Thomas Jefferson: Oenophile

During his first term as President, Jefferson spent seventy-five hundred dollars—roughly a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in today’s currency—on wine, and he is generally regarded as America’s first great wine connoisseur.
Patrick Radden Keefe, "The Jefferson Bottles"

Thomas Jefferson has long been one of the most interesting American leaders. He wrote the Declaration of Independence with a small amount of editing help from his colleagues. He designed his own home, a marvel of architecture. He argued persuasively with Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, perhaps the leading theorist concerning evolution a century prior to Charles Darwin, but who made some astounding statements concerning the deficiency of North American air and its lack of large fauna. Jefferson gathered specimens of fauna that dwarfed those in Europe to prove Buffon wrong. Jefferson played the violin, studied languages, experimented with agriculture, and maintained a life-long correspondence with his rival in the most fiercely contested election in the early national period of United States politics, John Adams.

Thomas Jefferson also loved wine.

In keeping with the focus of Patriots and Peoples, I scanned the indices of A Patriot's History of the United States and of A People's History of the United States for references to Jefferson's oenophilia. The term wine is not indexed in either book, but both contain ample references to Jefferson. Howard Zinn focuses on Jefferson's contribution to politics, saying nothing about his architecture, science, or social views with two exceptions: he credits the spirit of the times rather than personal views of the man for the fact that Jefferson remained a slave owner to his death (see "Thomas Jefferson: Abolitionist?"). The second reference to his cultural values comes in a section concerned with the "cult of domesticity," where Zinn notes Emma Willard contradicting Jefferson's views that women's education should emphasize "the amusements of life ... dancing, drawing, and music" (as quoted in A People's History, 118).

Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen offer a thumbnail sketch of Jefferson the man in A Patriot's History. They mention his interest in wine in a single sentence: "After the war, as American ambassador to France, he developed a pronounced taste for French food, wine, and radical French politics" (133). For much of the targeted audience of the ultra-conservative Patriot's History, this sentence is sufficient to damn Jefferson.

My interest in Jefferson and wine was provoked last week when I started reading The Billionaire's Vinegar (2008) by Benjamin Wallace. There are indications scattered around the web that a film based on Wallace's book is in development. Reports of the movie rights being optioned were released in January 2008 before the book's release. Movie Insider gives 2012 as the tentative date for the movie's release. There's certainly plenty of drama in the story as William Koch spends more than a million dollars hiring former FBI investigators and similar sleuths to build evidence against Hardy Rodenstock, the man behind the sale of dozens of bottles reputedly once owned by Jefferson. Kip Forbes bid 106,000 pounds for the alleged 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux that instantly became the most expensive bottle of wine in history. Koch spent many thousands less for the bottles that he bought.

The Billionaire's Vinegar opens with a description of the auction where Forbes set a record bid. Much of the story of the auction itself derives from "A Piece of History" in The New Yorker, 20 January 1986. This opening chapter narrates the development of the wine expertise of auctioneer Michael Broadbent, whose opposition to his portrayal later in the book led to a lawsuit that led to Random House agreeing not to distribute the book in the United Kingdom (one wonders whether the film will suffer similar barriers).

The second chapter focuses on Jefferson. I started this book as one of several Kindle samples dealing with history and culture of vitas vinifera cultivation, wine production, and consumption of the beverage that led to Benjamin Franklin's frequently corrupted line, "Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy!" Freakonomics has a brief entry by the editor of The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), Fred R. Shapiro, concerning the origins of Franklin's quote, the process of authenticating this little detail of the past, and the corruption of Franklin's expression by beer-swilling enthusiasts.

The Kindle sample offers a few pages of this chapter, just enough to hook this angler. I shelled out the $12 needed to get to the end of the chapter and gain access to the notes. Having done so, I read the rest of the book. I learned more about the world of rare wines and forgeries than I had anticipated as among my interests. Having read this book, there's a lot more that I'll be attentive to when the next issue of Wine Spectator arrives in the mail box. Meanwhile, I'm now attending to more Kindle samples:


John Hailman, Thomas Jefferson on Wine (2006)
Charles A. Cerami, Dinner at Mr. Jefferson's: Three Men, Five Great Wines, and the vening that Changed America (2011)
Tyler Colman, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink (2008)

Another book of interest is not available as an ebook, but may arrive via the mail in hardcover sometime in the near future.

James Gabler, The Wines and Travels of Thomas Jefferson (1995)

"small land holders are the most precious"

One text always leads to another. As I continue my efforts to comprehend the incomprehensible, to probe into the foundations of the hyper-conservatism of the present American political landscape, I set out to peruse a classic text: Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition (1962). The text was originally published as Liberalismus (1927) and initially the English translation was titled The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth, but Mises sought to "reclaim" the term liberal from those he regarded as socialists, and so the present title. I'm reading the etext edition from the Online Library of Liberty.

