I’d like to make something clear
before I begin this next series of posts.
In
spite of how often his work has appeared here, and thus how frequently he has
been a topic of discussion, I do not think of myself as a particular admirer of
Thomas Jefferson. He was undeniably an intelligent man, as well as eloquent and
exceedingly knowledgeable about a great swath of topics, but there are
absolutely certain elements of his personal and political philosophy that I
disagree with in no uncertain terms. I am not, if I may use the term, a
Jefferson apologist, nor do I think that if we all just paid a little more
attention to what he said and what he did the world would be in better shape.
That being said, the man unquestionably makes for a fascinating object of
study. For all his brilliance, his wide-ranging interests, and his dominant
influence in American history, politics, and culture, he was a deeply flawed
individual. He could be mercurial, cunning, reserved, and self-effacing. He
decried, for the better part of his political career, the evils of centralized
government, and yet when handed the reigns of federal power did more to expand
its influence in America than all of his predecessors combined. It would be
hard, I think, not to find such a man intriguing, particularly when he wrote so
often and so well about such a great variety of subjects.
This
brings us to the present case. As I hope I've made clear by now, one of the
reasons America, On Paper exists is because I wanted to share my appreciation
for the primary source texts of the American founding with whoever would take
the time. It is my firm belief that the best way to get to know the men (and
women) who gave birth to the United States, and whose thoughts and opinions
continue to be haphazardly thrown about in the media and in politics, is to
read the words that they wrote. This is a harder task than might appear – hence
why I've attempted to do some of the legwork of establishing context, sources,
and comparisons – but ultimately very rewarding. Unfortunately, not every
Founder was terribly prolific, and so the picture we are left with, here at the
dawn of the 21st century, is somewhat skewed towards those who were.
George Washington, for instance, is an incredibly important figure to
understand the principles and motivations of if one hopes to gain a deeper
appreciation for how and why the United States turned out the way it did. As it
happens, however, Washington was not much of a philosopher or an essayist. He
wasn't the sort of person to pen lengthy treatises on the nature of American
liberty, or the practical limitations of representative government, and so we
are left with a rather limited canon of documents through which to attempt to gain
insight into who the man was, what moved him, and why (or if) he is worthy of
continued commemoration. His Farewell
Address is mercifully rich in its philosophical and ideological content,
but it nonetheless remains one a very small number of documents through which a
modern inquirer could hope to known George Washington in any real sense.
Thomas
Jefferson, love him or hate him, was somewhat more generous with his pen. By
somewhat, of course, I mean that the man practically filled libraries with his
personal correspondence, dashed off dissertations like it was going out of
style, and compiled enough travelogues, agricultural and geological surveys,
and philosophical meditations so that a person could build a small dwelling out
of the compiled volumes and still have something left over to read on a rainy
day. He was, in short, a prolific writer, and so their remains very little
about which Jefferson’s opinion cannot be solicited. This is, through one lens,
a good thing. It allows us to construct an exceedingly complete picture of one
of the single most important people in the history of the Western world.
Through another lens, however, it can be said that relying too much on the
works of Jefferson as a means of understanding the American founding possibly
twists our perception so as to portray the Sage of Monticello as the one and
only prime mover in early American history. This is obviously an undesirable
outcome, and one which I have attempted to push against by turning my frequent
attention to a number of Jefferson’s contemporaries, be they Federalist or
Anti-Federalist, Northerners, Southerners, immigrants or native sons (or
daughters).
In
spite of the effort on my part, however, I find myself wanting to shine a light
on Jefferson once more. I had not necessarily planed to return to him. But, as
these things so often happen, a point of discussion in the most recent series
of posts led me down a particular path of enquiry, and then to a handful of
documents, and then to that smug, chameleonic Virginian once more. And so, as I
again embark on an examination of some of the work left to us by Albemarle
County’s favorite son, I ask of my readers their indulgence, their patience,
and if need be, their forgiveness.
Though
I can’t promise it won’t happen again.
Lengthy
and almost certainly unnecessary pseudo-apology aside, the document in question
that will hereafter be discussed is most definitely an intriguing one. Written
in the spring and early summer of 1776 while Jefferson was serving in the
Second Continental Congress, it is a draft of a constitution for his home state
of Virginia. This, on the surface, probably doesn't sound so remarkable. Jefferson
was a Virginian, through and through, and though he served over the course of
his life in a number of high federal offices, his home state remained always
very close to his heart, and greatly informed his vision of what kind of
country the United States ought to be. So of course he had a hand in writing
Virginia’s first constitution.
