Kennedy, Director Emeritus of the National Museum of American History and a former director of the US National Park Service, has presented a complex and controversial thesis – that Jefferson’s misguided policy in the Old South was responsible for the Civil War.

Kennedy, supported by a wealth of material, demonstrates at length the idealism of Jefferson’s Agrarian republic vision against the reality of planter dominance, land speculation, exploitation and betrayal. He paints in rich detail a picture of the South’s dependence on slave labour, cotton, and British economic power. This dependence is a central theme – it drives the Virginians in the White House to shamelessly favour the Planters in maintaining a system only sustainable by continual expansion into new territories. Thus lay the imperative to acquire, by fair means or otherwise, the backwater territories of distracted European Powers.

Kennedy’s style is intense but unfocussed. The book is divided into four parts, each roughly chronological within itself but not in relation to each other. Each chapter within these sections is further divided, sometimes within two or three paragraphs, to deal with a precise point or to elaborate, sometimes tangentially, on a particular topic or individual. These bijou diversions cover the wide range of characters that contributed to the “Lost Cause” and are often fascinating, though sometimes disruptive to the narrative - he has a genealogist’s penchant for emphasising, often irrelevantly, their personal ancestry and European ethnicity.

The style is intended to provide a view across the piece, although this is imperfectly achieved. However, the work is particularly strong in providing the background to the plantation systems, the pressing geo-political issues in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and in particular demonstrating how America, particularly the South, remained an economic colony of Great Britain for generations after the Revolution.

A particularly interesting aspect is the account of the ecological history, the scientific assessment of the Planter’s husbandry and the effects on the soil of intensive farming – in particular the environmental impact of slavery. The contrast with the practices of the indigenous Indians is a theme that is well explored.

Kennedy is clearly sympathetic to Jefferson, but his thesis is devastating to his reputation. One is forced to compare him unfavourably with his principled and disinterested predecessors Adams and Washington.

This work would be of particular use to undergraduates focusing on the South in the period, whilst its narrative style does not lend itself to easy use as a reference work the index and chapter notes are comprehensive. For the postgraduate Kennedy provides a thought provoking contribution to the debate.