Wiencek misled readers on Jefferson's record
As the “recently retired” Monticello historian who had “no comment” in Lisa Provence’s cover story [October 18: “Mr. Jefferson’s greed"], I’m moved to speak. I declined to comment because I had not yet read Henry Wiencek’s Master of the Mountain. I’ve now read excerpts in the October issue of Smithsonian magazine as well as related sections of the book.
As an admirer of Henry Wiencek’s previous work, I was shocked by what I saw: a breathtaking disrespect for the historical record and for the historians who preceded him. With the fervor of a prosecutor, he has played fast and loose with the historical evidence, using truncated quotations, twisting chronology, misinterpreting documents, and misrepresenting events.
In short, he has misled his readers. So much so that, to cite one example, some reviewers now believe that Jefferson “ordered” the whipping of ten-year-old slave boys in the Monticello nailmaking shop. Jefferson actually ordered the manager of the nailery to refrain from using the whip, except “in extremities.” And there were no ten-year-olds in the shop at the time; most were fifteen to eighteen, with two others about to be thirteen and fourteen.
Whipping boys of any age is terrible to contemplate, but we all know that the whip was the universal tool of slave discipline in Virginia. The more interesting point, which Wiencek does not explore, is that Jefferson was experimenting with methods of discipline that might help minimize use of the whip.
One would not know from Wiencek’s book, however, that historians, myself included, have examined slavery at Monticello and written of sales and whippings, not to mention young boys shut up in a hot smoky shop swinging their hammers 20,000 times a day. Yet Wiencek makes no mention of the work of Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Annette Gordon-Reed. And his treatment of the late Edwin M. Betts, editor of Jefferson’s Farm Book (1953), is unfair, to say the least.
He makes a great to-do about Betts’s omission of a sentence that revealed that the “small” nailers were whipped for truancy–- in Jefferson’s absence and without his knowledge. How can he know that Betts “deliberately” suppressed this sentence, in what was a compilation of excerpts, not full letters? Especially when it was Betts who first published the letters that describe troubling events in which Jefferson himself was involved: the flogging of James Hubbard, the selling south of Cary “in terrorem” to his fellow nailers, the addition to capital through slave childbirth. Wiencek fails to mention Betts’s pioneering editorial contributions.
I am angered by Wiencek’s distortion of history as well as disappointed that, with all his talents, he didn’t probe still-unexplored corners of the story of Jefferson and slavery. He has instead used a blunt instrument to reduce complex historical issues to unrecognizable simplicities.
Lucia (Cinder) Stanton
Charlottesville
39 comments
I think we can always point with pride to the fact that Jefferson was looking for ways to humanely treat his slaves. Without, of course, taking the bold step of treating them like humans. smh, white people's problems I guess.
I think we can always point with pride to the fact that Jefferson was looking for ways to humanely treat his slaves. Without, of course, taking the bold step of treating them like humans. smh, w hite people's problems I guess.
" I’ve now read excerpts in the October issue of Smithsonian magazine as well as related sections of the book." In order to make the sweeping criticisms you have made, I would hope you would read the entire book first. Given that you have not done so, it is difficult to take your comments seriously.
Once you and other Jefferson scholars have read the book it would be interesting to arrange a discussion with Mr. Wiencek to debate the points of disagreement in a civil manner. Instead of a battle of egos, I look forward to an educational exercise that would further the veracity of the historical record.
Perhaps by sharing your knowledge you could all learn from one another.
I am sure you are all fueled by the same passion - to highlight the role of the slaves at Monticello
@Peace - THAT public conversation happened at Wiencek's book event last week. The book was available then, and everyone, including Ms. Stanton, has read it (re-read her article...she has read it NOW..."related sections of the book"). And may I be so bold to say that 1) Stanton is THE preeminent historical researcher on Jefferson, and 2) Much of the historical research quoted by Wiencek is Stanton's! SHE would know better than anyone the veracity of this book.
