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In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson
"A major contribution." Washington Post
The authoritative single-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the most significant figure in American history. He was a complex and compelling a fervent advocate of democracy who enjoyed the life of a southern aristocrat and owned slaves, a revolutionary who became president, a believer in states' rights who did much to further the power of the federal government. Drawing on the recent explosion of Jeffersonian scholarship and fresh readings of original sources, IN PURSUIT OF REASON is a monument to Jefferson that will endure for generations.
The authoritative single-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the most significant figure in American history. He was a complex and compelling a fervent advocate of democracy who enjoyed the life of a southern aristocrat and owned slaves, a revolutionary who became president, a believer in states' rights who did much to further the power of the federal government. Drawing on the recent explosion of Jeffersonian scholarship and fresh readings of original sources, IN PURSUIT OF REASON is a monument to Jefferson that will endure for generations.
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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272 people want to read
About the author
Noble E. Cunningham Jr.
28 books3 followersOne of the foremost scholars of the life and thought of Thomas Jefferson, Noble E. Cunningham, Jr. served with the U.S. Army, 1944-1946, and received a B.A. from the University of Louisville in 1948. He earned his M.A. (1949) and Ph.D., with honors, from Duke University (1952). He taught at Wake Forest College and the University of Richmond before joining the history department of the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1964. There he served as associate professor, full professor, the Byler Distinguished Professor (1980-1981), the Frederick A. Middlebush Professor (1986-1988), and the Curators’ Professor of History (1988-1997). In 1997 he became Curators’ Professor of History Emeritus.
Cunningham was the recipient of several major awards and fellowships during his career. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and received fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Historical Publications Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a recipient of the University of Missouri Thomas Jefferson Award, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Medal, and the Missouri Conference of History Award. In 1994 he was selected to attend a formal dinner at the White House with other Jefferson scholars and President Clinton.
Cunningham’s exhaustive research in the Library of Congress and the National Archives underlay his pathbreaking explorations of early nineteenth-century American politics. His insights provided the foundation for the work of today’s historians of Jefferson and politics. Cunningham’s prolific scholarship has shaped our understanding not just of Jefferson but of the very nature and development of party politics in the early Republic. Cunningham’s first book, The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization, 1789-1801, was published exactly a half century ago. He proceeded to follow the Jeffersonian Republicans as they became the majority party in Congress and took control of the presidency in 1801. The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power: Party Operations, 1801-1809 (1963) examined issues of patronage (both the formation of a policy and the difficulties of putting it into practice), party machinery on the national and regional levels, and the broader subject of the party and the press, a topic that is significant for early American politics. The Process of Government Under Jefferson (1978) remains the cornerstone for any analysis of Jefferson’s presidency and indeed teaches us much about the evolution of the institution of the American presidency. It was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Over the course of his work, which included more than a dozen books and numerous articles, Cunningham developed a profound respect for the third president’s abilities to build a political party and a consensus. His biography of Jefferson, In Pursuit of Reason (1987), was translated into several languages, including Chinese.
—Barbara Oberg
Princeton University
Cunningham was the recipient of several major awards and fellowships during his career. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and received fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Historical Publications Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a recipient of the University of Missouri Thomas Jefferson Award, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Medal, and the Missouri Conference of History Award. In 1994 he was selected to attend a formal dinner at the White House with other Jefferson scholars and President Clinton.
Cunningham’s exhaustive research in the Library of Congress and the National Archives underlay his pathbreaking explorations of early nineteenth-century American politics. His insights provided the foundation for the work of today’s historians of Jefferson and politics. Cunningham’s prolific scholarship has shaped our understanding not just of Jefferson but of the very nature and development of party politics in the early Republic. Cunningham’s first book, The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization, 1789-1801, was published exactly a half century ago. He proceeded to follow the Jeffersonian Republicans as they became the majority party in Congress and took control of the presidency in 1801. The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power: Party Operations, 1801-1809 (1963) examined issues of patronage (both the formation of a policy and the difficulties of putting it into practice), party machinery on the national and regional levels, and the broader subject of the party and the press, a topic that is significant for early American politics. The Process of Government Under Jefferson (1978) remains the cornerstone for any analysis of Jefferson’s presidency and indeed teaches us much about the evolution of the institution of the American presidency. It was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Over the course of his work, which included more than a dozen books and numerous articles, Cunningham developed a profound respect for the third president’s abilities to build a political party and a consensus. His biography of Jefferson, In Pursuit of Reason (1987), was translated into several languages, including Chinese.
—Barbara Oberg
Princeton University
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February 17, 2025
In this concise, single-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson, one will find much that is helpful, though not much that is – if you will pardon the term – revolutionary. The title In Pursuit of Reason demonstrates author Noble Cunningham’s intent to present a relatively traditional portrait of Jefferson as the ultimate rationalist – someone who consistently sought to apply the rule of reason to human affairs, and who built his political ideology of republican democracy upon that basis.
Such a portrayal, of course, flies in the face of the slew of later works that have focused on the inconsistency between Jefferson’s advocacy of human liberty and his status as a slaveholder. Cunningham acknowledges that disconnect but does not dwell upon it. His Jefferson, by and large, is the man of the brilliant mind - the presidential polymath that generations of Americans were taught to admire and revere.
