Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

  REBUILT SHADWELL AFTER IT BURNED Kern, Jeffersons at Shadwell, 64.

  “HE WAS BORN” Jefferson, Writings, 3.

  SURVEYING AND MAPMAKING Ibid., 3–4.

  “HE DIED AUGUST 17TH, 1757” Ibid., 4.

  A BRIEF MENTION IN A LETTER PTJ, I, 409. “The death of my mother you have probably not heard of,” Jefferson wrote William Randolph. “This happened on the last day of March after an illness of not more than an hour. We suppose it to have been apoplectic.” (Ibid.)

  PAYING A CLERGYMAN MB, I, 444.

  “MY MOTHER’S HOUSE” PTJ, I, 34. The characterization was in a letter Jefferson wrote to John Page.

  HE DID NOT MOVE MB, I, 212.

  HER YOUNGER BROTHER’S “CONSTANT COMPANION” Randall, Jefferson, I, 40–41. See also TDLTJ, 38–39.

  COMMON PASSIONS Randall, Jefferson, I, 41.

  JANE SANG HYMNS FOR HER BROTHER TDLTJ, 34.

  “HE EVER REGARDED HER” Ibid.

  SENT TO STUDY CLASSICS JHT, I, 39–40. See also Randall, Jefferson, I, 17–18.

  THE REVEREND WILLIAM DOUGLAS JHT, I, 39–40.

  JEFFERSON LATER THOUGHT DOUGLAS Jefferson, Writings, 4.

  THE REVEREND JAMES MAURY Parton, Life, 17–18.

  “A CORRECT CLASSICAL SCHOLAR” Jefferson, Writings, 4.

  MAURY DID SPLENDIDLY JHT, I, 40–43.

  “WOULD BEGUILE OUR LINGERING HOURS” PTJRS, IV, 671. The letter was written on April 25, 1812.

  BORN IN 1743 TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/dabney-carr-1743–1773 (accessed 2011). See also TDLTJ, 45–46.

  FROM LOUISA COUNTY Ibid.

  THEY TOOK THE BOOKS Parton, Life, 44. My portrait of the friends’ time together is drawn from this page of Parton and from TDLTJ, 45–46.

  NO MAN, JEFFERSON RECALLED LATER TJ to Dabney Carr, Jr., January 19, 1816, Thomas Jefferson Papers, LOC.

  WHOEVER SURVIVED THE OTHER TDLTJ, 45. See also Parton, Life, 44.

  DISSERTATION ON EDUCATION Helen D. Bullock, ed., “A Dissertation on Education in the Form of a Letter from James Maury to Robert Jackson, July 17, 1762,” Papers of the Albemarle County Historical Society 2 (1941–42): 36–60. See also Hayes, Road to Monticello, 30–42.

  “AN ACQUAINTANCE WITH” Hayes, Road to Monticello, 36.

  GREEK AND LATIN Ibid.

  REMARKING THAT, GIVEN THE CHOICE TDLTJ, 25.

  “AT 14 YEARS OF AGE” Ibid., 26. Yet his mother was alive, and there were no fewer than four executors of his father’s will. (JHT, I, 437–38.) Still, Jefferson apparently could not imagine any one of those men taking the place of his father as patriarch and counselor.

  ARRIVED FOR THE 1759–60 HOLIDAYS PTJ, I, 3. The letter describing the visit and his uncle’s counsel is the oldest extant written document of Jefferson’s. (Ibid.)

  HOLIDAYS AT CHATSWORTH Ibid. For details about the estate itself, see Marc R. Matrana, Lost Plantations of the South (Jackson, Miss., 2009), 26–27.

  “BY GOING TO THE COLLEGE” Ibid.

  THE TEST FOR POTENTIAL STUDENTS Hayes, Road to Monticello, 47.

  TWO · WHAT FIXED THE DESTINIES OF MY LIFE

  “ENLIGHTENMENT IS MAN’S EMERGENCE” Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago, 2008), 258.

  “THE BEST NEWS I CAN TELL YOU” John J. Reardon, Peyton Randolph, 1721–1775: One Who Presided (Durham, N.C., 1982), 39.

  GAMBLED ON HORSES Randall, Jefferson, I, 23. Jefferson discussed his extracurricular activities in a letter to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph dated November 24, 1808. (Ibid., 22–23.)

  WASHINGTON RECEIVED HIS SURVEYING CERTIFICATE William and Mary Alumni Association, http://www.wmalumni.com/general (accessed 2011). A writer for the London Magazine delivered a mixed verdict on the College of William and Mary before Jefferson arrived, writing that while “the masters were men of great knowledge and discretion,” the college could not “yet vie with those excellent universities … of the Massachusetts,” arguing that students were “pampered much more in softness and ease” in Virginia than they were in New England. (Susan H. Godson, The College of William and Mary: A History, I, 1693–1888 [Williamsburg, Va., 1993], 84.)

