Reflection on Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham

You have to think of the Revolutionary War was a result of men who saw themselves as Englishmen being denied their rights as Englishmen. They were defending rights they believed won at the end of the Glorious Revolution. You also have to think of the Revolutionary War as a struggle that lasts from the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 until the End of the War of 1812 in 1815. When the Revolution did come, it was a rich, propertied man’s revolution and a philosopher’s revolution, making it appeal tremendously to Jefferson, who embodied all those attributes. In Virginia, many were radicalized by an English order in late 1775 to offer freedom to slaves who fought against American Revolutionaries. This pushed many slaveowners into the Revolutionary camp.

You can sum up early revolutionary priorities with the three committees formed by the Continental Congress in 1776: “one for the Declaration of Independence, another for preparing articles of confederation, and another for preparing a treaty to be proposed to France.” Jefferson was chosen to write the Declaration of Independence as a Virginian and a good writer. He set out “not to find out new principles, or new arguments… but to place before making the common sense of the subject; in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we were compelled to take. Congress removed from the original document condemnations on the people of England due to the idea that there were still friends in England and on slavery due to the objections of South Carolina and Georgia.

Jefferson and Slavery

               Early on, Jefferson seems like a liberal who opposed slavery, though never calling for its abolition. However, he did attempt to pass legislation in the Virginia House of Burgesses to limit slavery’s excesses and defended a mixed-race man from servitude. However, with age he became less sympathetic. The author alleges that to Jefferson, popularity was more important than a moral argument he doubted could be won, and so he abandoned the cause and went on to own dozens upon dozens of slaves, including his own children. On that topic, Mary Chestnut wrote of southern wives in the 19^th century that “Any lady is able to tell who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household but their own. Those she seems to think drop from the clouds.”

               Jefferson believed the only solution was abolition paired with deportation, as it was inconceivable to him that free whites and free blacks could live together in peace. He said, “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.

Jefferson Between the Declaration of Independence and the Presidency

Jefferson was Governor of Virginia from June 1779 to June 1781. America wins the war in October 1781 at Yorktown. He considered himself a failure as governor as the capital of Virginia, Richmond, was burned by the British. He was a delegate to create the Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781. The Articles of Confederation created no institutions of national government except the Congress- that means no President, no Post Office, no Immigration Service, no nothing at the national level but a congress- a weaker institution than the EU.

Jefferson supported the Ordinance of 1784 that attempted to organize Northwestern territories and significantly banned the expansion of slavery into new territories, failing by a single vote (a delegate from New Jersey was sick and missed the vote). Congress eventually passed the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, instead banning slavery west of the Mississippi and North of the Ohio rivers. This shows you how weak the slavery position was in the early United States; in truth, slavery forces grew in power in 1820 and 1850 enacting compromises that reflected a growing strength up until the Civil War! The founders really missed a crucial opportunity to end slavery but appeased pro-slavery forces, for which America would pay the price years later.

Miscellaneous Facts

• ·        Also, in exchange for the federal assumption of state debts, which were greater in the North, the South demanded, to get even, that the capital be put in the South.
• ·        Jefferson was the Ambassador to France from 1784 to 1789, a witness to the early French Revolution, and even helped to draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
• ·        Hamilton said the greatest man who ever lived was Julius Caesar. Hamilton allegedly said after a dinner party once that “there was no stability, no security, in any kind of government but a monarchy.” Whatta fuckin horrible set of opinions.
• ·        As President, Jefferson made the Louisiana purchase for about $15 million, or 3 cents an acre. It more than doubled the size of the United States at the time.
• ·        Jefferson used pieces of scrap paper as toilet paper and examples were collected from his bathroom on the day of his death and now lie with his many books in the Library of Congress.
• ·        Sally Hemings and children were freed some years after his death.
• ·        Adams’ last words: “Thomas Jefferson survives”
• ·        “The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of Mankind” Thomas Paine
• ·        Jeremy Bentham rejected the idea that every man had a natural, God-given right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as “absurd and visionary.”
• ·        Jefferson was an early proponent of what would eventually become the Trail of Tears, advocating in the 1770’s for removing every Indian east of the Mississippi river.

Jefferson and Adams

Jefferson reunited with John Adams after a long estrangement after seeing a quote in the news that Adams had said “I always loved Jefferson, and I still love him.” They began a correspondence that lasted until their deaths, which would come on the same day, July 4^th, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson had asked his doctor several times on the night of the third if the fourth had come yet, and when told it was, he said “ahh, just as I wished.”

Jefferson wrote to Adams in 1815, “On the subject of the history of the American revolution, you ask who shall write it?... Nobody; except merely its external facts. All its councils, designs and discussions, having been conducted by Congress with closed doors, and no member, as far as I know, making notes of them. These, which are the life and soul of history, must forever be unknown.”

Jefferson the Man

               I was unimpressed with Jefferson the man. He strikes me as a great intellectual but also a hypocrite who desired the approval of others far too much and conducted himself inappropriately in his romantic life. He is a hypocrite for allowing slavery to continue and for keeping his own lover and their children as slaves. Keeping one’s own children of slaves is pure evil. He also compromised many of his values, like the abolition of slavery (and others), in the face of opposition when he thought he could be more popular. Finally, he on various occasions attempted to seduce the wives of his acquaintances and friends, generally making an ass of himself in the process. He is still a great man but all of the reasons above make me see that he had some very tremendous faults and moral failings. I appreciate him for his mind, but I don’t like his heart nearly as much.