20. Richmond Recorder, Sept. 1, 1802.
21. Ibid., Sept. 15, 1802.
22. Ibid., Sept. 22, 1802.
23. Ibid., Nov. 3, 1802.
24. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 195–96.
25. Richmond Recorder, Sept. 15, 1802.
26. Ibid., Dec. 1, 1802.
27. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 59–60.
28. Ibid., 60.
29. Durey, With the Hammer of Truth, 154–55.
27: The Public World and the Private Domain
1. Stanton, Free Some Day, 62, 129–30.
2. TJ to John Wayles Eppes, Aug. 7, 1804, quoted in Lucia Stanton, "‘A Well-Ordered Household’: Domestic Servants in Jefferson’s White House," White House History, no. 17 (2006): 8; Cornelia Randolph to Virginia J. Trist, Aug. 22, 1831, quoted in Stanton, Free Some Day, 156.
3. Stanton, "‘Well-Ordered Household,’" 9.
4. Ibid., 8.
5. TJ to Edward Bancroft, Jan. 26, 1789, Papers, 14: 492–93. TJ mistakenly date d the letter 1788.
6. TJ to Mary Jefferson Eppes, March 3, 1802, LOC, 20875.
7. Stanton, "‘Well-Ordered Household,’" 8, 10–11; Stanton, Free Some Day, 185 n. 285.
8. Stanton, Free Some Day, 50.
9. MB, 1069. TJ noted paying expenses for Ursula’s "lying in." She had come to Washington sometime after Sept. 1801. She first appears in TJ’s list of servants in Nov. Her baby was born before March 22.
10. Eli Hawley Canfield to W. S. Canfield and Zaddock H. Canfield, Aug. 24, 1842, Correspondence of James Madison, 1801–1842, Accession 8005, Special Collections, ViU.
11. Stanton, Slavery at Monticello, 16. Reproduction of missing page from the Farm Book, "Negroes Alienated 1784–1794," Farm Book, 24.
12. Farm Book, 30.
13. George Jefferson to TJ, June 17, 1801, Farm Book, 425.
14. Stanton, Free Some Day, 131–32.
15. TJ to Joseph Dougherty, July 31, 1806, quoted in Stanton, "‘Well-Ordered Household,’" 11.
16. Ibid.
17. Stanton, Free Some Day, 133.
18. Ibid.; Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 109.
19. Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," WMQ, 3d ser., 8 (1951): 579; Robert L. Self and Susan R. Stein, "The Collaboration of Thomas Jefferson and John Hemings: Furniture Attributed to the Monticello Joinery," Winterthur Portfolio 33, no. 4 ("Race and Ethnicity in American Material Life") (1998): 231–48.
20. TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph, May 19, 1793, Papers, 26:65; directions for Watson, ca. Oct. 22–25, 1793, ibid., 27:267.
21. McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello, 86–87, 311; TJ to Thomas Munro, March 14, 1815, Farm Book, 460.
22. James Oldham to TJ, Nov. 26, 1804, MHi.
23. Ibid.
24. Stanton, Free Some Day, 116.
25. Ibid.
26. James Oldham to TJ, July 16 and 23, 1805; TJ to Oldham July 20, 1805, MHi.
27. TJ to James Oldham, July 20, 1805, MHi.
28. Thomas Mann Randolph to TJ, May 30, 1803, ViU.
29. TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph, June 8, 1803, LOC, 22821.
30. James Oldham to TJ, July 30, 1805, MHi.
31. MB, 1315.
32. See Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 544 n. 57. Brodie’s biography contains the greatest number of reproductions of the satirical verse about SH and TJ, in chaps. 25 and 26. See also "John Quincy Adams, Apostate," Journal of the Early American Republic 11, no. 2 (1991): 165.
33. Abigail Adams to TJ, Oct. 25, 1804, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:257; TJ to Benjamin Rush, Jan. 16, 1811, LOC, 34176.
35. Jack Shepherd, Cannibals of the Heart: A Personal Biography of Louisa Catherine and John Quincy Adams (New York, 1980), 114, 115.
36. Louisa Catherine Adams to John Quincy Adams, June 11, 1807, Adams Family Papers, MHi. I thank Mary T. Claffey of The Adams Papers for helping me find this quote after I had lost the reference.
37. Writings of John Quincy Adams, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford, 7 vols. (New York, 1913–17), 3:289. I thank Professor Lynn Parsons of the State University of New York (Brockport) for calling this passage to my attention. See also Linda K. Kerber and Walter John Morris, "Politics and Literature: The Adams Family and the Port Folio," WMQ, 3d ser., 23 (1966): 450–67.
28: "Measurably Happy": The Children of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
1. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 247.
