Sex and the Founding Fathers: The American Quest for a Relatable Past (Sexuality Studies)

by Thomas A. Foster

  Highlighting a relationship with a married woman could have backfired but for the story's ability to compensate for Hemings, lurking in the background, and for the added bonus of its showing Jefferson as besting another man. The relationship with Cosway thus could also serve Jefferson's image in that it could be fashioned to indicate his cuckolding of her husband. Although nearly the same age as Jefferson, Cosway's husband is described as a man whose "foppishness and affectation made him less than pleasing as a man, and his vanity was immeasurable."56 Brodie notes that he was "mocked for his pretentiousness in dress, especially a mulberry silk coat ornamented with strawberries."57 Out-manning such a husband might not have been very challenging, but nonetheless his biographers take note of Cosway's eagerness to fall in love with Jefferson, whom they imply cut a sharp contrast to her husband.

  In the hands of late-twentieth-century Jefferson image makers, Cosway's being married is far from a liability; the detail is reworked to highlight his attractiveness to women in addition to his superiority to other men. All the women in his life are noted as pretty or extraordinarily beautiful, with Cosway as the pinnacle. That Jefferson outmans her husband in some biographies is underscored through their emphasis on Cosway's desirability. She is always described as an extraordinary beauty. One typical account includes, for example, such descriptors as "very pretty, slender" and "great expressive soft blue eyes that smiled readily, and a great quantity of beautiful blond hair"-"her most noticeable feature."58 Another describes her as "small, exquisite, and feminine," "a fragile, languorously feminine woman of twenty-seven, with luminous blue eyes, exquisite skin, and a halo of golden curls."59 Still another describes her as "beautiful" and as "charming, blond, blue-eyed, and lovely."60 Such references are, of course, loaded with racialized connotations, and these glowing descriptions of hair and eye color are used disproportionately to describe women of European descent.

  For biographers, her beauty could shore up his credentials as a properly sexual man-one with healthy, normative desires. One biographer imagines, "Her voice was soft and alluring, and at times it took on overtones that set him all atremble." Jefferson, he writes, felt "many spasms of the heart when he looked at Maria Cosway."61 Chroniclers through the twentieth century have made use of the Cosway story to highlight the Jefferson's romantic side. As Joseph Ellis explains, "The Cosway affair is significant not because of the titillating questions it poses about a sexual liaison with a gorgeous young married woman but because of the window it opens into Jefferson's deeply sentimental soul and the highly romantic role he assigned to women who touched him there."62

  Biographers have been gushing over Jefferson's "Head and Heart" letter to Cosway (an extended dialogue between rational and romantic sides) for nearly two centuries now-perhaps because we have so little from him to use. It has been called the "greatest love letter in history." Biographers who discredit the letter and portray it as merely eighteenth-century romantic prose have been taken to the woodshed by others. Jefferson's mid-twentieth-century biographer Charles Tansill, for example, points out that Julian Boyd, editor of Jefferson Papers, is gravely mistaken when he characterizes the "Head and Heart" letter as romantic but asserts that Jefferson had "control of his passions." Taking issue with it as an understatement, Tansill argues, "It is apparent that Dr. Boyd knows little about Jefferson's emotional balance and less about the way of a maid with a man." And he asserts, "Jefferson's October 12 missive to Maria Cosway is, indeed, `one of the notable love letters in the English language.' It has all the earmarks of sincerity and could hardly have been part of a game of make-believe."63 Thomas Fleming, for example, in his 2009 collection of biographies on the romantic lives of the Founders describes the head and heart letter to Cosway as "twelve electrifying pages."64

  As previously mentioned, Jefferson's growing number of romances often lent support to each other-that is, each one became more plausible than the last as a case was made for the depiction of Jefferson as a man of passion and desires rather than merely a bookish, chaste widower. The above interpretation of Jefferson's "Head and Heart" letter illustrates this point once more. The author continues, "If in Jefferson's case the head had really been sovereign, there might never have been the attempted intimacies with Betsy Walker." Here the scandal of Walker works to support the claim of Jefferson as having normal desires and lends credence to the claim that his attraction to Cosway was genuine and had been acted on.65 In 1993, journalist Willard Sterne Randall continues the emphasis on depicting Cosway as someone Jefferson "would fall in love with" while in Paris-indeed, for Randall, Jefferson "fell in love with Maria Cosway from the moment he met her" and she became someone with whom he would want to "spend every possible moment."66

  Popular writer Hitchens similarly declares that "Jefferson carried on a passionate relationship during his time in Paris" with Cosway, even if we "may not be sure about consummation." For Hitchens, the "Head and Heart" letter is evidence of their emotional bond. Repeating the lore that Jefferson broke his wrist jumping over a fence to impress Cosway, Hitchens also asserts that the relationship soured when Jefferson took it too far, inserting a crude sexual reference in one of his letters to Cosway (making references to a nose in a manner that suggested a euphemism for penis), and it was then that Cosway was "displeased" and "the relationship between them cooled." However, for Hitchens, the bottom line here is that Jefferson was "fond of beautiful women," "sexually knowing," "forward," and "eager"-and most important, echoing the assessment of twentieth-century scholars, "without a mistress."67

  Walker: A Minor Scandal

  Although virtually all biographers from the earliest to the most recent mention his lost love for Burwell, not all of his earliest biographers would comment on a connection to Betsey Walker, the wife of a neighbor and friend, John. As we have seen, the story first appears in the nineteenth-century politically charged press. But despite including chapters devoted to "Jefferson in Love," Parton, for example, omits any mention of Walker in his 1874 writings.6H This omission of Walker continues well into the twentieth century. Writing in 1926, for example, Francis Hirst mentions only Burwell and Martha-erasing any explicit discussion of Walker.69 By the mid-twentieth century, however, most writers frame the relationship with Walker as both a minor scandal and a revealing romance before his marriage.

  By the twentieth century, biographers who write of it mention that early public knowledge of the relationship was the result of political enemies who resurrected this moment in Jefferson's life to slander him. Says one, "The lady was a woman of charm and beauty, vivacious, and perhaps unconsciously seductive, and probably, without considering the consequences, not a little flirtatious." The husband complained that this was not a one-time affair-a year after initial flirtations, "Jefferson had `renewed his caresses' and slipped into her gown sleeve cup a paper pleading the innocence of adultery." Other charges included that Jefferson had on another occasion "stolen into his room where the lady was undressing or in bed." Jefferson, we are told, "made no reply in public" when the husband told his story to the press. He did, however, write "a personal letter to two members of his Cabinet. ... `I plead guilty to one of the charges,' he wrote, `that when young and single I offered love to a handsome lady. I acknowledge its incorrectness. It is the only one founded in truth in all their allegations against me.' That this youth of twenty-five, susceptible to women, was not `pure as light and stainless as a star,' we would prefer to believe. But the rash and persistent pursuit after the rebuff is not in character. 1170

  Beginning in the twentieth century, sex scandals have generally worked in Jefferson's favor by portraying him as a more human, more mortal man with a natural desire toward romance rather than a sublimated sex drive replaced with books. One biographer writes of Jefferson's youth, "That at this age Jefferson was exceedingly susceptible to the charms of beautiful women there can be no doubt. It was about this time, in his twenty-fifth year, that he became infatuated with the young wife of an absent friend of the neighborhood and made a
dvances that were repelled."71 Similarly, Dumas Malone, once considered the most scholarly Jefferson biographer, explains, "It was in the year he was twenty-five that Jefferson made a mistake. He was then unmarried. Full of physical strength and vigor, and for four months his friend was away from home."72

  The Walker episode, in the hands of skilled biographers, could highlight Jefferson's passionate side, but it could also be used to comment on the strength of his character. In a chapter called "Tangle in a Petticoat," Tansill focuses on the scandal of the Walkers and finds positive things to say about Jefferson as a result: "Jefferson was being harassed by a scandal that might have affected his nerves or frightened him into silence, if he had been a weak man. He met it, dealt with it, put it in its place; but since it charged him with coveting his neighbor's wife, it must have cost him some of the most wretched moments of his life, knowing as he did that the Anglo-Saxon peoples throughout their history have reacted strongly against any accusation of sexual irregularity involving an eminent man."" Given that the charge is adultery, this explanation stands out for going to such lengths to bolster the manhood of Jefferson. In his 2009 collection of biographies on the romantic lives of the Founders, Thomas Fleming explains the connection to Walker as follows: "We know only this much: after tantalizing him long enough to send the bachelor into a frenzy of frustration, Betsey said no at the crucial moment."74 Hitchens uses the tale of Jefferson's "unsuccessful attempt to seduce" Walker because for him it "demonstrates that Jefferson was ardent by nature when it came to females." "Generations of historians," he laments, "have written, until the present day, as if he were not a male mammal at all."75

  Unintended Consequences

  Thus, in the nineteenth century, the famed author of the Declaration of Independence (by then already a "sacred text," one venerated by the nation) could not be, and would not be, memorialized as a man who sexually exploited his young slave girl 76 His biographers would successfully ensure that public memory of Jefferson's private life fit the domestic ideals of the era. To this end, romanticized depictions of his marriage and his loss would be accompanied only by brief mentions of an early love, Belinda.

  For those biographers who created a personal romantic life for Jefferson, the biggest challenge was not the skeletons in his closet but the lack of information with which to work. Writes historian Peter Onuf, "He kept his own secrets, destroying his correspondence with his wife, Martha, and revealing nothing about his long-term relationship with his slave Sally Hemings." And he elaborates, "Jefferson's autobiography (drafted in 1821) is a sketch of his public career, virtually bereft of illuminating details about his private life."77

  Calling him a "sphinx" or "impenetrable," popular and academic twentieth-century biographers acknowledge that Jefferson's most intimate life is elusive because he wanted it that way. For example, according to one, "No one ever succeeded better than Thomas Jefferson at hiding his inner springs of sentiment.... [I]n more intimate matters, especially in matters of affection and feeling, he never spoke out."78 Mid-twentieth-century biographers continue the characterization. As one notes, "He was extremely reticent about private domestic matters.... [T]here is no better way to describe his attitude toward an individual's religion than to say that to him it was as private a matter as his intimacies with his own wife."79 In the words of another biographer, "Not only he never wore his heart upon his sleeve, but tried to lead the approaches to it through a maze."80

  One tangible result of this secrecy is a pronounced lack of documentation. Although one would never guess it from the literature, as is the case for many of the Founders, biographers have experienced almost a total absence of documents from which to reconstruct Jefferson's early romantic life. Jefferson's mother's house at Shadwell, Virginia, burned in 1770, destroying nearly all of his letters and papers. As the writer of the best-selling American Sphinx concedes, this "ma[de] the recovery of his formative years an exercise in inspired guesswork.""

  Rightly or wrongly, Jefferson's image has at times been dogged by rumors that he was hardly the model of virile manhood. At least as long ago as when Alexander Hamilton called him "feminine," Jefferson's image has risked suffering from a lack of manly virility.82 His status as a chaste widower also made him an unusual president.83 With his wife, Martha, Jefferson had no sons, only daughters, and because his father died when Jefferson was young, Jefferson was both oriented toward women and yet typically (for the eighteenth century) misogynistic. 84 Historian Winthrop Jordan writes, "With women in general he was uneasy and unsure."85 Of Jefferson, a biographer notes, "In his relations with the opposite sex he was temperate to the point of continence."86 A later biographer explains, "Jefferson preferred to meet his lovers in the rarefied region of his mind rather than the physical world of his bedchamber."87 He is often fondly remembered as agrarian-yet, and in despite of how he espoused and idealized the model of the yeoman farmer, he himself was not a farmer, especially in contrast to Washington. Unlike Washington, he gave his State of the Union address in writing and made very few speeches as president. And he tended toward the overly refined. Depictions of him after his wife's death have him "swooning" and "fainting," and he suffered through life from chronic headaches. Others contend that he was no rough-and-tumble man-that he neither gambled nor drank (although he did). In his youth, writes one biographer, "heady, mature conversations, fine dinners, theatergoing, and other gentlemanly activities formed a milieu the young Jefferson loved... a life of high culture."" Jefferson is famed for his love of architecture and design-most notably as expressed in his own home, Monticello. He is generally not referred to as handsome or especially athletic. Indeed, he was described as gangly, tall, lanky, sometimes awkward-a man who only later grew into his frame, but only just barely.