Cunningham, a professor of history at the University of Missouri, has written extensively on Jefferson and his time. His wish to write a one-volume biography that could capture Jefferson’s amazingly eventful and achievement-filled 83-year life in 349 pages may have proceeded from a couple of motivations. One could be that the pre-eminent Jefferson biography, Dumas Malone’s Jefferson and His Time, takes up six weighty volumes; who, other than the serious Jefferson scholar or the heavy-duty Jefferson fan, has time to read all that?
The other could be the tendency, even by 1987 when Cunningham first published this book, to focus on Jefferson’s personal life rather than his public achievements. Thirteen years earlier, in 1974, Fawn Brodie had published her book Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, in which Brodie became the first modern writer to suggest that there might be some basis to the old stories about Thomas Jefferson having had a sexual relationship with an enslaved woman named Sally Hemings. Cunningham writes slightingly of Brodie’s work; and while I was reading the book, I felt as if Cunningham was saying, “Let’s dispense with all this personal stuff and get back to the real subject” – that real subject being, as far as Cunningham is concerned, Jefferson’s public achievements.
Those public achievements are here, along with many of the details of an eventful life – Jefferson’s birth into a wealthy and influential Virginia family; his education at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg; the beginnings of his public life with his election to Virginia’s House of Burgesses, and his authorship there of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom; his selection as part of Virginia’s delegation to the Second Continental Congress; his authorship of the Declaration of Independence (Cunningham rightly calls it “the most cherished document in American history” on page 51); his stormy term as wartime Governor of Virginia; his time as Minister to France; his service as Secretary of State, during the first term of George Washington’s presidency; his time as John Adams’s vice-president; his two terms as third president of the United States; and finally his years of retirement at Monticello, during which he founded the University of Virginia. Just trying to cover all of that in 349 pages seems like a bold endeavor.
As a number of Cunningham’s other works on Jefferson focus on Jefferson as a party leader and governing president, the chapters of In Pursuit of Reason that focus on Jefferson’s leadership of the nascent Republican party (later the Democratic-Republican party, now the Democratic Party) and on his two terms as president, are particularly strong. I have to say that Cunningham's accounts of the inter-party struggles between Thomas Jefferson as leader of the Democratic-Republican party and Alexander Hamilton as head of the Federalist party cover neither man in glory.
Cunningham is frank about the successes of Jefferson’s first term – most notably, the Louisiana Purchase, where Jefferson moved boldly to double the size of the United States even though the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France involved a “constitutional issue [that] posed a dilemma for the strict-constructionist president” (p. 266).
Cunningham is equally frank about the travails of Jefferson’s second term, such as an embargo policy that was so unsuccessful that Jefferson seems to have been eager to let go the reins of government, even before his term as president formally ended. Cunningham suggests that
Jefferson’s abdication of leadership during his last months as president can be explained in part by his resentment of President Adams, who at the end of his presidency filled offices and signed bills that would inhibit his successor….But this was inadequate justification for his premature retirement from leadership in a government that was to remain under the control of many of the same people and the same political party, and it detracts from the record of his presidency. (p. 318)
Cunningham’s judgments of Jefferson’s attitudes and actions with regard to race and slavery seem comparably judicious and well-grounded: “To the twentieth-century mind Jefferson’s views on race stand in contrast to the liberal stance that he took on most of the major issues of his day; yet his repeated condemnation of the institution of slavery and his insistent arguments that steps must be taken to bring it to an end placed him in advance of most – but far from all – eighteenth-century persons” (p. 62).
His verdict regarding Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings – “The evidence indicates that any Paris romance between Jefferson and Sally Hemings belongs in a work of fiction, not of history” (p. 116) – probably would have been a widely agreed-upon verdict in 1987; but that was before 1998, and the DNA study that provided genetic evidence that Jefferson and Sally Hemings had children together.
How are we to look at Thomas Jefferson? Earlier generations tended to give him a bit of a pass – “Yes, yes, he was a slaveholder; but he wrote the Declaration of Independence!” More recently, the formula has been reversed: “Yes, yes, he wrote the Declaration of Independence; but he was a slaveholder!”
Perhaps the proper coordinating conjunction is not but, but rather and. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, and he was a slaveholder. Jefferson was a slaveholder, and he wrote the Declaration of Independence. In confronting that paradox, we can begin the work that is still to be done in terms of achieving greater understanding about Thomas Jefferson, and about race in America.
Noble Cunningham’s In Pursuit of Reason is Jefferson biography of the old style, not the new style; but for the reader who is new to Jefferson studies, and wants to start gaining a sense of the complexity of Jefferson and his time, it is a good place to start.
Such a portrayal, of course, flies in the face of the slew of later works that have focused on the inconsistency between Jefferson’s advocacy of human liberty and his status as a slaveholder. Cunningham acknowledges that disconnect but does not dwell upon it. His Jefferson, by and large, is the man of the brilliant mind - the presidential polymath that generations of Americans were taught to admire and revere.
