JEFFERSON NOTES Jefferson Notes is a publication of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society Richard Dixon Editor jeffersonnotes@verizon.net Fall 2014 No. 14
Legacy and Character of Thomas Jefferson
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seminar on “The Character and reedom of the press and the right to Legacy of Thomas Jefpolitical speech are basic to the ferson and Its Meaning for Americans Today” American system of government. These was presented by the civil liberties are rooted in the founding T homas Jefferson of the country. Heritage Society on November 9, 2013 at While France was embroiled in its continuing domestic the Jefferson Scholars Foundation on social and political revolution, England continued to war with the grounds of the University of Virginia. France in the Caribbean and along the French coast. America The historical Thomas Jefferson who remained neutral, but both England and France preyed upon left us with the Declaration of Independ- American ships engaged in overseas trade. ence and the Virginia Statute for ReliGeorge Washington was concerned that the continued gious Freedom is slowly being sub- warfare between England and France would lead to insurrecsumed into a mythology where all his tion in the United States. There was widespread belief that the accomplishments were made possible French were trying to manipulate the American government. only on the backs of his enslaved com- The Jay Treaty in 1795 brought further controversy and mismunity. This seminar examines the cur- trust and a year later James Monroe was recalled as minister rent manipulation of his legacy and to France and John Adams was elected president. reputation. To compound his supposed failure to break down the legal and economic barriers that institutionalized slavery, Jefferson is also charged with fathering children by Sally Hemings. In 2012, The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society presented the seminar“ Cracking the Fable,” which examined in depth the failure of the evidence relied on by historians who support this claim of paternity. The presentations for both of these seminars may be seen in their entirety in Vimeo on the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society website (TJheritage.orgmenu button: Events).
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Two years later, it became public knowledge that the French had tried to bribe an American diplomatic delegation in the notorious XYZ affair. Elements in Congress believe that French influence had infiltrated Republicans and they were trying to separate America into factions. There was also fear of invasion by France and for several years, a state of “quasiwar” existed. Congress responded by setting restrictions on aliens and defining seditious conduct. In what came to be called the Alien and Sedition acts, Congress required a residence of fourteen years for nationalization, and gave the president the power to deport aliens. Subversive conspiracies were defined, and written publications against the legislature or the president could be punished. Twenty Republican editors were jailed. The laws were grounded in the belief that opposition to the government and its policies amounted to a division of the people, which would collapse the union. Cont’d on page 2
Alien and Sedition Laws Cont’ from page 1
There was an immediate resistance on the basis that the laws violated the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and press. The principle of judicial review was not established and there was no procedure to legally challenge the law. John Breckenridge and George Nicholas led Kentucky in opposition. Their effort was not to violate the law but to draw attention to its unconstitutionality. Thomas Jefferson had prepared a set of resolves intended for the North Carolina legislature. Jefferson gave them to Breckenridge since he needed a set of resolutions for Kentucky. Jefferson initially intended that the solution would be for the states to declare the alien and sedition acts “void” and that the states would decline to enforce its provisions. At the same time, Jefferson sought the assistance of James Madison in preparing a set of resolutions for Virginia. Jefferson argued that the powers of the federal government were based on the federal compact that formed the union of the states. Jefferson saw the sedition bill as an effort to silence criticisms of the Federalists and to influence the coming election in 1800. Jefferson’s aim was to establish a legal basis on which the states could nullify an act of Congress. He felt this violation of the constitutional compact was justification to sever from the union. Madison was less certain that the state legislature of Kentucky could challenge the constitutional power of Congress. At Madison’s urging, Jefferson retreated from his position and the resolutions became a defense of civil liberties. Kentucky continued to affirm it was not in conflict with the federal government, and that it would follow the rule of law in its opposition to any laws that violated the guarantees of individual liberty. Other resolutions and public rallies added to the protest. The reactions by Kentucky and Virginia unified voters in the northern states and greatly damaged the Federalist party. Jefferson was elected president in 1800, and within the next 2 years, the alien and sedition laws which did not expire automatically were repealed. Jefferson had written his draft of the Kentucky resolutions while he was Vice President and did not want to be named, nor did Madison claim authorship of the Virginia resolutions. Eventually both were identified, Madison 1809 and Jefferson in 1814.
