Thomas Jefferson

Joseph J. Ellis:  American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson:  3rd President (1801-1809); b. 1743; d. 1826

American Sphinx is an excellent name for a book about Jefferson because it’s so hard to cut to the core and see the real man at the center.  His predecessors made this much easier.  Washington was a man of duty--you could see his devotion to serving his country (be it Virginia or the U.S.) at many of the crucial events of his life.  Adams had a sense of puritan virtue that profoundly influenced everything he did (his greatest accomplishments and his greatest failures stemmed from his refusal to compromise when he believed himself to be in the right).  Even with later presidents we can see a central character trait that allows for a central narrative--Jackson cared too much about honor; Buchanan was overcome by his own blind ambition; Pierce tried too hard to mend fences.

They say he had auburn hair--looks right

There isn’t anything like that about Jefferson.  He is a mass of contradictions.  He authored the phrase “all men are created equal,” but he owned scores of slaved and never freed any during his own life (much in contrast to Washington who was not so eloquent, but truly lived his own ideals).  He was a committed franophile, but never achieved the fluency of Adams.  He was trained as a lawyer, but never really practiced.  He advocated war, but never himself served or even witnessed the horrors of war (unlike, say, Monroe, who witnessed the Reign of Terror first-hand).  He was a scholar but didn’t have the book learning of Quincy Adams.  He was a devotee of agriculture, but lost money on his farm and made money on his industrial endeavors (mostly nail-making).  He advocated independence, but was himself forever in debt.  And while the term “Jeffersonian Democracy” invokes the idea of an independent farmer, Jefferson himself lived a truly opulent lifestyle and, because of it, died in debt.

What to make of all this?  It’s easy, I think, to peg Jefferson as a sort of free-floating genius.  A man whose incredible intellect allowed him an easy mastery of any subject into which he came in contact without ever needing to devote himself to a subject or put in the hard work of his peers.  It’s also easy to paint as a reckless ideologue.  He had a certain devotion to the idea of revolution that, when taken to its extreme elsewhere, led to the breakdown of civil society and to mass bloodshed.  (It’s ironic that Edmund Burke, one of the founders of modern conservatism, wrote such polemical things against ideas very similar to those possessed by Jefferson, and yet Jefferson is held in such high regard by modern conservatives.)

Indeed, much of this is true.  Jefferson was a genius, and he was reckless.  But he was so many more thinks.  And that’s what makes him so interesting.

Loyalty?:  One of the topics that is so frustrating to the modern student of Jefferson’s life is his complete lack of loyalty to those around him.  He actively worked against many of the goals of the Washington administration and basically left the administration so that he could rail against it in the press.  His duplicity against Adams--for whom he served as vice president--was in many ways even worse.  The lies and half truths that he spread against John Adams, and his use of the potential war with France (a war Adams rightly sought to avoid) as a campaign issue were both repugnant.  This is especially true considering his long friendship with both John and Abigail.  And he was more than happy to use Monroe as a sacrificial lamb when public option turned against France (where Monroe was minister), even though Monroe had not only followed his instructions to a “t,” but had also excelled as a diplomat.  Perhaps worse, he came close to committing treason when he willingly gave aid to the French who were capturing and killing Americans on the high seas.

This is perhaps the worst part of Jefferson’s character.  He was always willing to destroy a friendship to advance his own career or whatever cause he championed.  What is interesting is that the men--John Adams and James Monroe--mostly forgave him, while the women--Abigail Adams and Martha Washington--found him to be a despicable creature.

Party Man:  We take parties for granted now, but Jefferson was really the first man to form one.  He was one of the original anti-Federalists--indeed, he was in France when the Constitution was written and he railed against it.  It was Madison, who wrote large portions of it, who had to tell him to be quiet so that the thing would be ratified.  And after the ratification, he spend his time fighting against Alexander Hamilton, whose main goal was to create a stable national currency that would have allowed all of those farmers that Jefferson supposedly represented pay off their debts more easily.  This included an early form of the spoils system as well as strong party loyalty (which required Monroe to step aside so that Madison could become president, and lead the country into a disastrous war with England).

Ladies Man:  So, Jefferson had a long-term affair with one of his slaves.  We know that.  He also had a long relationship with a certain Ms. Cosway in Europe during his time abroad.  These are both interesting events, especially considering that he appears to have gone into a severe depression when he wife died (and rather early).  I don’t know if this portion of his life makes him more vulnerable and therefore appealing, or more of a reckless debutante.  But it’s interesting.

Evaluation:  As a president, Jefferson may be the most overrated in our history (perhaps along with Monroe and Regan).  But as an American, his legacy stands there with Washington and Edison.  His ideas about liberty--and let’s give him credit, these were radical ideas that he helped shape and put into words--are now central tenants of our political culture.  And his positions on a number of issues led to the creation of one of the main schools of American political thought (not sure how to define it’s--it’s classical liberalism, but now it’d be called conservative).  He was also completely dedicated to these ideas.  Perhaps that is the most important part of his legacy.  When he said crazy things about revolution and the blood of patriots he was, perhaps, being a little flip and reckless.  But he said these things out of a real devotion to civil ideals.  Prior to Jefferson, I don’t know that anyone had created the idea that these civil virtues were so important that they were worth dying for.  This was vitally important then, and is even more vitally important now.  America is a collection of people of many nationalities, ethnicities, religious, and viewpoints.  

Most important document EVER!?  Possibly.

Unless there is something holding everyone together other than base self-interest, America is nothing more than empire.  That “something” was, I think, Jefferson’s legacy.  The “something” we have now we may have inherited directly from Lincoln, but without Jefferson we never get to that tall man from Illinois.