Notes on the state of America: Jeffersonian democracy and the production of a national past

Political Theory

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 190-216

  Holland, Catherine A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0035531658     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591701029002002     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. Waltet Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken, 1969), 255.
2. Thomas Paine, Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and Other Essential Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Sidney Hook (New York: New American Library, 1969), 66.
3. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Vol. 1), ed. Phillips Bradley (New York: Vintage, 1945), 302.
4. Edward W. Said, Beginnings: Intention & Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 34.
5. Paine, Common Sense, 63.
6. Charles A. Miller, Jefferson and Nature: An Interpretation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 3; emphasis in original.
7. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991), 22.
8. For Benjamin, messianic time "comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgement." Anderson gives the example of stained glass windows of medieval cathedrals that depict a nativity scene in which the Christ child is attended by his parents, who look like the offspring of Tuscan merchants; by shepherds, who resemble Burgundian peasants; and by the patron who commissioned the window, who appears in full burgher or noble costume. See Anderson, Imagined Communities, 22-24. Also, Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in Illuminations, 263.
9. For Benjamin, messianic time "comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgement." Anderson gives the example of stained glass windows of medieval cathedrals that depict a nativity scene in which the Christ child is attended by his parents, who look like the offspring of Tuscan merchants; by shepherds, who resemble Burgundian peasants; and by the patron who commissioned the window, who appears in full burgher or noble costume. See Anderson, Imagined Communities, 22-24. Also, Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in Illuminations, 263.
10. Judith N. Shklar, "Democracy and the Past: Jefferson and His Heirs," in Redeeming American Political Thought, ed. Stanley Hoffmann and Dennis F. Thompson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 174; emphasis in original.
11. Shklar. "Democracy and the Past," 174.
12. Creole is the term given to persons of European descent born in the Americas.
13. "Introduction," in Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. Frank Shuffelton (New York: Penguin, 1999), xix. The classic reading of the Notes as "a vehicle of American nationality" can be found in Merrill D. Peterson, "Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia" Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 7 (1978): 49-62.
14. "Introduction," in Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. Frank Shuffelton (New York: Penguin, 1999), xix. The classic reading of the Notes as "a vehicle of American nationality" can be found in Merrill D. Peterson, "Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia" Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 7 (1978): 49-62.
15. Susan Manning, "Naming of Parts; or, The Comforts of Classification: Thomas Jefferson's Construction of America As Fact and Myth," Journal of American Studies 30, no. 3 (1996): 347.
16. Page numbers cited in the text refer to Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. William Peden (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972).
17. Myra Jehlen, American Incarnation: The Individual, the Nation, and the Continent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 44; emphasis in original.
18. Jehlen, American Incarnation, 57-59. For similar analyses, see Christopher Looby, "The Constitution of Nature: Taxonomy As Politics in Jefferson, Peale, and Bartram," Early American Literature 22 (1987): 252-73; Harold Hellenbrand, "Roads to Happiness: Rhetorical and Philosophical Design in Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia," Early American Literature 20 (1985): 3-23. Fora sharply contrasting interpretation, see Peterson, "Thomas Jefferson's Notes," 49-62.
19. Jehlen, American Incarnation, 57-59. For similar analyses, see Christopher Looby, "The Constitution of Nature: Taxonomy As Politics in Jefferson, Peale, and Bartram," Early American Literature 22 (1987): 252-73; Harold Hellenbrand, "Roads to Happiness: Rhetorical and Philosophical Design in Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia," Early American Literature 20 (1985): 3-23. Fora sharply contrasting interpretation, see Peterson, "Thomas Jefferson's Notes," 49-62.
20. Jehlen, American Incarnation, 57-59. For similar analyses, see Christopher Looby, "The Constitution of Nature: Taxonomy As Politics in Jefferson, Peale, and Bartram," Early American Literature 22 (1987): 252-73; Harold Hellenbrand, "Roads to Happiness: Rhetorical and Philosophical Design in Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia," Early American Literature 20 (1985): 3-23. Fora sharply contrasting interpretation, see Peterson, "Thomas Jefferson's Notes," 49-62.
