Founding a nation was one thing. Footing the bill was a different matter entirely. Gautham Rao’s brilliant National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the American State analyzes America’s fiscal founding—its precedent and its product—through its most effective means of income: the custom house. George Washington and his administration—especially Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton—knew that the federal government would have to tread lightly concerning matters of taxation given that the Revolution was inspired in large part by questions over Parliament’s right to tax. Hamilton found the solution in tariffs, a method of indirect taxation that would not likely draw the ire of tax-phobic revolutionaries. However, customs officials were tasked with implementing on the docks the laws in the rough-and-tumble world of Atlantic capitalism. Indeed, it is on the waterfront that Rao’s argument really unfolds. He asserts that in practice, customs officials frequently negotiated federal laws with local merchants and sailors: “They decided which laws to apply, and which laws to ignore; when to make an example out of a lawbreaker, and when to sweep transgressions under the rug. Most often, they used their discretion to align federal revenue and regulatory law with local commercial communities’ expectations about how governance should work” (12). Surprisingly, these waterfront negotiations funneled an abundance of wealth into the Treasury. However, by the War of 1812, it became apparent that this system was difficult to restrict during wartime and potentially dangerous for American diplomacy in general. Ultimately, it disappeared by the end of Andrew Jackson’s presidency.

Rao structures National Duties chronologically, prefacing each section with an anecdote about a customs official dealing with the realities of his position. The first section details the colonial precedents of tariff negotiations. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the British Empire exercised a policy that scholars have often termed “salutary neglect”: so long as British colonies offered their loyalty to the mother country, imperial governance—including tariff enforcement—remained lax. In fact, it was actually beneficial to allow colonial merchants to expand into French and Spanish markets, undercutting Britain’s competition without resorting to war. With the beginning of the Seven Years’ War in 1756, however, Britain tightened its enforcement of mercantile policy, restricting the colonial tradition of negotiation. Thus, the American Revolution was not an outright rejection of Britain’s right to tax; rather, it was an outcry against a perceived violation of colonial rights to negotiation.

The second section details the United States’ implementation of its own tariff system in the 1790s. Both Washington and Hamilton were keenly aware of the risks of taxing too heavily. However, Hamilton’s well-documented Anglophilia inspired him to look to Britain’s financial model for the new United States. After pushing a series of bills through Congress to establish the custom house system, Washington appointed more than 130 officials to enforce the laws. However, as Rao illustrates, these men were selected not for their party loyalty, but for their standing in the community, with the expectation that they would be better able to inspire the confidence of their neighbors. This worked splendidly, and “by 1793 the custom houses were the federal government’s sole reliable and significant stream of revenue” (75). Much to Hamilton’s initial chagrin, a side effect of this success was waterfront negotiation: customs officials might take a captain at his word on a suspicious manifest, payments might be indefinitely postponed, and violations might be prosecuted only selectively. Failing these concessions, non-compliant customs officials might find themselves harassed, sued, and even assaulted should they refuse to work with their neighbors. It was, it seemed, in everyone’s best interests to maintain the status quo.

As Rao notes in the third section, the system’s success in the 1790s would prove its undoing. As the Napoleonic Wars engulfed Europe, it became increasingly dangerous for American merchants to violate agreements with France and Britain. Even when President Thomas Jefferson signed legislation to stop illicit trade, “customs officials were simply unable to muster enough authority” to enforce them (104). Despite his reputation as a de-centralizer, Jefferson cracked down on these violations at the docks, as he feared that unregulated trade with either France or Britain could provoke the belligerents and drag the United States into a war. The failure of the 1808 Embargo Act and the subsequent War of 1812 under James Madison proved Jefferson right. Many customs officials largely ignored smuggling during the embargo and war—and others actively aided renegade merchants. It grew so problematic that Madison deployed the navy during the War of 1812 to stop American smugglers. Rao considers this period the turning point for waterfront negotiations, writing, “This arrangement of power that had enabled empires past now seemed poised to enfeeble the republic” (162). The federal government was tired of a rebellious waterfront, and they would soon put a stop to it.

Rao’s final section details the government crackdown that put an end to the old ways. As a new generation of politicians committed to nationalist financial policies emerged after the War of 1812, James Madison’s administration began the daunting task of reforming custom houses. The Panic of 1819 saw the government take stock of its assets, and it became clear that customs officials had intentionally overlooked millions of dollars in unpaid tariffs. Understandably, the federal government was not pleased, and a renewed commitment to prosecutions followed. Further, the return of relative peace to the Atlantic meant that merchants had less to gain from violating laws, so they could not rally widespread support from disgruntled sailors. These reforms were completed by the end of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, and the waterfront negotiations that had defined Atlantic trade for over a century disappeared with it.

Rao’s methodology reflects his difficult task of connecting federal policy with its implementation. The core of his research comes from custom house records at the National Archives. Aside from (impressive) statistical analysis, Rao thoroughly explores the personal relationship between customs officials and their waterborne neighbors. Further, his footnotes evidence a thorough grasp of the scholarship on empire, nation, finance, and capitalism during the period in question.

This book joins the voluminous ranks of scholarship on cultural economy in the early republic. Rao’s story is less about federal financial policy than about how these laws worked on a daily basis. What develops is a story about the culture of Atlantic capitalism on the waterfront. Indeed, the text is populated by a wide cast of characters: the Hamiltons and Jeffersons are there, but so are shady merchants, disgruntled sailors, and mobs to persuade overly zealous officials to bend to local pressure. However, this book is primarily about the customs officials themselves. They are portrayed neither as faceless extensions of the government nor as sycophants who did not dare refuse local demands. While there were several different kinds of people who filled these offices, most were pragmatists who understood the law but also fully grasped the situation on the waterfront. One such example that Rao uses is James McCulloch. Initially selected by Jefferson for his post as a customs official in Baltimore due to his party loyalty, McCulloch came to sympathize with the local community during the financially disastrous Embargo Act of 1808, allowing illicit trade to leave the struggling port. When Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin confronted the wavering official, he was doubtless dumbfounded when he received McCulloch’s reply. While McCulloch knew the rules, he described someone in his position as “generally connected with those around him by common if not special ties . . . and liable to bias from confidence in acquaintances accompanied with good will” (quoted in Rao, 102). In other words, McCulloch told Gallatin that he knew the law. He simply did not care. Trade would continue to flow.

 It is difficult to overstate the quality of Rao’s work in National Duties. Well-researched, well-written, and well-executed, this book offers a new look into the dialectic of fiscal nation building. Compromise was not restricted to the legislative halls; it was an integral part of life on the waterfront. Further, this work will contribute to a sizeable body of literature on the culture of capitalism in the young United States. Refreshingly, this book looks also to the Federalist years of the 1790s as an important part of this development. Since Charles Sellers’ controversial thesis on the “market revolution” in 1991, scholars have been inclined to look to post-War of 1812 America for the rise of markets. Without rejecting the validity of this focus on the 1800s, scholarship can only benefit from looking to eighteenth-century precedents for later economic developments. National Duties is an important work in the study of capitalism and nation-building in the early republic. Rao reminds the reader that, contrary to a teleological view of history, both of these processes were open to negotiation in that era.

This article originally appeared in issue 17.3.5 (Summer, 2017).

Aaron L. Chin is a graduate student in history at the University of New Hampshire. He studies partisanship and economics in the early American republic.

New ways of seeing old faces

After George Washington’s death on December 14, 1799, pictorial tributes poured from the presses. During his life, engravings had established Washington’s face and his symbolic role among contemporaries. But the historic death of the first president and former commander in chief fed a growing appetite for inexpensive printed portraits, which would persist for the rest of the century. Though their popularity suggests that these portraits somehow spoke to Americans, an important question remains: exactly what did they say?

How can we know what an individual print communicated to its audience at the time? With paltry written evidence about reception or audience reaction, can we responsibly use these prints as historic documents? As we review a range of nineteenth-century printed portraiture, let us consider several techniques that will help us sharpen our perceptions of what these images really meant.

The engravings published after Washington’s funeral encompassed various approaches to death, grief, and glorification. Some printmakers delivered recognizable, bust-length portraits of Washington, based on paintings by Gilbert Stuart, Edward Savage, and other artists. Some enhanced the portrait with elements of neoclassical mourning art, including urns, obelisks, willow trees, and weeping Indians or female goddesses representing Columbia. Others heroicized the portrait with symbolic attributes such as eagles, seals, liberty caps, laurel wreaths, and allegorical figures of fame. A few popular examples granted Washington full-scale apotheosis with classical, religious, or Masonic imagery (fig. 1). Russian visitor Paul Svinin, traveling in America from 1811 to 1813, commented that “every American considers it his sacred duty to have a likeness of Washington in his home, just as we have images of God’s saints.”

