Posterity (15 page)

Well this has been quite a sermon but don't get the idea that it is my swan song because it is not. I have not finished my job yet.

Your affectionate father.

Woody Guthrie and children (Arlo far right)

General John J. Pershing and
son Warren Pershing

John Steinbeck (center), John Steinbeck IV, and President Lyndon Johnson

Struggle

T
HOMAS
J
EFFERSON TO
M
ARTHA
“P
ATSY
” J
EFFERSON

“Be assured that it gives much more pain to the mind
to be in debt, than to do without any article
whatever which we may seem to want.”

Standing a lean six feet, two inches tall, Thomas Jefferson was distinguished and elegant. He was also extravagant. In the way of material acquisitions it seems he denied himself not at all. In Philadelphia, Paris, London, and New York, he bought and bought—silver, wine, tablecloths, clothes, candlesticks, a chariot, paintings, sculpture; in Paris alone he purchased approximately two thousand books. Wherever he lived, he did so in grand style, renovating and remodeling houses he rented and always improving and expanding his own Monticello. Debt was a way of life for him, as it was for most Southern planters of the day, debt having been passed down to him, along with his land and his slaves. Throughout his life he increased his debt, incessantly borrowing from creditors in both America and Europe.

At the time of his death, Thomas Jefferson owed more than $100,000 ($1.8 million in today's money), which exceeded in value all that he owned, including Monticello. It was his dutiful and self-reliant daughter, Martha, the only child to survive him, who lived to endure the pain as everything was auctioned away.

Paris June 14. 1787.

I send you, my dear Patsy, the 15 livres you desired. You propose this to me as an anticipation of five weeks allowance. But do you not see my dear how imprudent it is to lay out in one moment what should accomodate you for five weeks? That this is a departure from that rule which I wish to see you governed by, thro' your whole life, of never buying anything which you have not money in your pocket to pay for? Be assured that it gives much more pain to the mind to be in debt, than to do without any article whatever which we may seem to want. The purchase you have made is one of those I am always ready to make for you, because it is my wish to see you dressed always cleanly and a little more than decently. But apply to me first for the money before you make a purchase, were it only to avoid breaking thro' your rule. Learn yourself the habit of adhering vigorously to the rules you lay down for yourself. I will come for you about eleven o'clock on Saturday. Hurry the making your gown, and also your redingcote. You will go with me some day next week to dine at the Marquis Fayette's. Adieu my dear daughter. Your's affectionately,

TH: JEFFERSON

A
BIGAIL
A
DAMS TO
T
HOMAS
B
OYLSTON
A
DAMS

“I have in the various stages of Life, been call'd
to endure afflictions, and dangers of many kinds,
but this was something so new, so unexpected,
that I could scarcely realize it.”

Abigail Adams was accustomed to making ends meet. With an eye for economy, she churned her own butter, did her own sewing, fed the chickens, skimmed the milk, and wove her own cloth. Raising young children and managing the Adams farm, Stoneyfield, she supported the family during the Revolutionary War and during those years her husband was serving the country in Philadelphia and Europe. She was never afraid of hard work, nor of scrimping and saving. Debt was something she was always determined to avoid.

By the early 1800s, through years of effort, the Adamses had acquired additional properties to increase their Braintree, Massachusetts, farm to more than six-hundred acres. They had also managed to save a goodly sum of money, some $13,000, which they had put in the London bank, Bird, Savage & Bird. Then in 1803, catastrophic news came that Bird, Savage & Bird had collapsed and their money, nearly all of their savings, was gone. Abigail was fifty-nine years old, John Adams, the former president of the United States, sixty-eight.

Their eldest son, John Quincy Adams, who had initially suggested the bank in London, was determined to “share in the suffering.” He sold his own home, used his savings and borrowed. Slowly he bought his parents' real estate holdings (they held title for life) and eventually replenished their depleted savings.

Here Abigail Adams illuminates the family predicament for the youngest son, Thomas, a thirty-one-year-old lawyer in Philadelphia.

