Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
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“HE APPEARED TO ME” Jefferson, Writings, 6.
“SPOKE TREASON” “Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, I,” 745.
“HE WAS READY TO ASK PARDON” IBID.
“MOST BLOODY” Mayer, Son of Thunder, 85.
THE “FIFTH RESOLUTION” Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 96–97.
MEN SUCH AS PEYTON RANDOLPH Reardon, Peyton Randolph, 21–23.
“BY GOD” Ibid., 22.
THE SENSE THAT THEY HAD LOST CONTROL Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 97–98, explains the dynamics well. “Why Randolph, Robinson, Robert Carter Nicholas, and even Richard Bland and George Wythe, all of whom are said to have opposed the resolutions, should have been so hostile to them is not apparent,” wrote Morgan and Morgan.
George Wythe, who had drawn the petition to the House of Commons, told Jefferson that his first draft had required toning down because the other members of the committee thought it treasonable. And Richard Bland was soon to express in print a view of Parliament’s authority which was at least as restricted as that taken in the resolutions. The argument of the opposition … was that the petitions of the preceding year were a sufficient statement of the colonial position and that no further step should be taken until some answer was received to these. But this argument was specious, for the Burgesses knew that the petitions had not received a hearing. In all probability, the opposition is not to be explained so much by the measure itself as by the men who were backing it. Henry and his friends were upstarts in Virginia politics, and their introduction of the resolves constituted a challenge to the established leaders of the House of Burgesses. (IbID.)
HENRY LEFT THE CAPITAL Mayer, Son of Thunder, 88. Mayer referred to Henry’s early exit as “unaccountab[le].” (IBID.)
ARRIVED AT THE CHAMBER EARLY PTJRS, VII, 544–51. See also Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 97–98.
EXAMINING THE RECORDS OF THE HOUSE Ibid. “The cautious leaders found themselves arguing for quiet submission in the most angry terms,” wrote Henry Mayer. “This was no time for hot-headed, ill-considered, and possibly treasonous assertion, they insisted.” (Mayer, Son of Thunder, 85.)
FAUQUIER WROTE THE BOARD OF TRADE Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 98.
THE ANNUAL BIRTH-NIGHT BALL “Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, I,” 746. See also Hayes, Road to Monticello, 81.
TO BEND THE NATURAL WORLD JHT, I, 115–16. See also Parton, Life, 42.
“WILD AND ROMANTIC” PTJRS, I, 386.
IN OCTOBER 1765 JHT, I, 115.
“LAUDABLE AND USEFUL” IBID.
“CLEARING THE GREAT FALLS” PTJ, I, 88.
HELPED BRING A MARYLAND PUBLISHER Hayes, Road to Monticello, 88. Hayes cites Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America: With a Biography of Printers and an Account of Newspapers (New York, 1970), 556.
“UNTIL THE BEGINNING” Jeffrey L. Pasley, ‘The Tyranny of Printers’: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2003), 37.
ONTASSETE, THE CHEROKEE CHIEF Jefferson, Writings, 1263.
WHO CROSSED THE ATLANTIC IN 1762 JHT, I, 60–61.
“THE MOON WAS IN FULL SPLENDOR” Jefferson, Writings, 1263.
“ONE OF THE CHOICE ONES” PTJ, VIII, 181.
“HIS POWERS OF CONVERSATION WERE GREAT” Randall, Jefferson, I, 45.
THE STORY OF A “MOST INTELLIGENT” Ibid., 45–46.
MARTHA HAD MARRIED HIS FRIEND DABNEY CARR MB, I, 21.
HIS SISTER JANE DIED Randall, Jefferson, I, 41.
“THE LOSS OF SUCH A SISTER” TDLTJ, 38–39.
THE ENGLISH POET WILLIAM SHENSTONE MB, I, 247.
“AH, JOANNA” Ibid. See also Hayes, Road to Monticello, 87–88.