After the amusing Introduction, the meat of the argument begins with a chapter titled "Property". There Mises offers:

The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production (for in regard to commodities ready for consumption, private ownership is a matter of course and is not disputed even by the socialists and communists). All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand.

Such a yoking of notions of freedom and liberty to notions of private property immediately brings to my recall Charles A Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913). Simultaneously, I think of Thomas Jefferson and his celebration of the Yeoman farmer as the backbone of American self-government.

Consequently, I find myself reading a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison from Fontainebleau outside of Paris, France. Jefferson wrote a nine where he meant to write an eight, and so the letter appears in volume 8 rather than volume 4 of Paul Leicester Ford, The Works of Thomas Jefferson (1904-5). As with the works of Mises, the Online Library of Liberty has a digitized and searchable edition. Here is the complete letter, as published there.

Dear Sir,—

Seven o’clock, and retired to my fireside, I have determined to enter into conversation with you. This is a village of about 5000 inhabitants when the court is not here & 20,000 when they are, occupying a valley thro’ which runs a brook and on each side of it a ridge of small mountains most of which are naked rock. The King comes here, in the fall always, to hunt. His court attend him, as do also the foreign diplomatic corps. But as this is not indispensably required & my finances do not admit the expense of a continued residence here, I propose to come occasionally to attend the King’s levees, returning again to Paris, distant 40 miles. This being the first trip I set out yesterday morning to take a view of the place. For this purpose I shaped my course towards the highest of the mountains in sight, to the top of which was about a league. As soon as I had got clear of the town I fell in with a poor woman walking at the same rate with myself & going the same course. Wishing to know the condition of the laboring poor I entered into conversation with her, which I began by enquiries for the path which would lead me into the mountain: & thence proceeded to enquiries into her vocation, condition & circumstances. She told me she was a day labourer, at 8. sous or 4d sterling the day; that she had two children to maintain, & to pay a rent of 30 livres for her house, (which would consume the hire of 75 days) that often she could get no emploiment, and of course was without bread. As we had walked together near a mile & she had so far served me as a guide, I gave her, on parting, 24 sous. She burst into tears of a gratitude which I could perceive was unfeigned because she was unable to utter a word. She had probably never before received so great an aid. This little attendrissement, with the solitude of my walk led me into a train of reflections on that unequal division of property which occasions the numberless instances of wretchedness which I had observed in this country & is to be observed all over Europe. The property of this country is absolutely concentrated in a very few hands, having revenues of from half a million of guineas a year downward. These employ the flower of the country as servants, some of them having as many as 200 domestics, not labouring. They employ also a great number of manufacturers, & tradesmen, & lastly the class of labouring husbandmen. But after all there comes the most numerous of all the classes, that is, the poor who cannot find work. I asked myself what could be the reason that so many should be permitted to beg who are willing to work, in a country where there is a very considerable proportion of uncultivated lands? These lands are undisturbed only for the sake of game. It should seem then that it must be because of the enormous wealth of the proprietors which places them above attention to the encrease of their revenues by permitting these lands to be laboured. I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers & sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, & to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour & live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small land holders are the most precious part of a state.
Jefferson to Madison, 28 October 1785

My first question concerned the correspondence of Jefferson's views with those of Mises. Jefferson seeks the good of all. Mises asserts, "liberalism was the first political movement that aimed at promoting the welfare of all" (Liberalism, 22). Mises admits that liberalism and socialism share this goal, differing principally in their methods.

Both Mises and Jefferson emphasize the rights of property. But Jefferson's notion of the commons ("The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour & live on") is an idea that I have yet to encounter in my reading of Mises. Moreover, one gets the impression from Mises that Jefferson's scheme of progressive taxation might proceed from principles that he would call socialist, distinguishing them from liberal.

Reading this letter of Jefferson's creates doubts concerning some of Mises' historical claims with respect to eighteenth century classical liberalism, but it does offer evidence for some of his claims. Mises labors to see all economic theory as bipartite: liberalism vs. socialism. Jefferson draws from and engages with a somewhat more nuanced view.

Washington, Adams, Jesus

Jesus is benevolence personified, an example for all men.
John Adams

How significant was Christianity to the American Revolution? To the Constitutional Convention, and to the Constitution? How significant were Christianity and Biblical precepts to the practice of government by members of the revolutionary generation?

These questions concerning the influence of Jesus Christ in America derive from broader questions.

What principles of philosophy were central to the ideas of government embraced by the men that wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, and that governed the the incipient nation that emerged? Who influenced the Founders, as we have come to call this group of men? How did they derive our system of government from their influences?

Entire careers are built on these historical questions. Historians pursue answers; politicians embrace or denounce their interpretations; pundits proclaim their conclusions.

A Patriot's History of the United States (2004) by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen offers:

Many of his biographers trumpeted Washington's faith, and a famous painting captures the colonial general praying in a snowy wood, but if Washington had any personal belief in Jesus Christ, he kept it well hidden. Like Franklin, Washington tended toward Deism, a general belief in a detached and impersonal God who plays no role in human affairs.
Schweikart and Allen, 130

Washington's successor as President brought a different faith into the Executive office (our standard metonymy, the White House, becomes available for the first time in the administration of Thomas Jefferson).

