Masur, Louis. 2025. A Journey North: Jefferson, Madison, & the Forging of a Friendship. Oxford University Press.
I read this short - just 160 pages - book over the past couple of weeks in honor of 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I would categorize it as an academic books aimed at a non-specialist audience. There are footnotes and sources, but I am pretty sure the book was an impulse buy on display near the checkout stand of some independent bookstore.
The book tells the story of a road trip that Jefferson and Madison took in 1791, so well after the revolution and well before their respective presidential terms. They travelled from Virginia to New York, a journey not new to either, and from there up the Hudson, across to Vermont, and then back down to New York via Long Island. The book covers the whole tour but highlights three destinations and uses these to motivate discussions of three topics in greater detail: the Hessian fly, race and slavey, and the prospect of an American maple sugar industry. The (mis-named) Hessian fly was reducing colonial wheat harvests at the time, and so piqued Jefferson's interests in both botany and economic development. The section on race and slavery includes some material on the American Colonization Society, which prompted me to look a bit into the literature on it as well as the related literature on Liberia. Maple sugar was viewed by some at the time, including Jefferson, as a possible avenue to economic development and as a moral opportunity to reduce the consumption of the cane sugar produced by slaves in the Caribbean. Alas, it never really took off and, more narrowly, Jefferson never succeeded in getting any sugar maple trees to grow at Monticello despite multiple attempts. Through it all, the friendship between Jefferson and Madison develops, and Jefferson rates all the of the inns they stay at as poor, middling, or good in his notes.
In sum, a bite-sized piece of early Republic history, with special interest for afficionados of the two founders at the center of the story. I enjoyed it.
Purchased on one of my spring travels, but I do not recall just where. I can rule out the JF Bookstore in DC, the little store in the Statler Inn at Cornell, Literati in Ann Arbor, the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle and the MIT Press Bookstore based on my receipts. Hmmm ....
