Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History

The book I picked for our third president is Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie, review initially aired on May 31, 2021, on YouTube, but you can watch on Rumble or listen on PodBean.

So, this was an interesting book.  When Mrs. Brodie wrote this book in the 1970’s, she did what no Jefferson historian had done before: Treated as primary sources and accepted as absolute truth the testimony of Madison Hemmings and Israel Jefferson, two former Jefferson slaves who were interviewed in the late 19th century and provided first-hand accounts of the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. This completely changed this historical story of Jefferson and Brodie was decried as being no true historian for listening to gossip and daring to treat the words of black men, former slaves no less, as worthy of inclusion in the Jefferson discussion.  While Sally Hemings was a known quantity in the late 18th and early 19th century, generally historians have followed the denials of the Jefferson family and treated James Callender’s stories as libelous slander, the angry attempts of a known blackmailer to extort more money from Jefferson. Additionally, Brodie dove into Jefferson’s most famous letter, a love letter written to Marie Cosway, and used those writings to work through their love affair. So, these primary sources have been around and known since the 19th century. But up until Mrs. Brodies book, they were treated as less than reputable because the sources, former slaves and women, were deemed less than creditable by historians of the 19th and 20th centuries.

With that background on sources in mind, let’s jump into this. Basic biography, Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, in Shadwell, VA to Peter Jefferson and Jane Randolph. Jefferson had nine siblings and was left in charge of the family at a fairly young age, when his father died when Jefferson was only 14. And while Jefferson inherited basically everything, due to primogeniture being the law in VA at the time, he was ordered to settle sums of money on each of his siblings as they came of age. Now, you get the impression from reading this book that his mother was a bit of an oedipal mother.  Nothing in writing survived to explicitly back that belief, but Jefferson, while nominally in charge of the family, in reality had no power as his mother decided everything.  Additionally, he did not marry until he was 27, which was fairly uncommon for that time. Further proof, if you will, of the oedipal nature of their relationship is Jefferson’s preference for married women. In fact, of all the names linked romantically with Jefferson’s throughout his life, the only one who had not been either widowed or was currently married when the interest struck, was Sally Hemings. 

So, he met his wife, Martha Wayles Skelton in 1770, and Martha was already widowed with a son, John, who died very young. They married in 1772 and had 6 children, of whom only the first born, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson and Marie “Polly” Jefferson, survived to adulthood.  It seems that Martha Jefferson was very jealous of Jefferson’s political aspirations, as he was constantly returning home to Montecello, although this could also have been a result of genuine affection for each other and the fact that Martha did not handle pregnancy well, falling very ill after each delivery, and eventually dying of childbed fever after their last child Lucy was born in 1782.

Politically, Jefferson was elected to the continental congress as a representative of VA and wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, with the strong sponsorship of John Adams, as mentioned during last month’s book review on John Adams. After serving in the continental congress, Jefferson was elected governor of VA and served from 1779 to 1781, where he experienced politically difficulty as a result of the war, when the British invaded and he fled the capital. Following the death of his wife, Jefferson was appointed minister to France in 1785. Following Martha’s death, Jefferson placed his two youngest daughters, Polly and Lucy, in the care of his sister Mary Epps, and then took his oldest daughter Martha with him to France, where he enrolled her in a convent school, which was an odd choice Jefferson was notably not religious.  Not an atheist, he just had no regard for organized religion. But he wanted Martha to be well educated and a suitable conversationalist for himself, and so he insisted on the very best education for her.

While stationed in Paris, Jefferson met Marie Cosway, who was in an unhappy and abusive marriage, and evidence definitely suggests an affair, although if eventually fizzled as a result of Marie’s own extremely religious propensities, which did not allow for easy extra-marital affairs.  While the affair fizzled, Marie wrote several times to Jefferson throughout the remainder of his life; however, he did not respond. It seems once Jefferson determined an affair was over, he saw no reason to draw it out, and simply stopped communications. However, it is also possible that he cut the affair with Marie as a result of his own burgeoning affection for Sally Hemings, who had accompanied his youngest surviving child, Polly, when Polly joined Jefferson in France.

Now, the relationship with Sally is a head scratcher.  It’s all too easy to dismiss it from the knowledgeable position of the 21st century as being a forty year sexual assault, given that Sally joined Jefferson in Paris when he was 44, and remained with him until his death at 83, and as his slave, she was not in a position to say no to any demands he made upon her.  Except for an interesting historical tidbit. Sally crossed Jeffersons path while he was stationed in Paris France.  French law made slavery illegal, even slaves belonging to diplomats, which means from the time she set foot on French soil, Sally was free. And by the time Jefferson’s posting in France ended, she knew it. So did her brother James, who had accompanied Jefferson to learn French cooking. Neither of them had to return to the United States and guaranteed slavery, and in fact could have stayed in France and sought their own way in the world, probably becoming 18th century celebrities in France. Jefferson convinced both to return with him.  James he promised freedom to, once James had trained a replacement for cook. Sally, he promised that any children born to her would be freed at the age of 21. Near as we can tell, he kept both promises, freeing James in 1796. And all of Sally’s children were freed at 21, except for the youngest, Eston, who was freed on Jefferson’s death due to a provision in his will.  However, while the two youngest, Madison and Eston were freed as a provision of Jefferson’s will, Madison having just turned 21, the four eldest seemed to have been freed when they walked off of Montecello, and Jefferson declined to pursue them. So, not exactly as promised to Sally in Paris.

