Norm Ledgin's Blog, page 3

Sally of Monticello: Founding Motherthe story continues.....

Sally of Monticello: Founding Mother the story continues...

78
I was so upset with Thomas this July day, I could have spit nails.To calm down I busied the children with chores and walked westto the burial ground, alone. I rested in the shade and watched the birds.I didn’t even look to see whose stone I sat on.Probably it’s been a mistake, his allowing me free access toletters. Not just the ones he received but also copies of those he sent.Today, one of them set off my nattering.“Thomas, you’ve passed up another opportunity to register yourvoice. You know how important the slavery issue is to me, not tomention the entire country.”He sighed heavily and sat back on the Campeachy chair. Hebeckoned me to help remove his boots. He’d been riding while I’dread, and he wanted to wear his slippers.At first I crossed my arms, shook my head, and turned awayfrom him. Then I realized he couldn’t manage. I took my position ashis favorite boot-remover. He put one foot on my buttocks and pushed.Same procedure for slipping off the other.I said, “I find that symbolic. A boot in the ass as the measure ofyour consideration.”Instead of appearing stung, the effect I’d hoped for, he chuckled.That infuriated me further.“Come here,” he said, opening his arms to invite me for a hug.I sat on the floor, facing him. I stuck out my tongue.More chuckles.I knew I was acting childishly, but I wanted to make mydisappointment vivid. “Let’s talk this out, Thomas. You had a perfectchance to tell Tompkinson and Kercheval. It’s high time a Virginiaconstitutional convention dealt with slavery. We’re in modern times—Eighteen-Sixteen, and have survived the war. You never evenmentioned slavery.”“It wasn’t relevant,” he said, stifling a yawn.“Regardless, you could have slipped something in. Haven’t youpaid attention to the recent uprisings? Not just Barbados. The blacks inFlorida are at this moment confronting General Jackson. And therewas that Boxley fellow, stirring a slave revolt not a spit and hollerfrom Charlottesville last year.”“The uprisings will be put down.”“Why let things boil to where lives are lost? With properreforms, the lawmakers can give Negroes hope of emancipation.”“Well, there you are, Sally. It’s not a constitutional issue. That’swhy my letter never mentioned the topic.”I grabbed the hem of my skirt and started twisting it, to give myhands something to do so I wouldn’t throw a chamber pot at him.“You’re not understanding the bigger issue.”“Perhaps I’m not. Explain it,” he said, “and I’ll listen.” Hecrossed his legs, crossed his arms, and fixed a serious gaze on me.“I don’t have to tell you what slaves discuss in their cabins.Taking stock of how they came to be slaves. Observing how whitestake their freedom for granted. It doesn’t take high intelligence todeduce what they—what we—feel and agonize over. It grates on usday after day. When we laugh or sing, it’s to lighten the burden, butit’s still heavy on us. On most plantations it’s heavier than on yours,but it’s still heavy.”He nodded. “I know. I know.”“It’s not all pointless commiseration, Thomas. They discusstrying to buy their freedom, or making a break and running away, orjoining with slaves of other plantations and doing violence. But whenthey balance everything out, all that’s left is a fearsome situation andtoo little hope.”This time Thomas looked down at the floor and nodded, waitingfor me to finish my protest.“Two years ago, when Edward Coles asked you to take theleadership—to guide the country out of slavery—you turned himdown. You said you were too old to be another Moses.”He looked up, amused. “Did I mention Moses? I don’t rememberthat. We have a slave by that name who’s laid up with a broken leg.”“No, you didn’t mention Moses, but please stay serious with me.You know what I meant. If you have the energy now to create auniversity, you also have the energy for showing the way to endslavery. The British have done it. I doubt they’re more sensitive thanAmericans.”“I suggested to Coles,” he said, “emancipation of those bornafter a certain day, then their education and eventual expatriation. Thatwould end everything gradually.”“How about me? Would you send me to Africa?”“You’re different. And I’ve been largely unspecific aboutwhere.”“How different? A quarter-Negro, but by law fully Negro?Besides, the so-called ‘amalgamation’ of races you fear takes placeevery day in this country, and you and I are contributing. You knowwhat a hypocrite that makes you?”“This talk is becoming tiresome, Sally.”“When Coles proposed your leadership, I prayed to see a sparkburst into flame. Just as Parisian women marched beside their men inrevolution, I’d have been so proud to stand with you. God, what an308 N. M. Ledgininspiring sight that was in Eighty-Nine. And to be martyred in thecause of eventual freedom for slaves? As you wrote in theDeclaration—‘our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor’.”Thomas sat silently, glancing around the room, I hoped inserious contemplation.At last he said, “It will all come in time, but not of my doing. AsI wrote young Coles, I learned my lesson early in the Virginialegislature, seeing Colonel Bland denounced as an enemy for hismoderate views. His reforms would have brought small relief toslaves, but relief nonetheless. I have to live among these other planters,my neighbors, trade with them.”“But you’ve been President. You could start Virginia and thewhole country moving in the right direction.”Thomas raised his eyebrows. “Oh?” This time his chuckle spokeof irony. “I thought in some ways I had.”That’s when I leapt from the floor and stormed out.I found Beverly and instructed him about jobs for the children.Then I walked on the dirt path, my eyes stinging in the glare ofsunlight.When I reached the shade of the burial ground, I realized therewere truths in what Thomas had said. Neither his Governorship nor hisPresidency had been free of intense calumny, in the latter instancemuch because of me. Nor would Mr. Madison escape publicdisapprobation. And soon it would be Mr. Monroe’s turn.Leadership could be uplifting, but it could also bruise the leader.I loved the man, so perhaps it was my lack of consideration that drovethis recurring dialogue.I was forced by my identity to see the issue from the insidelooking out—and to see it constantly.While Thomas lived I would never be free, because that was theway I wanted it. I refused to entertain the notion of our separating. Idreaded life without him.Perhaps I was a more passive slave than others, for the uprisingsand nearby rumblings have made me more nervous than partisan. Andthey’ve troubled me far more than they’ve worried him.I preferred a peaceful way out of all this. So did Thomas, butI’ve told him his plan is muddled.Still, as I heard him murmur after news of the Barbados slaverebellion, “It’s all going to get worse before it gets better.”