  As the influences of Sigmund Freud and turn-of-the-century sexologists spread, sexual urges came to be seen as a natural part of life, and in particular of a man's healthy libido.89 Twentieth-century Americans would in turn be less satisfied to portray Jefferson as a model chaste bachelor and widower, and a new generation began to emphasize in greater detail other relationships. Writing in 1952, Howard Swiggett quips, "There is an implication in several books that from 1784 until his death Jefferson lived in chastity and that there was something very noble in doing so. As to this, there is presumably no valid evidence but surely it is as unlikely as the charge that `he peopled his plantation with slaves' by intercourse with black women."9°

  The developing characterization of Jefferson as a man of great romantic passion eventually had an impact on the handling of the Herrings story. The Cosway and Walker stories gained traction, it seems, only in the absence of the Herrings story. They served as a counterbalance by inserting a proper object of affection and also served to humanize Jefferson in the absence of any other love interests-the image of the chaste widower having long since served its Victorian purposes. In doubt of the view of Jefferson as a chaste widower, a late-twentieth-century biographer asks rhetorically, "Does a man's sexuality atrophy at thirty-nine, especially if he has already demonstrated that he was capable of very great passion?" Establishing him as a man of "great sexual vitality," one who had adulterous affairs and who was capable of great passion, made it easier to eventually also understand him as a man who had a decades-long intimate relationship with his slave Hemings.91

  The story that Jefferson fathered the children of his slave Herrings, which has in recent decades become more accepted by both popular and academic audiences, has almost seamlessly fit into the model of earlier romantic connections of Jefferson's and has breathed new life into old efforts to humanize the cerebral, inaccessible, private world of one of our most important Founders.

  Hemings: A Romance Befitting a Great Man

  The story that Jefferson fathered children with Herrings, which emerged in his lifetime, did not fade away, and among a new generation it later served a different purpose from that of the original Federalist political enemies of Jefferson. By the 1830s, it was being used by abolitionis
ts. William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator published a column on the alleged sale of Jefferson's daughter in New Orleans, underscoring that no one was safe from the evils of that market. Attesting to the widespread knowledge of the Jefferson-Hemings relationship, the author never feels the need to provide any background information or to assert that the mother of Jefferson's daughter was an enslaved woman. The notice quotes an American veteran: "`I never thought,' said he, `when I was periling my life in the bloody struggle of the revolution, that I was fighting for the last resort of slavery.... [I]f I had, I could not have fought at all."'92 The core of this story, the sale of Jefferson's daughter at New Orleans, also serves to frame a poem, "Jefferson's Daughter," that was published in a British periodical in 1839. Versions of it were reprinted in the Liberator in 1848 93 Fugitive slave and abolitionist writer William Wells Brown also includes it in his collection of antislavery poetry published that same year. It would later serve as the basis of his 1853 novel that was published in London and entitled Clotel; or, The Presidents Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States.94 In the early 1860s, Brown serialized the story in the African American newspaper the Weekly AngloAfrican.

  During Reconstruction, several accounts of Monticello slaves appeared in print. In 1873, the Pike County Republican, a local Ohio newspaper with a limited circulation, published a brief essay entitled "Life among the Lowly, No. 1." The account was Madison Hemings's recollections of his family his tory as the son of Jefferson and Sally Herrings. He describes both his mother and his grandmother as having been taken as a "concubine" by their owners, John Wayles (Martha Jefferson's father) and Thomas Jefferson, respectively. The account describes that Herrings became pregnant while she was in Paris and that shortly after returning "she gave birth to a child, of whom Thomas Jefferson was the father." Although that child "lived but a short time," Herrings "gave birth to four others," including Madison, "and Jeffer son was the father of all of them."95 It would be more than a century before the account would be taken seriously by a broad audience.