American Sphinx (56 page)

23. The standard work on the subject is Richard Hofstadter,
The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays
(New York, 1965). On the integrity of conspiratorial thinking in the revolutionary era, see Gordon S. Wood, “Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century,”
WMQ,
XXXIX (1982), 401–41.

24. Matthews,
The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson,
makes the clearest case for Jefferson’s credentials as a radical utopian. While not landing squarely in the middle of his position, I am prepared to cozy up to it, though Matthews seems to endorse the utopianism while I consider it inherently illusory. If I land squarely anywhere, it is on Jefferson’s multiple personae and ideological versatility, which makes him capable of sounding like a republican of the Old Whig sort in certain contexts (i.e., the party wars of the 1790s), a liberal in other contexts (i.e., the defender of the French Revolution in the Thomas Paine mode) and a radical on yet other occasions (i.e., his generational argument and deeply felt hostility to any source of authority outside the self). This latter persona has more in common with the American radicalism of the New Left in the 1960s than with any Marxist tradition, although its antigovernment ethos also can blend easily with the conservatism of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. The core conviction, as I see it, is individual sovereignty.

25. Notes on Professor Eberling’s letter of July 30, 1795,
Ford,
VII, 44–49.

26. On the concept of “the people” as an invention or, if you will, a fiction, see Edmund S. Morgan,
Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America
(New York, 1988).

27. Jefferson to George Washington, May 14, 1794,
Ford,
VI, 509–10; Jefferson to James Monroe, May 26, 1795,
Ford,
VII, 15–22; Jefferson to Maria Cosway, September 8, 1795, quoted in Bullock,
My Head and My Heart,
142–43; Jefferson to Edward Rutledge, November 30, 1795,
Ford,
VII, 39–40.

28. Jefferson to François de Barbé-Marbois, December 5, 1783,
Boyd,
VI, 373–74; for Randolph’s character, see William H. Gaines, Jr.,
Thomas Mann Randolph: Jefferson’s Son-in-Law
(Baton Rouge, 1966). On the domestic situation at Monticello, see Donald Jackson,
A Year at Monticello
(Golden, 1989) and Lewis,
The Pursuit of Happiness,
as well as her “ ‘The Blessings of Domestic Society’: Thomas Jefferson’s Family and the Transformation of American Politics,” Onuf, ed.,
Jeffersonian Legacies,
109–46.

29. The La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt court quotations are from Merrill D. Peterson,
Visitors to Monticello
(Charlottesville, 1989), 29; Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, June 8, 1797,
Domestic Life,
245.

30. Gaines,
Thomas Mann Randolph,
46–48; Jefferson to James Monroe, May 26, 1795,
Ford,
VII, 20–21, for the report that Randolph “is very frail indeed . . . , the more discouraging as there seems too have been no founded conjecture what is the matter with him.” For additional reflections, see Robert P. Sutton, “Nostalgia, Pessimism, and Malaise: The Doomed Aristocrat in Late-Jeffersonian Virginia,”
VMHB,
LXXVI (1968), 41–55. On the imaginative response to the decay of Virginia’s gentry in the Randolph mode, see William R. Taylor,
Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and the American National Character
(New York, 1961), 67–94.

31. Martha Jefferson Randolph to Jefferson, July 1, 1798,
Family Letters,
166. Although I cannot accept the central premise of her book, Fawn Brodie’s treatment of Martha provides one of the fullest renderings of the father-daughter relationship after Martha’s marriage. See especially Brodie,
Intimate History,
287–300. Martha still awaits a biographer who can see her as the most important woman in Jefferson’s life and not just as a footnote to Sally Hemings.

32. Jefferson to Maria Jefferson Eppes, January 7, 1798,
Domestic Life,
246–48. One can see the same internal mechanisms at work in several emotionally charged domestic conflicts that Jefferson preferred to relegate to some sealed inner chamber, to include a highly publicized infanticide case involving the Randolph family in 1793 and the death by poisoning of his old mentor George Wythe in 1806, a scandal that also included the not-to-be-mentioned fact that Wythe’s mulatto housekeeper was his mistress and mother of two of his children.

33. Peden, ed.,
Notes,
164–65. The scholar-farmer referred to here is Douglas L. Wilson, currently the director of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. A nice review of the issues is available in Joyce Appleby, “The ‘Agrarian Myth’ in the Early Republic,”
Liberalism and Republicanism,
253–76.