Sally of Monticello: Founding Motherthe story continues.....

Sally of Monticello: Founding Mother
the story continues...
 

77
           My nephew Jamey Bowles was back after running away ten

years ago. He was Critta’s son, a man twenty-eight now.
When I asked why he returned, he shrugged and said, “I don’
know, Auntie.”
“Where’d you go? What did you do?”
“Been all over. Didn’ do nothin’ much.”
Looking down, he dug a shoe toe in the dirt. Then he fell into
silence and stared at the fall colors of the neighboring mountains.
So, that was all I would learn on that subject.
No doubt he would run off again. Thomas was so easygoing, he
wouldn’t care. He might give Jamey money to help him go.
When Jamey disappeared years back, Thomas bade us send
word through the grapevine, he needed his carpenter back to help
finish the house. Jamey ignored the entreaties. Now he was back, but
the house was as done as it would ever be—or so I wanted to believe.
I’d been out along Mulberry Row this mid-October morning of
1815, scouting for a cabin we might occupy. Beverly, Harriet,
Madison, and Eston were growing to where our space at the house was
too tight to move around. Coming out of a cabin, I recognized my
missing nephew strolling, a knapsack over his shoulder.
After Jamey’s initial nonresponses, I asked, “What’s your plan?”
“You in charge now? Keep an eye on everythin’? I thot
Grandmama—”
“She died. Surprised you hadn’t heard. We all move on, and
frankly we thought we’d never see you again. Does Critta know you’re
back?”
“I been lookin’ for her. The way it ’pears, she goes aroun’ all
over. Bet she don’ do floors no more.”
“She does floors.”
Jamey lowered the knapsack to the ground and reached in.
“Foun’ this on the groun’, fu’ther up that-away.” He pointed west and
held up a small round object made partly of glass. “Had dirt on it. I
cleaned it some.”
When I turned the thing over in my hand, I grew suspicious. It
looked too clean to have been on the ground.
Years ago Thomas complained his telescope eyepiece was
missing. He mentioned it again last month. He’d gone with the Abbé
Correia and Dr. Gilmer to measure elevations of the Peaks of Otter and
said he wished he could have had his favorite scope along.
“Take this to the house,” I said, “and give it to the Master. It
belongs to one of his scientific instruments. He’ll be pleased you found
it.”
“I c’d tell from your look, you thot I stole it.”
“It crossed my mind when I saw how clean it was. But I know
you didn’t. You were gone from the mountain before he bought the
telescope.”
Jamey grumbled when he returned the eyepiece to his knapsack.
Something about not liking my suspicion.
“After you ran off,” I said, “you didn’t send word to my sister
what was going on in your life. She was heartsick. Don’t you be
complaining, hear? I’m trusting you to get your rump over to the house
and give that to Mr. Jefferson. Then go find Critta.”
Jamey’s demeanor changed when he heard my tone. I could tell
he understood I wouldn’t brook any back talk.
I continued checking the cabins for who was moving out, who
was trading quarters or combining households after jumping the
broom. I’d thought of angling for Mama’s old place, but I didn’t want
to appear domineering simply because I was the highest-ranking slave
on Thomas’s plantations.
I returned to the house and went straight to Thomas’s suite. I
found him reattaching the eyepiece to his telescope, looking like a boy
at play. His grey hair was wild, probably from riding without a hat.
“Jamey Bowles was here,” he announced, “and brought me this
piece for the Borda. He’d found it lying on the ground. I gave him a
two-dollar reward.”
Some nonslaveholding visitors to Monticello who heard of
runaways thought the system worked by rules—that when a slave ran
off, his Master or overseer ordered him found and brought back,
perhaps punished him.
Not so. Not here, anyway.
There were mitigating factors, not least of which was Thomas’s
hatred of slavery as degrading to both blacks and whites. Where
Wayles descendants and Hemingses were involved—and there were
scores like Jamey on the mountain—we were dealing with “family.”
The laws and “rules” bent easily under pressure of blood kinship.
Mixed sentiments always cropped up on Mulberry Row. For
every slave grumbling about being a slave, there was another believing
he might starve or go naked without a Master to supply him.
At Monticello many slaves, dark or light, received training at
skills they would value if they ever bought freedom. To the
amazement and dismay of other plantation owners, Thomas paid them.
Mama had often observed, from plantation to plantation the
destiny of slaves depended on their Master’s personality. If he was
mean-spirited, they would suffer. If he was like Thomas— Well, too
few were like Thomas.
Another assault on perceptions was what happened to freed
slaves. An understanding of Virginia law was that they were supposed
to leave the state, but that didn’t always happen. Sister Critta was
married to a free man of color, Zachariah Bowles, who owned a
ninety-six-acre farm north of Charlottesville. He was accepted as a
permanent resident, as was my friend Nancy West, also a freed slave.
I asked Thomas, “Weren’t you surprised to see Jamey? He’s
been gone more than ten years.”
“Surprised?” He shook his head. “He’ll run off again, that one.”
“And it doesn’t bother you? Did he at least tell you where he’d
gone? I couldn’t get a thing out of him.”
“We didn’t discuss it.”
“Oh, Thomas. For a man with curiosity about everything, you’re
sometimes so detached you drive me crazy.”
“Come look through this scope.” He bent to position the
instrument and focus it.
I sat and watched him tinker with his restored toy.
I said, “When the children go free and they’re out of touch, and
if I outlive you and Martha lets me walk away, where should I go?”
“I have a squirrel’s nest in perfect view, but I haven’t spotted
any of the creatures.”
I sighed. “Should I go to Ohio? Or Canada? But it’s probably too
cold in Canada.”
Thomas fiddled with the lens, then peered through again. He left
off to jot notes, humming under his breath. Then he changed the
position of the telescope and looked through once more.
I might as well not even have been in the suite. I tried a new
tack, moving casually over to the bed.
“Thomas, I want to make love. I’m truly lusting for you, Old
Man. Leave off and come here, please.”
Still distracted, he mumbled, “Not just yet. Whatever you like.
Start without me.”
I giggled myself into a state of involuntary farts, an
uncontrollable fate of many mothers like me rounding forty.
All right then, forty-two.
 
