55. Jefferson to William H. Crawford, June 20, 1816, ibid., 36. The best discussion of Jefferson’s evolution on this subject is in McCoy, The Elusive Republic, 34–57.
56. O. I. A. Roche, ed., The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (New York, 1964). The earlier version, “Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus, Compared with Those of Others,” is in Ford, VIII, 223–28. The quotations come from his many letters on this subject: Jefferson to Charles Thomson, January 9, 1816, Jefferson to Horatio Gates Spafford, January 10, 1816, Jefferson to William Short, October 31, 1819, Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, June 26, 1822, Jefferson to John Davis, January 18, 1824, Ford, X, 5–7, 12–15, 144, 219–20, 287–88.
57. Jefferson to Judge Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819, ibid., 140–43. The classic Jeffersonian interpretation of the era, indeed of all American history, is Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (3 vols., New York, 1927–30).
58. Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816, Jefferson to John Taylor, May 28, 1816, Ford, X, 37–39, 27–31.
59. Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816, and September 5, 1816, ibid., 40–43, 45–46. The issue was on his mind at this time, as can be seen in other letters in which it comes up. See especially Jefferson to du Pont de Nemours, April 24, 1816, and Jefferson to Francis W. Gilmer, June 7, 1816, ibid., 22–25, 31–33. The most recent revisionist interpretation of the American Revolution is Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, which argues that there were incipient democratic implications embedded within the independence movement, which most of the revolutionary generation did not fully appreciate at the time and which seeped out slowly over the next fifty years, becoming fully discernible only in the Age of Jackson. On the one hand, Jefferson is an almost perfect illustration of the argument, and his own revisionist views of 1816–19 document Wood’s interpretation handsomely. On the other hand, as Wood himself has often noted, Jefferson had only a partial grasp of the leveling implications inherent in democratic culture and was never comfortable in the world that Andrew Jackson symbolized and Alexis de Tocqueville described.
60. Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, September 5, 1816, Ford, X, 45–46.
61. Jefferson to John Hambden Pleasants, April 19, 1824, ibid., 302–04.
62. Jefferson to James Madison, February 25, 1822, Smith, III, 1837–38.
63. Ford, I, 77.
64. Jefferson to George Logan, May 11, 1805, Jefferson to Dr. Thomas Humphreys, February 8, 1817, Ford, IX, 141, X, 76–77. In the same vein, see Jefferson to Fanny Wright, August 7, 1825, and Jefferson to William Short, January 18, 1826, ibid., 343–45, 361–62. The best discussion of Jefferson’s procrastinating tendencies is in Freehling, Road to Disunion, 122–31, 152–57.
65. Jefferson to John Adams, December 10, 1819, Cappon, II, 548–49; Jefferson to Hugh Nelson, February 7, 1820, and March 12, 1820, Ford, X, 156–57; Peterson, ed., Visitors to Monticello, 90–91. I am much indebted to Peter Onuf, who shared an early draft of his lengthy essay “Thomas Jefferson, Missouri and the ‘Empire of Liberty,’ ” which focuses in a fresh way on these years as a culmination of Jefferson’s somewhat tortured thinking on the slavery question.
66. Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, Ford, X, 157–58. Good discussions of this important letter are readily available in: Miller, Wolf by the Ears, 221–52; Malone, VI, 328–44; and Donald E. Fehrenbacher, “The Missouri Controversy and the Sources of Southern Separatism,” Southern Review, XIV (1978), 653–67.
67. For the Adams view, see John Adams to Robert Walsh, January 19, 1820, and John Adams to Joshua Cushman, March 16, 1820, Microfilm Edition of Adams Papers, Reel 124.
68. John Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, January 29, 1820, and John Adams to William Tudor, November 20, 1819, ibid.
69. John Adams to Jefferson, February 3, 1821, Cappon, II, 571; Jefferson to Charles Pinckney, September 30, 1820, Ford, X, 162–63.
70. Jefferson to David Bailey Warden, December 26, 1820, and Jefferson to Jared Sparks, February 4, 1824, Ford, 173, 289–93.
