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UNDERSTANDING THOMAS JEFFERSON   by E.M. Halliday     

Review by Mark Webster  

          April 13^th was Thomas Jefferson’s 258^th birthday.  I celebrated his birthday by studying the two hundred fifty very readable pages in Halliday’s new book, Understanding Thomas Jefferson.  This book is about the private Jefferson: the fatherless boy of fourteen, the studious young scholar, the young lawyer in backwoods Virginia, and the young diplomat in decadent Paris. 

          Jefferson suffered the usual awkwardness of youth: His first love, Rebecca Burwell, ditched him for a fellow student.  In 1768 he “offered love” to Betsey Walker, the attractive wife of a friend who was away on government business.  As a middle-aged widower he broke his wrist in Paris while showing off in front of Maria Cosway, the sexy wife of a foppish portrait painter.  In short, Jefferson had all the wooing skills of Clarence Thomas. 

          His one success in love occurred on January 1, 1772, when he married Martha Skelton, the twenty three-year old widow of Bathurst Skelton, and, more significantly, the daughter of a lusty planter named John Wayles.  It is through Jefferson’s father-in-law Wayles that the Hemings affair begins.  Wayles’ first wife died shortly after Martha’s birth.  His second wife bore him four more daughters and died.  His third wife, the widow of Martha’s first husband’s oldest brother, died within a year of marrying Wayles.  He then bred with Betty Hemings, a half-white slave who bore him six children.  Sally Hemings was one of these six, which means she was 75% white, and the half sister of Martha.  Along with numerous debts, Sally Hemings became the property of Thomas Jefferson at Wayles’ death in 1774.  Jefferson and Martha produced six children, but only two daughters, Patsy and Polly, lived to become adults.  On her deathbed Martha forced Jefferson to swear he would never remarry.  Jefferson was only thirty-nine. 

          While Jefferson and Patsy were in Paris in 1787, Jefferson sent for Polly so he could send the two girls to a good school. Sally Hemings, a fourteen-year old light skinned beauty who favored Martha, accompanied Polly on the journey.  Even Abigail Adams, a no-nonsense judge of people, thought Sally remarkable.  What happened next is the source of much historic and scientific investigation, but it appears Jefferson and Sally began a long-term sexual relationship. 

               The little family returned to Monticello in December 1789.  In February 1790 Patsy married her cousin, Thomas Mann Randolph, in an apparent attempt to get away from home.  Sally became pregnant at this time.  For the remainder of his long life Jefferson never  left American soil or Sally’s company.  Hemings bore six children, all conceived at times that Jefferson would have been in residence at Monticello and all six were born at Monticello. 

          If fathered by Jefferson, the children would have been “octoroons,” another way off saying they were 87.5% white.  To all appearances they were white and all but one eventually lived as a white.  In other words, Jefferson owned white slaves who were his own flesh and blood.  Why couldn’t he marry Sally and free his own children?  The man who stood up to the British feared what his neighbors would think. 

          Jefferson knew slavery was an “abominable crime” and feared God’s judgment.  He even drafted statutes forbidding the importation of slaves into Virginia.  Yet he could not abandon slaves because he could not curb his consumption of luxury items.  As a lawyer he could have lived well without slaves.  In order to live the lifestyle atop his mountain to which he felt entitled, others had to raise the crops, take the commodities to market, and raise the cash he had no time to bother with.  Slaves eased his life, worked his property, and labored for his pursuit of happiness.  

          Halliday paints a convincing picture of Jefferson as slave master driving teen-aged slaves to become more productive in his failing nail factory.  His farm operation was always in debt and on the edge of being financially out of control.  In desperation Jefferson even ordered runaway slaves flogged.  To Jefferson liberty was freedom from King George III; to his slaves liberty was freedom from Jefferson.    

          Jefferson was a racist who found the Negroid features of Africans repugnant.  He favored segregation and the deportation of slaves.  To his friend Lafayette’s bewilderment, as late as 1820 he even favored spreading slavery into the new states.  He believed it would be cruel to liberate ex-slaves because he thought they lacked the necessaries to thrive in a free society.  He did not believe former slaves and slave owners and their descendants could ever live under one government without violence and suspicion. 

          Nevertheless, Jefferson’s accomplishments as President are remarkable, and, as Halliday says, Jefferson deserves his place on Mt. Rushmore.  However, I believe libertarians should look north to Franklin, every Adams, and Paine for our heroes of liberty.  Halliday makes the correct observation that the secret to our country’s greatness as a world leader is our “amazing melange” of the views of Hamilton and Jefferson.  Despite Hamilton’s partiality to an unconstitutionally strong central government, his reliance on luck and pluck provides the more favorable culture for the propagation of liberty for all than Jefferson’s agricultural tyranny over many.  Hamilton was a self-made man who lived and died on his own terms.  Jefferson was little more than a slave to comfort and custom.