Episodes |
1) [Slavery remains] that shadow which lies athwart our national life. . . . [and] the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to address it honestly.
James Baldwin
2) One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only remember that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner, or that Thomas Jefferson had mulatto children, or that Alexander Hamilton had Negro blood, and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.
W. E. B. Du Bois 722
3) I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation--and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter From Birmingham Jail" (in Why We Can't Wait) 97-98
4) Social status has to be earned. Or, to put it another way, equality of association has to be mutually agreed to and mutually desired. It cannot be achieved by legal fiat. Personally, I feel only affection for the Negro. But there are facts that have to be faced. Any man with two eyes in his head can observe a Negro settlement in the Congo, can study the pure-blooded African in his native habitat as he exists when left on his own resources, can compare this settlement with London or Paris, and can draw his own conclusions regarding relative levels of character and intelligence--or that combination of character and intelligence which is civilization. Finally, he can inquire as to the number of pure-blooded blacks who have made contributions to great literature or engineering or medicine or philosophy or abstract science. (I do not include singing or athletics as these are not primarily matters of character and intelligence.) Nor is there any validity to the argument that the Negro "hasn't been given a chance." We were all in caves or trees originally. The progress which the pure-blooded black has made when left to himself, with a minimum of white help or hindrance, genetically or otherwise, can be measured today in the Congo.
Carleton Putnam 6-7
5) "Gentlemen, this man is my grandfather!"
"But he's white, his name's Norton."
"I should know my grandfather! He's Thomas Jefferson and I'm his grandson --
on the field-nigger side," the tall man said.
"Sylvester, I do believe that you're right. I certainly do," he said, staring at
Mr. Norton. "Look at those features. Exactly like yours -- from the identical
mold. Are you sure he didn't spit you upon the earth, fully clothed?"
Ralph Ellison 77
6) Lest we forget: Integration of the races and the destruction of White America is one of Communistic Russia's objectives.
Tom P. Brady, back cover
7) In the social hierarchy of slavery, the choicest position was that of a competent and trusted house slave. Betty Hemings held this envied place, and trained her daughters in good manners and household management. And if she, and one or more of her daughters, lived in concubinage, it must be remembered that a slave woman had no choice
Pearl Graham 90
8) "All reputations each age revises." Beginning prominently around 1880, Jefferson's fame revived until it burst in remarkable efflorescence at the turn of the century. This was, above all, a period of growing Americanization of the Jefferson image. The recognition of the "beautiful domestic character" helped to dispel the legends of the man of bronze and the political monster.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 275
9) All the convicts were sent here to found this country. The prisons were emptied of prostitutes and thieves and murderers. They were over here to populate this country. When these people jump up in your and my face today, talking about [how] the founding fathers were puritan pure, that's some talk for somebody else. And as soon as they got over here, they proved it. They created one of the most criminal societies that has ever existed on the earth since time began.
Malcolm X 39
10) Jefferson's epilogue, as tragic as the most terrifying Shakespeare, was staged only after his death. I shall now quote word for word a well-informed man whose integrity is unimpeachable: "Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, made a clause to his last will, conferring freedom on his slave offspring, as far as the Slave Code of Virginia permitted him to do it, supplying the lack of power by ‘humbly imploring the legislature of Virginia to confirm the bequests with permission to remain in the state, where their families and connections are.' Two of his daughters by an octoroon female slave were taken to New Orleans, after Jefferson's death, to be sold in the slave market at $1500 each to be used for unmentionable purposes. Both of these unfortunate children of the author of the ‘Declaration of Independence' were quite white, their eyes blue and their hair long, soft, and auburn in color. Both were highly educated and accomplished. The youngest daughter escaped from her master and committed suicide by drowning herself to escape the horrors of her position."
R. L. Bruckberger 76-77
11) Two interrelated currents seem especially relevant to [Jefferson's] thoughts on the Negro, the more deep-seated one having to do with his relationships with members of the opposite sex. Jefferson grew up in a world of women.
Winthrop Jordan 461
12) Impeccable authorities, including Jefferson himself, show Callender's information to have been correct, save in his account of "Tom," who is not elsewhere mentioned. In this instance, Callender may have been misinformed, but there is another, and more intriguing possibility. Tom, if 12 years old, must have been conceived in France […] Jefferson's Farm Book lists only his slaves. If "Tom" were free, this fact would explain his omission, even though the lad may have been living with his mother at Monticello, as Callender states that he was.
Pearl Graham 94-95
13) [Jefferson] not only believed in segregation in this country: he believed Negroes should be sent back to Africa or some place so far removed as to be "beyond the reach of mixture." He proposed that this be accomplished by gradual emancipation of the Negroes, their colonization "to such place as the circumstances of the time shall render most proper" and their replacement by an equal number of White immigrants who were to be "induced to migrate hither with proper encouragements.
W.E. Debnam 93-94
14) Those who have revived the miscegenation story in our own time have made allegations and used illustrations strikingly similar to and often identical with those of antislavery writers more than a century ago. In the earlier instance the moral discredit cast on Jefferson, whom in other respects the Abolitionists extolled, was incidental to the struggle against slavery rather than an object in itself. In the later instance, it is incidental to the fight against segregation and in behalf of the rights of Negroes. To enter into a discussion of these causes would be inappropriate, but at least it may be said that the abuse of his moral reputation in their behalf is ironical indeed in view of his lifelong abhorrence of the institution of slavery, his notable solicitude for the bondsmen and bondswomen whom fate assigned him, and his supreme emphasis on the dignity of every human being. Quite obviously, the truth must be sought in the life he actually lived, not in what political enemies or social reformers have said about that life for their own purposes, good or bad.
Dumas Malone, "Miscegenation" 495
15) [The story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings's affair] set afloat a libel that has never died--a scandal that today, in 1960, after being dormant for a century, has been revived and is being circulated throughout the United States. And, strange though it seems--its appearance in contemporary mass-circulation publications--is motivated less by interest in Jefferson or early American history than by the story's usefulness as a weapon in current twentieth-century politics.
Douglass Adair 161
16) Scattered across the nation living out their last years in total obscurity are a handful of elderly Negroes who can trace their ancestry to the most illustrious of American founding fathers. They are the great-great grandchildren of the famous Virginia patriot who authored the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson.
Lerone Bennett 78
17) Neither sex [of the African American slaves] found much value in premarital virtue as such, an attitude that probably came over in the slave ships.
J. C. Furnas 138
18) The outstanding traits of the "beautiful domestic character" created in Miss [Sarah] Randolph's pages were his enormous capacity for love, his scrupulous observance of duty in every personal relationship, his openness to all the windows of nature, his self-catechizing habits both moral and intellectual. Wherever he was, his heart was always at Monticello. Public office had no charms for him. On the testimony of this book, Jefferson's instincts were not those of a politician but those of a Virginia gentleman, who was quite incapable of posturing a demagoguery and who knew no happiness outside the bosom of his family.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 232
19) The attacks on his personal character had no compensatory advantage whatsoever, but the historical significance of these can be easily exaggerated. They were largely if not wholly irrelevant, since they related not to public but to private conduct and to episodes, real or imagined, most of which fell in the distant past. In comparison with the enormous effect on the President's popularity of the public measures of this first term, these charges appear to have had only slight political consequence. To lay on them the same degree of emphasis that his enemies did at the time would be to distort this story. It is nonetheless true that he suffered open personal attacks which in severity and obscenity have rarely if ever been matched in presidential history in the United States, that he writhed under them even though he said hardly anything about them, and that some of them were destined to re-echo through the generations. With only one significant exception, these virulent attacks were without substantial foundation; and, except for some reiteration of charges that had been made in the campaigns of 1796 and 1800, they emanated from a single poisoned spring. The grossest of them were given to the world by James Thomson Callender, whom he had unwisely befriended.
Dumas Malone, "Torrent of Slander" 206-7
20) How is it, then, that the American negro has been so terribly wronged and mistreated? The benefits derived from the necessary evolutionary steps, mental and otherwise, which it took the white and yellow men thousands of years to achieve, were donated to the poor, mistreated negro in the twinkling of an eye. But nothing of true and lasting value is achieved in this world without great labor and sacrifice. Since the negro could and did not think of labor, since he would not sacrifice, his reception of the benefits offered by those who did, was and has been extremely limited. The veneer has been rubbed on, but the inside is fundamentally the same. His culture is yet superficial and acquired, not substantial and innate.
Tom P. Brady 11-12
21) Two hundred years after his birth, the fame of Thomas Jefferson in his native land is unquestionably greater than it has been before in this generation, and is probably greater than it has been at any time since his death. The memorial to him in the national capital, which was dedicated on April 13, signifies in a tangible way his recognition as a member of our Trinity of immortals, with Washington and Lincoln whose claims have long been indisputable. He cannot challenge the unique position of Washington, who for more than a century and a half has been the recognized symbol of the independent Republic itself. To most people, however, the Father of his Country seems a silent statue, while Jefferson appears to have the gift of eternal speech. His words are probably quoted even more often than those of Lincoln, but he is less beloved and as a personality he is more elusive and remote. There is pretty general agreement, however, that he surpasses all our major heroes, except possibly Benjamin Franklin, in the rich diversity of his talent. A great many people besides scholars now know that he was not only a towering figure in political history, but also an educational statesman, a naturalist, an inventor, an architect, a bibliophile, and the most noted patron of learning and the arts in his generation. No other great American has conspicuously served his countrymen and posterity in so many different ways.
