Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause

Thomas Jefferson espoused a yeoman republic and presided over the expansion of a slave-based plantocracy. The price was paid by the land itself, and in civil war. His Louisiana Purchase opened the lower Mississippi Valley to an Empire of Freedom, and a series of avoidable decisions produced instead an empire of servitude. A vivid panorama of places and peoples from Florida and Texas to London, Spain, and Haiti, Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause interprets the Founding Father's
lost cause not as the defeat of slavery but as the defeat of free labour.