No other figure, even Benjamin Franklin, had occasioned this much pictorial output from the American press. Through the rest of the nineteenth century, artists, audiences, and public figures all assumed that relatively inexpensive and easily reproduced portraiture was a necessary fact of American life. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison complained in 1833 that “this sticking up of one’s face in print-shops, to be the ‘observed of all observers,’ is hardly consistent with genuine modesty.” Nonetheless, he sat for his portrait, so that it could be engraved.

So how do we interpret such pictures? It is crucial to start by understanding the physical object and its medium, questioning how, why, and by whom it is made and disseminated. Even the length of time it took to produce an image can change its significance. Political elections, for instance, always provided an opportunity for print sellers. But because the engraving process was slow, printed pictures rarely had any real impact on electioneering, at least until later in the century when new technologies sped the reproduction process. Neither of the rival publishers who announced ambitious full-length engravings of Thomas Jefferson during the 1800 presidential campaign had them ready until months after the inauguration. But even if they were not utilized as campaign material, these portraits still had a political element. We know from newspaper advertisements, for example, that Philadelphia publisher George Hembold Jr. sold his image of Jefferson, engraved by David Edwin, in sixteen other cities as well; often his agents were the publishers of partisan Republican newspapers that had supported Jefferson all along (fig. 2).

Understanding the conventions of the genre is also important. Political portraits heroicized their subjects, often utilizing a traditional “grand manner” pose in front of a background column and drapery. The books, documents, writing implements, and elegant table and chair in the Jefferson engraving were also features of Gilbert Stuart’s famous “Lansdowne” portrait of George Washington, well known through printed copies. Although Jefferson’s head was copied from a painting by Rembrandt Peale, other details of the print were conventions, not artistic choices inspired by the man. Such images must be approached, therefore, with a degree of skepticism about the accuracy of details. A print of Abraham Lincoln by John Sartain, to pick an egregious example, was actually printed from a plate depicting Martin Van Buren, originally engraved about twenty-five years previously (fig. 3). By changing the head, the coat, and the background building, the publisher could quickly produce a dignified presidential image with all the expected components of high office.

In order to understand the genre, it is helpful to consider prints in the aggregate. If we question poses and interior details or wonder what emblematic, allegorical, or thematic iconography really meant to its audience, looking at a whole body of contemporary imagery and seeing how such elements are applied and repeated can help us deduce meaning. That is, when considered collectively rather than individually, prints may actually reveal more of a message.

Any print published in a book or in a series garners significance from the presence of other images or texts and should not be read alone. A relatively modest bust-length engraving of Daniel Webster by James Barton Longacre, for example, represents more than just a small, rather formulaic likeness of a prominent statesman. It was published in Longacre’s and James Herring’s ambitious, multivolume work, The National Portrait Gallery. The early nineteenth century was a golden age of collected, illustrated biographies, whose publishers risked financial ruin to assemble or commission accurate paintings, engravings, and biographical manuscripts. Within this context, the modest Webster print is part of an American pantheon, a collective grouping of statesmen and heroes that satisfied nationalistic impulses by revealing a narrative of American greatness.

In the late 1820s, the advent of lithography—the technique of drawing directly on a heavy stone, which could then be inked and printed—transformed the commercial world of printed portraiture. More than ever before, the public could demand an inexpensive, immediately available image of a newly famous minister, spokesman, singer, dancer, hero, or martyr. Lithography’s tonal qualities were especially appropriate for delineating features, and it could provide an infinite number of copies. Portraits were a staple of every lithography firm. Sometimes lithographic portraits were commissioned by painters or photographers wishing to reproduce their own work. More often they were commercial ventures on the part of publishers or lithography companies and produced in large quantities for public sale. The copyright line on the bottom of most of these prints is a useful source of information, indicating who took financial responsibility for their publication.

Pondering what a piece says biographically about its subject at the precise moment it was published is always a useful exercise. Since printmaking, for much of the century, was a commercial enterprise as much as an artistic one, the purpose of the print was often related to an event that would attract buyers. Was the subject newly deceased? retiring from the ministry? running for office? performing at a local venue? Biographical understanding also explains unusual details. The Frank Johnson of Alfred Hoffy’s compelling lithograph turns out to be a renowned Philadelphia band leader, acknowledged as the most accomplished bugle player in America (fig. 4). Johnson’s all-black band was a sensational success and, while on tour in England, was even awarded a silver bugle by an admiring Queen Victoria. But Johnson was also a composer, and the music manuscripts and inkstand on the table imply his contribution not just as performer but as a creator of the popular music of his day.

Biographical research on the makers of the picture can be equally revealing. Nineteenth-century portrait prints were typically copied from paintings, daguerreotypes, or photographs. If a painter’s name is included in the inscription, it is worth pursuing publications on the artist who painted the “source” portrait. Monographs or collection catalogues often provide detailed information about the original painting upon which the print is based. In the case of Frank Johnson, the inscription tells us the lithograph was based on a daguerreotype by R. Douglass Jr. and was “[p]ublished at the Arch Street Gallery of the Daguerreotype Philadelphia.” In the literature on photography, one discovers that Douglass was also African American. The inscription implies that he commissioned the lithograph as a way to advertise his skills in the daguerreian business. The print thus becomes a rich testament to the creative roles of free, black professionals in Philadelphia in the 1840s.

Since the prints were so often copied from other sources, reading psychological attitudes into images that were not made “from life” can be dangerous. First of all, a certain formality in posing and expression was the norm, so nineteenth-century audiences were not accustomed to extrapolating much emotional information even from the original painting or photograph. In addition, since the printmaker often had not met or seen the subject, his copy almost inevitably diminished the subtle understanding between sitter and portraitist. Starting in the 1850s, newspapers began to illustrate the news with wood engravings—relief blocks, which could be quickly produced and printed along with the text. Through such images, newspapers brought the public pictorial news of the Civil War’s recent battles as well as its emerging heroes and martyrs. But the viewer of a Harper’s Weekly picture of Robert E. Lee was one step removed from the perspective of the original photographers, Minnis and Cowell (fig. 5). The wood-engraved copy of that picture could convey a good deal of information, but subtle nuances were inevitably lost. Sometimes, for a large wood engraving, the block was even broken apart and cut by a team of wood engravers to shorten the production time. Another newspaper might copy the same photographic portrait and to our eyes it may seem gentler, less stiff, or more aggressive. But such emotional subtleties were not intended, and one should be wary of drawing from them much meaning.

The speed of production for both wood engraving and lithography increased the importance of prints in the political process. In 1849, a Hartford newspaper reported that the Kellogg Company lithography presses “run off daily from 3000 to 4000 copies of various popular prints . . . More than 100,000 copies have been sold from a single design.” Given such quantities, promotional portraits may well have come to influence the electorate.

The single sheet lithographic cartoon, however, also became an expected element of political discourse and electioneering. By midcentury, some of these satiric broadsheets were printed in quantities from fifty to one hundred thousand and distributed to party headquarters or sold from newspaper offices. The prolific Currier and Ives Lithography company issued numerous cartoons in the election of 1860, for instance, targeting all factions. Instead of the caricatural distortion of features typical of later satiric portraits, these images featured easily recognizable, photographically derived faces. “Progressive Democracy,” for instance, features the dilemma of a bitterly divided Democratic Party (fig. 6). Stephen Douglas and running mate Hershel V. Johnson pull the “platform” one way while southerners John C. Breckinridge and Joseph Lane, driven by James Buchanan, strain in the other direction; Republican candidates Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin gleefully anticipate the “prospect of smash up.” Widely available photographic and printed sources made each face immediately recognizable. The wood-engraved newspaper cartoons by Thomas Nast provided another form of visual campaigning: his iconic donkey and elephant symbols for the Democratic and Republican parties were as important as his satiric caricatures.

Sometimes portraiture appeared in guises unfamiliar to modern sensibilities. The allegorical, memorial, and apotheosis prints of the early part of the century gave way to deathbed scenes for prominent individuals. Clustered around the bed of a public figure would be grieving widows and children but also cabinet members or other notables. Inevitably such scenes as Nathaniel Currier’s Death of [William Henry] Harrison bore no resemblance to the actual circumstances of the final hours but reflected instead a public acknowledgement of death and grief that related to mourning clothes, black bunting, and other funereal customs of the day (fig. 7). Understanding those customs helps us to see that the death of a prominent individual was often considered a public act. George Washington’s stoicism, for instance, in the painful waning hours of his life was widely reported and remarked upon in orations and eulogies.

The family portrait of a public figure is another category of portrayal that seems unusual to us today. With the exception of Edward Savage’s painting and engraving of the Washington family (1798), the genre seems to have started with the death of Abraham Lincoln. William Sartain’s engraving of Lincoln’s family provided the prototype for these images. Including a bust of Washington and a portrait of the deceased child Willie, it appeared in 1866 after Lincoln’s own death and spawned many copies. Such prints don’t tell an accurate story of the Lincolns’ domestic life before he died; many of them resurrect Willie and most include the older son Robert who at that point was rarely home. But images of public men within their family circle reinforced that division in the Victorian mind between male and female spheres of influence. Military figures such as George B. McClellan, Stonewall Jackson, and Ulysses S. Grant were all depicted with their families (fig. 8). The man’s return to the feminine sphere of the parlor—filled with pictures, sculpture, books, furnishings, and children—recharged him with moral rectitude and emotional sympathy. Every president from Lincoln through William McKinley was depicted in a “first family” domestic picture until printmakers finally gave up with Teddy Roosevelt, whose sprawling White House entourage of children, pets, and a glamorous debutante daughter required more regular updating in the rotogravure sections of the newspapers.

