Thomas Jefferson in London, 1786 by Mather Brown

 

John Langdon thanks Jefferson for the present he gave his daughter

December 7, 1785, John Langdon to Jefferson, Portsmouth (NH): “Our dear Bets, begs leave to present you with her grateful thanks, for the great honor you have been pleased to confer on her, in sending such an agreeable present: all Companies who come into the house must be entertained with the sight of her doll, and tumbling Gentleman; and she does not fail to confess her obligations to Governor Jefferson.

  “Mrs. Langdon desires her most kind respects may be made acceptable to you and your agreeable daughter.” [Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 9:84-85]  

Langdon was the governor of New Hampshire, and wealthiest resident of Portsmouth. Jefferson visited on a side trip on his way to Boston before sailing for his diplomatic post in Paris in 1784. 

Jefferson Looking Westward

Thomas Jefferson, serving in the largely ineffectual Continental Congress in 1784, was made the chairman of a committee created to address the issue of the conflicting trans-Appalachian land claims of the original thirteen colonies. In the final, and arguably the most important, legislative work of his career, his committee launched two seminal proposals in the spring of 1784, both written out in Jefferson’s own hand. The first, generally known as the Ordinance of 1784, was intended to provide a blue print for handling the new country’s western territories. It was passed by the Continental Congress but never went into effect, being replaced in its entirety by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. In the Ordinance of 1784, Jefferson, in his usual precise way, provided for fourteen hypothetical western states. The Ordinance also set forth the principle that new territories would be admitted as states on an equal footing with the existing states, arguably the first time in the history of the world that vassal territory was given this right, so he clearly contemplated that these new states would be co-equal with the original thirteen. In this context the fourteen states proposed to be formed by Jefferson in 1784, which would have included the southern ceded lands as well as the northern, was not that far off from what later occurred, although Jefferson’s precise geometrical boundaries and classically inspired names (like Polypotamia) seem contrived. These debates occurred while the United States was operating under the Articles of Confederation which gave each state a single vote in Congress, so Jefferson’s proposal would have given the Western states more power than the original thirteen. My question is what Jefferson contemplated would happen if those fourteen states had actually been created. Since under the Articles of Confederation each state had a single vote, wouldn’t Jefferson’s scheme have shifted control to these newly conceived western states? Later in that spring of 1784, Jefferson was appointed to a diplomatic post in Paris, where he would remain until 1788, so his proposals had to be worked out and applied by others as the Continental Congress faltered and the Constitution was being negotiated and implemented. The question of the western lands was so vital that when the Continental Congress again took up the question in 1785, it was assigned to a committee with one representative from each of the thirteen colonies. The more practical and nationalistic James Monroe became the moving spirit behind territorial organization after Jefferson left for Paris. He recognized that slavery could not be effectively ended south of the Ohio, and it was he who reduced the ultimate number of Western states that could be formed north of the Ohio by convincing Virginia to alter its act of cession to provide for not less than three nor more than five states to be created there. Jefferson's thinking about western states was undoubtedly affected by negotiations over cession of Virginia's lands north of the Ohio River to the United States, negotiations that were going on that same spring having been drawn out over the prior three years. Joseph Jones (Monroe's uncle and a brilliant lawyer trained in England) was an important moving spirit in these negotiations. I wonder whether all those Virginians were at the time thinking about America more along an east-west axis (rather than the north-south axis we have imposed on them in retrospect) and whether Jefferson himself (in proposing fourteen western states) was actually encouraging a move of the center of gravity westward. Certainly Jefferson himself was fascinated by the West as witnessed by his enthusiasm for the Lewis and Clark expedition. As Prof. Forbes has suggested, it would be interesting to study this issue, and the interaction among these three men, in the Jefferson correspondence and also in the minutes of the House of Delegates.

Too bad the Comte de Buffon never saw THIS!

