Thomas Jefferson and the Character of a Revolutionary

Was Thomas Jefferson a revolutionary? He was a very integral and influential figure during the American Revolution as he famously penned its rallying cry, the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence is a document that has an impenetrable mystique attached to it; its legend is entrenched in the story of the United States of America. In fact, other than gender bias much criticism about that document has almost nothing to do with its content but with its creator. That is Jefferson’s only saving grace, as venerated as he was in public life as a political figure, his private life disallows him any claim on the vaunted title of revolutionary, a figure to be lauded with the social and political gravitas that leers at tourists from every souvenir stand on the planet. He cannot be considered someone who fights against tyranny and under-representation. Thomas Jefferson is not a revolutionary but that does not matter because Thomas Jefferson never behaved out of character. In fact, Thomas Jefferson was simply enacting the hypocritical and self-serving character of a lot of powerful nineteenth-century U.S. citizens.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay Character, “Suppose a slaver on the coast of Guinea should take on board a gang of negroes which should contain a person of the stamp of Toussaint L’Ouverture: or, let us fancy, under these swarthy masks he has a gang of Washington’s in chains. When they arrive at Cuba, will the relative order of the ship’s company be the same? Is there nothing but rope and iron? Is there no love, no reverence? Is there never a glimpse of right in a poor slave-captain’s mind; and cannot these be supposed available to break or elude or in any manner overmatch the tension of an inch of iron ring?” (Emerson, 368). Toussaint L’Ouverture, one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution and George Washington, one of the leaders of the American Revolution, are being imbued with Emerson’s version of character, which is an essence that can survive any situation because it is innate, character always endures, and fights. L’Ouverture and Washington are persons of character according to Emerson because they both fought for and attained liberty.

Emerson uses two revolutionaries as his example of character because revolutionaries fight for a purpose, the promulgated “bigger than themselves,” “for the betterment of society” for “the liberty of the people” narrative. A man with the boldness, will, and strength of character to shout down wrong in the face of powerful and daunting odds, who can galvanize a people under a single noble cause, undoubtedly, has character emanating from him, character that would be noticed and admired by anyone.

Conversely, men of the character of L’Ouverture and Washington, men who lead their countrymen valiantly and proudly to victory in brutal battles for liberty are not always lauded, a revolutionary can soon become more oppressive than the system overturned. Sometimes the behaviors and actions they exhibit in their personal lives, in their private sphere, outweigh their contributions to the proliferation of the very public revolutionary ideals. To take a case in point, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, a prominent figure in the French Revolution is not afforded the same reverence as Washington or even L’Ouverture. Emerson writes at the very beginning of the essay “when he has told all his facts about Mirabeau, they do not justify his estimate of his genius” (365). Mirabeau was mired in scandal as posthumously it was discovered that he was an agent of King Louis XVI and the Austrian enemies of France and many believed that nullified his impact on the French Revolution. Publically, Mirabeau was a well renowned hero the ultimate countrymen but in his private life he was a traitor, the quintessential double agent. Along the same lines, Emerson may be alluding to Mirabeau’s propensity to plagiarize. J.J. Chevallier writes, “An omnivorous reader and always with pen in hand, he had made innumerable excerpts from all sorts of books, and drew upon them with no scruples about plagiarism when he wrote his own works” (Chevallier, 88). Plagiarism, especially for a writer, and although it is prevalent, is tantamount to murder or death, and only because the writer is not alive to write about it. What plagiarism is truly about is taking credit for someone else’s work and a man of character would not even dream of doing so.

Thomas Jefferson like Mirabeau was a writer, and like George Washington he was also a very prominent figure in the American Revolution. Actually, he is arguably the most influential member of the group of men considered to be the founders of the United States of America because of the grand importance of the Declaration of Independence and what it signifies in United States history. A man with the stature and importance to create a document that became apart of the essential fabric of American life has of course faced many critics of not only his public life in politics but also his personal life in his Virginia oasis Monticello. Despite both Jefferson and Washington being slave masters (and the supposed detestation of the institution) their images as beacons of democracy are hardly scathed. Jefferson was not only a slave² master; he was infamously involved in a long-term relationship with one of his slaves, a woman named Sally Hemming.

Although, there is historical discourse that argues that the relationship between the slave, Heming, and slave master, Jefferson, was consensual, like what is argued in “Fawn Brodie’s Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History a psychoanalytic case that contended Jefferson and Heming loved each other for almost four decades” (Lee, 501). Nonetheless, a slave cannot descent from their master, so at the very least their relationship is sinisterly coercion; at it’s most despicable it is a lifetime of rape, for Heming. Thomas Jefferson is also a very prominent rapist. The moral reprehensibility of betraying ones country, which means family and friends as well, versus being a slaver and rapist; which should preclude a person from any sort of historical revelry? History is best utilized to reward all research, and it is more acceptable to rape than to betray ones country, if Mirabeau and Jefferson are examples. Mirabeau was disgraced by what was private then became public, Jefferson has surely been criticized but this society has not done anything to denounce or demean the conflation of Jefferson’s political views, politics as in laws he wrote or voted for, and his private exploits on his Monticello slave plantation.

In addition, Jefferson was a private slave owner but it was public knowledge that he owned slaves. If Emerson’s slave ship docked in Virginia Beach, and Jefferson was on the shore waiting to purchase more slaves, would he have the character to see Heming’s character? Would he recognize the character he loved, according to Brodie, for forty years after the death of his wife, Martha Jefferson? Certainly, Jefferson would cut her chains: he would set her free so that he could bask in the glow of such a character-driven woman, a woman who helped ease the dread and loneliness he felt after his wife’s passing. They would live as a free couple. If Jefferson was in love with Heming for forty years, he must have had some adoration or attachment to her character. Would he use his public renown to create laws against miscegenation, so that other slavers could feel the love he felt for Sally Heming, if they were not already involved in similar relationships?³

Thomas Jefferson answers those questions in Query XIV in the Notes on the State of Virginia, “Slaves pass by descent and dower as lands do. Where the descent is from a parent, the heir is bound to pay an equal share of their value in money to each of his brothers and sisters. Slaves, as well as lands, were entailable during the monarchy; but, by an act of the first republican assembly, all donees in tail, present and future, were vested with the absolute dominion of the entailed subject” (Jefferson, 44). Jefferson was never anti-slavery. He knew that to keep his wealth and influence, as well as keep the power balance in his relationship with Sally Heming, he had to ensure that the institution of slavery would persist. Thomas Jefferson used the stature he gained from penning the Declaration to ensure, like Abraham Lincoln said in Charleston, Illinois in 1858, “the superior position assigned to the white race.”⁴

Furthermore, when Haiti, a former slave colony won their independence from France; with the much help from an Emersonian man of character, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Jefferson led a Congress that was very contentious with Haiti. Jefferson acquiesced to policies encouraged by the slave states to impose an embargo of trade and to not recognize Haiti as a sovereign nation. The slave states were deathly afraid that the Haitian Revolution would inspire slaves to revolt on their plantations. Similarly, Jefferson could not be a slaver and also openly support a nation of former slaves. European nations also refused to recognize Haiti when the new nation declared its independence in 1804 (Matthewson, 1999). In a short biography on Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Christopher Hitchens notes that Jefferson was regressive or counterrevolutionary in his treatment of Haiti as he expressed extreme ambivalence (Hitchens, 2009).

This is not out of character for Jefferson nor the country. Doctor Mark D. McGarvie professor of law at William and Mary’s University, writes in his essay In perfect accordance with his character: Thomas Jefferson, Slavery, and the Law (1999) “Studying Jefferson’s approach to slavery from an ideological perspective helps to explain his refusal to work more aggressively for abolition. Jefferson believed that his ideological position inhibited greater action. Because the idea of a social contract involved compromise, the sacrifice of some natural rights was necessary in order to secure others in a societal context. Jefferson’s conception of American democracy required that all citizens subordinate themselves to the rule of law. As American law came to embody the values and goals of republicanism, it too served to restrain those who sought to use institutional authority to abolish slavery” (145). Despite the rhetorical wavering of Thomas Jefferson on slavery in his writing, which was apart of his public persona as well, in practice, he was a slaver and there is no ambiguity attached to it. That is not a standard of historicism or applied to him anachronistically, his theorizing about some democratic society, was built with people already in bondage. Jefferson’s wavering is a deception to obscure his own personal gains from slavery. McGarvie continues, “In this ideological framework the men who shaped and applied the law were compelled to do so in accordance with the wishes of the public” (145). Jefferson blamed society it was the public who demanded the continuance of slavery.

Thomas Jefferson being a grand architect of some of the society’s most pivotal documents used being a private slaveholder to influence his politics on the nation. The relationship between his public and private life are not obscured they are dependent on each other. Thomas Jefferson as with the other the founders and the culture as a whole can openly condemn the institution of slavery and all of the degradations it wrought and still maintain and propagate the institution of slavery and it will not obscure any semblance of an essence of character as the United States society understood the notion (or even considered it). The character of the people in the society ordains it even though Jefferson wrote the drafts of many law documents that sanctioned slavery, even though most citizens did not own slaves (in the “North” a lot of citizens were most likely employed by an industry that was dependent on the materials of slave labor and in the “South” a lot of citizens were employed on slave plantations). Any arguments that focus on the amount of slave-owning citizens are purposely obscuring the economic, social, and the political impact of chattel slavery on the overall prosperity of the nation.

The nearly two centuries of writing that attempts to display Thomas Jefferson as an example of a complicated moral conundrum does not obscure his character. If that slave ship comes ashore in Cuba and Thomas Jefferson was on the shore waiting for it to dock so he could take his pick and a slave woman of Sally Heming’s caliber, quality, and character were to disembark would Jefferson, a leader of revolutionaries, a man of character himself be able to free her? Sally Heming would remain in chains and a free society will erect monuments put him on their money, and celebrate him for it.