Just as topical—and saleable—as images of presidents and generals were the portraits of theatrical figures. While lithographic music sheets of the early nineteenth century sometimes featured military heroes to whom the “grand march” could be dedicated, they most frequently depicted famous composers or touring actors, dancers, and singers. The importance of the piano as a social nexus in every well-appointed parlor adds to the significance of these often modest pictorial embellishments for the latest popular song sheet. Romantic tunes, stirring lyrics, and the frequent repetition of performance added to the appreciation of the subject, more than compensating for the artistic deficiencies of such boneless, weightless figures as singer Jenny Lind in the J. H. Bufford Company’s portrayal (fig. 9).

Theatrical portraits in differing mediums and varying quality were produced throughout the century. The strikingly photographic quality of the lithograph of actress Malvina Florence in her role as Peg Ann Higgenfluter in The Yankee Gal suggests that it might have been copied from a daguerreotype (fig. 10). The specificity of her features and expression, the extraordinary detail of the costume, and the clarity of the atmosphere all imply a daguerreian source. The lithographers of the time were proud of their ability to replicate the daguerreotype’s minute detail and startling, lifelike qualities; they strove for the same precision. Unlike other genres of printed portraiture, one can assume accuracy in these extraordinary prints after daguerreotypes. Malvina Florence may not have actually said, “How de dew Fellar,” to the photographer, as the inscription implies, but this is undoubtedly how she presented herself in character to his camera.

Eventually theatrical portraiture came in the form of posters. Are they reliable historical documents? Do the inevitable exaggerations of their advertising mission disqualify them as historical documents, or can we learn history lessons from their loud ballyhoo?

Consider a large wood-engraved poster of Thomas Edison, which on the surface doesn’t seem to have anything to do with theatrical traditions (fig. 11). In 1878, when Edison came to Washington to demonstrate his newly patented phonograph for the president, the Academy of Sciences, and Congress, he had his picture taken with his new invention. The same year, Edison had five hundred of his “talking machines” manufactured for exhibition around the country under the auspices of a lyceum, an organization that booked edifying and uplifting programs. This piece is, in essence, a show poster advertising the demonstrations of Edison’s machine. The blank space left purposefully at the top provided local promoters the opportunity to fill in the particulars of time and place. Edison did not accompany his machines on the circuit, but he appears prominently in this nearly seven-foot-tall poster. At the bottom, circus poster rhetoric informs the viewer about this extraordinary machine: “It Talks! It Sings! It Laughs! IT PLAYS CORNET SONGS.” This image and the man it represents would have been seen within the context of both the lyceum and the circus: a conflation of notions about education, entertainment, and pride in American invention. The poster reminds us that Edison, far from being that lone genius of American fantasy, was very much a public figure.

Posters were insistent, unsolicited visual statements, meant to be seen, as print historian A. Hyatt Mayor has suggested, “by people who did not mean to see them.” In order to capture attention, they were necessarily simple, graphically bold, and often large. Late nineteenth-century theatrical posters were more typically printed as brightly colored chromolithographs. In one sense the portrait is secondary in these images: the poster’s primary purpose is to advertise the arrival of the circus, the opening of the play, or the publication of a magazine. But because of their effective and dramatic combination of words and images, they communicate powerful messages about the subjects portrayed. The face in the Strobridge Company’s poster of singer Lillian Russell could advertise any of the sweet and youthful heroines of her many light opera roles (fig. 12). But the elaborate frame and the subtle color stippling of the background suggest the influence of the artistic poster craze on the large commercial printing firms. Strobridge’s unidentified artist posed Russell’s face against a marbleized wallpaper design and constructed an elegant frame, inspired by contemporary stained glass and ornamented with bamboo. The aestheticizing approach added more luster to this perennially popular performer whose beauty and flair for publicity had as much to do with her success as did her voice and her acting ability.

With the etching revival of the last two decades of the nineteenth century, prints became works of art, prized for beauty, rarity, and originality. But portraiture was never a major component of the etching revival. In this medium, prints simply could not compete with photography when it came to replicating the face.

In the end, printed portraits from the nineteenth century can be considered in commercial terms: pictures produced in quantity for a broad range of consumers. These portraits emphasized the public image rather than subtler, less well-known personality traits. They established or solidified fame, focusing consumers’ attention on the most commonly known and popular characteristics of famous Americans. By learning to read and understand these pictures, we can gain considerable insight into historical figures and how they were perceived in their own day.

Further Reading:

For several articles on these prints, see Wendy Wick Reaves, ed., American Portrait Prints (Charlottesville, 1984). Constance Harris, in Portraiture in Prints (Jefferson, N.C., 1987), covers a broad history of printed portraits in Europe and America from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. Joshua Brown, in Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America (Los Angeles, 2002), discusses nineteenth-century illustrated journalism. Bernard Reilly, in American Political Prints, 1766-1876 (Boston, 1991), surveys political prints and cartoons while Nobel Cunningham, in Popular Images of the Presidency (Columbia, Mo., 1991) focuses on the presidency from Washington to Lincoln. For other specialized studies, see Harold Holzer, Gabor Borritt, and Mark Neely, The Lincoln Image (New York, 1984); Wendy Wick, George Washington, An American Icon (Charlottesville, 1982); and Wendy Wick Reaves and Sally Pierce, “Translations from the Plate: the Marketplace of Public Portraiture,” in Young America: the Daugerreotypes of Southworth and Hawes (New York, 2005).

This article originally appeared in issue 7.3 (April, 2007).

Wendy Wick Reaves is the curator of prints and drawings at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery where she has focused her exhibitions, publications, and collecting activities on American visual culture and the relationship between portraiture and fame. Her most recent books are Celebrity Caricature in America (New Haven, 1998) and Eye Contact: Modern American Portrait Drawings (Washington, D.C., 2002).

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least, a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance.

–Abraham Lincoln, 1832 

The goal of teaching history is to develop and nurture our students’ ability to interpret history for themselves. In my senior year of college at the State University at Stony Brook, Professor John Pratt enlightened me about the richness of learning exclusively by examining primary sources in “Lincoln’s Statesmanship,” a course devoted to the writings of Abraham Lincoln.

As an ambitious new teacher a little more than a decade ago, I set out to design a unit for my eighth-grade American history class modeled after my favorite college course. When I threw out my enthusiastic proposal, “Today you are all going to become historians,” my proclamation was met with an unanticipated groan. As I soon learned, the prospect of learning as a historian is not as exciting to a thirteen-year-old as it is to a college history major. Looking back, it is easy to see where I went wrong, and how my students’ criticism improved my teaching. 

I decided to introduce my Lincoln’s Statesmanship thread during our study of the causes of the Civil War. The students were already familiar with some Lincoln rhetoric; we touched briefly on his “House Divided” speech and the Lincoln-Douglas debates. I compiled a worksheet packet containing excerpts of what I believe are defining speeches: Address before the Springfield Young Men’s Lyceum (1838), Address before the Springfield Temperance Society (1842), Accepting the Republican Senatorial Nomination (“House Divided,” 1858), Address at the Cooper Union (1860), the Gettysburg Address (1863), the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), and the Second Inaugural Address (1865). I placed the students in groups of four, each armed with a dictionary, fully expecting that cooperatively they would be able to digest the speech, dissect it, and draw parallels among them that revealed Lincoln the developing statesman. (Samples from the original Lincoln’s Statesmanship Lesson Plan packet are linked here).

After some toiling, the students voiced their opinion of the assignment, “This is too hard,” “Is this Old English because I don’t understand it at all?” and, of course, “I just don’t get it!” Frazzled, I ran from group to group trying to help, but realized that I was really just telling them the answers. That evening, reflecting on the failure of my lesson, I tried to think of what my professor did that made my learning experience so different. 

Recalling the early days of the course, I remembered that Professor Pratt guided us through the speeches, engaging us in discussions of Lincoln’s motives and recurring themes. We were assigned a passage to read before the next session. Although I had prepared for class by pouring over the assigned passage on my own, underlining and defining every word, I ultimately left each class with a much greater understanding of the work. Cooperatively, we went through each piece, line by line. Professor Pratt would ask for our interpretation, and spark the dialogue by posing questions and offering suggestions of his own theories. Looking back, Professor Pratt’s questions always connected to the theme of the course: Lincoln’s statesmanship. Although we did a fairly competent job interpreting the speech, Professor Pratt’s inquiries would help us orient to the “big picture,” namely Lincoln’s goals and a vision of the future for himself and the nation. 