Now, aside from the Hemings affair, Jefferson was a study in contradictions on the matter of slavery.  When he was a young revolutionary, he strongly advocated for freedom for all.  He believed slaves should be emancipated then sent to live in their own colony away from their former white owners, to prevent bloodshed, an idea that I think is resurrected by Lincoln. But as he aged, Jefferson reversed himself, gradually, and believed that slaves were like children who needed to be cared for. This despite the number of highly skilled craftsmen of Montecello, all of whom were slaves, all of whom were more than capable of caring for themselves.

Jefferson was a spendthrift, all his life, and continuously racked up enormous debts, always expecting the next bumper crop to pay them off, then failing to pay the debt when the crop failed to materialize at the end of the next harvest. His daughter Marth’s husband, Thomas Mann Randolph, was also a spendthrift. However, the couple were quite prolific in coupling, with Martha giving birth to 12 children, of whom 11 survived to adulthood, all of whom filtered through Montecello to live off of Jefferson while Randolph experienced periods of insanity and rage fueled outbursts.  Not gonna lie, I kind of wonder if his rage fueled outbursts were the result of constantly being compared to Jefferson, and constantly coming up short. I’m a daddy’s girl, and it took me a while to realize that the reason my husband would tense up whenever I said let’s ask my dad, was the implication that I didn’t think he could do it. Once I shut up and let him do it, we started really soaring as a couple.  One wonders if Martha had had more faith in her husband, would things have ended differently?

What would not have ended differently is the death of Jefferson’s youngest surviving daughter Marie Polly Epps. While Martha was the spitting image of her father, tall and strong and easily capable of bearing the 12 children she had, Marie was the image of her mother.  Only 2 of her children survived childbirth, and Marie herself died of childbed fever at 25.

Sally Hemings was also capable of giving birth to healthy children who survived and bore Jefferson at least four who survived to adulthood.  I did find it interesting that while  Mrs. Brodie took at face value and accepted as first person testimony the recollections of Madison Hemings, she insists that the child Sally conceived in Paris and bore in VA survived to adulthood and was one of the slaves freed by walking away from Montecello; however Madison’s recollections clearly state that this oldest child, named Tom, died in infancy. So, there’s some historical mystery there. What is not a mystery is that, while Martha Jefferson Randolph insisted to all her children, and the family denied up in to the 20th century that Jefferson had gotten children on Sally Hemings, the testimony of Madison Hemings was born out as truth at the end of the 20th century thanks to modern advancements in DNA, which conclusively proved the Hemings story as true, and vindicated Mrs. Brodies use of these resources in her own research.

This book was really good, it glossed over some of Jefferson’s more public moments, his political career, and time in the White House, in favor of this behind the scenes look at a very private man. It seems as if Jefferson suffered the introvert’s dilemma, the need to be publicly lauded and adored, while remaining very private and reclusive. Also, Jefferson seemed to be a man who lived in the moment. When he was at Montecello, he loved the country life, and extolled the virtues of pastoralism. When he was in the city, whether it was Philadelphia, Paris, or Washington DC, he immersed himself in politics. I personally remain ambiguous about Jefferson.  His contradictory record on slavery remains a blight on this otherwise great man’s record. But he did accomplish great things in his lifetime, not least of which was the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the nation for the comparatively low cost of $2million, and sending out Lewis and Clark to scout the continent.  When the British burned the library of Congress during the war of 1812, Jefferson sold his own library to rebuild this institution, at a loss to himself as the books were worth more than he sold them for, and he certainly needed the money at this time to pay off his debts, which at the time of his death on July 4, 1826, were in excess of $100,000. Ultimately, he was able to free 5 slaves in his will, the two Hemings children already mentioned, Eston and Madison, Burwell Hemings, nephew to Sally and Jeffersons body servant, John Hemings who was one of Sally’s half-brothers and the cabinet maker at Montecello, and Joe Fosset, who was Sally’s nephew and the blacksmith at Montecello. Sally was freed two years after Jefferson’s death by Martha.  The rest of the Montecello slaves, the property itself, and the surrounding lands, were sold to pay for Jefferson’s excessive deaths.

 And that’s it for this week. I’m still confused as to how I feel about Jefferson.  After I read John Adams, I knew I still had mad respect for that highly principled man.  After George Washington, I felt more empathy for him as a human. But Jefferson knew and always believed slavery to be evil.  And when a legislator, he fought many fights trying to secure freedom.  But in his twilight years, when his own popularity was highest, he gave up the fight. And I don’t know what to make of that, especially given that his own children stood to inherit the status of slave from their mother, Sally.