Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (72 page)

A
WAR
WITH
THE
C
HEROKEES
Anthony F. C. Wallace,
Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans
(Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 54–60.

J
EFFERSON
'
S
VIEWS
O
F
N
ATIVE
A
MERICANS
Ibid., 1–20, offers a good overview. See also Francis Paul Prucha,
The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians,
I (Lincoln, Neb., 1984), 5–88, for an account of the colonial, revolutionary, and early post-revolutionary periods. He believed them more capable than blacks. (Jefferson,
Writings,
266.) “The Indians … will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit,” Jefferson wrote in Query XIV of
Notes on the State of Virginia
. “They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as to prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture.” (Ibid.) See also Andrew Cayton, “Thomas Jefferson and Native Americans,” in Cogliano, ed.,
A Companion to Thomas Jefferson,
237–52.

A
GENUINE
CURIOSITY
Jefferson,
Writings,
218–29.

“N
OTHING
WILL
REDUCE
”
PTJ,
I, 485–86.

A
PROPOSED
CONSTITUTION
FOR
V
IRGINIA
Ibid., 329–86.

HE
CLOSELY
FOLLOWED
THE
C
ONGRES
S
'
S
DEBATES
Jefferson,
Writings,
24–32.

“
THE
ARTICLES
OF
CONFEDER
ATION
”
Ibid., 24.

DRAFT
RULES
O
F
PROCEDURE
FOR
THE
C
ONGRESS
PTJ,
I, 456–58.

H
E
AND
J
OHN
A
DAMS
ONCE
DISAGREED
McCullough,
John Adams,
113–14.

“I
RECEIVE
BY
EVER
Y
POST
”
PTJ,
I, 477.

A
POSTSCRIP
T
BEGGING
L
EE
Ibid. The next day, writing John Page, he said: “I purpose to leave this place the 11th of August, having so advised Mrs. Jefferson by last post, and every letter brings me such an account of the state of her health, that it is with great pain I can stay here till then.” (Ibid., 483.) Lee was delayed, preventing Jefferson from keeping his promise to Patty to leave on August 11. (Ibid., 486.)

TO
KEE
P
V
IRGINIA
'
S
QUORUM
Ibid., 483.

“I
AM
UNDER
THE
PAINFUL
NECESSI
TY
”
Ibid., 486. There was some talk that Patty was on the mend. “I wish you as pleasant a journey as the season will admit,” wrote Edmund Pendleton, “and hope you'll find Mrs. Jefferson recovered, as I had the pleasure of hearing in Goochland she was better.” (Ibid., 508.)

A
SEAL
FOR
THE
N
EW
NATION
Ibid., 494–97.

“P
HARAOH
S
ITTING
IN
AN
OPEN
CH
ARIOT
”
Ibid., 495.

S
O
WHY
DID
TH
E
COLONISTS
I am indebted to
EOL;
J. G. A. Pocock,
The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition
(Princeton, N.J., 1975); Joyce Oldham Appleby,
Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination
(Cambridge, Mass., 1992); and Wood,
Radicalism of the American Revolution
.

LONGED
TO
BE
IN
THE
THICK
OF
SHAPING
TH
E
GOVERNMENT
PTJ,
I, 292.

HER
F
REQUENT
PREGNANCIES
Gordon-Reed,
Hemingses of Monticello,
141–43.

“I
HOPE
YOU
'
LL
GET
CUR
ED
”
PTJ,
I, 489.

TO
USE
THE
W
YTHE
HOUSE
Ibid., 585.

THE
HANDSOME
BRICK
HOUSE
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, http://www.history.org/almanack/places/hb/hbwythe.cfm (accessed 2011).

ELEVEN
·
AN AGENDA FOR LIBERTY

“
T
HOSE
WHO
EXPECT
”
Thomas Paine,
The American Crisis,
No. 4, September 11, 1777.

“
I
T
IS
ERROR
ALONE
”
Jefferson,
Writings,
286.

CHOSE
TO
ENTRUST
THE
MISSION
PTJ,
I, 521–22.

STAKES
F
OR
THE
COUNTRY
Ibid., 522–23. “With this country, everything depends upon it,” said Richard Henry Lee on September 27, 1776. (Ibid., 522.)

R
USS
IA
MIGHT
DISPATCH
Ibid., 522.

“
TO
ACQUAINT
ME
”
Ibid., 523.

ASKE
D
THE
MESSENGER
TO
A
WAIT
Ibid., 524. The messenger bearing Hancock's letter arrived on October 8, 1776; Jefferson's reply to Hancock is dated October 11. (Ibid.)

P
ATTY
COULD
BE
WITH
HIM
Ibid., 604. See also
MB,
I, 426.