71. Jefferson to Fanny Wright, August 7, 1825, and Jefferson to William Short, January 18, 1826, ibid., 343–45, 361–62.
72. Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, December 26, 1820, and Jefferson to Henry Dearborn, August 17, 1821, ibid., 175–78, 191–92.
73. John Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, January 29, 1820, John Adams to John Quincy Adams, December 23, 1819, Microfilm Edition of Adams Papers, Reel 124. On the large question of what the revolutionary generation intended concerning slavery, see Gary Nash, Race and Revolution (Madison, 1990).
74. Jefferson to Charles Pinckney, September 30, 1820, Ford, X, 161–62.
75. Jefferson to Marquis de Lafayette, October 28, 1822, ibid., 233; Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, October 29, 1822, ibid., 235–36.
76. On this phase of Jefferson’s superheated response to national events, especially the vilification of those endorsing internal improvements, see the following: Joseph H. Harrison, Jr., “Sic et Non: Thomas Jefferson and Internal Improvements,” JER, VII (1987), 335–49; John Lauritz Larson, “Jefferson’s Union and the Problems of Internal Improvements,” Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies, 340–69; Robert Shalhope, “Thomas Jefferson’s Republicanism and Antebellum Southern Thought,” JSH, XLII (1976), 529–56.
77. Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, December 26, 1820, Ford, X, 177; Jefferson to Marquis de Lafayette, November 4, 1823, ibid., 279–83; Jefferson to William Branch Giles, December 26, 1825, ibid., 355–56.
78. The best account of the panic is in George Dangerfield, The Awakening of American Nationalism, 1815–1828 (New York, 1965), 108–41. This is the implicit defense of Jefferson’s mentality offered by his descendants in Domestic Life, 405–11 and, more explicitly, in Peterson, New Nation, 991–94. For the “coup de grace” reference, see Jefferson to James Madison, February 17, 1826, Smith, III, 1966.
79. Jefferson to Nathaniel Bacon, January 12, 1819, Ford, X, 121–22. For Taylor’s agrarian philosophy, see Robert Shalhope, John Taylor of Caroline: Pastoral Republican (Columbia, 1980). For Johnson’s judicial career, see Donald G. Morgan, Justice William Johnson, the First Dissenter: The Career and Constitutional Philosophy of a Jeffersonian Judge (Columbia, 1954).
80. Jefferson to James Madison, February 17, 1826, Smith, III, 1967; James Madison to Nicholas P. Trist, May 29, 1832, ibid., 1993. See the splendid account of this phase of the Jefferson-Madison partnership in McCoy, Last of the Fathers, 39–83. See also the earlier account in Koch, Jefferson and Madison, 283–90.
81. McCoy, Last of the Fathers, 9–170, is excellent on all these issues.
82. Jefferson to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, Smith, III, 1865; Jefferson to Robert J. Garnett, February 14, 1824, Ford, X, 295; James Madison to Jefferson, June 27, 1823, Smith, III, 1870–75; the Dolley Madison quotation, which dates from 1836, is in ibid., 1850.
83. Jefferson to Judge Spencer Roane, March 9, 1821, Ford, X, 189; Jefferson to Thomas Ritchie, December 25, 1820, ibid., 169–71; the “sappers and miners” comment is repeated in his autobiography, ibid., I, 113; see also Jefferson to Nathaniel Bacon, August 19, 1821, and Jefferson to William Johnson, October 27, 1822, ibid., X, 192–93, 222–26.
84. Jefferson to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, Smith, III, 1866.
85. James Madison to Jefferson, June 27, 1823, ibid., 1868–70.
86. Ibid., 1944–46, for Jefferson’s draft proposal; Jefferson to James Madison, December 24, 1825, 1943, for the quotation about Madison’s opinion.
87. James Madison to Jefferson, December 28, 1825, ibid., 1948–51, which includes Madison’s letter to Thomas Ritchie on the same subject, an enclosure Madison sent along to Jefferson in order to make his disagreement less direct; Jefferson to James Madison, January 2, 1826, ibid., 1961–62.