Keeping this in mind, and still determined not to give up on my idea, I reworked a part of the lesson and presented it a few weeks later: an examination of the Gettysburg Address using more of a mastery learning approach, modeling the desired skills and then progressing to student demonstrations of this new knowledge. I began by presenting the students with the Gettysburg Address, which we collaboratively dissected line by line. I encouraged them to mark up their copies, underlining and obtaining a definition for every word they did not know. 

To motivate the group, I began with a simple math problem:

A score = 20 years
Four score = 4 x 20 = 80
80 + 7 = 87
Four score and seven years ago = 87 years ago
1863 – 87 = 1776

The math revealed to them that the Gettysburg Address could have just as easily started with “In 1776” rather than “Four score and seven years ago.” The students had no idea that “Four score and seven years ago” meant anything, even though about a quarter of them knew the address by heart from memorizing it in fifth grade. A light went on that day. “Oh my God,” they chuckled, “If he meant in 1776, why didn’t he just say that?” O.K., I thought, a teachable moment here. “Why do you think he chose to say ‘Four score’ instead?” They thought, and agreed that Lincoln’s words sound much more official and important even though they were sure a lot of people did not “get it” the way that they do now. The math problem proved to be the key. It demonstrated that there was something to be unlocked in these words and we carried on. Collectively, we went through each passage, putting Lincoln’s words into our own and by the end, they really understood the meaning of the address. 

After finishing the speech, I sent them to their groups to rewrite the speeches in their own words. When they were finished, one student from each group came up to share their version of the Gettysburg Address. Here is a sample:

In 1776 very important men made this country and put “all men are created equal” in their directions for how we should run this country. Now in 1863, we are fighting over it. We are gathered here today to dedicate this graveyard for all the people who died at Gettysburg because they believed that slaves should be free. This ground is special because of all the people who fought here. It is important not to forget that all these people died here and that we have to finish what they started. We have to fight harder than ever because they gave their lives for it. When we are finished, and the war is over, they will have died for a good reason because our country will be truly free and our government will be the way it was always supposed to be.

Completing the Gettysburg Address provided a springboard for studying the speeches I presented to them earlier. When we reviewed my earlier assignment together, the answers seemed much plainer to them once they understood the deeper meaning of many of Lincoln’s addresses. They had a much better understanding about the Civil War at this point. Assuredly, that was another component they were missing that I had in my college course: a prior understanding of the time period. In successive years, I have introduced my Lincoln’s Statesmanship theme later in the course and have found the results much more satisfying. 

When introducing new documents, I try to follow this example and make it a mystery to uncover and unlock. For some, it is truly enlightening to see the growth of Lincoln as a leader who was a savvy politician, carefully tailoring his speeches to capture his audience and further his political aspirations. At the very least, rather than refer to Lincoln’s words as “Old English,” my middle schoolers have an understanding of epic language and why someone would wish to use it. 

Lincoln’s Statesmanship Lesson Plan

Name

Social Studies 8 

“The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions”

–Address before the Springfield Young Men’s Lyceum, 1838

“It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And when they do, they will naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others?”

1. What is Lincoln predicting about the future of democracy?

“They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbed away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason.”

2. Do you think Lincoln sees himself as one of those “other pillars”? Who are the pillars?

“When There Shall Be Neither a Slave Nor a Drunkard”

–Address before the Springfield Temperance Society, 1842

“And when the victory shall be complete–when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth–how proud the title of that Land, which may truly claim to be their birth-place and the cradle of both those revolutions, that shall have ended in that victory. How nobly distinguished that People shall have planted, and nurtured to maturity, both the political and moral freedom of their species.”

3. What issue does Lincoln bring into the Temperance debate?

4. What do we learn about Lincoln’s vision for the future of this nation?

–“A House Divided Against Itself”

Speech Accepting the Republican Senatorial Nomination, 1858

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”

5. What is the “house” Lincoln is referring to?

“Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by its own undoubted friends–those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work–who do care for the result . . . Wise councils may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later the victory is sure to come.”

6. What political party does Lincoln believe must the work be entrusted to?

7. What is the “cause”?

This article originally appeared in issue 5.1 (October, 2004).

Tracey Melandro taught seventh- and eighth-grade social studies for twelve years at East Northport Middle School in Long Island, New York. She now teaches early American history at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood, Long Island.

When British troops invaded the city of Washington on August 24, 1814, their orders were to capture the city, and “complete the destruction of the public buildings with the least possible delay.” In perhaps the most memorable event of the War of 1812, they set ablaze the interior of the United States Capitol, the president’s house, and the public offices, in retaliation for the looting and burning of the capital city of York in Upper Canada (present-day Toronto) by American troops the previous year.

At the Capitol building, the British forces used the books from the 3,000-volume congressional library to kindle the fire that reduced the north wing to charred timbers (fig. 1). Lovers of literature and learning, even the British press, denounced the destruction of the library. The editor of a Nottingham newspaper called it “an act without example in modern wars or in any other war since the inroads of the barbarians who conflagrated Rome and overthrew the Roman Empire.” British Major-General Robert Ross, who ordered the burning of public buildings, was reported to have said, “Had I known in time, the books most certainly should have been saved.”

Retired president Thomas Jefferson got wind of the burning of Washington from Monticello, his residence in the Virginia Piedmont, sometime around August 28, 1814, most likely via reports published in the Richmond Enquirer newspaper. Four weeks later, the deeply indebted Jefferson offered to sell his library to Congress to replace the one that was destroyed. What was the motivation behind this move? Jefferson biographers and historians have typically portrayed his offer and later the sale as purely opportunistic, and have characterized his motive in primarily financial terms. Even Jefferson descendant Sarah N. Randolph asserted in her 1871 biography, The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson, that it was her great-grandfather’s financial situation that led to the sale of his library. Writing about Jefferson’s pecuniary pressures, which grew more urgent with the war, she stated, “There was then nothing to be made from farming; but while his income was thus cut short, his company and his debts continued to increase. In this emergency something had to be done; and the only thing which offered itself involved a sacrifice which none but his own family, who witnessed the struggle it cost him, could ever fully appreciate.”

While Jefferson certainly benefited from and used the proceeds from the sale of his library to settle some of his debts, might his motives have been more multifaceted than previously understood? This article examines this question against the backdrop of the partisan politics surrounding the 1815 sale, while shedding light on the lesser-known and elaborate preparations Jefferson undertook to ensure that his prized collection would be installed in the nation’s capital “very perfectly in the order” he had envisaged.

On September 15, a week before Jefferson offered his library for sale, he received a letter sent from Philadelphia by Boston publisher Thomas B. Wait & Sons. They were in the midst of publishing a collection of State Papers and Publick Documents of the United States, for the use of Congress and the general public, to fill a need they perceived had been amplified by the war with Great Britain and tangled relations with other European powers. Their efforts were now in jeopardy because of the destruction of the documents they needed for the publication that had been housed in the congressional library in Washington. They turned to Jefferson as a last resort and wrote, “In our dilemma, the idea occurred, that you sir, would more probably have in your possession a complete series of Amer. State Papers, than any man in the country; and the remarks of many of our friends strengthened us in the hope that the desired papers might be found in your hands.” This request likely served to underline for Jefferson Congress’s dire need for a reference library in order to function effectively. Might this realization have played a part in, and even been the impetus for, Jefferson’s move a week later to offer his personal library to the nation? Jefferson had a close personal connection to the congressional library. During his tenure as president of the United States from 1801 to 1809, Jefferson had maintained a keen interest in the library and its development. Most notably, in 1802, he drew up a list of recommended books for Congress, which helped shape the library’s acquisitions at least until 1806. He was keenly aware of the resources the legislative body needed. Congress was now without a library, and Jefferson was uniquely positioned to fill this need.

On September 21, 1814, Thomas Jefferson wrote to his longtime friend in Washington and federal commissioner of the revenue, Samuel Harrison Smith. He expressed his indignation at the “vandalism of our enemy,” declaring the British acts of aggression and barbarism as tyranny of the strong over the weak and unbecoming of a European power in a civilized age. He then offered to sell his personal library to Congress as a replacement. “I have been 50. years making it, & have spared no pains, opportunity or expence to make it what it is,” wrote Jefferson of his collection that had “no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer.”

Jefferson offered to sell his library at whatever valuation and payment terms Congress should decide upon, on the condition that it be purchased in its entirety or not at all. Jefferson believed that no other collection of its kind existed in terms of its comprehensiveness and depth, which made it ideal to meet the immediate reference needs of the members of Congress. He wrote, “While residing in Paris I devoted every afternoon I was disengaged, for a summer or two, in examining all the principal bookstores, turning over every book with my own hands, and putting by every thing which related to America, and indeed whatever was rare & valuable in every science. besides this, I had standing orders, during the whole time I was in Europe, in it’s principal book-marts, particularly Amsterdam, Frankfort, Madrid and London, for such works relating to America as could be found in Paris. so that, in that department, particularly, such a collection was made as probably can never again be effected; because it is hardly probable that the same opportunities, the same time, industry, perseverance, and expence, with some knolege of the bibliography of the subject will again happen to be in concurrence.” He continued, “after my return to America, I was led to procure also whatever related to the duties of those in the high concerns of the nation … in the diplomatic and Parliamentary branches, it is particularly full.”