A brilliant attorney, patriot organizer, and Revolutionary diplomat, Adams exuded all the doctrinal religion missing in Washington, to the point of being pious to a fault. ... Adams brought a sense of the sacred to government that Washington lacked, placing before the nation an unwavering moral compass that refused compromise.
Schweikart and Allen, 131

There is a tendency to use labels among some who inquire into the faith of the men that wrote our founding documents and that served in the government thus established. John Adams was a Christian, and a Calvinist at that. Benjamin Franklin was a Deist. Thomas Jefferson was a Theist, or perhaps an Atheist, according to Abigail Adams and others who wish to embrace, condemn, or mourn his philosophy. These labels become points of contention; questioning their accuracy foments debate that drives scholars back into the archive, their place of refuge.

These labels illuminate and obfuscate. They might shed light on the beliefs of a man or woman. Although John Adams may have wavered in his faith during his later years, his wife Abigail remained devout. There is no question that James Madison considered a career in the ministry. That his family was Episcopal,* but sent him to a Presbyterian college is easily established. The influence of John Calvin's idea of total depravity upon Madison's concepts of government is less clear and open to debate.

John Adams was the child of New England Puritanism. He was "pious to a fault," Schweikart and Allen explain. His devout faith or his abrasive personality isolated him among his peers at the Second Continental Congress. The Declaration of Independence was his idea, but it would have been rejected if he proposed it. Some delegates voted against whatever Adams put forth. In order to circumvent this animosity, Adams worked behind the scenes, prompting other men to put forth his ideas as if they were their own.

Some historians consider John Adams the worst President in U.S. history, surpassed in infamy only by George W. Bush (stay with me conservative readers, please--assessments of Bush are not yet history). Schweikart and Allen, although they do not shrink from assessing his failures, credit him with "establishing the presidency as a moral, as well as a political, position" (131). Richard Nixon was a crook; Jimmy Carter was a morally grounded incompetent; George W. Bush was born again; William Jefferson Clinton was a morally bankrupt philanderer. All these assertions, whether accurate or not, stand on the foundation of John Adams' moral leadership, upon the rock of his faith.


Researching Patriots

When I read A Patriots History of the United States, or most any other book for that matter, I tease the text with a set of mundane questions concerning scholarship.

How accurate are the contentions? What supporting evidence is presented? Do they accurately represent the views of those they cite? Do they quote accurately? Out of context? Who agrees with them? Who disagrees? How does this contention compare to assertions of other historians? Where does their ideology illuminate their subject? Where does it obscure?

What did John Adams have to say for himself? What did he say about his religious faith, about God, about Jesus?

The Online Library of Liberty has digitized and rendered searchable the ten volume The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author (1856), edited by Charles Francis Adams. This text seems a good enough place to begin, so I entered God into the search box only to learn that search terms must have at least four letters. Jesus was more productive. The name of Jesus appears twenty-eight times in these ten volumes.

The scattered references to Jesus across Adams' writing vary in their focus, but appear in the author's autobiography, as well as his letters. There is one instance in a critically important text for considering his philosophy of government in the years leading up to the Revolution: "A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law" (1865). Of those that settled America, and their resistance to residual feudalism, Adams offered:

They knew that government was a plain, simple, intelligible thing, founded in nature and reason, and quite comprehensible by common sense. They detested all the base services and servile dependencies of the feudal system. They knew that no such unworthy dependencies took place in the ancient seats of liberty, the republics of Greece and Rome; and they thought all such slavish subordinations were equally inconsistent with the constitution of human nature and that religious liberty with which Jesus had made them free.
The Works of John Adams, vol 3, 454

This passage does not speak to Adams' personal faith, but it demonstrates part of his understanding of the faith of his forebears.

We learn more of a personal nature from a batch of letters to several friends, including Thomas Jefferson. During the winter 1816-1817 Adams' reading included Origine de tous les Cultes, ou la Réligion Universelle (The Origin of All Worships) by Charles François Dupuis, published in twelve volumes in 1795 and in an abridged version in 1798. Adams, if I read his letters correctly, first read the twelve volumes, then borrowed Jefferson's copy of the abridgment and read that.

Dupuis rejected the notion of revelation, even comparing Jesus to a ghost.

We shall therefore not investigate, whether the Christian religion is a revealed religion. None but dunces will believe in revealed ideas and in ghosts. The philosophy of our days has made too much progress, in order to be obliged to enter into a dissertation on the communications of the Deity with man, excepting those, which are made by the light of reason and by the contemplation of Nature.
Charles François Dupuis, The Origin of All Religious Worship (1872 [1798]), 216

Adams did not agree with Dupuis, but confessed that he lacked the time or knowledge of the world's mythologies to write the necessary rejoinder. He did consider Dupuis more stimulating than his other reading that winter. He told Jefferson that Dupuis offered more novelty.