88. From Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s account of the final hours in Domestic Life, 427.
89. The secondary literature on Jefferson and the University of V
irginia defies accurate or easy summary. The standard work on Jefferson and education is Roy J. Honeywell, The Educational Work of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1964). The most recent revisionist account is Harold Hellenbrand, The Unfinished Revolution: Education and Politics in the Thought of Thomas Jefferson (Newark, 1990). Since this is the most attractive aspect of Jefferson’s tortured final phase, Dumas Malone makes it the centerpiece of Malone, VI, 232–425. Because Madison was such a close partner in the enterprise, the narrative sections of Smith are helpful as guides. American Institute of Architects, Journal, LXV (1976), 91.
90. Jefferson to James Madison, April 13, 1817, Smith, III, 1784–85.
91. Ibid., 1796.
92. A conveniently concise account is in Hellenbrand, Unfinished Revolution, 68–140.
93. Smith, III, 1776–94; Malone, VI, 240–44; James Madison to Jefferson, January 1, 1818, Smith, III, 1801; Jefferson to James Madison, June 28, 1818, ibid., 1804–05.
94. Dumas Malone, The Public Life of Thomas Cooper, 1783–1839 (New Haven, 1922), 234–46, contains information on the difficulties with the Virginia legislature, as does Smith, III, 1817–18. Jefferson to James Madison, September 24, 1824, ibid., 1902; Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, November 28, 1820, Ford, X, 165–68; Jefferson to James Madison, September 30, 1821, Smith, III, 1833.
95. Richard Beale Davis, Francis Walker Gilmer: Life and Learning in Jefferson’s Virginia (Richmond, 1939); Jefferson to James Madison, October 6, 1824, and December 10, 1824, Smith, III, 1903, 1910–11; John Adams to Jefferson, February 21, 1820, and January 22, 1825, Cappon, II, 561, 607.
96. Jefferson to James Madison, February 1, 1825, Smith, III, 1923–34.
97. James Madison to Jefferson, February 8, 1825, ibid., 1026.
98. Peterson, New Nation, 980–82, is excellent and forthright about this unattractive development.
99. Jefferson to James Madison and Board of Visitors, April 3–4, 1826, Smith, III, 1968–69.
100. Hellenbrand, Unfinished Revolution, 143–46, is good on this issue, but the full implications for Jefferson’s core political values are best discussed in Matthews, Radical Politics, 15–16, 81–89. This is also the focus of Hannah Arendt’s appraisal of Jefferson as a truly radical political thinker in her On Revolution (New York, 1963), 217–85. My own view is that Matthews and Arendt are right about this seminal aspect of Jefferson’s thinking on politics, but I would argue that he does not reach a conscious realization of the ward as his ideal republic until late in life (it was there in embryo from the start, however) and that it is a romantic fantasy more than a cogent political idea.
101. Hellenbrand, Unfinished Revolution, 146–50, for the most concise descriptive account of the spatial arrangements at the University of Virginia. At the deeper level of Jefferson’s character, one can see this as an attempt to institutionalize his most sentimental attitudes about the affectionate bonds among friends and within families. Here the best source is Burstein, Inner Jefferson, which does the most insightful job of exploring the sentimental core of Jefferson’s personality.
102. Malone, VI, 463–68, tells the story more positively. For the Tutwiler quotation, see Smith, III, 1920.
103. Jefferson to James Monroe, March 8, 1826, Ford, X, 383. On the debt question see Malone, VI, 505–07, and the incomparable account of the nexus of financial and ideological issues in Sloan, Principle and Interest, 221–37.
104. Jefferson’s “Thoughts on Lotteries,” February 1826, Ford, X, 362–72; Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson Randolph, February 8, 1826, ibid., 374–75.
105. Jefferson’s will is in ibid., 392–96; on the false hope, see Jefferson to George Loyall, February 22, 1826, ibid., 379–80.
106. Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826, ibid., 390–92. The handwritten draft, with its multiple cross-outs and revisions, is reproduced in Ellis, Passionate Sage, 207.
107. Douglass Adair, “Rumbold’s Dying Speech, 1685, and Jefferson’s Last Words on Democracy, 1826,” in Colbourn, ed., Fame and the Founding Fathers, 192–202.
108. The auction scene has been recovered from many fragmentary sources in Lucia Stanton, “ ‘Those Who Labor for My Happiness’: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves,” Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies, 147–48. The reference to Adams’s death as a “Yankee trick” is in Domestic Life, 421.
EPILOGUE: THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION
1. Carl Becker, “What Is Still Living in the Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson?” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, LXXXVII (1944), 201–10.
2. Joyce Appleby, “Jefferson and His Complex Legacy,” Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Image, 2.
3. Ibid., 1; Peterson, Jefferson Image, 420–32.
4. The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation publicized its access code in the World Wide Web as http://www.monticello.org.
5. The classic essay by Frederick Jackson Turner is reprinted in his The Frontier in American History (Tucson, 1986), 37–38 for the quotation. For a brilliant and bracing reappraisal of what he calls “Anglo-America,” with Jefferson playing a major role as America’s premier racist, see Michael Lind, The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (New York, 1995), 17–96.
6. Herbert D. Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York, 1909), perhaps the most influential book about American politics ever written by a practicing journalist.
7. The most recent and panoramic review of these events, all considered within the broad sweep of American cultural history, is Robert H. Wiebe, Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy (Chicago, 1995), 181–246.
8. The classic account of Jefferson’s “pastness” is Daniel J. Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1948).
9. Dan Balz and Ronald Brownstein, Storming the Gates: Political Protest and the Republican Revival (Boston, 1996).
10. An earlier and profound assessment of the enduring role of the antigovernment ethos in American political history is Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge, 1981), 13–30. In the concluding chapter of Self-Rule, 247–66, Robert Wiebe calls for “guerrilla politics” to recover the Jeffersonian essence that has been missing from American democracy for about a century. This is pure nostalgia, but when embraced by a historian of Wiebe’s stature, it illustrates the persistent allure of the Jeffersonian vision.
11. See, for example, Isaac Kramnick and Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York, 1996).
12. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York, 1943), was the pathbreaking study of race as the central problem facing modern America, which also emphasized its cultural and historical origins rather than its biological character.
13. For the pervasive sense of social “aging” that the revolutionary generation presumed unavoidable, see McCoy, Last of the Fathers, 39–84, 171–216; and Ellis, Passionate Sage, 237–40.
14. The Wilson quotation is from Peterson, Jefferson Image, 343–44. The Appleby quote is from “Jefferson and His Complex Legacy,” Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies, 3.
15. Wiebe, Self-Rule, 264.
JOSEPH J. ELLIS
AMERICAN SPHINX
Joseph J. Ellis is the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College. Educated at the College of William and Mary and Yale University, he served as a captain in the army and taught at West Point before coming to Mount Holyoke in 1972. He was dean of the faculty there for ten years.
He is the author of four previous books: The New England Mind in Transition, School for Soldiers: West Point and the Profession of Arms (with Robert Moore), After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture, and Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams.
The author lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts, with his wife, Ellen, and three sons.
ALSO BY JOSEPH J. ELLIS
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams
After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture
/>
School for Soldiers: West Point and the Profession of Arms
(with Robert Moore)
The New England Mind in Transition
Copyright © 1996 by Joseph J. Ellis
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1997, and in trade paperback by Vintage Books, New York, in 1998.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the Knopf edition as follows:
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ellis, Joseph J.
American sphinx : the character of Thomas Jefferson /
by Joseph J. Ellis.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-679-44490-4
1. Jefferson, Thomas, 1743–1826—Psychology. I. Title.
E332.2E45 1997
973.4´6´092—dc20 96-26171
CIP
www.vintagebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-375-72746-7
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