Cunningham, a professor of history at the University of Missouri, has written extensively on Jefferson and his time. His wish to write a one-volume biography that could capture Jefferson’s amazingly eventful and achievement-filled 83-year life in 349 pages may have proceeded from a couple of motivations. One could be that the pre-eminent Jefferson biography, Dumas Malone’s Jefferson and His Time, takes up six weighty volumes; who, other than the serious Jefferson scholar or the heavy-duty Jefferson fan, has time to read all that?
The other could be the tendency, even by 1987 when Cunningham first published this book, to focus on Jefferson’s personal life rather than his public achievements. Thirteen years earlier, in 1974, Fawn Brodie had published her book Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, in which Brodie became the first modern writer to suggest that there might be some basis to the old stories about Thomas Jefferson having had a sexual relationship with an enslaved woman named Sally Hemings. Cunningham writes slightingly of Brodie’s work; and while I was reading the book, I felt as if Cunningham was saying, “Let’s dispense with all this personal stuff and get back to the real subject” – that real subject being, as far as Cunningham is concerned, Jefferson’s public achievements.
Those public achievements are here, along with many of the details of an eventful life – Jefferson’s birth into a wealthy and influential Virginia family; his education at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg; the beginnings of his public life with his election to Virginia’s House of Burgesses, and his authorship there of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom; his selection as part of Virginia’s delegation to the Second Continental Congress; his authorship of the Declaration of Independence (Cunningham rightly calls it “the most cherished document in American history” on page 51); his stormy term as wartime Governor of Virginia; his time as Minister to France; his service as Secretary of State, during the first term of George Washington’s presidency; his time as John Adams’s vice-president; his two terms as third president of the United States; and finally his years of retirement at Monticello, during which he founded the University of Virginia. Just trying to cover all of that in 349 pages seems like a bold endeavor.
As a number of Cunningham’s other works on Jefferson focus on Jefferson as a party leader and governing president, the chapters of In Pursuit of Reason that focus on Jefferson’s leadership of the nascent Republican party (later the Democratic-Republican party, now the Democratic Party) and on his two terms as president, are particularly strong. I have to say that Cunningham's accounts of the inter-party struggles between Thomas Jefferson as leader of the Democratic-Republican party and Alexander Hamilton as head of the Federalist party cover neither man in glory.
Cunningham is frank about the successes of Jefferson’s first term – most notably, the Louisiana Purchase, where Jefferson moved boldly to double the size of the United States even though the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France involved a “constitutional issue [that] posed a dilemma for the strict-constructionist president” (p. 266).
Cunningham is equally frank about the travails of Jefferson’s second term, such as an embargo policy that was so unsuccessful that Jefferson seems to have been eager to let go the reins of government, even before his term as president formally ended. Cunningham suggests that
Jefferson’s abdication of leadership during his last months as president can be explained in part by his resentment of President Adams, who at the end of his presidency filled offices and signed bills that would inhibit his successor….But this was inadequate justification for his premature retirement from leadership in a government that was to remain under the control of many of the same people and the same political party, and it detracts from the record of his presidency. (p. 318)
Cunningham’s judgments of Jefferson’s attitudes and actions with regard to race and slavery seem comparably judicious and well-grounded: “To the twentieth-century mind Jefferson’s views on race stand in contrast to the liberal stance that he took on most of the major issues of his day; yet his repeated condemnation of the institution of slavery and his insistent arguments that steps must be taken to bring it to an end placed him in advance of most – but far from all – eighteenth-century persons” (p. 62).
His verdict regarding Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings – “The evidence indicates that any Paris romance between Jefferson and Sally Hemings belongs in a work of fiction, not of history” (p. 116) – probably would have been a widely agreed-upon verdict in 1987; but that was before 1998, and the DNA study that provided genetic evidence that Jefferson and Sally Hemings had children together.
How are we to look at Thomas Jefferson? Earlier generations tended to give him a bit of a pass – “Yes, yes, he was a slaveholder; but he wrote the Declaration of Independence!” More recently, the formula has been reversed: “Yes, yes, he wrote the Declaration of Independence; but he was a slaveholder!”
Perhaps the proper coordinating conjunction is not but, but rather and. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, and he was a slaveholder. Jefferson was a slaveholder, and he wrote the Declaration of Independence. In confronting that paradox, we can begin the work that is still to be done in terms of achieving greater understanding about Thomas Jefferson, and about race in America.
Noble Cunningham’s In Pursuit of Reason is Jefferson biography of the old style, not the new style; but for the reader who is new to Jefferson studies, and wants to start gaining a sense of the complexity of Jefferson and his time, it is a good place to start.
February 14, 2021
I have read several books about Jefferson, and this was one of the best. The book covered everything from his early pre-Revolution life up to his creation of the University of Virginia.
It gave some good clarity on the powder keg relationship between Jefferson and Hamilton and between Jefferson and Adams (for example, Adams packing the courts with Federalist judges just before leaving office).