I must acknowledge, however, that I have found in Dupuis more ideas that were new to me, than in all the others. My conclusion from all of them is universal toleration. Is there any work extant so well calculated to discredit corruptions and impostures in religion as Dupuis?
Adams to Jefferson, 12 December 1816

The lessons he derives include both the need for purification of Christianity and tolerance of beliefs. Dupuis does not persuade him of his thesis that Christianity derives from ancient worship of the sun, but the text provokes inquiry into "superstition and fraud" that weave themselves into Christian faith. Adams letter two days after Christmas 1816 to Francis Adrian van der Kemp sums up the major themes, and provides the text for my epigraph above.

Jesus is benevolence personified, an example for all men. Dupuis has made no alteration in my opinions of the Christian religion, in its primitive purity and simplicity, which I have entertained for more than sixty years. It is the religion of reason, equity, and love; it is the religion of the head and of the heart. ...

How could that nation preserve its creed among the monstrous theologies of all the other nations of the earth? Revelation, you will say, and especial Providence; and I will not contradict you, for I cannot say with Dupuis that a revelation is impossible or improbable.

Christianity, you will say, was a fresh revelation. I will not deny this. As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed? How has it happened that all the fine arts, architecture, painting, sculpture, statuary, music, poetry, and oratory, have been prostituted, from the creation of the world, to the sordid and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud?
John Adams to F. A. Vanderkemp, 27 December 1816

Searching for Jesus in the writings of John Adams does not fully answer the question, but it provides a framework for inquisitive reading.



*This word is employed in John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (1987), 94 ff. However, for the time leading up to the Revolution, the Episcopal Church in America remained Anglican. The creation of the Episcopal denomination is part of the process of separation from England. In the context above, the word Episcopal strikes me as anachronistic. On the other hand, calling Madison Anglican might connote questions concerning his patriotism. See "Calvin and the Constitution" for more concerning Eidsmoe's views of Madison, and some links concerning Calvin's influence.


Addendum:

Jonathan Rowe also quotes from Adams letter to F.A. van der Kemp in a post for American Creation that is cross-posted on his own blog.

Calvin and the Constitution

History is eloquent in declaring that American democracy was born of Christianity and that Christianity was Calvinism.
Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (1932)

Had he lived, John Calvin would have been 500 years old this month. He died, but his ideas live on, perhaps even in the Constitution of the United States. A writer for the New York Times asked Calvin's most recent biographer whether it was "fanciful" to detect traces of Calvin's thought in the Constitution. “Absolutely not,” replied Bruce Gordon, author of Calvin (2009).

Calvin’s legacy has been traced in everything from modern marriage and modern science to modern liberal government and of course modern capitalism. By many accounts, he is a major source of modernity’s very understanding of the self.
Peter Steinfels, "Man of Contradictions, Shaper of Modernity. Age? 500 Next Week," New York Times 3 July 2009

Several bloggers celebrated Calvin's birthday by posting claims that he is the virtual author of our republican form of government; others mocked these assertions. Reed R. Heustis, Jr. found quite a few new readers for his "John Calvin and the American Founding" at Worldview Times. Heustis sees the world in clear dichotomies--one is either a Calvinist or a Marxist. Such logic gathers ridicule as a dog gathers fleas. Ed Brayton asserts that Heustis deserves ridicule, noting that Heustis "presents not a single quote from even a single founding father that supports that claim." But Heustis does cite an authority: John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (1987).

Many joined the chorus denouncing Heustis by posting comments at Dispatches from the Culture Wars (Brayton's blog), including yours truly. To support my initial claim that Calvin's influence was predominantly negative--an example to avoid, rather than emulate--I quickly found a quote from the pen of Thomas Jefferson in Edwin Gaustad's Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation (1987).

The Presbyterian clergy are loudest, the most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical and ambitious; ready at the word of a lawgiver, if such a word could be now obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere, the flames in which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor Servetus.
Jefferson to William Short, 1820, as quoted in Gaustad (48)

My response nagged at me, in part because I knew that I had Eidsmoe's book someplace in an box yet to unpack. Although I had missed a slice the birthday cake baked for Calvin at the Presbyterian university here in Spokane because I had been busy moving my belongings to our new home, I now had time to consider the man's legacy. It takes me a few weeks to unpack a ton of books. Two hours of unpacking, sorting and repacking--it is a smaller house--was sufficient to locate Eidsmoe's Christianity and the Constitution.


Eidsmoe's Scholarship

John Eidsmoe blogs for the Foundation for Moral Law, where he posted "Celebrating John Calvin's Legacy--Not so much Charles Darwin's." His point in his blog entry is expressed in greater detail in his book: Calvin's emphasis on total depravity "led to the system of limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, and reserved individual rights that characterize republican self-government." He also cites in the blog, and in more detail in the book, the authority of two prominent nineteenth century historians: Leopold von Ranke and George Bancroft.

