by Andrea Wulf
EPILOGUE
IN APRIL 1826, Thomas Jefferson received the seeds of a “mammoth cucumber.” During the previous winter he had read in a newspaper that a gardener in Ohio had grown the four-foot giants and was so excited that he had immediately written to the former governor there with the request that he “spare a few to a beggar.” Though almost eighty-three, Jefferson’s fascination with American plants—in particular those that were bigger and larger than their European relatives—had never diminished. He still went outside, riding across the plantation to inspect his crops every day, even though he had almost drowned a year earlier when his horse had slipped while fording a river. He felt that his death was long overdue and once again used nature as a metaphor to make his point. “Man, like the fruit he eats, has his period of ripeness,” he said. “Like that, too, if he continues longer hanging to the stem, it is but an useless and unsightly appendage.”
Botany and plants were, as ever, always on his mind. Two weeks after he received the seeds of the giant cucumber, Jefferson wrote a long letter to John Patton Emmet, the professor of natural history at the University of Virginia, urging him to consider the establishment of a “school of Botany” as well as of a botanic garden. Jefferson had been involved in every detail of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, from its foundation to the design of the buildings and gardens.1 “I have diligently examined all our grounds,” the octogenarian wrote on 27 April, and promptly suggested a site for the botanic garden near the academic village of the university, sending information on the lie of the land, instructions on “serpentine” garden walls, and details about plants that should be grown. Jefferson also engaged Madison in the project and over the next weeks letters crisscrossed between Monticello, Charlottesville and Montpelier, discussing the creation of the botanic garden and the procurement of seeds. At the beginning of May, Jefferson met Emmet to finalize the site and by the end of the month an enthusiastic Jefferson wrote that the “work should be begun immediately,” instructing the proctor of the university a few days later that the botanical garden should be made a priority. There was an almost breathless energy to these letters. Knowing that his life was coming to an end, Jefferson was determined to leave a botanical legacy at the university that he had founded. The success of the university, a visitor to Monticello observed, “would make a beau finale indeed to his life.”
Yet Jefferson would not be able to bring this final project to completion. During the night of 2 July 1826, two days before the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, he fell into a fitful coma in his bedroom at Monticello. He had been ill for several days and his family was keeping watch day and night. On 3 July he briefly woke at seven o’clock in the evening, speaking his last discernible words—“Is it the 4th?”—and when assured by his doctor that “It soon will be,” he lapsed into semiconsciousness. As the evening turned into night, the family stared at the slow-moving hands of the clock, praying that Jefferson would last until after midnight.
As the sun rose on the Fourth of July at Quincy, John Adams also lay in bed, battling to breathe and with his eyes closed, surrounded by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The ninety-year-old had spent the previous two days restless and in much pain, but had tenaciously clung to life with this iconic day in mind. As he woke his family told him that it was the Fourth, to which he replied, with great effort, “It is a great day it is a good day.”
At noon, as the chimes of the bells of Charlottesville rose to Monticello’s mountaintop, Jefferson died. Only a few hours later, as the firing of the celebratory cannons grew louder in Quincy, Adams whispered the words, “Thomas Jefferson survives,” and then passed away shortly afterward. As he took his last breath, a thunder shook the house and then a rainbow arched across the horizon, “a sublime sight,” Adams’s granddaughter said. The rain stopped and the sun broke through the clouds that had shrouded the sky in darkness all day—for a moment the light was “beautiful and grand beyond description.”
EXACTLY FIVE YEARS LATER, again on 4 July, America’s fifth president, James Monroe, died. James Madison was now the last of the founding fathers. By the end of June 1836 he was so weak that he knew his time had arrived. His doctors offered stimulants to extend his life to the Fourth of July, but Madison refused—on 28 June, aged eighty-five, he “ceased breathing as quietly as the snuff of a candle goes out.”
