JEFFERSON NOTES Jefferson Notes is a publication of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society Richard Dixon Editor jeffersonnotes@verizon.net Fall 2012 No. 12
T
he Two Treatises on Government by John Locke have been called the “cornerstone of modern democratic theory in England and America.” Locke conceived of a “state of nature” in which all men are equal. This is a metaphorical reference; there is no historical example of such an existence. It was Locke’s way of creating the beginning of an ordered society to which man brings his inherent rights of "life, health, liberty, or possessions." The government is designed to protect these rights under a “social contract.” When these rights are abused, man may replace the government by revolution.
Locke was born in 1632 and grew up during the Civil War which saw the House of Lords abolished, the Anglican church stripped of authority, and King Charles I die by the executioner’s ax. The Protectorate established by Oliver Cromwell only lasted 10 years when the monarchy was restored and Charles II assumed the throne in 1660. Charles espoused “the divine right of kings,” and the struggle with Parliament led to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the ascension to the throne of William and Mary.
pleasure, so Locke quietly left England for France in 1675. He returned to Oxford in 1679, but again came under suspicion for radicalism and went to Holland for his safety in 1683. He remained there until 1689 when he returned to England and over the next several years published the writings which have secured his reputation. These included the Two Treatises of Government (1690), followed by An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Letters of Toleration (1690 and 1692), Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), and The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695).
Locke was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and became a lecturer there. He later received a degree in medicine. He was the personal physician of the Earl of Shaftesbury, who became a leader of the Whigs. Shaftesbury advocated for a constitutional monarchy and became an object of the king’s dis-
The Two Treatises of Government placed his philosophical thought at the center of the tension between government and citizen. Written while in exile, these were published after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and justified parliament as the ultimate legislative power. Cont’d on page 6
Cracking the Fable: The Truth Behind Jefferson and Hemings A fable is defined as “A fictitious narrative; usually of known origin.” The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society will host a panel of distinguished authors and researchers to address the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings controversy in a comprehensive review of the facts from the historic record. For questions contact: Gar Schulin (540) 3495864; tjheritage@aol.com
This academic seminar, “Cracking the Fable: The Truth Behind Jefferson and Hemings,” will be held on Saturday, October 27, 2012, in Charlottesville, Virginia on the grounds of the University of Virginia in the Commonwealth Room at Newcomb Hall, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission to this special event is free and open to the public. Please go to TJheritage.org for details of the schedule and the speakers.
Founder’s Day in Paris Doughboys Honor Jefferson
A
pproximately 2500 University of Virginia alumni served during the Great War. There were so many that the University established a European Bureau in Paris under Lewis Crenshaw. Following the armistice, those waiting to return home commemorated the centennial of the University in April 1919 by ceremonies in Paris, and by affixing a tablet to the residence occupied by Thomas Jefferson when he was Minister to France. Other Americans, Washington, Franklin, Lincoln and Wilson, had been honored by streets or monuments in Paris. In spite of his long sojourn in France from 1784 to 1789, and for the part he played in forming the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, there was nothing in Paris to commemorate Jefferson. About 300 alumni attended the ceremonies. Such a large group was made possible by an order from the General Headquarters of the American Expeditionary Forces authorizing leave “to permit officers and soldiers who are alumni of University of Virginia to go on leave to Paris to attend centenary exercises on April 12 and 13.” The Commanding General of the District of Paris lent a military band for the festivities. IN THIS PLACE RESIDED THOMAS JEFFERSON
MINISTER OF THE UNITED STATES IN FRANCE 1785-1789
PRESIDENT OF
THE
UNITED STATES
1801-1809 AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE FOUNDER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA THIS TABLET HAD BEEN FIXED APRIL 13, 1919
BY THE CARE OF THE FORMER STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SOLDIERS OF THE WORLD WAR IN COMMEMORATION OF THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF THE UNIVERSITY At the request of the American Embassy, the Conservateur of the Musée Carnavalet researched for the location of Jefferson’s residence in Paris and submitted a report to Crenshaw. Jefferson’s last residence in Paris was a pavilion at the corner of the Champs Elysées and rue neuve de Berry (now rue Berri). Built for Madame de Langeac in the 1770s, it was replaced by the hotel Debelleyme-Trévise during the reign of Napoleon III, and later in 1898, by the modern building which stands today. * The owner of the building, E. Aubry-Vitet, was delighted (“ce sera un grand honeur”) to consent to the plan to affix a Jefferson Tablet to the front of his house. The Tablet was unveiled by Brig. Gen. Jefferson Cont’d on page 5 Randolph Kean (Thomas Jefferson’s greatJefferson Notes page 2
The Madison Hemings interview with a newspaper reporter occurred about fortyfive years after he left Monticello. This interview is important to the paternity believers because it is the only declaration by a Jefferson relative, acquaintance, or slave, that Jefferson fathered children by Sally Hemings. We will continue in Jefferson Notes, to examine it.
