A Companion to Thomas Jefferson

Blackwell's splendid series on presidents now tackles the third man to occupy that office. But Jefferson is so multi‐faceted he is a hard man to pin down: diplomat, secretary of state, two‐term president, noted author, inventor, political philosopher, cook, an avid bibliophile and proficient in five languages. He was the Apostle of small government, an early advocate of states' rights and a strict constitution man. He prefigured the nullificationist Calhoun of the 1830s and the secession states of 1860 – although having had a leading role in fashioning the union, he would have been horrified at the attempt to break...