AmericanSphinx - (EPUB全文下载)

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For Edmund S. Morgan
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Preface and Acknowledgments
Prologue. Jeffersonian Surge: America, 1992–93
1. Philadelphia: 1775–76
2. Paris: 1784–89
3. Monticello: 1794–97
4. Washington, D.C.: 1801–04
5. Monticello: 1816–26
Epilogue. The Future of an Illusion
Appendix. A Note on the Sally Hemings Scandals
Notes
Copyright
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ANY ASPIRING BIOGRAPHER of Jefferson, recognizing the ink already spilled and the libraries already filled, might do well to recall the young Virginian’s famous words of 1776. Which is to say that no one should undertake yet another book on Thomas Jefferson for “light and transient causes.” In fact “prudence dictates” and “a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires” that the publication of all new books about that man from Monticello be accompanied by a formal declaration of the causes that have impelled the author to undertake the effort.
My own defense would begin over thirty years ago, when I entered graduate school at Yale to study early American history. It is impossible to avoid Jefferson while attempting to master the story of the American Revolution, since his career crisscrosses the major events of the era. And his ideas, or at least the ideas for which he became the most eloquent spokesman, define the central themes of the story of the emerging American republic. Moreover, I was a native Virginian who, like Jefferson, had graduated from the College of William and Mary. I even had reddish blond hair like Jefferson and had learned how to disguise my insecurities behind a mask of enigmatic silence. It was therefore natural for me, once ensconced in the former cradle of New England Puritanism and Federalism, to identify with Jefferson’s edgy doubts about the arrogant austerities and quasi-Arctic climate of New England.
My eventual mentor in graduate school, Edmund S. Morgan, even had a huge Jefferson portrait on his office wall, the luminous Rembrandt Peale likeness of 1800, which looked down on our seminar sessions with otherworldly authority that I found oddly reassuring. Jefferson and I were kindred spirits, I told myself, allies in this alien world where a southern accent seemed inversely correlated with one’s seriousness of purpose. This youthful infatuation for Jefferson eventually went the way of my southern accent, never completely gone altogether but relegated to the blurry margins, where it lost its distinctive character. Like any young love, however, it became a pe ............

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