THE ASPEN INSTITUTE
ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL 2015
ASPEN LECTURE:
THOMAS JEFFERSON THEN AND NOW THE LEGACY AND LESSONS OF AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL
Paepcke Auditorium
Aspen, Colorado
Monday, June 29, 2015
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LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
JON MEACHAM
Executive Editor and Executive VP, Random House
Editor at Times Magazine
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THOMAS JEFFERSON THEN AND NOW THE LEGACY AND LESSONS OF AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL
MR. GERSON: Good morning, everyone. If you
could take a seat, we're going to start in just a minute.
I'm Elliot Gerson of the Aspen Institute. I'm absolutely
delighted to welcome you here this morning and to launch
the first Aspen Lecture of the 2015 Aspen Ideas festival.
Some of you may remember from last year that we decided to
introduce this new feature of the Ideas Festival, asking
enormously distinguished people to do lectures and to
brand them as Aspen Lectures.
As you know most of the things we do are panels,
they're conversations, but we heard from many people over
the first nine years that there was a thirst to have
something deeper, a deeper dive on topics from people who
could captivate the audience for a long period of time and
on topics that would test -MR. MEACHAM:
(Inaudible).
MR. GERSON: -- and that would stand the test of
time, and that we would then use these and the videos of
these on our website and extensively, and they proved
enormously successful. And I think we couldn't have a
better example of why we wanted to do this this morning in
Jon Meacham's lecture on "Thomas Jefferson Then and Now the Legacy and Lessons of an American Original."
As you think about it and I think maybe
immodestly, but nonetheless Thomas Jefferson would have
appreciated the whole concept of the Aspen Ideas Festival.
The breadth of what we do -- now he was such a polymath
from art to science, from philosophy to statecraft. I
think I could just imagine him walking across this campus
participating and speaking in almost everything we do.
And in addition to that, what makes Jefferson so special
in the context of the Aspen Institute was that he was not
just interested in ideas, he was interested in
implementing ideas.
He joined his extraordinary philosophical
disposition with a commitment to action, a commitment to
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politics, a commitment to changing the world and, of
course, those reflect very much the ideals of the Aspen
Institute. And finally I just want to say one thing in
appreciation to our trustee, Michelle Smith, who has
supported and inspired a new relationship that I hope will
expand and you'll hear more about between the Aspen
Institute and Monticello, Jefferson's extraordinary house
in Charlottesville.
When you think about it, when you think about
Jefferson and the dinners he would have hosted at
Monticello, in a sense it was an Ideas Festival at every
dinner. And so I really couldn't think of something more
appropriate for an Aspen Lecture.
With that, it's my pleasure to introduce one of
the nation's leading presidential historians, of course,
biographer of Thomas Jefferson, other presidents about to
be, yet another president who will benefit from his superb
writing and insights, an editor, a journalist, a
publisher, Jon Meacham.
(Applause)
MR. MEACHAM: I will say that being referred to
as one of the nation's leading presidential historians is
a little bit like being called the best restaurant in a
hospital, but thank you.
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM: Thank you, Elliot. And in the
absence of someone captivating and deep, you got me. So
we will do what we can. Whenever I'm tempted to believe
in introduction like that, I -- my mind goes back -- it's
been about seven years now when I was at the National Book
Festival in Washington, which is a wonderful occasion and
I was on my way at that point to give a talk about Andrew
Jackson. And a woman ran up to me, which doesn't happen
enough as a basic rule, and said, "Oh, my God. It's you."
And I said, "Well, yes. You know, existentially speaking,
that's hard to argue with."
(Laughter)
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MR. MEACHAM: And she said, "Well, you wait
right here. I want you to sign your new book." I said,
"Yes, ma'am. I'll be right here". And hand to God, she
brought back John Grisham's latest novel.
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM: So whenever I think I'm one of the
nation's leading anything, I remember there is a woman
somewhere with a forged John Grisham novel out there. So
I'm thrilled to be here. Jefferson would adore this,
absolutely. He never came this far west interestingly.
Captivated and entranced by the west, he never really came
out or made much of an effort to. He just sent others.
But the spirit of Aspen and the spirit of Monticello are
one. My friends from Monticello, Leslie Bowman, and
Michelle Smith, my fellow trustee, have done amazing
things with the house.
Going to Monticello is as close as we're ever
going to get to having a conversation with Jefferson. And
so I recommend if you're in that part of the world to come
by. I was allowed to spend the night in Jefferson's house
by myself. It was not as exciting as it was for him, most
of the time tragically again, and was able to sleep on the
floor next to his bed when I was researching the book. So
I was able to wake up as he woke up with the light. He
designed in the house and nothing in Jefferson's life was
left to chance.
He designed the house so that his bedroom would
be the place where the sun coming up over the mountains
would be the first place the light hit. And so he was
able to engage the day at the earliest possible moment.
His grave is at the place on the mountain where the sun is
at the last part of the afternoon. So he's soaked up the
sun, he tried to engage as much as possible of life from
the beginning of the day to the end. And I think that's
an apt metaphor for his spirit.