Having detailed the efforts he took to acquire such a useful collection for matters of state, Jefferson noted that he had long been thinking of Congress as the site of its ultimate disposition. “It is long since I have been sensible it ought not to continue private property, and had provided that, at my death, Congress should have the refusal of it, at their own price.” Now with Congress’s devastating loss, he felt that the present was the proper time to offer to place the library at their service, even if that meant the seventy-one-year-old Jefferson would give up its use for the remainder of his life.

In separate correspondence describing this offer to President James Madison and also Secretary of State and later Secretary of War, James Monroe, Jefferson reiterated his willingness to accept any valuation determined by persons appointed by Congress and any other terms decided by them. On the subject of purchase price, Jefferson balked at assigning a value to his library, on the grounds that he was not sufficiently familiar with current prices, and that he was not willing to trust himself in a case where “motives of interest” might subject him to bias, or the suspicion of it. His hope was that Congress would appoint an agent, someone knowledgeable like a bookseller, to arrive at an independent volume count and a maximum ceiling price for the entire collection. Congress could then decide to approve or reduce the proposed price. He wrote, “In all this I wish myself to be entirely passive, and to abide absolutely by the estimate thus formed.” To Monroe, he stated his readiness to accept payment even after the war, “at such epoch as they may chuse after the days of peace & prosperity shall have returned.”

If Jefferson’s chief goal in offering his library to Congress was to raise funds to help pay his personal debts and alleviate his financial woes, two questions arise. How would attempting to sell his library to a wartime government under financial duress and intense public scrutiny, at a price it alone set, achieve this end? The Madison administration faced a banking crisis, widespread economic uncertainty and enormous pressure to raise taxes. Furthermore, if Jefferson was selling his prized collection expressly to pay off pressing debts, how would accepting payment at some indeterminate date in the future, also of Congress’s own choosing, accomplish this goal? If debt relief was indeed Jefferson’s primary motive, one might have expected him to try, at least subtly, to maximize his proceeds from the sale. Yet, there is a glaring absence in surviving correspondence of any attempt by Jefferson to allude to a preferred purchase price or valuation. Nor did he place any emphasis on the most valuable and rare items in the collection. For example, an edition of Richard Hakluyt’s The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation was selling for the equivalent of nearly $140 on the London book market, fourteen times more than the $10 Jefferson eventually received for his 1589 folio edition. Similarly, Mark Catesby’s The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands was selling for more than $115, over five times the $20 he received for his two-volume folio set published in 1771. Instead, he encouraged Smith to come up with a figure he himself deemed reasonable for the entire collection, and suggested that he do so by applying an average price for each volume based upon size. “Whatever sum you should name shall be binding on me as a maximum,” he wrote Smith.

Jefferson’s emphasis on Congress’s acquiring his library in its entirety or not at all suggests the operation of a motive even more important than financial gain: Jefferson saw his carefully curated assemblage of literary treasures, many irreplaceable, as a reflection of who he was, the values he believed in, and how he wanted to be regarded by his fellow countrymen and by posterity—as the champion of a nation of enlightened and free men (fig. 2). The library was to be kept intact. He would not suffer it to be broken up or sold piecemeal. Parting with the collection he had painstakingly assembled over five decades was no small decision for Jefferson. Sarah N. Randolph described his library as “the books which in every change in the tide of his eventful life had ever remained to him as old friends with unchanged faces, and whose silent companionship had afforded him—next to the love of his friends—the sweetest and purest joys of life.” Yet parting with the library at this time was warranted because Jefferson strongly felt that in order for Congress to govern effectively, it needed access to a working library of books and documents relating to all aspects of human knowledge.

It would, of course, overstate the case to say that Jefferson’s sale of his library to Congress was a completely altruistic gesture. He could, one might argue, simply have donated the library to Congress, which we have no evidence that he considered doing. The reality was that Jefferson was deeply in debt and had built up his library at considerable personal expense. Even if he had wanted to, he could not at this time have afforded to give the library away. There is evidence that years earlier, Jefferson had considered donating his scientific books through his will to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, of which he was president. That consideration was now subsumed in the greater mission of leaving his library intact as a personal and republican legacy of greater usefulness to Congress while addressing pressing financial exigencies.

Jefferson may also have come to believe that selling the library to Congress at a fair price was a demonstration of the superiority of private property rights over collective ownership, a core idea of the Scottish Enlightenment and influential thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Smith, promoted by George Washington, Madison, and Jefferson himself. “The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person, & property, & in their management,” Jefferson wrote. By offering to sell, rather than donate, his library, he was acting in accordance with his republican ideals, and exercising his ownership rights by having Congress provide adequate compensation to him for ceding his library to it.

The politics of purchasing the ex-president’s books

Samuel Harrison Smith, who had expressed optimism early on about Congress’s approval of the library acquisition, underestimated partisan reactions to the offer. He forwarded Jefferson’s offer on October 3 to Senator Robert H. Goldsborough, the chairman of the congressional Joint Library Committee, who introduced a resolution four days later authorizing the committee to enter into negotiations with Jefferson for the purchase of his library. The resolution passed in the Democratic-Republican-dominated Senate without any debate on October 10. However, on October 19 the House of Representatives followed suit adding an amendment that Congress retain the right to accept or reject the final contract. This came after failed attempts by opponents of the proposal to exclude certain books and to impose a price ceiling. Voting in the House, which was two-thirds Democratic-Republican, was largely along partisan lines.

The Library Committee met with Smith on October 21, and decided that they would submit for congressional approval whatever valuation Smith proposed to be a fair sum. Smith sought Jefferson’s input, but the latter refused to stipulate a price, reiterating his desire that Congress appoint an independent party to arrive at a valuation. To assist Smith, Jefferson requested his Georgetown bookseller and bookbinder, Joseph Milligan, who was familiar with Jefferson’s library and its condition, to obtain a count of the volumes on each page of the library catalogue Jefferson kept, arrive at an average price for each volume, and report them to Smith. Milligan was a trusted associate of Jefferson’s, and an individual known to Smith. The final count presented to the Library Committee was 6,487 volumes valued at $23,950, based on Milligan’s formula of $10 for a folio, $6 for a quarto, $3 for an octavo, and $1 per duodecimo. Jefferson did not contest or attempt to raise the prices fixed by Milligan. Nor did he express any dismay or dissatisfaction at Milligan’s valuation, despite the final estimate amounting to only a fraction of what he had spent in total on individual volumes. He wrote to Milligan, “I am contented … with your estimate of price, if the committee should be so, or that they should send on valuers, fixing on your estimate.” In fact, Jefferson sold his library at a significant loss. Superintendent of the Patent Office William Thornton had advised members of Congress to offer $50,000, “for I have seen the Books, & knew them to be very valuable: that they ought not therefore to value them as Books in a common Library; for beside the learning & ability it would require to select the Books, they were not to be obtained but at very great trouble, great expense, great risk, & many of them not to be had at all.”

The Library Bill to purchase Jefferson’s library had its supporters and its detractors on both sides of the political aisle. Senator Goldsborough presented it to the Senate on November 28, which passed without amendment on December 3. After some delay, it finally passed the House of Representatives on January 26, but barely, with 47 percent of the House opposing the sale. Federalists in the House attempted to derail the bill. Motions to postpone the vote failed by a handful of votes. The proposal by Cyrus King, the representative from Massachusetts, that the Library Committee be authorized to sell the portion of the books that were, in their opinion, not useful or necessary for Congress, also failed. King, who had been reported by the National Intelligencer as being opposed to the general dissemination of Jefferson’s “infidel philosophy,” charged that Jefferson’s library “contained irreligious and immoral books, works of the French philosophers, who caused and influenced the volcano of the French Revolution.” He characterized the collection as “good, bad, and indifferent, old, new, and worthless, in languages which many can not read, and most ought not.” Echoing Federalist accusations that American imperialism and expansionism into British Canada were behind the Madison administration’s reasons for going to war, he charged that the transaction was a scheme in “true Jeffersonian, Madisonian philosophy, to bankrupt the Treasury, beggar the people, and disgrace the nation.”