  THE WREN BUILDING Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, http://www.history.org/almanack/places/hb/hbwren.cfm (accessed 2012).

  THREE BLOCKS EAST I drew on several sources for this portrait of Williamsburg. In 1724, a professor at William and Mary described the basic scene Jefferson saw in the spring of 1760: “From the church runs a street northward called Palace Street; at the other end of which stands the Palace or Governor’s House, a magnificent structure built at the public expense, finished and beautified with gates, fine gardens, offices, walks, a fine canal, orchards, etc… . This likewise has the ornamental addition of a good cupola or lanthorn, illuminated with most of the town, upon birth-nights, and other nights of occasional rejoicings.” Hugh Jones, The Present State of Virginia (London, 1724), 31.

  NOT QUITE HALF A SQUARE MILE I am grateful to Del Moore of the John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Library in Williamsburg for guidance on these details. See John W. Reps, Tidewater Towns: City Planning in Colonial Virginia and Maryland (Williamsburg, Va., 1972); and the eWilliamsburg Map, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, http://research.history.org/ewilliamsburg2/ (accessed 2012).

  A FRENCH TRAVELER SAW “THREE NEGROES” “Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, I,” American Historical Review 26 (July 1921): 745.

  “THE FINEST SCHOOL OF MANNERS AND MORALS” “Memoir of Thomas Jefferson Randolph,” Edgehill-Randolph Papers, Collection 1397, Box 11, University of Virginia.

  DR. WILLIAM SMALL, A SCOTTISH LAYMAN JHT, I, 51–55.

  “IT WAS MY GREAT GOOD FORTUNE” Jefferson, Writings, 4. Jefferson added: “He, most happily for me, became soon attached to me, and made me his daily companion when not engaged in the school; and from his conversation I got my first views of the expansion of science, and of the system of things in which we are placed.” (Ibid.)

  BORN IN SCOTLAND IN 1734 TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/Jefferson/William-small (accessed 2011).

  A “POLITE, WELL-BRED MAN” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 16 (1908): 209. This letter, from Stephen Hawtrey to his brother Edward Hawtrey, was written from London on March 26, 1765, and reported a conversation with Small, who had since left America, about William and Mary.

  LIVED IN TWO ROOMS Ibid., 210.

  ETHICS, RHETORIC, AND BELLES LETTRES Hayes, Road to Monticello, 50–51.

  NATURAL PHILOSOPHY TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/Jefferson/William-small (accessed 2011).

  LECTURING IN THE MORNINGS Ibid.

  SEMINAR-LIKE SESSIONS IN THE AFTERNOONS Ibid.

  BACON, LOCKE, NEWTON Ibid. See also Hayes, Road to Monticello, 50–56.

  KEY INSIGHT OF THE NEW INTELLECTUAL AGE Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York, 1976), is useful.

  “ENLIGHTENMENT IS MAN’S EMERGENCE” Gillespie, Theological Origins of Modernity, 258.

  “TO ME … A FATHER” PTJRS, VIII, 200.

  STUDIED FIFTEEN HOURS A DAY My portrait of his student days at Williamsburg is drawn from TDLTJ, 31–32; Randall, Jefferson, I, 24–32; and JHT, I, 55–57.

  “OF ALL THE CANKERS” PTJ, XI, 250–51.

  “KNOWLEDGE,” JEFFERSON SAID Ibid., X, 308.

  A VIGOROUS BODY HELPED CREATE A VIGOROUS MIND Ibid. “It is of little consequence to store the mind with science if the body be permitted to become debilitated,” Jefferson said. (Ibid.) See also PTJ, VIII, 405–8.

  “NOT LESS THAN TWO HOURS” Ibid.

  THEIR MORNINGS TO THE LAW Ibid., VIII, 408.

  WITH “THE MECHANIC” TDLTJ, 37–38.

  A “WALKING ENCYCLOPEDIA” Ibid., 37.

  �
��A LITTLE TOO SHOWY” RANDALL, Jefferson, I, 22.

  AN AVUNCULAR TONE Ibid., 22–23.

  THE MOTTO AT WILLIAMSBURG’S POPULAR RALEIGH TAVERN Willard Sterne Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Life (New York, 1993), 43. The motto in the tavern was in Latin.

  HELD FREQUENT GATHERINGS TDLTJ, 27–28.

  HE CALLED FAUQUIER’S “FAMILIAR TABLE” Ibid., 28.

