Alan Pell Crawford on Jefferson's Last Years
The twilight at Monticello the first book that tells the truth about what life was really like there. To Jefferson himself Monticello was a symbol and it’s a symbol of rationalism and rational enlightenment architecture and a showplace for the world not only architecturally but as an idea. And the tragedy is that the house for all of its beauty and architectural ingenuity was in fact very difficult to live in it.
The flats roofs gather—it collected water and then constantly leaking. Meanwhile they have the problem of course most of getting things like fresh water and other supplies up the mountain most Virginia plantations where on river fronts with the canal leading right from the river almost did the front door. The flat boats could come up unload provisions. Fresh water was not a problem there.
Monticello of course was on by east coast standard on the mountaintop, so there were all sorts of problems of practical living there that were never solve. Jefferson as I said so eager to show this place off understandably. And to continue to improve it and make it better and grander than it was. The sad fact was though that, because Jefferson was such an idealist and such an optimist that he kept deeper and deeper in dept so by the time Monticello should have been in the sense finish and complete and ready to be the most beautiful house in America, he no longer had the money for the up keep and so he will get—you get stories of decay and people walking out on the brand as I guess they call him piatsi’s there.
And putting a foot down and it falling through to the ground, so the house was in the sort of constant state of either being built and in decay as in—so that is symbolic I think of Jefferson’s life and the whole enlightenment project in America. Jefferson raised his immensely complicated subject. Volumes could be written, but the way the issue is usually address I think is a flaw and that is how could a man, he wrote the declaration of independence have own slaves, kept slaves.
Now if you explore that as—that’s not historically a particularly truthful question. The answer usually as well, the man clearly hypocrite and there was not as consistent as I of course would have in his situation but the man is basically a big hypocrite. That maybe is satisfying to the person who initiates that position.
Historically a more interesting question is how could a man who was born into his slave holding culture, who inherited slaves, whose marriage brought more slaves into the plantation, how could this man have written the declaration of independence? And then you get into a long and truthful discussion about the provenance of these ideas. And then it goes from being a question of Jefferson being flawed human being to the wonder month of this culture producing a man who could right annunciate these ideals that to this day are inspiring to Americans and to people who were lower. As a young member Virginia House of Burgesses, he wrote another man introduced legislation which called for the details of which I think or rather of secure. But it appears to have been a plan for the gradual emancipations of slaves and the ending of slavery in Virginia.
This was voted down solidly—I don’t know if they ever got out of committee. Jefferson was stung by this and he also, he never always acknowledge this slavery was evil and wrong and corrupting the humanizing etcetera and believe that was an institution that had in. In fact at one point he wrote a plan for the abolition or the prohibition of slavery in the territories. He later went back on, or again, immensely complicated reasons, so early in life he was committed as he wrote the notes on the state of Virginia the belief that slavery was immoral and should end and would have to end.
By around 1814, after he’d been in retirement for five years, he got a letter from Albemarle County; a younger Albemarle county planter, he never recalls who was going to inherit within just recently inherited slaves. He had in his days at college, marry he’d come to believe slavery was immoral and justifiable and he wanted to wash his hands of it, he being calls. So he came up with the plan, he didn’t tell Jefferson about but he did write a letter to Jefferson saying, “Now that you're retired you have the Simons moral authority, you’ve written in the past that slavery is wrong.
This is the time to come forward and throw your support to the cause of abolition.” And Jefferson wrote him back and he said, “You know, you're probably right and I wish you the best but however, I'm going to leave this to the next generation to take care off that I'm too old that I tried this as a young man and the opinion of the people of Virginia is not there yet and for that reason, I leave this to you and young people of your generations to take care of. I no longer have the energy nor will this happen overnight anyway.”
And its rather disappointing to be contemporary reader, to read these letters and thinks of how things might have been different and how we might view Jefferson today if he had actually reason to this challenge. We would view the man completely different. Jefferson had a fascinating philosophy of history that has not been sufficiently explored in which he believed as he expresses somewhat in these letters that human moral development does not come through heroic gestures. It comes through the gradual, in the sense evolution of refinement of the moral sensibility and there mention enlightenment notion.
And this is a gradual process in entire people and if you do believe as Jefferson did in self government, then this abolition would need to take place because Virginians had as a group come to understand what he understood and his neighbor understood that slavery is immoral. But at this process cannot be rush. Now this turns out to be in rather convenient position for a slave holder to take nevertheless it has certain of plausibility, it has certain logic to it.
Jefferson, I mentioned his philosophy of history is very interesting, he believed that the American Revolution was primarily collective experience by white Americans on the east coast. And that every culture must go through a comfortable experience in order to kind of own this and for it to be part of their collective experience, and Jefferson believed that in that sense what needed to ultimately happen was for black people to live somewhere else out of them in American west of Liberia later or for the islands of Caribbean and have in the sense their own revolution.
And this would be part of their development that they sort of were entitled to this until it’s a rather complicated, sophisticated idea which is rather repugnant to us today. But again it has certain plausibility and sophistication that I think is underestimated today that the extent of people are aware but it all.