Members of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia—who had at one time expected to inherit Jefferson’s scientific books—also expressed regret on hearing the news of the sale of Jefferson’s library to Congress. Jonathan Williams, representing the disappointed members and friends of Jefferson, wrote, “It can hardly be supposed, that in this Room surrounded by a Library consisting almost wholly of donations, with your almost animated Bust looking full in our faces, we could avoid expressing our regret that the rich collection of so many years of scientific research should be devoted to a political Body, where it cannot produce any benefit to them or to the World … Books as would adorn our Library and aid this Society in ‘the promotion of useful knowledge’ must there become motheaten upon the Shelves.” As far as we know, Jefferson, who had served as president of the society since 1797, did not respond directly to Williams’ letter. Instead, perhaps to avoid conflict (which would be characteristic of Jefferson), he wrote to the secretary, Robert Patterson, a week later to tender his resignation from the presidency. He argued that his longtime inability to travel to preside over the society’s meetings in Philadelphia was reason enough for him to vacate the position in favor of a successor, now that elections for office holders were imminent. He wrote, “Nothing is more incumbent on the old than to know when they should get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honors they can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform.” The society reluctantly accepted his resignation.

Moving the library to Congress

On January 30, 1815, Madison signed into law “An Act to authorize the purchase of the library of Thomas Jefferson, late President of the United States.” On February 5, while entertaining George Ticknor and Francis C. Gray, two gentlemen who had traveled from Boston carrying letters of recommendation from John Adams to “see Monticello, its Library and its Sage,” Jefferson received official notice of the purchase. Back in 1812, Adams and Jefferson had reconciled, and since then, they corresponded regularly. On hearing of the impending sale, Adams wrote, “I envy you that immortal honour: but I cannot enter into competition with you for my books are not half the number of yours.” Adams owned over 3,500 volumes, which are today preserved at the Boston Public Library.

Smith wrote to inform Jefferson that the Secretary of the Treasury had been authorized to issue Jefferson with the sale proceeds of $23,950 in the form of Treasury notes bearing an interest rate of 5 and two-thirds percent. Jefferson, however, declined to receive any payment until his library had been delivered to Congress. He went to great lengths to ensure that everything associated with the sale was seen to be transparent and above-board at each stage of the transaction. He wrote to friends to collect the books he had loaned them, and carried out a detailed inventory of the books on his shelves at Monticello. He compiled a detailed tally for each chapter in his catalogue, along with a list of books that were missing from the shelf and another list of added titles that he had inadvertently omitted from his catalogue (fig. 3). The almost 72-year-old Jefferson informed Smith, “I will set about revising and arranging the books. this can be done only by myself … In doing it I must be constantly on my legs, and I must ask indulgence therefore to proceed only as my strength will admit.” Insisting that an agent verify that all was in order, he wrote to Madison, “I should wish a competent agent … with the catalogue in his hand, see that every book is on the shelves, and have their lids nailed on, one by one, as he proceeds … this is necessary for my safety and your satisfaction as a just caution for the public. you know there are persons both in and out of the public councils, who will seize every occasion of imputation on either of us …” He was not going to supply their political enemies with any fodder to accuse the sitting president or himself of wrongdoing.

Following a rigorous review of his library, Jefferson arrived at a physical count of 6,707 volumes, 220 more than Milligan’s original count of 6,487 volumes. Despite missing 83 volumes, this was more than offset by an additional 194 and a half volumes that had been omitted in Milligan’s count. Jefferson arranged for Milligan to procure some of the missing volumes at Jefferson’s own expense. Satisfied that there was no shortfall in the number of volumes due to Congress, Jefferson informed Treasury Secretary Alexander J. Dallas on April 18 that the books were ready for delivery and that he was ready to accept payment for them. Three and a half months would pass before Milligan realized that Jefferson had actually made a computational error in his tally sheet. While unpacking the books in Washington, Milligan discovered that Jefferson had inadvertently counted volumes twice, ending up with 251 more volumes than there actually were. Therefore the number of books delivered was over 6,500 volumes, which still exceeded the contracted figure of 6,487 volumes.

Uppermost in Jefferson’s mind was for Congress to have ready and convenient access to his library. His plan was to leave his books in the pine bookcases they were already housed in, and to simply have boards nailed over the bookcases to cover them. This way, his books could be transported to Washington, set up on end, and together with his catalogue as a guide, be immediately accessible for use by members of Congress. He calculated that his books and bookcases would weigh 27,000 pounds, and fill an estimated eleven wagons. Concerned that his fine bindings not be scuffed and rubbed excessively by the “joultings of the wagons,” Jefferson lobbied Madison to appoint Joseph Milligan to oversee their “careful and skilful packing,” and wagoner Joseph Dougherty, Jefferson’s former coachman during his presidency, to transport the books to Washington. These were the two men he felt would exercise the utmost care in the handling of his prized books. After spending nearly three weeks laboriously ordering his books, he proceeded to label each of them. According to overseer Edmund Bacon, Jefferson had Monticello slave John Hemmings make additional boxes, while his butler Burwell Colbert and Bacon packed the books up. Bacon recalled that James Dinsmore, who worked for Jefferson as a joiner, also helped, while Jefferson’s granddaughters, Ellen, Cornelia, and Virginia Randolph (then aged 18, 15 and 13 respectively) helped sort the books.

Between May 2 and May 8, ten wagons loaded with Jefferson’s books and bookcases set off from Monticello for their 125-mile journey northeast to Washington. As the last wagonload of his books left Monticello, Jefferson remarked with pride to Samuel Harrison Smith, “ … an interesting treasure is added to your city, now become the depository of unquestionably the choicest collection of books in the US, and I hope it will not be without some general effect on the literature of our country.” Two hundred years after the sale, Jefferson’s legacy is still celebrated as the founding collection of the Library of Congress.

The books arrived in Washington six days later. They were set up on the third floor of Blodget’s Hotel at Seventh and E Streets, which served as the temporary Capitol for members of Congress (fig. 4). Due to illness, Milligan did not begin unpacking the library till the second week of July. When he finally completed the task on July 24, he happily reported to an anxious Jefferson a week later that the books had arrived without suffering any damage.

Organizing knowledge, structuring a legacy

In the way Jefferson organized his library and ordered it for use, we see a man who sought to shape his legacy, and who viewed the library he sent to Washington as a statement of the values he had espoused throughout his life as a politician and statesman. In briefing the newly appointed Librarian of Congress, George Watterston, Jefferson described the immense effort he had expended to order and document his collection exactly the way he intended Congress to have it. He stipulated, “You will receive my library arranged very perfectly in the order observed in the Catalogue.” Jefferson organized his library by subject, based upon a scheme he had adapted from Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning and Jean Lerond D’Alembert in the Encyclopédie, as well as chronologically. He divided human knowledge into three major groups, namely history, philosophy, and fine arts, in accordance with Bacon’s “faculties of the human mind,” namely memory, reason, and imagination. These were in turn subdivided into forty-four chapters or subjects. He enjoyed the “peculiar satisfaction” of seeing at a glance all the books he possessed on a particular topic. Books were arranged on the shelf by size, while the arrangement in his manuscript catalogue was “sometimes analytical, sometimes chronological, & sometimes a combination of both.”

Jefferson’s manuscript catalogue was sent to Washington along with the books. It ended up being retained by Watterston as his personal property, and unfortunately is lost. In 1823, Jefferson had his personal secretary and future grandson-in-law, Nicholas Philip Trist, recreate his catalogue. This 1823 catalogue, which survives today at the Library of Congress, is the closest surrogate we have for Jefferson’s original listing of the books he sold to Congress (fig. 5). From Jefferson’s manuscript catalogue, Watterston produced a print catalogue entitled Catalogue of the Library of the United States, which turned out to be a disaster in Jefferson’s eyes. Watterston had taken the liberty of alphabetizing the titles within each chapter, thereby upsetting Jefferson’s carefully ordered entries (fig. 6). His arrangement reflected his understanding and particular method of organizing what enlightened individuals of his time regarded as “useful knowledge.” When Jefferson eventually received copies of Watterston’s print catalogue in late January 1816, he complained to Joseph C. Cabell: “The form of the catalogue has been much injured in the publication: for altho they have preserved my division into chapters, they have reduced the books in each chapter to Alphabetical order, instead of the Chronological or Analytical arrangements I had given them.” An entire month passed before Jefferson wrote to Watterston to acknowledge his receipt of the catalogues. He gave no hint of his displeasure, except to remark in passing, “you ask how I like the arrangement within the chapters? of course, you know, not so well as my own;” and then with a hint of sarcasm added, “yet I think it possible the alphabetical arrangement may be more convenient to readers generally, than mine …”

In December 1818, the Library of Congress moved from Blodget’s Hotel back to the north wing of the Capitol building. Jefferson heard news of the move from Joseph Milligan, who had been engaged in the move. In the attic story on the west side of the north wing, conditions were cramped. Later, in August 1824, the library moved to new, spacious quarters in the central portion of the restored Capitol building designed by Charles Bulfinch. Jefferson continued to take an interest in the Library of Congress after the sale. In early September 1820, he forwarded to Watterston and the congressional library committee a catalogue of books relating to America that he thought might be useful in further expanding their collection. He even took the trouble to mark the books he knew they already had so it would be clear to them which ones they did not yet have.