I don't think my Euro friends realize how goddamned huge Moose are. They're prehistoric megafauna that survived. pic.twitter.com/ki6buJ88h4

— Will McLeod (@WillMcLeod99) September 26, 2015

Gov. Jefferson inquires about impounded wagons and horses

Gov. Jefferson to Gen. Edward Stevens, 15 September 1780: "Among the wagons impressed, for the use of your militia, were two of mine...A wagon-master, who says he was near it, informs me the brigade quarter-master cut out one of my best horses, and made his escape on him, and that he saw my wagoner loosening his own horse to come off, but the enemy's horse were then coming up, and he knows nothing further. He was a negro man, named Phill, lame in one arm and leg. If you will do me the favor to inquire what is become of him, what horses are saved, and to send them to me, I shall be much obliged to you. The horses were not public property, as they were only impressed and not sold. Perhaps your certificate of what is lost, may be necessary for me. The wagon-master told me, that the public money was in my wagon, a circumstance, which, perhaps, may aid your inquiries. After apologizing for the trouble, I beg leave to assure you, that I am, with great sincerity, /your friend and servant, Th: Jefferson

Jefferson wants to quit the Virginia governorship, 1780

Letters like this, to Gen. Edward Stevens on 12 September 1780, show the dismal condition of the Virginia militia during Jefferson's second term:

"Your letters of Aug 27 & 30th are now before me. The subsequent desertions of your militia have taken away the necessity of answering the question of how they shall be armed? On the contrary as there must now be a surplus of arms I am in hopes you will endeavor to reserve them as we have not here a sufficient number...."

The following day, Jefferson expressed his frustration with the job of Virginia governor to Richard Henry Lee:

"The application to the duties of the office I hold so excessive, and the execution of them after all so imperfect, that I have determined to retire from it at the close of the present campaign. I wish a successor to be thought of in time who, to sound Whiggism, can join perseverance in business and an extensive knoledge of the various subjects he must superintend."

Jefferson writes to the Marquis de Chastellux on Notes on the State of Virginia

On April 2, 1782, Major-General François Jean de Beauvoir, Marquis de Chastellux arrived at Monticello for a four-day stay with Jefferson. The French nobleman encountered Jefferson at a crisis point in his life: his governorship had ended in chaos and disgrace the previous June, and although the House of Delegates had absolved Jefferson of any blame, the investigation itself "had inflicted a wound on my spirit which will only be cured by the all-healing grave" (TJ to Monroe, 20 May 1782). His beloved wife Martha was pregnant with their sixth child; her labor was always difficult, and she had not fully recovered from the birth of Lucy Elizabeth, who had died at the age of a year in 1781. Jefferson had relinquished all thought of public service, and had retired to his farm, his family, and his scientific investigations. Henceforward, Thomas Jefferson was a private person.

But Chastellux had rekindled a desire for fame that Jefferson had thought was extinguished. To say that they were compatible would be an understatement; over the next four days they experienced something like a mind-meld. By the time Chastellux made his way down the mountain, he was a confirmed member of the Friends of Mr. Jefferson, a tireless and effective agent in his cause.

One way in which Jefferson solicited Chastellux's assistance was in disseminating and promoting interest in Notes on the State of Virginia, as illustrated in Jefferson's letter of 7 June 1785:

“Dear Sir,—I have been honoured with the receipt of your letter of the 2d instant, and am to thank you, as I do sincerely for the partiality with which you receive the copy of the Notes on my country. As I can answer for the facts therein reported on my own observation and have admitted none on the report of others which were not supported by evidence sufficient to command my own assent, I am not afraid that you should make any extracts you please for the Journal de Physique which come within their plan of publication. The strictures on slavery and on the constitution of Virginia are not of that kind, and they are the parts which I do not wish to have made public, at least till I know whether their publication would do most harm or good. It is possible that in my own country these strictures might produce an irritation which would indispose the people towards the two great objects I have in view, that is the emancipation of their slaves & the settlement of their constitution on a firmer & more permanent basis. If I learn from thence, that they will not produce that effect, I have printed & reserved just copies enough to be able to give one to every young man at the College. It is to them I look, to the rising generation, and not to the one now in power, for these great reformations. The other copy delivered at your hotel was for Mons de Buffon. I meant to ask the favour of you to have it sent to him, as I was ignorant how to do it. I have one also for Mons Daubenton; but being utterly unknown to him I cannot take the liberty of presenting it till I can do it through some common acquaintance.

