Master of the Mountain

By Henry Wiencek

Book Overview

Henry Wiencek's eloquent, persuasive Master of the Mountain--based on new information coming from archival research, archaeological work at Monticello, and hitherto overlooked or disregarded evidence in Thomas Jefferson's own papers--opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson's faraway world. We must, Wiencek suggests, follow the money.

Wiencek's Jefferson is a man of business and public affairs who makes a success of his debt-ridden plantation thanks to what he calls the "silent profit" gained from his slaves--and thanks to the skewed morals of the political and social world that he and thousands of others readily inhabited. It is not a pretty story. Slave boys are whipped to make them work in the nail factory at Monticello that pays Jefferson's grocery bills. Slaves are bought, sold, given as gifts, and used as collateral for the loan that pays for Monticello's construction--while Jefferson composes theories that obscure the dynamics of what he himself called "the execrable commerce." Many people saw a catastrophe coming and tried to stop it, but not Jefferson. The pursuit of happiness had become deeply corrupted, and an oligarchy was getting very rich. Is this the quintessential American story?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374534020
• ISBN13: 9780374534028
• Release Date: September 2013
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.03 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Full of Information, Well-Written, Unique

I really liked the pacing of the book. The obvious question now-a-days is all around Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson's relationship, but Wiencek does not jump right into that. He sets up Jefferson's homelife, his career, his time abroad, and much more in order for you to understand his choices and the dichotomy that is Jefferson and slavery. The title, "Master of the Mountain," is an apt approach. Read this if you're interested in Monticello, it's layout, the Jefferson family as a whole, their slaves, and their ways of approaching slavery at a tumultuous time in American History.