Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (52 page)

From Roosevelt to Reagan, Jefferson provided inspiration for radically different understandings of government and culture. Yet it was not Jefferson who had changed. It was his nation, tacking this way and then that way. That Jefferson has been a lodestar from generation to generation, from agenda to agenda, from vision to vision, speaks as much to his own literary versatility as to anything the real Jefferson did when he stood at the helm, directing America through the storms of his own time.

One thing is unmistakably consistent, however, in his successors' understanding of Jefferson: Like him, they believed in the power of words in public life, in the molding of popular opinion—and in the centrality of presidential power to keep the nation safe and strong in the most difficult of hours.

T
he three achievements he ordered carved on his tombstone—as author of the American Declaration of Independence and of the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty, and as founder of the University of Virginia—speak to his love of the liberty of the mind and of the heart, and to his faith in the future. They point toward the least disputable elements of his long, turbulent life, to the primacy of reason and the possibilities of freedom and the eternal quest for wisdom. They point, too, to the making of things, to leadership. He fought for each of these causes, convincing enough of the world of the rightness of his vision that he left behind living monuments. And there is no greater monument to Jefferson than the nation itself, dedicated to the realization, however gradual and however painful, of the ideal amid the realities of a political world driven by ambition and selfishness.

For Jefferson never gave up on America, a country in many ways he brought into being and which he nurtured through tender, fragile hours. “And I have observed this march of civilization advancing from the sea coast, passing over us like a cloud of light, increasing our knowledge and improving our condition … and where this progress will stop no one can say,” he wrote in 1824.

J
efferson arranged the world as he wanted it until the very end, and beyond. When he died in the midsummer of 1826, he was borne across the sprawling West Lawn, past willow trees and down the hill to the graveyard. The cemetery was, of course, of his own design. Here he had buried his mother, his wife, his children, his best friend. Here he was to be buried.

The little graveyard sits on the western side of the mountain. When dusk comes, darkness seems to fall slowly. To the east shadows lengthen over the Rivanna and over Shadwell. They fall over Monticello itself and over Mulberry Row. They fall over his pavilions and his gardens. Only then do the shadows fall over the remains of Thomas Jefferson, a man who always loved the light.

AUTHOR'S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
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1803,
the French chargé d'affaires in Washington, Louis-André Pichon, drafted a special letter about President Jefferson to send back to the foreign ministry in Paris. “It is difficult, Citizen Minister,” Pichon began, “to give a definitive judgment on the character of Mr. Jefferson, as well as on the effect that could be produced internally by his policy and his systems.”

It is indeed. It is not, however, impossible. This book, I hope, neither lionizes nor indicts Jefferson, but instead restores him to his full and rich role as an American statesman who resists easy categorization.

Jefferson has not had an easy time of it in recent years. The 1998 DNA findings and subsequent scholarly reevaluation that established the high likelihood of his sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemings—a liaison long denied by mainstream white historians—gave fresh energy to the image of Jefferson-as-hypocrite. Then came nearly two decades of highly acclaimed biographies of John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington that understandably emphasized the virtues of their protagonists, often at Jefferson's expense. (My friend Joseph J. Ellis started this trend with his 1993 book
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams,
published twenty years ago.) Even in his own day Jefferson faced the seemingly contradictory charges that he was at once an unrealistic philosopher and a scheming political creature.

The truth in Jefferson's case (as in so many lives) is complex. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt were great men and impressive presidents, but only Thomas Jefferson ranged across so many different aspects of American life over such a long period of time. Cool and cerebral, Jefferson could not resist the heat of political combat, and he adapted his brilliantly expressed principles to the realities of elections and of governing with seeming effortlessness. Many Americans idolized him; others shared the views of an anonymous letter writer who told him, “You are the damdest fool that God put life into. God dam you.”

My view is that at his core, from year to year and age to age, Thomas Jefferson was a politician who sought office and, once in office, tried to solve the problems of his day and set a course for the future within the constraints of his time and place. That he often did so with skill and effectiveness is a tribute to his life and is, I think, the heart of his legacy. For without a compelling political figure making the case for the principles and practices in which he believed against the Federalist interest of the time—and Jefferson was surely a compelling political figure—American life and politics could have turned out very differently. Jefferson the politician, then, was a man who stood on the ramparts of history, fighting for a particular habit of mind and of government that gave the many more of a role to play in the fullness of time than the few.

I did not set out to write a full life and times of Jefferson; too much happened to him and around him for a single volume to do justice to the immensity of scholarship about the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This book is a portrait, rather, of the man and of the world in which he lived and which he longed to bend to his purposes. The Jefferson I found in my reading and research was a public man of Renaissance interests but with an abiding, overarching concern: the survival and success of democratic republicanism in America.

The most remarkable stories are those of politicians who do the best they can given time and chance, and whose faults are at once personal and universal. The most accomplished presidents manage, however briefly, to transcend those constraints and overcome those faults in order to leave the nation a better, more just place than they found it. The test cannot be perfection or an American Valhalla, for no one can meet such a standard. Thomas Jefferson surely did not.

He did his best, though, and his best left the world a definition, if not a realization, of human liberty that has endured, and gave America the means to ascend to global power.

I do not believe we can make sense of Jefferson without a grasp of how seriously he took the possibility of the imminent end of the American experiment and the return of a monarchical government. Beginning with George Washington himself, contemporaries and later historians have treated Jefferson's fears of monarchy as fanciful, paranoid, or at best exaggerated to the point of unseriousness. Based on my reading of Jefferson's papers and archival explorations in the United States and in Britain, however, I contend that the threat of a revival of British authority in the United States was as fundamental to Jefferson's thought and actions as the cold war with the Soviet Union was to American presidents from Truman to George H. W. Bush. The analogy is imprecise, to be sure, for Britain and the United States alternated between friendship and enmity. Another imprecise analogy, but one worth considering, is that Jefferson was to Washington and Adams what Dwight Eisenhower was to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman: a president who reformed but essentially ratified an existing course of government.

It is also impossible to understand the historical, human Jefferson without appreciating the perennial place the events and legacy of the English Civil War played in his imagination and in the imaginations of many of his contemporaries. The important role of the Whig tradition of individual liberty has been long noted. Less remarked upon is the frequency with which the battles and incidents of the struggle appear in Jefferson's correspondence—a sign that the war and the fate of the Commonwealth, which was a military dictatorship followed by restoration of monarchy, were never far from Jefferson's consciousness. As a rule, politicians tend to remember the things they wish to emulate or the things they hope to avoid. For America, Jefferson wanted neither a Cromwellian absolutism nor the restoration of Charles II in 1660 nor even the installation of William and Mary in 1688—two monarchs who had fewer prerogatives but who were still monarchs. Such outcomes, Jefferson believed, were all too plausible.

This project began with a delightful lunch in Princeton with Barbara Oberg, the editor of the Jefferson Papers, which is one of the most formidable and significant scholarly undertakings in American life. Barbara and her colleagues were welcoming and generous, providing me with digital files of correspondence for the volumes-in-progress covering Jefferson's presidency after early 1803. Anyone writing about Jefferson or early America is indebted to the illuminating annotations of the papers stretching back to the very first volume, which was published in 1950. Barbara and her team are brilliantly carrying on the tradition begun by Julian P. Boyd. I am especially indebted to Martha King and Elaine Pascu, both of whom assisted Barbara in a review of my manuscript.

Jefferson's papers from 1809 until his death in 1826, known as the Retirement Series, are being edited in Charlottesville. J. Jefferson Looney, the general editor, took time out to answer queries and spend a beautiful Saturday afternoon talking things Jeffersonian and was kind about follow-up queries. I am deeply grateful to him and to his colleagues in Virginia.

Leslie Greene Bowman, the president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, has been an enthusiastic and tireless friend to me on this book. I am grateful to her for her grace, hospitality, and insights. Thanks, too, to her husband, Cortland Neuhoff, for putting up with itinerant biographers who turn up in his house and borrow his clothes. Among many other acts of generosity, Leslie agreed to take me on a horseback ride along the road Jefferson would have traveled up Monticello; to the best of my knowledge she managed not to laugh openly at my rather poor horsemanship.

I am indebted to many people at Monticello. Susan Stein was generous with her time and expertise, as were Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy and Melanie Bowyer. I am also grateful to Anna Berkes, Monticello's reference librarian.

One of the great pleasures of this project came in November 2011, when I was graciously granted permission to spend the night in Jefferson's bedroom at Monticello—on a pallet, I hasten to add. I am grateful to H. Eugene Lockhart, chairman of the board of trustees of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, who was instrumental in the approval of the request to stay in the house. The curatorial staff helped arrange the evening and gave me invaluable guidance on the house as it would have been in Jefferson's day: my thanks to Susan Stein, Richard Gilder Senior Curator and vice president for museum programs; to Elizabeth V. Chew, curator; and to Jodi Frederickson, curatorial assistant. Thanks as well to Barry Claytor, safety and security administrator; and to Fred O'Brien, Bryan Glover, and Terrell Thompson.

Many archives and libraries were welcoming and helpful. In particular I am grateful to Del Moore, reference librarian, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Library, Colonial Williamsburg, and to Katherine A. Ludwig at the David Library of the American Revolution. The New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library were critical resources. At the New York Public Library, I am especially indebted to the Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History, and Genealogy. The general holdings of the Stephen A. Schwartzman Building, their microfilm collection, and other NYPL branches were also invaluable, as was the staff of the Jessie Ball duPont Library at the University of the South. Also thanks to the staffs of the David Library of the American Revolution; Library and Archives Canada; Archives of Ontario; the Loyalist Collection, University of New Brunswick; and the Devon Record Office, Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom.

In France, Melissa Lo and Tom Stammers worked in the diplomatic archives and translated those manuscripts for me; Melissa also undertook archival work in England, along with Louisa Thomas. I am also grateful to Jamie Johnston, Matthew Price, Caitlin Watson, Baobao Zhang, and Jessica Gallagher for their work transcribing manuscript sources. In the Senate Historical Office, I am again grateful to historian Donald A. Ritchie and to his colleague Betty Koed.