  INVITED TO JOIN Randall, Jefferson, I, 30–31. In British America, the architects of revolution were delighted to learn the civilizing arts from their colonial masters. George Washington had a similar experience in northern Virginia, where his connection to the Fairfax family seat of Belvoir introduced him to more sophisticated and cultivated ways of life than he might have otherwise known. (Douglas Southall Freeman, John Alexander Carroll, and Mary Wells Ashworth, George Washington: A Biography, I [New York, 1948], 199–203.)

  HE LOVED SCIENCE Ibid., 30–32. “With some allowance he was everything that could have been wished for by Virginia under a royal government,” the Virginia chronicler John Daly Burk wrote in a history published in 1804. “Generous, liberal, elegant in his manners and acquirements, his example left an impression of taste, refinement, and erudition on the character of the colony, which eminently contributed to its present high reputation in the arts.” (Ibid., 30.)

  THE STORY WAS TOLD Ibid., 31. According to Burk, Fauquier “was but too successful in extending the influence of this pernicious and ruinous practice.” When not in residence at the Palace, it was reported, Fauquier “visited the most distinguished landholders in the colonies, and the rage for playing deep, reckless of time, health, or money, spread like a contagion among a class proverbial for their hospitality, their politeness, and fondness of expense.”

  FAUQUIER’S FATHER WAS A HUGUENOT PHYSICIAN JHT, I, 76. I am indebted to Malone for this short portrait of Fauquier. See also Parton, Life, 27–29; and “Francis Fauquier (bap. 1703–1768),” The Dictionary of Virginia Biography, http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Fauquier_Francis_bap_1703–1768 (accessed March 24, 2012).

  BECAME A FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY JHT, I, 76.

  AN UNUSUAL JULY HAILSTORM Ibid., 77.

  A SCIENTIFIC PAPER “Francis Fauquier (bap. 1703–1768).”

  THE LAWYER GEORGE WYTHE Imogene E. Brown, American Aristides: A Biography of George Wythe (Rutherford, N.J., 1981) was helpful on Wythe, as was Bruce Chadwick’s I Am Murdered: George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson, and the Killing That Shocked a New Nation (Hoboken, N.J., 2009).

  HAWK-NOSED Chadwick, I Am Murdered, 7–9, offers a fine descriptive section on Wythe.

  “OF THE MIDDLE SIZE” TDLTJ, 30.

  A HOUSE NEAR BRUTON PARISH Imogene E. Brown, American Aristides, 87.

  “MR. WYTHE CONTINUED” TDLTJ, 28.

  EXPENSIVE TASTES Imogene E. Brown, American Aristides, 81–82.

  “MRS. WYTHE PUTS” Ibid., 82. See also MB, I, 328.

  INTRODUCED JEFFERSON TO THE PRACTICE OF LAW Randall, Jefferson, I, 46.

  “APART FROM THE INTELLECTUAL” Ibid., 31.

  JEFFERSON ALSO INCLUDED HIS COUSIN Ibid., 22.

  RANDOLPH WAS “OF AN AFFABLE” Ibid., 51.

  HE ALSO “COMMANDS” Ibid.

  “UNDER TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES” Ibid., 22.

  “VERY HIGH STANDING” Ibid.

  MET PATRICK HENRY John P. Kaminski, The Founders on the Founders: Word Portraits from the American Revolutionary Era (Charlottesville, Va., 2008), 260–61.

  CONCEIVED OF LIFE IN SOCIAL TERMS Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), ix, and Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (New York, 2006), 104–7. See also Jack Rakove, Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (Boston, 2010), 299–302. With industry and skill, Jefferson studied much, but he was no cloistered intellectual or lonely scholar. We often think of him as a grand, solitary figure, alone with his thoughts and his pen and his inventions, shut off in his chambers at Monticello or upstairs in the President’s House. He was very rarely alone, however, and would have thought it odd if he had found himself long in isolation.

  “I AM CONVINCED” TDLTJ, 284. The quotation, from a letter to his daughter Polly Jefferson Eppes, continues: “and that every person who retires from free communication with it is severely punished afterwards by the state of mind into which he gets, and which can only be prevented by feeding our sociable principles.” (Ibid.)

  A SECRET SOCIETY MB, I, 338.

  LONGED FOR INTELLIGENCE PTJ, I, 5.

  A YOUNG WOMAN NAMED REBECCA Ibid., 6.

  THE EPISODE IS CHIEFLY INTERESTING For the basic details, see ibid.; for analysis, see JHT, I, 80–86.

  RATS AND RAIN PTJ, I, 3–6.

  COMPARED HIMSELF TO JOB Ibid., 3–5.

  “ALL THINGS HERE” Ibid., 7.

  “WE MUST FALL” Ibid., 15.