One of my favorite parts of American history is the re-kindling of the relationship between Jefferson and Adams through their letters in their later years. One thing that I did not know, that the book pointed out, was that Jefferson began this correspondence with Abigail Adams first. She was not able to convince her husband to write to Jefferson; that came later with a little help from Benjamin Rush (which I had known from other books).
The book also gave me a clearer understanding of one of the main causes of the War of 1812, the use of impressment by the British Navy.
All in all, I liked this book a lot.
It gave some good clarity on the powder keg relationship between Jefferson and Hamilton and between Jefferson and Adams (for example, Adams packing the courts with Federalist judges just before leaving office).
One of my favorite parts of American history is the re-kindling of the relationship between Jefferson and Adams through their letters in their later years. One thing that I did not know, that the book pointed out, was that Jefferson began this correspondence with Abigail Adams first. She was not able to convince her husband to write to Jefferson; that came later with a little help from Benjamin Rush (which I had known from other books).
The book also gave me a clearer understanding of one of the main causes of the War of 1812, the use of impressment by the British Navy.
All in all, I liked this book a lot.
March 25, 2025
Great biography of Thomas Jefferson.
September 6, 2012
The subtitle of this biography of Thomas Jefferson is "In Pursuit of Reason" and that theme is expanded upon in the quote by Jefferson with which Cunningham chose to head the text: It rests now with ourselves alone to enjoy in peace and concord the blessings of self-government, so long denied to mankind: to show by example the sufficiency of human reason for the care of human affairs and that the will of the majority, the Natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man. That quote captures how Jefferson saw the connections between his life, reason and politics. You can see it in his passion for education, architecture, books, in so many of the details of his life and expressed so eloquently in his speeches and writings. His intellect was so dazzling, his defense of liberty and democracy so inspiring--and then there's slavery.
It's said slavery is America's "original sin." Except there was nothing original about it. It was as old and wide-spread as mankind when America was young. So I do tend to make allowances for the times. But the picture Cunningham presents makes the question of slavery and Jefferson, if not exactly worse, well, then complicated, and very perplexing. As a young lawyer, Jefferson took on cases that challenged the ownership of slaves--for free. Early on he'd make arguments in such cases about the right of every human being to freedom as their birthright. He'd write a condemnation of slavery into the Declaration of Independence (cut by others) and wrote a provision--which didn't pass--into a draft of the Virginia constitution emancipating slaves. For the rest of his life he maintained the institution of slavery was evil and threatened the very republic he had helped create. Yet Flexner, in his biography of George Washington, compared Washington's treatment of his slaves to Jefferson--and the contrasts are telling. There was no rumor Washington ever sexually exploited his slaves, and he refused to sell them or even move them without their consent. He grew increasingly disturbed by slavery and towards the end of his life turned his beloved Mount Vernon upside down to prepare his slaves to be freed, and he did so in his will, providing pensions for those not able to work as well as providing for the education of those still children. You can't say any of that in defense of Jefferson according to Flexner. Cunningham does deny Jefferson's slave Sally Hemings was ever his mistress, saying that belongs "to fiction, not history." (The book was published in 1987, before the DNA tests in 1998 that substantiated the Jefferson/Hemings relationship). Cunningham also claimed Jefferson "never grew wealthy on slave labor" but admitted Jefferson sold slaves "to pay his creditors." He also admitted that Jefferson, unlike Washington, never intended to free his slaves. So in the end it's hard not to conclude that when it comes to slavery, Washington did better, while you can't deny that Jefferson knew better--that he did know owning human beings demeaned the owned and owner both. I don't think anything I read in this biography really resolves that conundrum.
The other issue the biographies of Washington and Adams I recently read brought to the fore was Jefferson's conduct as one of the founders of the first American political parties, the Democratic-Republicans, particularly in opposition to Alexander Hamilton and his Federalists. Flexner's account reflected well on neither Jefferson nor Hamilton. Ferling, in his biography of Adams, excoriates Hamilton and the Federalists, claiming they served to "enrich the few" and "foster corruption," that Hamilton had a "low, cunning dishonesty" and Washington was Hamilton's "puppet." I didn't expect Cunningham would take the Federalist side in this, and I think I can detect an understandable bias towards the subject of his biography, but to his credit he's much more fair than Ferling to both sides, presenting actions that do not reflect well on Jefferson and his Democratic-Republicans, even if he doesn't address some of the worst things of which Flexner accuses Jefferson. And he makes it clear Washington was no puppet but tried hard to reconcile Jefferson and Hamilton, both members of his cabinet. And really, in the end I find it hard to be shocked or condemn Jefferson for *gasp* acting like a politician rather than an aloof philosopher-king.
Rather, in the end, despite his flaws, the biography leaves me with a great appreciation of all that Jefferson contributed to America. Flexner justifiably claimed for George Washington that he promulgated and preserved a republican form of government. Ferling highlighted the ways John Adams secured American independence, not just in breaking from Great Britain, but in avoiding domination by Britain or France. If Jefferson's contribution could be summed up in one word, it would be: democracy. Jefferson's legacy included fostering religious freedom, public education, widening of the political franchise and helping to create the American political party as a way to channel political conflict and the will of the people. This is a fairly short biography--only 349 pages. Given all Jefferson witnessed, participated in and accomplished in his long life, this can only give an outline of this complex man and his accomplishments, but there's certainly plenty I learned reading the book, and I certainly was never bored.