Quincy April 26th 1803

My dear Son

A very bad whitloe upon the finger of my right Hand has prevented my holding a pen; or useing my hand for a long time, or I should not have been so long silent. Altho my communications will give you more pain than pleasure, it may relieve your mind respecting the loss your Brother has sustaind; but it will be only shifting the Burden upon older Shoulders. You know your Father had some Money in Holland, which since your Brothers return, he concluded to draw out, and vest in the Farm which belonged to your Great Grandfather Quincy. Mr. Tufts after keeping his part a year, made an offer of it to your Father and he concluded to take it; relying upon the property he had abroad to pay for it. Your Brother undertook the management of the buisness abroad and as the exchange was more in favour of England than Holand, the money was drawn from thence, and placed in the Hands of the House which has lately faild, Bird Savage & Bird. A Catastrophe so unexpected to us, and at a time when we had become responsible for so large a sum, has indeed distrest us. At no other time of our lives could we have been equally affected by it. The cloud is not however so black as it first appeard; the Bill which past through your Hands, and upon which such heavey damages would arise if returned, the House inform your Brother that Mr. King kindly agreed to take up, upon honour; if this should be true as I sincerely hope it may, it will save us from such sacrifice of property as at first appeard necessary to us. Your Brother tho no way to blame in the Buisness, having conducted it with as much circumspection as possible, still insists upon selling some property which he has in Boston; a House which he lately purchased in order to aid in raising the money necessary upon this occasion: we shall endeavour to make him secure so that he shall not finally be a looser any further than in common with the rest of the family. At first my phylosophy was put to a trial, different from any I had ever before experienced. I have in the various stages of Life, been call'd to endure afflictions, and dangers of many kinds, but this was something so new, so unexpected, that I could scarcely realize it. Your Father bears it as well and better than I could have expected, but as yet we hardly know what we may call our own. There is the Farm, that has not vanished, and will fetch as much as we agreed to give for it, but what the damages will finally amount to, upon the Bills we cannot yet determine: let it not depress your Spirits, it is one of the unfortunate incidents in human affairs to which no remedy but patience and Submission applies. It was not dissipation, extravagance or lack of Judgement which on our part produced the event. I hope we may yet be able to obtain some part of the property in time. In the mean time, the sacrifices we must make shall on my part be cheerfully borne. If I cannot keep a carriage, I will ride in a chaise. If we cannot pay our labourers upon our Farms, we will let them to the halves, and live upon a part. To know how to a bond and to suffer want is a new lesson, but I will bring my mind to my circumstances. I do not dread want, but I dread debt, and for that reason I would contract no debt which I do not see a way clear to pay.

I shall upon the next arrivals from England be able to let you know further respecting the State of this Busness.

I have not had a letter from you for a long time. Adieu my dear Son. My anxiety is chiefly upon my childrens account. Neither your Father or I can have a much longer lease. We should have been rejoiced to have left our children with better prospects. Your affectionate Mother

A A

G
EORGE
C
ATLIN TO
L
OUISE
C
ATLIN

“My conduct has broken your hearts . . .
I have done the best I could under
cruel and painful circumstances.”

As white settlers moved increasingly westward, artist George Catlin feared that Native Americans and their way of life would be forever destroyed. Concerned for the wildlife and wilderness of the West, he is credited for first envisioning the national park system, and he himself worked from 1829 to 1837 to make a pictorial record of the tribes and their people. Traveling by steamboat, horseback, and canoe, he created some six hundred paintings in all—of chiefs and tribal leaders, men, women, and children in their customary clothing and scenes of village life, spiritual ceremonies, and domestic routines. His depictions of the Native American were neither the idealized “noble savage,” nor the threatening beast. Instead Catlin's was a portrayal of individuals living in vibrant cultures all their own.

His hope was that the United States government would purchase his complete body of work, the “Indian Gallery” as it was known, as a permanent record for the nation of a vanishing world. He drummed up interest by staging exhibitions in eastern cities, and when Congress refused to buy his paintings, he angrily took the entire collection, in 1839, to Europe. There he exhibited the paintings and then went on to produce an expensive and extravagant “Wild West Show” that was to be the beginning of his personal ruin. First, his wife and young son caught pneumonia and died in France, and then he lost his money and his honor to creditors and wound up in debtors' prison. His surviving family returned to America. The entire “Indian Gallery” was sold in 1852 to Philadelphia businessman Joseph Harrison, who stored the paintings in his factory's boiler room for the next twenty-seven years.

In 1861, George Catlin was deaf and nearly crippled. It had been nearly a decade since he had seen his three daughters. For the previous nine years he had wandered Europe like a vagrant and then, attempting to recapture his days in the American West, he traveled the world painting native peoples. Here, from his small apartment in Belgium, he writes to twenty-year-old Louise.