I want to frame our conversation if I could by
commending to you the words of a biography written about
150 years ago by James Parton, who was really America's
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first professional biographer. So I have a statue of him
in the garden at home. He wrote in 1874 that if Jefferson
is wrong, America is wrong. If America is right,
Jefferson was right. Now when you think about it, that's
a remarkable burden to put on any one human being. And
its striking that we don't think of Washington or Adams or
Hamilton or Madison in that frame. The observation
resonates, I think, because in death, Jefferson remains
much as he was in life. He is a vivid, engaging,
breathing figure, brilliant and eloquent at once
monumental and human.
It's more difficult to imagine having a glass of
wine with George Washington at Mount Vernon talking of
many things. It seems the most natural thing in the world
to imagine doing so with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello,
surrounded by paintings from France and busts from
Philadelphia and artifacts from the dazzling world of the
expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Parton's observation is oft quoted -- often quoted in the
literature on Jefferson; less noticed is the next sentence
in Parton's 1874 book.
This is what he wrote, "Nor ought we to be
impatient with those who assert that both America and
Jefferson were wrong, since we cannot yet claim for either
a final and indubitable triumph." Listen to that again,
we cannot yet claim for either a final triumph. Not for
America not for Jefferson. Parton's words come very
close, I believe, to capturing a fundamental truth, not
only about biography, but about history itself, history
understood as the ambient reality of our common lives.
History is not merely the story of the past, but the
unfolding of the present.
As William Faulkner wrote, the past is never
dead, it isn't even past. It's an observation that
should, I think, remind us every day that to paraphrase
the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, no man lives to
himself and no man dies to himself. Whether we like it or
not, we're all part of a broader fabric. And as Lincoln
was to say decades after Jefferson, we cannot escape
history, for history is what we make of our time here.
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And so for our purposes, yours and mine, this
morning, the question is what Jefferson meant then and
what we can learn from him now. His circumstances were
particular, yet the general issues that consumed him were
universal; liberty, power, rights, responsibilities, the
keeping of peace and the waging of war. He was a
politician, a public man in a nation in which politics and
public life became and remain central and yet eternally
controversial. He once wrote, man feels that he is a
participator in the government of affairs, not merely at
an election, but every day all year round. In that way,
Thomas Jefferson anticipated cable news.
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM: Had he only been a philosopher, he
would not have endured as he does. Had he only been a
legislator, or only a diplomat, or only an inventor, or
only an author, or only an educator, or even only a
President, he would not have endured as he does. He
endures because we can see in him all the varied and
wondrous possibilities of the human experience; the thirst
for knowledge, the capacity to create, the love of family
and of friends, the hunger for accomplishment, the
applause of the world, the marshalling of power, the
bending of others to one's own vision.
His genius lay in his versatility, his larger
political legacy in the leadership of thought and of men.
With his brilliance and his accomplishment, he is
immortal. Yet because of his flaws and his sins and his
failures, he strikes us as mortal too, a man of
achievement who is nonetheless susceptible to the
temptations and compromises that ensnare all of us when
we're being honest with ourselves. He was not all he
could be. He was not all he could be, but no politician,
no human being ever is.
Despite all of his shortcomings and all of the
inevitable disappointments and the stakes and dreams
differed, he left America and the world a better place
than it had been when he found it, that he did not live a
perfect life, that he failed to deliver on the promise of
the Declaration of Independence, that he has been
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condemned as a hypocrite in the eyes of history are to my
mind reasons to engage with him not excoriate him.
So let us deal now with slavery at the top. He
failed to do the right thing. Full stop, end of debate.
My own view is that he failed to do so, because he was at
heart a political creature and he allowed himself to be
constrained by the limitations of the political life he
led, but that's an explanation, not an excuse. What can
we learn from Jefferson's failure on slavery? Chiefly, I
believe this, that the moral utility of history lies in
seeing that even the finest of past generations were
capable of horrendous moral error.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. once observed that self
righteousness in retrospect is easy, also cheap. I agree.
Instead of feeling morally superior in retrospect, we
should address the cares and concerns of our own time in
real time. That's the real moral utility of history. For
all his shortcomings, Jefferson remains the founding
president who charms us most. Washington inspires us,
Adams inspires respect.
But with his grace and hospitality his sense of
taste and his love of beautiful things, of silver and art
and architecture, and gardening, and food and wine,
Jefferson is more alive, more convivial. Nineteenth
century secessionists and 20th century states rights
purists have found him a hero. Progressive leaders from
Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Truman have believed him to
embody the best impulses in the American tradition of
popular government.
So let's spend a moment with the man himself.
He was lean and loose-limbed. He rose with the sun every
morning. He would swing his long legs out of bed and
plunge his big feet into a basin of cold water, a lifelong
habit he believed good for his health. There's a tent out
front where you can do that now.
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM: Walter thinks it's a great idea
even though Franklin didn't do it. At Monticello, the
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bucket that was brought to Jefferson every morning to put
his feet in wore a groove on the floor of the alcove where
he slept; you can still see it. Six foot two-and-a-half,
the Jefferson who came to the Presidency in 1801 had sandy
hair, which though reddish in his youth was graying, his
freckled skin always susceptible to the sun was wrinkling
a bit, his eyes were penetrating, but elusive, alternately
described as blue, hazel, or brown. He had great teeth.
He loved his wife, his books, his farms, good wine,
architecture, Homer, horseback riding, history, France,
the common wealth of Virginia, spending money, not paying
his bills, and his two daughters.