Jefferson's followers have been rather oblivious to his crimes against humanity. The historian Lucia Stanton has made it her job to "know" Jefferson but cannot bring herself to face the horror of the truth about Jefferson. What was the horrible truth? That he knew what he was doing. He was an architect of a university and Monticello yes, he was also an architect of unfathomable suffering, bloodshed, and institutionalized denial, writ large upon an entire country. Like Romney is teaching his followers to flip flop when it suits their immediate needs and liberally use the etch-a-sketch, Jefferson also taught Americans the art and practice of speaking with forked tongues. If there is one American tradition that deserves to be acknowledged above all others it is Jefferson's master work: He taught his people by his example how to be dishonorable and very nearly get away with it. His intellectual product was a grueling apartheid system in which he and his peers enjoyed a set of rules that advantaged their positions at the expense of everyone else. I can imagine Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe conversing and imploring one another to speak more about how "all men are created equal." Then Jefferson turns and says, "First lets get those Blacks and Indians out of the room so we can resume our conversation. Close that door behind you and keep it shut for over 150 years. Need I get the whip? Where were we? Oh yes, acting aghast and angered because someone dared impugn our integrity." Like Stanton. Angry because a more honest scholar questioned Jefferson's civility and honor.
If we believe in the universality of human rights and the sacredness of such principles, that they were given by God to everyone, then I hope the readers would agree that these principles were corrupted and exploited for the sake of greed and power by Jefferson.
I have known worked with Cinder Stanton for many years. Ms. Stanton championed the study of Jefferson and slavery and slave life at Monticello long before it was considered a subject worthy of books by men like Mr. Wiencek. Ms. Stanton expected her research to pass the historic document test...confirm the source..trace the source... and always confirm through the primary documents. To do otherwise is in my opinion to do nothing more than perpetuating rumor and promoting inaccurate history. Cinder Stanton is in my opinion the reigning authority on Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson and slavery in particular. And unlike Mr. Wiencek she isn't trying to make a buck off the discussion.
Monticello has for many years tolerated speculative and shoddy scholarship without challenge. This is exemplified by the fact that Ms. Stanton didn't feel comfortable to speak out about Mr. Wiencek's work until after her employment at Monticello ended. Mr. Wiencek is not a more honest scholar; he is one trying to make money off Thomas Jefferson's name.
globe,
The purpose of research and books should be to add facts in context to the ongoing story. I think that Ms. Stanton has done so very well with this response.
It seems that this author has an agenda similar to yours , to vilify a man who was instrumental in establishing the framework that not only insured your right to spew nonsense, but also created a government strong enough to not only end slavery, but to heal itself from the wounds that the slavery debate helped to cause.
Perhaps you should surrender your iphone, laptop, big screen and stop drinking coffee as they are all products of people exploited arguably as much as blacks ever were.
@ Ponce--Ms. Stanton retired several months ago. Mr. Wiencek's book and the Smithsonian article just came out.
Whichever way the book is interpreted, the buck stops with the slaveholder...like it or not.
I am still waiting for a convocation of Jefferson scholars to discuss Mr. Wiencek's important book. Primary sources may be interpreted differently by different people, but it is the totally of those sources along with the record of the times that Mr. Wiencek has used to portray Jefferson in a new light. I think the conclusions he has reached are worth careful consideration.
I find his book very convincing.
This is Jefferson country and it is understandable that those who have worked at Monticello, and earned their living there, would defend his reputation and find Mr. Wiencek's book disturbing.
Come on people, it's not like she's saying the slaves all got ice cream and puppies! She's stating specific errors in the book. Overly vilifying Jefferson is just as incorrect as whitewashing him. I understand the reaction, because you can see it with just about every historical figure that gets written about these days. Our world's nations were not made by saints.
Remember this is a book about Jefferson and his slaves, it does not diminish Jefferson's other accomplishments.
I suggest that everyone read the book first before criticizing it.
Quibbling about the ages of the boys whipped in the nailery misses the point.
The parts I found enlightening were; Jefferson's economic stance on slavery and the value of his slaves as commodities; the overseer he employed, who others would not use because of his violent treatment of slaves.
But the fact that Jefferson, even when offered the money, refused to buy his slaves freedom is something that I had never read before and certainly sheds new light on his public pronouncements.
Who was this Jefferson guy? From everything I read in the papers, all he ever did of significance was own slaves and possibly have sex with one of them. Did he do anything else during his life?
@Peace. The record about the money offered Jefferson is much more complex. The money was to be made available to Jefferson through a bequest. I guess you can say the bequestor was putting his money where his mouth was, which has a certain honor to it. But why didn't he just give Jefferson the money outright while still alive? Guess he didn't want to go wanting either. Plus, he wrote subsequent wills that left his estate contested and unsettled until well after Jefferson's death. Jefferson was a lawyer by training and could well have known the morass waiting for him and his own heirs. Not pretty. But here again Wiencek oversimplifies.