21. Jehlen, American Incarnation, 57-59. For similar analyses, see Christopher Looby, "The Constitution of Nature: Taxonomy As Politics in Jefferson, Peale, and Bartram," Early American Literature 22 (1987): 252-73; Harold Hellenbrand, "Roads to Happiness: Rhetorical and Philosophical Design in Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia," Early American Literature 20 (1985): 3-23. Fora sharply contrasting interpretation, see Peterson, "Thomas Jefferson's Notes," 49-62.
22. For the original order of Marbois's questionnaire, see "Marbois' Queries Concerning Virginia," in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951), 4:166.
23. Thomas Jefferson to William Ludlow, September 6, 1824, in Thomas Jefferson, Writings, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Library of America, 1984), 1496-97.
24. Berlant is speaking of the nationalizing effects of the Statue of Liberty. Lauren Berlant, The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 25.
25. Throughout his life, Jefferson returned to his personal copy of the Notes to add handwritten comments. The passage included in parentheses, above, represents one of these later insertions.
26. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 245.
27. Thomas Jefferson to John Melish, December 10, 1814, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, ed. E. Millicent Sowerby (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 4:328.
28. Jay Fliegelman, Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language, and the Culture of Performance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 152.
29. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, September 6, 1789, Papers, ed. Julian P. Boyd, 15:392-98 passim.
30. Jehlen, American Incarnation, 48.
31. Ibid., 56.
32. For a detailed treatment of Jefferson's anthropological investigations of native peoples, see Anthony F. C. Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999).
33. Jefferson's notion of native autochthony stands in sharp contrast to contemporary discussions of Indian origins. Quite against the grain of many of his contemporaries who posited the Asian origins of American natives, Jefferson argues in the Notes that American natives were of far more ancient provenance than their Asian counterparts and hence were more likely to be their ancestors than their descendents. See Notes on the State of Virginia, 100-102; also Bernard W. Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), chap. 2.
34. Jefferson's notion of native autochthony stands in sharp contrast to contemporary discussions of Indian origins. Quite against the grain of many of his contemporaries who posited the Asian origins of American natives, Jefferson argues in the Notes that American natives were of far more ancient provenance than their Asian counterparts and hence were more likely to be their ancestors than their descendents. See Notes on the State of Virginia, 100-102; also Bernard W. Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), chap. 2.
35. John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, May 21, 1821, in The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), 2:305.
36. Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, June 11, 1812, in The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 2:307.
37. Fliegelman, Declaring Independence, 98-99.
38. "Jefferson to the Osages," in Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with Related Documents, 1783-1854, ed. Donald Jackson (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1:200; see also, 1:280-83, 1:284-89.
39. Jefferson, Writings, 561. There is good reason to believe that Jefferson considered the Cherokees and several other tribes to have taken his advice. See Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, June 11, 1812, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 2:307.
40. Jefferson, Writings, 561. There is good reason to believe that Jefferson considered the Cherokees and several other tribes to have taken his advice. See Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, June 11, 1812, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 2:307.
41. The term cultural obstinacy is from Joyce Appleby, "Introduction: Jefferson and His Complex Legacy," in Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 1-16. See also Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, June 11, 1812, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 2:307-8.
42. The term cultural obstinacy is from Joyce Appleby, "Introduction: Jefferson and His Complex Legacy," in Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 1-16. See also Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, June 11, 1812, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 2:307-8.
43. Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction, 12.
44. Michael Paul Rogin, Fathers & Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995). See also Susan Scheckel, The Insistence of the Indian: Race and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Michael Rogin, Ronald Reagan, the Movie, and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), chaps 2 and 5; Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence.
45. Michael Paul Rogin, Fathers & Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995). See also Susan Scheckel, The Insistence of the Indian: Race and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Michael Rogin, Ronald Reagan, the Movie, and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), chaps 2 and 5; Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence.
