(Note: the following monologue is composed largely of direct quotes from Thomas Jefferson, with some paraphrases and some subjective interpretation of what he might have thought and said. Sources were The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson by Daniel J. Boorstin, The Religion of Thomas Jefferson by Henry Wilder Foote, Jefferson: An Intimate Biography by Fawn Brodie, and various publications from the Unitarian Universalist Association).
"Somehow we have forgotten what the Greeks taught us centuries ago, that a hero is not perfect; indeed, what makes a hero interesting are the inner negotiations between that person's great strengths and obvious, inevitable weaknesses. Thomas Jefferson had both, but he is still, in my estimation, the Man of the Millennium." Ken Burns. Hmmmmm.
"Man of the Millennium!" Of course, I'm flattered to have been nominated by this Ken Burns, whomever he may be, and whatever TV and PBS might be, though I doubt I deserve the honor.
Your late President John F. Kennedy once said to a dinner party of Nobel Prize winners that "this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." I should be flattered, but I know for a truth that I am but a mystery wrapped in an enigma, which finds its home in a quandary.
Whether such a one can be the Man of the Millennium is for you to judge. Let me tell you something of the contradictions that I am.
I was born a proud Virginian in 1743, my father the essence of the self-educated Virginia pioneer - even elected a member of the House of Burgesses. Alas, he died when I was but 14. My mother, Jane Randolph, was a noble woman who raised two sons and six daughters on books, music, gracious living and her deep and abiding affection.
From these two sources I drew the values which were to do battle within me - the lure of politics and public responsibility, and the sense of family and private enjoyment; the attraction of democratic politics and the temptations of aristocratic living.
I entered William and Mary at 17, a too-serious student who felt guilt at having fun. I was admitted to the bar in 1764, but the practice of law bored me, and so I entered politics, elected to the House of Burgesses like my father before me. In 1771 I began to build Monticello, my life-long project and dream, where I spent ten years of unchecquered happiness with Martha, whom I married in 1772. It was a deep, but possessive love.
You know much of the rest. I was charged with writing the Declaration of Independence along with John Adams and Ben Franklin who wanted me to draft it. I at first refused, as I was the younger, and asked Adams, "Why will you not?"
I remember his words, "Reason, the first. You are a Virginian and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason the second. I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason the third, you can write ten times better than I can."
I finally acceded: "Well, if you are decided, I will do as well as I can."
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I took the last phrase from John Locke's "life, liberty and property." A subtle but important distinction.
I failed as Revolutionary War Governor of Virginia, my only real public failure, I think. After the war I resigned from the Congress and dropped out of politics for six years to care for my sick wife and children at Monticello - four of the six died in infancy. I felt old and decrepit, exhausted from the exertions of liberty. But my love of politics still burned within me.
My beloved Martha died in 1782, and once more I plunged into politics. I was Minister to France from 1784 to 1789, befriended the French Revolution and helped Lafayette draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man. While there the contradictions in me had full play. On her deathbed I had promised Martha I would never marry again.
But weak in flesh as I was, I had a love affair with Maria Cosway, painter and wife of an artist.
And surely you must have heard about one of my slaves, Sally Hemings, a mulatto who escorted my younger daughter to France. She bore me 7 children, each of whom was released from slavery at age 21. I would pay my whole life for this loving indiscretion. I never did marry, but I did love.
I was reluctant to engage in politics, but Washington brought me back as Secretary of State. How does one say "No" to the Father of our Country? Then the political wars began among Washington's "satellite sons," John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and myself. It was a painful period, but I am proud to have championed the Bill of Rights, beginning with its fateful words, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
But after a time I was fed up and returned to my Eden, Monticello, and began its remodeling. I had no ambition to govern men.
Washington said of me, "By God, he had rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of the world." He was right.
I re-entered politics to combat those timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty. The Democratic-Republican party nominated me to oppose my old rival, Federalist John Adams, but doubting my own adequacy, I lost, becoming Vice-President. I succeeded in 1800 - narrowly - the House choosing me over Aaron Burr. In 1804 I was overwhelmingly elected to that splendid misery.
I would have none of your contemporary ostentation. I walked to my own inaugural in rather simple garb and returned to Conrad and McMunn's boarding house to sit at my accustomed place, at the coldest end of the table.
I believed that government which governs least, governs best, a government too weak to aid the wolves yet strong enough to protect the sheep. I did negotiate the Louisiana Purchase without the Congress, repealed the hated Alien and Sedition Laws and helped extend the nation to the west. Mine was hardly a passive administration.
I treasured my retirement at Monticello at age 66 after having been in politics almost continuously for 40 years. I had opportunity to cultivate the mind. I knew Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian and Anglo-Saxon, and at age 71 read Plato's Republic in Greek, finding that philosopher greatly overrated. I detested Plato as the patron saint of abstraction, Plato, who only used the name of Socrates to cover the whimsies of his own brain.
