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

by Thomas A. Foster

  106. Russell, Jefferson, 278.

  107. Tansill, The Secret Loves of the Founding Fathers, 89. This approach echoes the scholarly interpretations of the day that argue that Jefferson had been the victim of political sabotage and that his nephew Peter Carr had fathered Sally Hemings's children. See, for example, Adair, Fame and the Founding Fathers, 227-273.

  108. Malone, Jefferson and Our Times, 42.

  109. Frank L.Mott, Jefferson and the Press (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943), 35.

  110. Dabney and Kukla, "The Monticello Scandals," 57.

  111. Miller, The Wolf by the Ears, 164, 177, 185.

  112. Ibid., 171.

  113. Ibid., 193.

  114. Ibid., 167, 179.

  115. Carlyle C.Douglas, "The Dilemma of Thomas Jefferson," Ebony (August 1975): 60-66.

  116. Barbara Chase-Riboud, Sally Hemings: A Novel (New York: Viking, 1979).

  117. Winthrop D.Jordan, White over Black: Attitudes toward the American Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968; New York: Penguin, 1969).

  118. On the anachronism of this portrayal, see Andrew Burstein, Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 4, 151-188.

  119. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 32.

  120. Bottorff, Thomas Jefferson, 24.

  121. Fergus M.Bordewich, "Holiday Guide," Washington Post, December 7, 2008.

  122. Morgan and Morgan, "Jefferson's Concubine."

  123. Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I a Woman: Female Slaves in the Plantation South, rev. ed. (1987; rev.: New York: Norton, 1999).

  124. Ellis, American Sphinx, 21.

  125. See, for example, David Barton at Liberty University, available at www.youtube .com/watch?v=A5jnKuQIDHE (accessed January 23, 2013). See also Mark Tooley, "Challenging the Jefferson Flemings Orthodoxy," American Spectator, September 7, 2011, available at http://spectator.org/archives/2011/09/07/challenging-theJefferson-hemi (accessed April 20, 2009).

  126. Ellis, American Sphinx, 22.

  127. Scharff, The Women Jefferson Loved, 103, 218.

  128. Some cracks have begun to appear in this young facade of total acceptance of the Jefferson-Hemings affair in popular writing. Fleming, for example, points out that Callender called Hemings "`a slut as common as the pavement,"' casting doubt not only on the relationship but on the view of their relationship as entirely monogamous. Notably, Fleming, in a book that uses every tale possible to talk about love and romance, frames this particular story not in such terms but instead as scandal and focuses on the "guilt" or innocence. And he is explicitly skeptical that it could have occurred as "thirty-eight years of furtive sex in a house swarming with visitors and grandchildren." He moves away from earlier defenses based on Jefferson's character. In the end, he suggests no love across the color line, asserting that "we should not allow differences about Sally Hemings to obscure the other women in Jefferson's life." See Fleming, Intimate Lives, 312, 352.

  129. William Howard Adams, The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 221.

  130. Appleby, Thomas Jefferson, 75.

  131. Chase-Riboud, Sally Hemings.

  132. Bottorff, Thomas Jefferson, 52-53.

  133. Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson, 60.

  134. Roger Wilkins, Jefferson's Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 99.

  135. Clarence E.Walker, Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009), 39.

  136. Annette Gordon-Reed, "`The Memories of a Few Negroes': Rescuing America's Future at Monticello," in Lewis and Onuf, Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, 251.

  137. Joseph J.Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Vintage, 1998), xx.

  138. Wilkins, Jefferson's Pillow, 136. See also Henry Wiencek, Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012). On the issue of Hemings and Jefferson, Wiencek limits his examination to the issue of paternity and does not make substantial claims about the dynamic of relationship.

  139. Garry Wills, `Negro President': Jefferson and the Slave Power (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), xii-xiii; italics original.

  140. Bottorff, Thomas Jefferson, 28, 52.

  141. Joshua D.Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood: The Color Line in Virginia 1787-1861 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 25.

  142. Ellis, American Sphinx (1998), 26.

  143. Miller, The Wolf by the Ears, 176.

  144. Onuf, The Mind of Thomas Jefferson, 7. See also Shannon Lanier and Jane Feldman, Jefferson's Children: The Story of One American Family (New York: Random House, 2002).