It's said slavery is America's "original sin." Except there was nothing original about it. It was as old and wide-spread as mankind when America was young. So I do tend to make allowances for the times. But the picture Cunningham presents makes the question of slavery and Jefferson, if not exactly worse, well, then complicated, and very perplexing. As a young lawyer, Jefferson took on cases that challenged the ownership of slaves--for free. Early on he'd make arguments in such cases about the right of every human being to freedom as their birthright. He'd write a condemnation of slavery into the Declaration of Independence (cut by others) and wrote a provision--which didn't pass--into a draft of the Virginia constitution emancipating slaves. For the rest of his life he maintained the institution of slavery was evil and threatened the very republic he had helped create. Yet Flexner, in his biography of George Washington, compared Washington's treatment of his slaves to Jefferson--and the contrasts are telling. There was no rumor Washington ever sexually exploited his slaves, and he refused to sell them or even move them without their consent. He grew increasingly disturbed by slavery and towards the end of his life turned his beloved Mount Vernon upside down to prepare his slaves to be freed, and he did so in his will, providing pensions for those not able to work as well as providing for the education of those still children. You can't say any of that in defense of Jefferson according to Flexner. Cunningham does deny Jefferson's slave Sally Hemings was ever his mistress, saying that belongs "to fiction, not history." (The book was published in 1987, before the DNA tests in 1998 that substantiated the Jefferson/Hemings relationship). Cunningham also claimed Jefferson "never grew wealthy on slave labor" but admitted Jefferson sold slaves "to pay his creditors." He also admitted that Jefferson, unlike Washington, never intended to free his slaves. So in the end it's hard not to conclude that when it comes to slavery, Washington did better, while you can't deny that Jefferson knew better--that he did know owning human beings demeaned the owned and owner both. I don't think anything I read in this biography really resolves that conundrum.
The other issue the biographies of Washington and Adams I recently read brought to the fore was Jefferson's conduct as one of the founders of the first American political parties, the Democratic-Republicans, particularly in opposition to Alexander Hamilton and his Federalists. Flexner's account reflected well on neither Jefferson nor Hamilton. Ferling, in his biography of Adams, excoriates Hamilton and the Federalists, claiming they served to "enrich the few" and "foster corruption," that Hamilton had a "low, cunning dishonesty" and Washington was Hamilton's "puppet." I didn't expect Cunningham would take the Federalist side in this, and I think I can detect an understandable bias towards the subject of his biography, but to his credit he's much more fair than Ferling to both sides, presenting actions that do not reflect well on Jefferson and his Democratic-Republicans, even if he doesn't address some of the worst things of which Flexner accuses Jefferson. And he makes it clear Washington was no puppet but tried hard to reconcile Jefferson and Hamilton, both members of his cabinet. And really, in the end I find it hard to be shocked or condemn Jefferson for *gasp* acting like a politician rather than an aloof philosopher-king.
Rather, in the end, despite his flaws, the biography leaves me with a great appreciation of all that Jefferson contributed to America. Flexner justifiably claimed for George Washington that he promulgated and preserved a republican form of government. Ferling highlighted the ways John Adams secured American independence, not just in breaking from Great Britain, but in avoiding domination by Britain or France. If Jefferson's contribution could be summed up in one word, it would be: democracy. Jefferson's legacy included fostering religious freedom, public education, widening of the political franchise and helping to create the American political party as a way to channel political conflict and the will of the people. This is a fairly short biography--only 349 pages. Given all Jefferson witnessed, participated in and accomplished in his long life, this can only give an outline of this complex man and his accomplishments, but there's certainly plenty I learned reading the book, and I certainly was never bored.
September 24, 2019
Great work! Insightful and succinct, a must read for any historian or political scientist!
June 25, 2014
I found this succinct, one-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson to be well-written and effective, though not – if you will pardon the term – revolutionary. The title In Pursuit of Reason demonstrates author Noble Cunningham’s intent to present a relatively traditional portrait of Jefferson as the ultimate rationalist – someone who consistently sought to apply the rule of reason to human affairs, and who built his political ideology of republican democracy upon that basis. Such a portrayal, of course, flies in the face of the slew of later works that have focused on the inconsistency between Jefferson’s advocacy of human liberty and his status as a slaveholder. Cunningham acknowledges that disconnect but does not dwell upon it. His Jefferson, by and large, is the man of the brilliant mind that generations of Americans were taught to admire and revere.