 
 

Sally of Monticello: Founding Motherthe story continues.....

Sally of Monticello: Founding Mother
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76
            I peered over Thomas’s shoulder and reached to hold his other

hand as he wrote under the date, 7th of August, 1815, “My brother
Randolph Jefferson died this morning.”
By chance he had started out to visit his ailing brother, twelve
years his junior. He turned back when he reached Scott’s Ferry,
because there he learned Randolph had died.
Of Thomas’s nine siblings, only one now survived—Anna, a
widow whom we called Aunt Marks and who now lived with us. She
and Randolph were twins.
The brothers were dissimilar in their living styles and
temperaments, and they had never been close.
Brother Randolph would mix among his slaves and fiddle for
them and dance half the night. He was far less sophisticated than
Thomas but similarly naïve. Earlier this year he filed a will that
favored his second wife and prompted a challenge by his five grown
sons. Thomas wasn’t pleased with his brother’s action in that regard.
The fact that Thomas would ride out to visit his brother at all
was significant. It represented an uncharacteristic extension of his shy
self—a mellowing, if you will.
When active in public service he tried to overcome longstanding
inhibitions against the mere act of touching, shaking men’s hands
rather than bowing stiffly as before or crossing his arms. He now also
tried to fix his attention on others’ eyes instead of glancing away
repeatedly. These small sociable shifts have been big changes for him.
At age seventy-two he has this year turned over management of
all his Albemarle County farms to grandson Jefferson Randolph,
who’d returned from the war many considered inconclusive. The
young man and his bride of five months, Jane Hollins Nicholas,
occupied the dome room.
Thomas told me he saw much of his father, Peter, in young
Jefferson, now a very tall and strong fellow of nearly twenty-three.
Edmund Bacon was still overseer, but Thomas was wise to
gradually relinquish direction of business and plantation affairs to a
capable heir. In choosing Jefferson, Thomas passed over Martha’s
husband, whom he continued to distrust and dislike.
After recording his brother’s death in the memorandum book
and detailing transactions of Mr. Bacon’s for oats, lambs, and beef,
Thomas rose from his writing desk and strolled to his nearly empty
book room.
“My hearing may be failing,” he said, “but I can’t help but
discern new echoes in here.” He glanced at shelves that once contained
priceless volumes.
“If the echoes from bare walls bother you,” I offered, “I can
hang curtains or drapes.”
“No, Sally. My statement was more irony than complaint. What
I meant was that books are valuable beyond the information or wisdom
they contain. They dress a room properly. They’re a comfort simply
sitting there, in reach at the slightest whim.”
“Oh, Thomas. I hope you won’t regret what you’ve done. It was
one more great service to the country.” I wanted to add “and a
material gain to you,” but my honest opinion was that he’d let the
library go for too little, not quite twenty-four thousand dollars.
“A few replacement books from Milligan’s up in Georgetown
should arrive end of the week.”
“Don’t look so forlorn. Your library will rebuild. There’s time.”
Time. I wanted to bite my tongue for having used that word.
If Thomas had an enemy, it was time, unforgiving when debts
came due. There was never enough time to gather sufficient profits
from farming and plantation enterprises. The shortage of time in the
continuing race against insolvency was a cause of his headaches and
distress in his bowels.
“I need more time,” I’ve often heard him mutter when receiving
yet another letter of moneys due.
I’d thought the funds he received for his library might settle his
past-due obligations. But his generosity threw things off balance.
Thomas’s payouts to all, even to me for necessities, continued
unabated.
One would think his mastery of mathematics would allow him
control of his finances. But no. He recorded everything to the penny,
yet never reconciled transactions to see clearly which side was
building faster—his resources or his expenses. Alas, it was always the
latter.
I didn’t recall one book of his that would have shown how to
overcome that persisting problem. The only time I suggested he
examine balances, he appeared startled and protested, “It’s all here,”
meaning the raw figures. I disliked raising topics that made him
defensive, and apparently so did the bankers. They should have been
issuing stronger warnings, but his stature as the past President
intimidated them.
Because Thomas had directed his grandson Jefferson’s education
wholly toward science, it was unlikely the young man would close the
financial gap. If by some miracle he ever did, it would take
dedication—which I had no doubt was in him—and it would take time.
As threatening as time may have been, it held a few kindnesses.
Though past his prime and going through gastric ailments, headaches,
and arthritis, Thomas still had his wits about him.
His brother Randolph never reached sixty. His life wasn’t
dissolute, but who can predict outcomes?
And as tragic for the family in untimeliness?: The recent death
of nephew Peter Carr at age forty-five, soon after he’d appeared to turn
a new leaf in general behavior.
Thoughts of Thomas’s mortality often induced shudders in me.
As there’s a thirty-year difference between us, I expected he would
predecease me. I gave little thought in Paris to the fact that I might
spend a great portion of my life alone, or that I’d be without children
to comfort and support me, owing to Thomas’s agreement to free
them.
Thomas returned to his writing desk and reached for paper. He’d
not written Mr. Adams in two months and had received three or four
letters from him. At first I thought he intended to busy himself with
that correspondence, but he said, “My brother’s passing has prompted
new thoughts, Sally—my responsibilities to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your freedom, at such time as it might be my turn to go.”
“Oh, Thomas.” I bit my lip. A tear leapt out.
“Sit.” He patted his lap.
I complied, always ready for such closeness.
“Martha is clear about my intentions, but Virginia statutes
change like the direction of the wind. I’ll write a codicil. What would
be your preference that would allow the law’s gentlest effect on you?”
I threw my arms around him and yielded quietly to tears.
I said, “To die with you.”
 
