, he’s had a rough about 50 years, 40 years, as Hamiltonianism sort of became more respectable after Eisenhower ratified the New Deal in many ways. I don’t know if you’ve run into that much, but those of us who are self-styled Hamiltonians just prepare not to like him, and yet you’ve made him sympathetic. HH: This is really a magnificent book, and my compliments to you. Jon Meacham, welcome back, it’s good to have you. It’s in bookstores everywhere right now, it’s linked over at. He has a brand new book out, and it’s a wonderful book. He is of course the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion, which we talked about four years ago.

Jon meacham jefferson