My husband never laid a violent hand on our daughters—never seemed to take anything but delight in Ann, who cowered in the doorway, at the edge of tears. But Jeff worked my husband’s every last nerve. I suspected this time, it was simply that Tom couldn’t bear the thought that his son had seen him weep. He stood there, his chest heaving as he glowered at the scared little boy, then let him go with a shove. “Go do as your mother told you.”
With a hand to his stinging red cheek, Jeff ran off for my cloak. And I turned to Ann. “Your father is tired. Won’t you take him into the other room and read him one of the little newspaper stories Grandpapa cut out of the paper for you?”
Pretty Ann bobbed her head in obedience with a little hiccup before leading Tom out. And I was glad he went with her, even if half in a daze. For I was half in a daze myself. I turned back to my pitcher of honeyed water and stirred the honey into it, catching a glimpse of myself in the surface of the water once it stilled.
Then I took a deep breath as something snapped inside me. I’d told myself that Tom would one day recover from the blow of his father’s death and rejection. Just as my father had come through his madness. That given enough love and time, my husband would stand up like the man he wanted to be, and I could lean on him in times of trouble.
Now I knew better.
I could never, ever, lean on him or my sister or anyone else. I hadn’t chosen a life in which I might be cared for and pampered. I’d chosen a different path. And I ought to be grateful to Tom, I told myself, for having obliged me to exert all the strength and energy I had at my disposal. Because in this exercise, the mind acquires strength to bear up against evils that would otherwise overcome it.
Realizing it, my aches and pains and ailments melted away, to leave me in more perfect health than I had enjoyed in years. For if I wanted to hold my family together, if I wanted my children to survive, I could neither be tired nor ill. If I wanted to carve out anything for myself or anyone I loved, I couldn’t lean or waver.
I’d have to be the pillar to hold it all up . . . if only because I was Thomas Jefferson’s daughter.
Washington, 18 April 1802
From Thomas Jefferson to Robert R. Livingston
The cession of Louisiana by Spain to France will form a new epoch in our political course. Of all nations France is our natural friend. Her growth we viewed as our own, her misfortunes ours. But it’s impossible that France and the US can continue long friends when they meet in so irritable a position as they do now. The day France takes possession of New Orleans we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.
My father was not, as the Federalists suggested, blind to the dangers of Napoleon. Rather, I believe it was his well-known sympathy for France that made possible—in a way it wouldn’t have been possible for any other president—the successful purchase of Louisiana.
Even before it was completed in the third year of his presidency, it was plain that the Louisiana Purchase would be one of his greatest achievements, a staggering success of careful and opportunistic statecraft that doubled the size of the country. And the Federalists could scarcely mount up an opposition to it.
My father’s political victory had been a bloodless revolution, we said . . . but there had been blood. Hamilton’s blood. Spilled from the body of his eldest son in defense of his honor. One of my father’s supporters had claimed Mr. Hamilton intended to overthrow the government to stop a Jeffersonian presidency. That claim now proven utterly untrue, Philip Hamilton confronted his father’s accuser in a duel and was shot dead.
It was a reminder to me that public life could be fatal, exert ing a toll on families that was difficult to underestimate. So my husband couldn’t have astonished me more if he’d grown a horn in the middle of his head, when, before the purchase of Louisiana was negotiated, he said, “Jack Eppes is running for Congress. I’m going to do the same.”
My sister’s husband was running in a newly created district where his chances of victory were good. The seat Tom wanted was already occupied by one of my father’s strongest supporters. If Tom lost, it’d not only alienate the man against my father, but would also crush my husband utterly. And even if Tom won, they’d say he hadn’t earned his seat in Congress on his own merits, but on my father’s name; for both of Jefferson’s sons-in-laws to run together was to invite rumor of a Jeffersonian dynasty.
But when Tom told me, there was an earnest pride and eagerness in his expression, one I hadn’t seen since he was a boy, gazing up at my father with admiration. I realized what it would mean to him to win a seat in Congress. What it would mean to him to succeed. Tom had never wanted to be a planter. His responsibilities as a father and a husband had probably put a legal career out of reach forever. But he didn’t need that to serve in Congress.
I didn’t know how we’d manage the plantations without Tom or my father, but I didn’t have the heart to discourage my husband; I simply didn’t have the heart. “Why, I think it’s a wonderful idea, Tom.”