Thanks Rod for the heads-up on Wallace's Jefferson book. I was too quick
to question Conor O'Brien's reading. Here are the reviews of this Oct.
'99 study, right off amazon.com:
From Kirkus Reviews
Returning to his interest in the native tribes (The Long
Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians, 1993,
etc.), Bancroft Prizewinning historian Wallace gives us a
book that immediately becomes the best among very few
other studies of its subject. The author, an
anthropologist deeply knowledgeable about American native
cultures, reveals his colors early on: Jefferson's acts
concerning the Indians were ``hypocritical, arbitrary,
duplicitous, even harsh,'' the Squire of Monticello
himself a liar and self-serving. While he studied the
natives, knew some, and thought carefully about their
lives and cultures, he could not rid himself of the
conviction that these American tribal peoples must either
become ``civilized''give up hunting and gathering, become
farmers, and adopt Euro-American waysor disappear. But
Jefferson didn't stop there: throughout his life, he
effectually harried the Indians into war, land cessions,
or flight and thus, in Wallace's view, must be held
responsible both for inaugurating the failed 19th-century
policy of removing the Indians to the far west and then
onto reservations and for their drastic decline in
numbers. This is a harsh indictment, made harsher still
by Wallace's inappropriate likening of Jefferson's
policies to genocide, a holocaust, and ethnic cleansing.
After all, neither Jefferson nor most of his
contemporaries sought the Indians' extermination. Yet,
fortunately, these overwrought anachronistic charges do
not affect much of the book, which otherwise makes clear
the complexities of native-European interaction in the
post-Revolutionary era. One result is that a reader comes
away from the book's pages less critical of Jefferson
than Wallace probably wishes, more accepting of the
limits upon Jefferson's misguided views, and deflated by
a sense of the near inevitability of the Indians' fate.
One wishes that Wallace had occasionally lifted his eyes
from the details of his subjectto compare, for example,
the contributions of Indian removal and slavery to white
man's democracy. A searching scholarly study of one of
the great American dilemmas. (60 photos, 3 maps) --
Copyright 1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights
reserved.
Drew McCoy, Clark University
Many have written ably on Thomas Jefferson and the
Indians, but none has succeeded in bringing together as
thoroughly and effectively as this book so many
different, relevant dimensions of that topic. This is a
rich, multidimensional book that offers a complex and
utterly convincing interpretation of Jefferson and the
first Americans. Anthony Wallace has succeeded in taking
a fresh and engaging look at the subject. His approach
and perspective are unique.
Gary B. Nash, University of California, Los Angeles
Wallace's study of the always enigmatic Jefferson will
shock many but enlighten all. This masterful account of
how the admirer and student of Indian languages and
character was also the architect of removal policy and
the grand rationalizer of cultural genocide is a
must-read for all who teach American history. The master
lesson of this absorbing book is how Jefferson's love of
minimal government and maximal individual freedom,
combined with his insatiable appetite for land, became
the perfect formula for seizing Indian land and
rationalizing the frontiersmen's ethnic cleansing.
Sean Wilentz, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History,
Princeton University
Anthony F. C. Wallace, one of our premier historical
anthropologists, has written a sober and troubling
reassessment of Thomas Jefferson and the American Indian.
Only a scholar as alive to paradox and tragedy as Wallace
is could have written such a fine book on such a
difficult subject.
Book Description
In Thomas Jefferson's time, white Americans were
bedeviled by a moral dilemma unyielding to reason and
sentiment: what to do about the presence of black slaves
and free Indians. That Jefferson himself was caught
between his own soaring rhetoric and private behavior
toward blacks has long been known. But the tortured
duality of his attitude toward Indians is only now being
unearthed. In this landmark history, Anthony Wallace
takes us on a tour of discovery to unexplored regions of
Jefferson's mind. There, the bookish Enlightenment
scholar-collector of Indian vocabularies, excavator of
ancient burial mounds, chronicler of the eloquence of
America's native peoples, and mourner of their tragic
fate-sits uncomfortably close to Jefferson the
imperialist and architect of Indian removal. Impelled by
the necessity of expanding his agrarian republic, he
became adept at putting a philosophical gloss on his
policy of encroachment, threats of war, and forced land
cessions-a policy that led, eventually, to cultural
genocide. In this compelling narrative, we see how
Jefferson's close relationships with frontier fighters
and Indian agents, land speculators and intrepid
explorers, European travelers, missionary scholars, and
the chiefs of many Indian nations all complicated his
views of the rights and claims of the first Americans.
Lavishly illustrated with scenes and portraits from the
period, Jefferson and the Indians adds a troubled
dimension to one of the most enigmatic figures of
American history, and to one of its most shameful
legacies.
From the Back Cover
A good, thorough, fair, balanced, detailed,
illuminating, clearly written, eminently sensible book.
How to appraise Thomas Jefferson--especially how to
reconcile his soul-stirring rhetoric with his less
soul-stirring actions--is a subject of constant, if
sometimes fevered, interest. The interpretive talents of
Anthony F. C. Wallace give us every good reason to
rejoice in the publication of this book. (Patricia
Nelson Limerick, University of Colorado, Boulder)
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Jon Stephen Miller
Managing Editor
Walt Whitman Quarterly Review
Department of English
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1492
[log in to unmask] (319) 335-0592
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