* * *
1 The university had opened in March 1825.
APPENDIX:
MAPS OF MOUNT VERNON, PEACEFIELD, MONTICELLO AND MONTPELIER
(Illustration credit app.1)
Peacefield, 1787, historic landscape plan of Adams’s farm in Quincy. The “upper garden” is the flower garden. (Illustration credit app.2)
Monticello, c. 1809, historic landscape plan of the mountaintop and approach, including the scenic North Road, the Farm Road and the four roundabouts. (Illustration credit app.3)
Monticello, c. 1809, historic landscape plan of the pleasure grounds, including the Grove, orchards, and the vegetable terrace (here labeled as “Garden”). The Grove is shaded in gray. (Illustration credit app.4)
Montpelier during James Madison’s retirement years, 1818–48, historic landscape plan of the pleasure grounds. While most of the finds shown on this map have been confirmed through archaeological excavations, the curvilinear approach to the mansion and the horseshoe shape of the formal garden are conjectural based on a combination of archaeological finds and historic accounts. (Illustration credit app.5)
NOTES
Abbreviations: People
AA
Abigail Adams
AA2
Abigail Adams Smith
BF
Benjamin Franklin
DF
Deborah Franklin
GW
George Washington
JA
John Adams
JB
John Bartram
JM
James Madison
JQA
John Quincy Adams
TJ
Thomas Jefferson
Abbreviations: Archives and Sources
MHS
Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
MHS online
Adams Family Papers. An Electronic Archive at MHS.
AFC
Butterfield, L. H., Richard A. Ryerson, and Margaret A. Hogan (eds.). Adams Family Correspondence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963–2009, vols. 1–9.
AP
Adams Papers.
JA Diary
John Adams’s Diary at MHS online.
JA Papers
Taylor, Robert J. (ed.), et al. Papers of John Adams. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977–2008, vols. 1–14.
JA Autobiography
Butterfield, L. H. (ed). Diary and Autobiography of John Adams. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961, vols. 1–4.
TJ Papers
Boyd, Julian P. (ed.), et al. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1950–2009, vols. 1–35.
TJ Papers RS
Looney, Jeff (ed.), et al. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004–2009, vols. 1–5.
TJ Memorandum Book
Bear, James A., and Lucia C. Stanton (eds.). Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, vols. 1–2.
MHS TJ EA
Thomas Jefferson Papers. An Electronic Archive at MHS.
JM Papers
Hutchinson, William T., and William M. E. Rachal (eds.). The Papers of James Madison. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962–91, vols. 1–17.
JM Papers SS
Brugger, Robert J., Mary A. Hackett, and David B. Mattern. The Papers of James Madison: Secretary of State Series. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986–2007, vols. 1–8.
J
M Papers PS
Rutland, Robert A. and J. C. A. Stagg. The Papers of James Madison: Presidential Series. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1984–2004, vols. 1–5.
JM Papers RS
Mattern, David B., J. C. A. Stagg, Parke Johnson, Mary and Anne Mandeville (eds.). The Papers of James Madison: Retirement Series. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009, vol 1.
DMDE
Dolley Madison Digital Edition. University of Virginia Press (access by subscription only).
GW Papers Colonial
Abbot, W. W., Dorothy Twohig, and Philander D. Chase (eds.). The Papers of George Washington: Colonial Series. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1983–95, vols. 1–10.
GW Papers RWS
Chase, Philander D., and Dorothy Twohig (eds.). The Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1985–2008, vols. 1–18.
GW Papers CS
Abbot, W. W., and Dorothy Twohig (eds.). The Papers of George Washington: Confederation Series. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992–97, vols. 1–6.
GW Papers PS
Abbot, W. W., and Dorothy Twohig (eds.). The Papers of George Washington: Presidential Series. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1987–2008, vols. 1–14.
GW Papers RS
Chase, Philander D., and Dorothy Twohig (eds.). The Papers of George Washington: Retirement Series. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998–99, vols. 1–4.
GW Diaries
Jackson, Donald, and Dorothy Twohig (eds.). The Diaries of George Washington. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1976–79, vols. 1–6.
GWW
Fitzpatrick, John C. Writings of George Washington, 1745–1799. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931–44, vols. 1–39.
BF Papers
Labaree, Leonard, W. (ed.), et al. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1956–2008, vols. 1–39.
BF online
Papers of Benjamin Franklin online.
AH Papers
Syrett, Harold C., and Jacob E. Cooke (eds.). The Papers of Alexander Hamilton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–87, vols. 1–27.
Journals Lewis and Clark
Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition online.
Bicentennial Daybook
Bicentennial of the Constitution of the United States. Research Project Working Files, 1983–87, in the collections of Independence National Historical Park.