It was a time for reflection about life and death, right and wrong, God and humanity. On my tombstone I had inscribed my proudest accomplishments: "Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Liberty and Father of the University of Virginia."
But you need to know my views on ethics and religion if you are to reach a verdict on whether I am to be the "man of the millennium." I know your historians have debated my attitude and actions toward the infamous practice of slavery, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other.
I stopped the importation of slaves and the extension of slavery to the western territories. I drafted a bill for the abolition of slavery. It died for lack of one vote. The voice of a single individual would have prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country. Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, and Heaven was silent in that awful moment.
But it was clear from the beginning that it would be difficult to end a practice so deeply ingrained in America. As for my own slaves - some 200 of them, I know it was not enough that I treated them well or that I loved them and they loved me. I know this now. Though I detested the practice and agonized over it, I could not bring myself to release my slaves and end the existence in which I found so much meaning. It is a blot upon my record and I cannot make amends.
You may find my religious beliefs more congenial, if controversial, for I am called the most anti-clerical president. A child of the Enlightenment; my theology was deist - I believed in a "clock-maker God," a Cosmic Architect who designed the universe we know as a great clock with intricate and precise rules for nature and for ethics. Our task was to learn to follow them, expecting no divine intervention. It was not to Cotton Mather's God of the Red Sea or the Resurrection, but to Nature and Nature's god that I appealed - the Supreme Builder of the world.
You know, of course, about my letter to the Danbury Baptists when I called for a wall of separation between church and state. I had seen too much of theocracy in Europe and did not want it repeated here. I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over the other. I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.
Dogmatic religion I believe to be the charlatanism of the mind. I detested the demoralizing dogmas of John Calvin. Jesus for me was no Saviour but a moral reformer.
Of course for this heretical belief I was accused of being an atheist. I called the Gospel of John the rantings of a madman; the testaments were more about the real words of Jesus rather than the supernatural rubbish added by clergy to make religion so confusing it would require a priesthood to explain.
To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which Jesus wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines. His parentage was obscure; his condition poor; his education null; his natural endowments great; his life correct and innocent; he was meek, benevolent, patient, firm, disinterested, and of the sublimest eloquence.
And so, during my presidency I began in the evening at the White House compiling a "wee-little book" as I called it, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, a collection of his teachings made by cutting them out of the Bible and pasting them in my own book, while dispatching the supernatural and the miraculous.
A more beautiful or more precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from those who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said or saw.
They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer, were he to return to earth, would not recognize one feature. I tried to extract a diamond from a dunghill. In the 1800 campaign I was accused of writing a new Bible and would, if elected, substitute it for the old one. It was later called The Jefferson Bible.
In 1816 I wrote to Mrs. Samuel Harrison: "....I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wish to change another's creed. I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives...for it is in our lives and not from our words, that our religion must be read.
But this does not satisfy the priesthood! They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest.
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God.... Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility; and he who knows most, knows best how little he knows. But fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
I know you are asking, was I a Unitarian. Yes, - of sorts. Of course there were as yet few organized Unitarian churches, but in Philadelphia I often listened to the preaching of the Unitarian minister - and scientist - Joseph Priestly and believed his views constituted a breeze that began to be felt.
In later letters I wrote that the population of my neighborhood is too slender and is too much divided into other sects to maintain any one preacher well. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know. I must therefore be contented to be a Unitarian by myself, although I know there are many around me who would gladly become so, if once they could hear the questions fairly stated. So confident was I of the truth and practicality of this liberal faith that I wrote, I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian. Ah, what a poor prophet I was.
In 1824 I wrote to John Davis of Massachusetts, thanking him for the copy of the Rev. Mr. Bancroft's Unitarian sermons. I have read them with great satisfaction, and always rejoice in efforts to restore us to primitive Christianity, in all the simplicity in which it came from the lips of Jesus. I decried the metaphysical abstractions of Athanasius, and the maniac ravings of Calvin, tinctured plentifully with the foggy dreams of Plato. However, I concluded - not wishing to give offense to those who differ from me in opinion, nor to be implicated in a theological controversy, I have to pray that this letter may not get into print, I to assure you of my great respect and good will.
I began an autobiography in 1820, but I gave it up after 60 pages, saying to those who encouraged me, "I am already tired of talking about myself." I spent my latter years in prodigious letter-writing about the affairs of state - reconciling myself to that other Unitarian statesman John Adams. Was it Providence that we both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence?
Well, there is the story of one Thomas Jefferson, nominated by some perhaps foolish soul as "Man of the Millennium." It may help you to judge of me by these words I wrote to my daughter:
"Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for, for none of us - no, not one - is perfect, and were we to love none who had imperfections, this world would be a desert for our love."
John Adams once asked me, "Would you go back to your cradle and live over again your 70 years? I replied: 'I say yes, I think with you that it is a good world on the whole, that it has been framed on a principle of benevolence, and more pleasure than pain dealt out to us. I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. And so may you steer your bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. Farewell!
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