 

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Sally of Monticello: Founding Mother
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75
“You must soon suspend your pastime,” Thomas said, visiting
my quarters. “I plan to sell my library to Congress. I’ve written
Samuel Smith today to that effect.”
I set the book of Ossian poetry on my nightstand, next to the
lamp. I removed my eyeglasses and set them down as well.
Thomas closed the door and sat on a soft chair opposite my bed.
He had trouble crossing his legs. He looked worn and tired this final
day of summer, 1814.
I couldn’t imagine his letting go of his precious books. Over
many decades he has accumulated probably the largest collection of
classic works in America. More than were lost when the British burned
the Library of Congress earlier this summer, the war having raged two
years at great loss on our side.
I swallowed this pending separation from his treasure bitterly
and said, “I assume they’ll pay you handsomely.”
“I’ll negotiate the best possible price. This way I help the
country, and the country helps me.”
I sighed, then patted the bed, that he should come sit beside me.
Regardless of the exchange he’d just described, this must have been an
extremely difficult decision.
With great effort he rose and shuffled toward me, then removed
his jacket before sitting heavily.
“Lie down,” I said. “Stay here with me tonight.”
“The children?”
“Harriet drove a buckboard to Nancy West’s for the night, to
help with the newborn, Julia Ann. William Beverly’s out chasing
young women on Mulberry Row, as sixteen-year-olds do. I expect he’s
caught one.”
“And Madison and Eston?”
“At Critta’s place.”
Hearing that, Thomas unfastened and removed his shirt and lay
back. He needed help with his breeches. I slid out of bed to pull off his
boots and help him down to his undergarments. He inhaled deeply,
seeming relieved and ready to doze off.
I said, “Do you want to sleep or talk?”
“I’ve never counted my thousands of books and have no idea of
their worth.”
“Thomas, based on news accounts of the fire in Washington, you
have two or three times as many books as were burned.”
“I loaned Smith a catalog for Congress’s library committee to
consider. If they agree, it will take time to prepare the shipment. I
estimate eighteen or twenty wagon loads.”
“Please don’t sell them cheaply. It’s the only library of its kind,
so many volumes that relate to America. And from how many places?”
“Paris, London, Amsterdam,” he said, “Frankfort, Madrid—as
well as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.”
“Have you written the Madisons to express regrets at the
destruction of the President’s House?”
“I’ll do that this weekend, when I may be able to include a
countervailing note of triumph on the lakes. I hope the enemy is stung
to the soul by our victories over their supposed naval invincibility.”
I turned down the lamp and snuggled close, as his voice betrayed
weariness. Instead of going to sleep, however, he mumbled on.
“An atrocity,” he said, “what the British have done in
Washington.”
“I’ve been escaping such realities with made-up Third Century
Celtic adventures.”
Thomas turned his head, appearing quizzical in the dim light.
“Ossian? The adventures he described were not made-up. They were
real.”
“No, Thomas. Dr. Johnson exposed them as fabrications. We’ve
been over this before.”
He turned back and stared at the ceiling.
“Real,” he muttered. In a moment, he was asleep.
He might have dreamed of old imagined glories and believed
them real, but I knew Thomas’s heart and wakeful mind were with the
future. For all who would gain from his idealism and his inventive
reasoning, that would be reality.
I heard Beverly return quietly in the outer room. Our son knew
that when my door was closed I was either dressing or his father was
with me. Living arrangements in this house didn’t allow us to keep
secrets. Everyone knew what went on between the Master and the
housemistress.
Only Martha, when she was here, resented the relationship and
implied repeatedly that her father was, and would always remain,
celibate. I knew of no one who believed her. She was here now, with
baby Septimia Anne, or “Tim” as everyone was calling her.
How that woman managed to attract the ardor of her husband
was beyond my comprehension. The war or other duties
notwithstanding, he’d been more punctual planting his seed in her than
in nurturing his crops.
If not for the war, she’d have got back on her broomstick to
return to one of Colonel Randolph’s scattered holdings, leaving
whichever of Thomas’s grandchildren preferred to remain here.
Grandpapa’s indulgence of his grandchildren, especially of
young Jefferson now off fighting, involved more than letting them
prance in his gardens. He was absorbed with their schooling, their
readings, their music.
Peter Carr, the cousin Martha has told everyone was a likely sire
to my children, was ostensibly reformed. In his youth Peter had been a
slacker as a student. His Uncle Thomas had scolded him. Now the man
was a trustee of Albemarle Academy, same as Thomas.
In that connection my dreamer of glories recently wrote a plan to
establish a comprehensive educational system. Its starring feature was
a major university in Charlottesville, which fit exactly the
longstanding hopes of leading townspeople. A few like David Isaacs
urged me to drop hints to the man they considered best suited to get it
done, an irresistible challenge for Thomas. He sent his plan to the
Academy trustees by way of Peter in the hope his nephew would serve
as the “depository” of his ideas.
Thomas was one of the main intellects of America concerned
with the future. Perhaps it came with love of science and invention, or
being comfortable inside a limitless imagination. This university, as I
recalled his letter to Peter, would teach “every branch of science in its
highest degree.”
Thomas spoke and wrote often of “freedom of the human mind.”
And he was unyielding in the conviction that scholars must “follow
truth wherever it may lead.” For exactly those reasons he was weary of
the influence of religion upon all universities operating today,
including the College of William and Mary.
I reached to extinguish the lamp, then snuggled closer to my
sleeping giant.
My last conscious thought for the night was that this new
university would be a tribute to his genius and, I feared, the final
exhaustion of his life.
 