Cunningham, a professor of history at the University of Missouri, has written extensively on Jefferson and his time. His wish to write a one-volume biography that could capture Jefferson’s amazingly eventful and achievement-filled 83-year life in 349 pages may have proceeded from a couple of motivations. One could be that the pre-eminent Jefferson biography, Dumas Malone’s Jefferson and His Time, takes up six weighty volumes; who, other than the serious Jefferson scholar or the heavy-duty Jefferson fan, has time to read all that? The other could be the tendency, even by 1987 when Cunningham first published this book, to focus on Jefferson’s personal life rather than his public achievements. Thirteen years earlier, Fawn Brodie had published her Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, in which Brodie became the first modern writer to suggest that their might be some basis to the old stories about Thomas Jefferson having had a sexual relationship with an enslaved woman named Sally Hemings. Cunningham writes slightingly of Brodie’s work; and while I was reading the book, I felt as if Cunningham was saying, “Let’s dispense with all this personal stuff and get back to the real subject” – that real subject being, as far as Cunningham is concerned, Jefferson’s public achievements.
Those public achievements are here, along with many of the details of an eventful life – Jefferson’s birth into a wealthy and influential Virginia family; his education at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg; the beginnings of his public life with his election to Virginia’s House of Burgesses, and his authorship there of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom; his selection as part of Virginia’s delegation to the Second Continental Congress; his authorship of the Declaration of Independence; his stormy term as wartime Governor of Virginia; his time as Minister to France; his service as Secretary of State, during the first term of George Washington’s presidency; his time as John Adams’s vice-president; his two terms as third president of the United States; and finally his years of retirement at Monticello, during which he founded the University of Virginia. Just trying to cover all of that in 349 pages seems like a bold endeavor.
As a number of Cunningham’s other works on Jefferson focus on Jefferson as a party leader and governing president, the chapters of In Pursuit of Reason that focus on Jefferson’s leadership of the nascent Republican party (later the Democratic-Republican party, now the Democratic Party) and on his two terms as president, are particularly strong. Cunningham is frank about the successes of Jefferson’s first term – most notably, the Louisiana Purchase, where Jefferson moved boldly to double the size of the United States even though the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France involved a “constitutional issue [that] posed a dilemma for the strict-constructionist president” (p. 266) – and about the travails of Jefferson’s second term, such as an embargo policy that was so unsuccessful that Jefferson seems to have been eager to let go the reins of government, even before his term as president formally ended. Cunningham suggests that “Jefferson’s abdication of leadership during his last months as president can be explained in part by his resentment of President Adams, who at the end of his presidency filled offices and signed bills that would inhibit his successor….But this was inadequate justification for his premature retirement from leadership in a government that was to remain under the control of many of the same people and the same political party, and it detracts from the record of his presidency” (p. 318).
Cunningham’s judgments of Jefferson’s attitudes and actions with regard to race and slavery seem comparably judicious and well-grounded: “To the twentieth-century mind Jefferson’s views on race stand in contrast to the liberal stance that he took on most of the major issues of his day; yet his repeated condemnation of the institution of slavery and his insistent arguments that steps must be taken to bring it to an end placed him in advance of most – but far from all – eighteenth-century persons” (p. 62). His verdict regarding Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings – “The evidence indicates that any Paris romance between Jefferson and Sally Hemings belongs in a work of fiction, not of history” (p. 116) – probably would have been a widely agreed-upon verdict in 1987; but that was before 1998, and the DNA study that provided genetic evidence that Jefferson and Sally Hemings had children together.
How are we to look at Thomas Jefferson? Earlier generations tended to give him a bit of a pass – “Yes, yes, he was a slaveholder; but he wrote the Declaration of Independence!” More recently, the formula has been reversed: “Yes, yes, he wrote the Declaration of Independence; but he was a slaveholder!” Perhaps the proper coordinating conjunction is not but, but rather and. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, and he was a slaveholder. Jefferson was a slaveholder, and he wrote the Declaration of Independence. In confronting that paradox, we can begin the work that is still to be done in terms of achieving greater understanding about Thomas Jefferson, and about race in America. Noble Cunningham’s In Pursuit of Reason is Jefferson biography of the old style, not the new style; but for the reader who is new to Jefferson studies, and wants to start gaining a sense of the complexity of Jefferson and his time, it is a good place to start.
Cunningham, a professor of history at the University of Missouri, has written extensively on Jefferson and his time. His wish to write a one-volume biography that could capture Jefferson’s amazingly eventful and achievement-filled 83-year life in 349 pages may have proceeded from a couple of motivations. One could be that the pre-eminent Jefferson biography, Dumas Malone’s Jefferson and His Time, takes up six weighty volumes; who, other than the serious Jefferson scholar or the heavy-duty Jefferson fan, has time to read all that? The other could be the tendency, even by 1987 when Cunningham first published this book, to focus on Jefferson’s personal life rather than his public achievements. Thirteen years earlier, Fawn Brodie had published her Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, in which Brodie became the first modern writer to suggest that their might be some basis to the old stories about Thomas Jefferson having had a sexual relationship with an enslaved woman named Sally Hemings. Cunningham writes slightingly of Brodie’s work; and while I was reading the book, I felt as if Cunningham was saying, “Let’s dispense with all this personal stuff and get back to the real subject” – that real subject being, as far as Cunningham is concerned, Jefferson’s public achievements.