George Nicholas specifies the charges against Gov. Jefferson

George Nicholas to TJ, July 31, 1781: “By the resolution of the House of Delegates an enquiry is to be made into the conduct of the executive for the last twelve months. No particular instance of misconduct was specified. They seemed to think and I am still of opinion that the persons entrusted with the administration ought to be ready to give an account of the whole and of every part of it.
  You consider me in a wrong point of view when you speak of me as an accuser. As a freeman and the representative of free Men I considered it as both my right and duty to call upon the executive to account for our numberless miscarriages and losses so far as they were concerned in or might have prevented them. In doing this I had no private pique to gratify….
  At your request I will mention such things as strike me at present as want[ing] explanation and if any thing shall hereafter occur I will inform you by letter.
  The total want of opposition to Arnold on his first expedition to Richmond.
  The dissolution of a considerable body of militia on our Southern frontier at the time of Green’s retreat for want of orders from the executive.
  The want of timely orders to the counties of Amherst Augusta &c. after the adjournment of the Assembly from Richmond.
  The great loss that the country has sustained in arms &c. exclusive of those destroyed by the enemy.
  The rejection of an offer made by Cols. Campbell Christian and McDowell to raise regiments for the Southern Service.” [PTJ 7:105-106]

A look at Query 4 of Notes on the State of Virginia: Mountains

 Mountains loomed large in Jefferson’s thought. Monticello, his mountaintop home, was as unusual in its siting as it is iconic: most planters built homes near rivers, but for Jefferson, the soaring vista trumped practicality. Mountains could be tokens of chaos as well as sources of exaltation, however; his descriptions of the violent natural forces that formed the junction of the Potomac and the Shenandoah at Harpers Ferry, and his discussion (in the following Query) of the Natural Bridge, are classic expressions of Edmund Burke’s idea of the sublime—that which has the power to fascinate and to destroy. 

Watson analyzes Jefferson's personality

IBM's Watson supercomputer has been applied to a new horizon after wiping out human chess players and Jeopardy champs: psychology. Insert a passage of writing into the newly-debuted Personality Insights demo and the All-Wise will analyze your personality.

I stuck in the text of Query 2, "Rivers," from Notes. Here is Watson's interpretation of Jefferson's personality:

You are heartfelt, tranquil and skeptical.

You are adventurous: you are eager to experience new things. You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. And you are imaginative: you have a wild imagination.

Experiences that give a sense of well-being hold some appeal to you.

You consider independence to guide a large part of what you do: you like to set your own goals to decide how to best achieve them. You are relatively unconcerned with helping others: you think people can handle their own business without interference.

*Compared to most people who participated in our surveys.

The data breakdown is even more interesting, and, I have to say, resonates with my understanding of Jefferson:

There are a lot of data here that seem wildly inconsistent and contradictory: for example, "Emotionality" at 2%, while "Sympathy" is 100%; "Adventurousness" at 100% and "Excitement seeking" at 0%. It may be surprising to find the need for "Liberty" at 3%. You can find your own. At any rate, it's worth studying. 

Hey, if the darn machine can beat Ken Jennings...

Jefferson responds to George Nicholas's call to account for his administration

Jefferson to George Nicholas, 28 July 1781:
“Sir,
"I am informed that a resolution on your motion passed the House of Delegates requiring me to render account of some part of my administration, without specifying the act to be accounted for. As I suppose that this was done under the impression of some particular instance or instances of ill conduct, and that it could not be intended first, to stab a reputation by a general suggestion under a bare expectation that facts might be afterwards hunted up to bolster it, I hope you will not think me improper in asking the favor of you to specify to me the unfortunate passages in my conduct which you mean to adduce against me, that I may be enabled to prepare to yield obedience to the House while facts are fresh in my memory and witnesses and documents are in existence.
I am Sir
Your most obedt. Servt."

A look at Query 3 of Notes on the State of Virginia: Seaports

Query 3 is the shortest in the book:

"Qu. 3. a notice of the best seaports of the state, & how big are the vessels they
can receive?
            "Having no ports but our rivers and creeks, this query has been answered under the preceding one (Rivers)."

This is a misleadingly curt statement, since Hampton Roads is one of the largest natural harbors in the world, and Norfolk was Virginia’s largest and most promising city. The chief focus of Jefferson’s discussion of Virginia’s rivers, however, is their connection to the western back country; the eastern seaboard is of little interest to him. This is perhaps a  majority view in Virginia, but not a unanimous one; and it put him profoundly at odds with mercantile New England and the Middle Atlantic.

