White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

by Nancy Isenberg

“No distinction between man and man has ever been known in America,” he insisted. Among private individuals, the “poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest Millionary,” and the poor man was favored when the rights of the rich and poor were contested in the courts. Whether the “shoemaker or the artisan” was elected to office, he “instantly commanded respect and obedience.” With a final flourish, Jefferson declared that “of distinctions by birth or badge,” Americans “had no more idea than they had of existence in the moon or planets.”33 Though Jefferson sold Europeans on America as a classless society, no such thing existed in Virginia or anywhere else. In his home state, a poor laborer or shoemaker had no chance of getting elected to office. Jefferson wrote knowing that semiliterate members of the lower class did not receive even a rudimentary education. Virginia’s courts meticulously served the interests of rich planters. And wasn’t slavery a “distinction between man and man”? Furthermore, Jefferson’s freehold requirement for voting created “odious distinctions” between landowners and poor merchants and artisans, denying the latter classes voting rights.34 One has to wonder at Jefferson’s blatant distortion, his desire to paint the Society of Cincinnati as so otherworldly to Americans that only extraterrestrials could appreciate it. He failed to recognize that many elite Americans were fond of the trappings of aristocracy.

Given everything, I'm less inclined to think that Jefferson didn't recognize that he was lying and more likely to think that he was very deliberately and knowingly fooling himself. 'It's different' even though it definitely was not and 'I have a reputation to maintain' and 'people won't want to come here if it sounds the same as where they already are' are all justifications that I think played a role.