 
 
 

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Sally of Monticello: Founding Mother
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74
The year-old war was going badly, and it scared me to pieces.
The British had sent to our shores a company of former French
soldiers, captured in campaigns against Napoleon. Their commanders
turned these undisciplined forces loose against civilians of the town of
Hampton, close to Norfolk. Not a shred of decency governed their
actions.
The enemy was determined to advance through Chesapeake Bay
to the capital at Washington. If their tactics at Hampton were an
indicator, we all feared the worst.
Thomas was writing President Madison as I joined him in his
study to repair one of his shirts. He pled for use of an invention by
Robert Fulton against enemy ships that outnumbered ours heavily. It
was a floating bomb called a “torpedo,” tested and ready to
“deploy”—Thomas’s word.
I asked him to dispatch the letter urgently and leave off
lamentations about the drought’s effect on our wheat crop. But he
would have his way.
Thomas wasn’t easily aroused to counterattack. Although his
embargo was so unpopular that it ended the moment he stepped from
the President’s House, it was his middle way of confronting the
British. The alternatives at the time were war or submission to their
abuses.
Ever the reluctant huntsman who believed the quarry deserved a
chance to flee, he was also a reluctant warrior. In a practical mood,
however, he established a military academy at West Point on the
Hudson while President, setting anti-war idealism aside and meeting
realities of national need.
As for the new killing device, I imagined he would rationalize
his advocacy under the cover of science if not defense. There was no
fathoming Thomas Jefferson’s thinking fully when a topic captured his
attention. His mind was a bottomless resource.
That was why I worked so hard to hold his interest, studying to
the edge of exhaustion in his absences, keeping up with all the news
my poor slave-woman’s brain could grasp. My eyesight was now
affected, for I was having trouble sewing.
Better I should go blind in the effort than lose the affections of
this great man entering his eighth decade of life as I entered my fifth.
I’ve borne him four healthy light-skinned children—not
counting Little Thomas now in a separate life, and Lord, let it be a
happy one. They would go free and not be here to furnish him
grandchildren, as Martha has done for him with startling ease. Now
nearly forty-one, she showed her eleventh pregnancy, the baby due the
end of the year.
Still as poor a choice for a husband as I might ever have
imagined, Infantry Col. Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., did his duty on
the home front. To Thomas those babies were a delight—from a
fountain that would keep pouring till the houses at both Monticello and
Edgehill overflowed.
I continued to resent Martha because of her slanders that Great
George and Ursula first recounted to me years ago. Martha now said
my children came from lying with either Samuel or Peter Carr, or both.
Neither has touched me. Ursula’s old fears about the Randolphs’
possession of her son Isaac Jefferson were probably well founded, for
Isaac ran away last year.
As for my longstanding animosity toward Abigail Adams, I was
ready to suspend that. My first reason, I was pleased as Punch over
Thomas’s renewed correspondence with Mr. Adams.
Second, the Adams’s daughter Nabby—her actual name was
also Abigail—was seriously ill. I met her in London the year after she
married Mr. Adams’s secretary, William Stephens Smith. I found her
to be as delightful a person as her father. About ten years ago doctors
determined that Nabby had breast cancer. The condition has spread
through her body. She probably would not survive the summer.
While I knew what it was like to lose newborns and my first
Harriet when she was two, this was different. I couldn’t imagine what
John and Abigail—and even Nabby’s arrogant brother John Quincy—
were going through. Disease did more violence than war.
But then, again, this war was going badly. And it frightened me.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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73
Nancy was bent on continuing the horrible tale, so I was captive
whether I wanted to be or not.
“The slave George,” she said, “begged Lilburn to strike his head
with a fatal blow. But instead Lilburn continued his lecture to the other
slaves, then swung the axe to sever the boy’s thighs. Then the arms.
Then parts of his torso. Then at last the head. All into the fire.
“He threatened similar punishment if any told what they’d seen,
or if they were ever disobedient or defiant. He dismissed them and,
with Isham, stoked the fire to burn the flesh and bones.
“They covered the remains with rock and clay intended for a
wall. He went home to bed. His wife said later he dismissed her
questions about the screams and the peculiarly acrid smell of burning
meat. He said he had simply been enjoying himself, as though he’d
gone to a ball.
“After the earthquakes brought evidence to light, the brothers
were arrested but let out on bail. Mrs. Lewis feared for her life should
the slaves retaliate, and relatives took her to safety. Lilburn and Isham
became remorseful and designed an elaborate suicide pact.”
I excused myself to use Nancy’s privy. In the outhouse I sat and
rested my head on my hands, pictures of the crime assaulting my mind.
I’d heard stories of cruelty to slaves, but never had I heard one like
this.
“I’m sorry,” I told my dear friend when I returned. “Thomas
treats me so nobly I tend to forget I’m a slave. Small wonder I hear of
rebellions here and there, exactly his greatest fear, and yet he hides
from such truths.”
As she fetched us drinking water at the kitchen pump, she called
out, “Hides in what way?”
“Thomas believes in man’s inherent goodness, as you’ve
observed, and man’s ultimate perfectibility. Too often he retreats into
that idealistic view of life, ignoring contradictory realities.”
“Well,” Nancy said, “let me finish the story. Then you can
decide with whom it warrants sharing.” She sat again after handing me
a filled glass.
“The brothers took pistols to a graveyard. They were to fire at
each other on the count of three. But fearing a misfiring, Lilburn
showed Isham how to clean out the barrel with a rod. In that
demonstration the gun went off. Lilburn died within minutes.
“The shooting brought Negroes running. They found Isham
standing over Lilburn’s body. When Isham explained the brothers’
intention, he wasn’t charged for that but was jailed again for what he’d
helped do with George. He was scheduled to be hanged at Salem.”
“Not a severe enough punishment,” I said, “considering what he
was party to.”
“Oh, Sally. No punishment at all, for he escaped. He’s still at
large.”
I sighed. “I’m not sure I can tell Thomas this story.” Actually,
I’ve been more opposed than he to first cousins marrying and having
children, as Lucy Jefferson had done with Charles Lewis. The results
were too often bizarre.
Now that it was over and my summer frock was drenched at the
neck and upper arms, a strange form of relief set in. Actually, I was
numb, head to toes. “Where do you think this will all end?” I asked.
“You mean slavery? We can’t just keep pecking away at it with
meaningless reform here and there. The aristocracy in Virginia and
elsewhere rely on its continuing, yet we all know it can’t continue.”
“No, it can’t. But I fail to imagine how we’ll extricate
ourselves.”
“My David says we need another Moses to lead people from
bondage.”
I nodded, my lips pursed, my mind racing.
Driving the wagon back to Monticello and passing through leafy
woods, I heard the screech of hawks. Their eerie calls were nothing
compared with the imagined screams of the slave George Lewis—in
the greatest sense my brother in Negro blood—ringing in my ears all
the way home.
 
