Written by
He was fluent in French; an amateur botanist, inventor, and architect. He was standoffish and not especially fond of speaking in public. And like many famous men, he kept contradictory opinions in imperfect harmony.
Lately, I can't escape the feeling that people are recklessly quoting Thomas Jefferson. Not every founding opinion is a pearl, and Jefferson's vast opinions are no exception. The sin, easy in this culture, where all lay claim to the founders' legacy, is filiopiety.
The latest outrage against Jefferson’s legacy came at a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There William Kostric appeared with a loaded weapon (New Hampshire is one of many open-carry states), sporting a sign that read “It is time to water the tree of liberty”—an allusion to Jefferson’s “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Quoting Jefferson, a man known for an almost morbid affection for political violence, is always tricky business. Jefferson feared the spread of the slave power through territorial expansion, yet he authored the single largest territorial acquisition—the Louisiana Purchase—in U.S. history. He was ambivalent about the role of government, yet served as a member of the House of Burgesses, governor of Virginia, and president—proof of Disraeli’s statement, two decades later, that a “conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.” And, most troubling, he was a slave-owner who fathered multiple children with one of his slaves, while espousing liberty to anyone who would listen.
Jefferson’s “Tree of Liberty” letter was written from Paris in November of 1787: it answers charges in the British press that the American colonies, post-Revolution, were sliding toward anarchy. And many of these passages can still only be read hyperbolically and fit, properly, in the category of Jefferson apologetics—many too dated and embarrassing to hold-up as models of current behavior. Few, for example, would cite Jefferson’s attitudes on race in Notes on the State of Virginia as relevant to today’s discussions, unless as contrast to how attitudes have changed or how people who should know better are often captive to the prejudices of time and place.
Maybe the most useful advice I was given, as a history undergraduate, was a warning against judging historical figures according to contemporary standards of morality. I keep Jefferson’s portrait, the presidential portrait painted by Rembrandt Peale, above my home workspace. I’ve often argued that the America we currently live in is far removed from any America that could have lived in his mind—even allowing for Jefferson’s fertile imagination. And, when the history of our own generation is written, the best we can hope for is a fair, generous narrative—one that keeps our own prejudices and quirks in perspective. Jefferson’s appeal, at least to me, is one of internal conflict, largely unresolved: it makes him the most modern of our founders.