| Episodes |
Sarah Randolph's "beautiful domestic" Jefferson
Jennifer Markham and Thomas Potenza
[1] Following the revelation of James Thomson Callender's bombshell about Black Sal in 1802, the character assassinations launched against Thomas Jefferson were virulent. Although Jefferson himself remained aloof, opting for the "no comment" approach as his critics readily demolished his character, several of his family members resented the slanderous remarks, but only one decided to adopt a more aggressive strategy and publicly defend him. Her name was Sarah Randolph, Jefferson's great-granddaughter, who in 1871 published The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson, a volume composed of various correspondences between family and friends. Woven between the letters are commentaries and reminiscences about Jefferson that work together with the letters to introduce readers to a more intimate side of the humble politician. As Randolph simply states in the preface:
I do not in this volume write of Jefferson either as of the great man or as of the statesman. My object is only to give a faithful picture of him as he was in private life -- to show that he was, as I have been taught to think of him by those who knew and loved him best, a beautiful domestic character. . . . No man's private character has been more foully assailed than Jefferson's, and none so wantonly exposed to the public gaze, nor more fully vindicated. I shall be more than rewarded for my labors should I succeed in imparting to my readers a tithe of that esteem and veneration which I have been taught to feel for him by the person with whom he was most intimate during life -- the grandson who, as a boy, played upon his knee, and, as a man, was, he himself spoke of him, the "staff" of his old age. (vii)
Randolph establishes her character defense by providing readers with evidence of the relationships Jefferson shared with his wife, his children, and his grandchildren. This final product casts the image of an individual who seems morally incapable of taking part in the childbearing affair with a black slave that Callender and his followers delighted in sensationalizing.
[2] The reader is first given insight into Jefferson's high affection for his family through a manuscript from his daughter Martha (Patsy) that recounts his distraught reaction to the premature death of his wife Martha. After the birth of their sixth child, Martha's health rapidly deteriorated, to the point where recovery was impossible. Although there was no hope, Jefferson was "untiring in his attentions to her, and the devotion he showed her was constant and touching" (62). Jefferson acted as caretaker to his dying wife: "no female" ever had a nurse with "more tenderness nor anxiety." Patsy remembers him "sitting up with her [mother] and administering her medicines and drink to the last. For the four months that she lingered he was never out of calling." As his wife took her last breaths, Patsy vividly recalls that Jefferson had to be "led from the room in a state of insensibility," and after being taken "with great difficulty" to the library, he fainted and "remained so long insensible that they feared he would never revive." In the month immediately following her death, Jefferson remained in "desolation" at Monticello (63). Through her description of the physical and emotional trauma afflicting Jefferson as a result of his beloved wife's death, Randolph probes the human side of the sphinx-like politician. Her recordings portray Jefferson as a warm-hearted man, unlikely to have shamed the memory of his deceased wife by having an intimate relationship with one of his slaves.
[3] After the heartbreaking death of his wife, Jefferson's closest remaining relations were his two daughters Martha (Patsy) and Mary (Polly). The great love that Jefferson had for his daughters is reflected by the large portions of the text that Randolph dedicates to chronicling the countless letters he exchanged with them. Through these dispatches, readers are able to get a sense of Jefferson as a devoted family man. He routinely expresses his weariness of political commitments to his daughters, in one instance griping, "Politics and party hatreds destroy the happiness of every being here [Philadelphia]" (249). In another instance he goes so far as warning, "Politics are such a torment that I would advise every one I love not to mix with them" (262). His top priority was not political but, rather, parental -- in one letter to his daughter Martha, he candidly writes, "Monticello and my dear family [comprise] everything which is pleasurable to me in this world" (250).
