Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (54 page)

F
OR
THIRTY
-
SIX
OF
THE
FORTY
YEARS
As noted in the text, aside from Jefferson himself, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren considered themselves part of the Jeffersonian tradition. John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, is the exception. For excellent overviews of the years between 1800 and 1840, see
EOL;
Daniel Walker Howe,
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848
(New York, 2007); and Sean Wilentz,
The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
(New York, 2005).

J
EFFERSON
SO
UGHT
,
ACQUIRED
,
AND
WI
ELDED
POWER
My contention is that Jefferson was at heart a politician—a politician with a wide-ranging philosophical mind and oft-expressed principles, to be sure, but still a politician. See, for instance, Bernard Bailyn,
To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders
(New York, 2003), 37–59. Bailyn concluded:

So it was Jefferson—simultaneously a radical utopian idealist and a hardheaded, adroit, at times cunning politician; a rhetorician, whose elegant phrases had propulsive power, and a no-nonsense administrator—who, above all others, was fated to confront the ambiguities of the Enlightenment program. He had caught a vision, as a precocious leader of the American Revolution, of a comprehensive Enlightenment ideal, a glimpse of what a wholly enlightened world might be, and strove to make it real, discovering as he did so the intractable dilemmas. Repeatedly he saw a pure vision, conceptualized and verbalized it brilliantly, and then struggled to relate it to reality, shifting, twisting, maneuvering backward and forward as he did so. (Ibid., 47.)

“
THE
WORLD
'
S
BEST
HOPE
”
PTJ,
XXXIII, 149.

“W
HATEVER
THEY
CAN
,
THEY
WILL
”
PTJRS,
VIII, 32.

“M
R
. J
EFFERSON
WAS
AS
TAL
L
”
Bear,
Jefferson at Monticello,
11.

J
EFFERSON
“
WAS
L
IKE
A
FINE
HORSE
”
Ibid., 71.

NO
TING
THE
TEMPERATURE
EACH
DAY
See, for instance,
MB,
I, 771. “My method is to make two observations a day, the one as early as possible in the morning, the other from 3 to 4 o'clock, because I have found 4 o'clock the hottest and daylight the coldest point of the 24 hours,” he wrote Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., his son-in-law, on April 18, 1790. “I state them in an ivory pocket book … and copy them out once a week.” (Ibid.)

A
TINY
,
IVORY
-
LEAVED
NOTEBOOK
MB,
I, xvii. The typical contents of Jefferson's pockets are illustrated in William L. Beiswanger and others, eds.,
Thomas Jefferson's Monticello
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2001), 65. The book notes that the items included an English pocketknife, key ring and trunk key, gold toothpick, goose quill toothpick, ivory rule, watch fob, steel pocket scissors, and a red-leather pocketbook. (Ibid.)

H
E
DROVE
HIS
HORSES
HARD
AN
D
FAST
James A. Bear, Jr., ed.,
Jefferson at Monticello
(Charlottesville, Va., 1967), 5.

HIS
“
ALMIGH
TY
PHYSICIAN
”
PTJ,
VIII, 43.

DRANK
NO
HARD
LIQUOR
BUT
LOVED
WINE
Randall,
Jefferson,
III, 450. Isaac Jefferson “never heard of his being disguised in drink.” (Bear,
Jefferson at Monticello,
13.)

GIFT
S
OF
H
AVANA
CIGARS
PTJRS,
I, 466.

DUMBWAITERS
AND
HIDD
EN
MECHANISMS
Beiswanger and others,
Thomas Jefferson's Monticello,
53.

HIS
OWN
VERSION
OF
THE
G
OSPELS
Thomas Jefferson,
The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth
(Boston, 1989). In the afterword to this edition, Jaroslav Pelikan wrote: “There has certainly never been a shortage of boldness in the history of biblical scholarship during the past two centuries, but for sheer audacity Thomas Jefferson's two redactions of the Gospels stand out even in that company.” (Ibid., 149.)

P
ALLADIAN
PLANS
FOR
M
ONTICELLO
Beiswanger and others,
Thomas Jefferson's Monticello,
2–33. A book of Palladio's that belonged to Jefferson emerged in the collections of Washington University in St. Louis in 2011, which I was generously allowed to see.

THE
R
OMAN
-
INSPIRED
CAPITO
L
OF
V
IRGINIA
Susan R. Stein,
The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello
(New York, 1993), 19–20.

PATR
ON
OF
PASTA
TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/macaroni (accessed 2012).

RECIPE
FOR
ICE
CREAM
Marie Kimball,
Thomas Jefferson's Cook Book
(Charlottesville, Va., 1976), 2–3. See also TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/ice-cream (accessed 2012).

