Mr. Jefferson

THOMAS JEFFERSON: AUTHOR OF AMERICA by Christopher Hitchens. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this readable little book is the new twist it puts on an old game. To wit: author Christopher Hitchens, one of the leading intellectual supporters of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, attempts, unsuccessfully in my opinion, to enlist Thomas Jefferson in the fight against Islamic terrorism. Jefferson, of course, can be claimed by just about every domestic faction and sect, depending on the issue, or at lest one's willingness to ignore other issues. What's notable about Jefferson the liberal interventionist--he did, Hitchens points out, wage unilateral war on the Barbary pirates and their Islamic state supporters in Tripoli, Algiers, Morocco, and Tunis--is the fact that Jefferson is simultaneously admired by the anti-war right, who advocate Jeffersonian states' rights as a bulwark against federal tyranny, particularly of the neo-conservative, “American Greatness” variety. Can we reconcile the strict constructionist who opposed Hamilton's national bank with the President who stretched the Constitution to illegally purchase Louisiana? Should we even try?

Next to his newfound pugnacity, Hitchens is perhaps best known for his atheism, or “anti-theism” as he prefers it. Thus our author has much worthwhile praise for Jefferson's “wall of separation.” Hitchens also employs, as a sort of radical doppelganger, the figure of Tom Paine, comparing and contrasting each on such points as organized religion, the French Revolution, and the legacy of 1776.

As for the tragedy and sin of slavery, to which all discussions of Jefferson must eventually turn, Hitchens draws real blood. Jefferson, he notes, famously wanted the French to export their revolution around the globe. He soon got that wish, “but not in a way he welcomed.” By 1791 a massive slave revolt was underway in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which we now call Haiti. Those black Jacobins, it turned out, were far too close for the comfort of American slaveholders. Jefferson, in a letter to James Monroe in July 1793, described the Haitian revolution in rather remarkable terms: “Never was so deep a tragedy presented to the feelings of man,” he mourned. He went on to urge that the state of Virginia commit public funds to ease the pain and suffering of the evicted slaveholders (“refugees from the ideas of 1789,” Hitchens memorably dubs them). As President, Jefferson supported French efforts to retake the place, thus sanctioning the reinstitution of slavery. In short, the sage of Monticello “took the same view of Haiti as he had of Virginia: the abolition of slavery could be as dangerous and evil as slavery itself.”