 
 
 
 

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Sally of Monticello: Founding Mother
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72
By fast post this June day the papers from Richmond reached
Charlottesville with news of a declaration of war. Over the past week
we’d expected a formal declaration. Now, President Madison has
reportedly put his signature to it.
My friend Nancy West, heavy with her fifth child, expressed
anguish this afternoon that her firstborn, Thomas Isaacs, might leave
his father’s store and go off to fight.
The fighting fever was contagious. Thomas said he expected
Thomas Mann Randolph to apply for a Colonel’s commission and that
his grandson, Jefferson, might serve. John Wayle Eppes has remarried
and was no longer his son-in-law, technically, but Thomas treated him
as one. We believed he planned to go as well.
Their going to war wasn’t cheerful news, but in the realm of loss
and especially violence there was worse: Two of Thomas’s nephews
have been accused of murder.
After Thomas lost two sisters last year, Martha Carr at
Monticello and Lucy Lewis in western Kentucky, Lucy’s sons Lilburn
and Isham were arrested for murdering a slave by the most brutal
means.
From her position in town, Nancy often received information
through the grapevine faster than I did. Despite her delicate condition,
she insisted I sit in her parlor and listen to the grisly story out of
Kentucky.

“When you tell Mr. Jefferson,” she began, “you may shake his
faith in the goodness of people as well as shock him over what his
close relatives are capable of.”
“Thomas does tend to believe the best of people. But any man
might do evil when drunk.”
“This was a wide-awake crime, Sally, not a result of
drunkenness. The story reached me by way of Ohio, from a colony of
freed slaves.”
I bit my lip and steeled myself to listen.
“It happened in mid-December, just before the series of winter
earthquakes at New Madrid, in Missouri Territory close by Kentucky.
For months,” Nancy said, “the earthquake’s debris covered the Lewis
brothers’ crime. However, slaves who’d witnessed the murder spoke
out after a subsequent tremor knocked a skull loose from where the
brothers had hidden the head. A dog found it and set it in the road.”
I gasped at mention of a skull. I pulled out my fan and fanned
away.
“Several slaves including seventeen-year-old George Lewis,”
Nancy continued, “had complained about conditions in which they
were held. Lilburn had been driving them hard, feeding them poorly,
whipping them often. The night of the murder, George had gone to the
spring for water. When he returned he dropped and broke a pitcher that
had belonged to Lucy.
“The brothers were enraged and ordered the Negroes into their
biggest cabin. Lilburn had them build up the fire. He locked the door,
and with Isham’s help tied George onto the surface of a wide bench.
Then he took hold of a broad axe.”
I fanned more swiftly. My underarms soaked through my dress.
“Lilburn announced he would ‘set an example for uppity
niggers.’ He chopped off one of George’s feet at the ankle and threw it
into the fire. While the boy screamed, Lilburn threatened the other
slaves if they interfered, and he chopped off the other foot. Then he
hacked off the lower legs below the knee and added the parts to the
fire.”
“Nancy, I can’t take this.”
“This is connected to your man, the acts of his blood nephews.
You must hear it out.”
I wanted to flee outdoors, plunge into the cool Rivanna. I felt
myself being hurled into a fire with the boy’s limbs. I pulled out a
handkerchief to blot the sweat on my forehead and neck.
I didn’t want to hear more, yet I did want to hear it all.
 

