Jefferson’s Secrets

Jefferson’s Secrets (New York: Basic Books, 2005) is a portrait of Thomas Jefferson in the years after his retirement from the presidency, 1809-1826. It addresses questions about the ex-president’s personal and political legacies: How did Jefferson confront his own mortality? What were his views on religion and the possibility of an afterlife? Did he love his slave Sally Hemings, as the positive DNA test of 1998 has suggested to many, or did she merely satisfy his physical needs – or is there a richer explanation, based on medical and sexual knowledge and the particular moral considerations of Jefferson’s generation? And finally, how did Thomas Jefferson wish to be remembered?

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