Dumas Malone, "The Jefferson Faith" 4
22) [James] Parton wrote from a viewpoint commonly called liberal in his time. The liberal was a nationalist who retained the Jeffersonian distrust of government, an advocate of maximum individual liberty who had no zeal for equality, a friend of "good government" rather than of popular government. Parton thus associated Jefferson with political principles not adequately comprehended in the tradition of the Democratic party. Morevover, his Jefferson was not in essence a political character at all. Judging from the letters, Parton said, "the more furiously the storm of politics raged about him, the more attentive he was to philosophy." No one cared to remember just what Parton said about Jefferson's political career -- it had been said many times over -- but no one seemed able to forget his description of Jefferson as "a gentleman of thirty-two who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play a violin." Nothing written before so clearly foreshadowed the emergence of Jefferson as a hero of American culture.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 234
23) James Parton's description of Jefferson as "a young man of thirty-two who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play the violin" is, for all its incongruity, only a partial analysis of his enormous versatility. To catalogue the areas of his explorations is to list most of the principal categories of knowledge: law, government, history, mathematics, architecture, medicine, agriculture, languages and literature, education, music, philosophy, religion, and almost every branch of the natural sciences from astronomy through meteorology to zoology. This exploration of science and culture, much of which Jefferson enriched and all of which he gathered within the orbit of his lofty purpose, is apt to be misunderstood in a day when the vast accumulation of knowledge has made universal inquiry impossible and specialization inevitable. Yet his insatiable thirst for knowledge was neither dilettantism nor pedantry. Its most salient characteristic was its purposefulness.
Julian P. Boyd, "Thomas Jefferson Survives" 163
24) Convinced that Jefferson was losing the battle of the books, Randall approached the biographer's charge in the spirit of a knight who, if he could not rout the entrenched foe, was nerved for the martyr's faggot and stake in the cause of his hero. "The north wind which sweeps without," he wrote in 1856, "is not at this moment fearless & reckless than I, so far as Mr. Jefferson's political or personal enemies are concerned." Not the least interesting feature of the Life was the author's angry attack on Jefferson's detractors in history. Scarcely a blemish on the reputation escaped notice.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 150
25) [Sally] must have conducted herself discreetly, since the outside world knew so little of her, but she was no nonentity. Any woman who, willing or unwilling, held the close interest of Thomas Jefferson for at least 10 years, and probably well more than twice that time, was no casual light o' love.
Pearl Graham 101
26) They were such artful liars, they were such artful, skillful liars, that they were able to take a criminal system and, with lies, project it to the world as a humanitarian system.
Malcolm X 39
27) With women in general he [Jefferson] was uneasy and unsure; he held them at arm's length, wary, especially after his wife's death, of the dangers of over-commitment. Intimate emotional engagement with women seemed to represent for him a gateway into a dangerous, potentially explosive world which threatened revolution against the discipline of his higher self.
Winthrop Jordan 462
28) Despite this pride of color, there has been . . . due to social contact in the schools and elsewhere between Mulattoes and persons of darker hue . . . a steady cross-breeding down through the years, assisted, we confess, by certain Whites none too choosy as to their bed-fellows.
W.E. Debnam 122
29) In the persons of [Betty Hemings'] children and grandchildren, some of whom where "bright" and others darker in their coloring, she provided most of the household servants and artisans on the mountain. Any special favors the Master may have show the artisans--including Betty's son John Hemings and her grandsons Joe Fosset and Burwell--may be attributed to their recognized merit; and when Jefferson provided in his will for their emancipation, he had reason to believe they could maintain themselves as freedmen by their skills.
Dumas Malone, "Miscegenation" 495
30) The motive for Callender's original publication is crystal clear. It was revenge.
Douglass Adair 161
31) In four generations, these proud Negro descendants of America's third President have made the long and improbable journey from the white marbled splendor of Monticello to the "Negro ghetto" in the democracy their forebear helped to found.
Lerone Bennett 78
32) James Madison told Miss Martineau that in the Virginia of his day slave girls were expected to become mothers by the age of sixteen.
J. C. Furnas 139
33) The legend would not have been born but for the Federalists; it would not have been revived but for the abolitionists or, conceivably, the British commentators; and when there was little but Jefferson's own history and the memories of a few Negroes to sustain it, it faded into the obscure recesses of the Jefferson image.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 187
34) Jefferson's relations with this impecunious and disreputable journalist offer the most extreme example of the gullibility of a personally generous man who was insufficiently critical of those who were, or seemed to be, in basic agreement with his political position. There is no reason to believe that he ever told Callender what to say, but for a time at least he had welcomed the support of this unsparing critic of the Federalists and had tolerated excesses that he himself would not would not have engaged in. His financial contributions to this needy man amounted to very little until Callender became an object of persecution. If he wanted to dissociate himself from the fugitive by that time, he could not do so either in consistence or charity; and in his effort to have as little to do with him personally as possible--that is, to answer as few of his letters as possible--Jefferson did not challenge Callender's intimation that the gifts to him were for party services rendered. Thus by force of circumstances, as well as by too-ready generosity and excess of party loyalty, Jefferson unwittingly subjected himself to the danger of blackmail. Callender was fully aware of that if his benefactor was not, and, like any blackguard dealing with a reputable gentleman, he had the advantage of unscrupulousness.
Dumas Malone, "Torrent of Slander" 207
35) Granting that all animate life came from one common source, protoplasm, still there arose three different species of man. The majority of Americans believe in the existence of a Divine Being in spite of sneers from so-called intellectual communistic and socialistic snobs. The Supreme Architect of the Universe saw fit that there should be, and are today, on this planet, three distinct species of man. If God had deemed it wise and just that there should be only one specie of man on this earth, the laws of heredity and the stimuli of environment would have produced this uniform man. There are those today who would improve upon the handiwork of the Divine Architect and would cause the amalgamation of all races if they had the power to do so. If the Omnipotent Creator had willed it, this single specie of man would have been located all over the face of the earth. The three species of man would not have been placed in different locales.
Tom P. Brady 10
36) What he contributed to his generation and transmitted to posterity was a faith. The policies that he pursued cannot be separated from their times and circumstances; the timeless element in his contribution to his country and to mankind is to be found in the values that he recognized and proclaimed. What he most prized was the free life of the human spirit; the tyrannies that he attacked were those that seemed most menacing in his own day; and the opportunities that he coveted for individuals were not contingent on rank or fortune.
Dumas Malone, "The Jefferson Faith" 6
37) A century ago Edward Everett dismissed the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence as containing nothing but "glittering generalities." A materialistic era applauded him in bland forgetfulness of the bright promises of our infancy. Today we are in danger of repeating that error, and for a reason even more gross. Our reason is that we are afraid. We are afraid because we do not share Jefferson's faith in the ability of the people to reject the false and to choose the good.
Julian P. Boyd, "The Relevance" 71
38) In the face of the capital fact that the nation which began such a great experiment under such high ideals has become the oldest, the largest, and by all standards the wealthiest and most powerful republic on earth, it seems needless thus to restate the principles which moved its founders and its chief spokesman. Are we not already sufficiently aware of our deep-rooted beliefs and principles: have we not glorified the Declaration of Independence, sanctified the Bill of Rights, proclaimed our allegiance to their principles in coast-to-coast broadcasts, speeches, loyalty parades, prizes, Freedom Trains, pledges, and many other ways--so much so that our ears and eyes are benumbed by the very din? Surely. But when we escape at last the noise and the public spectacles and the fervid orators, we are assailed by skepticism. And we conclude that there are at least two compelling reasons for re-examining and restating the Jeffersonian philosophy.
Julian P. Boyd, "Thomas Jefferson Survives" 165-66
39) All this, in [Henry] Randall's view, simply added interest and charm to a man whose genius lay elsewhere. By its revelation of the private life, the biography opened a new phase in the quest for the historical Jefferson.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 154-55
40) Translated into terms of today's racial problems, Jefferson would sanction South African apartheid, as well as Negro hegemony in central Africa, and the expulsion of whites from that territory. The present policies of the NAACP he would regard as a partial fulfillment of his prophecy of "convulsions which will never end but in the extermination of one or the other race," and, reluctantly no doubt, he would decree that the blacks must be the race to be exterminated. How far he might be willing to go in carrying out these principles is problematic. . . . In theory, he was not so far from Hitler, with his concept of a Master Race . . . . But he sacrificed much for his country; and he did great services. And for these things, his country--and, I think, his descendants--have long since forgiven him for the evil that he did.
Pearl Graham 103
41) Who was it that wrote that--"all men created equal"? It was Jefferson. Jefferson had more slaves than anybody else. So they weren't talking about us.
Malcolm X 39
42) Malice was, indeed, the animating force behind the original claim, but we need to brace ourselves into an intellectual posture from which we can see that the importance of the stories about black Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson lies in the fact that they seemed--and to some people still seem--of any importance.