The Madison Hemings interview with a newspaper reporter occurred about forty-five years after Hemings 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 to examine it in Jefferson Notes.
The Unknown Source The interview which was conducted in 1873 by S. F. Wetmore contains two claims by Madison Hemings which are relied on to establish the paternity of the Hemings children. The first is the famous “treaty” negotiated between Jefferson and Sally Hemings. The second is that Jefferson was the father of a child conceived in Paris as well as four children born to Sally Hemings at Monticello. As far as we know, the “treaty” existed only in the mind of Madison Hemings. Although some writers have speculated that it must have been a tale told by his mother. Hemings offered no source or detail to support claim for its legitimacy. It is possible that it had its origin in the newspaper articles by James Callender, but those were written several years before Madison Hemings was born, and were about a son for whom there is no historical proof that he ever existed. It is possible that the rumors generated by the articles were accepted by Hemings to explain why he had no father. Of course, the “treaty,” as related by Hemings, was based upon the pregnancy of his mother in Paris. Again, there is nothing to indicate, other than Hemings’ story, that this pregnancy ever occurred. Jefferson was then the well-known ambassador to France, but the pregnancy was never noted in Paris. He returned home on a ship with his two daughters and Sally Hemings, and no comment was ever made that she was pregnant. According to Madison Hemings, the birth occurred at Monticello, but was never recorded, or commented on by anyone at Monticello. In his interview with Wetmore, Madison Hemings also claimed that Jefferson was his father and the father of his four siblings. He includes this Paris child, which he said later died at Monticello. Again, he gives no source for this information on his paternity, or that of his siblings, nor does he describe any circumstances on which he bases that claim. The Madison Hemings interview is simply devoid of any evidentiary value. Those committed to the paternity belief tried to manufacture some support for it by version that the Paris baby had lived and became the ancestor of the Woodson family. This was conclusively discredited by the DNA tests. Even the part of the DNA tests that received such public attention only indicated that someone in the Jefferson male line (about 20 possibles) was the “father” of Sally Hemings’ youngest child, Eston. There are no DNA tests linking the three oldest children of Sally Heming to any Jefferson.
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BOOK NOTES Books on Jefferson continue at such a pace it is difficult for the average reader to keep up. The following titles are suggested reading as they either bring new scholarship, or cover an important area of Jefferson’s life.
Dutiful Correspondent: Philosophical Essays on Thomas Jefferson M. Andrew Holowchak Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2013
Thomas Jefferson’s Enlightenment: Paris 1785
Thomas Jefferson is mostly remembered for the words he gave to the spirit of revolution that exploded
James C. Thompson Commonwealth Book Publishers of Virginia 2013
Why Jefferson left Monticello in 1784 and went to Paris is somewhat of an unanswered mystery. His wife had died several years before, and he was left with three young daughters, and the continued responsibility for a working plantation. He suggests that he still needed a “change of scene” from his wife’s death. This book does not attempt to answer that question, but it does present a unique and intriguing account of what the experience meant in the development of Jefferson’s political and social concepts. Leaving the largely rural expanse of Virginia, he was suddenly in the largest metropolitan center of the western world and in the midst of social turmoil. He stayed five years leaving on the eve of the French Revolution. During that time he was exposed to the philosophes and their debates of social equality in the salons of Paris. James Thompson takes us on the walks where Jefferson explored Paris, introduces us to the intelligentsia that wished to reform the monarchy, and discusses how the rights of man would change the relationship of all classes of citizens. An interesting aspect of this examination is the influence of Freemasonry on Jefferson. Many of the leading intellectuals in France were Masons, as were many of the Founding Fathers. Thompson suggests that the principles of Freemasonry were influential in asserting the rights of the individual in the American Revolution.