He believed in America and Americans. The
nation, he said in his first inaugural address in 1801,
was the world's best hope. He thought Americans capable
of virtually anything they put their minds to. Whatever
they can, he said, they will. To his friends who were
numerous and devoted, Jefferson was among the greatest men
who had ever lived, a renaissance figure, who was
formidable without seeming overbearing, sparkling without
being showy, winning without appearing cloying.
Yet to his foes, who were numerous and prolific,
Jefferson was an atheist and a fanatic, a demagogue and a
dreamer, a womanly Francophile who could not be trusted
with the government of a great nation. His perennial task
was to change those views as best he could. He longed for
affection, for approval and for harmony. He adored
detail. He was probably OCD. He noted the temperature
each day. He carried a tiny ivory leaved notebook in his
pocket to track his daily expenditures. He drove his
horses hard and fast, considered the sun his almighty
physician.
He was fit and virile, a terrific horseman and
an inveterate walker. He drank no hard liquor, but loved
wine, taking three glasses a day and perhaps a bit more
with friends. He did not smoke. When well-wishers sent
him gifts of Havana Cigars, he passed them along to
friends. He was described this way. Mr. Jefferson was as
tall, straight-bodied a man as you would ever see, right
square-shouldered, said Isaac Jefferson, an enslaved
Monticello person. Neat a built man as ever was seen, a
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straight up man, long face, high nose. Edmund Bacon, a
Monticello overseer, said that Jefferson was like a fine
horse, he had no surplus flesh. His countenance was
always mild and pleasant. He possessed a genius for
politics, philosophy and education. He was a vital maker
of his nation's public intellectual and cultural lives.
He was a master of emotional and political
manipulation. He was sensitive to criticism, intoxicated
by approval, obsessed with his reputation, devoted to
America and irresistibly drawn to the great world. As a
lawyer, planter, legislator, governor, diplomat, secretary
of state, vice president and president, he spent much of
his life seeking control over himself and power over the
lives and destinies of others. He never tired of
invention and enquiry. He designed dumbwaiters and hidden
mechanisms to open doors at Monticello.
He delighted in archeology, paleontology,
astronomy, botany and meteorology and once created his own
version of the Gospels by excising the New Testament
passages he found supernatural or implausible. They were
much shorter reading. He savored wine, drew sustenance
from music, found joy in gardening. He bought and built
beautiful things, creating Palladian plants for Monticello
in the Roman-inspired capital of Virginia, which he
designed after seeing the ruins of a temple in Nimes in
the south of France.
He was -- and this may be perhaps his greatest
legacy, an enthusiastic patron of pasta. He gave
Americans the first recipe for ice cream. He enjoyed the
search for the perfect dressing for his salads. He kept
shepherd dogs. He knew Latin, Greek, French, Italian and
Spanish. And he loved Picasso. In his library of
Monticello was a collection of what a guest called "regal
scandal," that he put together under the title, "The Book
of Kings," not the old testament one, his.
It included the memoirs of the Princess Royal of
Prussia, sister of Frederick the Great, those of the
Comtesse de la Motte by a key figure and a scandal
involving a diamond necklace and Marie Antoinette and an
account of the trial of the Duke of York, the commander-
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in-chief of the British army who had been forced to resign
amid charges that he allowed his mistress to sell officer
commissions. He pointed out these tales, a guest
recalled, with a satisfaction somewhat inconsistent with
the measured gravity he claims in relation to such
subjects generally.
A guest at a country inn was said to have once
struck up a conversation with a plainly dressed and
unassuming traveler whom the stranger did not recognize.
The two covered subject after subject and the unremarkable
traveler was perfectly acquainted with each. Afterward
filled with wonder, the guest asked the landlord who this
extraordinary man had been. When the topic was law, the
traveler said, he thought he was a lawyer. When it was
medicine, he felt sure he was a physician. When it was
theology, he was convinced that he was a clergyman. The
landlord's reply was brief, "Oh, I thought you knew Mr.
Jefferson."
He was the father of the idea of American
progress, of the animating national spirit that the future
could be better than the present or the past. The
greatest of American politicians in ensuing generations
have prospered again and again by projecting a
Jeffersonian vision that the country's finest hours lie
ahead. Engaged in a perennial campaign to win the
affection of whoever happened to be in front of him at a
given moment, Jefferson flirted with men and women alike.
It is charming, he said, to be loved by everybody. And
the way to obtain it is to never quarrel or be angry with
anyone.
He hated arguing face to face, preferring to
smooth out the rough edges of conversation, leading some
people to believe that Jefferson agreed with them when, in
fact, he was simply seeking to avoid conflict. He paid a
high price for this obsession with congeniality among
those who mistook his reticence for duplicity. Often
viewed mainly as a man of ideas, Jefferson was a man of
action, a force of human nature, who was not only present
at the creation of the country, but who fought year after
year and battle by battle to keep America strong and
secure.
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He has most commonly been thought of as the
author of America or its architect -- those are the most
common metaphors -- a figure who articulated a vision of
what the country could be, but who was otherwise a kind of
detached dreamer. Yet he did not rest once his words were
written or his ideas entered circulation. He was builder
and a fighter. He once said as president, what is
practical must control what is pure theory. What is
practical must control what is pure theory. And the
habits of the governed determine, in a great degree, what
is practical. He was a political man.