Winthrop Jordan 464
43) Social contact means Miscegenation. It's as certain as one and one make two. The racial arithmetic in this instance, however, is one and one make one half-breed
W.E. Debnam 122
44) [Edmund] Bacon stated explicitly that [Harriet Hemings] was not Jefferson's daughter and that he himself knew who her father was, having seen this man emerge from Sally's room many times in the early morning.
Dumas Malone, "Miscegenation" 496
45) For variety's sake "Dusky Sally" was presented in Federalist verse as well as prose--surely she had more newspaper stanzas written about her between 1802 and 1803 than any other contemporary American female.
Douglass Adair 163
46) One of [Joseph] Fosset's great granddaughters, Mrs. Dora Wilburn, lives alone in a one-room apartment in a shabby building on Chicago's South Side. A retired nurse and a widow, she lives on a small, inadequate pension from the government her ancestor once headed.
Lerone Bennett 78
47) Jefferson was only one of many eminent and sometimes aristocratic slave-owners who left mulatto offspring for their admirers to deny or ignore. Sometimes their wills emancipated such by-blows. . . . At the other extreme were authenticated cases of white master-fathers selling their own offspring.
J. C. Furnas 140-41
48) More credible than anything that survives are the recollections of Madison Hemings, of Pee Pee, Ohio, published in the local Pike County Republican . . . . [They] check remarkably well with the data accumulated by scholars on Jefferson's domestic life and the Monticello slaves. But it does not prove that Sally was Jefferson's concubine or Madison his son.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 185
49) The vengeful campaign of the embittered journalist [Callender] reached its crescendo in the autumn of 1802. His fury was diminished or dissipated in the spring of 1803, but it ended only with his death in July, in the James in three feet of water --an event that was largely ignored outside the local press. The death was officially designated as accidental, proceeding from intoxication, but the Examiner regarded it as suicidal, claiming that this unfortunate man had descended to the lowest depths of misery after having been fleeced by his partner. Such was the pitiable end of one of the most notorious scandalmongers and character assassins in American history. The evil that he did was not buried with him: some of it has lasted through the generations.
Dumas Malone, "Torrent of Slander" 211-12
50) There is no room for boasting or arrogance. Humility and frankness are much more in order. We find the negro hidden in the steaming jungle, afraid of his very shadow. Bound with the fetters of daimonology, his back is pressed against the struggle for existence. Before him burns a slow fire. Clothed only in a loin cloth, with a churinga stone about his neck, his teeth sharpened by rough rocks so that they can more easily tear human flesh, he squats and utilizes the great discovery he has made, namely, that the point of his green spear can be hardened by a flame of fire. Here we find the negro only one-half step from the primordial brute. The marvelous struggle for development had been naturally and completely side-stepped. He was impervious to the Divine urge and yearning for advancement because he was handcuffed by heredity, and the negro is still so handcuffed. These are the melancholy facts, and they cannot be refuted. That was his status in 1620, and is still his status in darkest Africa.
Tom P. Brady 10-11
51) The climate of the twentieth century is totally different from that to which Jefferson responded with such single-minded devotion. Where he saw one broad highway, we see many, or none. Where he proclaimed a society based upon a natural order of aristocracy of virtue and talent, we revere the low common denominator. Where he looked to the summit of the pyramid for social advancement, we project our systems of education and our great engines of communication at the base. Where he confidently set forth a creed that allowed each individual to trust the markers along the highway, to move with the crowd, to move against it, or to abandon the highway altogether, we insist upon compelling or to abandon the highway altogether, we insist upon compelling all to move together in tyrannical uniformity, penalizing those who dare to set up their own private markers or even to proclaim belief in those we have always followed. Where he walked in the invigorating sunshine in which tolerance of all opinion, even opinion against tolerance, was implicit, we move in the increasingly "black silence of fear"--fear of dissent, fear of departure from the norm, fear of expression by the nonconformist, fear of those who imagine the king's death.
Julian P. Boyd, "The Relevance" 72-73
52) He [Jefferson] was naturally fond of children; he was cautious and painstaking; his eye and ear were quick to watch over them and note their little wants; he had the feminine dexterity and delicacy of manipulation; he had the feminine loving patience; he appreciated instantly and correctly what was under all circumstances appropriate to them, with a feminine instinct.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 153
53) Jefferson was the pre-eminent spokesman for the idea that became, under his felicitous pen, both the fundamental act of union and an exalted expression of the national purpose.
Julian P. Boyd, "Thomas Jefferson Survives" 165
54) During Jefferson's own visits, necessarily few, to Monticello, he entered upon or, it may be, resumed, his relations with Sally. By the time he turned the reins of government over to James Madison in 1809, Sally was the busy mother of several younglings who closely resembled Jefferson; poets were writing condemnatory verses; newspapers from Richmond to Boston were expressing disapproval; and in the taverns male voices were singing lustily, to the tune of Yankee Doodle, a popular ditty of the day.
Pearl Graham 93
55) As a young man, leading a life thoroughly lacking in direction, he filled his letters with talk about girls, but his gay chitchat ended abruptly after a keenly disappointed one-sided romance with Rebecca Burwell, an attractive sixteen-year-old orphan. Consoling himself with outbursts of misogyny, Jefferson turned to the companionship of men.
Winthrop Jordan 461
56) The day will come, as surely as tomorrow's sunrise, when Americans will be a Mongrel Race.
W.E. Debnam 121
57) In his will, Jefferson provided for the emancipation of Sally's sons Madison and Eston when they should reach the age of twenty-one […] this action, again, was in line with the policy Jefferson followed with respect to other men slaves he freed.
Dumas Malone, "Miscegenation" 496
58) Sally was 53 years old when Jefferson died. From this moment, she disappears from history.
Pearl Graham 98
59) No, they were crooks that came here--Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Quincy, and the others, all of them were criminals.
Malcolm X 39
60) As Jefferson matured, he seems to have mitigated this inner tension by imputing potential explosiveness to the opposite sex and by assuming that female passion must and could only be controlled by marriage.
Winthrop Jordan 462
61) There are some who contend the Negro Race is superior to the White Race. There are others, who, while not as positive in their opinion as is Mrs. Waring, have a suspicion the White Race may be a little bit superior to the Negro Race. An example is Thomas Jefferson. The Sage of Monticello gave this Race business a lot of study. He finally came to the conclusion he didn't know for sure whether the Negro Race is inferior or not, but he was positive of one thing: the future of this country, said Jefferson, depends upon the Races being kept separate.
W.E. Debnam 92-93
62) A rational explanation can be given for his actions in all these cases, but his concern, in life and death, for the descendants of Betty Hemings could hardly have failed to excite some local comment and thus to have laid some foundation, albeit unsubstantial, for the legend that arose and grew.
Dumas Malone, "Miscegenation" 496-97
63) In the popular Negro picture magazine, Ebony, for November 1954, its five hundred thousand readers found an essay entitled: "Thomas Jefferson's Negro Grandchildren." . . . The Ebony revival of the Jefferson scandal, with its sensational modernized mixture of fact and fiction, is calculated to remind its Negro readers of one of the ugliest features of Negro-white relations in American history. Its printing is designed to stir up, to quote a phrase of Jefferson's, "ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained." As such the publicizing today of the story of Jefferson's Negro concubines operates as a battle cry and recruiting slogan for militant political action now in the battle for Negro rights.
Douglass Adair 167
64) Although these Negro descendants of America's third President are proud of their distinguished lineage, they do not boast of it to their friends. Most of them hold that their great-grandfather Joseph was the product of a union between Jefferson and "Black Sal" who was undoubtedly the Jefferson favorite.
Lerone Bennett 78
65) Master usually agreed with most slaveholders that fecund slave women were ‘if properly taken care of . . . the most profitable to their owners of any others. . . . It is remarkable the number of slaves which may be raised from one woman in the course of forty of fifty years with the proper kind of attention.
J. C. Furnas 143
66) Despite the utter disreputability of [Callender], the charge has been dragged after Jefferson like a dead cat through the pages of formal and informal history, tied to him by its attractiveness to a wide variety of interested persons and by the apparent impossibility of utterly refuting it.
Winthrop Jordan 465
67) In the veins of some of these Colored People flows the blood of some of our most distinguished families. Out in Chicago there's a Colored family whose proudest boast is that it can trace its ancestry back to Thomas Jefferson. Bastardy, it would seem, loses its onus when given the bonus of distinction. It's a shameful situation . . . but just because we've gotten our feet wet in a racial mud-puddle is no reason why the White Race and the negro should jump into the Integration river and drown themselves.
W.E. Debnam 123
68) Swearing to secrecy the biographer Henry S. Randall, [Thomas Jefferson Randolph] said that, while there was no shadow of suspicion at Monticello that his grandfather had commerce with female slaves at any time, the connection of two of his very near relatives with women of the Hemings family was notorious on the mountain and scarcely disguised by them. Specifically, he said that Sally was the mistress of Peter Carr, favorite nephew of Jefferson and treated by him as a son while Betsey Hemings was the mistress of Samuel Carr, Peter's brother.
Dumas Malone, "Miscegenation" 497
69) Thus, by the mid-decades of the twentieth century, Callender's ancient attack on Jefferson was very much alive and was being regularly reprinted and circulated as "the truth" in reputable mass-media publications to millions of modern Americans.