within colonial America. Those early documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom—were only the beginning of Jefferson’s impact on the American mind. For another forty years, his philosophy of social order would be a challenge for the young country he helped found. Today, the real Thomas Jefferson is being slowly erased from for the public consciousness by the conventional historian’s model that Jefferson’s personality was complicated, ambiguous, and contradictory. Andrew Holowchak paints a different picture. With a unique command of the thousands of letters written by Jefferson, Holowchak is able to understand his moral and progressive intellect. Jefferson is a realist and his observations on social and political equality are the result of his empirical studies., but it is his heart that is the higher guide. This type of examination of Jefferson is unique and marks Holowchak as one of the most important writers in today’s Jefferson literature. While not an exhaustive examination of Jefferson’s philosophy, Holowchak manages to range through such aspects of Jefferson as a philologist, his liberal eudaimonism, and his admiration for the doctrines of Epicurus. Holowchak reestablishes for us the virtuous Jefferson, the moralist who challenges himself and his correspondents to let conscience lead to a truthful and virtuous life. Jefferson’s philosophy of man and his place in society runs through all of his correspondence with consistent themes of individual responsibility, honesty and familial obligations.
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Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War Michael Kranish
“Those Who Labor for My Happiness”: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello
Oxford University Press 2010
Lucia Stanton
After the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson returned to Monticello
University of Virginia Press 2012
and remained there for the greater part of the Revolutionary War. He was elected governor in 1779 and served for two years. He faced great difficulties in exercising control over the Virginia state militias and merging them into the national army. The burning of Norfolk and other military movements within Virginia are well documented in this excellent treatment by Michael Kranish. He also suggests that Jefferson’s flight to Poplar Forest may have contributed to the death of Martha Jefferson following the birth of her sixth child. Most accounts of this period do not go beyond the incident where Banastre Tarleton attempted to trap him and the General Assembly in Charlottesville. Criticism by his fellow Virginians of his efforts to avoid capture brought Jefferson much pain. When his second term expired, he immediately returned to Monticello, leaving Virginia without a governor. His wartime experience led to a lasting disdain for Patrick Henry. It probably contributed to his quick acceptance of an appointment to the peace commission in Paris, which was offered shortly after the death of his wife.
Martha Jefferson: An Intimate Life with Thomas Jefferson William G. Hyland Jr. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2014 To be released in November 2014
Martha Jefferson is the first and only biography of Thomas Jefferson’s greatest love and true kindred spirit, who died an untimely death at the young age of 33 in 1782.
Review by Vivienne Kelley
The title is in quotation marks, as if Jefferson actually wrote such a thing, but in fact he did not. The title completely changes the meaning of what Jefferson actually wrote to the very opposite of what Jefferson meant. In a personal letter, Jefferson wrote the following sentence: “I have my house to build, my fields to farm, and to watch for the happiness of those who labor for mine" (Jefferson letter dated November 27, 1793 to Angelica Church). “I have … to watch for the happiness of those who labor for mine” is a thoughtful and important statement whose meaning is clear. But this phrase has been cut and twisted to what Stanton uses as her title: “Those Who Labor for My Happiness.” Now enclosed by Stanton in quotation marks— the heart, the central thought that Jefferson sought to convey is removed and an entirely different meaning is substituted by Stanton. Is this fair scholarship? To Jefferson, to the public, and perhaps in a unique way to the descendants of those who did labor to whom Jefferson’s words might be very welcomed and hold a special meaning? Stanton’s manipulation of Jefferson’s phrase proved valuable to Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf in their Introduction, as they deviate from the focus on the lives of the slaves and instead use these words to highlight their idea of Jefferson as a “master” and “an alien and alienating figure.” Imagine what a different first impression this book might have made on thousands of minds today and down through the years had Stanton chosen to correctly use Jefferson’s phrase, and entitled her book, “To watch for the happiness of those who labor for mine."
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Spokesman of the Revolution But Only in Writing
liver such an address, he understood the cadence and force of expression which would be required of the town crier.