His longtime arrival, Alexander Hamilton, once
said that Jefferson was "among the indolent and
temporizing rulers who loved to loll in the lap of
epicurean ease, and seemed to imagine that to govern well
is to amuse the wondering multitude with sage aphorisms
and oracular sayings," which to me sounds like a sage
aphorism and an oracular saying.
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM: A few words on Hamilton. I
suspect more than few of you, if I ask, would say you are
a Hamiltonian. That basically means you're an investment
banker, let's be honest.
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM: When I published this book, I
happened to have a meeting with Chris Christie, and he
said, you know, I'm a Hamilton guy. And I said, well,
that's great, sir, but at least my guy didn't get shot in
Jersey.
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM:
And then I laughed, and there was
traffic.
(Laughter)
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MR. MEACHAM: It's the second time I did it, the
first time, totally off point, but just might amuse you.
When George W. Bush was running for president in 1998 and
so, he was receiving journalists down in Austin,
(inaudible) McKinley asked from Porch Campaign. And he
knew I was from Tennessee, he'd read that. And so as I
was in the house, he said, hey, I should show you the
pictures of Sam Houston. And I said, that's great,
governor. You know, if it weren't for Tennesseans, you
know, you all would still be part of Spain. And he went,
ha-ha-ha -(Laughter)
years.
here.
MR. MEACHAM: Eight years of audits, eight
I'm the best client and accountant ever had, right
Hamilton was a brilliant man and an invaluable
founder, but he had that wrong. Jefferson craved control
over people and events and he knew that to govern well
required unrelenting and often hidden work. There was
nothing indolent about Thomas Jefferson. Judged by the
raw standard of the winning and keeping of power, Thomas
Jefferson was the most successful political figure of the
early Republic.
For 36 of the 40 years, between 1800 and 1840,
either Thomas Jefferson himself, or a self-described
Jeffersonian was president of the United States. I'll say
that again. For 40 -- 1800 to 1840, for 36 of those
years, the exception being John Quincy Adams, either
Thomas Jefferson himself, or a self -described
Jeffersonian was president. It is an unmatched political
dynasty.
Roosevelt didn't do it, Reagan didn't do it, no
one else has done it; Thomas Jefferson did. More than any
of those early presidents, more than Washington, more than
Adams, Jefferson believed in the possibilities of
humanity. He dreamed big, but he understood that dreams
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become reality only when their champions are strong enough
and wily enough to bend history to their purposes.
Broadly put, philosophers think, politicians maneuverer.
Jefferson's genius was that he could do both and be both,
often simultaneously, and I would argue that that is the
art of power.
On the home front, he promised his dying wife
that he would never remarry. He kept his word, but
embarked on a love affair with one woman, an Anglo-Italian
beauty, also married Maria Cosway, and finally Jefferson
maintained a decades-long liaison with Sally Hemings, his
late wife's enslaved half-sister, who tended to his
personal quarters at Monticello.
They produced five children, four of whom lived,
and gave rise to two centuries -- more now -- of
speculation about the true nature of the affair. Was it
about love, was it about power, was it about both, and if
both, how much was affection, how much coercion?
Jefferson's connection with Sally Hemings lasted almost 40
years, from 1787 to Jefferson's death in 1826, by far the
longest relationship with any woman outside his mother or
his wife.
Jefferson, as we have seen, fought for the
greatest of causes, yet felt short of delivering justice
to the enslaved and the persecuted. His imagination
totally failed him on slavery. He admitted that he simply
could not see how America could practically redeem itself
from its original sin. He has in his generation's failure
to apply his formidable political gifts to that question
helped lead to the bloodshed of the Civil War, and one
could argue to the bloodshed in our own country over
matters of race, even now.
As James Parton said though, we cannot yet claim a final
triumph. From his reading of history, literature and
philosophy, and from his years among the statesmen, in the
salons of Williamsburg, Richmond, Philadelphia, Paris, New
York, and finally Washington, Jefferson knew that one
cannot always be good if one is to be great. The
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political life is not for the pure or for the inflexible.
And I would argue that fortunately for his country, Thomas
Jefferson was neither.
He had a limitless appetite for fame and respect
and love, and no patience for attacks, slights, and second
guessing. Little wonder then that he lived in constant
tension between advance and retreat, between the capital
and Monticello, between engagement and retirement. To get
what he wanted the most, he had to endure what he liked
the least. By the force of nearly two-and-a-half
centuries of habit, we tend to view our history as an
inevitable chain of events leading to a sure and certain
conclusion.
There was, however, nothing foreordained about
the American experiment, still isn't actually. To treat
the revolution as a set piece pitting an evil empire of
Englishmen against the noble band of Americans does a
disservice to both, for it caricatures Britain and it
minimizes the anguishing complexities that Jefferson and
his contemporaries faced in choosing accommodation and
reform or rebellion. Most Americans were, after all, of
British descent. And American culture in the decades
leading up to the revolution was deferential to, and even
celebratory of the monarchy.
The whole structure of the lives of Jefferson's
American ancestors and of his generation was built around
membership in the British Empire. For many, if not most
Americans, the hatred of King George the III that marked
the active revolutionary phase was the exception, not the
rule. So Jefferson lived and worked in a time when
nothing was certain. He knew and felt that America's
enemies were everywhere. The greatest of these was
Britain, and not only during the struggle for
independence.
