Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders (67 page)

263.
Thompson, “Mount Vernon,” 2:392–93.

264.
Gomez,
Black Crescent
, 146–48.

265.
Thompson, “Mount Vernon,” 2:392–93.

266.
“George Washington to Tench Tilghman,” March 24, 1784, in
Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799
, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, 39 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1938), 27:367.

267.
Henry Wiencek,
Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 274–75, quote on 275, where Wiencek opines the choice of Jefferson as “the moral standard of the Founders’ era, not Washington.” Thompson, “Mount Vernon,” 2:393, notes that Washington freed 123 of his slaves, with others who had belonged to Martha Washington’s first husband remaining enslaved. For an earlier critique of Jefferson’s view of slavery and treatment of slaves, see Paul Finkelman,
Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson
, 2nd ed. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), 153–54, 189, who notes that all of those slaves freed were Hemingses, part of Jefferson’s family.

268.
The possible presence of Muslims on Jefferson’s plantation was first noted by al-Hibri, “Islamic and American Constitutional Law,” 502.

269.
See Annette Gordon-Reed,
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 272; Wiencek,
Master of the Mountain
, 191, refers to six childbirths only.

270.
Elizabeth Hemings (d. 1807) was the daughter of a “full-blooded African” woman whose name remains unknown. Elizabeth was the mother of Sarah (Sally) Hemings (d. 1835). Their great-grandmother’s African religion and ethnicity remain a mystery, according to Annette Gordon-Reed,
Hemingses of Monticello
, 47–52.

271.
Wiencek,
Master of the Mountain
, 228; Finkelman,
Slavery and the Founders
, 154.
Jefferson never freed Sally, although those slaves freed on his death were Hemingses, their children.

1.
“John Adams to Thomas Jefferson,” February 21, 1786, in
The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams
, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 1:123. I have regularized capitalization in all of these exchanges. Hereafter cited as
Adams-Jefferson Letters.

2.
Thomas A. Bailey,
A Diplomatic History of the American People
(New York: Meredith Corporation, 1969), 64–65.

3.
Robert C. Davis,
Holy War and Human Bondage: Tales of Christian-Muslim Slavery in the Early Modern Mediterranean
(Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2009), vii–36.

4.
The classic treatment is by Ray W. Irwin,
The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with the Barbary Powers, 1776–1816
(New York: Russell and Russell, 1931). A more recent, thorough reading is provided by Michael L. S. Kitzen,
Tripoli and the United States at War: A History of American Relations with the Barbary States
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 1993). A historically problematic reading regarding “terror” and piracy is offered by Joseph Wheelan,
America’s First War: Jefferson’s War on Terror, 1801–1805
(New York: Carroll and Graf, 2003). Whelan’s assumption is countered thoughtfully and thoroughly by Richard B. Parker,
Uncle Sam in Barbary: A Diplomatic History
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), and Frank Lambert,
The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World
(New York: Hill and Wang, 2005). See also the popular history by A. B. C. Whipple,
To the Shores of Tripoli: The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines
(New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991). For a cultural analysis, focused in part on American views of Islam, see Robert J. Allison,
The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776–1815
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). The issue of captivity in North Africa has received renewed attention of late. A helpful introduction to the cultural construction of the British encounter with Barbary may be found in Linda Colley,
Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850
(London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), 99–113. Accounts of American captivity narratives in North Africa may be found in Paul Baepler, ed.,
White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of Barbary Captivity Narratives
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); see also Timothy Marr,
The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 26–68; Lawrence A. Peskin,
Captives and Countrymen: Barbary Slavery and the American Public, 1785–1816
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Thomas S. Kidd,
American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 19–36.

5.
Sebastian R. Prange, “Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an,”
Saudi Aramco World
62, no. 4 (July/August 2011): 7.

6.
For a comparison of Jefferson and Adams on religion, see Lambert,
Barbary Wars
, 8, 113, 117–18.

7.
I paraphrase Lambert here, with whom I concur based on Jefferson’s writing, that U.S. conflicts with North Africa “were primarily about trade, not theology, and that rather than being holy wars, they were extensions of America’s War of Independence”; see Lambert,
Barbary Wars
, 8. Offering a more religion-centered explanation of the conflict is Michael B. Oren,
Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to Present
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 20–42.

8.
Lambert,
Barbary Wars
, 8–9.

9.
Baepler, introduction to
White Slaves, African Masters
, 8–58.

10.
“Adams to Jefferson,” July 3, 1786,
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, 1:139.

11.
Davis,
Holy War
, 15.

12.
Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 125. For Qur’anic verses about captives as differentiated from slaves, see Jonathan E. Brockopp, “Captives,”
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an
, ed. Jane D. McAuliffe, 6 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 1:289–90, and Jonathan E. Brockopp, “Slaves,”
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an
, 5:56–60. The humanity of the slaves and their kind treatment and manumission are regarded as a way to expiate sins (Qur’an 4:36, 5:89, 58:3).

13.
Quoted in Nabil Matar,
Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005), 114–15.

14.
Adrian Tinniswood,
Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests, and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean
(New York: Riverhead, 2010), 172.

15.
James Leander Cathcart, “The Captives: Eleven Years a Prisoner in Algiers,” in Baepler,
White Slaves, African Masters
, 103–46; see also Jacob Rama Berman,
American Arabesque: Arabs, Islam, and the 19th-Century Imaginary
(New York: New York University Press, 2012), 31–69.

16.
Tinniswood,
Pirates of Barbary
, 172; Cathcart, “Captives,” in
White Slaves, African Masters
, 136–39.

17.
Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 24, 263, 168–69.

18.
Ibid., 16, 96–97.

19.
The connection between American captivity in North Africa and abolitionist thought in the United States was first documented by Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 121–26, 223–25.

20.
Henry Wiencek,
Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 76–83, 245–51, 273–75.

21.
Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 103; Kidd,
American Christians and Islam
, 19–27.

22.
Quoted in Paul Finkelman,
Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson
, 2nd ed. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), 161.

23.
“From Martha Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson,” May 3, 1787, Paris, in Julian P. Boyd et al., eds.,
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 40 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950–), 11:334. Hereafter
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
. Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 89–90.

24.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 11:334; Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 89–90.

25.
Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 89.

26.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 11:334; Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 89–90.

27.
“We cannot know what her father thought, since he never mentioned this episode, or Martha’s comments on it, when he wrote back to her. Nor did he mention it to anyone else,” as noted by Allison,
Crescent Obscured
, 90.

28.
Annette Gordon-Reed,
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 163–90; Oren,
Power, Faith, and Fantasy
, 24.

29.
Wiencek,
Master of the Mountain
, 190, who states that they never hired a lawyer to investigate proceedings that would have freed them under French law.

30.
“The Marquis de Lafayette to John Adams,” February 22, 1786, in John Adams,
The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States
, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1850–56), 8:376–77.

31.
“Adams to Granville Sharp,” March 8, 1786, ibid., 8:387.

32.
Ibid., 8:388.

33.
Ibid.

34.
Irwin,
Diplomatic Relations
, 17; Phillip Chiviges Naylor,
North Africa: A History from Antiquity to Present
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 121.

35.
Quoted in Irwin,
Diplomatic Relations
, 24–25; Kitzen,
Tripoli
, 9; Magali Morsy,
North Africa, 1800–1900: A Survey from the Nile Valley to the Atlantic
(London: Longman, 1984), 73; Naylor,
North Africa
, 123.

36.
Quoted in Irwin,
Diplomatic Relations
, 17 n. 68.

37.
Dumas Malone,
Jefferson and the Rights of Man
, vol. 2 of
Jefferson and His Time
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1951), 27; Irwin,
Diplomatic Relations
, 17 n. 70. This same quotation was attributed to others, including the French king Louis XIV; see Louis B. Wright and Julia H. Macleod,
The First Americans in North Africa: William Eaton’s Struggle for a Vigorous Policy Against the Barbary Pirates, 1799–1805
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), 14–15.

38.
“John Adams to Secretary Jay,” February 17, 1786, Adams,
Works
, 8:372.

39.
Matar,
Britain and Barbary
, 113.

40.
Irwin,
Diplomatic Relations
, 204.

41.
Matar,
Britain and Barbary
, 113.

42.
Quoted in Karoline P. Cook, “Forbidden Crossings: Morisco Emigration to Spanish America, 1492–1650” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2008), 96.

43.
Wright and Macleod,
First Americans
, 14.

44.
Matar,
Britain and Barbary
, 113.

45.
Lambert,
Barbary Wars
, 31.

46.
Tinniswood,
Pirates of Barbary
, 29–30.

47.
Ibid., 31–103.

48.
Ibid., 28–29.

49.
Lambert,
Barbary Wars
, 30.

50.
Naylor,
North Africa
, 123.

51.
Matar,
Britain and Barbary
, 116–32.

52.
Davis,
Holy War
, vii.

53.
Janice E. Thomson,
Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), quote on 23.

54.
Tinniswood,
Pirates of Barbary
, quote on 30.

55.
Naylor,
North Africa
, 131.

56.
Allison
, Crescent Obscured
, 4–8.

57.
“Thomas Jefferson to John Page,” Paris, August 20, 1785,
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 8:418.

58.
Gary Edward Wilson, “American Prisoners in the Barbary Nations, 1784–1816” (PhD diss., North Texas State University, 1979), 314.

59.
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, 10:426.