Douglass Adair 169
70) Many reputable historians concede that Jefferson fathered at least five Negro children and possibly more by several comely slave concubines who were great favorites at his Monticello home. Although the great bulk of material written on Jefferson is discreetly silent on this point, numerous authorities hold that the slaves Jefferson freed in his will were his own children. At least three and possibly all five of these slaves . . . were the sons of the celebrated "Black Sal," a stunningly attractive slave girl with long pretty hair and milk-white skin.
Lerone Bennett 78
71) Treating people as animals often makes something rather like animals out of them. Under the conditions of slavery white women would probably have been just as regardless.
J. C. Furnas 148
72) Jefferson was the crucial figure in American history both for slavery and for abolition.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 188
73) When Mrs. Jefferson, a few years later, became a confirmed invalid, Betty Hemings was in charge of the sick room, and Sally, under her mother's supervision, was the little errand girl, under call for small services. On Mrs. Jefferson's bedside table there stood a little bell, hand-wrought, of iron, at some slave blacksmith's forge. . . . When Mrs. Jefferson died, nine-year-old Sally was in the room, one of the attendants at her bedside. Jefferson, to mark appreciation of the services rendered his wife [gave Sally] the intriguing little bell. . . . One hundred and seventy years later, this bell was presented, by a great-granddaughter of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, to the library of Howard University, where it is now to be seen.
Pearl Graham 90-91
74) In short, Jefferson's paternity can be neither refuted nor proved from the known circumstances or from the extant testimony of his overseer, his white descendants, or the descendants of Sally, each of them having fallible memories and personal interests at stake.
Winthrop Jordan 466
75) If we surrender it is, indeed, Then My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night! So far as Racial Integration is concerned, this reporter is a Neverist . . . a Neverist, that is, until our people embrace it of their own free will. That isn't likely for a long, long time
W.E. Debnam 126
76) Exactly the same note of self-righteous warfare--exactly the same use of the Monticello scandal as a weapon--but now against Negro demands for status, is to be seen in a current parallel publication of the story by W. E. Debnam. . . . Debnam notices the Jefferson scandal in connection with his argument "that the Negro Race has a built-in Code of Morals several degrees below that with which the Good Lord has endowed the White Race." His logic fastens on the fact that 70 to 80 percent of the Negroes today are mulattoes . . . . The white author's main interest, however, is to link the old scandal with modern statistics on venereal disease rates and illegitimacy among Negroes in order to demonstrate their lack of chastity.
Douglass Adair 167-68
77) Three factors were chiefly responsible for the rise and progress of the miscegenation legend. The first was political: the hatred from the Federalists, the hope of his enemies inspired by Callender that the African harem revelations would destroy him, and later the campaign of British critics to lower the prestige of American democracy by toppling its hero from his pedestal. The second was the institution of slavery: the Negroes' pathetic wish for a little pride and their subtle ways of confounding the white folks, the cunning of the slave trader and the auctioneer who might expect a better price for a Jefferson than for a Jones, the social fact of miscegenation and its fascination as a moral theme, and, above all, the logic of abolitionism by which Jefferson alone of the Founding Fathers was a worthy exhibit of the crime. The third revolves around the personal habits and history of Jefferson himself: his wife's early death, his brief affair with Mrs. Walker . . . his great interest in Negroes generally along with his particular kindness to some of his slaves, and items of a similar nature, with which some imaginations could piece together the intriguing "Black Sal" description.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 187
78) Whenever and wherever the white man has drunk the cup of black hemlock, whenever and wherever his blood has been infused with the blood of the negro, the white man, his intellect and his culture have died. It is as true as two plus two equals four. The proof is that Egypt, India, the Mayan civilization, Babylon, Persia, Spain and all the others, have never and can never rise again.
Tom P. Brady 7
79) But to conclude, as Mr. Niebuhr does, that the ills of the world today follow from the "shallowness of a liberalism based on illusions of reason" is to indulge in logic requiring more demonstration than he has as yet produced. It would be quite as logical to suppose those ills to derive from the even more ancient illusions which he would substitute in their place. Perhaps it would be sounder to conclude that the world is in its present state because Jeffersonian liberalism, like Christianity, has not yet been given full and fair trial.
Julian P. Boyd, "The Relevance" 70
80) All previous biography, with a modest exception for Tucker's, had been based upon official records and published writings, which dealt almost entirely with public affairs. [Henry] Randall was the first to gain the full co-operation of the family and to exploit its treasures. He came to regard his Life as authorized by the family. It was so received by many of its readers.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 152
81) Despite the doctrine of fear on which moral, political, economic and other issues are being resolved, a few courageous voices re-echo the faith that Jefferson expressed when we experienced a similar wave of hysteria in the years 1798-1800. They believe, with him, that government by the people is the most energetic, though not necessarily the most orderly form; that the people may be trusted when left free to decide; and that those who offer false and seditious counsels should be allowed to "stand as monuments of the freedom with which error of opinion can be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
Julian P. Boyd, "Thomas Jefferson Survives" 172
82) It is probable that Madison and Eston were tutored in the elements of the three R's by Virginia Randolph, Jefferson's granddaughter.
Pearl Graham 96-97
83) Certainly Jefferson lived in a culture which assumed dutiful wifely submission, but there was a particular urgency in his stress upon the necessity of female decorum
Winthrop Jordan 462
84) If the private segregated school system can't stand up against the public integrated school system, if it can't do a better job, then let it die as does every other adventure into private enterprise that can't meet competition. By the same token, if the public school system can't stand up against the private school system, then it will die and the private schools take over.
W.E. Debnam 152
85) If all the records now available and referred to here had been open to the Abolitionists, they would have found fresh materials for their favorite allegation that the best of Southern blood was mixed with that of slaves. Miscegenation was a legend in his [Jefferson's] case, but its existence in the plantation households he knew best was an undeniable fact. He was a victim of the slave system he abhorred, though not in the way his political enemies asserted at the time, or that certain moral and social reformers claimed afterwards.
Dumas Malone, "Miscegenation" 498
86) It is Colonel Thomas Jefferson Randolph's report of Sally's relations with another member of the Monticello household that impeaches Sally's story on the crucial point of her children's paternity.
Douglass Adair 176
87) Of course the Declaration of Independence applied to slaves! Not to be sure, as a self-executing law but as a moral standard to which the nation must repair.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 173
88) The negro could not be expected to participate in the conquest of these United States. His language consisted mostly, at the time of the Revolutionary War, of grunts, a sign language and a few words. The jargon of the jungle was in his tongue and the Congo flowed deep in his brain.
Tom P. Brady 12
89) Of this, however, we may be sure: he would continue to regard government as a means to human happiness and not an end in itself; and he would be irrevocably opposed to such nations and such rulers as value power for its own sake. The Jeffersonian emphasis, therefore, is most salutary at the present moment.
Dumas Malone, "The Jefferson Faith" 6
90) The greatest gulf that separates Jefferson from the twentieth century is that we seem to have turned our back on his faith and to have embraced what he called "a theoretic and visionary fear." It is a fear that commits treason upon an ancient human hope and makes of law itself a tyranny.
Julian P. Boyd, "The Relevance" 65
91) The library at Monticello contained, among the impressive shelves of books, a small hand forge, a cabinet of scientific instruments, a surveyor's transit, a collection of fossils, a set of drafting instruments. Here the necessary but theoretical divisions of knowledge, adapted by Jefferson from Bacon, were subordinated to the aim of producing an integrated man in a free society. In the room that contained both library and laboratory, Jefferson was a man of learning endeavoring to fit himself for an exacting specialization, not merely to become a paleontologist, a student of linguistics, an architect, an archaeologist, a jurisconsult, an agronomist, a promoter of medical advances--though he was all of these and more.
Julian P. Boyd, "The Relevance" 63
92) By first describing Jefferson's life at Monticello in some detail, [Henry] Randall was the first historian to add sweet and mellow touches to the Jefferson image.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 153
93) One of Harriet's granddaughters has told me that, according to her family tradition, Monticello slaves enjoyed many simple pleasures. Certainly their surroundings were beautiful, and no overseer was ever allowed to exercise authority over the Jefferson house servants. There were no physical cruelties; a slave practiced courtesy and obedience, or he was sold.
Pearl Graham 96
94) If we turn to Jefferson's character we are confronted by evidence which for many people today (and then) furnished an immediate and satisfactory refutation. Yet the assumption that this high-minded man could not have carried on such an affair is at variance with what is known today concerning the relationship between human personality and behavior.
Winthrop Jordan 466
95) Most Southerners deplore Integration . . . even a little of it . . . but, recognizing the inalienable right of the individual to choose his associates from those who wish to associate with him, they would not deny any White parent who wants his children to go to school with Negro children and the right to send them to school with Negro children whose parents want them to go to school with White children. That's an involved sentence . . . but so is the situation.
W.E. Debnam 128
96) From 1860 to the recent present, for nearly a century, the Jefferson scandal lay dormant so far as widespread popular interest was concerned. . . . Then, suddenly, during the last few years it has been revived and widely circulated in national publications. In our own day the Negroes' status has once again become a major issue in American politics. . . . And the context in which the Jefferson scandal is being publicized in the mid-decade of the twentieth century shows why the story of Sally Hemings is today being used by both Negroes and whites as a weapon in current politics to embitter the battle over Negro rights.