So I would argue that rather than recalling the
revolutionary war in his traditional way, as an arm
struggle that began from Lexington and Concord, 1775 until
the British defeat at Yorktown, it's illuminating to
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consider that Jefferson saw the struggle against Britain
and its influence in American life as one that had been
opened in 1764, at the end of the French and Indian war,
and did not really end until the Treaty of Ghent and the
Battle of New Orleans brought the war of 1812 to a close.
So seen this way, which is how Jefferson saw it, or at
least implicitly experienced it, Jefferson lived and
governed in what was functionally a 50-years' war.
It was a war that was sometimes hot and
sometimes cold, but it was always unfolding. It took
different forms; there were traditional battlefield
confrontations from 1775 to 1783, and then again from,
1812 to 1815. There were battles by proxy with loyalists
and British allies among the Indians. There were
commercial strikes and counter strikes; there were fears
of political encroachment within the United States that
could be aided by British military movements from Canada,
Nova Scotia, or Britain's western posts, posts they
declined, by the way, to surrender after the revolution.
There were anxieties about disunion in sentiment
in New England and in New York; there were terrors about
monarchical tendencies wherever they might be. Anything
that happened in either foreign or domestic politics was
interpreted thorough the prism of this ongoing conflict
with Britain. Even talk of potential alliances with
London in the event of war with France was driven not by
affection for Britain, but by cruel calculations of
national interest.
Jefferson did not trust the old mother country,
and he did not trust those Americans who maintained even
imaginative ties to monarchy and all its trappings,
aristocracy of birth, hereditary executives, lifetime
legislators, standing armies, large naval establishments,
and grand centralized financial systems. When Jefferson
sensed any trend in the general direction of such things,
he reacted viscerally, fearing that the work of the
revolution and of the constitutional convention was at
risk.
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The proximity of British officials and troops to
the north of the United States and to the strength of
British fleet exacerbated these anxieties. So the
question becomes was Jefferson paranoid about such
possibilities, especially from the Treaty of Paris in
1784, which marked the end of the revolution through his
presidency which ended in 1809. Perhaps he was paranoid.
Was he engaged in conspiracy mongering, yes. But
sometimes, as we know, paranoids have enemies, and
conspiracies are only laughable if they fail to
materialize.
Jefferson's fevered fears about a return of
monarchy, which was often shorthand for a restoration of
British influence and an end to the uniquely American
enterprise in self-government, were dismissed as fancible
by no less a figure than George Washington. But in the
climate of that time, a time of revolution, of espionage,
of well-founded terrors the American Republic might meet
the dismal faith that all other republics had met,
Jefferson's sense of Britain as a perennial foe, is
unsurprising and essential to understand. He thought he
was in a perennial war.
And so he spoke and acted in tones and terms
that may seem extreme, but which were natural, if one saw
the world as he saw it. So from Hamilton's fiscal program
to John Adam's weakness for British forms, to the over New
England hostility toward his presidency, Jefferson judged
everything in the context of the British threat to
democratic republicanism.
To him, little than America was secure, for the
military success of the revolution had marked only the end
of one battle in a larger half-century war. It may seem
over-heated and it surely did to some who lived through
the same years and the same pressures. But it was real to
him, and if we are to understand what he was really like,
and what our politics -- why our polities took the form
they did, then we must see the world as he saw it, not as
we know it turned out.
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So, quickly I'd like to offer three thoughts,
three lessons from that Jeffersonian life that might apply
to us and to our own political leaders at this point. The
first is that great political leaders tend to be in tune
with the broader culture of their times. Thomas Jefferson
was fully conversant and engaged with the last two to
three centuries of western thought that was breaking over
the United States, as the United States became the United
States during the revolution.
So what had happened in the 15th, 16th, 17th,
and into the 18th centuries? You had the rise of the
(inaudible), you had the translation of sacred scripture
into the vernacular, you had the Protestant reformations,
you had the Scottish moral enlightenment and the European
enlightenment that were shifting the fundamental
intellectual orientation of the west from the divine right
of kings and of prelates, and of Popes, from hereditary
power to the idea that we were all born with a certain
liberty and a certain capacity to realize our own destiny.
The American Revolution for all its limitations
was, in fact, the political manifestation of a broader
European and the United Kingdom shift in how we saw the
world. It was no longer about the divine right of kings;
it was about the divinity within every breast. When
Jefferson wrote the words, "All men are created equal," he
was giving life, giving written manifestation to that
broader cultural tendency. Our great political leaders
are the ones who are engaged in those cultural and
intellectual shifts in the broader world.
The other is the virtue of compromise.
Jefferson was seen as a ferocious partisan in New York -I'll put you in a leg just for a moment, imagine -- put
yourself in New York in 1790. Real estate was still a
problem, so that won't help. It won't be a nice thing.
Jefferson has come back from France as minister to France.
He learns from the newspapers that he has to become
secretary of state, proving that the press operation even
then was leaky.
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He goes to New York, he wants to get rooms on
what he calls the Broadway, but it's too expensive and too
complicated. So he takes rooms on Maiden Lane, and
immediately goes to war with Hamilton. They are, as
Jefferson himself put it, like two cocks in a pit,
constantly at each others throats, over the shape of the
fiscal system of the country, the nature of federal
authority, even the ceremonial of the presidency. Should
George Washington return visits when he is visited as
president?
