Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves
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10. Quoted in Boulton, “American Paradox,” p. 469.
11. Boswell and Croker, Life of Samuel Johnson, p. 461.
12. Quoted in Wilson, “Evolution of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia,” p. 124.
13. Jordan, White over Black, pp. 287, 519.
14. Rush, Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, upon Slave-Keeping, p. 3.
15. Bruce Dain remarks: “Jefferson had to dismiss a Wheatley. One instance of substantial black reason or imagination would upset his whole scheme.” Dain, Hideous Monster of the Mind, p. 34. David Waldstreicher writes: “Wheatley posed a special problem for Thomas Jefferson. He must have been aware that enlightened figures like Voltaire and Rush had already cited Wheatley’s poetry in the ongoing, international…debate about race, nature, and slavery…. His vituperative response to Wheatley suggests the threat that her poems and her public actions…posed for Jefferson.” Waldstreicher, “Wheatleyan Moment,” p. 545. David Grimsted dissects TJ’s derision of Wheatley in “Anglo-American Racism and Phillis Wheatley’s ‘Sable Veil,’ ‘Length’ned Chain,’ and ‘Knitted Heart,’” pp. 338–444.
16. Wheatley, Complete Works, p. 89.
17. TJ to Clark, Jan. 1, 1780, in Papers, vol. 3.
18. TJ to Chastellux, June 7, 1785, in Papers, vol. 8.
19. Thomas Jefferson, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Lipscomb and Bergh, vol. 16, p. 452.
20. Ibid., vol. 10, p. 363.
21. Thomas Mann Randolph Jr., Notes on the Genealogy of Pocahontas, n.d., Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 6, Randolph Family Manuscripts, 1790–1889, Library of Congress.
22. Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, p. 85.
23. As McColley notes, Virginians “could command the sympathy of outsiders simply by showing the right attitudes.” McColley, Slavery and Jeffersonian Virginia, p. 114.
24. Barker, “Unraveling the Strange History of Jefferson’s Observations sur la Virginie,” p. 140.
25. Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom, p. 105. See also Pybus, “Jefferson’s Faulty Math.”
26. Holton, Forced Founders, p. 143.
27. Kranish, Flight from Monticello, pp. 254–55.
28. Ibid., p. 253.
29. Ibid., p. 270.
30. Short to TJ, Feb. 27, 1798, in Papers, vol. 30.
31. Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women, pp. 69–70.
32. Armstrong, undated marginal annotation on Notes on the State of Virginia, p. 240. I am grateful to John Winthrop Aldrich, who remembered this annotation made by his great-great-great-great-grandfather and provided me with a copy.
33. Quoted in Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, p. 380.
34. John Kern, “Henry County: Dry Bridge Rosenwald School and Bassett Furniture, Inc.: ‘We Lived Under a Hidden Law,’” lecture, Virginia Forum, 2010.
35. Peterson, Jefferson Image in the American Mind, p. 187.
4. “The Hammer or the Anvil”
1. Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson, p. 345.
2. Farm Book, plate 29.
3. These departures “had the hallmarks of well-planned, premeditated action,” writes the historian Cassandra Pybus in “Jefferson’s Faulty Math,” pp. 245–46. Farm Book, plate 29; Stanton, Free Some Day, pp. 52–55. Though TJ asserted that Cornwallis “carried off” his people, implying that the British had forced his slaves to abscond, in the Farm Book he wrote that Black Sal and her children “joined the enemy.” He may have made inquiries among the remaining slaves and found that Sal had gone of her own accord. Three men named Robin, Barnaby, and Harry and a boy named Will fled Monticello for the British camp at Elk Hill. Barnaby, a blacksmith, died; after Robin and Will returned to Monticello, TJ sold them; Harry was one of three slaves “never more heard of.” “Jefferson’s Statement of Losses to the British at His Cumberland Plantations in 1781” [Jan. 27, 1783], in Papers, vol. 6.
4. TJ to Jean Nicolas Démeunier, June 26, 1786, in Papers, vol. 10.
5. TJ to Charles Bellini, Sept. 30, 1785, in Papers, vol. 8.
6. Ellis also refers to TJ’s “highly developed network of interior defenses.” Ellis, American Sphinx, pp. 149–50, 177; Miller, Wolf by the Ears, p. 163; Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, pp. 371–72.
7. TJ to James Monroe, deleted portion, May 20, 1782, in Papers, vol. 6.
8. Wiencek, Imperfect God, p. 268.
9. Price to TJ, July 2, 1785, in Papers, vol. 8.
10. TJ to Price, Aug. 7, 1785, in Papers, vol. 8.
11. Hochman, “Thomas Jefferson,” p. 180.
12. Thomas Jefferson, “Argument in the Case of Howell vs. Netherland,” in Ford, Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1.