46. Michael Paul Rogin, Fathers & Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995). See also Susan Scheckel, The Insistence of the Indian: Race and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Michael Rogin, Ronald Reagan, the Movie, and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), chaps 2 and 5; Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence.
47. Michael Paul Rogin, Fathers & Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995). See also Susan Scheckel, The Insistence of the Indian: Race and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Michael Rogin, Ronald Reagan, the Movie, and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), chaps 2 and 5; Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence.
48. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 49-50; emphasis added by Anderson.
49. Ibid., 145.
50. Werner Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 124.
51. Joseph E. Lowndes, "The Discourse of Antistatism in the Post-Civil Rights Era: Forrest Carter and the Outlaw Josey Wales" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 2-5, 1999), 12.
52. For the classic discussion, see Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), chap. 12. See also Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (Armonk, NY: M. E Sharpe, 1995); Frank Shuffelton, "Thomas Jefferson: Race, Culture, and the Failure of Anthropological Method," in A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America, ed. Frank Shuffelton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Chester E. Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (New York: Free Press, 1977).
53. For the classic discussion, see Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), chap. 12. See also Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (Armonk, NY: M. E Sharpe, 1995); Frank Shuffelton, "Thomas Jefferson: Race, Culture, and the Failure of Anthropological Method," in A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America, ed. Frank Shuffelton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Chester E. Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (New York: Free Press, 1977).
54. For the classic discussion, see Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), chap. 12. See also Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (Armonk, NY: M. E Sharpe, 1995); Frank Shuffelton, "Thomas Jefferson: Race, Culture, and the Failure of Anthropological Method," in A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America, ed. Frank Shuffelton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Chester E. Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (New York: Free Press, 1977).
55. For the classic discussion, see Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), chap. 12. See also Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (Armonk, NY: M. E Sharpe, 1995); Frank Shuffelton, "Thomas Jefferson: Race, Culture, and the Failure of Anthropological Method," in A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America, ed. Frank Shuffelton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Chester E. Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (New York: Free Press, 1977).
56. Jefferson's condemnation of slavery was struck out by Congress well before the document was approved and signed. See "The Declaration of Independence as originally reported to Congress," in Fliegelman, Declaring Independence, 206.
57. Jefferson meant, of course, "our" white people.
58. Paul Finkelman, "Jefferson and Slavery: 'Treason against the Hopes of the World,' "in Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 196-97.
59. Thomas Jefferson to St. George Tucker, August 28, 1797, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1896), 7:168.
60. As Winthrop Jordan has argued, in the end even Jefferson's efforts to recognize blacks' achievements seem to convince him only of their shortcomings. See Jordan's discussion of Jefferson's correspondence with, and about, Benjamin Banneker's, which Jefferson ultimately dismisses as "show[ing Banneker] to have had a mind of very common stature indeed." Similarly, in the Notes, he dismisses the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley and Ignacio Sancho as exhibitions not of the art of intellect but of sentiment: Wheatley's work, he writes, is "beneath the dignity of criticism," and Sancho's "subjects should often have led him to a process of sober reasoning; yet we find him always substituting sentiment for demonstration." Jordan, White over Black, chap. 12.
61. Also, Thomas Jefferson to Joel Barlow, October 8, 1809, reprinted in Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. Shuffelton, 279-80; Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 140-41.
62. Also, Thomas Jefferson to Joel Barlow, October 8, 1809, reprinted in Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. Shuffelton, 279-80; Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 140-41.
63. Renata Salecl, The Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis and Feminism after the Fall of Socialism (New York: Routledge, 1994), 12. See also Etienne Balibar, "Is There a 'Neo-Racism?' "in Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, ed. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (London: Verso, 1991), 17-28.
64. Renata Salecl, The Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis and Feminism after the Fall of Socialism (New York: Routledge, 1994), 12. See also Etienne Balibar, "Is There a 'Neo-Racism?' "in Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, ed. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (London: Verso, 1991), 17-28.