Those public achievements are here, along with many of the details of an eventful life – Jefferson’s birth into a wealthy and influential Virginia family; his education at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg; the beginnings of his public life with his election to Virginia’s House of Burgesses, and his authorship there of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom; his selection as part of Virginia’s delegation to the Second Continental Congress; his authorship of the Declaration of Independence; his stormy term as wartime Governor of Virginia; his time as Minister to France; his service as Secretary of State, during the first term of George Washington’s presidency; his time as John Adams’s vice-president; his two terms as third president of the United States; and finally his years of retirement at Monticello, during which he founded the University of Virginia. Just trying to cover all of that in 349 pages seems like a bold endeavor.
As a number of Cunningham’s other works on Jefferson focus on Jefferson as a party leader and governing president, the chapters of In Pursuit of Reason that focus on Jefferson’s leadership of the nascent Republican party (later the Democratic-Republican party, now the Democratic Party) and on his two terms as president, are particularly strong. Cunningham is frank about the successes of Jefferson’s first term – most notably, the Louisiana Purchase, where Jefferson moved boldly to double the size of the United States even though the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France involved a “constitutional issue [that] posed a dilemma for the strict-constructionist president” (p. 266) – and about the travails of Jefferson’s second term, such as an embargo policy that was so unsuccessful that Jefferson seems to have been eager to let go the reins of government, even before his term as president formally ended. Cunningham suggests that “Jefferson’s abdication of leadership during his last months as president can be explained in part by his resentment of President Adams, who at the end of his presidency filled offices and signed bills that would inhibit his successor….But this was inadequate justification for his premature retirement from leadership in a government that was to remain under the control of many of the same people and the same political party, and it detracts from the record of his presidency” (p. 318).
Cunningham’s judgments of Jefferson’s attitudes and actions with regard to race and slavery seem comparably judicious and well-grounded: “To the twentieth-century mind Jefferson’s views on race stand in contrast to the liberal stance that he took on most of the major issues of his day; yet his repeated condemnation of the institution of slavery and his insistent arguments that steps must be taken to bring it to an end placed him in advance of most – but far from all – eighteenth-century persons” (p. 62). His verdict regarding Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings – “The evidence indicates that any Paris romance between Jefferson and Sally Hemings belongs in a work of fiction, not of history” (p. 116) – probably would have been a widely agreed-upon verdict in 1987; but that was before 1998, and the DNA study that provided genetic evidence that Jefferson and Sally Hemings had children together.
How are we to look at Thomas Jefferson? Earlier generations tended to give him a bit of a pass – “Yes, yes, he was a slaveholder; but he wrote the Declaration of Independence!” More recently, the formula has been reversed: “Yes, yes, he wrote the Declaration of Independence; but he was a slaveholder!” Perhaps the proper coordinating conjunction is not but, but rather and. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, and he was a slaveholder. Jefferson was a slaveholder, and he wrote the Declaration of Independence. In confronting that paradox, we can begin the work that is still to be done in terms of achieving greater understanding about Thomas Jefferson, and about race in America. Noble Cunningham’s In Pursuit of Reason is Jefferson biography of the old style, not the new style; but for the reader who is new to Jefferson studies, and wants to start gaining a sense of the complexity of Jefferson and his time, it is a good place to start.
June 11, 2024
I found this helpful in dispelling persistent myths that surround Thomas Jefferson and understanding him better as an individual as well as a political figure. It’s also a relief to read that politics were just as underhanded, petty, and spiteful back then. We seem to have this idea that they were all great chums and worked well together.
Favorite quotes:
“I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more.” – Thomas Jefferson
“However much Jefferson disapproved of slavery, by transferring the ownership of these slaves to his daughter and her descendants, Jefferson was helping to perpetuate the system that he deplored.”
“It was fitting that Jefferson should have been the first president inaugurated in Washington, and it was symbolic of the old order’s bitterness over the change of administration that President Adams departed the capital at four o’ clock in the morning to avoid witnessing the transition of power.”
Favorite quotes:
“I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more.” – Thomas Jefferson
“However much Jefferson disapproved of slavery, by transferring the ownership of these slaves to his daughter and her descendants, Jefferson was helping to perpetuate the system that he deplored.”
“It was fitting that Jefferson should have been the first president inaugurated in Washington, and it was symbolic of the old order’s bitterness over the change of administration that President Adams departed the capital at four o’ clock in the morning to avoid witnessing the transition of power.”
November 8, 2024
This was an excellent biography of Jefferson that focused mainly on his public life, though gave some attention to his private life as well.
Cunningham explores the roots and influences of Jefferson’s political theory early in his life and then proceeds to explore how it developed over the course of his public career. He states in the prologue that this is the focus of his book and it works very well, as by limiting his focus he is able to piece together a cogent and convincing narrative in the short span of 350 pages.
This book would serve as a great first pass at Jefferson for those interested in his life and contribution to the nation’s founding.
Cunningham explores the roots and influences of Jefferson’s political theory early in his life and then proceeds to explore how it developed over the course of his public career. He states in the prologue that this is the focus of his book and it works very well, as by limiting his focus he is able to piece together a cogent and convincing narrative in the short span of 350 pages.
This book would serve as a great first pass at Jefferson for those interested in his life and contribution to the nation’s founding.
