Description: Thomas Jefferson's views on slavery have long been seen as paradoxical or incoherent. Jefferson's Wolf shows that he was, in fact, a consistent advocate of racial exclusion. Although he criticized slavery, he also insisted throughout his life--like many, but not all, Americans of his time--on the need to remove Black people from the United States.
Brief description: Christa Dierksheide is Brockman Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Beyond Jefferson: The Hemingses, the Randolphs, and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America and Amelioration and Empire: Progress and Slavery in the Plantation Americas, 1770-1840. Formerly the Historian at the Robert H. Smith Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, she has curated and contributed to numerous related exhibitions.
Review Quotes: The most difficult Jeffersonian knot to untie, for us, is the relationship between his professed opposition to slavery and his racism. Dierksheide and Guyatt find the explanation in Jefferson's commitment to racial exclusion, revealing this to be fundamental to his vision for the nation's future. By attending carefully to political contexts, they provide balance without invoking necessity or letting Jefferson off the hook.--David Waldstreicher, author of The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley