Robert M.S. McDonald - Thomas Jefferson's Lives - Notes

 Who was the real Thomas Jefferson?  There have been so many biographies.  There can be no clear answers.  Jefferson was controversial, polarizing in his own time, and he continues to be polarizing today.  This book is a collection of essays appraising some of the leading biographies of the man.

FOREWARD

Jon Meacham explains where this book came from: a conference at UVA with a group of scholars honoring Peter Onuff.

PREFACE

During Thomas Jefferson's lifetime, Americans united around the supposition that he possessed the potential to change the world.  What divided them was whether he would make it better or worse.  (I take this to mean that Jefferson was polarizing from the beginning)  His critics associated his political philosophy with mob rule and the butchery of the French Revolution, that he embodied the "Demon of Jacobinism,."  He was cited for his irreligion and atheism.  He was called a "double-faced politician."   Yet many saw nothing but good in him.  If his contemporaries saw him in contrasting ways, is it any wonder that later biographers had different conceptions of him?

Jefferson himself said that many knowledges make up the complex man.  Of all the founders and despite the fact that Jefferson left a huge volume of papers including 19,000 letters sent and received, Jefferson is the least  self-revealing founder and the hardest to sound the depths of his true self.  Perhaps Jefferson himself did not know his true self.

This book examines not who Thomas Jefferson was but instead what his biographers made him out to be.

This book is an excellent tool to gain insights into the changing landscape of historical interpretation rather than history.  In other words, historiography rather than history.

Its closest predecessor is Merrill Peterson's The Jefferson Image in the American Mind.  Peterson's work is a pioneering landmark of historiography.  The emerging field of "Memory Studies" or "History and Memory."  What history has made of Thomas Jefferson.

Interpretations of Jefferson changed over the years not just because of new information but also because new interests and preoccupations of historians.  In different eras historians have presented Jefferson as a states rights republican, the man of Monticello, a party founder and leader, a world citizen, an epicurean, and on and on.  He was conscripted by Whigs and Democrats, abolitionists and slaveholders, unionists and secessionists, Populists and Progressives, and seemingly every side of just about every political struggle with Jefferson being a mirror of America's troubled search for the right image of itself.

Biographical focus makes a mistake emphasizing the Great Man version of history which was popular in the 19th Century before the advent of of bottom up history.

Jefferson may pass the litmus test of greatest, but this fact only magnified his mistakes and short-comings.  As Joseph Ellis says, Jefferson always ultimately disappoints.  Time will only diminish his stature.  

That Jefferson opposed slavery in principle yet maintained it in practice owning hundreds of men, women, and children over his lifetime and afterwards as his estate sold them off one by one as one of the biggest enslavers in his time will always from now on be the can on a string trailing along after him so that no matter how he might be praised he will always have one unalterable BUT after his reputation.

This book enlightens by showing how Jefferson's biographies shed light on the biographers themselves: their personal commitments, their ideologies, the time in which they lived and what was going on in the country as a whole as they wrote.

INTRODUCTION The Many Lives of Thomas Jefferson by Barbara Oberg

What is a biography?  There are different opinions. Simply defined, it is the story of a person told by someone else.  Joyce Carol Oates call is "pathography."  Stanley Fish calls attention to the writer's self in any biography.  Freud said that "biographical truth does not exist."  P. 1

What are we to do with Thomas Jefferson?  So many opinions over the years, he defies easy explanation as he seems to be all over the place.  P. 2

Joseph Ellis calls him the "Great Sphinx of American History."  He shows cherished convictions and contested truths.  P. 2

Jefferson's biography is firmly embodied in the nation's history.  P. 2

Marshall's biography of Washington established the Federalist version of American history against Jefferson's so-called republican version.  Jefferson did not like the Federalist version.  Jefferson and Madison wanted Joel Barlow to write the republican version of our early history, but he never did so.  Jefferson was obsessed in thinking about his future reputation.  P. 2-3

Jefferson is our perfect example of the country's flawed hero.  He was controversial all of his life with no letup in sight to today.  P. 3

Biographies are shaped by the times in which they are written.  P. 3

Each age creates its own Thomas Jefferson and adapts him to their own purposes.  A man for all seasons and times.  Was the nation to be republican or aristocratic?  TM is the personification of the good and bad in our history.The author of the DOI yet major slave owner.  You can make Jefferson into what you want him to be.  A balanced view? Not sure if that is possible.

