Thomas S. Kidd - Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh

Thomas Jefferson

Published with assistance from the Annie Burr Lewis Fund.

Copyright 2022 by Thomas S. Kidd.

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I have thought them ... aristocratical, pompous, clannish, indolent, hospitable, and ... thoughtless in their expenses.

Thomas Jefferson on elite Virginians, 1785

He does not possess strong nerves: The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Maryland senator John Howard on Jefferson, 1798

Contents

Thomas Jefferson

Introduction

This is a biography of a brilliant but troubled person. Thomas Jefferson would seem to need no introduction, yet among the Founding Fathers he is the greatest enigmaand the greatest source of controversy. Jefferson left a massive collection of carefully curated papers, but he seems virtually unknowable as a man. Most of the controversy about him comes back to questions of character. How could the author of the Declaration of Independence keep hundreds of human beings in bondage? How could he carry on a long-standing sexual relationship with one of his bondspeople, who was also his dead wifes half sister? His relationship with Sally Hemings produced at least one and perhaps as many as six children. The children who survived to adulthood he acknowledged only by letting them go free, unlike most of the other people he owned.

Hypocrisy! Jeffersons critics cry. When you look closer at Jefferson, however, hypocrisy doesnt quite penetrate the mystery, doesnt explain Jeffersons troubled genius and vacillating life. For all his blazing intellect and inspired rhetoric, Jefferson held a host of beliefs and inclinations that were unreconciled, and maybe irreconcilable. To be fair, most of us struggle with forms of incoherence and hypocrisy. And it is undoubtedly easier to see these problems with the benefit of historical hindsight. We never know if we would have done better if we had lived the same life as a person in the past. We will never know if we would have outdone Jefferson if placed in his situation.

But Jeffersons inconsistencies often transcended the failure to live up to his stated beliefs, which is the definition of hypocrisy. On issues such as

The dissonance between stated belief and practiced reality is perhaps more acute for Jefferson than any other American, ever. Thats quite a burden to bear. Yet Jefferson carries it, because of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson did a great deal to promote the Declaration, listing it first on his epitaph, followed by the Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786) and the founding of the University of Virginia. By the end of his life Jefferson cultivated his image primarily as the author of the Declaration, and indeed we have come to remember him as the writer of that American Scripture, in historian Pauline Maiers phrase. But all men are created equal is not the definitive word on Jeffersons philosophy, or on his life. That phrase is better understood as a national self-image and lodestar than a code by which Jefferson lived.

His sheer brilliance, political doggedness, inherited resources, and occasional good luck led to history-changing accomplishments, not only the Declaration and the other items listed on his epitaph, but other achievements not included there, such as the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson could also be mystifyingly impractical, however. By impractical I mean that his ideas sometimes failed to manifest themselves in reality, especially on a personal level. Or he stated positions that he did not act upon, at least not in a sustained way. Again, tendencies toward impracticality are common among politicians, perhaps increasingly so in recent decades. America has had innumerable government leaders who have held incoherent positions, though few of them have also been as imaginative as Jefferson. When someone as brilliant and powerful as Jefferson also struggles with incoherence, it can have disastrous consequences. Those consequences meant trouble for many people with less power (meaning virtually everyone around him) around the nation and within his household.

Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh tells Jeffersons story with special attention to the mans dissonant beliefs and actions. This book is a narrative of Jeffersons moral universe more than a traditional biography. It is not a step-by-step account of his political or diplomatic career, although these aspects play a significant role in my account. Readers wanting to know more about politics and diplomacy should consult comprehensive Jefferson biographies by Merrill Peterson, John Boles, and others, or the many excellent books (which I hope are adequately cited in the notes) on Jeffersons presidency, foreign policy, economic views, and other topics.

The vast literature on Jefferson has gone through many stages, some of which started even before Jeffersons death. Great resources for understanding the changing reception of Jefferson are Francis Coglianos fascinating Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy (2006) and Robert M. S. McDonalds excellent volume Thomas Jeffersons Lives: Biographers and the Battle for History (2019). Yet the continental divide in Jefferson studies is still what we might call pre- and post-DNA. Before 1998, Jefferson scholars often treated the allegations about Jeffersons relationship with Sally Hemings as unseemly rumors. Historian Annette Gordon-Reed powerfully analyzed the evidence for that relationship in Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997). A year later, the journal Nature revealed that a Jefferson male had fathered at least one of Sally Hemingss children. Once the Thomas Jefferson Foundation concluded in 2000 that the evidence for the Hemings-Jefferson relationship was compelling, expert opinion overwhelminglythough not unanimouslyaffirmed the relationship, and Jeffersons paternity of her children.

As Cogliano explains, there have been a number of phases in the longer story of scholarship and popular writing about Jefferson. Some phases have been critical of the third president, some not. Following an era of uncritical celebration of Jefferson in the mid-twentieth century, the 1960s saw frequent criticisms of him in the context of broader cultural upheavals and the civil rights movement. Even after the DNA results, some scholars lamented this negative turn as Jefferson bashing. Many recent scholars, led especially by historian Peter Onuf of the University of Virginia, have moved beyond the celebration/denunciation dichotomy to assess Jefferson as an intellectual, politician, and plantation owner formed by the elite culture of Revolutionary-era Virginia and the transatlantic Enlightenment community. This historicized balance animated Onuf and Gordon-Reeds outstanding Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination