North Carolina Office of Archives and History
The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery by John Chester MillerReview by: C. W. HarperThe North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 55, No. 3 (July, 1978), p. 354Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23535251 .
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354 Book Reviews
The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. By John Chester Miller. (New York: Free Press, 1977. Frontispiece, preface, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pp. xii, 319. $12.95.)
John Chester Miller, professor emeritus of history at Stanford University,
presents this volume as an addition to the endless debate revolving around the
paradox that the author of the Declaration of Independence was one of the
largest slaveholders of his time. Nonetheless, a comprehensive, definitive
analysis of such aspects of Jefferson's personality, conduct, and ideas which im
pinge upon the subject of slavery did not exist before this publication.
Miller, a prolific writer on the American Revolutionary and Federalist eras, is
eminently familiar with the historical record. He traces the development of Jef
ferson's attitudes toward slavery over the full course of his lifetime, relating this aspect of his thinking to his views on agrarianism, property rights, the
social character of American democracy, and North-South political conflicts.
Miller argues the possibility that Jefferson sought to accomplish by stealth
what he could not hope to do openly—to make the Declaration a charter of
freedom for slaves. With compassion and understanding he reminds one that Jef
ferson felt that emancipation and expatriation were feasible. Yet, the Virginian encountered powerful social and economic undercurrents which prohibited ef
forts to bring about this reform. In spite of his real and abiding abhorrence of
slavery, Jefferson was too much the political pragmatist, too intent upon achiev
ing lofty but realizable goals, and too much the product of his background as a
Virginia slaveholder to grapple with man's tyranny over man with the same fer vor he displayed in contending against British tyranny. Miller's Jefferson
emerges with greater luster if he is judged by his words rather than by his acts.
Miller lays to rest the political smear, recently revived, that Sally Hemings was Jefferson's mistress. He reveals the ambivalencies, limitations, and
strengths of Jefferson and affirms the "Jeffersonian tradition" in American
democracy. This is an excellent work, well written and scholarly—a must for the student
of Jefferson and slavery.
C. W. Harper North Carolina State University
C. W. Harper
A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South. By Drew Gilpin Faust. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Preface, epilogue, manuscript collections cited, notes, index. Pp. xii, 189. $11.00.)
This valuable study is about five archconservatives, and arch-egotists, too, of the Old South who corresponded with each other in "a sacred circle" of agree ment generally in their criticism of the South. These men all felt alienated from their society and rejected by it. Were they at fault for their belief that they were not appreciated, or was southern society at fault? To this reviewer, both were to blame.
The author, using modern psychological insights, has done an excellent job in
seeking to explain the characters of these men on the basis of their unhappy, ill
adjusted childhoods. They were left motherless at an early age, and at a forma
ra® NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW
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