John Calvin was the virtual founder of America.
Leopold von Ranke, as cited in Eidsmoe (18)

In Christianity and the Constitution, Eidsmoe reveals his sources for the idea that Calvinism "stands out above all others" (18) among the ideas that influence the founders. Five of the first six footnotes--documenting the assertions of Ranke, Bancroft, Jean Henri Merle d’Aubigné, and Emilio Castelar--are to a single text: Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination. Boettner's book dates to 1932, but Eidsmoe cites a 1972 reprint. The remaining footnote for the first three pages of the chapter "Calvinism" is discursive. Eidmoe identifies himself as a minister of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren, "lest [he] be accused of a Calvinistic bias" (19).

Boettner's text is a work of theology, not history. It does contain a brief section, "Calvinism in History" at the end. Eidsmoe's technique of citing authorities that declare the influence of Calvinism is readily aparent in Boettner's section on history, and he offers a longer list of authorities than Eidmoe. In Eidsmoe, the Ranke quote is attributed to E. W. Smith and cited from Boettner. Boettner gives us the source of Smith's statement.

In his book, "The Creed of Presbyterians," E. W. Smith asks concerning the American colonists, "Where learned they those immortal principles of the rights of man, of human liberty, equality and self-government, on which they based their Republic, and which form today the distinctive glory of our American civilization? In the school of Calvin they learned them. There the modern world learned them. So history teaches" (p. 121).
Boettner, 215

Egbert Watson Smith's The Creed of Presbyterians (1901) delves into history, as Boettner, at the end of a theological tract. Under the title "The Creed Tested by its Fruits" Smith strings together quotations from dozens of authorities, citing the source of many. Both Ranke and Bancroft are among his authorities, but for reasons not entirely clear to me, these two are omitted from the footnotes. I have failed to locate the source of Ranke's statement and failed as well to find the origin of Bancroft's frequently repeated line:

He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty.
Eidsmoe, "Celebrating John Calvin's Legacy"

Eidsmoe presents hyperlinks. Ranke's line is referenced to Philip Vollmer, John Calvin: Theologian, Preacher, Educator, Statesman (1909) in which appears an essay, "Calvinism in America" by William Henry Roberts. Perhaps the work of Roberts is the Ur-text for arguments that "Calvinism is the chief source of modern republican government" (Vollmer, 202). Smith cites another text by Roberts, Proceedings Seventh General Council (1899). Eidsmoe's hyperlink for Bancroft's statement takes us to David W. Hall, Genevan Revolution and the American Founding (2005). Eidsmoe certainly deployed this quote in advance of the the publication of Hall's book (Boettner is cited in Christianity and the Constitution), but perhaps Hall documents it better. I'll add the book to my reading list.

As I mentioned to the author of the blog, Samuel at Gilgal (another list of quotes from Boettner), it would be helpful if someone could locate the source of Ranke's statement instead of joining the ranks of those that repeat it endlessly.


From Theology to History

The arguments that appear at the end of several theological treatises from a century ago are deployed at the beginning of Eidsmoe's Christianity and the Constitution. Where others end, he begins. The publisher (Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan) makes a strong claim for Eidsmoe's scholarship on the dust jacket: "He meticulously documents his position, using the writings of the founders themselves." Eidsmoe does not rest on the authority of prior historians, but delves into the primary sources--writings of the founders--to elucidate their influences and support a thesis that that not begin with him. The core of Christianity and the Constitution is thirteen chapters, each one concerned with one of the so-called Founding Fathers. Twelve of these chapters concern men that were present in Philadelphia at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Eidsmoe begins with John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton). He was not at the convention, but is "the man who shaped the men who shaped America" (81). Eidsmoe accesses Witherspoon's writing and influence through two biographies and one master's thesis. Citations to the writing of this "founder" are all "as quoted in" Varnum Lansing Collins, President Witherspoon (1969 [1925]); Martha Lou Lemmon Stohlman, John Witherspoon: Parson, Politician, Patriot (1897); and Roger Schultz, "Covenanting in America: The Political Theology of John Witherspoon," MA Thesis, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1985. No where does Eidsmoe cite Witherspoon's writings directly.

It may be a fine point, but I would not call extracts of primary sources from secondary works meticulous documentation from "the writings of the founders themselves." Perhaps he does better with James Madison. Indeed, The Papers of James Madison (1962), ed. William T. Hutchinson and William M. Rachel appear as the source for a long extract of Madison's Bible study notes. Eidsmoe also cites several letters from this scholarly resource. With respect to Madison, the publisher's claim has merit.

Eidsmoe's argument for the influence of Calvin on Madison begins with Madison's decision to attend the College of New Jersey, a Presbyterian college, even though Madison's family was Episcopal. Noting its pro-independence sentiment, he also claims "by 1769 the Episcopal church had become largely Calvinistic and not much different from Presbyterianism in basic doctrine" (95). Eidsmoe draws on Madison's letters to show the influence of Witherspoon, and Madison's attitudes toward Christian ministry, a career he considered for several years.