Douglass Adair 166-67
97) The pioneer white master was likely to take his fun where he found it, at choice among his forced labor, black or white. His sons, grandsons and so forth often kept up the good old ways.
J. C. Furnas 138
98) I have been shown a daguerreotype of Mrs. Kenney--Harriet Hemings' daughter--which so closely resembles some of the portraits of Jefferson himself, painted in his middle years, that it could easily be taken for his own likeness, save for the fact that the daguerreotype process was unknown in his lifetime.
Pearl Graham 100
99) Why was it that the negro was unable and failed to evolve and develop? It is obvious that many rationalizations and explanations will be offered by minority group leaders and educators, but the fact remains that he did not evolve simply because of his inherent limitations. Water does not rise above its source, and the negro could not by his inherent qualities rise above his environment as had the other races. His inheritance was wanting. The potential did not exist. This is neither right nor wrong; it is simply a stubborn biological fact.
Tom P. Brady 2
100) "Nature," he confided to DuPont de Nemours, "intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science by rendering them my supreme delight." Mathematics was his favorite branch of study; music, his chief art; architecture, his joy; mechanics, his useful pastime; agriculture, his sustenance of body and soul; politics, his duty--and his greatest achievement. He was the first American, declared Chastellux, to consult the fine arts in order to shelter himself from the weather. He assembled the fines and most discriminatingly gathered library in America, and in all his omnivorous reading, in every branch of learning that it embraced, utility was a dominant purpose. "No body can conceive," he gently remonstrated with David Rittenhouse for wasting his talents in government, "that nature ever intended to throw away a Newton upon the occupations of a crown. It would have been a prodigality for which even the conduct of providence might have been arraigned, had he been by birth annexed to what was so far below him. Co-operating with nature in her ordinary oeconomy, we should dispose of and employ the geniuses of men according to their several orders and degrees." This was at once Jefferson's tender of advice that he himself could not follow, and his tribute to the standing that intellectual achievement should occupy in society. Nothing would have delighted Jefferson more than to remain at his beloved Monticello indulging in the pleasures of books and farming, but, when the practical issues of his own day made that impossible, he contrived to make his studies and his public duties two sides of the same coin.
Julian P. Boyd, "The Relevance" 62
101) Jefferson's conduct has been attacked from several angles, for in fact the charge of concubinage with Sally Hemings constitutes not one accusation but three, simultaneously accusing Jefferson of fathering bastards, of miscegenation, and of crassly taking advantage of a helpless young slave (for Sally was probably twenty-two when she first conceived). . . . The last of these, insofar as it implies forced attentions on an unwilling girl, may be summarily dismissed. For one thing, indirect evidence indicates that Sally was happy throughout her long period of motherhood, and, more important, Jefferson was simply not capable of violating every rule of honor and kindness, to say nothing of his convictions concerning the master-slave relationship.
Winthrop Jordan 465
102) To a lot of people, one of the most disturbing things about our public school system is the passion for "equality."
W.E. Debnam 130
103) In four widely separate areas of the country, four different scholars independently discovered four key documents, no one of which alone solves the puzzle but which, when checked and cross-checked against each other, together throw a great blaze of light on Jefferson as a slaveholder, on the Monticello slaves, and in particular the slaves named Hemings. Today, it is possible to prove that Jefferson was innocent of Callender's charges.
Douglass Adair 169
104) A scholarly analysis of Negro ways in Alabama in the 1930's read: "Conditions are favorable to a great amount of sex-experimentation. . . . Whether or not sexual intercourse is an accepted part of courtship . . . no one is surprised when it occurs. When pregnancy follows . . . the girl does not lose status, perceptibly, nor are her chances for marrying seriously threatened."
J. C. Furnas 139
105) Always the intent [of the British commentators] was to exhibit the hollowness of the democratic virtue or, with the abolitionists, the horrors of slavery.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 184
106) "Black Monday" is the name coined by Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi to designate Monday, May 17th, 1954, a date long to be remembered throughout this nation. This is the date upon which the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its socialistic decision in the Segregation cases on appeal from the States of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware. "Black Monday" is indeed symbolic of the date. Black denoting darkness and terror. Black signifying the absence of light and wisdom. Black embodying grief, destruction and death.
Tom P. Brady, "Foreword"
107) This Federalist rubbish fouling the historical page, as [Henry] Randall saw it, had to be cleared away if the heroic figure of Jefferson was to rise and if Americans were to understand the political principles essential to the nation's well-being.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 150
108) Assuming this ambivalence in Jefferson, one can construct two reasonable (though not equally probably) and absolutely irreconcilable cases. It is possible to argue on the one hand, briefly, that Jefferson was a truly admirable man if there ever was one and that by the time he had married and matured politically, in the 1770's, his "head" was permanently in control of his "heart." Hence a liaison with a slave girl would have been a lapse from character unique in his mature life . . . it would have meant complete reversal of his feelings of repulsion towards Negroes and a towering sense of guilt for having connected with such sensual creatures and having given free reign to his own libidinous desires, guilt for which there is no evidence.
Winthrop Jordan 467
109) In 1956 J. C. Furnas's popular best seller Goodbye to Uncle Tom, a Book-of-the-Month-Club choice, used Jefferson as a shameful example of miscegenation in slavery days and flatly stated that the great Virginian was undoubtedly the father of Sally Heming's children.
Douglass Adair 168
110) Jefferson himself had never made a denial, although it was later alleged he had once repudiated the claim of a mulatto paternity. In none of his published papers, in none of the reports of his numerous auditors, in no documents whatsoever was there the slightest suggestion of miscegenation.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 184
111) Black Monday ranks in importance with July 4th, 1776, the date upon which our Declaration of Independence was signed. May 17, 1954, is the date upon which the declaration of socialistic doctrine was officially proclaimed throughout this nation. It was on Black Monday that the judicial branch of our government usurped the sacred privilege and right of the respective states of this union to educate their youth. This usurpation constitutes the greatest travesty of the American Constitution and jurisprudence in the history of this nation.
Tom P. Brady, "Foreword"
112) On the other hand, however, it is possible to argue that attachment with Sally represented a final happy resolution of his [Jefferson's] inner conflict. This would account for the absence after his return from Paris in 1789 of evidence pointing to continuing high tension concerning women and Negroes, an absence hardly to be explained by senility.
Winthrop Jordan 467
113) Integration . . . no matter how gradually it comes . . . is still Integration and means the destruction of both Races. Whether it takes two years or five or ten or twenty, the end result is the same. A man is just as dead if he slowly bleeds to death from slashed wrists as if his throat be cut from ear to ear.
W.E. Debnam 125
114) The first of the documents [that proves Jefferson's innocence], in the handwriting of Jefferson himself, is his record--incredibly detailed--of all the slaves who belonged to him from 1774 until his death in 1826. . . . The Farm Book makes it possible to trace the genealogy of many of the Monticello slaves through four generations. . . . It is now possible to determine when the famous Sally was born, how many children she had, and the exact dates of their birth. . . . Significantly, the name of the father of Sally Hemings's children is not reported.
Douglass Adair 170
115) Paternity, of course, is one of the most difficult things in the world to prove. It will probably never be proven in this case. The legend [that Jefferson had a relationship with Hemings] survives, although no serious student of Jefferson has ever declared his belief in it.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 186
116) Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Stalin were both instrumental in the establishing of secular governments. Both men made mistakes and both men are dead. Their respective governments survive them. Jefferson's government is founded on a firm belief in God, the dignity of the individual and on the institution of capital. Stalin's government is based on atheism, the absolute sovereignty of the State, and collectivism. Jefferson's government is the father of freedom and liberty. Stalin's government is the master of regimentation and slavery. Jefferson's government symbolizes light, truth, peace and life. Stalin's government represents darkness, deceit, war and death. The principles upon which these two governments are founded are irreconcilable. They cannot be fused any more than can day exist in night. The twilight of the martyrdom of man will result. They are now engaged in a mortal conflict, and only one can survive. "Choose you this day whom ye will serve."
Tom P. Brady, inside front cover
117) The question of Jefferson's miscegenation, it should be stressed again, is of limited interest and usefulness even if it could be answered.
Winthrop Jordan 467
118) While we continue the public schools, and upon an integrated basis, we propose further that any parent, White or Negro, who does not want his child to attend the public integrated schools be allowed--be required--to send his children to a private school.
W.E. Debnam 129
119) Two of [Betty's] sons in this group, Bob and James, were freed by their master in the 1790's, apparently without exciting any special comment. This action of Jefferson's met another test: he was confident at the time that as freedmen they could take care of themselves […] two others, Critta and Sally, remained at Monticello as household servants and were apparently treated with indulgence, but this was the rule rather than the exception there.
Dumas Malone, "Miscegenation" 496
120) The third document [that proves Jefferson's innocence], and most amazing of all, was a short autobiography written or dictated by one of the Hemingses--the story of his life and his mother's life reported in the very words of one of Sally's sons--Madison Hemings. Madison Hemings's account of his own life, and those of his mother and grandmother, reads like the plot of a lurid novel. It seemed to confirm every charge made by Callender against Jefferson and to add extra evidence of the Virginian's guilt that Callender with all his malice could never have dreamed of.
