????杰斐遜任性固執，野心勃勃，要求嚴格。他容不得下屬（無論是人還是獸）的冒犯。一位孫輩回憶稱：“印象中祖父的急躁脾氣只發在他的馬身上，哪怕馬兒表現出一丁點不聽話的苗頭，他就會無畏地揮起鞭子，抽打個不停，直至馬兒屈服于他的意志為止。”但隱藏在種種政治博弈之后的，是一種極其精明的“政治本能，”米查姆寫道。“他只打那些他認為他現在就能夠贏得勝利的政治斗爭。”

????對于這位“人人生而平等”這一名句的作者來說，奴隸制構成了他的終極政治困境。盡管如此，自身就是一位奴隸主的杰斐遜依然曾經多次嘗試著推動他的國民不斷前行；他主張解放奴隸，輔之以驅逐出境。在杰斐遜起草的《獨立宣言》的最初版本中，他譴責奴隸貿易。他深知，歷史在他那一邊（“命運之書上毫無疑義地寫著：這些人應該獲得自由……”）。但他逐漸明白，現在還不是解放奴隸的時候，這不僅僅是因為佐治亞州和北卡羅萊納州激烈反對。“我相信，在這些譴責之下，我們北方的兄弟也覺得這個問題有些棘手。這是因為，盡管他們自身并沒有多少奴隸，但他們曾經將大批奴隸賣給其他人，”杰斐遜寫道。迫于現實，盡管他非常憎惡自己的話被他人（特別是各種團體）改寫，但杰斐遜還是允許刪除掉這段冒犯性的言論。

????米查姆寫道：“他喜歡安靜，但無法忍受寂靜。”讀到這段話之前，筆者一直以為這是一種現代社會才具有，由iPod予以滿足的神經官能癥。他不拉小提琴（在他的太太帕蒂因分娩過早地離世之前，她經常陪伴他彈鋼琴）或獨自哼著歌曲的時候，杰斐遜就置身于一群歌唱的小鳥之中。他給自己最喜歡的一只鳥取名迪克，這只鳥一直陪他住在白宮。據上文提到的史密斯太太講述，迪克“陪伴他度過了許多孤寂和勤勉工作的時光。”迪克常常陪著總統上樓午休，棲息在沙發上，“演奏悅耳的曲調。”

????閱讀這些文字時，我們幾乎可以把杰斐遜想象成為一位正在《每日秀》（The Daily Show）上接受喬恩·斯圖爾特采訪的嘉賓，畢恭畢敬，侃侃而談“人的權利”。杰斐遜是一位新聞迷（“他必須知道一切事情”）；一位藝人（“不斷且慷慨地，帶有一定目的地娛樂他人，”他認為“善于社交是推行共和主義的必要前提”）；一位愛樹者（“在我看來，不必要地砍伐一顆或許已經生長了幾個世紀的樹，或許與謀殺沒有太大的區別”），以及一位無神論者，僅憑這一項原因，他或許無法贏得今日的大選。美國的這位開國之父寫道：“總有一天，所謂耶穌以上帝為父，在處女的子宮中神秘誕生的說法，將與羅馬女神米涅瓦從羅馬主神朱比特的腦中誕生的說法一樣，被視為寓言。”沒錯，這一天遲早會來臨。

????譯者：任文科

????Jefferson was willful, ambitious, and demanding. He did not take kindly to being crossed by his inferiors, be they man or beast. ("The only impatience of temper he ever displayed," a grandson recalled, "was with his horse, which he subdued to his will by a fearless application of the whip on the slightest manifestation of restiveness.") But underlying all his political maneuverings was an uncanny "political instinct," Meacham writes, "to fight only those political battles he believed he could win now."

????For the author of the phrase, "all men are created equal," slavery posed the ultimate political dilemma. A slave owner himself, Jefferson nevertheless tried several times to nudge his countrymen forward; he favored emancipation coupled with deportation. In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson denounced the slave trade. He knew that history was on his side. ("Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free ...") But he came to understand that now was not the time for emancipation, and not just because Georgia and North Carolina were violently opposed. "Our Northern brethren," Jefferson wrote, "also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others." Bowing to reality, and as much as he hated to be edited, especially by groups, Jefferson allowed the offending passage to be struck.

????"He liked quiet but he could not stand silence," Meacham writes, which, until I read that, I assumed was a strictly modern, iPod-enabled neurosis. When he wasn't playing the violin (often accompanied, before her early death in childbirth, by his wife Patty on the piano), or humming to himself, Jefferson surrounded himself with singing birds. His favorite was one he named Dick, who lived with him in the White House, and according to the same Mrs. Smith, "was the constant companion of his solitary and studious hours." Dick used to follow the president upstairs at naptime and "pour forth its melodious strains" from its perch on the couch.

????The Jefferson that emerges from these pages is a figure we can almost imagine Jon Stewart interviewing, respectfully and with reference to "the rights of man," on?The Daily Show. Jefferson was a news junkie ("He?had?to know everything"); an entertainer ("constantly, handsomely and with a purpose," believing "sociability was essential to republicanism"); a tree-hugger ("The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder"); and an atheist, who for that reason alone could never win an election today. "And the day will come," this founding father wrote, "when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." Yes, well, all in good time.