2. Ibid., 248.
3. I thank Beverly Gray, researcher for the Getting Word Project, of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, genealogist and expert on African American families in Ohio, for this information and insight.
4. Stanton, "Monticello to Main Street," 100.
5. TJ to Maria Jefferson Eppes, March 3, 1804, LOC, 23989.
6. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 195–96, 247.
7. Ibid., 247; "Room in Which Martha Jefferson Died," Thomas Jefferson Wiki, http://www.wiki.monticello.org.; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Ann Payne Cutts, Sept.
8. 8, 1804, noting, "Patsy and Nelly wrote to you last week. P. goes with us tomorrow on a visit to Montecello for a week," Dolley Madison Digital Edition, http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu. See also TJ to James Madison, Sept. 6, 1804, and James Madison to TJ, Sept. 8, 1804, Smith, Republic of Letters, 2:1344. 8. Malone, Jefferson, vol. 5, Appendix 1: "Descendants of Thomas Jefferson."
9. The literature on Jefferson and the embargo is considerable and generally negative, though there are signs that a reconsideration is under way. The most conventional treatment of the subject can be found ibid., Malone, vol. 5, chap. 25, "The Lesser Evil: The Embargo," 469–90. For the more typically negative view, see Doron S. Ben-Atar, The Origins of Jeffersonian Commercial Policy and Diplomacy (New York, 1993).
10. TJ to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1825, LOC, 38465.
11. TJ to John Page, June 25, 1804, LOC, 24511.
12. Boston Repertory, May 31, 1805.
13. The will of George Wythe, LOC, 27971. See also Julian Boyd, "The Murder of George Wythe," WMQ, 3d ser., 12 (1955): 513.
14. Lydia Broadnax to TJ, April 9, 1807, Papers (unpublished); TJ to George Jefferson, April 18, 1807, ibid. I thank Linda Monaco at the Papers of Thomas Jefferson for providing me with copies and transcriptions of these letters. MB, 1201.
15. TJ to William Duval, June 22, 1806, LOC, 27941; July 17, 1806, LOC, 28061; William Duval to TJ, Dec. 10, 1806, LOC, 28553; George Wythe’s will, LOC, 27971–72.
16. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 199; Ellen Randolph Coolidge to Nicholas Trist, March 28, 1823, Family Letters Project.
17. TJ to James Madison, June 22, 1817, Smith, Republic of Letters, 3:1786; Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 199–200; Thomas Eston Randolph to Nicholas Trist, June 30, 1826, Family Letters Project.
18. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 247.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. See, e.g., TJ to Joel Yancey, Sept. 16, 1816, and Oct. 14, 1820, MHi; codicil to TJ’s will, MSS 5145, Special Collections, ViU. See also photograph in the second insert.
22. Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 110; Farm Book, 130.
23. TJ to Francis C. Gray, March 4, 1815, LOC, 36173.
24. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 248; Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 110.
25. Susan Kern, "The Material World of the Jeffersons at Shadwell," WMQ, 3d ser., 62, no. 2 (2005), at http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/wm/62.2/kern.html, 24.
26. Farm Book, 128; TJ to Joel Yancey, Sept. 13, 1816, MHi.
27. Rhys Isaac, "Monticello Stories," in Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, 123–24.
28. TJ to Francis C. Gray, March 4, 1815, LOC, 36173.
29. Francis Gray to TJ, March 24, LOC, 36208. In this letter Gray explained to TJ that he asked the question because he was trying to interpret the Massachusetts law on the question of the definition of a "mulatto." He answered TJ’s algebra with equations of his own.
30. Peter S. Onuf, The Mind of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville, 2006), 226–31.
31. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 247.
32. Ibid., 151–52.
33. Charles Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 572; Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 127; from Martha Jefferson Randolph and Thomas Mann Randolph to TJ, Jan. 31, 1801, Papers, 32:527; Memoirs of Thomas Jefferson Randolph, 4, Special Collections, ViU.
34. The Autobiography of T. Jefferson Coolidge, 1831–1920 (Whitefish, Mont., 2007), Mary J. Randolph to Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge postscript by Nicholas P. Trist, Nov. 26, 1826.
35. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 14–16; Stanton, Free Some Day, 101.
36. Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 110; Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 568.
37. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 255.
29: Retirement for One, Not for All
1. Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 125.
2. Ibid.
3. See Stanton, Free Some Day, 131, describing comments about Fossett’s cooking.
4. Anne Cary Randolph, 1805–1808, Part A: Household Accounts, LOC.
5. New York World, Jan. 30, 1898.
6. TJ to John Adams, Jan. 21, 1812, LOC, 34560.
7. Stanton, Free Some Day, 121.
8. Martha Randolph to Ellen Randolph Coolidge, Nov. 16, 1825, Family Letters Project; TJ to Ellen R. Coolidge, Nov. 14, 1825, The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Edwin M. Betts and James A. Bear Jr. (1966; reprint, Columbia, Mo., 1986), 461.