BEGAN HIS GARDEN BOOK GB, 1.
“PURPLE HYACINTH” IBID.
“PUCKOON FLOWERS FALLEN” IBID.
AN EXCURSION NORTH PTJ, I, 18–21. See also JHT, I, 98–101.
WITH ELBRIDGE GERRY JHT, I, 100.
BROKE AWAY FROM HIM PTJ, I, 19.
TERRIBLE RAINS IBID.
FORDING A STREAM IBID.
STOPPING IN ANNAPOLIS IBID.
“I WAS SURPRISED” Ibid., 19–20.
“I WOULD GIVE YOU” Ibid., 20.
PARLIAMENT HAD STOOD DOWN Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 279–92.
“IN ALL CASES WHATSOEVER” Ibid., 288.
CASES TOOK HIM Frank L. Dewey, Thomas Jefferson, Lawyer (Charlottesville, Va., 1987), covers this aspect of his lifE WeLL.
HIS SISTER MARTHA WROTE HIM GB, 6.
HIS CARNATIONS WERE IN BLOOM IBID.
CALCULATED HOW MUCH HAY IbId., 7.
A BRIGHT, ENTHUSIASTIC “He pursued the law with an eager industry,” said Edmund Randolph. “Reserved toward the world at large, to his intimate friends he showed a peculiar sweetness of temper and by them was admired and beloved.… He panted after the fine arts and discovered a taste in them not easily satisfied with such scanty means as existed in a colony.… It constituted a part of Mr. Jefferson’s pride to run before the times in which he lived.” (Willard Sterne Randall, Thomas Jefferson, 100.)
A BOTTLE OF WHISKEY AND A SHIRT JHT, I, 123.
“HE SAW [FRAME]” IBid.
FOUR · TEMPTATIONS AND TRIALS
“YOU WILL PERCEIVE THAT” JHT, I, 448.
“ALL MEN ARE BORN FREE” Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 100.
PETER JEFFERSON HAD MADE WALKER’S FATHER JHT, I, 449. Malone devotes an appendix to this volume to what he called “The Walker Affair, 1768–1809.” (Ibid., 447–51.) See also Jon Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women (New York, 2007), 41–63, for an extended discussion of the Walker-Jefferson sToRY.
“WE HAD PREVIOUSLY” IBID.
DAUGHTER OF BERNARD MOORE Robert A. Lancaster, Jr., Historic Virginia Homes and Churches (Philadelphia, 1915), 266–67.
“JACK WALKER IS ENGAGED” PTJ, I, 15.
THE ABSENCE OF HIS HORSES IBId.
DATED FROM “DEVILSBURG” Ibid., 14.
“BUT I HEAR” IbiD., 15.
THE FIRST WEEK OF JUNE JHT, I, 449.
“THE FRIEND OF MY HEART” Ibid.
BY 1768 THE WALKERS WERE LIVING Ibid., 154.
BOUND FOR FORT STANWIX Ibid., 449.
APPOINTED “MR. JEFFERSON … MY NEIGHBOR” IBID.
DEPARTED FOR NEW YORK Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s WomEN, 51.
ABOUT TWO YEARS YOUNGER IbiD., 44.
SEEMS TO HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE JHT, I, 449–50, details the Walkers’ version of events. As noted below, Jefferson conceded his culpability though he is not known to have commented on the particulars of the Walkers’ acCOUnt.
JOHN WALKER RECALLED Ibid., 449.
“RENEWED HIS CARESSES” IBid.
JOHN COLES, A GREAT HUNTER The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 7 (1900): 101.
“HE PRETENDED TO BE SICK” JHT, I, 449.
CONFIRMED THE WALKER STORY Ibid., 448.
AFTER A POLITICAL BREAK Ibid., 447–48.
AN INCORRECT THING TO DO Ibid., 448.
A GLORIOUS AUTUMN MB, I, 73.