You know I have found this to become such a matter of the conventional wisdom that Jefferson obviously, two things people seems to know about Thomas Jefferson, he wrote the declaration of independence and he was the father of Sally Hemings children. Beyond that most Americans don’t know much it all, their certain of those facts.
So I'm honoree enough when I started this research to think when they're settled wisdom on anything I kind of like to be examine of myself as I look at that, I look at the evidence of these in many ways. I tried to poll calls in the idea that Jefferson obviously father of Sally Hemings children. I did a few things I don’t think other writers have done, historians, I’m not a historian, I'm a writer. I look at Jefferson—very good records of Jefferson health, so I compared Jefferson health to the times in which Sally Hemings conceived children and Jefferson for a resilient man who lived at ‘83 was a plague through out much of his life was more psychosomatic and nagging ailments.
Whenever Sally Hemings got pregnant Jefferson was in fine shape so I could never say, “Well, this is highly unlikely that he would father children during this four week period or whatever.” So I looked at his in many, many ways and then I began to look to examine it in a slightly different way which was I wanted to—I look began to examine the alibis the defenses the family had put forth about who really a family who always saying, “Well, it wasn’t grand papa who fathered these children it was this cousin or niece, nephews or his brother.” So I began to put all of that together and so to list the other suspects and then I realized something very interesting.
If you take Jefferson white family at its where and say “Jefferson himself didn’t father these children.” Some of these either one or more these other man did. You got a very long list of suspects in their grandchildren saying, “Well, yeah was those Irish workman that came up the mountain and work that their always sleeping with the slave women or these nephews you know, he was so and so was his mistress and Sally was his mistress the way everybody knew that. Then I coupled out with the story of one of the Monticello slaves who was interviewed and he talked about how one visitor live a cousin of Jefferson would whip him all the time.
Every time came up to mountain he whip it. And it was clear that all of these were going on with Jefferson’s implicit approval or consent. Well, you can weigh these two things, you can say, “Well, Jefferson obviously had this affair with Sally Hemings so what terrible hypocrite he was. Or he is a well that couldn’t have happen and you believe that the family then you come to a conclusion well boy, that was awful lot of shenanigans going on between the white visitors to Monticello and the slave women and then this was done while Jefferson the gracious house was there. And that puts life at Monticello and yet another in less, in many ways less favorable like.
So I think the preponderance of the evidence is that Jefferson probably fathered some of these children and that had a long term and would appears to have been somewhat monogamous relationship with Sally Hemings. All of that is interesting to us as people today struggling with what racial relations in our own time are going to be.
He designed the curriculum, he found the faculty, and he lay out and designed the architecture of the university which was in many ways a rather radical development in university architecture. He obviously had great energy to take on projects that he wanted to take on. And just as Monticello was an outpost to the enlightenment in the charlottes area so was the university and what made an enlightenment institution was that unlike all other colleges in America, it was not sponsored by a church.
It was to be a holy secular institution of higher learning something that really was unheard off. It is proved highly controversy and that time threatened the financing of university and there were touching goal moments when Jefferson never knew of the legislature was going to approve this at all because he didn’t want a clergy man at charge, he didn’t want a chapel, he wanted free thinkers to be running the institution and yet by share force of will and imagination and energy and resourcefulness, he was able to accomplished this.
As a man and he is—I think the university opened in 1825, so he was about 82 years old at that time. And to a bit accomplish that alone is absolutely remarkable thing. Politically I think what I find most fascinating in Jefferson in most congenial was his belief that, if Americans are—that big government, the term he didn’t not use—big government in variably removed individual citizens from the process of self government, and his late life iteration of this belief that government should be radically decentralized if the spirit of liberty is to continue.
That’s a pretty idea I think he believed that in order for people to be capable of self government to have the virtues in which they could participate responsibly in directing their own affairs. They had to be involved in those affairs. And I see a widely misguided political system now in which is a near monarchical president and that won't change with the democratic administration in which all the reformers who would travel by some of this are calling for an increasingly plead the system in which the national primaries, the parties play smaller and smaller roles and there's nothing between this the masses of individual atomistic people, citizens and the president who suppose to answer their needs.
And I see the republicans further this in the area of foreign policy the democrats further it in the area of domestic policy. So the system is completely whacked at this point. And the only way to get out of this American idle approach to American politics I think is for is somehow to engage the people not just as citizens on Election Day but everyday. And Jefferson’s ideas about the individual citizens have a local level administering their schools, running the police department, administering justice and all of these stuff in the daily kind of way strikes me as the only way those habits of mind and character can be maintained in the way that make self government possible.
I don’t think that Jeffersonian ideal where we finish no matter how far we did as a governmental structure from a Jeffersonian one. Jefferson’s great portrait and eloquence in defense of these ideals that admittedly he could never himself lived up to even as president or in his private life nevertheless those have a resonance and a power to continue to inspire and to inform our politics. I would much prefer if we could move back in the decentralized direction.
I don’t see that happening but I also—it’s impossible to believe that Jeffersonian redirect and therefore Jeffersonian spirit will ever be extinguish in America. So that will remain and for that we should be immensely grateful.
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