13. TJ to Angelica Schuyler Church, Nov. 27, 1793, in Papers, vol. 27.
14. Thomas Jefferson, “The Article on the United States in the Encyclopédie méthodique; Additional Questions of M. de Meusnier, and Answers,” [ca. Jan.–Feb. 1786], in Papers, vol. 10.
15. TJ to Alexander McCaul, April 19, 1786, in Papers, vol. 9.
16. Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom, pp. 104–105, 240–41n4.
17. TJ to Francis Eppes, July 10, 1788, in Papers, vol. 13.
18. TJ to Nicholas Lewis, July 29, 1787, in Papers, vol. 11.
19. TJ discusses the legal intricacies of the Wayles debt in TJ to Eppes, July 10, 1788. Even if the Wayles slaves had somehow been responsible for the debt, the slaves TJ inherited from his parents certainly were not, yet TJ called upon them to labor harder as well.
20. The other fourteen people might have been the so-called privilege slaves, the commission that Wayles and his partner were entitled to take; or they escaped or died before sale.
21. When TJ and two other heirs took possession of the Wayles estate, they decided to assume Wayles’s debt personally, believing that they could pay it off, rather than leaving it as part of the estate. It was not a bad strategy, but it turned out to be a mistake. Sloan, Principle and Interest, pp. 14–26.
22. Sloan, ibid., p. 24, refers to TJ’s generalized sense of victimization by the war, the weather, the market, the merchants in England, and so on. In a 1785 letter TJ blamed British merchants for getting Americans into debt by offering “good prices and credit to the planter, till they got him more immersed in debt than he could pay without selling his lands or slaves.” TJ to Nathaniel Tracy, Aug. 17, 1785, in Papers, vol. 8.
5. The Bancroft Paradox
1. TJ to Montmorin, July 23, 1787, in Papers, vol. 11; Nettels, Emergence of a National Economy, p. 49.
2. As the U.S. trade representative in Paris, “Jefferson knew that he represented South Carolina as well as Virginia; his efforts to find new markets for American products, including rice, had increased his awareness of the importance of slave labor in the national economy,” as David Brion Davis writes. Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, p. 178; Waldstreicher, Runaway America, p. 231.
3. Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, pp. 134–35.
4. Ibid., p. 7. “Your republic has instructed us,” wrote another Frenchman to TJ, “and your institutions will perhaps one day establish in our country that which English and American philosophers have thus far only led us to hope for.” Pulley, “Thomas Jefferson at the Court of Versailles,” p. 27.
5. Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, p. 150.
6. Pulley, “Thomas Jefferson at the Court of Versailles,” p. 69.
7. TJ to Brissot de Warville, Aug. 16, 1786, in Papers, vol. 10.
8. Quoted in Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, pp. 134–35.
9. Ibid., pp. 136–37.
10. “Jefferson’s Notes from Condorcet on Slavery,” n.d., in Papers, vol. 22.
11. Popkin, Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought, pp. 51, 52.
12. Quoted in Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, p. 139.
13. TJ to Démeunier [June 26, 1786], in Papers, vol. 10. Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, pp. 137, 147.
14. “A Bill Concerning Slaves,” in Ford, Works of Thomas J
efferson, vol. 2.
15. Pulley, “Thomas Jefferson at the Court of Versailles,” p. 49.
16. TJ to Brissot de Warville, Feb. 11, 1788, in Papers, vol. 12.
17. Waldstreicher, Runaway America, p. 219.
18. Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, pp. 11–12, 187.
19. Pulley, “Thomas Jefferson at the Court of Versailles,” p. 40.
20. D’Souza, What’s So Great About America, p. 113.
21. Bancroft to TJ, Sept. 16, 1788, in Papers, vol. 14.
22. Ibid.
23. Wolf, Race and Liberty in the New Nation, p. 54.
24. McColley, Slavery and Jeffersonian Virginia, pp. 158–59.
25. Wolf, Race and Liberty in the New Nation, pp. 31–33.
26. Thomas Jefferson, “Notes of a Tour Through Holland and the Rhine Valley,” March 3, 1788, in Papers, vol. 13.
27. TJ to Short, April 9, 1788, in Papers, vol. 13.
28. TJ to Edward Coles, Aug. 25, 1814, in Papers, Retirement Series, vol. 7.
29. TJ to Jean Nicolas Démeunier [June 26, 1786].
30. Short to TJ, Oct. 7, 1793, in Papers, vol. 27.
31. “Jefferson’s Notes from Condorcet on Slavery,” n.d., in Papers, vol. 14.
6. “To Have Good and Human Heart”
1. TJ to Lewis, July 11, 1788, in Papers, vol. 13.
2. Sarah N. Randolph, Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson, pp. 152–53; Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, pp. 552–53, cites the recollections of the enslaved gardener Wormley Hughes. TJ’s daughter Martha, who was in the carriage, described the event; Hughes corroborated most of the details in a conversation with Randall, though Hughes said nothing about devotion.
3. Malone, Jefferson and the Rights of Man, p. 246.
4. TJ to Mary Jefferson Eppes, Jan. 17, 1800, in Papers, vol. 31. In the ensuing decades TJ made numerous arrivals at Monticello, and there is no record of the slaves repeating this emotional welcome.
5. Martha Jefferson to TJ, May 3, 1787, in Papers, vol. 11.
6. TJ was prescient: ten years later he had to put up money to save the plantation from creditors. Thomas Mann Randolph could never get out from under the mortgage, and eventually his son Thomas Jefferson Randolph sold the property. Wayson, “Martha Jefferson Randolph,” p. 276.
7. Ibid., pp. 201–202, 206, 209.
8. Martha Jefferson Randolph to TJ, June 23, 1798, in Papers, vol. 30.
9. TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph Sr., Feb. 4, 1790, in Papers, vol. 16. TJ had inherited the property from John Wayles through his late wife. Marriage Settlement for Martha Jefferson, Feb. 21, 1790, in Papers, vol. 16. Gaines, Thomas Mann Randolph, p. 29.
10. TJ to James Monroe, deleted portion, May 20, 1782, in Papers, vol. 6.
11. TJ to Lewis, Dec. 19, 1786, in Papers, vol. 10.
12. TJ to Randolph Jefferson, Sept. 25, 1792, in Papers, vol. 24.
13. Jefferson Encyclopedia, s.v. “Moldboard Plow,” Monticello.org.
14. TJ to Charles Willson Peale, April 17, 1813, in Farm Book, p. 47.
15. Notes on the State of Virginia.
16. Jefferson Encyclopedia, s.v. “Threshing Machine,” Monticello.org.
17. Farm Book, plate 77.
18. Ibid.
19. Senile corps: TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jan. 29, 1801, in Papers, vol. 32; Lucia Stanton, “Those Who Labor for My Happiness,” in Onuf, Jeffersonian Legacies, p. 155.
20. TJ to Jean Nicolas Démeunier, April 29, 1795, in Papers, vol. 28.
21. TJ to William Short, April 13, 1800, in Papers, vol. 31.
22. Stanton, “Those Who Labor for My Happiness,” pp. 154–55.
23. Martin, “Mr. Jefferson’s Business,” p. lix.
24. Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, pp. 85–86.
25. TJ to Démeunier, April 29, 1795.
26. TJ to James Lyle, July 10, 1795, in Papers, vol. 28.
27. TJ to William Temple, April 26, 1795, in Papers, vol. 28.
28. Farm Book, plate 46.
29. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels Through the United States of North America, vol. 2, p. 157.
30. Stanton, “Those Who Labor for My Happiness,” p. 174n24.
31. Ibid., p. 152.
32. TJ to Banneker, Aug. 30, 1791, in Papers, vol. 22.
33. Deed of Mortgage of Slaves to Van Staphorst & Hubbard, May 12, 1796, in Papers, vol. 29.
34. TJ to Van Staphorst and Hubbard, Feb. 28, 1796, in Papers, vol. 28.
35. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels Through the United States of North America, vol. 2, p. 138.
36. Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, p. 179.
37. Christopher Morris offers a fascinating analysis in “Articulation of Two Worlds.”
38. Aside from being expensive, skilled white workers were not always reliable (many of them drank), and there were few of them; TJ told La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt that “there were not four stone masons in the whole county of Albemarle.” McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello, p. 70.
39. Weld, Travels Through the States of North America, vol. 1, p. 147.
40. George Washington described the Revolution as a struggle “for the purpose of rescuing America from impending Slavery.” Washington to Chastellux, May 7, 1781, in Fitzpatrick, Writings of George Washington, vol. 22.
41. Edmund S. Morgan, “Heart of Jefferson.”
42. Preliminary Will of Tadeusz Kosciuszko [before May 5, 1798], in Papers, vol. 30.
7. What the Blacksmith Saw
1. Randolph to Nicholas Trist, Nov. 2, 1818, Papers of the Trist, Randolph, and Burke families, accession no. 10487. The incident took place at Morven, owned by David Higginbotham.