  CHAPTER 3

  1. Available at www.imdb.com/title/tt0472027/awards.

  2. David McCullough, john Adams (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 56.

  3. Available at www.tvguide.com/PhotoGallery/7-Unsexiest-Sex-1850/4984 (accessed February 5, 2012). According to the Internet Movie Database, NPR ran a piece that explained the scene as the product of the imagination of the two main actors: "During an interview on NPR's `Fresh Air,' Paul Giamatti told interviewer Dave Davies that the scene in which Abigail and John have sex upon being reunited after many years apart was not writ ten as a sex scene. The script only called for John and Abigail to kiss, but Giamatti said that he and Laura Linney discussed between themselves that they thought the characters would go farther in that situation, and they decided to `keep going' and hope the director and camera person would follow them, which they did. The scene they improvised and shot was originally much longer than what ended up in the finished film'; available at www.imdb .com/title/tt0472027/trivia (accessed February 5, 2012). For an example of a blog about the "unwatchable" scene, see www.historiann.com/2010/07/05/1776-c/#more-11604 (accessed February 5, 2012).

  4. Matthew Gilbert, "No Sex Scandals TaintThis Power Couple in HBO'sJohnAdams," Denver Post, March 27, 2008, available at www.denverpost.com/ci_8707240?source=rss (accessed February 5, 2012).

  5. Available at http://naturalresources.house.gov/UploadedFiles/AdamsTestimonyO7 .30.09.pdf.

  6. John and Abigail Adams, documentary film, American Experience series (PBS, 2006).

  7. Recent biographies include John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 53; and McCullough, John Adams.

  8. On Puritan culture and sexual expression, see, for example, Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

  9. Thomas A.Foster, ed., "John Adams and the Choice of Hercules: Manliness and Sexual Virtue in Eighteenth-Century British America," in New Men: Manliness in Early America (New York: New York University Press, 201 1), 217-235. On Adams and virtue, see also, for example, G.J.Barker-Benfield, Abigail and john Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Andrew S.Trees, The Founding Fathers and the Politics of Character (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 75-106. On John Adams, see, for example, Joseph J.Ellis, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of john Adams (New York: Norton, 1994).

  10. Quoted in Walter Stahr, John Jay: Founding Father (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006), 131.

  11. Quoted in ibid., 139.

  12. John Adams autobiography, part 2, "Travels, and Negotiations," 1777-1778, sheet 9 of 37, April 1-3, 1778 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  13. Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 25, 1778 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Arcbive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  14. June 23, 1779. John Adams diary 29, March 12 July 31, 1779 [electronic ed
ition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  15. Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, January 9, 1797 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Arcbive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/. On his "hatred" of Hamilton, see Ellis, Passionate Sage, 21-25.

  16. On the rivalry and comment, see, for example, Gore Vidal, Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 17.

  17. Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1988), 2:677.

  18. Charles Francis Adams, The Works of john Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1856).

  19. March 15, 1756. John Adams diary 1, November 18, 1755-August 29, 1756 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  20. John Adams diary 3, 1759 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  21. John Adams autobiography, part 1, "John Adams," through 1776, sheet 3 of 53 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  22. John Adams autobiography, part 2, "Travels, and Negotiations," 1777-1778, sheet 11 of 37 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  23. John T.Morse, John Adams (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884), 6-7.

  24. Mellen Chamberlain, John Adams: The Statesman of the American Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898), 5-6.

  25. Ibid., 96.

  26. Adams, The Works of john Adams, 1:61-62.

  27. L.H.Butterfield, The Book ofAbigail and john: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 11.

  28. Kevin White, The First Sexual Revolution: The Emergence ofMale Heterosexuality in Modern America (New York: New York University Press, 1993).

  29. Quoted in Meade Minnigerode, Some American Ladies: Seven Informal Biographies (1926; repr., Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), 55.

  30. Quoted in ibid.

  31. Quoted in Samuel McCoy, This Man Adams: The Man Who Never Died (New York: Bretano's, 1928), 49; italics original.

  32. Quoted in ibid., 50-51.

  33. Alfred Steinberg, John Adams (New York: Putnam, 1969), 39-40.

  34. Page Smith, John Adams, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1962), 1:20.

  35. Robert A.East, John Adams (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979), 20.

  36. Ibid., 57.

  37. Ferling, John Adams, 53, 172, 203.

  38. Ibid., 26-27.

  39. Ibid., 234.

  40. McCullough, John Adams, 36, 48, 51.

  41. Stahr, John Jay, 162; Thomas Fleming, The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2009), 195.

  42. Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, June 3, 1778 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  43. John Adams diary 44, March 27 July 21, 1786 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist .org/digitaladams/.

