Government and pursuit of happiness — #ThomasJefferson vs #DavidBarton

For addition of a period, the meaning has changed.

Has a misplaced period in one of America's founding documents led to a misunderstanding of Thomas Jefferson and his thoughts on the role of government?

Very possibly so, according to Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, affiliated with Princeton University.

Here's how one of the most iconic passages in the Declaration of Independence normally reads, with the punctuation mark in question included:

“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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

See that period right after "the pursuit of Happiness"? That's what's at question and, according to Allen, not part of Jefferson's original hand.

OK, we take it out. So, what does that do?

According to another story, this:

Allen ... argues that Thomas Jefferson intended to emphasize the second part of this passage — the role of the government — equally with the individual rights in the first part. Instead, with the period in place, there's an implied hierarchy. So you can begin to see how one little punctuation mark's presence or absence could become the subject of heated debate among those who have strong opinions about the role of government as it concerns individual liberty.

Indeed.

In fact, she's written a book on the issue. And, has some strong arguments. Typologically, given that a comma appears after the first "that" clause, just before the second em-dash, and that other historians of the period think that if there's any punctuation mark after "pursuit of Happiness," it's a comma, not a period, she's not alone.

Besides, sentences don't begin with "That."

As for non-wingnut objections to the idea?

First, it doesn't matter that Jefferson was one of five people on a committee drafting the Declaration of Independence. What matters is he was the one writing it.

There's a reason that word is boldfaced.

The Declaration is NOT a "modern" document like an Obama State of the Union address. It's a manuscript in the narrow etypmological version. It's something written by hand, and Thomas Jefferson didn't pass the pen to Ben Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, or Robert Livingston, his fellow members of the Committee of Five.

Beyond that, as the top link notes, beyond my form-critical note about sentences not beginning with "That," this is a textual criticism issue. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, about which I recently read a great critical book about its manuscript history, comes to mind.

So, too, do Plato, Homer, the Bible, etc. This is a text-critical issue. And, with a graduate divinity degree and a class in textual criticism, I'm familiar with issues like this.

Given that the National Archives "engrossed" or Matlack copy is illegible, it's hard to appeal to that. Per the Times piece, and per common text-critical issues, it's very possible that the Stone 1823 copperplate added a period working off, to analogize with the Greek New Testament, the "Textus Receptus" at hand.

Also per the story, Allen has other historians who agree, including others that have a background in textual criticism and manuscript issues.

That all said, we do have parallels in the study of other ancient manuscripts to what would have happened had Jefferson handed the quill pen to somebody else. Paul, at the end of one of his letters, says, "Look at the big marks I make with my own hand," implying everything else had been dictated to a scribe. (Sidebar: It makes one wonder how much of the claim Paul was a Pharisee of academic training actually is true; given that it's only in Acts, not in Philippians, itself of doubtful authenticity to a few scholars, this almost certainly isn't true, the academic part. But then, was he a Pharisee at all? I'll stop, before digressing too much.) Or, in a manuscript of the Gospels, we'll see how a second "hand" edits what (he thinks) is a mistake in the original.

But, we have none of that here. Nobody's ever suggested that the version at the Archives is based on multiple "hands" being on the document Matlack used.

To wit:

The period does not appear in Jefferson’s so-called original rough draft (held in the Library of Congress), or in the broadside that Congress ordered from the Philadelphia printer John Dunlap on July 4. It also does not appear in the version that was copied into Congress’s official records, known as its “corrected journal,” in mid-July.

So, there you go. 

These issues of textual criticism are well illustrated by the history of composition of the Gettyburg Address, delineated very well in this new book.

Now, back to, using biblical studies analogies, "higher criticism" of the passage with a comma, not a period. And thus, sometimes my "wasted" professional degree is not wasted.

Does it make the language flow that much differently? I say yes. I think she's still stretching her argument somewhat, but not fully.

The Jefferson of 1776 was certainly not the states rightist of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions a full two decades later. He would surely, still, have a belief in a somewhat limited government, but, we do know that he feared a strong central government because he thought it would overly boost the power of manufacturing interests — and, indirectly, financiers.