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Sally of Monticello: Founding Mother
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71
Often I’ve feared a one-sidedness to Thomas’s friendships, more
recently because of what I’ve learned about charisma. He told me
Dolley Madison had “accused” him of possessing a charismatic
bearing, adding he’d felt uncomfortable hearing that.
And well he might have been uneasy. That magnetic attraction
failed to induce reciprocation from people so perceived. I’ve tried to
help Thomas reach out more, visit others rather than always expect
them to come to Monticello.
“To what purpose?” he asked more than once.
“I don’t want Virginia gentry charging you with aloofness,” I
said, “which they’ll exaggerate by calling you a hypocrite. Your
shunning of ceremony in Washington hasn’t gone unnoticed. If you’re
truly a ‘man of the people,’ get out among people, this time free of the
mantle of public office. I know you love your home, but don’t be such
a lone wolf.”
There were signs my plea may have sunk in. He did visit around
the Piedmont now at times, whereas formerly he pled “too busy” or
“no time for that” and sat for hours on his bony rump writing letters.
Well, of course there must be letters.
Now came one from John Adams this 21st day of January, 1812.
I suspected the Coles brothers, Edward and Isaac, and Dr.
Benjamin Rush had something to do with thawing Mr. Adams,
encouraging him to restart contact. I think they felt a continued
estrangement between the two former Presidents would cheat history.
Today Thomas settled himself into replying to my
Massachusetts hero, whom I considered a martyr because of his
peckish spouse. Thomas thanked Mr. Adams for sending samples of
homespun that haven’t yet arrived, going on at length about home
manufacture of fabrics that he began in earnest at Monticello last
month.
“Feel free to read the copy,” Thomas said, “because I know you
have special feelings for the man.”
I was particularly moved by this portion—
A letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my
mind. It carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties
and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is  most valuable to man, his right of self-government. Laboring always at the same  oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us and yet passing  harmless under our bark, we knew not how, we rode through the
storm with heart and hand, and made a happy port.
The two old oarsmen who navigated the Declaration of
Independence would finally reunite through the mails. I was barely out
of diapers at the time, but today I’m impressed with the fact that they
and others in Philadelphia risked their lives to bring forth that
document.
I’ve argued that the phrase “all men are created equal”
constituted a terrible exclusion of women. Thomas has tried repeatedly
and patiently to explain the legal context, always to my dissatisfaction.
“Then change the law,” I’ve said with my usual impertinence.
“There’s not a man who hasn’t been pushed into life—created, if you
will—by a woman.”
I never knew whether he was taken aback by such outbursts or
simply amused. I suspected, however, he thought about my protests
afterward. I hoped I wasn’t misleading myself, but I believed he took
my unschooled opinions into account. I threw so many at him, some
were bound to stick.
A renewed friendship with John Adams would mean so much to
Thomas, for it was a series of misunderstandings that had driven them
apart. Perhaps it was because they were so vastly different in
background and temperament that they needed each other.
James Madison was a wholy different kind of friend, in many
ways similar to Thomas and certainly having much more in common
with him as a Virginia planter. There was no danger of a schism there,
for I believed Mr. Madison thought of himself as part protégé, part
close personal advisor.
President Madison was having a devil of a time trying to keep
the country out of war. I hoped he would succeed. I didn’t want our
militiamen or sailors killed, nor would I look forward to running
through the house finding places to hide silverware from the Redcoats.
Thomas’s reply to Mr. Adams contained a sad fact I wasn’t
aware of—
Sometimes indeed I look back to former occurrences, in remembrance of  our old friends and fellow laborers, who have fallen before us. Of the  signers of the Declaration of Independance I see now living not more than  half a dozen on your side of the Potomak, and, on this side, myself alone.
He never could get the spelling right on “independence.” We
would forgive him, because independence was a condition he invented
for many Americans.
But not “all.”
 
 
 

