June 2024
The latestabout the book, author events, and more
NewsletterEditor - Marc Leepson
VolumeXXI, Number 6 June2024
JML & THE UDC: In mid-November 1912 the battle between Jefferson Levy andhis supporters and Maude Littleton and her backers over her well-financed planto have the government assert eminent domain, confiscate Monticello, and turnit into a government-run house museum was reaching a crescendo.
A bill that Mrs. Littleton (as she was referred to in thenewspapers of the day) and her allies on Capitol Hill had written would doexactly, and it would soon be coming up for a vote in the House ofRepresentatives. The bill came out of a series of bombastic hearings during thesummer and fall in which the two camps—led by Maude Littleton and the congressmensupporting her effort, and by Jefferson Levy and his lawyer, Judge Tom Duke ofCharlottesville—verbally sparred over Monticello’s fate.
As the adversariesworked to gain support before the vote, the United Daughters of the Confederacy—athen-influential descendants group founded in 1894 whose members were bloodrelatives of Confederate soldiers or those who supported the South’s cause inthe Civil War—came into the picture.
Although I wrote afair amount about other events surrounding what some people called “The War of1912” in Saving Monticello, I only recently learned new details about Mrs.Littleton’s interactions with the most-influential American hereditary groups,including the UDC and the Daughters of the American Revolution, about thepending legislation. The DAR spurned her offer to support the government-takeoverplan, but proposed an alternative, having a private group (such as the DAR) runMonticello as a house museum open to the public. As I wrote in the book, DARleaders later would make a case before Congress to do just at that. It did notcome to fruition.
Meanwhile, in November1912, the UDC briefly stepped into the Levy-Littleton imbroglio. It came about duringthe organization’s 9th annual convention at the lavish Beaux-Arts-styleWillard Hotel in Washington (in photo below) during which Mrs. Littletonshowed up to lobby UDC members to endorse her plan. But she left the city withoutaddressing the body, after the convention did not take up the matter when the proceedingsended on November 16.
Spurning Maude Littletonmay have been due to the fact that the convention received a letter fromJefferson Levy “reiterating,” a Richmond Times Dispatch reporter wrote, “hisoft-repeated declaration that he does not wish to sell the historic home.”
Inthe letter Levy also lambasted Mrs. Littleton and her supporters for “the abuse”of his family and for her “misstatements and disregard of the care I havebestowed on the property.”
At the convention’slast session, the UDC elected new members, then “applauded a statement with referenceto the right of the South to have succeeded,” as a Washington Timesreporter put it. Then came an address by a Union Civil War veteran that “hadmany of the delegates weeping” after the man spoke about the ceremonies of the dedicationof the cornerstone of a Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery aweek earlier.**
Afterthe convention ended, word got out that influential UDC members, including Mrs.Frank Anthony Walke (as the newspapers referred to her) of Norfolk, Virginia, theUDC’s Custodian of the Flags, opposed a government seizure of Monticello. But theDaughters were not averse to their organization running the property, an idea thatMrs. Walke said Jefferson Levy agreed to do at some unspecified time in thefuture.
Monticello, she tolda reporter, “belongs to Virginia in the future, and the government shall notown it. Mr. Levy has promised that the Virginia division of the [UDC] shall havethe old home of Jefferson. I have his personal assurance that the propertyshall go to us when he has finished its use.” She went on to say that she wouldoppose “any proposition for [Monticello’s] acquisition by the United Stateswhich may be advanced by Mrs. Littleton.”
Mrs. Walke then sarcasticallyadvised Maude Littleton to have “the government purchase all the historicalplaces in the North, South, East and West, and to preserve them. But Virginiacan take care of her property, particularly when it is not [on] the market.”
That didn’t exactly go over with Mrs. Littleton. “Don’t payany attention to Mrs. Walke,” she said the day after the convention ended. “Sheis just a silly, little thing—a little foolish thing—a busybody who is tryingto get even with me because I wouldn’t okay her railroad fare to Washington andher hotel expenses there.”
Then she added: “I don’tcare a row of pins about Jefferson Levy. He is nothing but a stumbling block inthe way of our great purpose. All I am thinking about is Thomas Jefferson.”
Mrs. Littleton wenton to say that the famed populist politician and orator William Jennings Bryan (above,orating) had “informed Mr. Levy” that “we are going to have Monticello.” Bryan,she said, assured her “that he would fight while he had breath in his body tohave Monticello set aside as a public memorial.”
WilliamJennings Bryan, a venerator extraordinaire of Thomas Jefferson, had written toJefferson Levy in 1897 suggesting that he sell Monticello to the federalgovernment, which would turn it into a national shrine. Six months earlierBryan, the Democratic Party nominee, had narrowly lost the 1896 presidentialelection to William McKinley
In November1912, William Jennings Bryan did, indeed, come out in support of Mrs. Littleton’scause. But Bryan, who died in 1925, never saw the government take Monticellofrom Jefferson Levy—though he (and Mrs. Littleton) did live to see the newly formednonprofit Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, purchase Monticello from Levyin 1923 and begin the process of turning it into a privately run house museum.
**Thatmemorial, the largest in the cemetery, was commissioned by the UDC anddedicated in 1914. It was created by the Virginia-born sculptor and diehard formerConfederate soldier, Moses Ezekiel. The memorial was removed from the cemeteryon December 22, 2023.
EVENTS: Aside froma talk at an informal gathering of folks near where I live, I don’t have anyspeaking engagements for Saving Monticello or any of my other books inJune. In other event news, Steve Pressman’s great 2022 documentary, “The Levysof Monticello,” which was inspired by my book, is now available (with ads) forfree on Amazon Prime.
In other news, the pub date for my next book, TheUnlikely War Hero, a different kind of Vietnam War POW true story, is December17. You can get a sneak preview at https://bit.ly/PrePubInfo
And the 11th printing of the SMpaperback, published by the University of Virginia Press, is now available inbookstores and online. If you would like an autographed copy of the hardcover,I have a few on hand, along with brand-new paperbacks. To order, go to thispage on my website: https://bit.ly/BookOrdering or email me at marcleepson@gmail.com
I also have six of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; DesperateEngagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag:An American Biography; Ballad of theGreen Beret; and Huntland. There’s more info on all those books on my website.
