Reviewed by Peter S. Onuf | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 64.4

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Reviewed by Peter S. Onuf | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 64.4 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia

"I Tremble for My Country": Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Gentry. By Ronald L. Hatzenbuehler. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. 219 pages. $55.00 (cloth).
Thomas Jefferson "is best understood as an uneasy member of the Virginia gentry" (5), Ronald L. Hatzenbuehler argues in an engaging set of linked essays on the author of the Declaration of Independence. That Jefferson's first loyalty was to Virginia, his "country," is well known, as is his regret at getting stuck in Philadelphia drafting the Declaration and not taking a lead role in drafting the commonwealth's constitution. But Hatzenbuehler pushes Jefferson's provincialism a step further. Not only did the new nation's charter have "Virginia roots" (Jefferson borrowed liberally from George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights) but "Jefferson wrote his famous document less as a statement of American nationalism than as evidence that his views coincided with those of his gentry peers at Virginia's constitutional convention" (61). He may have launched a brilliant career in national politics, but Jefferson's heart remained in Virginia, torn between his desire to reform its gentry and his need to retain their approval.	1
Hatzenbuehler's Jefferson is less a tragic than a pathetic figure, thwarted in his career as a provincial reformer by his class's and his country's resistance to change—that is, by their provincialism. Nor could Jefferson sufficiently extricate himself from his position as a great landowner and slave owner to promote his country's republican renovation. The pathos of Jefferson's later years was a function of the increasingly conspicuous discrepancy between the young reformer's vaulting hopes and the economic and social realities of a society ever more committed to slavery. "At the end of his life," Hatzenbuehler concludes, "we confront a gentry squire deeply entwined in the major inconsistencies of his life and culture regarding slavery" (130).	2
Hatzenbuehler's framing of Jefferson's dilemma, focusing obsessively and sometimes reductively on his identity as a provincial Virginian, is fresh and provocative. But the portrait that emerges is all too familiar. Hatzenbuehler clearly sympathizes with his subject; "his countrymen consistently protected their privileged position in their society and forced him to retreat" from "several areas" (6) of his reform program. Jefferson's ideals and "devotion to change" were thus fatally compromised by deep-seated prejudices and interests. Had Jefferson's Virginia been transformed according to his (putative) vision, it would have become some other place, a postprovincial, perfect republic that would have been an inspiration for all Americans and for peoples across the world.	3
Jefferson initiated his reform efforts with his 1774 Summary View of the Rights of British America, another document of continental significance that "relied primarily on local texts, especially the writings of George Mason" (31). Jefferson sought to secure provincial liberties against imperial encroachments, elaborating a federal "concept of shared authority between centralized and local government" (49) that was the enduring mark of his provincialism. Rather than looking forward, Jefferson and Mason looked back, drawing inspiration from provincial historians such as Robert Beverley, William Keith, and William Stith. These historians had depicted Virginia as a failed paradise that could only fulfill its potential with crop diversification, economic development, and independence from British creditors. Jefferson saw the break with Britain as a providential opportunity for the gentry "to undertake a wholesale reformation of their country" and redeem this promise. There would be "no more quibbling over internal or external taxes, royal charters, mercantilist theory, or the ambiguities of the British constitution." The provincial reformer transcended provincialism, banishing the metropolis in one bold theoretical stroke: "Virginians had received the right to rule themselves from nature" (52), not from Britain.	. . .

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