My journey reading the biographies of the principal founding fathers of the United States has been very illuminating up to this point. My goal is to read biographies of the seven principal founders: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.

While reading about John Adams, I discovered the wonderful Abigail Adams, the second first lady of this country, which led me to read her biography and consider her one of the founding mothers.

This time I read Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, written by Fawn M. Brodie, and it was fantastic. The biography goes deep into all facets of our third president’s personal and professional life, and includes reminiscences from Madison Hemings, Thomas Jefferson’s son, and Israel Jefferson, one of his slaves who provided a great deal of historical information after he gained his freedom and moved north.

Thomas Jefferson was the second vice president under John Adams and the third president of the United States. He drafted the Declaration of Independence (pp. 121–123), including the preamble that is known to most of us:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (p. 122)

He was also a philosopher, lawyer, and skilled mathematician. He owned hundreds of slaves and had children with one of them, Sally Hemings, a mulatto who, by the way, was the half-sister of Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha Jefferson. (p. 29)

The fact that he wrote in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” while at the same time owning hundreds of slaves, is extremely problematic and speaks to his lack of morals. Abigail Adams told him about his lack of morals directly, and it caused a break in their friendship to the point that when Jefferson and John Adams renewed their correspondence, Jefferson said, “that I never name her.” (p. 384)

He was also not a Christian but a deist, whose trinity consisted of Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke (p. 267). Jefferson created his own version of the New Testament by removing all miracles, the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus, and other elements, calling it “Morals of Jesus.” (pp. 372–473)

He was also a strong supporter of the separation of church and state and did not include any religious instruction in the curriculum of the newly formed University of Virginia, which he helped establish. (p. 447)

Oh, and one more thing: Thomas Jefferson had an affair with Maria Cosway, who was married, while he was stationed in France. (p. 199) Interestingly, many people refuse to accept that the affair happened because they believe it was out of character for Jefferson. But I’m thinking that if he had six children with Sally Hemings, then morally speaking, he probably would not have held back from having an affair.

Here are a few highlights that caught my attention:

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” (p. 22)

“The destruction of the power of the Anglican Church became one of Jefferson’s chief goals during the revolution, and one of his first acts as governor of Virginia and a member of the Board of Visitors of William and Mary College in 1780 was to rout out the divines and turn the school over to professors of science, mathematics, and modern languages.” (p. 55)

“Jefferson’s proposed legislation to separate church and state forever in Virginia…” He then said the following:

“Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.” (p. 157)

While Jefferson’s wife was gravely ill, he retired from politics. But politicians needed him, and John Tyler, Speaker of the House of Delegates, wrote the following:

“I supposed your reasons are weighty, yet I would suggest that good and able Men had better govern than be govern’d… if the able and good withdraw themselves from society, the venal and ignorant will succeed…” (p. 166)

“Jefferson’s daughter later wrote that in the last four months of her mother’s life her father ‘was never out of calling: when not at her bedside, he was writing in a small room which opened immediately at the head of her bed.’” (p. 166)

“He improved his Spanish by reading Don Quixote in the original.” (p. 186)

“When he received a letter from Edward Bancroft asking his opinion on the value of the Quaker experiment in Virginia, where owners freed and then hired their own slaves, Jefferson replied… ‘As far as I can judge from the experiments which have been made to give liberty to, or rather, to abandon persons whose habits have been formed in slavery, it is like abandoning children.’” (p. 235)

“Jefferson preferred the company of scientists and republicans, despising merchants and bankers for their greed, and considering them secret monarchists and potential subverters of the republic.” (p. 264)

During his inaugural presidential speech, he said the following regarding minority rights in the United States. This was on the heels of the passing and enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts under the previous president, John Adams:

“If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” (p. 336)

Jefferson wrote thousands of letters from 1809 to 1826 (p. 443), and in the chapter “Writer of Letters,” I read the following:

“Most important of all, Jefferson could not dwell on the past for very long except to search for models with which to improve the future.” (p. 445)

A very interesting and complicated life from one of our founding fathers. It is fascinating to read the letters and biographies of the men who were key figures in the creation of this country and compare what they did and said with what current politicians say about the founding fathers. There is clearly a disconnect, and only those who spend time reading the history of our beginnings will be able to sort through fact and fiction.

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About the Author:

Fawn McKay Brodie was an American biographer and one of the first female professors of history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).¹

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1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawn_M._Brodie ↩︎

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