[4] Although Jefferson was a well-learned man, his letters to his daughters do not address scholarly topics; instead, they merely expresses sentiments that any loving father would write to his daughters -- many touching upon things like Jefferson's eagerness for his next meeting with his daughters or how his happiness rests upon the happiness of his daughters and those closest to him. In a letter to Martha he tenderly writes:
I value the enjoyments of this life only in proportion as you participate [in] them with me. All other attachments are weakening, and I approach the state of mind when nothing will hold me here but my love for yourself and sister, and the tender connections you have added to me. I hope you will write to me; as nothing is so pleasing during your absence as these proofs of our love. Be assured, my dear daughter, that you possess mine in its utmost limits. (243)
In a letter to his other daughter Mary he emotionally records the following:
I know no happiness but when we are all together. . . . It is necessary for my tranquillity that I should hear from you often; for I feel inexpressibly whatever affects your health or happiness. My attachments to the world and whatever it can offer, are daily wearing off; but you are one of the links which hold to my existence, and can only break off with that. You have never, by a word or deed, given me one moment's uneasiness; on the contrary, I have felt perpetual gratitude to Heaven for having given me in you a source of so much pure and unmixed happiness. (263-64)
Randolph uses these sentimental notes to depict Jefferson as a man intensely dependent on his family. By showing readers the happiness he accrues from his family, she makes it seem unreasonable for Jefferson to potentially jeopardize this by partaking in an affair with a slave.
[5] Aside from his cherished daughters, Jefferson's next great loves were his grandchildren. In many of the letters to his daughters, he would sweetly sign, "Kiss all the little ones for me" (249). As the grandchildren grew older, he even began addressing them their own letters, in which he often touches upon such subjects as their schooling, sometimes providing them advice or suggestions on how to augment their education. Randolph describes Jefferson as having "thoughtful devotion for his grandchildren" and "the perfect confidence which existed between himself and his grandchildren" (314). She exhibits this by providing an anecdote of the time fifteen-year-old Thomas Randolph Jefferson visited his grandfather in Washington while en-route to Philadelphia. Upon arriving there, Jefferson "looked over, with him, his wardrobe and examined the contents of his trunk with as much care as if he had been his mother and then . . . made a list of purchases to be made for him . . . Nor would he let another make the purchases, but, going out with his grandson, got for him himself what he thought suitable for him, though kindly consulting his taste" (315). With all of the various responsibilities of state and of family that Jefferson had to tend to during his lifetime, the special attention he paid to his grandchildren is of even higher significance. Randolph provides readers with examples such as this to demonstrate how Jefferson truly cared about every aspect of his grandchildren and the rest of his family's lives. She wants readers to think it unrealistic, even impossible, that Jefferson would willingly tarnish his reputation and risk disappointing his family by having a fling with a slave.
[6] Although he is revered as one of our most noteworthy politicians, a man who has shaped the course of the nation and even the world since penning his revolutionary words in 1776, Randolph's book shows us that Jefferson took no pleasure in politics. In a letter to his close friend Dupont de Nemours, Jefferson wrote as he neared the termination of his presidency in 1808, "Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power" (323). Instead, he yearned for the simpler things--his family and his countryside home, Monticello. The record of correspondence Randolph provides shows readers a side of the Founding Father most Americans never knew, revealing a tender, thoughtful man that had previously been unknown to the masses, concealed by the humble and reserved façade the shy politician donned while in the spotlight.
[7] Of course, being close family, Randolph's depictions of Jefferson are quite skewed and essentially no evidence is presented that unveils significant flaws in his character or morals. Does this mean that Jefferson was truly a paradigm as Randolph's account claims -- with a record free of any blemish whatsoever? Did he have family members that would have given much less flattering reviews and Randolph simply didn't include them in the memo about her project? Or was he genuinely the lovable, sage relative that everyone flocked to at family reunions? Even though Randolph's book is a compilation of primary sources that seems reliable enough to believe without question, it is important to be mindful that her book was designed with a specific intent: to make readers dismiss the various slanders against Jefferson, especially the rumors milling around of his affair with "Dusky Sally," and to restore his high standing in the eyes of Americans. She uses examples of sentimental correspondences between family and friends to restore Jefferson's reputation as an illustrious politician but also to give a new dimension to his being, casting him as a loving patriarch incapable of inflicting the hurt and shame of a slave-master affair on his family.