Hamilton was the aristocratic yin to Thomas Jefferson's democratic yang according to Joanne Freeman.

Henry Adams gave the 19th Century mixed reviews  His great grandfather and Alexander Hamilton had the more realistic approach to framing a strong and successful national government P. 10

Jefferson's reputation barely survived the Civil War while Hamilton's rep received a boost. It was easy to hold Jefferson politics responsible for the bloody war.  The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were early steps toward war.  The plantation economy of the South was outmoded and inefficient n the new industrial age.  In romanticizing the western farmer was ambivalent about manufacturing and the new age.  Jefferson was simply out date after the Civil War.

Frederick Jackson Turner brought Jefferson back part way.  P.11

Wilson concluded that Jeffersonian Democracy could only be achieved by Hamiltonian means.  P. 12

Claude Bowers characterized the United States as a clash of economic forces beginning with Jefferson & Hamilton.  Like Woodrow Wilson, Bowers initially preferred Hamilton but switched Jefferson as he delivered the keynote address at the 1928 Democratic convention.  The intellectually tide shifted to favoring Jefferson.  Steele says that Bowers tutored FDR toward Jefferson.  P. 13

Jeffersonianism prospered during the Depression and WWII.  P. 13

Jefferson's reputation rises and falls.  We will continue to discuss Jefferson a thousand yrs from now if this country survives, which is not likely.  P. 17

CHAPTER 1 "Merely Personal or Private, with Which We Have Nothing to Do"

Jefferson's Autobiographical Writings do not add much to worth with which to evaluate him.

CHAPTER 3 Dexterity and Delicacy of Manipulation by Andrew Burstein

It seems like the top Jefferson biographer in the 19th Century was Henry Stephens Randall published in 1858.  His treatment of Jefferson is hagiography at its best.

Recently Florida's Governor DeSantis took us back to the good old 19th Century telling us in the name of presenting both sides explaining slavery that slavery taught the enslaved some useful skills. This was a popular defense of slavery in the 1850's leading up to the Civil War.

Perhaps here is a possible source for this view. James Parton published a popular biography of Thomas Jefferson in 1874. According to Parton, Jefferson's father taught his son this view as recounted here in Andrew Burstein's summary of Parton's account.

"Jefferson came to hate slavery and foretold the ruin of the system. Under his father's tutelage, he witnessed how slavery could take a positive form. He saw his father patiently drilling negroes, not long from their native Africa, into carpenters, millers, wheelwrights, shoemaker and farmers"

Perhaps the disgusting DeSantis point of view started from Parton's fantasy biography of Jefferson.

P. 78

Parton outdoes Randall in contrasting Jefferson with Hamilton, condemning Hamilton who could never be Americanized. P. 79

CHAPTER 5 Painting with a Fine Pencil by Richard Samuelson : Henry Adams's Jefferson

I should probably read Henry Adams, the leading US historian of the 19th Century, a true patrician, but I doubt I will ever get to him.

Jefferson preached strict construction but practiced something different. (In more ways than that he was a hypocrite). Adams quotes from Jefferson's draft of the Kentucky Resolutions: "every State has a natural right, in cases within the compact, to nullify of their won't authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits." (The state of Alabama would agree). He sent so far as to assert that the national government, as he saw it, was foreign, independent of the states, as though the states and the national were different countries. Quite startling! We live in a confederation, not a unified country. The line between foreign policy was clear and distinct for Jefferson. Amazing!

Jefferson tried to build democracy here in his own way, but he certainly could not see as far into the future as his nemesis Hamilton. P.119

But what, exactly was this new, democratic nation? P. 118

CHAPTER 8 Consulting the Timeless Oracle. The Thomas Jeffersons of Claude Bowers and Albert Jay Nock by Brian Steele (UAB)

Jefferson was concerned about Federalists dominating the country's early historiography. John Marshall led the way (whom Jefferson despised) leading the way for the Federalist interpretation at Jefferson's expense. The history wars commenced in recounting the 1790's. Marshall's Life of Washington cast a shadow over early interpretations. P. 177

Claude Bowers 1925 Jefferson and Hamilton: The Struggle for Democracy in America. Facing according Jefferson the failure of Federalist historiography. Bowers and Nock were doing Jefferson's dirty work of revision in the 20th Century. Jefferson's thought was being projected into a world which he could not have imagined. P. 177

Should I read Bowers? (1925)

Hamilton and Jefferson represented opposite historical forces. P. 180

Hamilton's financial program favored the moneyed minority. P. 180

Jefferson favored democracy; Hamilton favored monarchy. P. 180

Jefferson was a democrat who who was the first American who invited the hate of a class. P. 180

(I wish there were a book detailing the Hamilton vs. Jefferson discussion over the yrs)

Nock's version of Jefferson is too complex and time restricted to engage my interest.