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Sally of Monticello: Founding Mother
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70
Thomas was now a great-grandfather.
And from the same birth to Anne Randolph Bankhead giving
him that distinction, I’ve received a great-grandnephew. The child’s
name was John.
I was glad Anne and the young husband I’ve been leery of were
getting along at neighboring Carlton. I’d hoped and prayed he would
give the lie to fears he’d generated before their wedding.
On Thomas’s writing desk today, 26th of May, 1811, I read a
remarkable letter he wrote Anne. It was so poetic, so full of beautiful
images—and yet touched by a tragic thought—that it started me
thinking afresh what set him apart.
Nothing new has happened in our neighborhood since you
left us. The houses and trees stand where they did. The flowers
come forth like the belles of the day, have their short reign of
beauty and splendor, and retire like them to the more interesting
office of reproducing their like. The hyacinths and tulips are off
the stage, the Irises are giving place to the Belladonnas, as this
will to the Tuberoses &c. As your Mama has done to you, my
dear Anne, as you will do to the sisters of little John, and as I
shall soon and chearfully do to you all in wishing you a long,
long goodnight.
I sat at his writing desk and reread that portion of the letter. The
reason it held me was that it reflected the Thomas I loved best but
worried about most—the optimist who tried to ignore dismal realities
in order to see only the beauty of the world.
Because the letter had a feminine tone, also referencing “sisters
of little John” not yet born, I closed my eyes and recalled incidents
when Thomas showed his softer side. In retrospect, they numbered
higher than my memories of roughness, or what some would consider
manly virtues.
Oh, he was very much a man, and physically powerful. But he
was also gentle to the point of being taken advantage of, a truth I’ve
tried to impress upon him without success.
Through his garden reveries I saw him as the analyst of nature,
the spectator to life’s cycles. He often exhausted me with more facts
on farming than I cared to hear. I didn’t know where he found patience
for so much of the detail that went into his writings, his memoranda
and farm books. Then I reminded myself he’d been to school and had
sat often in debate with great minds at the College of William and
Mary.
I wished he were more interested in balancing his accounts. I
didn’t believe he’d ever learned how, for the simple reason that
finances seemed to bore him. And while others have warned him, he
threw caution to the wind when someone in need stepped forward with
his hand out.
“Are you studying?”
Oh God, he’d startled me. My heart was a heavy drumbeat.
“I’ve just read a copy of your letter to Anne. She’ll be pleased.”
“She’s brought forth my first great-grandson, and I want to
reward her with pleasurable images.”
“I don’t like the ‘long, long goodnight,’ though I understand it.”
He checked his weather instruments and made notes in a
memorandum book. “Such thoughts enter my mind more easily with
each passing year.”
“Oh, Thomas, don’t do that to me. Move off the gloomy
references, please.”
“I’ve already lived longer than General Washington.”
“But not quite so long as Dr. Franklin.” I sounded snappish.
To pull him away from long goodnights, I used my favorite
trick. I put my arms around him and nuzzled his chest. He never
rejected me, and he reciprocated with kisses on top of my head.
In past years he lifted me and swung me around, but he’s left off
doing that for fear of losing his balance. Instead, this time, he lifted
and sat me on the alcove bed.
I lay back and he fell alongside me. I turned for kisses,
whispering, “My fertility is at peak.”
“As you’ve often reminded me by actions,” he said, “nature has
furnished us other paths to pleasure.”
I whispered, “Soixante-neuf.”
My grinning Thomas, the natural scientist.
 

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Sally of Monticello: Founding Mother
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69
Small wonder that Thomas suffered weeks-long sieges of
headaches, joint aches, and diarrhea. Within a year after retiring from
the Presidency, his debts were making him sick.
On the good side, his diet leaned much toward vegetables and
fruits. He exercised by riding and walking, compensating for the hours
he sat at his writing desk.
Yet, though his face was customarily unreadable, he winced at
discovery of an unpaid obligation he’d given little or no thought while
incurring it.
What happened in town today was an example of how his lack
of money control affected him. He’d deposited me at Nancy West’s
shop and continued on to James Leitch’s place of business—building
supplies and the like.
Sooner than I’d expected, Thomas returned agitated, this chilly
mid-February of 1810 reddening his face.
“Do you want to tell me what’s bothering you? Or will you cork
it inside you and make yourself sick?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Don’t trouble yourself about it, Sally. I’m
taking care of everything.”
Needless to say, whenever Thomas told me there was “nothing”
wrong, I braced myself against the worst news—that everything was
the matter. “Did you place an order and receive assurance of
delivery?”
“No order today. None,” he said.
“I see. We’re going to play that game where I guess and you say
‘yes’ or ‘no’ till I have information you could have furnished from the
start.” I was not above sarcasm, for the offsetting reasons that I
enjoyed it and that he seldom rose to it.
Thomas mumbled under his breath.
As we walked back to the carriage, Thomas began to hum
almost inaudibly—a sign that either masked trepidation or joy. But
whatever had happened at Leitch’s could hardly have inspired joy.
“Mr. Leitch has left for Richmond,” he blurted, as though I
might greet that news appreciatively. “There he’ll present a draft that
will catch me up somewhat on what I owe him.”
“Thomas, are you buying too much on credit?”
“I can’t continue my projects without doing business on credit.
As for whether it’s too much, I’m not entirely certain.”
Oh my, Sally. Don’t nag about the building at Poplar Forest. Don’t nag about the other projects Thomas has mentioned, like manufacturing cloth at Monticello.
His inability to manage finances was more ominous than I’d
imagined.
“I may have to shut down the nailery,” he said, rubbing his
forehead, “unless I can order nailrod next month on credit. The risks of
my enterprises continue to balloon.”
“Let’s stop in here,” I suggested, pausing in front of a tea room.
“I’m not sure they serve Negroes,” Thomas said.
“Do you think they’ll refuse service to the companion of the
recently retired President? I don’t believe you have a full grasp of your
power, my love.”
We whiled away half an hour. The interlude elevated Thomas’s
mood. He stopped massaging his brow.
“The salary you received as President helped tide you over in
circumstances such as this,” I said. “Of course, your eight years’ split
residency between Monticello and Washington increased your debt. Is
there any way Congress might approve a pension, one that will benefit
Mr. Adams, you, and later Mr. Madison?”
“Unfortunately, preparations for another possible war with
Britain are draining the national treasury. Now might not be a good
time to propose a pension, though I’ve considered that possibility.”
I held my teacup daintily and stared at it before sipping. “Do you
think the shopkeeper will destroy this because my lips touched it?”
“I doubt it. It’s hard to find a Virginian who wasn’t wet-nursed
in infancy. If the owner here has any sense, that cup is as safe as the
bounteous black teats we suckled to survive.”
I laughed, relieved that I could laugh. And that Thomas joined
me in that.
But as I helped him temporarily set aside worries over money, or
lack thereof, I wondered whether I had done the right thing. Shouldn’t
I make my man face and resolve the problem of his growing
insolvency once and for all?
Anyone who kept robbing Peter to pay Paul would suffer a
frightening day of reckoning.
I wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable anguish of this gentle,
naïve man. But I would help him through it when it came, not so much
from duty as from love.