DLC
Library of Congress.
NA
National Archives, Washington, D.C.
APS
American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.
Cutts 1817
Mary Cutts, c. 1817, Mary Cutts’s Memoir, Cutts Collection, DLC.
ViU
University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville.
MV
Mount Vernon Library.
PROLOGUE
1 “The first is by War”: BF, “Positions to be examined concerning National Wealth,” 4 April 1769, BF Papers, vol. 16, p. 109.
2 Stamp Act: The House of Commons passed the Bill on 27 February, the House of Lords on 8 March and the Royal Assent was given on 22 March 1765.
3 house raids: Burk 2007, p. 122.
4 Stamp Act protest in Boston: Schlesinger 1952, pp. 437–38; Burk 2007, p. 121; JA Autobiography, vol. 1, pp. 259–61.
5 “proprietors” and BF: The proprietors, who practically owned Pennsylvania, had the right to overturn laws and decisions made by the Assembly, which, according to Franklin and other Pennsylvanians, was a “tyrannical and inhuman” state of affairs. Franklin had come to London to plead for a royal instead of the proprietary government because, he believed, nothing should come between “Crown and the People.” (Pennsylvania Assembly: “Resolves upon the Present Circumstances,” 24 March 1764, BF Papers, vol. 11, pp. 127, 130.)
6 BF’s interest in plants: BF to Jared Eliot, 16 July 1747, BF Papers, vol. 3, pp. 147–48; Peter Collinson to BF, 27 January 1753, BF Papers, vol. 4, pp. 412–15; BF to Jane Mecom, 21 February 1757, BF Papers, vol. 7, p. 134; BF to Samuel Ward, 24 March 1757, BF Papers, vol. 7, pp. 154–55; BF to Charles Norris, 16 September 1758 and 5 August 1762, BF Papers, vol. 8, p. 155 and vol. 10, p. 139; BF to Sir Alexander Dick, 21 January 1762 and 11 December 1763, BF Papers, vol. 10, pp. 16, 385; BF to DF, 24 March 1762, BF Papers, vol. 10, p. 70; John Mills to BF, 12 July 1764, BF Papers, vol. 11, pp. 357–58; BF to Rudolph Erich Raspe, 9 September 1766, BF Papers, vol. 13, p. 407; JA Diary, 26 May 1760, 5:1–2, MHS online; JB to BF, 10 April 1769, Berkeley and Smith Berkeley 1992, p. 709; see also BF’s agricultural and horticultural books in Hayes 2006 and Library Thing: Benjamin Franklin’s Library (online).
7 BF’s own experiments: BF to Jared Eliot, 16 July 1747; BF to Jared Eliot, 3 May 1753, BF Papers.
8 offered the entire produce: Anthony Todd to BF, 31 October 1768, BF Papers, vol. 15, p. 248.
9 seeds sent by BF from London: BF to DF, 21 December 1768–26 January 1769, BF Papers, vol. 15, p. 292; BF to Joseph Chew, 12 December 1769, BF Papers, vol. 16, p. 261; BF to JB, 9 July 1769 and 11 January 1770, Berkeley and Smith Berkeley 1992, pp. 714, 727; BF had already sent some rhubarb seeds to Joshua Babock on 10 December 1761, BF Papers, vol. 9, p. 398.
10 “besotted”: BF to Joseph Galloway, 11 October 1766, BF Papers, vol. 13, p. 449; see also BF to David Hall, 14 February 1765, BF Papers, vol. 12, pp. 65–66; the meeting with Grenville was on 2 February 1765.
11 BF and independence: BF remained wedded to the idea of the empire. His vision was one of separate states which were led by one sovereign. Each would have their own representative assemblies so that the British parliament would have no control over America. (BF to Samuel Cooper, 8 June 1770, BF Papers, vol. 17, p. 163; Morgan 2003, p. 160.)
12 “faithful Adherence”: BF to John Hughes, 9 August 1765, BF Papers, vol. 12, p. 235.
13 threats to destroy BF’s house: John Hughes to BF, 8–17 September 1765, BF Papers, vol. 12, p. 264; Isaacson 2004, p. 224.
14 British exports to colonies: Langford 1989, pp. 168–71.
15 manufacturing in colonies: North 1974, pp. 50ff.