Unfortunately for the argument that Calvinism was a decisive influence on "the father of the Constitution," Madison spoke and wrote very little about religion after he entered politics. Eidsmoe addresses this problem, but departs from Madison's own writings, except for Federalist 51, and instead relies upon the analysis in James H. Smylie, "Madison and Witherspoon: Theological Roots of American Political Thought," The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Spring 1961, and a few extracts selected by Smylie. Smylie asserts, "man's innate depravity, of which Presbyterians are keenly aware, must be checked by counteracting forces" (Eidsmoe, 101).

Smylie extended his arguments through other articles, and studies of the influence of Witherspoon upon Madison and others has proceeded since his day. Perhaps because it is less less typical of historical scholarship, Terence S. Morrow's thesis in "Common Sense Deliberative Practice: John Witherspoon, James Madison, and the U.S. Constitution," Rhetoric Society Quarterly (Winter 1999), 25-47 is worth noting: "Madison's views on representation, this article contends, drew upon the teachings in rhetoric and moral philosophy that he received from John Witherspoon" (26).

Perhaps there is something of merit in assertions of Calvin's influence on our system of government beyond what is evident in Heustis's shoddy logic and convoluted argument. At first glance, Eidsmoe seems little better, and his "research" leaves something to be desired. Nevertheless, he does offer leads to other scholarship. His argument leaves me far from convinced that Calvin was "the virtual founder of America," but his case suggests Calvinist churches, colleges, ministers, and ideas were not without influence.

Laying Claim to Sacred Land

In 1938, as often before and after, Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, offered a reading of the significance of the four U.S. Presidents whose images were being carved into granite. He explained,

Jefferson appears on Mount Rushmore because he drew the Declaration of Independence; Washington, because he was the great presiding officer in shaping the Constitution; Lincoln, because it was Lincoln and no other than Lincoln, whose mind and heart, and finally life, determined that we should continue as a common family of states and in union forever. Roosevelt is joined with the others because he completed the dream of Columbus, opened the way to the East, [and] joined the waters of the great East and West seas. (Dean,* 56)

An entirely different view was offered in 1970 by Lehman Brightman, cofounder of United Native Americans. Brightman and others in his group had joined John Trudell, representing the United Tribes of Alcatraz, several members of the American Indian Movement, including Russell Means, and some Lakota elders for a protest at Mount Rushmore. The protest was planned as an assertion of the Sioux claim to the Paha Sapa, or Black Hills, as recognized in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Means reported his memories of Brightman's speech in his autobiography, Where White Men Fear to Tread (1995). According to Means,

Lee explained that George Washington had become famous as an Indian killer during the French and Indian War. He had risen quickly through the militia ranks by butchering Indian communities and burning the bones. ... Lee spoke of Thomas Jefferson, who more than once had proposed the annihilation of the Indian race to "cleanse" the Americas ... Abraham Lincoln ... signed an order to execute thirty-eight Indians for the so-called Great Sioux Uprising in Minnesota. ... Finally, Lee spoke about Teddy Roosevelt, the biggest thief ever to occupy the White House. Roosevelt violated scores of treaties, and illegally nationalized more Indian land than any president, before or since. (167-68)

There are many ever-changing variations of Borglum's celebratory tale, and of Brightman's iconoclastic narrative. Borglum's view reflects a tradition in historical scholarship, but which remains dominant in the histories consumed by tourists. Brightman's view, on the other hand, provokes memories not yet emergent in histories of the nation. These divergent views of the figures carved into Mount Rushmore express fundamental conflicts in the meanings of America as a nation.


*Robert J. Dean, Living Granite: the Story of Borglum and the Mount Rushmore Memorial (1949).

Thomas Jefferson: Abolitionist?

In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), written during the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson identified slavery as a "blot" and "moral evil" upon the nation's existence.

Under the mild treatment our slaves experience, and their wholesome, though coarse, food, this blot in our country increases as fast, or faster, than the whites. During the regal government, we had at one time obtained a law, which imposed such a duty on the importation of slaves, as amounted nearly to a prohibition, when one inconsiderate assembly, placed under a peculiarity of circumstance, repealed the law. This repeal met a joyful sanction from the then sovereign, and no devices, no expedients, which could ever after be attempted by subsequent assemblies, and they seldom met without attempting them, could succeed in getting the royal assent to a renewal of the duty. In the very first session held under the republican government, the assembly passed a law for the perpetual prohibition of the importation of slaves. This will in some measure stop the increase of this great political and moral evil, while the minds of our citizens may be ripening for a complete emancipation of human nature.
Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 87.

His belief that slaves were treated mildly in America would form part of the foundation of the defense of the Peculiar Institution. This passage does not sum all of Jefferson's views, but is one piece that cannot be ignored. His statement that ending slavery is part of "emancipation of human nature" lends credence to the view that he may have considered the assertion that "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence to include African Americans.