Congratulating Jefferson after the sale of his library had been finalized, William Short expressed relief that Jefferson’s library was going to stay intact as a collection. He wrote, “It gave me great pleasure to see that your valuable Library was to be secured & forever kept together.” Little would he know that thirty-five years later, on Christmas Eve in 1851, a fire that began in a faulty chimney flue in the Capitol would destroy much of the Library of Congress’s 55,000-volume collection. Two-thirds of Jefferson’s books were lost. Today, Jefferson’s library has been recreated in a permanent exhibit in the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress, consisting of the more than 2,400 surviving original volumes, along with replacement copies.

Money for debts, money for books

Of the sale proceeds of $23,950 he received in the form of treasury notes, Jefferson designated $10,500 to William Short, $4,870 to John Barnes to settle Jefferson’s outstanding debt to General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and the remaining $8,580 to himself. Short had been Jefferson’s private secretary in Paris when Jefferson was minister plenipotentiary and then minister to France from 1784 to 1789. The $10,500 was to pay off three bonds totaling $10,000 and the accumulated interest Jefferson owed Short. In 1798, Kosciuszko had granted Jefferson power of attorney over his American assets. The $4,870 was a loan of $4,500 with interest that Jefferson had loaned himself from the general’s assets to pay off notes he owed to the Bank of the United States in 1809. In settling his obligations, he chose to clear these two outstanding debts and a number of other smaller ones. Yet he did not settle others but chose instead to buy books for his replacement library at Monticello.

Even as he was organizing the transfer to Washington, Jefferson had begun planning a replacement library. In late February 1815, he wrote to the American consul in Paris, David Bailie Warden, “I have now to make up again a collection for my self of such as may amuse my hours of reading.” He wrote to John Vaughan to enquire after depositing funds in London, Liverpool, Paris, and Philadelphia to fund his anticipated book purchases. In June, after his books had left Monticello, Jefferson declared to John Adams, “I cannot live without books; but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.”

In this abbreviated account of the 1815 sale, we see how Jefferson used the library he sold to Congress as a self-fashioning project to shape his legacy and the way he wished to be viewed by posterity. Like the papers and personal correspondence he left behind, Jefferson considered his library—its collection scope, the individual titles and editions, its meticulous organization, and its breadth and depth of “useful knowledge,” as a reflection of what he stood for, a symbol of how he wanted to be perceived by his peers, his political opponents, and the public. In offering the library to the nation at significant financial loss, Jefferson was acting in a manner he perceived as consistent with republican virtue and self-sacrifice. He viewed the transfer of his library as crucial in ensuring the survival of the American experiment and its democratic government, and an important step in building the nation. It was also an opportunity to profoundly shape the country’s intellectual, social, and political future, while shaping his own public legacy.

How, then, do we explain family descendant Sarah N. Randolph’s assertion over fifty years after the sale of the library, in her 1871 biography, that Jefferson sold his library solely out of dire financial necessity? It is useful to realize that Randolph’s statement was part of a consistent narrative, promulgated by Jefferson descendants shortly after Jefferson’s death in 1826, that long years of dedicated public service had essentially impoverished the Founding Father and his family. Randolph’s account of the 1815 sale was effectively a continuation and reflection of this family narrative, one in which losing the library was a pointed symbol of the terrible personal cost of Jefferson’s public service, and more important to highlight than the public legacy he sought to shape while meeting pressing financial needs.

Further Reading

The Jefferson letters cited are published in volumes 7-9 of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series (Princeton, N.J., 2010-2012), and available online via Founders Online. Sarah N. Randolph’s biography of Jefferson is The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1871).

For more on the 1815 sale, see Kevin J. Hayes, The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 2008); Carl Ostrowski, Books, Maps, and Politics: A Cultural History of the Library of Congress, 1783-1861 (Amherst, Mass., 2004); James Conaway, America’s Library: The Story of the Library of Congress, 1800-2000 (New Haven, Conn., 2000); Lucy Salamanca, Fortress of Freedom: The Story of the Library of Congress (Philadelphia, 1942); and William Dawson Johnston, History of the Library of Congress, Volume 1, 1800-1864 (Washington, 1904).

This article originally appeared in issue 16.4 (September, 2016).

Endrina Tay is associate foundation librarian for technical services in the Jefferson Library at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia. She heads the Thomas Jefferson’s Libraries Project, based at Monticello.

Historians have long wondered what prompted President Thomas Jefferson’s cryptic sentence in a note dated January 13, 1807, to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin: “The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I.” Given Jefferson’s opinion explicitly expressed elsewhere that women were best suited to domestic roles, not to boisterous public political forums, and not as actors in the halls and offices of government, scholars of the early republic and popular authors alike, since at least 1920, have tried to reconstruct the specific context in which the president made this comment. For the last twenty years, the consensus explanation has been that Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, unable to find enough qualified men to fill federal government jobs, proposed hiring women for those positions. However, while Jefferson’s statement may reflect his thoughts on women as office holders in general, my recent research in federal records proves that Jefferson wrote the sentence in reaction to Gallatin’s proposal to appoint a specific woman to a specific job.

Previous scholars’ attempts to explain Jefferson’s statement were foiled by the fact that Gallatin’s letter to Jefferson, which provoked the presidential response, has apparently not survived. Arsonists burned the Treasury Department offices on March 31, 1833, incinerating much of the department’s records, including letters to and from the collectors of customs. Despite the Treasury Secretary’s efforts to reconstruct the files with duplicate copies from elsewhere, most correspondence with the Collector of the Port (customs collector) at Wilmington, North Carolina, remains lost—and the Collector of the Port at Wilmington turns out to have been the key correspondent in this issue of appointing a woman to public office.

Clues to solving the mystery lie in the next sentence of Jefferson’s note: “Shall we appoint Springs, or wait the further recommendations spoken of by Bloodworth?” Timothy Bloodworth (1736-1814) was Collector of the Port of Wilmington, appointed by Jefferson in 1802. One of Bloodworth’s collateral duties as collector was to superintend the Cape Fear Lighthouse on Bald Head Island at the entrance to the port of Wilmington. As Superintendent of Lights, he nominated candidates for light-keeper to the Treasury Secretary, Gallatin. Probably due to the fire, documents of Bloodworth’s efforts to find nominees for the light-keeper appointment are largely lost to us, except four pieces of correspondence that escaped the flames and are now in three separate record series at the National Archives.

There was, indeed, a vacancy at the Cape Fear Lighthouse. The Wilmington Gazette of October 21, 1806, reported that five days earlier, a man named Joseph Swain, hunting deer and wild hogs on Bald Head Island, fired at a noise he heard in the bushes—only to find that he had killed his father-in-law, light-keeper Henry Long. This tragedy did not necessarily interrupt the function of the lighthouse, because light-keepers’ wives routinely helped their husbands tend the lights, and would operate them single-handedly in their husbands’ absence. In the intervening months between Henry Long’s death and President Jefferson’s appointment of a replacement keeper, it was most likely Rebecca Long, Henry’s widow, who kept the Bald Head lighthouse lamp clean, trimmed, and lit.

Collector of the Wilmington port, Timothy Bloodworth, wrote a letter (now lost) to Secretary Gallatin, on October 27, 1806. We can guess much of its content from Gallatin’s reply on November 10, preserved among “Lighthouse Letters” at the National Archives:

Your letter of 27th ult^o has been duly received. You are authorized to cause the necessary repairs to be made to the Lantern of the Light House. Whether the President will appoint the widow of the late Keeper of the Cape Fear Light House I have not yet ascertained; but it will be necessary that you should inform me of her christian name; and also transmit the other recommendations with your opinion thereon, in order that he may select the most proper person.

Bloodworth delayed replying to Gallatin until almost two months later, on New Year’s Day 1807. His reply forwarded the only other nomination for the vacancy, Sedgwick Springs, a Revolutionary War veteran and the Long family’s near-neighbor on Bald Head Island:

In answer to your honored favor of the 10^th November last, I have to inform the christian name of the widow of Henry Long late keeper of the Light House is Rebecca. Several others had applied to me for the appointment and I have waited some time to give opportunity to send in Recommendations from those applicants. None have yet been handed in but the one herewith sent and I am fully in the knowledge of the truth of said recommendation[.] Should the widow be thought unfit, I believe him to be the most proper Person that has yet applied for that appointment.