But
the thing is, he didn't; or at least not substantially
By
the time Jefferson settled on a plan for the government of independent Virginia
that he was satisfied with and sent the draft from Philadelphia to Williamsburg,
his colleague George Mason (1725-1792) had already submitted his own version to
the appropriate committee. Jefferson’s constitution was thereafter considered
as an alternative, received support from a handful of those present, and had
certain of its elements incorporated into the final document. Consequently,
though there was some small sliver of Jefferson present in the 1776
Constitution of Virginia, the finished product was then understood, and should
still be, as Mason’s brainchild. For this reason Jefferson’s original draft,
written in Philadelphia during those same months when he lent his pen to the
crafting of a declaration of American independence, represents a vision of what
could have been; a version of Virginia that only ever existed on paper, and in
the mind of one of America’s most celebrated revolutionaries. As a consequence,
because the draft that survives did not suffer being “mangled” by a committee
of those who would no doubt have sought to moderate Jefferson’s more radical
proclivities, it is a more revolutionary document than the one ultimately
adopted. In this sense the document provides a rare opportunity.
There is a veritable mountain of
missives that Jefferson dashed off over the course of his life which represent
at least a sampling of his honest and unadulterated perspective. And he was the
author of numerous essays, pieces of legislation, declarations, and public
addresses across the length of his public career, many of which addressed areas
of philosophy or administration that were near and dear to his heart. But hardly
any of these written works are as broad in scope or fundamental in approach as
a codified constitution. Rather than detail his opinion on freedom of religion,
say, or provide insight into his thoughts on international trade, the framework
he penned in mid-1776 for a new government for Virginia encompassed nothing
more or less than 33-year-old Jefferson’s vision of the ideal republic. However
he was forced to compromise his vision when working alongside collaborators, or
when confronted by practical limitations, the draft constitution represents
Jefferson at his most raw and idealistic, and accordingly perhaps his most honest.
Studying said constitution thus makes understanding the Jeffersonian ideal – so
influential in subsequent decades – much easier. Rather than having to intimate
what kind of society the Sage of Monticello would have preferred exist in
America from fragments or suggestions contained in various other documents, one
need only examine the plan he very clearly laid out for his home state’s
government. As well, a comparison of Jefferson’s constitution with Mason’s, and
also with the colonial charters that preceded them both, aids in understanding
how the Founding Generation set about transforming the societies in which they
lived and what their approximate threshold for change was.
But of course, before we dig into
any of this, a little background. Because, as aforementioned, Jefferson has
been a frequent topic of discussion in these pages, there is very little more
that needs to be said about who he was in 1776 and what sort of life he had led
up to that point. It will therefore hopefully suffice to simply reiterate that
he was the son of a surveyor and prominent Virginia landowner, that he was born
near that colony’s western frontier, and that he was a lawyer by trade. It may
also be worth noting, as a nod to his contemporary public profile, that he had
already written a well-regarded pamphlet in 1774 refuting the claimed British
right to tax the American colonies (A
Summary View of the Rights of British America) and then co-wrote a
declaration by the Second Continental Congress explaining the logic behind
their decision to take up arms against the British government (Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of
Taking up Arms). It would perhaps also be prudent to examine, in light of
the subject of the coming discussion, what sort of government Virginia existed
under prior to 1776.
Virginia, as mentioned in a
previous post detailing the origins of each of the original Thirteen Colonies,
was the oldest of its brethren, and its history was somewhat troubled in the
early years. After the first efforts at colonizing the western seaboard of
North America in 1606 by the competing London and Plymouth Companies (both
divisions of the joint-stock Virginia Company) failed, the former was able to
successfully petition the Crown in 1609 for a revision of its original charter.
Thereafter its territory encompassed the entire modern coastlines of Delaware,
Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina (extending, theoretically, to the
Pacific Ocean). Subsequent settlements in this expanded territory struggled to
prosper, however, due to poor access to resources, disease, and frequent
contact with hostile Natives. Government during this formative era, between
1609 and 1619, was exercised by a Company-appointed Governing Council, headed
by a President. Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr (from whose title is derived
the name “Delaware”) attained the latter position in 1609 (as “Governor”), and
because of his frequent absences power was most often exercised by a series of
deputies. The third of these deputy governors, Sir Thomas Dale, enacted a legal
code in 1612 known as the “Lawes Divine, Morall, and Martial” which effectively
conferred on him a kind of dictatorial authority, and erected a series of
exceedingly strict punishments (up to and including execution) for a host of
outwardly trivial offences. Though it has been argued that Dale’s harsh
administration in Virginia was what ultimately allowed the colony to overcome its
earlier difficulties, particularly in terms of economic self-sufficiency, it
was his uncompromisingly authoritarian leadership that perhaps led to the most
significant transformation of colonial Virginian society.
Or, more specifically, it was the
reaction to his leadership that set Virginia on such an important path. Though
Dale had overseen a period of increased economic stability in the young colony,
his style of leadership was not viewed by the Governing Council as necessarily
conducive to the enlarged immigration Virginia sorely required if its
population was to recover from years of poor harvests and frequent epidemics. Accordingly,
the colony was granted a new charter by the Virginia Company in 1618 that
established an elected assembly, mandated civilian control of the military, and
granted fifty acres of land to all those who paid their passage from England in
full. The assembly, known subsequently as the House of Burgesses, was not
independent of either the appointed governor (who possessed a veto on their
legislation) or the Company (who could revoke the charter at will), but did for
the first time permit colonial residents some say in how they were governed and
taxed. When the newly-elected Burgesses met for the first time alongside the
Governing Council (together comprising the Virginia General Assembly) in July,
1619, it represented the effective beginning of European-style representative
government in the Americas.
