ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Only one with a callous disregard for America’s national treasures would fail to recognize the extraordinary competence that Daniel P. Jordan, Monticello’s executive director for more than two decades, has brought to his job. I have Dan to thank not only for making the splendid new Jefferson Library accessible, but also for the warmth and intellectual enthusiasm he has conveyed over the years since I began to study in his neighborhood. During the summer of 2003, I received a generous research fellowship under the auspices of the International Center for Jefferson Studies.

The scope of scholarship that thrives at Monticello is impressive:

Cinder Stanton has produced studies of Jefferson and slavery, and Jefferson and literature. Her Free Some Day: The African-American Families at Monticello (2000) is outstanding, and her influence on my book has been pronounced. In The Worlds of Monticello (1993), Monticello’s curator, Susan Stein, wrote about everything that Jefferson collected that holds any interest for me. She, too, has been consistently supportive. Bob Self, who has explored Monticello’s recesses, opened up his country home, where he restores Jefferson’s material world.

Jefferson Looney, editor of the new Retirement Papers series at the Jefferson Library, has a staggering knowledge of the republic of letters. As he moves ahead in publishing the many critical documents that pertain to Jefferson’s retirement years, I hope my book will serve to attract more attention to the fine work already underway.

Conversations with Jill Anderson, also of the Papers, and research librarians Jack Robertson and Bryan Craig, made the investigative process friendlier and easier. Katherine Knisley, of the ICJS, coordinated everything so that my time as a fellow was productive. I am also grateful to Ann Lucas for sharing her inquiry into the travels of Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge; and to Andrew O’Shaughnessy, the new director of ICJS, for his encouragement.

Three other libraries were important in the research process: Alderman Library at the University of Virginia; the Huntington Library in San Marino, California; and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. For any historian who studies the republic of letters, nothing can replace access to personal texts and precious parchment.

A number of active scholars have contributed substantively to my work on Jefferson, and I wish to acknowledge their efforts as well: David Waldstreicher has a unique appreciation for the spirit of Jeffersonian Americans. I enjoy his scholarship, and I appreciate his good comments on key portions of the manuscript. Douglas Egerton aided in providing context on the subject of slavery and politics. Annette Gordon-Reed regularly challenges me to expand my understanding of Jefferson’s long problematic race-consciousness. Joseph J. Ellis, attuned to Virginia-Massachusetts tensions, argues persuasively with regard to the Jefferson-Adams dialogue, and I bear in mind his incisive critique.

Classicist Tom Benediktson was of immense help as I sought to better appreciate what drew Jefferson’s heart to ancient Greece. In his role as Dean of Arts & Sciences at the University of Tulsa, Tom has been encouraging on more than one front. Christine Ehrick and Andrew Grant Wood connected North and South American worldviews, as I aimed to encounter the varieties of knowledge and culture to which Jefferson was exposed. Jay H. Geller provided clarification of the career of Professor Ebeling of Hamburg, Germany; Laura Stevens gave a thoughtful review of the section on Jefferson’s reading habits; and John Bowlin read and reacted to the chapter on Jefferson’s religious views. My son Josh, now college-bound, freely gave his opinion on the readability of vital passages.

My partner, Nancy Isenberg, is a steady muse. This book was generated nearly as much by Nancy’s lively historical perspective, and our relentless backand-forth on daily walks, as by my own research and reflection. Watch for her forthcoming treatise on Aaron Burr!

I am especially grateful to two very understanding professionals who are devoted to the cause of history and who actively inspired the final product: Geri Thoma, my unfaltering literary agent, and the equally kind and resolute Liz Maguire, editor and publisher at Basic.

I leave for the ultimate acknowledgment my friend Peter Onuf, to whom I appreciatively dedicate this book. Peter has been a good-natured critic for more than a dozen years now. When I re-entered graduate school in quest of a Ph.D., after a “tentative” fifteen-year career in international business, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia facilitated the transition and taught me how to think and write as a historian. I have been out of graduate school a good while now, but Peter never ceases to prompt, stimulate, and bring cheer. Excepting his extraordinary tolerance for differences in style and opinion, I do not know anyone quite so well formed for academe as he. This book is just part of what I owe, Big Guy.