The Cavalier daily :: Thursday, February 12, 1970 :: University of Virginia Library

Jefferson The President The First
Term, the first study of Thomas
Jefferson's career as President since
Henry Adams' work written 80 years ago,
was released Tuesday with appropriate
ceremonies held at the University
honoring its author, Dumas Malone.

Mr. Malone, who served two terms as a
professor at the University, is regarded as
the foremost authority on Mr. Jefferson.
His latest work joins three previous
volumes as the most comprehensive study
on the life of the third President of the
United States and founder of the
University.

This fourth volume covers the
Presidential career of Mr. Jefferson from
1801 to 1805. Published by Little, Brown
and Co., the 539-page work sells for $10
and is reviewed in the February 15, 1970
Book Review section of the New York
Times.

Adrienne Koch

The reviewer, Adrienne Koch, a
professor of American intellectual history
at the University of Maryland and author of a
number of works on Mr. Jefferson, praises Mr.
Malone's-fourth volume as maintaining "the
magnificent quality of the preceding ones and
in one important sense outstrips them by filling
an urgent need in American scholarship."

Miss Koch describes the work as an
"eminently readable and deeply thoughtful
appraisal of Jefferson's first term as
President...He is portrayed as a man of learning
with a passion for liberty; a man of personal
ties and family affairs; a realistic statesman who
led his party so adroitly that he became a
President with the personal magnetism to unify
the people."

According to the reviewer, Mr. Malone
highlights three aspects of Mr. Jefferson's first
term in Washington. First, he was the first party
leader to become President and thus was faced
with problems that George Washington and
John Adams did not have to solve.

Mr. Malone claims that Mr. Jefferson's
self-proclaimed Revolution of 1800 was in fact
a revolution, heralding a new era in the nation.
The author also stresses that Mr. Jefferson put
political reality over the desire for consistency
with absolute and abstract standards.

In an interview with The Cavalier Daily
yesterday, Mr. Malone stated that Mr.
Jefferson's greatest achievement was that he
"unified the country and made the democratic
experience in self-government work without
any essential sacrifice of the basic principles of
freedom."

Mr. Malone added that "in the period of
counter-revolution in which Jefferson was
President, this was the only country of the
great ones in which it was checked on the
political front."

Louisiana Purchase

Mr. Malone said that the Louisiana Purchase
was the greatest single accomplishment of Mr.
Jefferson's career as President and pointed to it
as an example of his willingness to put political
reality before personal consistency in standards.

Mr. Jefferson's greatest weakness, Mr.
Malone stated, was an offshoot of one of his
strongest characteristics. The author said that
the President's political success stems from his
perceptiveness about other people.

"He could sense how other people felt
concerning something and he adjusted himself
to it. This has been called tact, understanding.
However, as is the with people like that,
once in a while he'd it."

Things Economic

Mr. Malone also said that, while he stressed
economy while he was in the "President's
House," he was less than economical in his
personal affairs.

Mr. Malone summarized the reasons for Mr.
Jefferson's success and popularity as the result
of his personality. Although he was often shy,
highbrow or stiff, Mr. Jefferson was "always
amiable and always respected other persons'
feelings, no matter how obscure they were:"

Mr. Malone said that a fifth volume covering
the remainder of Mr. Jefferson's career was
about two thirds done and would be published
in two or three more years.