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Judged by the raw standard of the winning and the keeping of power, however, Thomas Jefferson was the most successful political figure of the first half century of the American republic. For thirty-six of the forty years between 1800 and 1840, either Jefferson or a self-described adherent of his served as president of the United States: James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren.32 (John Quincy Adams, a one-term president, was the single exception.) This unofficial and little-noted Jeffersonian dynasty is unmatched in American history.
“It is a charming thing to be loved by everybody,” he told his grandchildren, “and the way to obtain it is, never to quarrel or be angry with anybody.”
“Knowledge,” Jefferson said, “indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.”
Leadership, Jefferson was learning, meant knowing how to distill complexity into a comprehensible message to reach the hearts as well as the minds of the larger world.
Everyone wants to believe that what they have to say is fascinating, illuminating, and possibly even epochal. The best political figures create the impression that they find everyone they encounter to be what Abigail Adams said Jefferson was: “one of the choice ones of the earth.”
Wythe added a tag from Virgil: “Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis.” The line means “Carry on, and preserve yourselves for better times.”
Mrs. Jefferson is said to have remarked.11 “He is so good himself, that he cannot understand how bad other people may be.”
South Carolinian Mary Boykin Chestnut noted something about white women that was equally true in the eighteenth: “Any lady is able to tell who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household but their own.41 Those she seems to think drop from the clouds.”
Even among the elite, childbirth was dangerous and could be fatal to both mother and infant. Jefferson was to learn this well: All but two of the six children born to Patty and Thomas Jefferson were fated to die in infancy or childhood.
At moments of intense emotional distress Jefferson often suffered what he would call an “attack of my periodical headache,” a migraine headache so debilitating and vicious that he once said he was “obliged to avoid reading, writing, and almost thinking.”6,7 Before 1776, his last known bout had come in the wake of his heartbreak over Rebecca Burwell. With the death of Jane Randolph Jefferson, the blood and nerves in his brain gave him nothing but anguish. The force of her death was almost more than he could stand. The pain would not stop.
Jefferson loved the story of an exchange between the fat Benjamin Harrison of Virginia and the wispy Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts.65 “Gerry, when the hanging comes, I shall have the advantage; you’ll kick in the air half an hour after it is all over with me!”
With the power of the pen, he had articulated a new premise for the government of humanity: that all men were created equal.
Jefferson understood a timeless truth: that politics is kaleidoscopic, constantly shifting, and the morning’s foe may well be the afternoon’s friend.
In political terms, Jefferson believed it unjust (and unwise) to use public funds to support an established church and to link civil rights to religious observance. He said such a system led to “spiritual tyranny.”27 In theological terms, according to notes he made on John Locke, Jefferson concurred with a Christian tradition that held the church should not depend on state-enforced compulsion.
It did not speak well of the power of God, in other words, if He needed a human government to prop him up.
His epitaph for Patty came from Homer, from the heart of the Iliad.21 He had the words inscribed in Greek—only the educated would be able to share in his memorial to his wife.
If in the melancholy shades below, The flames of friends and lovers cease to glow, Yet mine shall sacred last; mine undecay’d Burn on through death and animate my shade.
“You are now old enough to know how very important to your future life will be the manner in which you employ your present time,”
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”
Most significantly, the version of the Ordinance of 1784 that Jefferson supported banned the expansion of slavery into the new territories.51 The plan failed by a single vote in the Congress (a delegate from New Jersey was too ill to attend, dooming the bill).52,53 Reflecting on the closeness of the decision, Jefferson wrote: “Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, and heaven was silent in that awful moment.”
It was the Hôtel de Langeac, at the corner of the Champs-Élysées and the rue de Berri.
Pleasure is always before us; but misfortune is at our side: while running after that, this arrests us.
Mrs. Adams then told Jefferson: “I show her your picture. She says she cannot know it, how should she when she should not know you.”
“The age of Dr. Franklin, and the doubt whether he would accept it, are the only circumstances that admit a question but that he would be the man.…
to go on in a strict but silent performance of my duty: to avoid attracting notice and to keep my name out of newspapers, because I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.”
It is a proof the more of the justice of the character given by Dr. Franklin of my friend: ‘Always an honest man, often a great one, but sometimes absolutely mad.’ ”
By early June, however, the president was well enough to take Jefferson along on a fishing trip off Sandy Hook.60 Jefferson, ever practical and optimistic, hoped any seasickness would “carry off the remains of my headache.”