@Peace. The record about the money offered Jefferson is much more complex. It was to be made available to Jefferson through a bequest. I guess you can say the bequestor was planning on putting his money where his mouth *was.* While this has a certain honor to it, why didn't he just give Jefferson the money outright while he was still alive? i guess he didn't want to go wanting either. Plus, he wrote subsequent wills that left his estate contested and unsettled until well after Jefferson's death. Jefferson was a lawyer by training and could well have known the morass waiting for him and his own heirs had he tried to make his claim. Not pretty. But not as straightforward as Wiencek makes it out.
Yes, Peace, the will "offering" Jefferson the money was in the courts until years after Jefferson was dead- and was judged invalidated by the later wills, anyway. But for some reason Wiencek chose not to delve into that...presenting it as "Jefferson refused to take the money" gins up more controversy and free publicity than "Jefferson chose not to get involved in ugly lawsuits over money he knew he might well not get anyway."
I think Henry is right on target here. Alexis de Tocqueville handled the subject of men of those times speaking and writing so well about the "rights of man" while insouciantly holding some of them in bondage and subjecting them to casual cruelties. It all had to do with their respective positions in the social order of the times where one was a "gentleman" and the other an anthropoid but not strictly human. And that Jefferson valued his comforts and took a casual attitude towards creditors is well known. So, as to his position regarding his slaves... well: Cui Bono.
I would like to hear Mr. Wiencek's take on the will leaving Jefferson money to free his slaves. You say, ". Jefferson was a lawyer by training" which would lead me to believe that he could have had the money if he wanted it.
This is a fascinating book and I think adds much to update the information about Jefferson. It's not any one detail that has changed the landscape, it's the entirety of what Mr. Wiencek presents us with, and just as the Sally Hemings story awoke the Jefferson defenders to the battlefield, so too has Mr. Wiencek's book.
I say, let the battle for the truth begin, and may it be waged with words and thoughts and not deeds.
Stanton is a good slavery scholar, and we are indebted to her. Stanton's comments are accurate about Wiencek's slavery scholarship. Wiencek's book is disappointing. Wiencek misrepresented evidence about the nailboys' ages and omitted Jefferson's instructions about not whipping them. Wiencek also misrepresented the allegations about Kosciusko's estate. The will was one of four, so it was contested. A provision of the will was to free his or others' slaves and to educate them. Jefferson could not have educated them in Virginia. Besides, at the time Jefferson was in his mid-70s and using all of his energy to open UVA. There are other instances misrepresented (like the 4% profit), and his reasoning is poor. Where Stanton strayed is in noting Gordon-Reed's Hemingses book. It deserves scrutiny, and you'll discover it is more conjecture and myth than history.
to Ponce: You wrote -"It seems that this author [Wiencek} has an agenda similar to yours , to vilify a man who was instrumental in establishing the framework that not only insured your right to spew nonsense, but also created a government strong enough to not only end slavery, but to heal itself from the wounds that the slavery debate helped to cause."
Most of Jefferson's apologists have a predetermined agenda, Ponce's comment illustrates that agenda when he attributes my rights to Jefferson's work. I will not allow Jeffersonian doublespeak any credit for my well-being. I was given my rights by the Creator, not Jefferson! I will also point out that the wounds from the slavery debate did not begin to heal until Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement successfully advanced human rights for all, thereby overcoming Jefferson's White Supremacy framework that Ponce so uncritically embraces. If Jefferson had a cause it was to become the Confederate Cause and then Jim Crow. Jefferson set up intellectual barriers in his life and work that we've yet to completely overcome in realizing equal rights and freedom for all who inhabit our nation.
to Ponce: You wrote -"It seems that this author [Wiencek} has an agenda similar to yours , to vilify a man who was instrumental in establishing the framework that not only insured your right to spew nonsense, but also created a government strong enough to not only end slavery, but to heal itself from the wounds that the slavery debate helped to cause."
Most of Jefferson's apologists have a predetermined agenda, Ponce's comment illustrates that agenda when he attributes my rights to Jefferson's work. I will not allow Jeffersonian doublespeak any credit for my well-being. I was given my rights by the Creator, not Jefferson! I will also point out that the wounds from the slavery debate did not begin to heal until Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement successfully advanced human rights for all, thereby overcoming Jefferson's White Supremacy framework that Ponce so uncritically embraces. If Jefferson had a cause it was to become the Confederate Cause and then Jim Crow. Jefferson set up intellectual barriers in his life and work that we've yet to completely overcome in realizing equal rights and freedom for all who inhabit our nation.
to Ponce: You wrote -"It seems that this author [Wiencek} has an agenda similar to yours , to vilify a man who was instrumental in establishing the framework that not only insured your right to spew nonsense, but also created a government strong enough to not only end slavery, but to heal itself from the wounds that the slavery debate helped to cause."
