Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (69 page)

“
ELOQUE
NCE
IN
PUBLIC
ASSEMB
LIES
”
Kaminski,
Founders on the Founders,
287.

“A
PUBLIC
SPEA
KER
”
IBiD.

“F
EW
PERSONS
CAN
BEAR
”
IBiD.

“T
HE
CONTINUAN
CE
AND
THE
EXTENT
”
PTJ,
I, 223–24.

FACED
A
“
DEFICIENCY
”
Ibid., 224.

A
FTER
A
VISIT
TO
R
OBERT
B
ELL
'
S
SHOP
MB,
I, 402.

LEFT
P
HILADELPHIA
FOR
V
IRGINIA
Ibid., 403–4.

STOPPED
ALONG
THE
ROAD
IBid.

“F
OR
G
OD
'
S
SAKE
”
Morgan,
Virginians at HoME,
50.

NEVER
STOPPED
HUMMING
Bear,
Jefferson at MonticelLO,
13.

A
N
A
EOLIAN
HARP
MB,
I, 28.

“M
RS
. J
EFFERSON
WAS
SMALL
”
Bear,
Jefferson at MonticeLLO,
5.

SUPERVISING
THE
SLAUGHTER
OF
DUCKS
Stein,
Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello,
15–16.

MANAGED
THE
SLAVES
I
N
THE
HOUSE
Ibid., 16.

“T
HE
HOU
SE
WAS
BUILT
”
Ibid., 14.

H
E
ACQ
UIRED
A
CHESSBOARD
Jefferson bought books, he bought clothes, he bought tickets to plays—then he bought punch at the playhouse. He spent money to make himself handsome, comfortable, entertained, and engaged.
MB,
I, 28, records the examples here, and the Memorandum Books and
PTJ
—as well as the extant collections at Monticello—record a life of acquisition and consumPtION.

“
A
COPIOUS
AND
W
ELL
-
CHOSEN
”
Stein,
Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at MonticellO,
14.

H
IS
AR
CHITECTURAL
SENSE
MB,
I, 24.

THE
PAINTING
SCHEME
IbiD., 27.

ORDERED
A
COPY
IbiD., 35.

SENT
FOR
A
CL
OTHESPRESS
IbiD., 29.

JOINED
T
HE
P
HILOSOPHICAL
S
OCIE
TY
Ibid., 338–39. See also Ibid., 525.

PUBLISHED
A
BOOK
Ibid., 341.

HIS
KINSMAN
J
OHN
R
AN
DOLPH
PTJ,
I, 240–43. For details on John Randolph's violin, see Hayes,
Road to Monticello,
104, and
MB,
I, 77.

WAS
FASC
INATED
BY
GARDENING
TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/houses-and-gardens/Jefferson-scientist-and-gaRDENER.

EXPRESSING
REGRET
Ibid., 241. Jefferson cast the issue in personal terms. “There may be people to whose tempers and dispositions contention may be pleasing.… But to me it is of all states but one the most horrid.” He added: “My first wish is a restoration of our just rights; my second a return of the happy period when, consistently with duty, I may withdraw myself totally from the public stage and pass the rest of my days in domestic ease and tranquility, banishing every desire of afterwards even hearing what passes in the world.” (Ibid.) The longing for withdrawal was something of a conventional trope for public men in the eighteenth century, men whose idealized model of service was that of Cincinnatus, the Roman general who was summoned, reluctantly, to power from hiS PLOW.

CONCENTRATED
WITHI
N
“
A
SMALL
FACTION
”
IBId.

“T
HEY
HAVE
TAKEN
IT
”
Ibid. “Even those in Parliament who are called friends to America seem to know nothing of our real determinations,” he told Randolph. The British seemed to think that Americans “did not mean to insist rigorously on the terms they held out,” said Jefferson, but “continuance in this error may perhaps have very ill consequences.” In fact, the offer of the Congress of 1774 amounted to “the lowest terms they thought possible to be accepted in order to convince the world they were not unreasonable.” Those conditions, however, had been set out “before blood was spilt.” Now Jefferson could make no promises. “I cannot affirm, but have reason to think, these terms would not now be accepted,” he told Randolph. (Ibid.) Jefferson also made bold to suggest that Britain's imperial destiny might be in the balance. “If indeed Great Britain, disjoined from her colonies, be a match for the most potent nations of Europe with the colonies thrown into their scale, they may go on securely,” he told Randolph. “But if they are not assured of this, it would be certainly unwise, by trying the event of another campaign, to risk our accepting a foreign aid which perhaps may not be obtainable but on a condition of everlasting avulsion from Great Britain.” (Ibid., 242.)