So, at a minimum, this undercuts the Jefferson as portrayed by libertarian wingnuts who want to move him halfway to Ayn Rand, or Religious Right wingnuts like David Barton who want to make him into a small-government zealot so as to undercut his "wall of separation" comments on church-state separation.

As for claims that Jefferson is misinterpreted, as Barton likes to state? Wikipedia shows that it's more complex than that. Our history shows that our founding fathers made a number of other compromises, though they held ideals in mind. Note slavery. Setting aside the inconsistent, then hardening, Jefferson, we know Ben Franklin's involvement in abolition, yet his signing off on the Constitution.

Some people interested in history may say, but, "It's the 'official' copy of the Declaration of Independence! Surely Jefferson would have corrected it."

Well, this gets back to how much difference the comma vs. period has. More precisely, it gets back to the perceived degree of difference back then, not today.

At the first Census, in 1790, we were a widely scattered nation of just 4 million people with no faster means of communication than horseback or sailing vessel. And, even in Britain, let alone America, government remained fairly small relative to the populace. So much the more, in a more open, more loosely-run nation here.

So, the difference wasn't nearly as much in a pre-electronic communication world of 4 million vs. a wired, big government world of 315 million.

A second reason Thomas Jefferson didn't run to correct Matlack? That's per John Adams famous mis-guesstimate about July 2 being "the day," not July 4, as Adams expected future Americans, if such a country survived, would be celebrating the day we declared our independence, not the day Congress approved the document stating why we had declared that independence. A month later, as long as Matlack didn't refer to George II instead of George III, nobody was that concerned. By the time of the 1823 copperplate, I'm pretty sure Adams, Jefferson and Charles Carroll were the only three Signers alive and nobody thought to check.

Third, given the military events of the next 18 months in the middle colonies, the Declarational Founders had little time to worry about what was surely very low on their priorities list. They were trying to escape capture by Gen. Howe, squabbling over who should have precedence in the mission to Versailles, trying to figure out how to pay for that French weaponry and much more.

In other words, to riff from the Declaration to the Constitution, and to kick one of David Barton's fellow travelers, Constitutional originalist Nino Scalia, right in the nuts, nobody was performing biblolatry on the Declaration of Independence between 1776 and 1823.

And, what you saw in the last five paragraphs above, if you include the snarky last one, was the equivalent of "historical criticism" or "higher criticism" in biblical studies, properly connecting with textual criticism.

And I do appreciate some comment on Facebook which led me to the last one-third of this post, to spell out these issues.

Thomas Jefferson, racist hypocrite

Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves by Henry Wiencek

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is at times a great book, and throughout, it's a thought-provoking and challenging book.

I couldn't quite rate it five stars, though, for a couple of reasons.

One is that he does appear to have committed intellectual plagiarism in not better referencing Annette Gordon-Reed's research on Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings.

Second is that, per some criticism, he appears to have vastly oversimplified the issue of Kosciuszko's will. On the other hand, Gordon-Reed has led the charge against Wiencek (more below), and he notes Jefferson's own son apparently was not unduly worried about Kosciuszko having multiple wills.

Third, per critique by Paul Finkelman, Wiencek may have been too kind to the younger Jefferson. Yes, he excoriated the slave trade at the time of the Declaration of Independence; yes, he pushed for a slave-free "Old Northwest." but, that was about it. Finkelman notes he was a "racist" and a "creep." While Wiencek looks "bluntly" at Jefferson's record, for some reason, he never uses the word "racist" in the book himself.

Fourth, he may, or may not, have oversimplified other things. Did Edwin Betts deliberately, or accidentally, omit things like whippings of small boys at Monticello's nail-making shop?

Overall, this book is at the edge of four stars, maybe 3.75, with allowances for everything above. And, not all the criticisms of Wiencek are right.