THE
PERFECT
DRESSING
FO
R
HIS
SALADS
TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/house-and-gardens/thomas-jeffersons-favorite-vegetables (accessed 2011). “Salad oil was a perennial obsession for Jefferson. He referred to the olive as ‘the richest gift of heaven,' and ‘the most interesting plant in existence.' When he found domestic olive oil imperfect and imported olive oil too expensive, Jefferson turned to the possibilities of oil extracted from sesame seed or benne (
Sesamum orientale
).” (Ibid.)

H
E
K
EPT
SHEPHERD
DOGS
MB,
I, 745. See also
PTJ,
XXIX, 26–27.

H
E
KNEW
L
ATIN
, G
REEK
, F
RENCH
TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/languages-jefferson-spoke-or-read.

ADMIRED
THE
LETTERS
OF
M
ADAME
DE
S
ÉVIGNÉ
TJ to Ellen Wayles Randolph, March 14, 1808, Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Manuscripts, Massachusetts Historical Society. “Among my books which are gone to Monticello, is a copy of Madame de Sevigné's letters, which being the finest models of easy letter writing you must read.” (Ibid.)

M
ADAME
DE
S
TAËL
'
S
Corinne, or Italy
Hannah Thornton to TJ, January 15, 1808, Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Manuscripts, Massachusetts Historical Society. “Mrs. Thornton's Compliments to the President of the U.S, and having heard that he possesses a copy of Made. Stäel's celebrated Novel ‘Corinne' and not being able to procure it elsewhere at present, hopes he will excuse the liberty she takes in requesting the favor of a perusal of it, if disengaged,” she wrote. (Ibid.)

A
COLLECTION
OF
WHAT
A
GUEST
CALLED
“
REGAL
SCANDAL
”
PTJRS,
VIII, 240.

A
DIAMOND
NECKLACE
AND
M
ARIE
-A
NT
OINETTE
Simon Schama,
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
(New York, 1990), 203–10.

AMID
CHAR
GES
THAT
HE
HAD
ALLO
WED
HIS
MISTRESS
Philip Harling, “The Duke of York Affair (1809) and the Complexities of War-Time Patriotism,”
The Historical Journal
39, no. 4 (December 1996): 963–84.

“
WITH
A
SATISFACTION
”
PTJRS,
VIII, 240.

A
GUEST
AT
A
COUNTRY
INN
TDLTJ,
38.

“
TO
SEE
THE
STANDARD
OF
REASON
”
PTJ,
X, 604.

“W
HAT
IS
PRACTICABLE
MUST
OFTEN
CO
NTROL
”
Jefferson
, Writings,
1101.

“
THE
HABITS
OF
THE
GOVERNED
”
Ibid.

TH
E
DEBATE
AND
THE
DIV
ISION
Jefferson has tended to be depicted in what I believe to be an overly harsh light in recent years, often portrayed as, at best, a mystery and, at worst, a cynical politician. In an illuminating essay, Gordon S. Wood explored the distorting dynamic of excessive celebration and excessive condemnation. “We seriously err in canonizing and making symbols of historical figures who cannot and should not be ripped out of their own time and place,” Wood wrote. “By turning Jefferson into the kind of transcendent moral hero that no authentic historically situated human being could ever be, we leave ourselves demoralized by the time-bound weaknesses of this eighteenth-century slaveholder.” (Wood, “The Ghosts of Monticello” in
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture,
ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf [Charlottesville, Va., 1999], 29.) For influential recent portraits of Jefferson, see, for instance, Joseph J. Ellis,
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
(New York, 1997); David McCullough,
John Adams
(New York, 2001); Ron Chernow,
Alexander Hamilton
(New York, 2004); and Chernow,
Washington: A Life
(New York, 2010).

“I
T
IS
A
CHARMING
THING
”
Ibid., xxxviii, 20. The letter was written to Ann Cary, Thomas Jefferson, and Ellen Wayles Randolph from Washington on March 2, 1802.

LEADING
SOME
PEOPLE
TO
BELIEV
E
Joseph J. Ellis,
American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic
(New York, 2007), 168. Ellis quotes John Adams's grandson Charles Francis Adams, who observed: “More ardent in his imagination than his affections, he did not always speak exactly as he felt towards friends and enemies. As a consequence, he has left hanging over a part of his public life a vapor of duplicity, or, to say the least, of indiscretion, the presence of which is generally felt more than it is seen.” (Ibid.)

C
ALLING
ON
S
AMUE
L
H
ARRISON
S
MITH
Margaret Bayard Smith,
First Forty Years,
6.

T
H
E
CHILD
OF
A
F
EDERALI
ST
FAMILY
Ibid., vi. Margaret Bayard Smith was born in 1778; her father was Colonel John Bayard, a Pennsylvania statesman and member of the Continental Congress. Her family included James A. Bayard, a Federalist lawmaker and diplomat from Delaware, who was to play a noted role in Jefferson's election to the presidency in February 1801. (Ibid.)

FOUND
HER
SELF
“
SOMEWHAT
CHECKE
D
”
Ibid., 6.