“I
T
WOUL
D
ARGUE
”
Ibid., 524.

“N
O
CARES
FO
R
MY
OWN
PERSON
”
Ibid. Jefferson was so anxious about missing out on the service in France that he told Silas Deane, who was to serve with Franklin, “I feel within myself the same kind of desire of an hour's conversation with yourself or Dr. Franklin which I have often had for a confabulation with those who have passed the irredeemable bourne.” (Ibid., II, 25.) By framing the matter in such terms—equating time with Deane and Franklin with unobtainable time with the dead—he invested the work in France with the highest possible meaning, equal to his love for his parents, his sister Jane, Dabney Carr, Peyton Randolph, and his lost children. He felt the loss of the French opportunity that deeply.

A
R
EMARKABLE
LEGISLATIV
E
AGENDA
FOR
LIBERTY
JHT,
I, 235–85.

“
THE
STRENGTH
OF
THE
GENERAL
PULSE
”
Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 199.

A
STRIKE
AGAINST
ENTAIL
JHT,
I, 247–60. “To annul this privilege, and instead of an aristocracy of wealth … to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent … was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic,” Jefferson said. “To effect it, no violence was necessary, no deprivation of natural right, but rather an enlargement of it by a repeal of the law. For this would authorize the present holder to divide the property among his children equally, as his affections were divided; and would place them, by natural generation, on the level of their fellow citizens.” (Jefferson,
Writings,
32–33.)

“
A
DISTINCT
SET
OF
F
AMILIES
”
Jefferson,
Writings,
32.

ALTERING
CRIMINAL
JUSTICE
Ibid., 270.

GE
NERAL
PUBLIC
EDUCATI
ON
Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 223–26.

THE
NATURALIZA
TION
OF
THE
FOREIGN
-
BORN
Ibid., 202.

A
NEWCOMER
ON
THE
POLITICAL
SCENE
Ibid., 198.

B
ORN
IN
1751
For background on Madison, see Ralph Ketcham,
James Madison: A Biography
(Charlottesville, Va., 1990). Richard Brookhiser,
James Madison
(New York, 2011), is an interesting recent work, as is Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg,
Madison and Jefferson
(New York, 2010).

M
ADISO
N
“
ACQUIRED
A
HABIT
”
Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 198.

“
BUT
A
WITHERED
LI
TTLE
APPLE
-J
OHN
”
“James Madison,” White House, http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jamesmadison (accessed 2012).

“N
EVE
R
WANDERING
FROM
”
Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 198.

FREEDOM
OF
RELIGION
PTJ,
I, 525–58.

HAD
BECOME
A
READER
Thomas Jefferson,
Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels: “The Philosophy of Jesus” and “The Life and Morals of Jesus,”
ed. Dickinson W. Adams and Ruth W. Lester (Princeton, N.J., 1983). I have long found the introduction to this volume essential reading on the subject of Jefferson and religion. See also Eugene R. Sheridan,
Jefferson and Religion
(Charlottesville, Va., 1998); Paul K. Conkin, “The Religious Pilgrimage of Thomas Jefferson,” in
Jeffersonian Legacies,
ed. Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville, Va., 1993), 19–49; Edwin S. Gaustad,
Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson
(Grand Rapids, Mich., 1996); and Charles B. Sanford,
The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson
(Charlottesville, Va., 1984). I also explored aspects of Jefferson's views on religion in my
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation
(New York, 2006).

HON
EST
ABOUT
HIS
STATE
'
S
ABYSMAL
RECORD
Jefferson,
Writings,
283–87.

HEARD
B
APTIST
MINISTERS
PREA
CHING
William Lee Miller,
The First Liberty: America's Foundation in Religious Freedom
(Washington, D.C., 2003), 6. For more on Madison's work in Virginia on liberty of conscience, especially on the distinction between “liberty” and “toleration,” see ibid., 4–8; Robert A. Rutland,
George Mason: Reluctant Statesman
(Baton Rouge, La., 1980), 60; and Ketcham,
James Madison,
71–73.

I
N
1767, J
EFFE
RSON
WAS
INVOLVED
MB,
I, 22. In another matter, sincerely devoted to helping a friend who longed to be ordained an Anglican priest, Jefferson wrote several letters on the subject, including a plea for Peyton Randolph's influence, yet marveled at what he believed to be the inherent limitations of minds defined by Christian factionalism. His friend's father was a Presbyterian minister in Aberdeen, Scotland, who received his son on a visit with joy—until he discovered his son's mission. “Yet, so wonderful is the dominion of bigotry over her votaries that on the first information of his purpose to receive episcopal ordination he shut him from his doors and abjured every parental duty,” Jefferson told Randolph. (
PTJ,
I, 49–51.)