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Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. By Henry Wiencek. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. Pp. [xiv], 336. $28.00, ISBN 978-0-374-29956-9.)
Henry Wiencek hammers away at Thomas Jefferson like a prosecutor making his case. Jefferson's crimes are serious: one count each of first-degree greed and racism, numerous counts of insincerity and willful self-deception, and several instances of outright prevarication. Jefferson, argues Wiencek, could have freed his slaves and indeed had several opportunities to do so, and he could have used his political capital to advocate for emancipation. He did neither because, well, he liked the life he had-a life made possible by and dependent on his slaves. He liked the furniture and the gracious architectural forms his enslaved artisans constructed, the sophisticated French cuisine his enslaved kitchen staff prepared, and the ease and luxury that he paid for with what his slaves produced and, especially, reproduced.
Wiencek makes his case over eighteen relatively short chapters that follow a rough chronology. The book begins in the twenty-first century with a description of a visit to Monticello during which Wiencek heard the story of Peter Fossett, who, as an eleven-year-old boy, was sold from the estate after Jefferson's death. Thus, the book declares in its first pages that its subject is as much our view of Jefferson-our mental and actual visits to his mountaintop-as it is Jefferson himself. Throughout the book Monticello works as a metaphor for Jefferson's control over his slaves and his reputation; he was master of his mountain and master of his legacy. Wiencek seeks to understand the first form of mastery and undermine the second.
The early chapters discuss the young Jefferson's antislavery beliefs as well as his lifelong intimacy with slavery and with slaves, including his personal servant, Jupiter. Wiencek takes Jefferson at his word in denouncing slavery in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, points out that Jefferson once considered housing enslaved black and free white workers at Monticello in identical "substantial, dignified neoclassical houses," and interprets Jefferson's pro bono work as an attorney in a...