Thomas Jefferson --- Revolutionary, by Kevin R.C. Gutzman

Americans have made quite a cult of the Founding Fathers, the political and military leaders who led the Atlantic colonies to throw off British rule – a remarkable achievement that often is used to support the similar idea of American exceptionalism: that America is a country unlike any other, thanks in large part to the wise choices made by the equally exceptional Fathers.  

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that at least some of the Fathers were pretty amazing. George Washington, for instance, had exactly the aristocratic character that was needed to lead a new republic in the 18^thcentury. But his ability to charm and impress his contemporaries is now entirely mysterious to us.  If he showed up in modern America he would have no hope of a political career.  It's hard to imagine what kind of role he could find in public affairs.  Aristocratic, eccentric rich guy, perhaps a shadowy investor in cutting edge tech firms?

An amazing FF that we can partially understand is Thomas Jefferson.  He gets credit for a wide selection of contributions to the American character and American institutions over more than 50 years of public life.  We appreciate and praise his constructive efforts, the importance of which is pretty obvious (freedom of religion); what we wonder is how he addressed all of those issues. 

Kevin Gutzman may not have an answer to this question, but he gives a pretty good analysis of what he considers Jefferson's key achievements.  This is not a full biography – there are good biographies and they are massive –it's a portrait.  Gutzman compares Jefferson to a pointillist painter who created a political philosophy by dealing with one issue at a time.  Gutzman himself has a pointillist approach in describing Jefferson, and it works for him.

Gutzman identifies five areas that Jefferson dealt with in the course of  his career:  Federalism (his opposition to centralized power),  Freedom of Conscience (his opposition to  established churches), Colonization (what might be better called Deportation, meaning the elimination of racial conflict by eliminating the slaves), Assimilation (of the Native population) and "Mr. Jefferson's University" (the most important piece in Jefferson's desire for public education).  Put those 5 issues together and you find yourself treading surprisingly familiar paths through a political landscape that maybe has changed less in the past 200+ years than we might first think.  I am particularly thinking of the issue of "federalism," meaning not  centralism (as it does in Canada) but quite the opposite, which Jefferson supported because he believed in the legitimacy of the separate states, with their differing institutions and "values" as people say today.

One issue that Gutzman says little about is Jefferson's relationship with his slave mistress, Sally Hemmings.  It's a tough question for an alumnus of Jefferson's own university, but I do have to wonder if she would have been deported, if colonization of slaves and ex-slaves had ever taken place.  Is this so ridiculous a question?  I think this is just one way that the contradictions of the Founding Fathers' position can be expressed.

So:  a book of reasonable length, well-written, with the power to inspire serious contemplation  about both Jefferson's time and America's present.

Jefferson the Anglo-Saxonist

Jeff contemplates Jefferson at Williamsburg:

Poring over a 15th-century legal tract, Jefferson encountered a modern preface arguing that a student should learn “Saxon” to understand the essence of English law. Already intrigued by languages, the young man was hooked; Stanley R. Hauer points out (in “Thomas Jefferson and the Anglo-Saxon Language”) that the future third president of the United States collected Old English textbooks, painstakingly copied footnotes in Anglo-Saxon script into a 1778 legal treatise, and made sure that the University of Virginia was the first American institution to offer Anglo-Saxon language courses when it opened in 1825. According to Hauer, Jefferson’s grasp of Anglo-Saxon was weak—often he couldn’t distinguish it from Middle English—but if you’ve studied Old English, or even if you’ve read Beowulf in a college class, its presence was partly Jefferson’s doing.

Jefferson’s obsession with Old English resonated far beyond the English department. During his five years in Wythe’s study, he imaginatively plunged into what historians have dubbed the “Saxon myth,” the common belief among Whigs of his era that the best English institutions—parliament, trial by jury, common law—were the unbroken legacy of freedom-loving Germanic tribes who’d crept into Britain as early as the fifth century. (This idea was itself the legacy of 16th- and 17th-century reformers who’d tried to prove that both the Church of England and Parliament were continuations of ancient, primitive democracy.)

In letters and treatises, Jefferson trumpeted his belief that America had directly inherited liberty from the Anglo-Saxons. His strongest statement on the matter was surely his (unsuccessful) push to decorate the Great Seal of the United States with the figures of Horsa and Hengist, “the Saxon chiefs from whom we claim the honor of being descended, and whose political principles and form of government we have assumed.”

I suppose we are the political heirs of the Anglo-Saxons, since Jefferson believed it to be so when he helped establish our republic.

Read the rest here.

Image: yes, that's H&H!