A look at Query 2 of Notes on the State of Virginia: Rivers

“2. Rivers”
The word “river” appears 170 times in Notes, more than any other noun. Indeed, rivers are central to Jefferson’s imperial view of Virginia. It is in this section that the state reclaims the expansiveness shorn from it in the recitation of limits in Query 1. If once all roads led to Rome, all rivers flow from Virginia. Jefferson follows the course of rivers no longer within Virginia’s borders, from Lake Michigan via the Mississippi to “the mines of Charcas, Zaccatecas & Potosi” and Mexico City. In Jefferson’s hands, nearly all of North America is in effect recast as Greater Virginia. For Jefferson, as for many of his fellow “countrymen,” the rivers are Virginia’s highways to the future, and connecting them with the great waterways of the West an essential part of its destiny. More immediately important as one of the functions of Notes, Jefferson is linking Virginia to the entire North American continent in the minds of his readers.

A look at Query 1 of Notes on the State of Virginia: The Boundaries of Virginia

“In the beginning,” asserted William Byrd II, “all America was Virginia.” In this first chapter, Jefferson delineates a State of Virginia that is far and away the largest territory of the United States, encompassing Kentucky (a part of Virginia until 1790) and West Virginia (made a state in 1863). By itself, this undivided Virginia is “one third larger than the islands of Great Britain and Ireland,” and comprises two-fifths of the entire American Republic. Though a seaboard state, Jefferson’s Virginia is essentially a land of the west: “of 121525 square miles,…79650,” or more than 65 per cent, “lie westward of the Allegany mountains.” Jefferson’s account of Virginia’s borders acknowledges the state’s cession of its claims northwest of the Ohio River, completed on 1 March 1784; but his discussion of its features (especially its rivers) frequently extends to the state’s pre-cession borders (and beyond). This first Query is devoted to delimiting the boundaries of the state; much of the rest of Notes proceeds to blur those borders.

The Chevalier de Chastellux visits Jefferson at Monticello, 1782

"Let me describe to you a man, not yet forty, tall, and with a mild and pleasing countenance, but whose mind and understanding are ample substitutes for every exterior grace. An American, who without ever having quitted his own country, is at once a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesmen. A senator of America, who sat for two years in that famous Congress which brought about the revolution; and which is never mentioned without respect, though unhappily not without regret: a governor of Virginia, who filled this difficult station during the invasions of Arnold, of Phillips, and of Cornwallis; a philosopher, in voluntary retirement from the world, and public business, because he loves the world, inasmuch only as he could flatter himself with being useful to mankind; and the minds of his countrymen are not yet in a condition either to bear the light, or to suffer contradiction. A mild and amiable wife, charming children, of whose education he himself takes charge, the house to embellish, great provisions to improve, and the arts and sciences to cultivate; these are what remain to Mr. Jefferson, after having played a principal character on the theater of the New World, and which he preferred to the honorable commission of Minister Plenipotentiary in Europe."

Jefferson overlooking Harpers Ferry, 25 October 1783

The passage of the Potomac, through the Blue Ridge, is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature. You stand on a very high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain a hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Potomac, seeking a passage also.

Harpers Ferry, watercolor by William Roberts c. 1807.
Jefferson had a lithograph of this painting.

The same view today, approximate time of year Jefferson visited.

In the moment of their junction, they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off to the sea. The first glance at this scene hurries our senses into the opinion, that this earth has been created in time; that the mountains were formed first; that the rivers began to flow afterwards; that, in this place particularly, they have been dammed up by the Blue Ridge of mountains, and have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley; that, continuing to rise, they have at length broken over at this spot, and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base. The piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their beds by the most powerful agents of nature, corroborate the impression. But the distant finishing, which Nature has given to the picture, is of a very different character. It is a true contrast to the foreground. It is as placid and delightful as that is wild and tremendous. For, the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach, and participate of the calm below. Here the eye ultimately composes itself; and that way, too, the road happens actually to lead. You cross the Potomac above its junction, pass along its side through the base of the mountain for three miles, its terrible precipices hanging in fragments over you, and within about twenty miles reach Fredericktown, and the fine country round that. This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic. Yet here, as in the neighborhood of the Natural Bridge, are people who have passed their lives within half a dozen miles, and have never been to survey these monuments of a war between rivers and mountains, which must have shaken the earth itself to its centre.