DAVIES, A PRESBYTERIAN CLERGYMAN Lynn Gardiner Tyler, Williamsburg: The Old Colonial Capital (Richmond, Va., 1907), 230.
OFFERINGS IN THE CAPITAL MB, I, 73.
BRINGING THE ITALIAN MUSICIAN FRANCIS ALBERTI Ibid., 70.
FAUQUIER DIED AT THE GOVERNOR’S PALACE IbiD., 97.
REGRET THAT HIS SLAVES WOULD HAVE TO BE SOLD IbID.
HE “MAY BECOME MORE USEFUL” William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, VII, ed. Lyon G. Tyler (Richmond, Va., 1900), 174.
FAUQUIER’S BURIAL FIVE DAYS LATER The Official Papers of Francis Fauquier, I (Charlottesvi
lle, Va., 1980), xxXVIiI.
“THE ABLEST MAN” Jefferson, WritinGS, 33.
DETERMINED TO MAKE HIMSELF PLEASANT JHT, I, 139.
“CHARMING, CHARMING!” IBID.
HAPPILY JOINED THEM IBID.
A HEAVILY BLACK-BORDERED BOX The Virginia Gazette, March 10, 1768.
THE EIGHTH INSTALLMENT IBiD.
“LET US THEN TAKE ANOTHER STEP” Milton E. Flower, John Dickinson: Conservative Revolutionary (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), 66–67.
“LEVEL 250 FT. SQUARE” GB, 12–13.
REPORTED THOMAS JEFFERSON’S ELECTION JHT, I, 129–31.
THE TOWNSHEND ACTS Morgan, Birth of the Republic, 34–35.
A SENSE OF URGENCY JHT, I, 134–37.
SUMMONED THE BURGESSES Ibid., 136.
WALKED TO THE APOLLO ROOM Ibid., 137.
LEAD BUST OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH Tyler, Williamsburg: Old Colonial CapitaL, 233.
THE VIRGINIANS HAD A PLAN PTJ, I, 27–31.
THEY WOULD NOT IMPORT OR CONSUME Ibid., 27–31. The signatories to this agreement pledged “to be frugal in the use and consumption of British manufactures” in the hope that “the merchants and manufacturers of Great-Britain may, from motives of interest, friendship, and justice, be engaged to exert themselves to obtain for us a redress of those grievances under which the trade and inhabitants of America at present labour.” (Ibid.) A provocative document, but in the spring of 1769 Jefferson, who signed it, and most of his colleagues were still far from revolution. In the Apollo Room after the adoption of the Nonimportation Resolutions, the assembled legislators drank toasts to the royal family, to Lord Botetourt, to “a speedy and lasting union between Great-Britain and her colonies,” and to the author of the Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. (Ibid., 31) It was, to say the least, a confusinG TIME.
ACCOMPANYING HIS MOTHER Parton, LiFE, 99.
THE SLAVE REPLIED TDLTJ, 43.
THE BURNED BOOKS PTJ, I, 35.
“WOULD TO GOD” IBID.
DESPERATE, EVEN FRANTIC Ibid., 34–38.
HE CONTEMPLATED MOVING Ibid., 35. “If this conflagration, by which I am burned out of a home,” he said, “had come before I had advanced so far in preparing another, I do not know but I might have cherished some treasonable thoughts of leaving these my native hills.” (IbID.)
HE BLEAKLY ALLUDED TO IT IbID.
THE SUMMIT OF HIS MOUNTAIN GB, 16–19.
CREATED AN ORCHARD Ibid., 15. His thought was to build and move into a house he described to his uncle as “another habitation which I am about to erect, and on a plan so contracted as that I shall have but one spare bedchamber for whatever visitants I may have.” He was ready for a demanding pace: “Nor have I reason to expect at any future day to pass a greater proportion of my time at home.” What he called the “way to and from Williamsburg” was to be a familiar one. (PTJ, I, 24.)
“YOU BEAR YOUR MISFORTUNE” PTJ, I, 38.