Douglass Adair 171
121) While there was not much evidence tending to prove the legend, neither was there much positive disproof. . . . It was known all along that a family of light mulattoes, the Hemingses, had labored at Monticello, and that three of this name were among the five slaves Jefferson had freed by his will. From this it was inferred that the Hemingses (and perhaps others left in slavery) were the children of Jefferson and Sally.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 184
122) The supercilious, glib young negro, who has sojourned in Chicago or New York, and who considers the counsel of his elders archaic, will perform an obscene act, or make an obscene remark, or a vile overture or assault upon some white girl. For they will reason, "Has not the Supreme Court abolished segregation in the schools, swimming pools and passenger trains? Is not the Federal Government behind us and will it not protect us? We need but to assert ourselves and abolish every vestige of segregation and racial differences." This is the reasoning which produces riots, bloodshed, raping and revolutions. This is the reasoning that "Black Monday" will foster.
Tom P. Brady 64
123) With the knowledge that six of Betty [Hemings]'s children, owned by Jefferson, were fathered by John Wayles, we have one clue to the mystery of the Jefferson scandals--the secret of Jefferson's silence in the face of Callender's charges. Even if completely innocent, Jefferson could only have defended himself against Callender's attacks by revealing who the Hemingses were and how they had come to be at Monticello. As an honorable man, he was prepared to writhe under the venomous charges of his enemies, bite his lip, and still keep silent rather than reveal that the older generation of "white slaves" at Monticello were the children of John Wayles, his father-in-law, and thus his own beloved wife's half-brothers and half-sisters.
Douglass Adair 174
124) One other group, the British commentators on America, contributed to the revival of the legend in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Insolent aristocrats many of them, they found Jefferson--the idol of democracy--a convenient target for their criticism.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 183
125) This handful of negroes, not over one hundred and fifty in number, whose contribution to American life is appreciated, is given as proof of the entire race's evolutionary salvation. Such observations are proof indeed that the comprehension of the negro and his problems by the members of the United States Supreme Court, including Justices Black and Clark, is scarcely a squirrel's leap from total ignorance.
Tom P. Brady 45
126) Madison Hemings, whose testimony helps to establish that there was "a Wayles scandal" involving those nearest and dearest to Jefferson, flatly claims that Jefferson was his father. . . . Thus Madison Hemings reported in 1873 what his mother . . . must have told him of his parentage. . . . There can be no question that Madison and his brothers and sister believed the story Sally told them of their paternity. And we too would be inclined to believe it--if we did not have evidence to prove that Sally's story contained at least one major falsification and if we did not have Colonel Randolph's report from inside the Monticello household, which points to another member of Jefferson's family as the true father of Sally's children.
Douglass Adair 174-75
127) Upon the flimsy basis of oral tradition, anecdote, and satire, the most intelligent and upright abolitionists avowed their belief in Jefferson's miscegenation.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 183
128) The loveliest and the purest of God's creatures, the nearest thing to an angelic being that treads this terrestrial ball is a well-bred, cultured Southern white woman or her blue-eyed, golden-haired little girl. The maintenance of peaceful and harmonious relationship, which have been conducive to the well-being of both the white and negro races in the South, has been possible because of the inviolability of Southern Womanhood. Cases of moral leprosy and degeneracy have produced sporadic instances of amalgamation of whites with negroes. It is such instances as these which produced the negro hybrids of America.
Tom P. Brady 45
129) The number of these hardy Jeffersonian plants is still small, but if my reading of history is correct, they will prevail even in this climate of ours. Their courage, I believe, is of a higher order of magnitude even than Jefferson's, their faith in his principles more indestructible. For where he was required only to conform to an age ripe for rebellion, it is their fate to rebel against an age that demands conformity.
Julian P. Boyd, "The Relevance" 74-75
130) Sally's falsification of fact in the story she told her children relates to the account of her stay in France, for there is extremely persuasive evidence that she was not pregnant when she returned to Virginia. . . . Jefferson's careful and exact records of the births of Sally's children in the Farm Book reveal that her first child was not born until 1795, five years after her return from Europe.
Douglass Adair 175
131) It is an adage among abolitionists that "the best blood of Virginia flows in the veins of slaves . . . even the blood of Jefferson." In the slender annals of personal legend inspired by Jefferson's life, the legend of miscegenation has a conspicuous place.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 181
132) I am not, nor never have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not, nor never have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to inter-marry with white people, and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.
Tom P. Brady 44
133) Clearly Sally dramatized her relations with Jefferson even at the expense of truth in this instance. Clearly Sally wanted her children to believe that she had been Jefferson's mistress from the time she was fifteen or sixteen. . . . Clearly Sally's story as she tells it dignifies her role: in France her relations with Jefferson are not those of slave and master, for slave and master do not bargain as equals and do not extort solemn promises from their owners. Thus Sally's account gave her children both cause for pride that Jefferson was their father and also a measure of self-respect by making her relations with Jefferson voluntary, contractual, almost like a common-law marriage.
Douglass Adair 176
134) It is necessary to appeal to him as such a specialist because we are being told daily, in very respectable and even learned quarters, that a specialist in eighteenth-century forms of tyranny has nothing to say to us as we confront unprecedented tyrannies that make those of his day appear by comparison to be benevolent charities. This denial of Jefferson's relevance is not based merely upon the vast differences between the Arcadian simplicity of the eighteenth century and the enormous complexity of the twentieth. These appear closer to the Stone Age than to the age of electronics and atomic energy. But they constitute less a denial than a confirmation of his meaning to us. Only a static society would have betrayed him; only a failure to change would have made his life a failure.
Julian P. Boyd, "The Relevance" 64
135) With this mass of new material on the Sage's private life, making up about one fourth of the biography, [Henry] Randall cracked, however slightly, the legend of the "man of bronze," and excited in his readers a sense of fresh discovery. For all the literature on Jefferson, one reviewer observed, he was not really known.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 152
136) [Thomas Jefferson] Randolph is the sort of witness that the research historian prays to discover--a primary witness who was involved directly and who saw a past situation with his own eyes.
Douglass Adair 176
137) The hard truth is that the unity of the movement is a remarkable feature of major importance. The fact that different organizations place varying degrees of emphasis on certain tactical approaches is not indicative of disunity. Unity has never meant uniformity. If it had, it would not have been possible for such dedicated democrats as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, a radical such as Thomas Paine and an autocrat such as Alexander Hamilton to lead a unified American Revolution. Jefferson, Washington, Paine and Hamilton could collaborate because the urge of the colonials to be free had matured into a powerful mandate. This is what has happened to the determination of the Negro to liberate himself. When the cry for justice has hardened into a palpable force, it becomes irresistible. This is a truth which wise leadership and a sensible society ultimately come to realize.
Martin Luther King, Jr., "Black and White Together" (in Why We Can't Wait) 145
138) When I see some poor old brainwashed Negroes--you mention Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Patrick Henry, they just swoon, you know with patriotism. But they don't realize that in the sight of George Washington, you were a sack of molasses, a sack of potatoes. You--yes--were a sack of potatoes, a barrel of molasses, you amounted to nothing, in the sight of Washington, or in the sight of Jefferson, or Hamilton, and some of those other so-called founding fathers. You were their property. And if it was left up to them, you'd still be their property today.
Malcolm X 39-40
139) [Thomas Jefferson] Randolph emphatically denied that Jefferson had commerce with Sally or any other of his female slaves. . . . "He said he had never seen a motion, or a look, or a circumstance which led him to suspect for an instant that there was a particle more of familiarity between Mr. Jefferson and Sally Hemings than between him and the most repulsive servant in the establishment--and that no person ever at Monticello dreamed of such a thing."
Douglass Adair 177
140) For many people it seems to require an effort of will to remember that the larger significance of the Hemings matter lay not in Jefferson's conduct but in the charges themselves. . . . that a white man's sleeping with a negro woman should be a weapon at all seems the more significant fact. It is significant, too, that the charge of bastardy was virtually lost in the clamor about miscegenation. . . . Callender . . . was playing upon very real sensitivities.
Winthrop Jordan 468-69
141) One of the most disturbing things about this Integration business is that . . . once it's begun . . . there's no turning back […] with Integration the Point of No Return is the day it begins.
W.E. Debnam 120
142) If we can accept the oral tradition, handed down by certain of the slaves themselves, that Betty Hemings was the concubine of John Wayles after the latter's third wife died, and that he was the father of the six younger children she brought to Monticello, Jefferson's actions take on fresh significance and poignancy. If this tradition is fact, he shouldered and bore quietly for half a century a grievous burden of responsibility for the illegitimate half brothers and sisters of his own adored wife.
Dumas Malone, "Miscegenation" 497
143) Faced with irreconcilable disagreement between two prejudiced witnesses--Sally Hemings and Jefferson Randolph--about the paternity of the Hemings children, we can accept neither with confidence unless we find independent corroboration for one or the other statement from some third and independent contemporary witness. Such a witness does exist whose testimony corroborates Randolph's. This witness is Edmund Bacon, who was hired as overseer at Monticello in 1806 when Jefferson as president was living in Washington.
Douglass Adair 179
144) Another distinguished descendant of the former President was Peter Fossett, who was born at Monticello in 1816. According to a story which has been handed down from generation to generation in the family, Peter was taken into the household at Monticello and taught reading and writing by Jefferson's white daughters.