Most of Jefferson's apologists have a predetermined agenda, Ponce's comment illustrates that agenda when he attributes my rights to Jefferson's work. I will not allow Jeffersonian doublespeak any credit for my well-being. I was given my rights by the Creator, not Jefferson! I will also point out that the wounds from the slavery debate did not begin to heal until Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement successfully advanced human rights for all, thereby overcoming Jefferson's White Supremacy framework that Ponce so uncritically embraces. If Jefferson had a cause it was to become the Confederate Cause and then Jim Crow. Jefferson set up intellectual barriers in his life and work that we've yet to completely overcome in realizing equal rights and freedom for all who inhabit our nation.
Jefferson wrote the constitution of the United States...enough said.
Globe, if you were given your rights by the "creator" and give no attribution to the contributions of Jefferson I suggest you take those "rights" to pakistan or Syria and try and have a say about how they mistreat a minority and see how far you get before you get allaakbarred in the streets while people clap.
I also don't feel like an "apologist" for jefferson because I don't think what he did was as malicious as some people like to make him out to be.
It is easy in hindsight to lump all white males together as if they all eminated from the same womb and banded together to rob people who didn't look like them just because they didn't look like them. That is patently untrue as can be proven by reading ANY history of the world written in any culture. Whites fought whites for centuries along with arabs, asians, africans and so on. Contrary to the other rewritten history not all africans were pacifists enjoying the carefree life of harmony and bliss prior to the muslims capturing them and selling them into slavery.
Jefferson lived out his life in a tumultuous time and although he could have simply chosen the easy and financially lucrative route and stayed out of politics, he dedicated much of his life to making the world a better place. Some will say he was harsh on his slaves and some will say as his life went on his slaves lives improved as he either became more enlightened or had more access to the funds that allowed for a better standard of living for them. Either way it was the times and he did not have the option to buy a zero interest john deere tractor or have government farm subsidies and he had responsibilites to his families needs and agenda first. It is very easy for someone to sit at a laptop in a heated home and criticize someone who designed an entire university by an oil lamp with a quill pen and a ruler.
It is also easy to blame all the plights of blacks on slavery, jim crow and a white supremeacy framework but I can't help but notice that blacks with the highest standard of living all live in primarily white countries. I guess the tribes in the deepest parts of the congo who have live undisturbed for a thousand years have zero crime rates, high birth rates, and have exported significant contributions of science, technology, medicine and great works of literature to the rest of us.
Whites exploited blacks. they also exploited other whites. The italians expolited the greeks and vice versa, the british exploited anyone they could exploit, regardless of race. that was where civilization was at that moment in time and it was not all based on evil or greed but ambition and desire for a better life.
I imagine that if you were living at the time you may not have owned a slave, but I also suspect you would have been a little too busy growing your own food for survival to actually contribute to the good of the nation.
Those in the north who like to claim inocence were the direct benificiary of the textiles from the south and were simply a degree of separation away from the slave labor and all it entailed. Just like people reading this on their laptop or iphone made by child workers who live about the same quality of life as slaves did (and cannot quit without retribution or starvation) they are hypocrites and judgemental and refust to add context to the current day analogy and to the envrionment thay Mr Jefferson lived in.
It is okay to explore his life but it needs to be done in context without such an obvious agenda to villify the man. This guys writings seem disingenouous to me.
Whoa Nelly& Ponce: Jefferson was on a committee that helped to write the US Constitution and the result was that White Supremacy became an institutionalized foundation of the USA. His followers believed in White Supremacy so vehemently that they were willing to lay down their lives or take life to impose it and so they killed and died by the hundreds of thousands in the US Civil War and other wars throughout the Americas against Indigenous peoples, and also against Mexico.
Jefferson and his peers didn't invent the idea of freedom and liberty but they did figure out a way to use those ideas to their own advantage at the expense of many, many others. In fact Jefferson and his peers who held slaves were quite willing to enslave their own children, nephews, & nieces, and also sell them to the highest whip-wielding bidders. There is no excuse on earth for such actions, it was inexcusable in its own time as well.
It's fine to have an agenda. We all have one whether we recognize it or not. The tough part is not letting it that make a ruin of the facts. All people are saying here is that there are a few serious questions about how the historical record has been portrayed in this book.
