Negro President
Jefferson and the Slave Power

Garry Wills is one of the few people I'd really like to meet and have over for dinner, although his intelligence would make me shrivel. His writing is so thoughtful and erudite. He never ceases to astonish me with his insights. The Negro President exams the election of 1800 through the biographies o......more

Brilliant insight from Wills on the role the 3/5's clause had on presidential politics well into the 19th Century. The centerpiece is the fact that Jefferson's election would not have happened without the additional dozen or so votes generated for a southerner by the 3/5's clause, which gave elector......more

Review title: American slavery Garry Wills is a well known historian of the American experience, including a book about Jefferson in his role as an inventor of the American idea and ideal. But this is not that book. In fact, much like in Chernow's Hamilton, Jefferson does not fare well here. But the......more

Two stars is not really fair. When it comes to non-fiction, I'm a bit of a tough critic. There were some interesting points in this book, but really, I could have summed it all up in two chapters, and since the writing didn't sweep me along as it did in other non-fiction books that I have recently r......more

I'm fairly sure I learned about the three-fifths Compromise during high school but I had forgotten about it. This is how it worked: if you were a slave owner with 30 slaves, then your slaves represented -- (3/5 * 30 = 18) -- 18 additional humans in the census, thereby giving these owners more repres......more