When searching through this correspondence, I did not find the application “herewith sent” with Bloodworth’s letter. I suspected that, separated from the letter, it had perished in the Treasury Department fire. But about a year later, Thomas M. Downey, associate editor of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, sent me a copy of the missing enclosure, found elsewhere in the National Archives by a researcher for the Papers. The document is a recommendation from twelve Wilmington citizens, all men, dated December 1806, addressed to the President of the United States. It reads:

We the subscribers resident Citizens in the District and town of Wilmington being informed that Sedgwick Springs wishes to become a Keeper of the Light House on Bald Head (provided it should be thought the widow of the late Henry Long, inadequate to the safe keeping thereof) beg leave Hereby to Recommend the said Sedgwick Springs as a fit and proper Person to take charge and keep up the said Light—He being an old Inhabitant of the town of Wilmington a Sober Industrious Citizen having been employed for these eight Years last past and now is an Inspector of the Revenue in which Office he has ever behaved himself as a dilligent and Carefull Officer and to our knowledge conducted himself as a truly honest man in all his dealings—With great Respect We are Sir Your most Obedient Servants [signed Jn^o Walker and eleven others]

When Gallatin forwarded Bloodworth’s letter, with its enclosure, to the president, Jefferson promptly wrote the now often-cited reply to Gallatin, “The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I. Shall we appoint Springs, or wait the further recommendations spoken of by Bloodworth?” Jefferson’s consultation with Gallatin was brief and his decision swift. Two days later, on January 15, 1807, Gallatin replied to Bloodworth: “Your letter of the 1^st Inst. has been received. The President of the United States has appointed Sedgwick Springs to be the Keeper of the Cape Fear Light House, of which you will be pleased to give him notice.”

We know something of the woman, Rebecca Long, whose nomination Jefferson rejected, from public records and newspapers. According to a family historian, she was born Rebecca Hand about 1755 and married Henry Long in 1774 in Smithville District, North Carolina. The Wilmington Gazette of February 13, 1800, reported that Rebecca and her husband marched in a large procession of military and civilian mourners to attend a local funeral service for George Washington, who had died the previous December at his home in Mount Vernon. From the 1790 census we know that she employed the labor of at least one slave and from a newspaper advertisement we know she managed one indentured servant in her own household. She placed an ad in the Wilmington Gazette of September 13, 1803, seeking the apprehension and return of “an indented girl servant” named Elizabeth Clary. Long administered her husband’s estate after his death in 1806, taking out a notice to his creditors in the March 3, 1807, issue of the Wilmington Gazette. Rebecca Long reportedly died May 2, 1815, in Smithville, North Carolina.

Jefferson’s declaration that he and his public were “not prepared” for a woman to hold federal appointed office may have surprised his two long-time, politically astute associates, Timothy Bloodworth and Albert Gallatin. In the months after Henry Long’s death, they were willing to support his widow as his replacement (or they would not have forwarded the suggestion)—and the twelve Wilmington men who petitioned Jefferson on behalf of Sedgwick Springs explicitly made their recommendation contingent on the unfitness of Rebecca Long. Why did they all or any of them not foresee Jefferson’s adverse reaction, if indeed the general public was so averse to the notion of a female light-keeper?

For his part, Jefferson saw no place in public life for women, arguing that nature had “marked infants and the weaker sex for the protection rather than the direction of government.” But, unlike some appointed officials actively engaged in public life and policy decisions, a light-keeper was a civil servant ensconced within the thick walls of a remote lighthouse, far removed, practically and geographically, from the administration of government. What was more, the work of a light-keeper (cleaning the light, trimming the wick, and fueling the lamp) was quite similar to the kinds of work that women already did in their own houses. Indeed, people in the early republic saw light-keeping as domestic work requiring no manly skill or masculine strength. Therefore, according to historian Virginia Neal Thomas, “many keeper positions were filled by veterans, debilitated men, [and] unskilled political appointees.” Women performing such work were not the “innovation” that Jefferson feared.

Jefferson might have been unaware that, prior to his administration, at least three women had served the public quite satisfactorily as postmasters in the United States. The postmaster job required business competence, financial accountability, and daily personal interaction with the public, making his claim that women in federal office were “an innovation for which the public is not prepared” seem, at best, uninformed. Perhaps Jefferson was less concerned with the suitability of a woman to the work than with possible political objections to Rebecca Long’s nomination; the federal government at the time had less than 3,000 civilian employees (including forty working in lighthouses and navigation), most of them appointed by the president. People of Wilmington who had advocated for Long’s worthiness might have applauded her appointment, but since Revolutionary War veterans were still a numerous voting constituency who benefited from light-keeper appointments, perhaps Jefferson meant that women appointees as light-keepers were an innovation that opportunistic veterans might resent.

In 1826, almost twenty years after Jefferson had rejected Rebecca Long’s nomination, President John Quincy Adams appointed the first federally employed female light-keeper. By then, politicians’ need to place veterans in these posts likely had grown less pressing as the Revolutionary generation died out. From 1826 to 1859, the federal government appointed fifty-three women—about five percent of all principal light-keepers appointed during that time; most (81 percent) were widows who succeeded their deceased husbands. They not only knew the job—which they learned, like many women in other trades, from helping their husbands—but, as widows, benefitted from the earnings lighthouse-keeping generated. Perhaps if Jefferson had seen—as Bloodworth, Gallatin, and twelve petitioners from Wilmington did—that presidential appointments could work as beneficially for worthy, disadvantaged women as they did for men, Rebecca Long might have been first in that long line of light-keepers’ widows to a receive federal appointment. 

Further Reading:

Jon Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women (New York, 2007).

Virginia Neal Thomas, “Woman’s Work: Female Lighthouse Keepers in the early Republic, 1820-1859” (MA thesis, Old Dominion University, 2010).

Information about Rebecca (Hand) Long’s birth, marriage, and death were gleaned from Jean Hirsch, comp., “Family of Winifred Mae Taylor Mayo.”

Sedgwick Springs’ application for a Revolutionary War pension, published in NARA, National Archives Publication M804, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files, roll 2262, is conveniently transcribed online at “Southern Campaigns Revolutionary War Pension Statements & Rosters.”

A U.S. Postal Service history of women postmasters is here.

Previous published explanations of Jefferson’s remark include: James Morgan, “Women in Politics,” Journal of Education 92:17 (November 11, 1920): 461, claiming Gallatin proposed “a woman clerk in the treasury”; Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia, 2007), who asserted that Jefferson vetoed a proposed “postmistress”; William K. Bottorf, Thomas Jefferson (Boston, 1979), who stated that Jefferson wrote this famous line to Abigail Adams; and Jay C. Heinlein, “Albert Gallatin: A Pioneer in Public Administration,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 7:1 (January 1950): 69-70, suggesting that Gallatin considered women a “possible source of talent” to fill underpaid federal jobs.

Probably building on Heinlein’s suggestion, Joyce Appleby propounded the most influential theory to explain Jefferson’s statement, beginning with her article, “Introduction: Jefferson and His Complex Legacy,” in Peter S. Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies (Charlottesville, 1993). Appleby stated, “Worried about the pressing shortage of first-rate talents for government office, Gallatin suggested naming women to certain posts.” Appleby reiterated the same explanation in  Jefferson: Political Writings, eds. Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball (Cambridge, England, 1999); Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (Cambridge, Mass., 2000); Joyce Appleby, “Thomas Jefferson: 1801-1809,” in Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer, eds., Reader’s Companion to the American Presidency (Boston, 2000); Joyce Appleby, Arthur M. Schlesinger, general editor, Thomas Jefferson: The American Presidents Series: The 3rd President, 1801-1809 (New York, 2003); and Joyce Appleby, “Thomas Jefferson,” in Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer, eds., The American Presidency (New York, 2004).

For Appleby’s influence in popular history, see Cokie Roberts, Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation (New York, 2008). Writers who cite no source for their elaborations on the Appleby thesis include: Susan Dunn, ed., Something that will Surprise the World: The Essential Writings of the Founding Fathers (New York, 2006); and Christopher Phillips, Constitution Cafe: Jefferson’s Brew for a True Revolution (New York, 2011).

This article originally appeared in issue 15.4 (Summer, 2015).

Public historian David E. Paterson studies Upson County, Georgia, especially the local history of slavery and Reconstruction. A civilian employee of the US Navy by day, he spends his leisure hours researching and writing history—especially mini-biographies of enslaved Upson County residents—and managing the Slave Research Forum at AfriGeneas.com. He is the author of A Frontier Link with the World, Upson County’s Railroad (1998), and editor of the autobiography of Houston Hartsfield Holloway, In His Own Words: Houston Hartsfield Holloway’s Slavery, Emancipation, and Ministry in Georgia (forthcoming from Mercer University Press, November 2015). Paterson lives in Norfolk, Virginia.

All the more strange, then, is it that we should wish to know Greek, try to know Greek, feel for ever drawn back to Greek, and be for ever making up some notion of the meaning of Greek, though from what incongruous odds and ends, with what slight resemblance to the real meaning of Greek, who shall say?—Virginia Woolf, “On Not Knowing Greek”

It was a Wednesday night when I sat down to read selections in the Eighth Edition of the Norton Anthology of American Literature. I opened the volume to Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia to prepare for the next discussion in a pre-1865 American Literature survey. Written and enlarged between 1781 and 1783, published privately in Paris in 1784-5, and then published publicly in London in 1787, Notes outlines for an international audience the history, landscape, manufacturing, and agriculture of Virginia. Jefferson organized Notes based on twenty-three “queries” that range from “Rivers” to “Aborigines” to “Weights, Measures and Money.”