D
RAFTED
BUT
DELETED
Ibid., 243. Yet he remained defiant, telling Randolph that he would “lend my hand to sink the whole island in the ocean” if Britain did not satisfy American demands. (Ibid., 242.) The conflict felt inescapably personal, for the North Atlantic world was a comparatively small one. After a trip to London in 1772, Alexander McCaul, a merchant friend, wrote Jefferson: “I saw several of our old Virginia friends and on the Change of London you would meet with many faces you had seen before.” There was an assumption of enduring common ties. “It is happy for the natives of Britain [that] they have such a resource as North America, for there, if they happen to be reduced, they may always have bread with industry,” McCaul wrote Jefferson. “The Virginia planters may thank their stars they have so good a country to cultivate, though many of them are not sensible of the happiness they enjoy.” (
PTJ,
I, 93.)

TO
USE
HIS
DEPARTI
NG
KINSMAN
IBID.

PARTED
O
N
A
WARM
NOTE
Ibid., 242–43.

“T
HOUG
H
WE
MAY
POLITICALLY
DIFFER
”
Ibid., 244.

2
ND
E
ARL
OF
D
ARTMOUTH
Ibid., 243.

H
IS
D
AUGHTER
J
ANE
Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 383.

ONLY
A
YEAR
AND
A
HALF
OL
D
Ibid. According to Jefferson's notes in his Book of Common Prayer, Jane was born on April 3, 1774, and died in September 1775. (IbiD.)

ON
C
HESTNUT
S
TREET
MB,
I, 407.

“I
HAVE
SET
APART
”
PTJ,
I, 251.

“I
HAVE
NEVER
RECEIVED
”
Ibid., 252.

CANNONS
EN
ROUTE
Ibid., 247.

COMING
“
AT
THE
EXPRESS
”
Ibid. The British, Jefferson reported to Francis Eppes, had a continental strategy ready. Ten thousand more troops—raised from the garrison at Gibraltar and from Ireland—were due in the spring. While in control of New York, Albany, St. John's, and Quebec they would use their naval vessels as communication channels to keep these cities and Boston in contact. The feared effect, according to Jefferson: The British would “distress us on every side acting in concert with one another.” (IbiD.)

AT
R
OXBOROUGH
,
THE
COU
NTRY
HOUSE
MB,
I, 407.

R
ANDOL
PH
SUFFERED
A
STROKE
IBiD.

“
OUR
MOST
WORTHY
S
P
EAKER
”
PTJ,
I, 268.

AT
H
AMPTON
,
NE
AR
N
ORFOLK
Ibid., 249.

THE
B
RITIS
H
TRIED
TO
LAND
IBID.

UND
ERTAKING
EXPEDITIONS
AGAINST
C
ANADA
Ibid. See also Middlekauff,
Glorious Cause,
309–14. “We are all impatience to hear from Canada,” said Robert Carter Nicholas on November 10, 1775. (
PTJ,
I, 256.)

CREATED
A
C
OMMITTEE
OF
S
AFETY
McDonnell,
Politics of War,
92–97. The committee's duties, McDonnell noted, included the “sole power to direct the movement of the army and to call out the minutemen and militia into service, to call for assistance from other colonies, and to purchase any arms outside the colony. All officers in every branch of the armed forces were specifically ordered to obey the Committee of Safety; no military officers whatsoever could sit on it.” (Ibid., 97.) See also Middlekauff,
Glorious Cause,
565–66.

T
HE
ELEVEN
MONTH
S
PRECEDING
THE
D
ECLA
RATION
In August, Jefferson had written John Randolph that he “would rather be in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon earth, or than on no nation.” (
PTJ,
I, 242.) The flummoxing phrase, though, was “properly limited”: What did that mean? As 1775 fell away, month by month, to stand alone as a nation was not yet the chief desire of Jefferson's heart, or of the broad American public's. (See Maier,
American Scripture,
21.) So what happened? George III and Lord Dunmore, two men cloaked in the ancient authority of the Old World, chose this season to assert themselves in ways that proved inflammatory and decisive. On Thursday, October 26, 1775, George III told Parliament that the American course was “manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent Empire.” It was a “desperate conspiracy” whose “authors and supporters … meant only to amuse, by vague expressions of attachment to the parent State, and the strongest protestations of loyalty to me, whilst they were preparing for a general revolt.” (Ibid.) London now intended “to put a speedy end to these disorders by the most decisive exertions.” The words gave the king's unhappy subjects no apparent opening for negotiation, and little reason to think that they might avert total war. (Ibid.) And then Dunmore struck in ViRGINIA.

DEPREDATIONS
OF
A
SUPERIOR
MILITAR
Y
FORCE
PTJ,
I, 260. “Former labors in various public employments now appear as recreations compared with the present,” Edmund Pendleton wrote. (IBiD.)

“W
E
CARE
NO
T
FOR
OUR
TOWNS
”
Ibid., 259. Page continued: “I have not moved many of my things away—indeed nothing but my papers, a few books, and some necessaries for housekeeping. I can declare without boasting that I feel such indignation against the authors of our grievances and the scoundrel pirates in our rivers and such concern for the public at large that I have not and cannot think of my own puny person and insignificant affairs.” (IBId.)