Long journey with Mr. Jefferson
William G. Hyland
Language: English
Pages: 332
ISBN: B00BD58E2W
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The magisterial collaboration over half a lifetime between historian Dumas Malone and his subject, Thomas Jefferson, is the basis for William G. Hyland Jr.'s compelling Long Journey with Mr. Jefferson. Malone, the courtly and genteel historian from Mississippi, spent thirty-eight years researching and writing the definitive biography of the man who invented the United States of America.
Hyland provides a surprising portrait of the man many consider America's greatest historian, recording in detail Malone's struggle to finish his towering six-volume work on Jefferson through excruciating pain and then blindness at the age of eighty-three. Hyland includes Malone's previously unpublished correspondence with such notables as John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, George H. W. Bush, Felix Frankfurter, and Fawn Brodie. Readers are treated to an exclusive look at private family documents and Malone's unfinished memoir, which reflects on history, social commentary, and his life's accomplishments.
Offering much more than most biographies, this book imparts extensive insight into Malone's earlier years in Mississippi and Georgia, and how they shaped his character. Through interviews with Malone's intimates, family members, rivals, and subordinates, Hyland generates a true portrait of the man behind the intellect and the myth.
the Autumn of His Years.” 13 Dumas Malone, speech at UVA, Charlottesville, VA, July 3, 1981, Malone Papers. 14 David Maurer, “Set in Stone,” UVA Magazine, Spring 2008. Afterword 1 Katie Couric, The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives (New York: Random House, 2011), 104. 2 Dumas Malone, letter to Paul Horne Jr., April 4, 1980, Malone Papers. 3 Wills, “Prodigious Life.” 4 Malone, Malone and Jefferson, 12. 5 Dumas Malone, letter to Rickie Asby, November 7, 1974, Malone
professorship, 117–18 Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 120 WWII years, 111 U.S. Information Agency (USIA), 189–90 Van Doren, Carl, 69 Vandenberg, Arthur, 186 Vaughan, Joseph L., 43 Vidal, Gore, 155–56, 168 Viking Press, 165–66 Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 140 Virginia Quarterly Review, 49, 77, 100–101, 152, 216–17, 218, 221 Virginia State Library, 168, 204 Visualtek, 202–3 von Bismarck, Otto, 23 Walker affair, 159, 161 Wallenborn, Ken, 198 Ward, Judson C., Jr.,
where Malone had taught his Yale history classes. About the occasion, Malone wrote, “I was much impressed by that stately Southern gentlemen and most interested in the position he wanted to fill.” Malone recalled that he was overawed by Alderman, but “he liked me well enough to invite me to visit Mr. Jefferson’s University that spring and to offer me a post on its faculty.” President Alderman was a major influence on Malone, and he thought so highly of Alderman that he wrote a highly praised
flower beds Mrs. Malone asked me to remind you that she wants you to fertilize the one next to the living room on the front side of the house. We never have much luck in getting anything to grow there. She also asks that you be very careful in the herb beds, since it is so easy to confuse an herb with a weed.”10 Elisabeth’s father, Benjamin Gifford, had deep roots in Cape Cod, where his direct ancestor, William Gifford, settled in the 1680s. Quaker William Gifford and his family, together with a
at this distance it may be quite impossible.”54 But Malone was quick to note that Jefferson’s grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, made a categorical statement many years ago. Requesting the discretion of biographer Henry S. Randall, Randolph said that while no one at Monticello suspected that his grandfather had affairs with female slaves at any time, “the connection of two of his very near relatives with two women of the Hemings family was notorious on the mountain and scarcely disguised by