Jefferson and Hamilton managed to have a fight
about that. So there was a beginning there, there was a
moment where not just partisanship was taking shape.
Partisanship, as Jefferson said, was a natural part of
democracy. It was the air one breathed if we were going
to have different opinions. He said that differences of
opinion have shaped representative governments since
Greece and Rome. So that was a necessary element.
Where Jefferson and Hamilton were dangerously
tending in the first years of 1790s were toward reflexive
partisanship, toward my instinct to disagree with
something that you say, simply because you say it, not
considering the merits of what you say, but considering
the source, I dismiss it. So, Washington in his wisdom
wrote a letter to both men, trying to calm the waters.
Here's what Washington wrote. He said, "How
unfortunate it is that whilst we are encompassed on all
sides with avowed enemies and insidious friends, that
internal dissensions should be harrowing and tearing our
vitals." It's a wonderful phrase of Washington, and
that's not a big category. Washington had made many
virtues; you know, the gift of gab was not one of them.
Harrowing and tearing our vitals, it's a
reminder that in the 18th century, public life was seen as
vital as physical health. Remember the initial meaning of
corruption was not draft or theft; it was disease. Our
public life was so important that if we were to become
sick, if we were to create obstacles to the full
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realization of our possibilities as a body of politic,
then that was like a disease, it would kill us.
So, Jefferson and Hamilton get this letter, and
Jefferson wrote back of the illegitimate son of
(inaudible), "I shall not suffer the slanderers of a man
whose history from the moment at which history can stoop
to notice him has been a tissue of machinations against
the liberty of the country, which has not only received
him, but heaped its honors upon his head." Hamilton wrote
that Jefferson was an atheist in religion and a fanatic in
politics. And an ally of Hamilton said that -– wrote
saying, I think you ought to get a damn kicking, you
redheaded son of a bitch.
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM: So, George Washington's attempt at
family therapy was not wildly successful. But in the
fullness of time, Jefferson began to see that reflexive
partisanship was dangerous. And so by the time he becomes
president, 10 years later, he becomes more comfortable
with compromise. July 3, 1803, word comes that Louisiana
is for sale. He immediately -- Jefferson has made his
whole life, right, on being a strict constructionist or
not being Alexander Hamilton. If the Constitution doesn't
say it explicitly, he's going to amend the Constitution.
He's not going to go beyond the written letter of the law.
So he immediately begins to form a
constitutional amendment to buy Louisiana. Six weeks
later, he gets a second letter saying that, in fact,
Napoleon is rethinking this idea. It was, in fact, the
worst real estate deal since Manhattan. So it was wise of
Napoleon to rethink it. Anyway, what I think of is Thomas
Jefferson Claude Rains moment. At that point, he becomes
shock shocked, that anyone would think he needed a
constitutional amendment to buy Louisiana.
(Laughter)
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MR. MEACHAM: He buys it and moves forward and
then justifies it in some of the most important language
in the history of the American presidency. So there is a
serious point here. Language that Lincoln turned to in
the Civil War, that Jackson had turned to later, that
Franklin Roosevelt turned to later, which was that the
duty of the chief magistrate is not to the strict line of
the law; it is to the survival and success of the country.
And what he did, though he had gone beyond the rudiments
of the will of the Constitution itself, he hoped would be
as though he had been a guardian for award, he had made
investments beyond the written word, but that the word
prospered in the fullness of time, and came to appreciate
it.
So he saw there that the art of compromise, the
capacity to react to changing circumstance was, in fact,
one of the high virtues of leadership. Compromise is not
a dirty word. It is simply the practical result of living
in a representative government. And that's a Jeffersonian
virtue. And the last is the -- if you think about the
culture of compromise and a sense of curiosity, he just
never stopped wanting to learn. He never stopped wanting
to understand. Lewis and Clark bedazzled him. For him,
Lewis and Clark was like a new season on Netflix. He
downloaded all at once, he binge-viewed it, you know, he
adored it.
He put the different bones in the east room of
the White House so that people could come and see them.
He was, in fact, a museum keeper as well as a president,
and was just always wanting to know the next thing. And
if you think about "democratic leadership," lower case
"d," a president, a political leader, a leader of thought,
who wants to know what is interesting and fascinating to
the people, is, in fact, a vital virtue.
I'll leave you with this. Jefferson hungered
for greatness, let there be no doubt about this, one of
the most ambitious men who ever drew breath. And the
Lord, although he would not have put it that way, faith,
gave him an epic role to play in tumultuous times. He did
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not fail to play it. The drama of his age drew him into
politics. It was a world he never really left.
He wrote to schoolmate, John Page, who was then
the governor of Virginia -- Jefferson was president of the
United States, and he said, "We have both been drawn from
our natural passion for study and tranquility. By times
which took us -- took from us the freedom of choice:
times, however, which planting a new world with the seeds
of just government will produce a remarkable era in the
history of mankind. It was incumbent on those, therefore,
who fell into them to give up every favorite pursuit and
lay their shoulder to the work of the day." To lay their
shoulder to the work of the day.
He could do no other, and neither should we.
