Free Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham

unlikely revolutionary. His journey from loyal subject to leading rebel reveals Jefferson to be a pragmatist as well as an idealist, a man who understood the importance of using philosophy and history to create emotional appeals to shape broad public sentiment.
    Leadership, Jefferson was learning, meant knowing how to distill complexity into a comprehensible message to reach the hearts as well as the minds of the larger world. In 1766, Jefferson helped bring a Maryland publisher, William Rind, to Williamsburg to create a Virginia Gazette to rival the one that was controlled by Joseph Royle, John Dixon, and Alexander Purdie. “Until the beginning of our revolutionary disputes,” recalled Jefferson, “we had but one press, and that having the whole business of the government, and no competitor for public favor, nothing disagreeable to the governor could be got into it.”
    Fascinated with how to marshal men, he studied the political arts not only in books but in Williamsburg and Albemarle County. A poor public speaker himself, he admired gifted orators such as Patrick Henry. Shadwell, a convenient stopping place for those making their way to and from Williamsburg, was open to all sorts and conditions of travelers, including Ontassete, the Cherokee chief who crossed the Atlantic in 1762 for a celebrated visit to George III. “The moon was in full splendor,” Jefferson recalled, “and to her he seemed to address himself in his prayers for his own safety on the voyage, and that of his people during his absence: His sounding voice, distinct articulation, animated actions, and the solemn silence of his people at their several fires, filled me with awe and veneration, although I did not understand a word he uttered.”
    When it came to the spoken word, Jefferson knew that he could not compete in such arenas with such men. Armed with this insight, he cultivated alternative means of influencing others. He studied the folkways of deliberative bodies. He learned to write with grace, with conviction, and—important in a revolutionary time—with speed.
    He immersed himself in the subtle skills of engaging others, chiefly by offering people that which they value most: an attentive audience to listen to their own visions and views. Politicians often talk too much and listen too little, which can be self-defeating, for in many instances the surer route to winning a friend is not to convince them that you are right but that you care what they think. Everyone wants to believe that what they have to say is fascinating, illuminating, and possibly even epochal. The best political figures create the impression that they find everyone they encounter to be what Abigail Adams said Jefferson was: “one of the choice ones of the earth.”
    A grandson described Jefferson’s tactical approach to personal exchanges. “His powers of conversation were great, yet he always turned it to subjects most familiar to those with whom he conversed, whether laborer, mechanic, or other.”
    There was a method to this habit beyond the acquisition of information. Henry Randall tells the story of a “most intelligent and dignified Virginia matron of the old school” who often hosted Jefferson at her table. She was, Randall reported, “wont to boast that [Jefferson] never failed to inquire with great particularity how her best dishes were compounded and cooked.” Though she suspected that charm was at work—even flattery—she was also convinced by the apparent sincerity of Jefferson’s manner of listening. “I know this was half to please me,” she allowed, “but he’s a nice judge of things, and you may depend upon it, he won’t throw away anything he learns worth knowing.” With her, as with so many others, Jefferson knew what he was doing.
    T he autumn of 1765 should have been a heady time for Jefferson. In July his sister Martha had married his friend Dabney Carr,