December 6, 2025
I managed to drag this one out. Out of the first three presidents biographies, this has been the least interesting by far. I don’t think that is because Jefferson was, just that the author didn’t write very compellingly.
I’m sure you can find more interesting biographies of this man. Now I’m on to Madison.
I’m sure you can find more interesting biographies of this man. Now I’m on to Madison.
February 9, 2020
Very indepth bio of Jefferson that covers all his chapters of his very illustrious life. Other biographies might be more indepth in some areas, but this one covered much of everything.
Read
April 26, 2024A very concise biography of our third President, not burden with too much detail. A very informative read and what a time in the history of our nation to have re-read this book.
March 1, 2015
Some historians say that Thomas Jefferson was the greatest of America's founding fathers. Noble E Cunningham makes a splendid effort to support this assertion in this highly detailed account of Jefferson's pursuit of reason.
That Jefferson was a man of firm convictions has been recorded in numerous accounts of his life. What needs to be addressed in addition to his accomplishments, which Cunningham to a large extent has done, is Jefferson's fervor to ensure man's rightful place in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Pundits love to proclaim that Jefferson was a spoiled and haughty gentleman of privilege, that he did not truly give a damn about common folk, that he was merely a deist in his relationship with God, and that the horrors of manumission bothered him little.
Jefferson loved the Declaration of Independence, his Notes on the State of Virginia, and was most proud of his success in building the University of Virginia. A man of many talents, Jefferson loved Monticello, farming, architecture, his books, and his friendships with fellow founders Washington and Madison, most of all John Adams, and even with the sometimes recalcitrant Alexander Hamilton. Maria Cosway proved to be a delight as well.
Pay attention when reading this book, for there are many unknown revelations about Jefferson's character and his relationships with friends and foes alike.
That Jefferson was a man of firm convictions has been recorded in numerous accounts of his life. What needs to be addressed in addition to his accomplishments, which Cunningham to a large extent has done, is Jefferson's fervor to ensure man's rightful place in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Pundits love to proclaim that Jefferson was a spoiled and haughty gentleman of privilege, that he did not truly give a damn about common folk, that he was merely a deist in his relationship with God, and that the horrors of manumission bothered him little.
Jefferson loved the Declaration of Independence, his Notes on the State of Virginia, and was most proud of his success in building the University of Virginia. A man of many talents, Jefferson loved Monticello, farming, architecture, his books, and his friendships with fellow founders Washington and Madison, most of all John Adams, and even with the sometimes recalcitrant Alexander Hamilton. Maria Cosway proved to be a delight as well.
Pay attention when reading this book, for there are many unknown revelations about Jefferson's character and his relationships with friends and foes alike.
January 5, 2011
I found this book to be quite abysmal. The author states he set out to write a more accessible biography of Jefferson for the casual reader but in the end has created something entirely useless for anyone who does not already know just about everything about Jeffersons acheivements. Most of the space that could have been spent talking about his actual accomplishments is instead taken up with commentaries and refutations of the most dismal scholarly minutia. The only mention of his relationship with Miss Hemmings is to tell us that there is no evidence it started in France. The fact that Jefferson later had four children by Miss Hemmings, a fact not even alluded to during what is supposed to be a biography of Jefferson. His relationship with Miss Hemmings and the emancipation of his children by her is crucial to any study of Jefferson because of it's impact on his relationship to the question of slavery, and the fundamental contradiction of Jeffersons life. This is only one of many omissions or bizarre and glancing treatments of the most important parts of Jeffersons life.
Read the wikipedia page.
Read the wikipedia page.
December 10, 2010
This was just what it purported to be, a one volume, accessible biography of Jefferson. Not a scholarly historian, but interested in history, and particularly early 19th century America, I found this book was instructive and, except for minute details of political maneuverings, which got way too specific, very readable.
Read
August 8, 2008This was going to be Book Three in the President Project, but after more than fifty pages, I still wasn't at all engaged. I thoght Jefferson deserved better, so I went off in search of a bio that would suit me.
December 1, 2010
Thomas Jefferson led a fascinating life - one difficult to capture in a single volume.
Cunningham does a pretty good job of providing the postitive and negative of Jefferson's life (though he is quite dismissive of the Hemings affair).
Cunningham does a pretty good job of providing the postitive and negative of Jefferson's life (though he is quite dismissive of the Hemings affair).
June 12, 2011
I forget the reason why I ended up reading this book, but I'm fairly sure it was for a research paper. Whatever the reason, I did read it, and it is a rather good book to use for reference and no where nearly as dry as some history texts I've had the dubious pleasure of reading.
August 2, 2007
This is not the most robust of the many available Jefferson biographies but not a bad entry. Casual readers might start here rather than with a more detailed volume.
March 20, 2009
A straight forward biography, not riveting, but balanced and a good start for a one volume book.
Read
September 23, 2010In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson by Noble E. Jr Cunningham (1988)
December 27, 2010
see A. P. History 1 binder--Thomas Jefferson biography
Read
February 11, 2013It was just ok. Very clinical. About his career as a politician.
January 7, 2014
Interesting but dry.
Read
October 29, 2008Interesting history.
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