“CARRY ON, AND PRESERVE” Ibid. John Page sensed, too, that Jefferson was applying his reading of the ancients to the destruction of a whole domestic world. “I have heard of your loss and heartily condole with you, but am much pleased with the philosophy you manifest.” (Ibid.) As philosophical as Jefferson tried to be, the pain was still there, and his thoughts turned to other hearths and other lives. He idealized his brother-in-law’s situation. Dabney Carr, he told Page, “speaks, thinks, and dreams of nothing but his young son. This friend of ours, Page, in a very small house, with a table, half a dozen chairs, and one or two servants, is the happiest man in the universe.” (Ibid., 36.)
AN ADVERTISEMENT JEFFERSON PLACED PTJ, I, 33.
WOULD OWN MORE THAN 600 SLAVES Stanton, “Those Who Labor for My Happiness,” 106. Writing of the difficulties of historical work on slavery at Monticello, Stanton noted: “To reconstruct the world of Monticello’s African Americans is a challenging task. Only six images of men and women who lived there in slavery are known, and their own words are preserved in just four reminiscences and a handful of letters. Archaeological excavations are unearthing fascinating evidence of the material culture of Monticello’s black families, and since 1993, steps have been taken to record the oral histories of their descendants. Without the direct testimony of most of the African American residents of Monticello, we must try to hear their voices in the sparse records of Jefferson’s Farm Book and the often biased accounts and letters dealing with labor management and through the inherited memories of those who left Monticello for lives of freedom.” (Ibid.) See also Cassandra Pybus, “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery,” in Cogliano, ed., A Companion to Thomas Jefferson, 271–83. A new work is Henry Wiencek, Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves (New York, 2012). Wiencek was kind to share a galley of his book with me; he offers a bracing argument about Jefferson and slavery—one that is of a piece with my contention that Jefferson was driven to control and exert power over the world around him. “The regime at Monticello was far crueler than we have been led to believe; but more important, Jefferson’s financial letters and accounts reveal his icy calculus of slavery’s profits. He calculated he was getting a 4% increase in capital assets per year on the births of black children. He urged a neighbor to invest in slaves. He financed the rebuilding of Monticello with a $2,000 ‘slave-equity’ loan from a Dutch banking house. Far from being stuck or ensnared in slavery, Jefferson embraced it. He modernized slavery, diversified it, industrialized it. Through him we can see why slavery survived the Revolution and how it emerged as a robust and adaptable component of the American economy.” (Henry Wiencek to author, June 27, 2012.)
INHERITED 150 Stanton, “Those who labor for My Happiness,” 106.
BOUGHT ROUGHLY 20 IBiD.
MOST OF THE OTHERS WERE BORN INTO SLAVERY ON HIS LANDS IBid.
FROM 1774 TO 1826 IbID.
THE CASE OF SAMUEL HOWELL V. WADE NETHERLAND John C. Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (Charlottesville, Va., 1991), 4–5. See also Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 99–101.
“I MADE ONE EFFORT” Jefferson, WritiNGS, 5.
CRAFTED A BILL JHT, I, 121–22, and Miller, Wolf by the EarS, 4–5.
UNILATERAL AUTHORITY TO FREE A SLAVE Miller, Wolf by the Ears, 4. Miller wrote: “For half a century, manumission had been permitted only with the consent of the governor and council; Jefferson sought to give every slaveowner the right to free his slaves if he so desired.” (IBID.)
“MERITORIOUS SERVICES” Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 109. As Gordon-Reed wrote, the statute governing manumission, in effect since 1723, stated: “No negro, mulatto or Indian slaves shall be set free upon any pretense whatsoever, except for some meritorious services, to be adjudged and allowed by the governor and council.” (IBID.)
JEFFERSON ASKED RICHARD BLAND Miller, Wolf by the EARS, 5.
THE HOWELL CASE Ibid., 5–6. See also Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 99–101.