THE HOLLOW INTERVIEW It took almost 200 years to prove Thomas Jefferson correct that advertisements are “the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.” The rumors about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson were started in 1802 by the newspaper allegations of James Callender, whose sources have never been established. There was a revival of sorts for a short period in 1873 when Madison Hemings claimed in a newspaper interview that Jefferson was his “father” and the father of his siblings. There was little public acceptance that his story was true. Fawn Brodie, in her Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, treats the interview as a historical document. Later, Annette Gordon-Reed in Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, argues that historians rejected the interview because of racial prejudice. Both ignore that the account is riddled with factual errors, and Hemings does little more than recite the Callender rumors. More crucial to the validity of this newspaper story is that it is a thirdhand account, not a “memoir.” What is intriguing from an historical perspective is why no one was interested in Hemings story for some 45 years after Jefferson’s death. There is an effort to bolster the paternity belief by making it an oral tradition of the Hemings family, but there is only silence in the years before Madison’s interview. Then in 1998, Nature printed the headline on the DNA test that “ Jefferson fathered slave’s last child.” Somehow, the evidence that did not exist before, coupled with Nature’s false allegation, was enough for the media and academia to finally make Callender’s rumors come true.
BOOK NOTES The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson Kevin J. Hayes Oxford University Press 2008
I
f you are unfamiliar with the basic details of the life of Thomas Jefferson, this should not be your first book. It is better that you read a biography first, such as Merrill Peterson’s Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, or Willard Sterne Randall’s Thomas Jefferson. Kevin Hayes is a professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma and his interest is literature. He has produced what might be called a biography of Jefferson’s “literary” life. It is a large book, almost 650 pages in length, with voluminous notes showing the prodigious research. Beginning with the young Jefferson, Hayes examines the books Jefferson bought, recommended, collected and read, to the end of his life, when he was stocking the new University of Virginia library. Along the way, Jefferson developed his writing style, each word carefully chosen, with precise attention to its sound, and his message embellished by metaphor. We know about the sixteen thousand letters that Jefferson wrote, and the mind wonders how he found time to read. Prof. Hayes follows a unique methodology in developing the literary Jefferson. He reviewed the marginal notes made by Jefferson in the books that survived the fire in the library that he donated to the Library of Congress in 1815. This is only a small number of all the books Jefferson accumulated during his life. Left unexamined would be the Shadwell library that burned in 1770, his Annapolis library sold to James Monroe, his vacation library at Poplar Forest, or the books accumulated at Monticello after his retirement from the presidency.
science, geography, mathematics, whatever the discipline or activity, Jefferson read it. This includes other languages, Italian, French, Greek and Latin. Jefferson even enjoyed fiction and poetry. He loved metaphors, used them constantly in his own writing to impart meaning not always apparent in dry historical accounts. Jefferson recounted that he wrote the Declaration of Independence without reference to “neither book or pamphlet,” the phrasing and the details on the origin of governmental power born from his reading. Hayes also discusses Jefferson’s preparation of the Notes on the State of Virginia, and Jefferson’s notetaking that led to compilation of the Anas. Hayes traces Jefferson’s life by books, bought and read, sold and given away. Jefferson apparently had a seamless ability to move between works of literature, law, a different language, or the latest techniques of agriculture. It was a world of the mind, moving in rhythm to the real world, where Jefferson met the demands of his plantation or his political life This is a different approach to Jefferson. It is one that will provide information not found in traditional accounts of Jefferson’s life. The methodology of this biography will welcome and entertain readers who love reading about other book lovers.