Speaking of which, Jefferson was in France when the Constitution was being written and debated and was a sideline player at best. Give credit to Madsion as the chief architect and then to Hamilton and Jay as his fellow advocates and then the rest of the convention for various contributions. If anyone's interested there's a lovely book on this era by Gordon Wood called Empire of Liberty that's great at giving you food for thought rather than telling you how to think.
Whoa Nelly, Jefferson did not write the Constitution Of The United States. He wrote the Declaration of Independence. And the only reason he had the time to do all that writing is because he had six hundred slaves doing what he would have had to be doing himself, instead of sitting inside with his quill pen while his slaves sweated it out. Enough said.
I'm just curious to know how all the folks who make excuses/rationalizations for Jefferson's slaveholding feel about his proposing a law that sodomites (i.e. homosexuals) be castrated. I have a feeling they don't want to "go there" either. Maybe it's for the best.
Yea...and we can go back a little furthur and they burned women at the stake...
See what I mean?
At least you're consistent, Whoa Nelly. But to my knowledge nobody was burned at the stake on suspicion of being a woman.
This is why Harvard and Princeton trained professors at UVa are pushing for a C-ville Human Rights Commission to make sure the minimum wage jobs of waiters on the downtown mall are not just whites and Asians. We need more black waiters on the mall to help them out and to make up for slavery at Monticello.
Ms. Stanton's casual assertion "we all know that the whip was the universal tool of slave discipline in Virginia" was absolutely chilling. As if that makes it less horrific, and as if Thomas Jefferson is not to be held accountable for taking part in such a system but rather given bonus points for "experimenting" with other forms of discipline.
And to quibble over the ages of the boys--as if a "soon-to-be thirteen-year-old" is more acceptable than a ten-year-old to bear the lash.
Unwittingly Ms. Stanton has underscored the point Mr. Wiencek makes in his book--that historians, like herself, gloss over Jefferson's participation in a brutal system and his responsibility in spreading the system even further abroad. This does not diminish either Jefferson's accomplishments nor the impact of his ideas. Rather it testifies to the corrupting power of an evil institution.
Obviously Jefferson "owned" people and that is bad, very bad in fact. That said, it is quite important to look at things through the lens of history. Was he being immoral based on the societal mores or his time?
Looking back there were all kinds of things that today we consider immoral and horrific that were simply accepted and normal back then. For instance I know people that were whipped (by a belt) as a kid when they misbehaved. Today that would be criminally punishable, though when it happened it was a normal operating procedure. I imagine that in 200 years people looking back on today will consider many things we are doing immoral and horrific.
Logan is right in his imaginings that our practices and perspectives on morality may be viewed in the future as horrific. One of those practices that may well be viewed by posterity as being in error is the convenient twisting of our humanity to accommodate a heroic vision of Jefferson. That practice will one day be understood as a challenge to the limits of our cultural discourse -- an enforcement of a code that has established certain kinds of scrutiny as offering too much information that we just aren't ready to process. You see, many of us don't want to know Jefferson, not really, unless our present position benefits from the knowledge. We want to believe that Jefferson really did intend to lead the nation towards a state where liberty and justice is provided to all. So we seek an intellectual cleansing of Jefferson's history because it makes us feel clean and pure today, unfettered by the insanity that has plagued our unenlightened past. For we have overcome those obstacles, and now we are all on an equal playing field, right? So long as we mold our actions towards the pearls of wisdom in our founder's words, we redeem them and ourselves as well. So we strike the damnable things that they did but in doing so we perpetuate the practice of also excising from our history the victims who suffered from those damnable things. In the end we will find ourselves victims of our own design. And the spiritual reckoning is postponed for yet another generation.
globe,
I am totally on board with you that we should not hide or white wash historical facts. Humans like to think of things in absolutes, but the reality is that no one has ever been all good or all bad. Hero worship in my opinion always leads to letdown.
That said, we need to look at things that were done from the mores from his day. While Jefferson owning slaves is counter to many of the ideals he projected, you need to consider the social and economic realities he was dealing with. So yes Jefferson is both good and bad, in my opinion his good greatly outweighed his bad.
It would be good to read any one of numerous less sensational biographies of Jefferson before reading Wiencek's book in order to have more well rounded impression of who Jefferson was, what he accomplished in his lifetime, and what he contributed to posterity. Possibly reading Ms Stanton's books on Jefferson and slavery would also be good beginning reading. Also, it should be noted that Jefferson was in France when the U. S. Constitution was written.