“EVERYONE COMES INTO” Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of MonticellO, 100.
LOST THE CASE Miller, Wolf by the Ears, 5–6.
“I REFLECT OFTEN” Ibid., 35–36.
FIVE · A WORLD OF DESIRE AND DENIAL
“HARMONY IN THE MARRIAGE” PTJ, XXX, 15.
“A LITHE AND EXQUISITELY” TDLTJ, 43.
“HER COMPLEXION WAS BRILLIANT” Randall, Jefferson, I, 63–64.
“GOOD SENSE AND GOOD NATURE” PTJ, I, 66.
ONE KINSMAN THOUGHT THE JEFFERSONS “A COUPLE” Ibid., 84. The kinsman was Robert Skipwith, who married a sister of Martha’s. By the middle of 1771, Jefferson was writing Skipwith at the Forest: “Offer prayers for me too at that shrine to which, tho’ absent, I pay continual devotion.” (Ibid., 78.) In reply, on September 20, 1771, Skipwith said: “My sister Skelton, Jefferson I wish it were, with the greatest fund of good nature has all that sprightliness and sensibility
which promises to ensure you the greatest happiness mortals are capable of enjoying.” (Ibid., 84.)
“THE BEGINNINGS OF KNOWLEDGE” Parton, Life, 128.
HE CONFIDED IN HER ABOUT POLITICS PTJ, I, 247.
PATTY’S “PASSIONATE ATTACHMENT” TDLTJ, 343.
JEFFERSON’S “CONDUCT AS A HUSBAND” IBId.
PATTY ONCE COMPLAINED THAT SOME INSTANCE IBiD.
“BUT IT WAS ALWAYS SO” IBId.
LIKED HAVING HER WAY Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s WomeN, 72.
JEFFERSON ONCE GENTLY REBUKED TDLTJ, 343.
“MY DEAR, A FAULT IN SO YOUNG” Ibid., 344.
“WARM GUSH OF GRATITUDE” IbID.
“MY GRANDMOTHER JEFFERSON” TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/martha-wayles-skelton-jeffeRSOn.
“MUCH BETTER … IF OUR COMPANION VIEWS A THING” PTJ, XXX, 15.
HAD RISEN FAR IN VIRGINIA Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 57–90, is a brilliant, groundbreaking account of John Wayles’s background in England, his life in Virginia, and his relationship with Elizabeth HEMINgs.
POOR, UNDISTINGUISHED FAMILY Ibid., 59.
THE CHILD LIVED BUT THE MOTHER DID NOT Ibid., 77. The first Mrs. Wayles lost a set of twins before giving birth to Patty. (IBID.)
NEVER WANTED HER OWN CHILDREN TO FACE Ibid., 145. Gordon-Reed wrote: “Her reported words do not appear to have been motivated by a desire to die knowing that her husband would in some perverse way always belong just to her. This was not about him. It was about her children. She was concerned about the prospect of her daughters’ growing up under the control of a woman who was not their mother.” (IBID.)
WAYLES WAS A DEBT COLLECTOR Ibid., 68–69.
“MR. WAYLES WAS A LAWYER” Jefferson, WritiNGS, 5.
PROVOKED ANXIETY AMONG THE PLANTERS Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 69–71. One day Wayles was trying to track down Jefferson kinsman Thomas Mann Randolph only to be informed that Randolph had (conveniently, given the nature of Wayles’s business) “gone to some springs on the frontiers to spend the summer.” (IBID.)
A MOCKING POEM IbiD., 74.
A CONTROVERSIAL MURDER TRIAL Ibid., 74–76. In the frenzy of the hour, Wayles clearly had enemies with a motive to say the most extreme and negative things they could. He did, however, come from obscurity—there are suggestions in the written record that he arrived in America as a “servant boy” to a richer family—and debt collecting and slave trading were not considered entirely gentlemanly lines of work. (Ibid., 75.)