  JEFFERSON DECIDED TO DECLARE Ibid., 11–12.

  THE APOLLO ROOM OF THE RALEIGH TAVERN Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Williamsburg: The Old Colonial Capital (Richmond, Va., 1907), 232–35.

  “I WAS PREPARED” PTJ, I, 11.

  HE TRIED TO SPEAK Ibid.

  A CONVERSATION Ibid., 13–14.

  “I ASKED NO QUESTION” Ibid., 14.

  “ABOMINABLY INDOLENT” Ibid., 16.

  A LETTER TO A FRIEND Ibid., 15–17.

  HIS “SCHEME” TO MARRY Ibid.

  THE WEALTHY JACQUELIN AMBLER Alfred J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall, I (Boston, 1916), 149.

  “MANY AND GREAT ARE THE COMFORTS” PTJ, I, 16. E. M. Halliday, Understanding Thomas Jefferson (New York, 2001), thinks it unlikely that Jefferson would have availed himself of the obvious means of satisfying his sexual desires (Ibid., 16–17), but his views are as speculative as those suggesting Jefferson might well have done so. Such activity in the elite of his time was hardly unknown.

  Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996), 319–66, offers a compelling account of issues of sexuality and power in the world in which Jefferson grew up and ultimately lived. William Byrd II, the prominent planter, left a diary that included accounts of his sexual designs on women of inferior rank, both white and black. “On one of his first trips to Williamsburg as a councillor,” Brown wrote, “Byrd ‘sent for the wench to clean my room and when I came [to the room] I kissed her and felt her, for which God forgive me.’ Several days later, Byrd kissed Mrs. Chiswell with excessive passion in front of his wife ‘until she [Chiswell] was angry and my wife also was uneasy.’ After that incident, Byrd confined his philandering to private encounters with women who were clearly his social inferiors: He tried unsuccessfully to entice a chambermaid to his room in Williamsburg, engaged in some group ‘sport’ with a drunken Indian woman along with members of his militia, and kissed various women he and his male companions met during their visits to Williamsburg.” After Byrd’s wife died, Brown wrote, “Byrd began to visit prostitutes and initiated several longer affairs with white women who were not of his social rank.” Ultimately these included enslaved women. (Ibid., 331–32.)

  For his part, Halliday found it more likely that Jefferson resorted to masturbation. (Halliday, Understanding Thomas Jefferson, 20–21.) Andrew Burstein, Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello (New York, 2005), explores the influence of contemporary medical thought about human sexuality on the mature Jefferson. In Burstein’s interpretation, masturbation would have been seen as an exercise in depletion, whereas moderate sexual activity was essential to give “a healthy balance to the body’s internal forces,” Burstein wrote. “Sex was seen much as diet was, part of a regimen of self-control, and important to understand if one was to enjoy a productive life.” (Ibid., 157; see especially 151–88.) In my view, it is as likely that Jefferson, like Willi
am Byrd II, took advantage of available women—those in dependent stations such as service or slavery—to experiment sexually.

  THREE · ROOTS OF REVOLUTION

  “OUR MINDS WERE CIRCUMSCRIBED” Jefferson, Writings, 5.

  “MAY WE OUTLIVE OUR ENEMIES” MB, I, 283.

  JEFFERSON SENT TO LONDON Ibid., 16.

  “NO LIBERTY, NO LIFE” Ibid.

  THE DEFINITION OF LIBERTY I am indebted to many sources for my analysis of the intellectual, political, and cultural background to the American Revolution. In general, see Bailyn, Origins of American Politics (New York, 1968), and Ideological Origins of the American Revolution; Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1993), The American Revolution: A History (New York, 2003), and The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States (New York, 2011); Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire Before the American Revolution: vol. XIII, The Triumphant Empire: The Empire Beyond the Storm, 1770–1776 (New York, 1967), 171–224, which offers a valuable “Summary of the Series”; Gipson, “The American Revolution as an Aftermath of the Great War for the Empire” in Colbourn and Patterson, American Past in Perspective, I, 103–20; Clinton Rossiter, “Political Theory in the Colonies,” in ibid., 121–31; Page Smith, “David Ramsay and the Causes of the American Revolution,” in ibid., 132–60; T. H. Breen, American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People (New York, 2010); Taylor, American Colonies; Esmond Wright, ed. Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution (Chicago, 1966); Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995), 6–7; John Ferling, Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free (New York, 2011), 8–51; Morgan, Birth of the Republic, 15–60; Charles M. Andrews, “The American Revolution: An Interpretation,” American Historical Review 31, no. 2 (January 1926): 219–32; and Don Higginbotham, War and Society in Revolutionary America: The Wider Dimensions of Conflict (Columbia, S.C., 1988).