Lerone Bennett 80
145) The negro's contribution in our struggle for freedom with England was comparable to that of a well-broken horse. When Thomas Jefferson was composing the Declaration of Independence and wrote that it was evident that all men were created equal, he did not even remotely consider the negro slaves he had purchased, domesticated, and was watching from the veranda of his home, as being men. They were primitive savages and wholly beyond the consideration of our founding fathers.
Tom P. Brady 13
146) Independently, Bacon supports Randolph by insisting that he knew Jefferson was not Harriet [Hemings]'s father. "She was not his daughter, she was -------'s daughter. I know that. I have seen him come out of her mother's room many a morning when I went up to Monticello very early." . . . Here, at least, not on the basis of Randolph's testimony alone or of Bacon's alone, but on the joint corroboration that each of these witnesses speaking independently gives the other, we have positive evidence and established ground for declaring Thomas Jefferson innocent of the charge that he fathered a mulatto family by his slave Sally Hemings.
Douglass Adair 180
147) Jefferson treasured to his death, [Henry] Randall learned, locks of hair and other mementos of his deceased wife and children. The great man loved the soil and all that grew upon it. He was a kind master and a perfect gentleman, bowing to blacks and whites alike on the road. He loved the fiddle; men who heard his bow testified to his accomplishment. He never gambled, and cards were forbidden in his house. He had aversion to strong drink. His mouth was unpolluted by oaths and tobacco. As readers snatched at these passages, discovering an interest they had not known before, it at once became apparent that Jefferson had a higher destiny than politics. He would serve posterity as an instructor in the arts of civility and a monitor of the young.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 153
148) Let's get one thing unmistakably clear. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the leaders of the three million block-voting negroes of the North and East and of California, together with segments of the Communist-front organizations of our population, have set as their goal the "passing" of the negro in these United States. Only the most stupid or gullible would dare to dispute this fact. These new deal, square deal, liberated, black qualified electors are determined to indoctrinate the Southern negro with this ideal, and arouse him to follow them in their social program for amalgamation of the two races.
Tom P. Brady 64
149) Jefferson's late marriage and the known details of his affair with [Maria] Cosway remind us over and over again that even when the great Virginian's emotions were intensely engaged he was never the slave of passion--his head always to a degree governed his heart. Obviously, the women who attracted him most powerfully were those with some artistic, musical, or literary sophistication who offered intellectual as well as physical communion.
Douglass Adair 182
150) A man of universal learning, he [Jefferson] was a specialist in tyranny. He knew its face and form as he knew his familiar lands along the Rivanna. He knew its obvious and its devious manifestations, and he swore eternal hostility against its every attempt to work upon the mind of man.
Julian P. Boyd, "The Relevance" 64
151) Our Declaration of Independence . . . drafted by men themselves far about the common herd . . . declares all men are created equal. That, we agree with Voltaire, is an undoubted truth, if it means that all have equal right to liberty, to their property and to the protection of the laws. But, says Voltaire, they are mistaken who hold men are equal in their station and employments since they are not so by their talents.
W.E. Debnam 152
152) The best-known Negro descendant of Thomas Jefferson perhaps was the militant Boston newspaper editor, William Monroe Trotter, who died in 1931. Though he and his sister, Maude, knew their family tree extended back to Monticello, they did not publicize the fact. "But," Mrs. Steward says, "we knew about it all our life."
Lerone Bennett 80
153) Now we know a great deal about Jefferson's attitude towards women, his taste in women, and his behavior when in love, and Sally's story of Jefferson's purported affair with her simply does not ring true in this context.
Douglass Adair 181
154) Instances of girl field hands of any attractiveness coming virgin to their "husbands" must have been very rare. The deflowering agency might be the overseer or young master.
J. C. Furnas 139
155) [Alexander] Hamilton had once called Jefferson "womanish"; William Graham Sumner and Henry Cabot Lodge thought no single word better characterized him. Miss [Sarah] Randolph, of course, said he was "manly" in everything, from horsemanship to female companionship. Her narrative suggested, nevertheless, there was something to be said for the other view, with no disparagement intended. His unfailing joy in household cares, the raising of children, the arrangements of the house, the cuisine and the garden; his disgust for combat in any form and abstinence from most of the manly sports and habits of the Virginians of his day; most of all, the sweetness of his temper, seldom ruffled and almost never broken by anger--these traits would commonly be counted more effeminate than masculine. They were, on the whole, the traits that had made Jefferson the beloved head of the Monticello family.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 232-33
156) Such behavior is completely at variance with Jefferson's known character, revealing a hypocrisy, a gross insensitivity, and a callous selfishness that he conspicuously lacked, whatever other failings are credited to him.
Douglass Adair 182
157) Very few negroes have true respect and reverence for their race. They sense their racial limitations. If there is a short cut they want it. They are unwilling to try to evolve and develop through growth and struggle as has the white man. Evolutionary advancement, the only way in which a substantial lasting contribution to their race and to this country can be made, is far too tedious and slow. Oh, no, they desire a much shorter detour, via the political tunnel, to get on the inter-marriage turnpikes. These Northern negroes are determined to mongrelize America!
Tom P. Brady 64
158) The vengeful campaign of the embittered journalist reached its crescendo in the autumn of 1802. His fury was diminished or dissipated in the spring of 1803, but it ended only with his death in July, in the James in three feet of water --an event that was largely ignored outside the local press. The death was officially designated as accidental, proceeding from intoxication, but the Examiner regarded it as suicidal, claiming that this unfortunate man had descended to the lowest depths of misery after having been fleeced by his partner. Such was the pitiable end of one of the most notorious scandalmongers and character assassins in American history. The evil that he did was not buried with him: some of it has lasted through the generations.
Dumas Malone, "Torrent of Slander" 209-10
159) Sally, however, asks us to believe that the author of the "Dialogue Between His Head and His Heart," one of the most sensitive and revealing love letters in the English language, would turn his back on the delectable Cosway, to whom it was addressed, to seduce a markedly immature, semi-educated, teen-age virgin, who stood in peculiarly dependent person relation to him, both as a slave, as half-sister to his dead wife, and as the companion and almost-sister to his young daughters.
Douglass Adair 182
160) [James] Parton wrote from a viewpoint commonly called liberal in his time. The liberal was a nationalist who retained the Jeffersonian distrust of government, an advocate of maximum individual liberty who had no zeal for equality, a friend of "good government" rather than of popular government. Parton thus associated Jefferson with political principles not adequately comprehended in the tradition of the Democratic party. Morevover, his Jefferson was not in essence a political character at all. Judging from the letters, Parton said, "the more furiously the storm of politics raged about him, the more attentive he was to philosophy." No one cared to remember just what Parton said about Jefferson's political career -- it had been said many times over -- but no one seemed able to forget his description of Jefferson as "a gentleman of thirty-two who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play a violin." Nothing written before so clearly foreshadowed the emergence of Jefferson as a hero of American culture.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 234
161) The great barrier to the integration of the races has been segregation. It is also the greatest factor for peace and harmony between the races. The NAACP realizes that until the barrier is removed in the schools, churches and in housing districts, integration of the races will be extremely difficult. For this reason, education on the grammar school level was the center of the target. You cannot place little white and negro children together in classrooms and not have integration. They will sing together, dance together, eat together and play together. They will grow up together and the sensitivity of the white children will be dulled. Constantly the negro will be endeavoring to usurp every right and privilege which will lead to intermarriage.
Tom P. Brady 65
162) The slave-woman was to be had for the taking. Boys on and about the plantation inevitably learned to use her, and having acquired the habit, often continued it into manhood and even after marriage. . . . Efforts to build up a taboo against miscegenation made little progress. . . . That [such liaisons] were sufficiently common is unquestionable.
Mrs. Chestnut, qtd. in Furnas 140
163) Sally would have us believe that having seduced her--a mere child--after she had conceived a daughter, he was so in thrall to his lust that when she begged to stay in France in order to remain free and in order that Jefferson's baby might be born free, the seducer beguiled her into returning to Virginia, to concubinage, and to servitude.
Douglass Adair 182
164) [Peter Fossett's] granddaughter, Mrs. Bessie Curtis, keeps alive the family tradition in Cincinnati today. A modest, quite-spoken woman, she recalls that a fire in the family home some 30 years ago destroyed a Bible which originally was in the Thomas Jefferson family. She said this book had the name Thomas Jefferson tooled on the cover. The names of Joseph Fossett and his son, Peter, were inscribed on the inside in Jefferson's "beautiful handwriting."
Lerone Bennett 80
165) I happen to be fortunate enough to spend most of my professional life in the company of a man [Jefferson] whose mind and principles and amiable qualities I admire greatly.
Julian P. Boyd, "The Relevance" 61-62
166) Sally would ask us to believe that Jefferson's physical desire for her approached the obsessive--that it was the overruling passion of his later life Sally would have us believe that having seduced herâ€"a mere childâ€"after she had conceived a daughter, he was so in thrall to his lust that when she begged to stay in France in order to remain free and in order that Jefferson's baby might be born free
Douglass Adair 182
167) In every other quality and grace of human nature he has often been equaled, sometimes excelled; but where has there ever been a lover so tender, so warm, so constant, as he? Love was his life. Few men have had so many sources of pleasure, so many agreeable tastes and pursuits; but he knew no satisfying joy, at any period of his life, except through his affections.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 233-34
168) The slave woman was to be had for the taking. Boys on and about the plantation inevitably learned to use her, and having acquired the habit, often continued it into manhood and even after marriage. . . . Efforts to build up a taboo against miscegenation made little progress.