9. MB, 1265 n. 84, 1352.
10. Cornelia Jefferson Randolph to Virginia Jefferson Randolph, Oct. 25, 1816, [Aug.?] 28, 1819, Family Letters Project; Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 109. Bacon confuses "Priscilla" Hemings’s name with Ursula, another enslaved woman at Monticello.
11. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 245.
12. Ellen Wayles Randolph Harrison, quoted in Bear, The Hemings Family of Monticello, 17.
13. John Hemmings to TJ, Nov. 29, 1821, MHi.
14. The First Forty Years of Washington Society, Portrayed by the Family Letters of Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith (Margaret Bayard), ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York, 1906), 71; McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello, 20; Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 573; Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 86–87.
15. For discussion of the architecture of Jefferson’s living quarters, see William L. Beiswanger, "Thomas Jefferson and Art of Living Out of Doors," Magazine Antiques 157 (2000): 595–605; McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello, 323–25.
16. McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello, 323–24.
17. For a general look at the lives of the enslaved people at Monticello, see Barbara J. Heath, Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest (Charlottesville, 1999).
18. Ellen Wayles Randolph to Martha Jefferson, Aug. 18, 1817, Aug. 24, 1819, Family Letters Project.
19. TJ to John Wayles Eppes, Sept. 18, 1812. HM5841, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.
20. Life, Letters, and Journal of George Ticknor, 2 vols. (Boston, 1909), 1:34–36.
21. "Elijah Fletcher’s Account of a Visit to Monticello," May 8, 1811, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, ed. J. Jefferson Looney et al., vol. 3 (Princeton, 2006), 610.
22. See Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge’s memories of trips to the Poplar Forest, written in 1856 and printed in Randall, Life, 3:343–44. For an example of regards sent through Randolph to a member of the Hemings family, see Ellen W. Randolph to Martha Jefferson Randolph, Sept. 13, [1816?], Family Letters Project: "Aunt Priscilla begs to be remembered to the young ladies—and that they will inform John H of her well doing and constant recollection."
23. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 245.
24. Ellen Wayles Coolidge to Joseph Coolidge, Oct. 24, 1858, Family Letters Project; Stanton, Free Some Day, 101.
25. TJ to Joel Yancey, Sept. 13, 1816; Nov. 10, 1818; June 25, 1819, MHi.
26. Ellen W. Randolph to Martha Jefferson Randolph, July 18, 1819; Ellen W. Randolph to Martha Randolph, Sept. 27, [1816?], Family Letters Project.
27. TJ to Francis Eppes, Feb. 17, 1825, Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson, 451; codicil to TJ’s will, MSS 5145, Special Collections, ViU. See also photograph in the second insert.
28. Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 87–95; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 554.
29. Ellen Wayles Randolph to Martha Jefferson, Sep. 27, [1816?], Family Letters Project. Randolph first speaks of Burwell Colbert’s child who had been ill. "Critty’s child is pretty much as it was, if there is any change it is for the worse, but Aunt Bet [Betty Brown] who keep it at her house and nurses it, desired me to ask you to tell Burwell, that it is just as…he left it."
30. Ellen Wayles Randolph to Virginia Randolph, Aug. 31, 1819, Family Letters Project.
31. Cornelia J. Randolph to Virginia J. Randolph, Oct. 25, 1815, Family Letters Project.
32. Thomas Jefferson Randolph, "The Last Days of Jefferson," Special Collections, ViU; Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 352–53, quoting the Frederick Town Herald.
33. Ellen W. Randolph to Martha Jefferson Randolph, July 28, 1819, Family Letters Project.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. See Stanton, Free Some Day, 156, discussing Colbert’s height.
37. Ellen W. Randolph to Martha Jefferson Randolph, July 28, 1819, Family Letters Project.
38. TJ to Martha Jefferson Randolph, quoted in J. Jefferson Looney, "‘I Never Saw Any Body More Uneasy Than Grandpapa’: Thomas Jefferson as Seen by His Family" (paper presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Worcester, Mass.).
39. Malone, Jefferson, 6:469; Virginia Randolph Trist to Ellen Randolph Coolidge, Randall, Life, 540.
40. TJ to James Madison, Oct. 18, 1825, in Smith, Republic of Letters, 3:1942–43.
41. Virginia Randolph Trist to Ellen Randolph Coolidge, Oct. 16, 1825, Family Letters Project; Malone, Jefferson, 6:469–70.
30: Endings and Beginnings
1. TJ to James Madison, Sept. 24, 1814, Smith, Republic of Letters, 3:1745; E. Millicent Sowerby, ed., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 5 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1952–59).