34. Until recently the most succinct and accessible assessment of Jefferson’s indebtedness has been
Malone,
III, 528–30. But the new authoritative source for our understanding of both the economic and psychological dimensions of Jefferson’s debt problem is Sloan,
Principle and Interest,
especially 13–49. Jefferson to George Washington, [April] 1794,
Domestic Life,
229–30. The most recent study of the planter class in revolutionary Virginia is Bruce A. Ragsdale,
A Planters’ Republic: The Search for Economic Independence in Revolutionary Virginia
(Madison, 1994).

35. Answers to [Jean] Démeunier’s Additional Queries, [January–February 1786],
Boyd,
X, 27; Jefferson to Mary Jefferson Eppes, January 7, 1798,
Domestic Life,
247–48. For the economic condition of postrevolutionary Virginia, see Risjord,
Chesapeake Politics,
96–116; Breen,
Tobacco Culture,
84–123; Sloan,
Principle and Interest,
86–124; Lorena S. Walsh, “Slave Life, Slave Society, and Tobacco Production in the Tidewater Chesapeake, 1620–1820,” in Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, eds.,
Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas
(Charlottesville, 1993).

36.
Farm Book,
viii–x, 201–02, 325–36. The Research Department of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation at Monticello prepared a packet of materials entitled “My Family, My Farm, and My Books” for its winter tour of 1990–91 that includes a great deal of information on Jefferson’s lands and his efforts to improve them in the 1794–97 years.

37.
Farm Book,
257–310; Jefferson to Francis Willis, July 15, 1796,
ibid.,
255–57.

38.
Ibid.,
310–11, 316–17, for the nagging problems with the crop rotation system and the elements. See also La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt’s appraisal of the predicament in Peterson,
Visitors to Monticello,
24–26, and
Malone,
III, 198–206, for a nice summary of the clash between weather and hope.

39.
Farm Book,
335–36, 227–28, 238–39.

40. The classic analysis of Virginia’s soil problems is Avery O. Craven,
Soil Exhaustion as a Factor in the Agricultural History of Virginia and Maryland, 1606–1860
(Urbana, 1925). See also Jack Temple Kirby, “Virginia’s Environmental History: A Prospectus,”
VMHB,
IC (1991), 464–67.

41. Jefferson to Jean Démeunier, April 29, 1795,
Ford,
VII, 14; Jefferson to James Lyle, July 10, 1795,
Farm Book,
430; Jefferson to Henry Remsen, October 30, 1794,
ibid.,
428. See also Jefferson to Archibauld Stuart, January 3, 1796,
Ford,
VII, 49–51, and Jefferson to James Madison, March 6, 1796,
Smith,
II, 923. For Isaac Jefferson’s recollection, see Bear, ed.,
Jefferson at Monticello,
23.

42. To my knowledge, the only book that has recognized the imaginative implications of Jefferson’s nailery is McLaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello,
110–11.

43. ”Reminiscences of Madison Hemings,” in Brodie,
Intimate History,
474; Edmund Bacon, in Bear, ed.,
Jefferson at Monticello,
71–82. For the interest in the other mechanical or construction projects, see
Farm Book,
72–73, 341–46, 363–64.

44. For the architectural and construction story of Monticello, the best book is McLaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello.
For the aesthetic and interior story, Susan R. Stein,
The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello
(New York, 1993) is incomparable. For a convenient review of the story of the family and the mansion, see Elizabeth Langhorne,
Monticello: A Family Story
(Chapel Hill, 1987).

45. Jefferson to George Wythe, October, 1794, quoted in McLaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello,
258; Jefferson to Steven Willis, November 12, 1792,
Farm Book,
173, for the estimate of the bricks required; Jefferson to William Giles, March 19, 1796,
Ford,
VII, 67; Peterson,
Visitors to Monticello,
18–19, 21–22; Jefferson to Count Constantin François de Volney, April 10, 1796, quoted in McLaughlin,
Jefferson at Monticello,
259–60.

46. Lucia Stanton, “ ‘Those Who Labor for My Happiness’: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves,” Onuf, ed.,
Jeffersonian Legacies,
147–80, displaces all previous scholarly studies of the slave population at Monticello and draws extensively on the ongoing work of the Monticello Research Department.

