Jefferson had a different opinion in 1786, when Shays’ Rebellion broke out across western Massachusetts. Rising taxes and mounting debts among middle-class and poor farmers had fueled a class war. Captain Daniel Shays had served in the Continental Army, and whether or not it was an accurate description, he was called the “Generalissimo” of the uprising. Shays had acquired over two hundred acres of land, only to see half of his holdings lost during the postwar depression. His supporters closed down courts that were auctioning off farms and homes, forming an ad hoc army that attempted to take over the armory in Springfield. Similar protests took place as far south as Virginia. Writing from France, Jefferson did not deny the existence of the rebellion, but treated it as a naturally recurring, even therapeutic phenomenon. In an odd twist, he calculated that such political tempests would most likely happen every thirteen years. A “little rebellion” was analogous to “storms in the physical environment”; temporarily jarring, it would settle back down, leaving society’s core principles refreshed.31
Jefferson’s language betrayed him. He envisioned rebellion as a process of regeneration, removed from human agency and, most important, devoid of class anger. For her part, Abigail Adams had little sympathy for the Shaysites. “Ferment and commotions,” she curtly observed in a letter to Jefferson, had brought forth an “abundance of Rubbish.” Others agreed. Captain Shays was described in newspapers as an ignorant leader, a pathetic man living in a “sty,” his fellow insurgents nothing more than “brutes.” Critics compared them to “Ragamuffins of the earth,” lowly vagabonds who owed more than they were worth. To the naturalist Jefferson, they belonged to the sedimentary debris unearthed and let loose across the human terrain.32
In the same year, he wrote lengthy comments on an article entitled “Etats Unis,” meant for publication in the famed Encyclopédie Méthodique. After summarizing the history of the Society of Cincinnati, Jefferson offered a curious explanation for the convulsions it caused. “No distinction between man and man has ever been known in America,” he insisted. Among private individuals, the “poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest Millionary,” and the poor man was favored when the rights of the rich and poor were contested in the courts. Whether the “shoemaker or the artisan” was elected to office, he “instantly commanded respect and obedience.” With a final flourish, Jefferson declared that “of distinctions by birth or badge,” Americans “had no more idea than they had of existence in the moon or planets.”33
Though Jefferson sold Europeans on America as a classless society, no such thing existed in Virginia or anywhere else. In his home state, a poor laborer or shoemaker had no chance of getting elected to office. Jefferson wrote knowing that semiliterate members of the lower class did not receive even a rudimentary education. Virginia’s courts meticulously served the interests of rich planters. And wasn’t slavery a “distinction between man and man”? Furthermore, Jefferson’s freehold requirement for voting created “odious distinctions” between landowners and poor merchants and artisans, denying the latter classes voting rights.34
One has to wonder at Jefferson’s blatant distortion, his desire to paint the Society of Cincinnati as so otherworldly to Americans that only extraterrestrials could appreciate it. He failed to recognize that many elite Americans were fond of the trappings of aristocracy.
Under the administration of George Washington, the Federalists established a “Republican Court,” with rules of protocol, displays of genteel etiquette, and formal weekly levees—visits by invitation only extended to the national elite to meet with the president. Martha Washington held her drawing-room salons, and around the president emerged a cult of adulation that imitated certain aspects of royal pageantry. Powerful families in Philadelphia established dynastic marriages with European peers. Elizabeth Patterson, the daughter of a wealthy Baltimore merchant, became an international celebrity when in 1803 she married the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. At the time, President Jefferson wrote his minister in France to inform Napoleon that his sibling had married into a family whose social rank was “with the first of the United States.”35
In 1789, when Vice President John Adams proposed before the U.S. Senate that the president required a more daunting title, such as “Majesty,” he accepted that political distinctions needed to be dressed up in pomp and circumstance. Unlike Franklin, Adams felt that the “passion for distinction” was the most powerful driving human force, above hunger and fear. Americans not only scrambled to get ahead; they needed someone to look down on. “There must be one, indeed, who is the last and lowest of the human species,” Adams concluded, and even he needed his dog to love him. He also sarcastically acknowledged that while Jefferson and his brand of republicans might disdain titles and stations, they had no intention of disturbing private forms of authority; the subordinate positions of wives, children, servants, and slaves were left safely intact.36
Jefferson was not above his own brand of political stagecraft. Unlike Washington and Adams, who rode in fancy carriages to their inauguration ceremonies, Jefferson rode his own horse back to the President’s House after delivering his inaugural address. He dispensed with the levees and greeted diplomats and guests at the executive mansion while wearing an old vest and worn slippers. He was known for his casual attire—not while he was in France, but upon his return.37
His version of rustic republican simplicity reflected his experience in Virginia, where the gentry lived in grand houses like Monticello, and yet dressed down when commingling with the mass of small farmers during elections. A Federalist he particularly despised, the Virginian and chief justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall, was known for his slovenly appearance. Two men’s politics could not have been more different, but they dressed in the same style. Elite Virginians had a strong distaste for the nouveau riche, and believed that those with wealth, land, family names, and reputations didn’t need to show off. Some observers saw Jefferson as playing a role, appearing “affectedly plain in his dress.” In this climate, eliminating external signs of class did not necessarily erode expectations of deference. Dressing down just as easily masked social distinctions. The conservative art of emulation, assuming that the head of state had something to teach others, was very much a part of Jefferson’s philosophy. Indeed, he allowed his sheep to graze on the lawn of the President’s House, letting everyone know that a gentleman farmer occupied the highest office in the land.38
? ? ?
Jefferson may have hated artificial distinctions and titles, but he was quite comfortable asserting “natural” differences. With nature as his guide, he felt there was no reason not to rank humans on the order of animal breeds. In Notes, he wrote with calm assurance, “The circumstance of superior beauty is thought worthy of attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other animals.” With emphasis, he added, “why not in that of man?”39
Careful breeding was one solution to slavery. In his Revisal of the Laws, Jefferson calculated how a black slave could turn white: once a slave possessed seven-eighths “white” blood, the “taint” of his or her African past was deemed gone. In 1813, he explained to a young Massachusetts lawyer how the formula worked: “It is understood in Natural history that a 4th cross of one race of animals gives an issue of equivalent for all sensible purposes to the original bloods.” This was the same formula Jefferson used in breeding an original stock of merino sheep. William Byrd had earlier talked about blanching Native Americans through intermarriage with Europeans. As Buffon put it, breeding back to the “original” stock meant reconstituting blacks as white people.40