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Jefferson may have suffered from an inability to project a dynamic speaking style. Although he was always critical of Patrick Henry’s intellect, he recognized that this did not diminish Henry’s capacity to connect with his audience.
homas Jefferson’s great talent was in the written word. We tend to forget that he was trained as a lawyer and made his living that way for about seven years before his first great document, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.” In his years as a lawyer, he concentrated on land law cases which were usually tried before single magistrates or judges. He was rarely before a jury, so he did not require an accomplished oratorical style. His practice allowed him to utilize his natural strengths which were a persistent habit of investigation and a closely reasoned presentation of the facts. John Adams recalled that when Jefferson joined the Second Continental Congress, he brought with him a “happy talent for composition…remarkable for the peculiar felicity of expression.” In Congress, he was not noted for his speaking ability, but served on many committees because of his research and the clarity of his writing. It is interesting that his next great document, “The Declaration Of Independence,” was composed as a rhetorical presentation in the public square. Although Jefferson may not have been able to de-
Jefferson never attempted speeches which were designed to shift the emotions of the audience. He had to connect with reason and logic. William Wirt, in his eulogy of Jefferson, recalled his inability to give “strength and compass” to his voice as a physical defect. It was his opinion that the pressure of the moment caused Jefferson’s voice to become “guttural and inarticulate.” The realization that this would happen affected Jefferson and prevented him from attempting a strong speaking style. Jefferson’s campaigns for president did not involve extensive travel, which was time-consuming and arduous, so there were few opportunities to address large crowds. Campaigns were waged through newspapers allied with the candidates and through surrogates. Jefferson’s greatest advantage over his opponents was the written word and his weakness as a public speaker was never an issue.
THOMAS JEFFERSON HERITAGE SOCIETY BEGINS DONATION OF SCHOLARS COMMISSION REPORT The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society is now providing free of charge to various university and public libraries The Jefferson- Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission. This program is made possible through the John and Catherine Coolidge Lastavica Literary Fund. Chaired by Professor Robert F. Turner, of the University of Virginia, this group of thirteen distinguished scholars, independent and unpaid, spent a year studying all the available evidence relating to whether Jefferson could have been the father of a child by Sally Hemings. It was their “unanimous view that the allegation is by no means proven; and we find it regrettable that public confusion about the 1998 DNA testing and other evidence has misled many people into believing that the issue is closed.” The book has 412 pages and more than 1400 footnotes. A short biography on each of the scholars who served on the commission may be found at http://tjheritage.org/scholars.html Librarians who are interested in receiving the book may email The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society at Jeffersonnnotes@verizon.net, with a reference to the name and address of the library. Jefferson Notes page 5
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BOOK NOTES IN DEFENSE OF JEFFERSON By William D. Hyland Jr JEFFERSON VINDICATED By Cynthia H. Burton FRAMING A LEGEND By M. Andrew Holowchak Available now from Amazon.com
mary of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society and a short explanation of the Jefferson-Hemings controversy with a reference to the Scholars Commission o celebrate Jefferson’s birth- Report. day, the Thomas Jefferson HeriThe students had previously toured the Capitol, tage Society presented a film titled and were aware of Jefferson’s birthday and the his“Keepers of the Flame,” to two tory of his design of the Virginia Capitol building. Jefgroups of seventh graders at the ferson was in Paris when he was asked by the DirecVirginia Capitol. The film was produced by the Virtor of Public Buildings to suggest designs for the new ginia Capitol Foundation and features Jefferson inCapitol to be constructed in Richmond. terpreter Bill Barker touring the Capitol with two young students. Jefferson was greatly impressed by the Maison Carrée, a Roman temple in Nîmes, France, and sugAlthough Jefferson’s birthday is on April 13, the gested it as the model. Jefferson was the first to inCapitol was not available on that date, so the film troduce classical design to public buildings in Amerwas shown on April 14, 2014. Each student was ica. given a handout with a picture of Jefferson, a sum-
Birthday at the Capitol
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Visit the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society at www.TJHeritage.org for other articles on Thomas Jefferson and discussions on the Hemings paternity claim and exactly what the DNA tests proved. Jefferson Notes page 6