2. TJ to Jeremiah Goodman, March 5, 1813, in Papers, Retirement Series, vol. 5.
3. TJ to Jeremiah Goodman, Jan. 6, 1815, in Papers, Retirement Series, vol. 8.
4. Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, p. 23.
5. TJ to Lewis, July 11, 1788, in Papers, vol. 13.
6. Memorandum for Nicholas Lewis, ca. Nov. 7, 1790, in Papers, vol. 18.
7. TJ to Randolph, Feb. 3, 1793, in Papers, vol. 25.
8. Bear and Stanton, Jefferson’s Memorandum Books, vol. 1, p. 334; Stanton, Free Some Day, pp. 33, 36; Hochman, “Thomas Jefferson,” p. 72; TJ to Archibald Thweatt, May 29, 1810, in Papers, Retirement Series, vol. 2; McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello, pp. 103–104; William Page’s salary, Bear and Stanton, Jefferson’s Memorandum Books, vol. 2, p. 934.
9. TJ to Randolph, Feb. 3, 1793, in Papers, vol. 26.
10. During the Revolution, TJ brought in a British deserter, an alcoholic who lasted two years in the job.
11. Randolph to TJ, April 22, 1798, in Papers, vol. 30. When Smith George was ill in 1798 and 1799, the nail boys’ productivity plummeted. TJ to John McDowell, Oct. 22, 1798, in Papers, vol. 30; TJ to McDowell, March 21, 1799, in Papers, vol. 31.
12. Stanton, Free Some Day, pp. 45–46, 48, 51, 170n73; Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, pp. 23–24. Campbell did not prepare the 1847 interview for publication until 1871.
13. Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, p. 6.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 4.
16. Ibid., p. 18.
17. Ibid., p. 12.
18. Gaye Wilson, lecture, Jefferson Library, International Center for Jefferson Studies, Sept. 2006.
19. Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, pp. 19, 23, 18, 19.
20. Ibid., p. 19.
21. Ibid., p. 13.
22. Ibid., p. 17. In 1797, Polly married her cousin John Wayles Eppes.
23. Ibid., pp. 15–16.
24. Stanton, Free Some Day, pp. 33–34; Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, pp. 3, 18–19.
25. Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, pp. 14–15.
26. Statement of Nailery Profits, Sept. 30, 1797, in Papers, vol. 29. McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello, p. 112; Stanton, Free Some Day, p. 34.
27. Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, p. 23.
28. Randolph to TJ, Jan. 13, 1798, in Papers, vol. 30.
29. Rand
olph to TJ, Feb. 26, 1798, in Papers, vol. 30.
30. TJ to Randolph, April 19, 1798, in Papers, vol. 30.
31. Randolph to TJ, April 29, 1798, in Papers, vol. 30.
32. Randolph to TJ, June 3, 1798, in Papers, vol. 30.
33. Martha Jefferson Randolph to TJ, Jan. 30, 1800, in Papers, vol. 31. Martha Randolph applied this description to Ursula’s symptoms but said the symptoms were the same as Smith George’s.
34. The healer, referred to in letters as both a “doctor” and a “conjuror,” lived near Randolph Jefferson’s plantation, Snowden, just across the James River from Scottsville.
35. Martha Jefferson Randolph to TJ, Jan. 30, 1800, in Papers, vol. 31.
36. TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph, Feb. 4, 1800, in Papers, vol. 31; TJ to Maria Jefferson Eppes, Feb. 12, 1800, in Papers, vol. 31. Martha wrote that after Jupiter died, the doctor “absconded” and she thought he should be prosecuted for murder. The healer may have given Jupiter a compound known as nux vomica, a common preparation in colonial times, containing strychnine. In low doses strychnine is a tonic, but in high doses it produces seizures, including the grand mal convulsions that apparently killed Jupiter. Communication from Anthony L. McCall, M.D., Ph.D., FACP, James M. Moss Professor of Diabetes, University of Virginia Health System.
37. Stanton, Free Some Day, pp. 33, 50; Randolph to TJ, April 12, 1800, in Papers, vol. 31. Benjamin Franklin’s grandson Dr. William Bache, who lived near Monticello, was summoned to take care of Ursula when TJ expressed his concern.
38. Communication from David J. Stone, M.D.
39. Stanton, Free Some Day, p. 50.
40. In his memoir Isaac says nothing about his wife and children. Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, p. 16; Stanton, Free Some Day, pp. 49–50.
8. What the Colonel Saw
1. TJ to James Dinsmore, Dec. 1, 1802, no. 6540, TJ Papers, University of Virginia. Bear, “Mr. Jefferson’s Nails.”
2. TJ to John Strode, June 5, 1805, Library of Congress. TJ was asking Strode to recommend an overseer.