CHAPTER 10 The Perils of Definitiveness "Dumas Malone's Jefferson and His Time"

Biographies of famous people are products of their time and era. Malone dominated from 1948 to 1981, a relatively quiet time in Jefferson scholarship.

The author has a brief discussion on what might be meant a "definitive" biography. Okay, but I am not concerned about a precise definitive biography of Jefferson. Malone was considered definitive in his time but not necessarily now.

From the discussion here, it seems to me that Malone tried to ignore Brodie as much as possible. P. 229

Gordon Wood said that Malone's biography on Jefferson reads like an artifact from a bygone historiographical era. P. 232

CHAPTER 11

Merrill D. Peterson and the Apostle of Freedom by Francis D. Cogliano

This is perhaps the most valuable essay in the book for the author delineates the intellectual phases in the history of Jefferson biographies thru the work of Merrill Peterson. I have and have read yrs ago one of Peterson's biographies of but not the pricey other one.

Peterson says that Jefferson was "an impenetrable man." Despite this declaration he thought that the Jefferson "character" would have prevented him from having relations with Sally Hemings. P. 244

Peterson takes his place alongside Dumas Malone and Julian Boyd as one the leading Jefferson scholars in the mid-twentieth century.

There have been 4 distinct periods in the history of Jefferson scholarship.

1) From his death in 1826 to 1865. His legacy caught up in proponents and opponents of slavery, nullification state's rights, and secession. Each proponent of these positions quotes Jefferson in support. P. 244-245

2) After the war Jefferson's standing went into decline: After hundreds of thousands of deaths Jefferson was viewed as an advocate of nullification and a defender of secession and slavery. Jefferson is the patron saint of hypocrisy.

3) WWII Jefferson was rehabilitated as a national hero. No longer as a divisive figure, he was seen as a symbol of the nation and an embodiment of the country's founding principles. Not unti the early 60's did the revisionist fourth stage emerge.

4) With the civil rights movement, the Viet Nam war, and the Watergate scandal, historians became more openly critical of politicians and institutions. When race, class, and gender rose up, Jefferson automatically became fair game. These issues became more important than Jefferson's achievements. Jefferson became the patron saint of hypocrisy reflecting the limitations of the Revolutionary Era heroes to reflect American values.

Peterson came along during the third phase perhaps reaching its apex with FDR's dedication of the Jefferson Memorial in 1943. Jefferson came to embody America itself. P.246

Though he was writing in the 60's as he achieved mastery of the Jefferson corpus along with Boyd and Malone, Peterson's Jefferson was very much third stage Jefferson. P. 246

Jefferson can be quoted on every side of every issue. He contained multitudes for sure. Is this good or bad for the country today for our collective and contradictory history? I am dubious that is good.

CHAPTER 12 "That Woman" by Annette Gordon-Reed

Fawn Brodie published her Jefferson biography in 1974 and dealt with a storm of criticism in a male dominated Jefferson scholarship brigade. The Sally Hemings story was not new, but her work placed Jefferson's personal life and the Hemings intimate story front and center in the story. Brodie has been vindicated, not that she got everything right, but that the relationship was real and that he fathered as many as severn children with his wife's half sister and she being his legal slave. The male scholars referred to her as "that woman." That numinous thing called "the "Jefferson Character" suffered a blow from which it will never recover. Thanks to Professor Gordon-Reed the truth sets us free.

AFTERWARD by Gordon Wood

Who better to sum up than Gordon Wood, probably the dean of early American historians.

Naturally he praises Peter Onuff on whom this book is dedicated.

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 Reading the Jefferson book reminds me of how contentious and complicated American history has been from the beginning.  There is no way I can come to firm conclusions about Thomas Jefferson.

The classic view of the Federalists  like Adams and Washington was that democracies eventually kill themselves.  Today this country is a laboratory testing their hypothesis. 

As Joseph Eillis, Jefferson ultimately disappoints.