The House of Burgesses was
initially composed of 22 members representing an equal number of
constituencies, and all free men were permitted to vote in their election.
After the massacre of several hundred colonists by Natives in 1622, preceded
and followed by a pair of destructive epidemics, Virginia again passed into
brief era of particularly firm governance by the Company and its appointed
Governor and Council. In 1624, responding to the frequent crises that seemed
always to be besetting the long-standing venture and the evident inability of
the Virginia Company to arrive at a permanent solution, James I had its charter
summarily revoked. Virginia was consequently reorganized as a Crown colony, though
the government established under the 1618 charter remained largely intact. In
the one hundred and fifty years that followed between the re-charter of
Virginia as a Crown Colony and the events of the American Revolution, the
colonial government underwent only minor changes. Beginning in 1634, Virginia
was divided into 8 counties whose significance was mainly administrative and
judicial. This number was expanded to 15 in 1643. County-level offices were
appointed, including clerks, sheriffs, constables, and judges, and after 1670
the franchise was narrowed so as to permit only property owing males the right
to vote in elections.
Slavery, one of the most important and most
divisive issues in Jefferson’s era, no doubt also bears some degree of
explanation, in terms of its origins in Virginia. In spite of how important the
institution would become to the colonial, and later state, economy, it was
introduced gradually; the first Africans appear in the historical record 1619
as indentured servants. By 1650 there were some 300 Black Africans living in
Virginia under terms of indenture, along with 4000 White Europeans in a similar
state of servitude. While certain among these African servants succeeded in
paying off their contracts and becoming property owners in their own right,
between the 1640s and 1660s the colonial government began to alter the manner
in which Black indentured servants were legally perceived. As punishment for
escape attempts, constituting essentially a violation of their contracts, Black
servants began increasingly to be sentenced to life service to their aggrieved
master. In fairly short order life servitude became the norm for imported
Africans in Virginia, partly in response to increased demand for labor stemming
from the growth of plantation agriculture and the viability of cash crops like
tobacco. When, in 1660, a mixed-race indentured servant named Elizabeth Key
successfully sued the colonial government for her freedom on the grounds that
she was both a baptized Christian and the acknowledged daughter of a free
Englishmen, the House of Burgesses responded in 1662 by adopting the doctrine
of partus sequitur ventrem. This
legal concept, meaning literally “that which is brought forth follows the
womb,” decreed that all children born in the colony thereafter were to inherit
the legal status of their mother. Though it represented a violation of English
Common Law tradition (whereby children took the status of their father), it was
likely deemed necessary by the colonial government as a means of ensuring the
continued existence of a stable labor pool in light of chronic population
instability, the general unwillingness of Whites to take on menial vocations,
and the needs of the burgeoning export economy.
By the dawn of the 18th
century, both the political and economic status quo in colonial Virginia had
more or less solidified to the point where they would have been recognizable to
men like Thomas Jefferson and George Mason seventy years later. This was in
spite of an attempted rebellion against the authority of Governor William
Berkeley (1605-1677) that was led by English settler and colonial statesman
Nathaniel Bacon (1647-1676) in 1676. The revolt was supported by a wide swath
of discontented Virginians from across the social orders, including planters
who desired to expand westward into Native-held territory and landless laborers
who desired the right to vote. Bacon also found the bulk of his armed following
among the Black enslaved and White indentured servants who constituted the bulk
of the colony’s labor force. The insurrection was ultimately crushed thanks to
armed support from the British government. Thereafter, property qualifications
on the franchise were reinforced, and a slave code was drawn up in 1705 that
more clearly established and defined the practice of chattel slavery in the
colony and helped establish a degree of social segregation so as to discourage
any future alliance between discontented Blacks and Whites.
There are several things which
ought to be drawn from this brief chronicle which bear directly on an
examination of Jefferson’s draft constitution of 1776. One is that, again, the
system of government in Virginia that was replaced in the 1770s had been in
operation, with minor changes, for something on the order of a century. It had
managed to weather a great deal of economic uncertainty, attacks by Native
Americans, enduring problems stemming from an unstable population, devastating
epidemics, and at least one major armed rebellion. Yet, from 1619 until 1776
the House of Burgesses continued to operate, elections continued to be held,
and Governors continued to be appointed (first by the Virginia Company and then
by the Crown). This perhaps speaks to the flexibility and durability of
Virginia’s charter government, as well as to the relative conservatism of the
resulting society. After all, the culture that developed in Jefferson’s home
colony was doubtless greatly affected by the manner in which it was
administered; by the 1770s elections were no doubt considered “normal,” as were
slavery, property qualifications, and some degree of deference to royal
authority. To what degree Jefferson’s proposed state constitution deviated from
or conformed to these established norms is potentially illustrative of what
elements of his own culture the Sage of Monticello felt were in need of reform,
as well as to what extent he felt his fellow Virginians were willing to accept
change.
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