Thomas Jefferson’s Scrapbook Jonathan Gross Steelforth Press 2006
T
his is a book you keep on your night stand or on the corner of your desk so that you can pick it up from time to time. That is what you do with a book of poetry. This is a book of Thomas Jefferson’s poetry; not poetry that he wrote, but poems that he collected. All of this reveals a mind almost without a limit in For years, four scrapbooks, its ability to absorb information. Literature, history, Cont’d on page 4 Jefferson Notes page 3
BOOK NOTES
Ice Creams, Sorbets & Gelati
Cont’d from page 3 composed of poems which had been clipped from newspapers and other periodicals were thought to have been compiled by Jefferson’s granddaughters. While visiting Monticello, Jonathan Gross became aware that these scrapbooks were actually compiled by Jefferson. This wonderful book is the result. Jefferson began the scrapbooks in 1801, and compiled them through his two terms as president. It seems that it was more than a cut-and-paste project, as Jefferson made notes and comments on the poems and rearranged them at times. It is intriguing that this activity would be confined to the time frame of his presidency, but Gross offers no explanation for this. Jefferson biographers have routinely dismissed his interest in poetry. The only poem definitely attributed to him was “A Death-bed Adieu,” written shortly before his death to his daughter Martha. He did provide an essay, “Thoughts on English Prosody,” in a 1986 letter, which reveals a solid understanding of how poetry is created. Gross has divided the poems into three sections, the first of which is Poems of Nation. Interestingly, many of these involve the Fourth of July. Not only was it to become a day of celebration of independence, but the day of Jefferson’s death. Next are Poems of Family. Jefferson used poetry often to communicate thoughts and emotions, and many were directed to his grandchildren, who were also encouraged to maintain their own scrapbooks. The third section is Poems of Romantic love, which shows Jefferson’s sentimentality. Each of the poems is annotated with the author’s explanation, which will reveal Jefferson in ways that a traditional biography cannot. Each section has a Preface which explains the nature of the poems, and places Jefferson’s life in context. There are five appendices which contain a number of short essays that will be interesting even to the serious Jeffersonian. This is not the standard Jefferson biography. The author calls it an “autobiography of the heart,” and indeed it is.
Order Now Go to the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society website TJHeritage.org. An icon will direct you to Books of Interest where you can order The Jefferson Hemings Controvery: Report of the Scholars Commisssion, and take advantage of a 20% discount code.
Caroline & Robin Weir Grub Street 2010
This is not really a Jefferson book, but it is a fascinating and exhaustive book on its title, “Ice Creams, Sorbets & Gelati,” and it does feature Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson loved ice cream and it was often served in Monticello. His recipe for making ice cream is included. It appears a daunting task, but for those who wish the original taste of Jefferson ice cream, all the details are here. Jefferson’s icehouse at Monticello is based on the details he recorded during his journey through southern France in 1787. The authors do not know the exact origin of baked Alaska, but observe that Thomas Jefferson served ice cream baked in a pastry at a state banquet while he was president.
WHAT IT MIGHT BE LIKE IF TRUE
V
irginia Scharff has provided another entry into the Jefferson romance genre with The Women Jefferson Loved. Pioneered by Barbara ChaseRiboud’s Sally Hemings (1979), a number of writers have tried to imagine the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Imagination is demanded because there is no historical record. No document describes any physical interaction between Hemings and Jefferson, not so much as a glance or a touch or a word. Aside from the claim of paternity, there is not even any so -called “oral history” that they ever looked at each other. Even the third-tier hearsay by Madison Hemings is silent on this critical point. Chase-Riboud at least called her roman à clef “A Novel,” as did William Safire in Scandalmonger (2000). Apparently, the book awards received by Annette Gordon-Reed for The Hemingses of Monticello have validated history as I would imagine it to be. Safire provided extensive notes to describe his fictional insertions. We don’t have that with Gordon -Reed, and now Scharff, so the reader doesn’t know what is based on historical evidence and what has been made up by the author.
