Today, 13 April 2021, is the 278th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson, so I thought I’d share some of his best moments from his book Notes on the State of Virginia (1782). He wrote this book in response to a French friend who asked him to answer twenty-three questions about Virginia–about its history, geography, economy, and so on. Jefferson, at the time, was the initial drafter of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and governor of Virginia, resigning from the latter position in 1781. According to the editors of volume A (Beginnings to 1820) of the Norton Anthology of American Literature (9th edition), Jefferson
wanted especially to counter the notion, prevalent among European naturalists . . . that North American species, human and nonhuman, had degenerated and were inferior to Old World types. (711; emphasis added)
Here are a couple of my favorite excerpts from Notes:
- on the idea that “our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them”: “The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg” (718; emphasis added). I have written elsewhere that we could replace the bit about “twenty gods, or no god” with the idea that “it does me no injury for” the ETSU men’s basketball team to take a knee during the national anthem; this respectful protest–during the playing of a song that was written when Africans in America were considered only 60% of a person–“neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
- “I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years’ imprisonment for not comprehending the mysteries of the Trinity. But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind of protection we receive for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war [the American Revolution] we shall be going down hill. . . . [The people] will be forgotten, . . . and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion” (720; emphasis added). My reading of American literature and literary history, from Columbus’s first letters of discovery to now, have recently suggested to me that Jefferson was insightful–even prophetic–in his idea that from the American Revolution forward “we shall be going down hill.” The entire, the overarching American experience, beginning with Columbus, has been an experience of decay. Are we now arrived at the point of “convulsion” and expiration?
This is a haunting painting, I think, because the United States of America–represented here by the image of Thomas Jefferson, a white man–is haunted by a troubled history that has become its troubled present. Jefferson’s time was known as the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the Age of Science. In Notes, he attempted to evaluate the slave population at his Monticello according to the period’s reliance on observation and experiment: sensory observation. I won’t repeat what he has to say about his slaves, but, in my opinion, he reveals a racist ignorance that is in stark contrast to his general political brilliance.