Take, for example, the "4 percent profit" statement. Wiencek shows it was more than a back-of-the-envelope calculation. That's based on things like Jefferson using slaves as collateral for loans from Dutch merchants, precision in to whom he rented out his slaves, the diversifying of economic activity at Monticello and more. That includes issues of Jefferson's instruction on how much and how severely to use the whip and more.

And, once he gets to the late 1780s and beyond, Wiencek does pick up to some degree on Finkelman's point of view.

Now, on to illegitimate complaints, in my opinion.

Complaints about him distorting the historical record at Monticello? I think James van Loewen, if he writes another "Lies ... " book about American history, would probably, and probably rightly, blast Lucia Stanton out of the water. Methinks she has a fair degree of Jeffersonian detachment, and doth protest too much.

Gordon-Reed? Other than the intellectual plagiarism, or whatever one should call it, I think she's full of hot air. She didn't romanticize the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings relationship as much as Fawn Brodie did, but she romanticized it more than enough. Without using Finkelman's word "creep," Wiencek portrays him as being at least near that in his later relations to his own kids.

Ta-Nehisi Coates at Atlantic Monthly also says she's been way to charitable to Jefferson.

Per Coates, and myself, I reject Gordon-Reed's "presentism" claims. With George Washington, Edward Coles, the French Revolution (until Napoleon) and more, we have many, many white Americas and Europeans (don't forget the 1772 Somerset ruling in Great Britain essentially abolishing slavery in the Isles themselves) who knew slavery was wrong back then.

This all said, I'd like to see Finkelman write a book specifically about Jefferson himself.

As for the rest of this?

I'm suspecting antipathy from the "academy" toward a non-academic historian, just like Jared Diamond's new book has gotten from cultural anthropologists.



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Counterfactual history - President Aaron Burr

Crazy idea for  the man who "murdered Alexander Hamilton," eh?

But, had he wanted the presidency in 1800 (he did NOT "grasp for it," a great triple biography reviewed just below shows) American history might have been a lot different. First, the review, then I'll pick up the train of thought further about how President Burr might have been different for America than President Jefferson.

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Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character by Roger G. Kennedy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a good re-evaluation for the better of Aaron Burr, basically freeing him from 200 years of accretion of the ... well, the lies that Thomas Jefferson had his minions spread about him. It also fits well in some recent columns and essays about Jefferson who, as Kennedy notes, was the first explicitly lying president, and able to be believed, anyway, by following on Washington, definitely, and also on Adams. And, we get dollops of Hamilton playing off of both.

First, Kennedy established that, when the electorally tied 1800 election went to Congress, Burr did nothing to "angle" for election himself. (It's well known that Hamilton worked against him.)

That said, Kennedy points out that, had Burr wanted the position it could have been his. Burr got electoral votes in 1792 and 96 as well as 1800. In the first two cases, many were in the South. In 1800, Jefferson’s agents specifically fought against this. Related to this,  Burr had Federalist as well as anti-Federalist friends, esp. in New York, and including John Jay. Hamilton, Burr, Jay worked together on abolition in New York as part of that.

A lot of the enmity went back to the Revolution. Burr was mistrusted by Washington due to his assn. with Gates and his clique, before, during and after Saratoga. Hamilton used this when Washington was prez to poison him against Burr. John Marshall was in the army at Valley Forge, as were Hamilton, and Washington. Marshall, as chief justice, presided over Burr's treason trial in 1807. All of the above, remembering Jefferson's "runaway" governorship of Virginia, had reason to disdain him.

A lot of Hamilton’s envy toward Burr may have been “projection,” Kennedy says, and makes a good case for this. He also hints that Hamilton may have seen the duel as a chance for "suicide by opponent" along with one last bit of revenge, having wrecked Burr's chance at the presidency, his chance at New York's governorship earlier in 1804, and before that, John Adams' presidency.

In any case, Burr’s post-duel plans in the Louisiana Territory, as an abolitionist, may have been part of why Jefferson was even further “set” against him. Jefferson himself had designs on  both the Floridas and Mexico himself, after all. But, with a chance to reset the "New World Order" in Louisiana, to meet the idealism of the Declaration and make it slave free, Jefferson took a pass.