That is perhaps the greatest lesson of Thomas Jefferson's
life. He engaged with what Oliver Wendell Holmes would
later call the "passion and action of his time, with an
eye toward all time," as should we. I'll give Abraham
Lincoln the last word, always a safe decision, I think.
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM: All honors to Jefferson, Lincoln
wrote in 1859, on the eve of the storm. To the man who in
the concrete pressure of a struggle for national
independence by a single people, had the coolness,
forecast, and capacity." It's a wonderful phrase. Test
yourself, can someone say this of you -- "had the
coolness, forecast, and capacity, to introduce into a
merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, and so
to embalm it there that today and in all coming days, it
shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very signs
of reappearing tyranny and oppression." Not a bad legacy
that.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
22
Thank you. It's always dangerous, but do you
have any questions? We have a few minutes. How do we do
this, sir? We're going to have our Oprah moment here.
SPEAKER: I wonder if John Roberts known the
words that you were talking about the duty of the chief
magistrate and when they came down with the decisions this
week. I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on the
relationship between Adams and Jefferson.
MR. MEACHAM: Sure. Adams and Jefferson –- it
was as ever as was more complicated than we tend to think.
They were very close in Philadelphia in the 1770s, in the
Second Continental Congress. Adams conceded a couple of
things to Jefferson that I think even now wherever Adams
is, he's a little annoyed by, the Declaration of
Independence being the big one.
How many lawyers are in the room? Okay, that's
what I figured. So sorry about this, but John Adams had a
lawyer-like view of the world. And his view was that the
day that we would celebrate as our national independence
would be the day that the Continental Congress passed a
resolution directing that the different states could
reorganize their state governments. You know, that was
going to be the fireworks and the hotdogs.
Thomas Jefferson provided the poetry of the
revolution, and so Adams for the rest of his life, and
actually he wrote that the Declaration of Independence was
a theatrical performance, and Jefferson ran away with the
glory of it. Even the fact that they died as you know on
the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the
Declaration of Independence, stuff you can't make up, I
wonder if poor John Adams was thinking, the son of a bitch
stepped on my headline again, you know.
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM: So I don't know, I don't know.
But they were friends, then they were rivals, and then
they were friends. So they ran against each other for
23
president in 1796 and in 1800. Beginning a tradition of
frustrated vice presidents, Jefferson tried to have some
substantive role in 1797 with Adams. He described the
scene, they were standing there and Jefferson offers
opinions, Adams listened and then Jefferson's voice picks
up, and he said -- and at that point I had no further
engagement with the matters of the administration for
another four years.
So they fell out over really a different vision
of the country. Adams thought that Jefferson was wrong
about the British influence that I described, Jefferson
thought that Adams was wrong, and then about 1812, they
began exchanging the great correspondence that we all
know. Benjamin Rush gets the credit for that, patriot
physician from Philadelphia. He played a kind of Serrano
role in that. Rush told Adams that Jefferson was
desperate to hear from him, he told Jefferson that Adams
was desperate to hear from him.
It was all like passing notes in study hall.
But at that point, they had both come to live in a sense
with an awareness of their historical role. Jefferson
wrote to Adams, actually asking him to receive a grandson,
saying that, "I would be honored if you would let him come
see you so that in his age, in his great age, he can say
that he once met the Argonauts of old." So they were
fully aware of their role and I think it's a great lesson
in ultimately in the craft and practice of politics. The
more people can emphasize what pulls them together, it
seems to me, the more fluid and prosperous the process is
going to be.
SPEAKER: To some people today, Jefferson is
always cited as a champion of states rights over federal
power. Can you speak a little bit to that?
MR. MEACHAM: He absolutely is. It has the
virtue to paraphrase Henry Kissinger of not being true.
Now, Jefferson was against federal power until he wielded
it.
24
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM: I don't know. In my life, I know
I'm guilty of that. I suspect some of you all are, maybe.
So, but ultimately you have to look at sort of like what
John Mitchell, the Attorney General once said, watch what
we do not what we say. You have to watch what Jefferson
did, less than what he said. No one was more articulate.
In fact, to some extent Jefferson is a victim, he's both
made and unmade by his eloquence. His words live forever.
One of the most important sentences in the English
language, you know, he wrote. But because he was so
eloquent about state rights, about the need for rebellion
every now and then, because he spoke in such wonderful
needlepoint pillar terms, sometimes that obscures his
actual record as president.
And he doubled the size of the country, breaking
with his philosophical states rights precepts, leading by
the way, the first secessionist movement in the United
States was in New England, not in the South, Pickering and
others were -- in fact, John Quincy Adams, was trying to
calm it down, because they saw that center of gravity,
political power and gravity was going to move in execrably
to the south and the west, which in fact turned out to be
the case.
So, yes, he's championed by state rights folks,
but I think if you look at what he actually did as
president, you see a man very comfortable with using
federal power and expanding the state when he believed
that it was ultimately to the good of the whole. And so
I'm always very leery of anyone who claims -- if any
movement that tries to appropriate the past for a
particular sanction for a given course of action, because
it's almost always more complicated.