Jefferson Notes page 4
IT’S ODD
I
n her 1997 book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, Annette Gordon-Reed included as appendix E a typescript of an October 24, 1858 letter from Ellen Randolph Coolidge (one of Thomas Jefferson’s granddaughters) to her husband. ODD that the typescript would have an altered sentence. The sentence by Ellen Coolidge referring to Jefferson’s bedchambers read that “no female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be there and none could have entered without being exposed to the public gaze.” Gordon-Reed’s version dropped “there and none could have entered without being exposed to,” and added the word “in.” So, the sentence by Gordon-Reed then read that “no female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be in the public gaze.” Odd such a “mistake” could be made which comprised both the dropping of a ten word phrase and the addition of a new word. Coolidge’s intent is clear, which is that someone could not enter Jefferson’s bed chambers without being observed. Gordon-Reed’s altered version reversed the meaning Coolidge had intended. Odd that Gordon- Reed would feel the need to Founder’s Day in Paris
Cont’d from page 2
grandson), Chief of the United States Ambulance Service from 1917 to 1919, and Director-General of the American Red Cross from 1916 to 1917. He spoke as Chief of the Overseas Alumni, on behalf of the alumni “who fought in this great war, both the living who are going home and the gallant dead whom we leave behind in France.” ** Also attending the ceremonies was Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, and William G. Sharp, Ambassador of the United States to France. Representing the faculty of the University of Virginia, and delivering one of the addresses was Major Armistead Dobie, a professor of law at the University. Dobie left his professorship to serve with the 80th Division in France. He returned to become dean of
prepare a typescript, when one was available in the files of Monticello. A correct typescript of the letter had also appeared in the May 18, 1974 New York Times as part of an article by Dumas Malone. Odd that when this serious discrepancy was called to her attention by John Works, then President of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, she responded that “your charge that I intentionally altered the text of Ellen Randolph Coolidge’s letter to her husband, Joseph, is flat wrong. Any mistake that appears in my work is just that – a mistake.” Gordon-Reed did not explain how the “mistake” occurred. Odd that when the in-house Research Committee at Monticello issued their January 2000 Report, it included a photocopy of the hand written letter from Ellen Coolidge, but also included as a typescript Appendix E from the Gordon-Reed book, rather than the correct typescript Monticello had in its own files. Odd that Gordon-Reed would address this issue in her subsequent book, The Hemingses of Monticello (page 698, n. 51), but not discuss the critical aspect of the discrepancy, i.e., could a domestic have entered Jefferson’s chambers without observation by the Jefferson family, the other slaves, or the many visitors to Monticello. In this book, she simply concludes that everyone knew about Hemings. So, Coolidge’s letter must have been just a ..mistake. (View the documents at http://www.tjheritage.org/
Jeffersondocuments.html)
the law school, instituted the famous casebook method of study, and was later made a federal judge. The festivities continued on Saturday night with a banquet sponsored by the twenty-one alumni who were then attending the University of Paris. On Sunday, there was an all day excursion on the Seine. Not far from the ceremonies was another alumnus of the law school, Woodrow Wilson, who was drafting the terms of peace at the Palace of Versailles. * The Jefferson Tablet is on the building at 92 Champs Elysées, about 40 yards east from the Arc de Triomphe, at the intersection with rue de Berri. ** On the south side of the Rotunda at the University of Virginia there is a plaque with the names of those who gave their lives in the Great War.
Jefferson Notes page 5
THOMAS JEFFERSON HERITAGE SOCIETY 12106 Beaver Creek Road Clifton, Virginia 20124
PRSRT STD US POSTAGE
PAID MERRIFIELD VA NO. 206
RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED
We welcome your support for the work of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society Please make donations to TJHS and forward to Box 4482, Charlottesville, VA 22905 Little Mountain $ 25.00 Rotunda 100.00 Memorial 250.00
All contributors will receive a copy of The Jefferson-Hemings Myth: An American Travesty. Rotunda and Memorial contributors will also receive Jefferson Vindicated. The Legacy of John Locke
Cont’d from page 1
Locke’s ideas became popular in colonial America during the middle 1700s. There is some dispute on how much influence he had on the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson does use phrases directly lifted from Locke. Jefferson drew on Locke’s idea that the origin of power was in the governed, not the government. Jefferson also drew from his understanding of British history, and Anglo-Saxon common law as a historical record of the development of ideas and social relationships. He did call Locke one of the “three greatest men who have ever lived.” There is not a detailed reference to Locke in Jefferson’s writings, but as early as 1770, he declared that all men are born free under the law of nature. Locke defended the power of Parliament to depose James II; Jefferson saw power as inherent in the peo-
BOOK NOTES IN DEFENSE OF JEFFERSON By William D. Hyland Jr
JEFFERSON VINDICATED By Cynthia H. Burton
Available now from Amazon.com
ple and not transferred to a legislative body. Locke saw government as preserving property; Jefferson saw the purpose of government to preserve man’s right to pursue happiness. It is the thought of Locke which Jefferson understands and reduces it deftly to language that is more clear and precise. Locke is sometimes credited with the checks and balances embedded in the U.S. Constitution, but at the time of the Constitutional convention, he is not mentioned by the leading writers. Instead, they turned to Montesquieu who provided the concept of three separate branches of government. Apparently, the fear that James II could reclaim his throne induced Locke to issue his Second Treatise of Government anonymously. His authorship was revealed In his will upon his death at Oates in Essex in 1704.
Jefferson Notes page 6