2. Steven Harold Hochman, "Thomas Jefferson: A Personal Financial Biography" (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1987), 231–32, quoted in Sloan, Principle and Interest, 360.
3. TJ to Madison, Sept. 6, 1789, Papers, 15:392. See MB, xviii–xix, for James A. Bear and Lucia Stanton’s discussion of Jefferson’s problematic approach to financial record keeping.
4. Sloan, Principle and Interest, 11.
5. Malone, Jefferson, 3:3; Catherine Allgor, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government (Charlottesville, 2000), 24.
6. Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 573; TJ to John Adams, June 10, 1815, LOC, 36303.
7. Cornelia J. Randolph to Ellen Wayles Randolph, Aug. 3, 1826, Family Letters Project; Sloan, Principle and Interest, 221–22.
8. Sloan, Principle and Interest, 222.
9. Martha Jefferson to TJ, Aug. 17, 1819, Family Letters, 430. See also Ellen W. Randolph to Martha Jefferson, Aug. 24, 1819, Family Letters Project, describing TJ’s reaction to the news about Nicholas and her own extremely ironic criticism of Nicholas’s failure to be realistic about his financial situation. Wilson C. Nicholas to TJ, Aug. 5, 1819, LOC 38530; Malone, Jefferson, 3:314; Sloan, Principle and Interest, 219.
10. Morgan, "‘To Get Quit of Negroes,’" 403–29.
11. See, generally, Self and Stein, "Collaboration of Thomas Jefferson and John Hemings," 231–48.
12. Stanton, Free Some Day, 134–35; TJ to Charles Willson Peale, Aug. 20, 1811, LOC, 34408; Sloan, Principle and Interest, 11.
13. Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825; or, Journal of a Voyage to the United States, trans. John D. Godman (Philadelphia, 1829); Malone, Jefferson, 3:403.
14. Malone, Jefferson, 3:404; Peter Fossett in the New York World, Jan. 30, 1830, quoted in Stanton, Free Some Day, 97.
15. Stanton, Free Some Day, 101.
16. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 27–28.
17. Ibid., 15; Stanton, Free Som
e Day, 148, "Life among the Lowly," Pike County (Ohio) Republican, March 13, 1873.
18. Levasseur, Lafayette in America, 217–20.
19. Ibid., 219.
20. McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello, 379.
21. Daniel Webster is quoted in Randall, Life, 3:505, as writing in 1824 that Jefferson’s "general appearance indicates an extraordinary degree of health, vivacity, and spirit"; Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 247–48; Randall, Life, 3:538.
22. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 245; Gordon James and James A. Bear Jr., "A Medical History of Thomas Jefferson" (unpublished manuscript), p. 119, Special Collections Research Report, Jefferson Library, Charlottesville; see also "Dunglison’s Memorandum," ibid., 547. Jefferson told his final doctor that he attributed his impaired health to his trip to the springs.
23. Martha Jefferson Randolph to Ellen Randolph Coolidge, April 25, 1826, Family Letters Project.
24. Sloan, Principle and Interest, 222; The Letters of Lafayette and Jefferson, ed. Gilbert Chinard (Baltimore, 1929), 428.
25. Malone, Jefferson, 3:473–77.
26. Burstein, Jefferson’s Secrets, 271–74; Randall, Life, 3:543.
27. Codicil to TJ’s will, see photograph in the second insert.
28. See Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 26–29, discussing Harriet Hemings’s departure from Monticello.
29. Randall, Life, 3:544.
30. Ibid., 541.
31. Ibid., 545.
32. Stanton, Free Some Day, 142–43. The only known account of Jefferson’s funeral was provided by Andrew K. Smith, who upon seeing a notice of Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s death wrote to the Washington Republican recounting his memories of the event. Apparently Jeff Randolph and his father were unable to curb their mutual enmity, even as the family mourned Jefferson’s death. A contingent from Charlottesville was supposed to proceed up to the mountain from the courthouse, but there was a dispute about who had the right to be where in the procession. Smith and others grew exasperated and could wait no longer, so they headed to Monticello. They arrived to find that Jefferson’s coffin had been taken out of the house and placed on "narrow planks" over the grave. Randolph père and fils knew that the large procession, including students from the university and citizens from the area, was on its way, but each thought it was the other’s duty to tell the minister. So they said nothing while the minister performed the ceremony for the "thirty or forty" people in attendance. Jefferson was buried, and as the assembled dispersed and started down the mountain, they ran into almost fifteen hundred would-be funeral attendees coming up. Those in the crowd were both disappointed and angry at not having been able to pay their last respects. Smith said that an explanation of the mixup was printed the next day in a Charlottesville newspaper. Family Letters Project.
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