Mrs. Chesnut, qtd. in Furnas 140
169) [Sally] would try to convince us that Jefferson, traveling home from France with his teenage daughters in the tight, enforced intimacy of shipboard, would exhibit his pregnant mulatto mistress as the fourth member of the family group; she expects us to credit the unbelievable fact that after Callender had broadcast to the world that this adulterous relationship existed, the sixty-year old Jefferson, in the face of transatlantic scandal, would continue to bed with her for at least six more years and beget two more children.
Douglass Adair 182-83
170) The racial question, which is squarely presented by the "Black Monday" decision of the Supreme Court, is but one vital part of this problem. The great threat to this Nation is that of creeping Socialism and Communism. The inter-racial angle is but a tool, a means to an end, in the overall effort to socialize and communize our Government. The grading down of the intelligence quotient of one-third of the people of this country through amalgamation of the white and negro race would be a great asset in the communizing of our Government.
Tom P. Brady 67-68
171) James Parton, America's first professional biographer, acquainted a much larger audience with "the beautiful domestic character." Jefferson's great art was love, Parton thought.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 233
172) A great Negro student of his people says that "social status among Negro slave women was in an important measure based upon their breeding power," a criteria probably to some extent reflecting consciousness of economic value.
J. C. Furnas 144
173) All in all, Sally's story and the Jefferson it asks us to believe in, if credited as true, would require us not merely to change some shadings in his portrait but literally to reverse the picture of him as an honorable man.
Douglass Adair 183
174) The outstanding traits of the "beautiful domestic character" created in Miss [Sarah] Randolph's pages were his enormous capacity for love, his scrupulous observance of duty in every personal relationship, his openness to all the windows of nature, his self-catechizing habits both moral and intellectual. Wherever he was, his heart was always at Monticello. Public office had no charms for him. On the testimony of this book, Jefferson's instincts were not those of a politician but those of a Virginia gentleman, who was quite incapable of posturing a demagoguery and who knew no happiness outside the bosom of his family.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 232
175) Until a child was grown enough to be handed a hoe and started in life as a quarter hand, it needed few skills but those of feeding, fighting, and speaking the few hundred slurred words necessary to a slave's daily concerns. Only potentially higher intelligence distinguished small slaves from the pups littered by the old yellow hound-dog bitch that hung around the same shack.
J. C. Furnas 146
176) The personality of the man who figures in Sally Heming's pathetic story simply cannot be assimilated to the known character of the real Thomas Jefferson.
Douglass Adair 183
177) [Alexander] Hamilton had once called Jefferson "womanish"; William Graham Sumner and Henry Cabot Lodge thought no single word better characterized him. Miss [Sarah] Randolph, of course, said he was "manly" in everything, from horsemanship to female companionship. Her narrative suggested, nevertheless, there was something to be said for the other view, with no disparagement intended. His unfailing joy in household cares, the raising of children, the arrangements of the house, the cuisine and the garden; his disgust for combat in any form and abstinence from most of the manly sports and habits of the Virginians of his day; most of all, the sweetness of his temper, seldom ruffled and almost never broken by anger--these traits would commonly be counted more effeminate than masculine. They were, on the whole, the traits that had made Jefferson the beloved head of the Monticello family.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 232-33
178) The biographer's [Henry Randall's] idolatry, though perhaps in keeping with the conventions of public opinion, the Richmond Whig observed, necessitated the opinion that "the whole people of the Union formed a perfectly inert, unthinking mass, and Thos. Jefferson did all the thinking for the whole of them . . . . There is such a thing as making a man ridiculous by overpraise!"
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 159
179) [Sally's] advantages in early life and upbringing as a companion of Jefferson's own daughters, her years in Paris, all together seem to have given her manners, a style of her behavior, and standards of taste that set her apart even from her mulatto kin and made her much too superior to associate with slaves in general. . . . Educated above the level of the Negro community, she could never be accepted into the white community except on the terms that prevailed in such a Southern city as New Orleans. . . . Therefore, since there was no place for Sally to go safely if she was freed, [Jefferson] kept her where he thought he could protect her best and best guarantee her a decent life --in the bosom of his own family.
Douglass Adair 186
180) [Henry] Randall's Life was a public triumph, one which represented the pinnacle of Jefferson's reputation in historical literature in the nineteenth century.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 158
181) Sally at Monticello was indeed protected against the grosser hazards of sexual exploitation, but Jefferson's decision [not to free her] resulted in a liaison with Peter Carr. . . . Meaning well, his actions had resulted in ill. This guilty knowledge was the cross that Jefferson carried silently but with anguish in his soul for seven long years before Callender broadcast to the world that there was a scandal at Monticello. No wonder he writhed silently under the scourge of the newspapers, bit his lip, and stood mute.
Douglass Adair 186
182) But the more immediate and enduring effect of [James] Parton's popular book was neither to make Jefferson, so soon, a cultural hero, nor to make him, so narrowly, a Spencerian liberal; it was, rather, to emphasize the virtues and the charms of the human being. With his unique talent for characterization, Parton brought the figure into relief from his political history. His biography was a great source as was the Domestic Life, of Jefferson legend.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 235
183) Assuming that Peter Carr was Sally's lover, her denial of this fact seems especially significant in view of the lasting, almost conjugal nature of their relations. All of the evidence points to the notion that Sally's connection with Peter Carr was a genuine love match, exhibiting deep and lasting emotional involvements for both partners. . . . While Sally was faithful to her lover, Peter Carr, she could not as a slave ask him to be faithful to her. Two years after she bore Carr's first child and in the very year (1797) she conceived his second child, Carr married Hetty Smith. . . . [Sally's] revenge was neither to refuse him her body nor to punish him accepting other lovers but, more subtly, to deny to her children--the children who were the continuing mark of their mutual affection--that Carr was their father.
Douglass Adair 187-88
184) "All reputations each age revises." Beginning prominently around 1880, Jefferson's fame revived until it burst in remarkable efflorescence at the turn of the century. This was, above all, a period of growing Americanization of the Jefferson image. The recognition of the "beautiful domestic character" helped to dispel the legends of the man of bronze and the political monster.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 275
185) Why did Sally do it? Why did she mislead her children and conceal their true father's name from them? An easy answer, of course, is Sally's vanity. It was flattering to her, as it would have been to most women, to have her name linked so intimately with one of the truly great men of the age. The widespread newspaper discussion of her supposed affair with Jefferson, which she undoubtedly was aware of, provided a tempting opportunity to elevate simultaneously her status in her own children's eyes and to give them as high a pride of ancestry as their situation as slaves allowed. Sally would have been less than a human if the opportunity had not been grasped.
Douglass Adair 187
186) James Parton, America's first professional biographer, acquainted a much larger audience with "the beautiful domestic character." Jefferson's great art was love, Parton thought.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 233
187) We have the record of an eyewitness report on Carr's confessed shame over the sorrow his attachment had caused Jefferson and the rest of the Monticello family after the newspapers began to mock the president for his supposed amours, but the guilt with love must have been present earlier.
Douglass Adair 188
188) In every other quality and grace of human nature he has often been equaled, sometimes excelled; but where has there ever been a lover so tender, so warm, so constant, as he? Love was his life. Few men have had so many sources of pleasure, so many agreeable tastes and pursuits; but he knew no satisfying joy, at any period of his life, except through his affections.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 233-34
189) Even in such times there are some who, like hardy desert plants, defy the stifling climate. They are few, of course, for the natural aristoi of virtue and talent bears perhaps a similar proportion to the whole as an aristocracy of birth and position. It is true today that their voice is not silenced, and this is the most encouraging evidence of all that Jefferson does have meaning for the twentieth century. There are even hopeful signs that the people as a whole are proving Jefferson's observation that "the will of the majority, the Natural Law of every society . . . the only sure guardian of the rights of man," exhibits "errors [that] are honest, solitary, and short-lived."
Julian P. Boyd, "The Relevance" 73
190) But the more immediate and enduring effect of [James] Parton's popular book was neither to make Jefferson, so soon, a cultural hero, nor to make him, so narrowly, a Spencerian liberal; it was, rather, to emphasize the virtues and the charms of the human being. With his unique talent for characterization, Parton brought the figure into relief from his political history. His biography was a great source as was the Domestic Life, of Jefferson legend.
Merrill Peterson, Jefferson Image 235
191) You are quite right that my father had no good opinion whatsoever of Mr. Jefferson … my father considered Jefferson a physical coward. . . . He also felt that Mr. Jefferson had the habit of stating all sorts of principles which he never lived up to.
Archibald Roosevelt, son of Theodore Roosevelt, qtd. in Graham 102
192) [Those attending a Citizens' Council rally in Montgomery received] copies of a leaflet which said: "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, sling shots and knives. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all whites are created equal with certain rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers."
John Bartlow Martin 39