La démocratie aux extrêmes Book

This book was recommended reading for my high school AP American History course (1968) and has been on my reading list (and my bookshelf) ever since; I finally decided to read it for a Goodreads challenge to read something on Jefferson. The book was originally published in 1950.

Ostensibly an account of the life-long friendship/collaboration of Jefferson and Madison, it is (despite being based on original scholarship) actually a political rather than a scholarly book, designed both to idealize the two subjects and to bring them into the fold of New Deal Democratic Party liberalism. Although twentieth century concerns are not mentioned explicitly except in a very vague way, they seem to me to underlay much of the emphasis and selection of the material. The focus of the book is to emphasize Jefferson's position that the Constitution should be revised every generation to accommodate the current majority, while diminishing his strict constructionism (against those in the 1930s and 1940s who idolized the wisdom of the Constitution and the founders, as an argument for conservatism); to reinterpret the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions as a defense of civil liberties rather than "States' Rights" (the conservative code-word for preserving Jim Crow); and to suggest that the Supreme Court and the judiciary is more dangerous to liberty than the elected branches of government (an issue in the 30's; I wonder whether she would have emphasized this so much four years later, when it became a conservative argument against desegregation by court order.)

There was much of interest in the book about the history of the early republic, and particularly the struggles between the Federalists and the Republicans, but it is very selective. The biggest omission is any mention of slavery -- there is one paragraph on page 13 defending Jefferson as being against slavery (on the basis of a very early position he took in 1783) and that is literally the only mention of slavery in the entire book. After just finishing Edward Baptist's book which interprets the history of the U.S. from the Jefferson administration on as being mainly about slavery and its extension (this may be an exaggeration as well, but certainly the question was important from the beginning, and didn't just pop up at the time of the Missouri Compromise as one might gather from the usual high school history) it seemed very odd to hear Jefferson talking about the Louisiana Purchase as an "empire of liberty" without the author ever pointing out that it was in truth an empire of slavery. The entire account takes Jefferson's and Madison's rhetoric at face value, without questioning the actual tendency of their actions.

Partly of course, this was because of her interests in writing it, but it is also a symptom of the treatment of slavery and Jim Crow by American historians in general, compartmentalizing them in particular chapters as specific aberrations rather than showing them as important and even dominant factors in the general history of the country (apart from the immediate pre-Civil War period.)

I had expected to like this book, as I have always considered Jefferson and Madison as our most intelligent and among our best presidents -- as they were from a perspective of freedoms for white citizens. The country would have been much less democratic in the short term if the Hamiltonians had succeeded; but on the other hand, the North would have become dominant much earlier, had manufacturing been encouraged as Hamilton wanted. Certainly if one looks at their writings rather than their actions, Jefferson and Madison would have to be considered better than most of those who came after. I was struck by the way they emphasized education and tried to be as well read as possible; I can't help but contrast an incident in the 2008 U.S. election, where the Bush and Obama supporters argued about which candidate was better educated -- the Bush supporters accusing Obama of being better educated, and the Obama supporters retorting that Bush was. That sums up everything wrong with our electoral system today.

The book was worth reading, but not particularly great; and probably some at least has become outdated.