65. Finkelman, "Jefferson and Slavery," 195. See also Miller, The Wolf by the Ears, 64.
66. Finkelman, "Jefferson and Slavery," 195. See also Miller, The Wolf by the Ears, 64.
67. For a brief account of the somewhat-tangled publication history of the Notes, and of the Fry and Jefferson map as well as its later revision, see Coolie Verner, A Further Checklist of the Separate Editions of Jefferson 's Notes on the State of Virginia (Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1950).
68. See The Fry & Jefferson Map of Virginia and Maryland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950). For details about Thomas Jefferson's revisions of the Fry and Jefferson map, see Coolie Verner, "Mr. Jefferson Makes a Map," Imago Mundi 14 (1959): 96-108. The clearest reproduction of Jefferson's 1786 map is the one included in Jefferson, Writings.
69. See The Fry & Jefferson Map of Virginia and Maryland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950). For details about Thomas Jefferson's revisions of the Fry and Jefferson map, see Coolie Verner, "Mr. Jefferson Makes a Map," Imago Mundi 14 (1959): 96-108. The clearest reproduction of Jefferson's 1786 map is the one included in Jefferson, Writings.
70. Anderson, Imagined Communities (2d ed.), chap. 10. See also Monarchy, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Buisseret (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
71. Anderson, Imagined Communities (2d ed.), chap. 10. See also Monarchy, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Buisseret (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
72. With respect to the problem of attempting to chart the western territory, for example, the Fry and Jefferson map depicts the continuation of mountain ranges beyond Virginia's western boundaries, then shows a virtually empty territory beyond, vacant space broken now and then by rivers and the occasional mountain. Along the western edge of the map is the indication of "Branches of the Mississippi River" between Lake Erie to the north and the westernmost boundary of North Carolina to the south. Just below Lake Erie, the map offers the following disclaimer: "Maps differ much in the Longitude and Latitude of the Lakes, and wether [sic] Lake Erie in this Map is in its proper Situation or not must be left to further Discoveries."
73. Jefferson's committee recommended the establishment of fourteen new states, although this number appeared only in private communications and was never formally specified in the ordinance itself. The ordinance was never implemented but was officially repealed by the North-west Ordinance (approved July 1787), which nonetheless borrowed extensively from its predecessor. See "Report of the Committee, 1 Mch. 1784," in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952), vol. 6,603-17, as well as the extended "Editorial Note" that precedes it on 571-600. See also Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., "Jefferson, the Ordinance of 1784, and the Origins of the American Territorial System," William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, vol. 29, no. 2 (April 1972): 231-62; Peter S. Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).
74. Jefferson's committee recommended the establishment of fourteen new states, although this number appeared only in private communications and was never formally specified in the ordinance itself. The ordinance was never implemented but was officially repealed by the North-west Ordinance (approved July 1787), which nonetheless borrowed extensively from its predecessor. See "Report of the Committee, 1 Mch. 1784," in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952), vol. 6,603-17, as well as the extended "Editorial Note" that precedes it on 571-600. See also Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., "Jefferson, the Ordinance of 1784, and the Origins of the American Territorial System," William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, vol. 29, no. 2 (April 1972): 231-62; Peter S. Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).
75. Jefferson's committee recommended the establishment of fourteen new states, although this number appeared only in private communications and was never formally specified in the ordinance itself. The ordinance was never implemented but was officially repealed by the North-west Ordinance (approved July 1787), which nonetheless borrowed extensively from its predecessor. See "Report of the Committee, 1 Mch. 1784," in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952), vol. 6,603-17, as well as the extended "Editorial Note" that precedes it on 571-600. See also Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., "Jefferson, the Ordinance of 1784, and the Origins of the American Territorial System," William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, vol. 29, no. 2 (April 1972): 231-62; Peter S. Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).
76. Benjamin, Illuminations, 261.
77. Bruce Burgett, Sentimental Bodies: Sex, Gender, and Citizenship in the Early Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 15; emphasis in original.