16 colonists and agriculture: BF to Lord Kames, 25 February 1767, BF Papers, vol. 14, pp. 69–70.
17 boycott: wheat, oats and rice could feed America, Franklin wrote. They had barley to make ale, and—hailing an all-American beverage—“the buds of our pine [are] infinitely preferable to any tea from the Indies.” (BF, “ ‘Homespun’: Second Reply to ‘Vindex Patriae,’ ” The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 2 January 1766, BF Papers, vol. 13, p. 8.
18 “I do not know”: Examination of Dr Benjamin Franklin in the House of Commons, 13 February 1766, The Parliamentary History of England 1813, vol. 16, p. 144.
19 BF and repeal of Stamp Act: William Strahan to David Hall, 7 April 1766, BF Papers, vol. 13, p. 125.
20 more duties imposed: These were the so-called Townshend Acts, starting in 1767.
21 boycott of British goods: BF to Joseph Galloway, 29 January 1769, BF Papers, vol. 16, p. 31.
22 “I wish it may”: BF to Humphry Marshall, 22 April 1771, BF Papers, vol. 18, p. 82.
23 tofu and chickpeas: BF to JB, 11 January 1770, Berkeley and Smith Berkeley 1992, p. 727.
24 BF sent seeds: Upland rice, tallow tree, Indian plants, kohlrabi and Scottish kale, BF to Noble Wimberly Jones, March or April 1771 and 7 October 1772; BF to William Franklin, 3, 14 February, 3 March 1773; BF to JB, 10 February 1773; BF to David Colden, 5 March 1773; BF to DF, 1 September 1773, BF Papers, vol. 18, p. 65; vol. 19, p. 324; vol. 20, pp. 39, 62, 90, 95–7, 384; Berkeley and Smith Berkeley 1992, p. 756.
25 BF and chickpeas: BF to JB, 11 January 1770, Berkeley and Smith Berkeley, 1992, p. 727.
26 “chairman of British Colonies”: Allan 2000, p. 255; the Society for the Encouragement of Arts Manufactures and Commerce was Bri
tish and had been founded in London 1754.
27 premiums and awards: William Shipley to BF, 1 September 1756, BF Papers, vol. 6, pp. 499–500.
28 “true Spirit of all”: BF notes, 1770, in margins of Josiah Tucker’s “A Letter from a Merchant in London to His Nephew in North America,” London, 1766, BF online.
29 “one shilling worth”: Humphrey Ploughjogger to Boston Gazette, 14 October 1765, JA Papers, vol. 1, p. 147.
30 “the seeds [are] sown”: BF to the Massachusetts House of Representatives Committee of Correspondence, 15 May 1771, BF Papers, vol. 18, p. 102.
31 “this catastrophe”: Ibid., p. 103.
32 BF attacked in Privy Council: Alexander Wedderburn, 29 January 1774, “The Final Hearing before the Privy Council Committee,” BF Papers, vol. 21, p. 47; BF to Thomas Cushing, 15–19 February 1774, BF Papers, vol. 21, p. 90; Edward Bancroft on BF, Isaacson 2004, pp. 277–78.
33 “my Office of Deputy-Postmaster”: BF to William Franklin, 2 February 1774, BF Papers, vol. 21, p. 75.
34 “I wish you were”: BF to William Franklin, 2 February 1774, BF Papers, vol. 21, p. 75; William Franklin had been royal governor of New Jersey since 1762 but had also purchased a farm near Burlington, New Jersey.
35 “this old rotten State”: BF to Joseph Galloway, 25 February 1775, BF Papers, vol. 21, p. 509.
36 BF made delegate: BF to David Hartley, 8 May 1775, BF Papers, vol. 22, p. 34.
37 “We should be prepared”: BF to Humphry Marshall, 23 May 1775, BF Papers, vol. 22, p. 51.
38 “all Ranks of”: BF to David Hartley, 8 May 1775, BF Papers, vol. 22, p. 34.
39 America’s ability to survive: BF to Lord Kames, 25 February 1767, BF Papers, vol. 14, pp. 69–70.
40 “it will itself”: BF to Jonathan Shipley, 13 September 1775, BF Papers, vol. 22, p. 199.