An exchange between Conor Cruise O'Brien and Douglas L. Wilson in the Atlantic Monthly in 1996 offers one entry into the complexities of Jefferson's legacy. O'Brien draws from statements of Jefferson's a few chapters later in Notes on the State of Virginia, as well as other texts. Wilson challenges O'Brien's reading of some of these texts.


My copy of the text is William Peden, ed., Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982 [1954]). The extract above also is available as hypertext at the University of Virginia's American Studies Crossroads Project.

Founders, Slavery, Public Schools

In a coffee shop this week, I overheard criticism of public school teachers that nearly pulled me into a conversation that was mostly none of my business. Having once before jumped into other peoples’ conversations in that bistro, and remembering the mixed results, I desisted. The comments, however, came back to my consciousness this morning while browsing the archive of American Revolution & Founding Era.

Allegations of Racism in the Republic

Almost two years ago, Brian Tubbs characterized the lessons our public schools teach regarding George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and company as depicting them as racists whom we “should be ashamed to pay … any respect or honor.”

According to Lincoln, the Founders never saw slavery as consistent with the principles they enshrined in our heritage.

Rather, the Founding Fathers overwhelmingly deplored slavery and considered black Americans to be included in the Declaration's creed. Said Lincoln: “The fathers of this government expected and intended the institution of slavery to come to an end. They expected and intended that it would be in the course of ultimate extinction.”

His view is ignored or rejected in today's classrooms and in the media, but it was this very viewpoint that sustained his ultimately successful campaign to rid the nation of the evil institution he so ardently despised. But while Lincoln's argument was compelling, was it accurate?
Tubbs, “Should We Revere ‘Racists’?”

Tubbs offers several points of evidence that the Founders sought the eventual abolition of slavery and considered African Americans “men”. Indeed, his arguments remind me of those offered by my professor for a graduate course in US history from Jefferson to Jackson, in which my son’s current high school history teacher was a classmate. The professor explained that Washington intended that his slaves be freed upon his death, and he would have freed them sooner if it had been economically possible (or something to that effect—it was a few years ago).

I could draw on many sources from which to confirm, modify, and refute the points in Tubbs’ argument, but will confine myself to explicit evidence concerning classroom practice. My son’s teacher demands that the students read carefully and take notes upon their textbook, David M. Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, and Thomas A. Bailey, The American Pageant, twelfth edition (2002).

Does this textbook support or refute Tubbs’ allegation regarding the Founders, slavery, and historical memory?

Tubbs tells us that Congress outlawed slavery in 1808. The American Pageant, describing the debates at the Constitutional Convention, offers more detail.

Most of the states wanted to shut off the African slave trade. But South Carolina and Georgia, requiring slave labor in their rice paddies and malarial swamps, raised vehement protests. By way of compromise the convention stipulated that the slave trade might continue until the end of 1807, at which time Congress could turn off the spigot (see Art. I, Sec. IX, para. 1). It did so as soon as the prescribed interval had elapsed. Meanwhile all the new state constitutions except Georgia’s forbade overseas slave trade.
Kennedy, et al, American Pageant, 181.

More than a dozen pages earlier, in a section that begins with the Declaration’s “All men are created equal,” the textbook addresses why the Founders did not eliminate slavery in the new nation: “the fledgling idealism of the Founding Fathers was sacrificed to political expediency” (167). They quote Madison.

“Great as the evil [of slavery] is,” the young Virginian James Madison wrote in 1787, “a dismemberment of the union would be worse.” Nearly a century later, the slavery issue did wreck the Union—temporarily.
Kennedy, et al, American Pageant, 167.

(I will refrain from commenting here on the power and meaning of the phrase, “one nation indivisible,” that was routinely spoken as part of the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954 when the phrase was broken up in the war of rhetoric against godless communism.)

The American Pageant neither presents the Founders as demigods, nor as demons. It does, however, employ the term “demigods”—always in quote marks—which the authors attribute to Thomas Jefferson’s observation regarding the “extraordinarily high” (178) quality of the fifty-five participants in the 1787 Constitutional Convention. The text notes that they were “a conservative, well-to-do body” and nineteen owned slaves (178). The revolution “did not suddenly and violently overturn the entire political and social framework” (166). The “conservative-minded delegates” in Philadelphia, recalling Shay’s Rebellion, “deliberately erected safeguards against the excesses of the ‘mob’” (181).

The general theme of the text—hence of the curriculum now employed in my alma mater—highlights the possibilities and limits of the revolutionary era that created and established the United States. The years of the Confederation and Constitution resulted in “accelerated evolution rather than outright revolution” (166). The text highlights such anti-slavery achievements as Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman’s successful lawsuit to win freedom from slavery in Massachusetts in 1781, and the founding of “the world’s first antislavery society” in 1775 (167). It demonstrates that slavery was a controversial aspect of eighteenth century American society, continued to be a source of much conflict well into the nineteenth century, and emancipation did not eliminate all racism and sectional conflict.