47. More has been written on Jefferson and slavery than any other subject in the Jefferson corpus. And here there is nothing like a scholarly consensus. The best defense of Jefferson’s record is Douglas L. Wilson, “Thomas Jefferson and the Character Issue,”
Atlantic Monthly,
CCLXX (1992), 61–78. The most sustained scholarly attack of Jefferson’s record is Paul Finkelman, “Jefferson and Slavery: ‘Treason Against the Hopes of the World,’ ” Onuf, ed.,
Jeffersonian Legacies,
181–221. The standard survey of the subject is Miller,
The Wolf by the Ears.
The deepest probe into the psychological issues at stake is Jordan,
White over Black,
429–81. The best look at the Virginia context is McColley,
Slavery and Jeffersonian Virginia.
The most extensive effort to understand his latter-day procrastinations is Freehling,
The Road to Disunion,
122–57. And this merely scratches the proverbial surface. What I am attempting to argue here is that our understanding of this controversial subject will be enhanced if we do two things: First, try to relate Jefferson’s position on slavery as a social problem with his own predicament as an owner of slaves and, second, recognize the shift that occurs in his thinking somewhere between 1783 and 1794, a shift toward passivity and procrastination.

48. Jefferson to William A. Burwell, January 28, 1805,
Farm Book,
20. One of the few ironies of Jefferson’s relation to slavery that has escaped the notice of historians involves the cotton gin. Jefferson’s oft-stated confidence that slavery was doomed in America was based on his belief that it would simply fail as a labor system. The development of the cotton gin was a crucial factor in vitalizing the slave economy, especially in the Deep South, thereby making him a poor prophet. When he was secretary of state, one of Jefferson’s responsibilities was the approval of patents, including Eli Whitney’s request for the cotton gin. See Jefferson to Eli Whitney, November 16, 1793,
Ford,
VI, 448.

49. The fullest statement of his mature position on slavery was made in a letter to Edward Coles, a member of the younger generation that Jefferson regarded as the proper source of leadership. See Jefferson to Edward Coles, August 25, 1814,
Farm Book,
37–39. For the short-lived scheme to import German peasants to “intermingle” with blacks, see Jefferson to Edward Bancroft, January 26, [1789],
Boyd,
XIV, 492–94.

50. The following letters from Jefferson to his overseer at Monticello, Nicholas Lewis, discuss the sale of slaves, or the leasing of their labor, to meet the problem of rising debt: December 19, 1786,
Boyd,
X, 614–16; July 29, 1787,
ibid.,
XI, 639–42; July 11, 1788,
ibid.,
XIII, 339–44; Sloan,
Principle and Interest,
22–23, also sees the late 1780s as the crucial moment when debt begins to become an integral part of all his thinking.

51. Stanton, “Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves,” 174. Interestingly, this assiduous assessment of Jefferson’s position on slavery, which is unquestionably the most significant statement in the entire memoir that La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt wrote of his visit to Monticello, did not make it into any of the published editions produced by modern scholars until Stanton generated her own translation from the microfilm version at the Library of Congress.

52.
Farm Book,
18.

53.
Domestic Life,
152–53, for the description of Jefferson’s return to Monticello in 1789, when the slaves disengaged the horses and pulled the carriage up the mountain, then crowded around the returning master, laughing and crying with joy. Jefferson to Bowling Clarke, September 21, 1792,
Farm Book,
13; Jefferson to Nicholas Lewis, April 12, 1792,
ibid.,
12. For his policy on runaways, see Jefferson to Reuben Perry, April 16, 1812,
ibid.,
34–35; and Jefferson to Randolph Lewis, April 23, 1807,
ibid.,
26, for his view on preserving slave families. All of this is carefully presented in Stanton, “Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves,” 158–59.

54.
Farm Book,
7.

55. Thomas Mann Randolph to Jefferson, April 22, 1798,
ibid.,
436. The genealogy of the Hemings family is conveniently provided in Bear, ed.,
Jefferson at Monticello,
insert after page 24. The terms governing the emancipation of Robert and James Hemings are set forth in
Farm Book,
15–16. This La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt quotation is available in Peterson,
Visitors to Monticello,
30.

56. Judith P. Justus,
Down from the Mountain: The Oral History of the Hemings Family
(Perrysburg, Ohio, 1990), while not wholly reliable, gathers much evidence about many branches of the Hemings family. The Research Department of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation is currently involved in a major project to interview the descendants of the Hemings family, many of whom regard themselves as descendants of Jefferson via Sally Hemings.