Sunday, April 7, 2013

Thomas Jefferson: American Enigma?

Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves --Henry Wiencek, 2012.
       Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power –Gary Wills, 2003.
       The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson --Forrest Mcdonald, 1976.

"There was never a moment when the slavery issue was not a sleeping serpent. That issue lay coiled up under the table during the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.  …slavery was on every one's mind, though not always on his tongue."   --John Jay Chapman

          Thomas Jefferson has increasingly become a problem for modern historians.  Sixty years ago his reputation was  untouched—and unmatched.  Combining the talents of philosopher, architect, naturalist, writer, political leader, scientist, and educator in one person, he was seen as one of the greatest Americans who ever lived.  John F. Kennedy exemplified this attitude when he joked at a dinner for Nobel Prize laureates that “…this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” 
          There were always disquieting aspects to Jefferson however; his passion for freedom and his ownership of slaves; his interest in science and his primitive views on race; his commitment to limited government and his embrace of the Imperial Presidency.  Until recently, historians have explained away these contradictions by arguing that Jefferson was simply a man of his time, that he privately deplored slavery, and that his political excesses were more than balanced by the good he achieved for the nation.  In recent years, writers have increasingly come to question this judgment.  Two recent works, along with an old one, challenge the conventional view of Jefferson and come very close to accusing him of intellectual fraud.  Instead of being an enigma, many modern scholars are positing the view that his legacy actually amounted to much less than we have previously thought.
          Professor Forrest McDonald looks at Jefferson’s Presidency with an unblinking, cool perspective and finds that his “achievements” diminish as they are examined closely.  True, Jefferson oversaw the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, but at the exorbitant cost of $15 million—much more than an actual war with France would have cost at the time.  Given his hostility to public debt and militarism, Jefferson was able to make great strides in paying down the nation’s debt and cutting federal expenditures.  He did this however, by emasculating the nation’s army and navy which in turn, led to Great Britain’s calculation that the War of 1812 could “restore” their American colonies.  Without military power, the Jefferson Administration was forced to rely on an economic embargo against Europe when the Napoleonic Wars threatened to engulf the young nation.  Counter intuitively, the embargo simply ruined the U.S. economy, while Europe hardly noticed its effects. 
          In domestic politics, while he embraced the rhetoric of democracy, Jefferson continued most of the Federalist policies that he said he deplored.  The Bank of the United States was allowed to remain in business while federal intervention into the economy continued.  The only breakthrough that Jefferson accomplished was to institute the “spoils system” and get rid of many federalist-appointed officeholders, replacing them with party faithful.  All-in-all McDonald concludes, Jefferson was a disaster as president.  Because his basic political philosophy was rooted in the English eighteenth-century oppositionist philosophy of Bolingbroke, there were few positive aspects to his view of the purposes of government and society.
          Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke, led the Tory opposition to Sir Robert Walpole and the English financial revolution in the early 1700’s.  Bolingbroke, while mouthing the sentiments of individual liberty and freedom, represented the English landed nobility’s hostility to industrial growth, financial expansion, and modernity.  Walpole, a centralizing figure similar to Alexander Hamilton, was painted by Bolingbroke as a Machiavellian figure who would enslave England using debt, a centralized government, and “corruption.”  That Bolingbroke was only interested in freedom and prosperity for his fellow aristocratic landowners has not been emphasized by many historians.  Not only did Jefferson repeat these arguments, but his policies tended to favor landed wealth, even while extolling the virtues of the “common man.”
          Gary Wills observes that the “Revolution of 1800” never actually happened.  Historians have taken Jefferson’s election as a triumph of democracy and the first important step in the development of the mass electorate in America.  But this was not really so.  At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, southern states were given extra representation in the Congress through the adoption of the “three fifths rule.”  Under this provision, slaves were counted as 60% of a person for census purposes.  This gave slave-holding states more representation than they would have had if only free persons had been counted.  The adoption of the rule was the only way to ensure southern support for the new Constitution.  There would have been no federal republic without it.  But it also meant that the South would have disproportionate political power in future congresses.  Although not considered in 1787, it also ensured that any presidential candidate who carried the southern half of the country would be awarded an extra 12 electoral votes because of the slave population.  Although John Adams easily won the popular vote in the election of 1800, he lost in the Electoral College with 65 votes to Jefferson’s 73.  Without the slave factor, Jefferson would have only mustered 62 votes.  This was the reason Federalist leaders sneered at Jefferson as the “Negro President.”  Future southern political hegemony seemed assured through the expanding slave population.  Even though the majority of voters lived in free northern states, they had little power to affect national policy.  This imbalance would feed the drive to civil war by 1861.
          Jefferson’s involvement with slavery has been the subject of much scrutiny during the last thirty years.  Henry Wiencek offers a masterful overview of Jefferson’s true relationship with the “peculiar institution,” and completely demolishes the myth that the “Father of the Declaration of Independence” was ambivalent about owning human beings.  Not only did Jefferson find new, imaginative, ways to monetize his human holdings, he also grasped as early as 1792 that breeding and selling slaves was the most profitable activity he could engage in.  At his death, Monticello contained about 120 slaves, but Jefferson had sold almost 600 people during his lifetime.  He had caused his labor force to be trained in woodworking, nail manufacturing, metallurgy, carpentry, and advanced agricultural techniques.  He successfully transitioned his plantation from tobacco to wheat and would have died a rich man had he not made some unfortunate investments late in life.  Wiencek shows that, far from being a lenient master, Jefferson consistently used violence, starvation, and threats of separating families to ensure that his property worked at maximum efficiency. 
          What Wiencek finds particularly disturbing is that many historians and researchers have participated in masking the true face of Jefferson the slave-master.  An example of this is to be found in the standard edition of Jefferson’s Farm Book which was published in 1953 by Edwin Betts.  This work described in minute detail the daily workings of life at Monticello.  Wiencek found that Betts had left out important details when he compiled his book.  A letter from Jefferson’s son-in-law Thomas Randolph for example, reports that the nail factory was functioning better since the young slaves were now being whipped when they were late for work.
          The Polish hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko fought in the Revolution side-by-side with Lafayette.  As a reward for his services, Congress awarded him $20,000 (a huge sum for the time) just before his death.  Kosciuszko asked his friend Jefferson to help write his will and be the executor.  He wished the entire sum to be used by Jefferson to free as many of his slaves as possible and settle them in Ohio.  After Kosciuszko’s death, Jefferson made no move to settle the estate and let it lapse in the courts.  The money eventually went to distant relatives in Poland.  All during this era Jefferson was writing about the scourge of slavery, how there was no way out for the south, and how it was like holding a “wolf by the ears.”
          The Sally Hemmings controversy has been settled at least, although Jefferson’s defenders still are fighting a delaying action.  Beginning with Fawn Brodie in the 1970’s through Annette Gordon-Reed in this century, the issue of whether Jefferson had slave children has been settled.  Buttressed by DNA evidence in the late 1990’s the case is clear.  What is depressing is that the evidence was there all along.  Academic apologists simply refused to believe that someone “like Thomas Jefferson” could have fathered children with a slave, and then held his own offspring in servitude.  Jefferson’s family members always denied the charges, but a cursory view of their testimony proves most of them to be simply wrong.  In the case of his daughter Martha, she is shown to be a liar.  Most present-day defenders of Jefferson concede his paternity but have shifted their ground.  Where before they attacked those who sought to “slander” Jefferson with the charge of miscegenation, now they enthusiastically embrace the Sally Hemmings story as “proof” of Jefferson’s humanity and goodness.   His 30-year relationship with one of his own slaves is treated as a great love affair that had to be hidden from Virginia society.  Conveniently forgotten is that Sally had to live in a basement room, and that his own progeny were kept in slavery and never acknowledged by the great man, even in private.
          Contemporary visitors to Monticello always left puzzled.  Jefferson would patiently explain how he abhorred slavery but saw no way to end it.  He lamented that he was being bankrupted because it was not an efficient system and slaves cost far more to support than they could ever earn.  Indeed, they were like helpless children that he had to maintain.  All the while the visitor would observe his slaves engaging in a variety of skilled tasks, ranging from building the mansion house itself, to engaging in complex agricultural work around the plantation.  The most puzzling reason Jefferson always gave for not ending slavery was his fear of race mixing.  Visitors would then look around and see that most of the household slaves at Monticello were plainly related to Jefferson.  Indeed, the head waiter in the dining room was a virtual twin of his master.
          Ultimately should Jefferson’s lies and hypocrisy really matter to us?  We know, for example, that Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy were far from perfect in their personal lives.  Modern figures from Bill Clinton to Gen. David Petraeus have been exposed as lesser men than we were led to believe.  One might ask why should Jefferson’s foibles present such a problem?  I believe the answer lies in the chasm between Jefferson the philosopher of liberty, and Jefferson the man.  It is true that none of us are perfect.  Few of us however, lead revolutions and proclaim freedom for all men and the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  On his headstone Jefferson famously had engraved what he believed to be his most important achievements: writing the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom, and founding the University of Virginia.  These accomplishments represented his public stance on human freedom and development in all of its facets: religious, political, and intellectual.  That such a man could publicly proclaim such ideals while totally betraying them in his private life still stuns even his most ardent defenders.  The Jeffersonian Image in the American mind steadily diminishes, even while his thoughts continue to fascinate and influence the modern world.