Jefferson severs ties to Charles Williamos

This letter--perhaps the angriest Jefferson ever sent--is interesting because he will later assert that Williamos' copy of Notes on the State of Virginia got into the hands of an unscrupulous French publisher after Williamos' death--which does not seem to be the case.

TJ to Charles Williamos, 7-7-1785:

“SIR

The inclosed letter will inform you how much reason I have to be dissatisfied with the liberty you have taken with my name. Did the humiliating light in which you have represented me concern me as an individual only, I should be disposed to neglect it, and to spare myself the pain of the present letter. But in my present situation my conduct and character is interesting to the nation whose servant I am. I have no right therefore to neglect this transaction The man upon whom the pecuniary injury falls has applied to me for a certificate that you were not authorized by me in what you did, of which he means to avail himself with the Police I have desired him to apply to you, with an assurance that if he did not obtain immediate satisfaction, I would give him the certificate desired. To remove the foundation of such an abuse hereafter I must pray a discontinuance of all further intercourse between us. I find this the more necessary as an opinion has got abroad, I know not how, that you are invested with some public character from the United States. It is not proper that their reputation should be staked on the conduct of any person with whom they have not really entrusted it I have, as was my duty, contradicted this opinion, on every proper occasion, by assuring those who had entertained it that you had not received this mark of confidence from our new republic and that you could not as yet be a citizen of it, as you had visited it only for two or three months since the peace, and were still as I had understood an officer on half pay in the British service, a condition inconsistent with the abjuration of allegiance to any foreign power which is necessary on becoming an American citizen. I rely on your concurrence in setting the public opinion to rights on this subject; and if I have been misinformed as to the circumstance of your being still on British pay I shall be glad to be set to rights myself.

I am Sir

Your humble servt.,” 

Oran-ootan

"The first difference which strikes us is that of colour....And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them as uniformly as is the preference of the Oran-ootan for the black women over those of his own species." Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), 252-253

Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, Paris, 14 January 1789

"How have you weathered this rigorous season, my dear friend? Surely it was never so cold before. To me who am an animal of a warm climate, a mere Oran-ootan, it has been a severe trial."

What happened on July 4?

Well, not this:

Jefferson met the young American painter John Trumbull in London in 1786 and invited him to visit him in Paris. He arrived that summer and took up Jefferson's invitation to stay with him at his lodgings. Jefferson was much impressed with Trumbull's first two studies for a series of paintings of great events of the Revolution: the Battle of Bunker Hill and the death of General Montgomery at the Battle of Quebec. He suggested another theme for Trumbull: the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It compressed into a single dramatic moment a process that in fact took place, a signature at a time, through most of the summer of 1776, as members of Congress found the time to put their signatures to the document. The original painting was given by Trumbull as one of the founding works of the Yale Art Gallery, where it is to this day.

Leadup to July 4, part 3

Why did John Adams believe Jefferson was the right person to write the Declaration of Independence? Why did he insist that "a Virginian should be at the head of this business," and not a New Englander?

The second question is relatively easy to answer. Adams and his fellow New Englanders descended from a Puritan stock that had been in more or less constant revolt against church and crown since the 1610s, and had already fought two revolutions--in the 1640s, and in 1688. To the rest of the states, Massachusetts in particular was pugnacious, intolerant, and chronically rebellious. It was their incapability of living within the Anglican establishment that brought them to America in the first place. It passed as a truism with these zealous folk that "resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

The southern states, by contrast, were far more lax about religious practice and belief, but they adhered to the Established Church--that is to say, the Church of England. To them, King George III was not merely the head of the state, but the head of the Church as well; and rebellion against his rule could look very much like rebellion against God.

There was really only one way that loyal Anglicans could be persuaded to take up arms against their King: they must be made to feel that, like his Stuart predecessors, he had placed himself in opposition to the true Church and to God. And that, paradoxically enough, is where Jefferson came in.

(To be continued)