  44. Judith St. George, John and Abigail Adams: An American Love Story (New York: Holiday House, 2001), 46.

  45. John P.Diggins, John Adams (New York: Times Books, 2003), 21-22.

  46. Ibid., 30.

  47. James Grant, John Adams: Party of One (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005), 21-22, 43, 203.

  48. Fleming, Intimate Lives, 125-129.

  49. John Adams diary 3, includes commonplace book entries, spring and summer 1759 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  50. Fleming, Intimate Lives, 125-129.

  51. John Adams diary 3, includes commonplace book entries, spring and summer 1759 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  52. Morse, John Adams, 20.

  53. Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 28, 1776 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  54. Minnigerode, SomeAmerican Ladies, 56.

  55. Ibid., 65.

  56. Although we should, of course, read these letters as genuine and heartfelt, we must also recognize that, given the postal system of the day, writers also recognized the distinct possibility that mail could be read by others. Additionally, in some instances, letters would be shared. In at least one instance, the sharing of Abigail's letters resulted in gains for her. "The other Day, after I had received a Letter of yours, with one or two others, Mr. William Bartell desired to read them. I put them into his Hand," writes John to Abigail, "and the next Morning had them returned in a large Bundle packed up with two great Heaps of Pins, with a very polite Card requesting Portias Acceptance of them." Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 7, 1775 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  57. Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, September 17, 1777 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  58. Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, May 4, 1796 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  59. Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, September 14, 1774 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  60. Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, May 17, 1776 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  61. Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, October 1, 1775 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  62. Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, September 14, 1767 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  63. Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, February 21, 1779 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  64. On the significance of sibling relationships in early America, see C.Dallett Hemphill, Siblings: Brothers and Sisters in American History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

  65. Edith B.Gelles, Portia: The World of Abigail Adams (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 1-23, 25, 26, 59-71, chaps. 7 and 9. Writers who wish to highlight the sexuality of the Founding Fathers have consistently applied a double standard to interpreting love letters written between Founding Fathers' wives and other men and those letters written between Founding Fathers and other women. Letters between Franklin and women, as we have seen, are readily served as evidence of his libido in a full voyeurism. Yet, the same authors describe the correspondence of Abigail and James Lovell in qualified terms. Fleming, for example, calls him her "literary lover" and conveniently uses Gelles to point out that "historians" have referred to it as a "`virtuous affair."' Fleming, Intimate Lives, 148. See also Joseph Ellis, First Family: Abigail and John (New York: Vintage, 2010), 72-73; Smith, john Adams, 1:407-409.

  66. Anne Husted Burleigh, John Adams (New Rochelle, NY:
Arlington House, 1969), 36-37.

  67. Ibid., 38-39.

  68. East, John Adams, 30, 35-36, 76, 68.

  69. Ferling, John Adams, 321.

  70. Richard Brookhiser, America's First Dynasty: Tbe Adamses, 1735-1918 (New York: Free Press, 2002), 17, 37.

  71. Grant, John Adams, 215, 217.

  72. Available at www.clarencedarrowgaryanderson.com/law-liberty-passion.html.

  73. Diggins, John Adams, 22-23.

  74. Smith, John Adams, 1:167.

  75. Ellis, First Family, 16, 79.

  76. Available at www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/adams/sfeature/sf-letters.html.

  77. Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, October 16, 1774 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  78. Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, February 10, 1777 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Arcbive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  79. Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, December 27, 1778 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  80. Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, May 14, 1789 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Arcbive, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

  81. Stahr, john jay, 187, 191. See, for example, Anya Jabour, Marriage in the Early Republic: Elizabeth and William Wirt and the Companionate Ideal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

  82. Available at http://harvardpress.typepad.com/off the-page/2008/02/the-romance- of.html (accessed February 5, 2012).

  83. Available at http://clarencedarrowfoundation.org/lovers-and-patriots.html. In Cokie and Steve Roberts's biography of their marriage, they include a section on John and Abigail, referring to their union as "one of the most remarkable" marriages. Cokie and Steve Roberts, From This Day Forward (New York: William Morrow, 2001), 38.