From Jefferson to Lincoln

Tubbs makes much of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, validating Lincoln’s view of the Founders. The American Pageant presents a sidebar quoting Lincoln in his first debate with Douglas.

… there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to those rights as the white man.
Kennedy, et al, American Pageant, 421.

However, the text also prompts allegations that Lincoln, too, might have been a racist in the first words of the extract: “I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position” (421). Much earlier in the text, on the other hand, an 1865 quote of Lincoln’s is presented in the caption to a picture illustrating a slave auction: “Whenever I see anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally” (358). The text undermines simplistic caricatures of Lincoln.

It appears to me that The American Pageant does not tell students that they should be ashamed of the Founders and of Lincoln, nor does it urge that they venerate these men without a sense of their human flaws.

Brian Tubbs offers several examples—some quite specific, some vague—documenting his assertion that there is a “chorus of contempt and condemnation sung by scholars, students, politicians, judges, talk show hosts, authors, and everyday Americans concerning the sins of our nation's past” (“Should We Revere ‘Racists’?”). Such a generalization goes further than the evidence he presents: a caller’s statement to C-SPAN and a History Channel poll, both recalled years after the fact; a quote from a “biography” of Jefferson by Conor Cruise O'Brien (perhaps The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800); and a quote from “civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy” (source not cited). I prefer to see better support for such assertions.

Tubbs’ discussion leaves many gaps, but is far more nuanced than the assertion I heard in a coffeehouse. There, parents disgruntled with their children’s school alleged that many teachers could not pass the much scorned WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) for which they must prepare students. Relating the comment to some teachers, I suggested that they ought to take up the challenge because there is a huge difference between high school and college education—they would easily pass. The WASL tests what the state would like high school students to know before they graduate; teachers must know quite a bit more.

I too have observed problems with schools over the years, and have been vocal about these. Nevertheless, I get a little incensed when I hear assertions that teachers cannot pass the tests given to students or that schools teach that the Founders were little more than a bunch of racists. Those criticisms are inaccurate.

Vertigo and the Sublime

I never read one book, but always have a half dozen or more going at once. I read some books in particular places, and carry others until I’m through with them. I have stacks of partly read books scattered from nightstand to throne room. I read much of Paul Schullery’s Cowboy Trout on several fishing trips last summer, and will finish it during the first or second angling expedition in the next month or so. I read most of Barry Miles, Zappa: A Biography last fall and eventually will read the last twenty pages. I’m in for the long haul on my readings of A Patriot’s History of the United States by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, A History of the American People by Paul Johnson, and A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, which I’ve read previously. I could finish Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama today or tomorrow, but it might sit unopened for another week or so, as it has for the past several days. Due to my “Reading Challenge,” I’m going through Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Non-Fictions systematically at a page or two per day.

A few days ago, I started William Peden’s critical edition of Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982 [1954]). Jefferson writes about a sublime natural feature on some land that he purchased.

The arch approaches the Semi-elliptical form; but the larger axis of the ellipsis, which would be the cord of the arch, is many times longer than the {semi-axis which gives it’s height.} Though the sides of this bridge are provided in some parts with a parapet of fixed rocks, yet few men have resolution to walk to them and look over into the abyss. You involuntarily fall on your hands and feet, creep to the parapet and peep over it. Looking down from this height about a minute, gave me a violent head ache. {This painful sensation is relieved by a short, but pleasing view of the Blue ridge along the fissure downwards, and upwards by that of the Short hills, which, with the Purgatory mountain is a divergence from the North ridge; and descending then to the valley below, the sensation becomes delightful in the extreme. It is impossible for the emotions, arising from the sublime, to be felt beyond what they are here: so beautiful an arch, so elevated, so light, and springing, as it were, up to heaven, the rapture of the Spectator is really indiscribable! The fissure continues deep and narrow and, following the margin of the stream upwards about three eights of a mile you arrive at a limestone cavern, less remarkable, however, for height and extent than those before described. It’s entrance into the hill is but a few feet above the bed of the stream.}
Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 24-25.

This version of the text differs from that found on the American Studies Crossroads Project’s hypertext version, which used an edition printed in Brooklyn by the New York Historical Printing Club in 1894. Notes on the State of Virginia was published without Jefferson’s name in France in 1785, then with his name by John Stockdale in England in 1787. The Stockdale edition became the definitive text, but Jefferson inscribed marginal corrections in his personal copy throughout the rest of his life. This marginalia is the basis for the deviations from the Stockdale edition that Peden enclosed in brackets.

Peden’s notes include Jefferson’s marginal comment.

This description was written after a lapse of several years from the time of my visit to the bridge, and under an error of recollection which requires apology. For it is from the bridge itself that the mountains are visible both ways, and not from the bottom of the fissure as my impression then was. The statement therefore in the former edition needs the corrections here given to it. Aug. 16. 1817.
Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 263.

Peden includes the Stockdale version in the balance of this endnote.

I suspect that Peden’s misspelling of “its” in two instances reflects changes in American English from the 1950s to today.