Jefferson and the slave owners

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MR. JEFFERSON'S LOST CAUSE: LAND, FARMERS, SLAVERY, AND THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE

By Roger G. Kennedy

Oxford, $30, 350 pages, illus.

REVIEWED BY BILL MURCHISON

In "Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause," Roger Kennedy thrusts under our noses another one of history's What-If's. What if Thomas Jefferson had practiced what he preached? That is to say, had Jefferson committed himself to entrench in the West the kind of yeoman farmers he was always extolling, might the spread of slavery have been arrested and the War Between the States averted?

As it was, according to Mr. Kennedy, our third president gave the slave-owning planter class its way: He backed its desire for expansion of slave territory. From east to west the planters moved as fragile soil wore out; the peculiar institution of slavery moved right along with them.