He advised his daughter Patsy to approach all people and all things with forbearance. “Every human being, my dear, must thus be viewed according to what it is good for, for none of us, no not one, is perfect; and were we to love none who had imperfections this world would be a desert for our love,” Jefferson wrote in July 1790.
“All we can do is to make the best of our friends: love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way of what is bad: but no more think of rejecting them for it than of throwing away a piece of music for a flat passage or two.” It was sound counsel for life
And there was little Jefferson hated more than the thought that people were disparaging him in the shadows.
He believed in the virtues of civility, understanding that they were the most required when they were the least convenient.
“I THINK IT IS MONTAIGNE who has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head,” Jefferson wrote a friend from Monticello in February 1794.
Jefferson himself admitted, “Architecture is my delight, and putting up and pulling down one of my favorite amusements.”
Drama, Jefferson knew, was one of the prices one paid for democracy.
At issue was the advantage Jefferson and his fellow Southerners had in national elections because of the three-fifths clause, the constitutional provision that counted a slave as three-fifths of a person to establish the number of congressmen and presidential electors allocated to each state.31 When Jefferson went on to win the presidency four years later, his Federalist critics would disparage him as the “Negro President” because of his dependence on the three-fifths clause. The battles over slavery were thus rooted not only in the debate over the morality of abolition but in the practical
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As Adams recalled it, George Washington seemed cheerful—even relieved: “Methinks I heard him think ‘Ay, I am fairly out and you fairly in! See which of us will be happiest.’ ”
An evangelical minister, William Scales, took a more optimistic view: “Many declare you an atheist,” Scales wrote to Jefferson, “but be it so, I much rather a liberal atheist should govern the people, than a bigoted saint, who knows not God.”
“One imputation in particular has been repeated till it seems as if some at least believed it: that I am an enemy to commerce,” Jefferson wrote a correspondent on Wednesday, February 18, 1801.48 “They admit me a friend to agriculture, and suppose me an enemy to the only means of disposing of its produce.”
Rising men do not like to be reminded of the smell of the stables; dignitaries dislike recollections of the dust through which they have come.
Often only the well born or the socially serene can forgo badges of status—the neglect or absence of which is in itself a badge of status.
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
Rush had told Jefferson.58 “Were it possible for St. Paul to rise from his grave at the present juncture, he would say to the clergy who are now so active in settling the political affairs of the world: ‘Cease from your political labors your kingdom is not of this world. Read my epistles. In no part of them will you perceive me aiming to depose a pagan emperor, or to place a Christian upon a throne. Christianity disdains to receive support from human governments.’ ”
“Callender and Sally will be remembered as long as Jefferson as blots on his character,” John Adams wrote privately.56 “The story of the latter is a natural and almost unavoidable consequence of that foul contagion in the human character, Negro slavery.”
the president fulfilled the most fundamental duty of a host: He showed respect to those under his roof, making them feel comfortable and cared for.
In the swirl of the celebration, Jefferson was soon told that “the ladies” hoped to follow him to the President’s House.32 Twinkling, he said: “That is right, since I am too old to follow them.33 I remember in France, when his friends were taking leave of Dr. Franklin, the ladies smothered him with embraces, and on his introducing me as his successor, I told him I wished he would transfer these privileges to me, but he answered, ‘You are too young a man.’ ”
Anything—or anyone—represented within Monticello was meaningful to Jefferson in some way and to some degree.
His sense of the needs of others was part of his nature—a nature, one granddaughter said, “so eminently sympathetic, that with those he loved, he could enter into their feelings, anticipate their wishes, gratify their tastes, and surround them with an atmosphere of affection.”81 A patriarch’s love is rather like a politician’s skill. Both are about perceiving what others want, and trying, within reason, to provide it. That had been the work of Jefferson’s public life and now, in retirement, it was that of his personal life, too.
Adams then criticized the press for its harshness toward Jefferson, adding: “I always loved Jefferson, and still love him.”
My mind has been long fixed to bow to the judgment of the world, who will judge me by my acts, and will never take counsel from me as to what that judgment should be.”
“Every hope from time, patience and the love of peace is exhausted, and war or abject submission are the only alternatives left us.”