But, that's not now. Kennedy informs us that Jeffersons’s Northwest Ordinance anti-slavery petition applied only to **new govts**  in the area. Given that, pre-Constitution, Virginia claimed the entire Old Northwest, as well as the future Kentucky, it was therefore largely vacuous.

There's lot more like this, combined with a "hail, reader" style of writing by Kennedy that I find generally ingratiating.



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OK, first, Burr would have bought Louisiana just like Jefferson. He probably would have created some expedition similar to Lewis and Clark up the Missouri, as well as Zebulon Pike up the Arkansas. He might have been more aggressive than Jefferson on trying to get East Florida, West Florida, or both from Spain.

And, he would have worked for a "reset of the New World Order," with Louisiana being admitted as a free state. He might even have encouraged it, like northern states at the time, to allow free blacks to vote. (They generally only lost or had restricted this right from the 1830s on.) Slavery would have been put on a path to eventual extinction.

That would have forced the South to look at diversifying its economy, including a mechanical cotton picker of some sort, perhaps.

Also, if Jefferson were defeated, we would have no "Virginia dynasty" of presidents. Madison might well have followed Burr, and out from under a Jeffersonian presidential shadow, done better than he did.

And, we wouldn't have had Jefferson's "Embargo," but Burr might have stood up to Britain even more, earlier, than Congressional "War Hawks."

Talk about getting Thomas Jefferson wrong

Corey Robin, even if he has written in The Nation, comes off as a conservative apologist for Thomas Jefferson, in an article that almost sounds as if George Will had written it.

Ignoring the reality of ongoing cruelty in both word and deed by Jefferson, documented in this NYT op-ed by Paul Finkleman, rightly titled "The Monster of Monticello," Robin basically tries to make Thomas Jefferson into Abraham Lincoln, first, and second, believe Jefferson's thought was frozen in amber after he wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

His main claim is that Jefferson was worried about what would happen upon the event of black emanicipation and freedom.

Yes? Well, so was Lincoln. Per Finkelman and his NYT op-ed, the fact that Jefferson was focused on black freedom, not black slavery, doesn't lessen his cruelness as a slaveowner. A piece like Robin's would be better read for those who criticize Lincoln the man, or worry that Lincoln the movie is too hagiographic.

The critics, of the movie, the president himself, or both, also ignore Lincoln's genuine evolution on the issue. Jefferson, meanwhile, can only be described as devolving, not evolving.

As for Robin's appeal to Jefferson's words of the Declaration of Independence?

Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence 50 years before he died. Appealing to it wipe out a clear legacy of both later writings, and actions, which point in a clearly contrary direction?

Meanwhile, the Volokh Conspiracy tries to claim that because Lincoln, in 1858 comments about Jefferson, appealed to his sentiments? Lincoln's comments, too, were about the Jefferson who authored the Declaration, not the Jefferson who threatened to sell slaves "down the river," so to speak, etc.

And, don't forget he wrote the Kentucky Resolutions, which even more than Madison with the similar ones for Virginia, were the first articulated argument for nullification.

I do mean it about Lincoln, though. He was sincerely wrestling with a post-slavery world back in the 1850s, during the Lincoln-Douglas debates. No, he wasn't the most "advanced" person on racial thought then, but he was legitimately struggling with this issue more than Jefferson, because he was looking forward to slavery's eventual end, while Jefferson was engaging in hand-waving bullshit, to be blunt.

Between Jefferson being a hypocrite about miscegenation worries after having fathered multiple children via Sally Hemings (will Robin deny that next?), his nullification ideas (and his decades-long cowardice on not owning authorship) and more, he is arguably one of our five or so most hypocritical presidents ever, and that's saying a lot. 

Update: Robin thinks I've seriously misread him. Given that he has multiple posts on interpretation of Jefferson, explicitly attacks Finkelman, and has raised the eyebrows of other commenters than me, I think not. Also interesting that he references Notes on the State of Virginia without finding anything untoward about Jefferson there.