Of the making of books about Jefferson there will be no end, and that's a very good thing. Readers seeking an intelligent, accessible, and thorough survey of the current state of Jefferson scholarship will find it in the essays collected by editor Francis D. Cogliano in
A Companion to Thomas Jefferson,
a 2012 volume published as one of the Blackwell Companions to American History. Frank Cogliano has been welcoming and generous to me, and the book he edited is invaluable. Contributors include Annette Gordon-Reed, Michael A. McDonnell, Kristofer Ray, Robert G. Parkinson, Peter Thompson, John A. Ragosta, Johann N. Neem, Iain McLean, Todd Estes, Joanne B. Freeman, Robert M. S. McDonald, Jeremy D. Bailey, Leonard J. Sadosky, Andrew Burstein, Andrew Cayton, Lucia Stanton, Cassandra Pybus, Catherine Kerrison, Billy L. Wayson, Richard Samuelson, Kevin J. Hayes, David Thomas Konig, Hannah Spahn, Caroline Winterer, Peter S. Onuf, R. B. Bernstein, Max M. Edling, Cameron Addis, Matthew E. Crow, Barbara B. Oberg and James P. McClure, Brian Steele, and Jack N. Rakove.

For their counsel and friendship, I am grateful to historians and biographers who kindly took the great trouble to advise me on different points. Evan Thomas and Michael Beschloss are eternally generous with me, as are Oscie Thomas and Affie Beschloss.

Annette Gordon-Reed, whose work on Jefferson and the Hemings family is a landmark contribution to American history, has been a wonderful friend and invaluable reader. Susan Kern, the author of a remarkable book on Jefferson's origins,
The Jeffersons at Shadwell,
graciously spent a morning with me on the Shadwell site and read parts of the manuscript. Lucia “Cinder” Stanton arranged that visit, and so much else. Gordon S. Wood, a longtime hero of mine, generously read the manuscript and offered valuable insights.

At Monticello, both Cinder Stanton and Susan Stein read and commented on the manuscript, improving it greatly. Peter Onuf, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia and mentor to a generation or two of scholars of Jefferson and of American history, read my draft carefully and made helpful comments, rescuing me, as did my other readers, from mistakes. Professor Onuf also offered this book a benediction when it was done, something for which I will be always grateful.

In 2012, I was fortunate to be invited to a conference hosted in Charlottesville by the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution and the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. Entitled “Thomas Jefferson's Lives: Biography as a Construction of History,” the gathering was fittingly dedicated to Onuf. For their roles in organizing and directing the conference, I am grateful to Andrew O'Shaughnessy, the Saunders Director of the International Center and a longtime friend; to Robert McDonald of West Point; and to Joseph W. Dooley of the SAR. The papers presented were intriguing and illuminating, and I learned much from them, and from a roundtable discussion moderated by Barbara Oberg. Professor McDonald, who also presented a paper co-authored by Christine Coalwell McDonald, is preparing a volume of the papers. Contributors include Jefferson Looney, Andrew Burstein, Nancy Isenberg, Joanne B. Freeman, Jan Ellen Lewis, Richard A. Samuelson, Brian Steele, Herbert Sloan, Annette Gordon-Reed, Frank Cogliano, R. B. Bernstein, and Gordon S. Wood.

Walter Isaacson, Henry Wiencek, Pauline Maier, Ron Chernow, Joseph J. Ellis, Daniel Jordan, Sean Wilentz, David McCullough, Andrew Burstein, Nancy Isenberg, Stacy Schiff, Robert A. Caro, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gary E. Moulton, and the late Christopher Hitchens were selfless readers, advisers, interlocutors, and editors along the way. The responsibility for the book, of course, lies with me.

For kindnesses large and small, thanks to Richard and Lisa Plepler, Jonathan Karp, John Huey, Julia Reed, May Smythe, Mark Miller, Clara Bingham, Anna Quindlen, Tom Brokaw, Perri Peltz and Eric Ruttenberg, Graydon Carter, John Danforth, Gardiner and Nicholas Lapham, Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough, Willie Geist, Mike Barnicle, Ann Edelberg, Alex Korson, Cate Cetta, Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee, Linda and Mort Janklow, Alice Mayhew, Richard Stengel, Nancy Gibbs, Jane and Brian Williams, Jeffrey Leeds, Claire and John Reishman, Leslie and Dale Richardson, Hardwick Caldwell III, Tammy Haddad, Chloe Dupree, Barbara DiVittorio, Bill Owens, Jeffrey Fager, Rebecca Pratt, George Gilliam, Samuel R. Williamson, Jr., Kitty Boone, Betsy Fischer, David Gregory, Neal Shapiro, Alison Stewart, Wayne Fields, Lenora Fisher, Richard Cohen, Robley Hood, Ruby Walker, Shaima Ally, Madeline Magee, Roger Hertog, and Donna Pahmeyer and her colleagues at the University Book and Supply Store.