| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Roger G. Kennedy. Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase. New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. Pp. xv, 350. $30.00.

Eminent administrator and authority on American architecture and history, Roger G. Kennedy explains that he planned this book for half a century. In it, he argues that prior to 1784 Thomas Jefferson "expressed in radical language his aversion to slavery and his preference for a republic of free and independent farmers, offering proposals whereby a virtuous republic might wisely dispose of its public lands and" promote "a benign labor system" on them. Yet subsequently, he "interposed no public objections as his edifice of dreams was systematically reduced to rubble" (p. 2). "Had different outcomes been achieved in a score of narrow contests between 1802 and 1820," Kennedy writes, particularly regarding the Louisiana Purchase, the Civil War "might have been prevented." Jefferson failed "to tip the balance" when choices benefited "the spread of slavery" (pp. 28–29).

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