The other thing I'd say, we're in the midst of a
great debate in the country as we should be about the
mechanics of memory, right, about figures in the past who
represented traditions, which we have litigated by the
sword and by important and epical work of non-violent
25
protest. My view of the biographical past is that we
learn far more from figures in history, not if we look up
at them adoringly or down on them condescendingly, but try
to look them in the eye and judge them for what they were
experiencing and how did they do facing the constraints
and difficulties of their time, again, not to excuse it,
but to explain it, and then to figure out, I have three
children under the age of 13. And I wonder all the time,
what in 20 years, 30 years, if I'm spared, they will turn
to me and say "Exactly how was it, you didn't do anything
about X or Y."
When you think about it, we're facing
existential issues. The climate of the planet on which we
live is shifting radically. The gap between the rich and
the poor is perilously wide. There are enormous numbers
of issues that require thoughtful and persistent
attention, and I guess I would argue that we should
perhaps focus our energies more on resolving the problems
of the moment than on litigating the issues of the past,
one man's opinion.
Yes, sir?
(Applause)
SPEAKER:
I'm a financial guy.
MR. MEACHAM:
SPEAKER:
Hamilton.
So I'm always interested in how people
handle -MR. MEACHAM:
No duels for you, right.
SPEAKER: So I'm really interested in and this
may be an unfair question, because it may be asking you to
sort of speculate about psychological issues.
MR. MEACHAM: Oh, I hate to do that.
they're not mine, I'm fine.
As long as
SPEAKER: So you've got a man who is writing
down all of his expenses.
26
MR. MEACHAM:
Yeah.
SPEAKER: And yet left a life with such
financial incompletion. Does it say anything about it?
MR. MEACHAM: It says a lot about him. No, he
died in terrible consumer debt and it was a cataclysm for
Monticello and his family and the people he owned. And so
it was deeply irresponsible. So why did he do it? So the
question becomes, we know that he was epicurean in the
best sense. So did he believe that the consumption of the
moment, the pleasure that he derived and those around him
derived, because he was very generous, was outweighed the
need to deal with future issues, and yet as a politician,
he thought all the time about future issues, so how do you
balance that?
My own view is that he believed somehow like
Micawber that something would turn up.
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM: I really do. I think that he was
an optimist in the broadest sense, that it was all going
to work out somehow. And if you look at his life, it's
actually not an irrational conclusion for him to reach. I
mean, he's born a subject of the British king, and he
becomes the third president of a republic that did not
exist when he was born, a job, which by the way meant a
great deal to him. I consider the epitaph issue, you
know, where he said he was the author of the Declaration
of independence, the father of the University of Virginia
and the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious
Liberty, thereby guaranteeing that for the rest of
history, people would say, "Oh, how humble." He never
mentioned that he was president. It is the world's most
passive-aggressive epitaph ever.
(Laughter)
MR. MEACHAM: He absolutely made certain that we
would say "Oh, we know he was president." It's brilliant.
I mean it's one his great achievements, I think. I'm in
27
awe of that. I think he was fundamentally optimistic,
thought it would all work out and it didn't. So one more,
and we'll let you go. Yes, sir?
SPEAKER: Having matriculated from Mr.
Jefferson's academical village, I consider -MR. MEACHAM:
You've done all right, I see.
SPEAKER: I have been curious though as
brilliant and sensitive as he was, Kennedy once said at
the university when addressing Nobel laureates that it was
the most intelligence that had been in that room since
Jefferson sat there by himself.
MR. MEACHAM:
Right.
SPEAKER: I think that you've answered this and
perhaps this is just a segue. It's always been perplexing
as I have admired and been grateful to him for so many
years, how somebody of his sensitivity and intelligence,
could have written "All men are created equal," and then
participated with slavery at Monticello and the University
of Virginia.
MR. MEACHAM:
Right.
SPEAKER: And perhaps you answered it by saying
"You have to remember what time it was."
MR. MEACHAM: Again, which is not an excuse, but
I do think it is an explanation. The whole legacy of
African-American slavery cannot be put on Thomas
Jefferson's shoulders. It would be convenient if it
could; it would be a lot easier for all of us. His sins
were a huge part of the nation's sins as well in the same
way with Andrew Jackson and the removal of Native
Americans. It was a fundamentally tragic, in the pure
sense of that word, in the Aristotelian sense of it. It
was a tragic sin, and he simply gave up.
It's the exception to what we were just talking
about. And to me that makes him more interesting, more
human than -- and it just doesn't lead me to, therefore,
28
try to dismiss him or put him in sort of a penalty box,
historical penalty box. If we try to simplify our issues
of race and of slavery and of ownership, and try to put it
off on a couple of Virginia planters from the 18th
century, we're really trying to dodge a broader sense of
responsibility, I think.
And so while it may be convenient, it is
probably ultimately unwise to do so. And so again I would
argue that we should engage more with these figures to
understand, try to understand as best we can through what
George Eliot called "the dim lights and tangled
circumstance of the world," try to understand how did
these people who did remarkable things, who built the
world's oldest functioning democracy, the world, a
country, a republic that has benefitted everyone in this
room, beyond measure, how were they so morally blind to
something right in front of them?
And perhaps that's the answer. It was right in
front of them. And so I'll go back to Arthur Schlesinger
again, "Self-righteousness in retrospect is easy, but it's
also cheap" and I think ultimately, we're going to engage
history and engage our own lives more fairly and more
fully if we do it with a measure of sympathy and
perspective.
Thank you all very much.
(Applause)
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