While Thomas Jefferson’s view of his slaves is contradictory, his opinions on the women in his life are easier to comprehend. Considering that he lived between the Age of Reason and the Romantic Era, his philosophy was fairly standard for a successful Virginian man. His preferences for a wife were not unreasonable for the time period. He desired their lives to be devoted to companionship to their spouse, maintenance of their place of residence, and nurture of their spawn. For marriage material, they must, in his eye, be soft, have manipulability, subdued, highly hygienic, and virgin. In his search for a wife, he sought out women who were intelligent, sociable, and homely. All of these traits would ensure that his spouse could fill her role as assistant in personal business and politics. But, the trait he attached the utmost importance to was a woman’s appearance. This was especially important for a man like Thomas Jefferson, who, as a plantation owner, needed his wife, in particular her dress, to serve as his social status. In time he found a woman that possessed all of his desires, by the name of Martha. Their marriage lasted 10 years, in which their procreation (done even while Martha was ill) produced 6 children. After having a fairly successful relationship with a woman, Thomas Jefferson put the utmost importance in ensuring his daughters were quality marriage material. During their childhood, he kept his daughters under a strict regimen to give them skills they would need to entertain their future spouses. From 8am-10am, the Jefferson girls were designated to practice music, from 10am-1pm to alternate between dancing and drawing every day, 1pm-2pm to draw on the days reserved for dance, 2pm-4pm read and recite French, 4pm-5pm continue music education in areas such as the harpsichord, and 5pm to the time they slept to be used to learn the English language properly. Even after they left his household, Thomas Jefferson continued to advise and guide his daughters down a path of appropriate success. In a letter to his daughter, he wrote “A lady who has been seen as slovenly or a slut in the morning will never efface the impression she has made, with all her dress and pageantry she can afterward involve herself in…I hope therefore the moment you rise from bed your first work will be to dress yourself in such style as that you may be seen by any gentleman, without his being able to discover a pin awry”. As it can be observed, Thomas Jefferson placed high regard in women being knowledgeable in the arts. No doubt his parenting expanded his daughter’s minds a little, and they would have been expanded more if not for the fact that Thomas Jefferson kept a common fear many men possessed of women’s power. For instance, he believed poetry is fine for a woman to write, but in moderation so as to not grant her too much of an abundance of confidence. Also, in his mind, music is only of value to those who possess talent, and shouldn’t be bothered with for any others. The worst limitation he placed on women influenced by his paradigm was that women should never read more than needed to prevent the development of ideas suggestive of women’s rights in their minds. His justification for rejecting the opposite gender’s voting was flawed at best, as he merely stated that women shouldn't be involved in politics. Without involvement in politics, even political discussion, Thomas Jefferson deemed that the level of ignorance forced upon women about such issues left them unfit to vote. All in all, the United State’s third president’s view on women remained predictable for the era.
The next expenditure of inquiry revolves around Thomas Jefferson’s debt. Was it a result of his love of property? To answer this, the origins and circumstances leading up to it must be fully understood. Throughout his life, Thomas Jefferson acquired large sums of money owed from various expenditures. This was not of course unusual for men of his social and economic stature, yet it begs curiosity of the source. Some of the debt was simply a result of a non-stable income. Since the Jefferson family’s payment came largely from farming profits, periods of great riches and virtual nothing coincided with the seasons of the crops they grew. As a result payments could not be made on time, and owed interest increased. Little could be done about this issue, especially with all he had invested in the farm, and it most certainly wasn’t property alone emptying his pockets. Another source of money lost was the economic collapse of 1819, which, from Thomas Jefferson’s standpoint, could not be helped. He was merely one of the many affected, which just added to his profound debt. The economic maladies he delved further into could have been prevented, but none the less were quite unintended, and his involvement in the affairs sinking him deeper into the red good natured. Thomas Jefferson took on debt from his father-in-law, John Wayles, in his death, as well as from demise, this time of his business partner and acquaintance Wilson Cory Nicholas, to the tune of $20,000, as the result of co-signing a check with him to pay for an investment which later fell through. But, at the center of his debt was his adoration of acquiring property. With great frequency Thomas Jefferson treated himself to the finest wines, nicest clothes, greatest tools of trade, instruments of instruction, materials to construct great works of architecture, and books. If only his quote, “Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life it is their only capital,” were less of an inconvenient truth for him. His various texts were in fact used as his capital, and sold as such to the government to lessen his debt. Yet, Thomas Jefferson could not stop his spending, even after all the trouble and misfortune he must have created. He soon lost just as much money as before replacing his extensive library, and had to make further sacrifice to pay it off. Even in death his debt was not paid. The family he left with the remaining negative balance was forced to sell his beloved Monticello for $107,000, which, over the centuries, has gained worth of over $2,000,000. During the 18th, there was little other options for families such as the Jefferson's, as declaring bankruptcy would not be yet possible for several decades. It appears that, in this case, property bit Thomas Jefferson back, and caused great unease to himself and his family.
What conclusions can be drawn from this data about Thomas Jefferson’s views on property? First, let us examine the role of slaves, which were, for all legal purposes, his property. They most certainly brought him happiness, as he relied heavily on them to tend his farm to fund his vast purchases. But, as legal property, did he treat them as such? In his political life he wrote about freedom for all, and ownership of people as malicious. Yet, this sounds like simple rhetoric when compared to the sheer number of slaves he owned. And of one of these, a woman Sally Hemmings, he either considered property by having intercourse with her at his leisure, or else he severely manipulated her into rape to produce yet more children when his ill wife could no longer serve, in his opinion, her duty of mothering offspring. But, even though Thomas Jefferson had 800 slaves and freed less than 5% of them, he did grant them, at the time and in his peer’s review, unprecedented freedom by breaking the colonial slave code. The answer to the question based upon his action is more than a little fuzzy. Now, on the question of how he viewed woman as compared to property, it appears his beliefs placed women as slightly higher than objects, yet lower than men, which is fairly appropriate for the men of his time. Overall, he displayed little confusing prominence in his opinions of women, compared to his view of slaves, particularly the slaves he owned. Now, for what brought Thomas Jefferson presumably the least happiness, his debt is to be examined. No doubt of his love of buying property, expensive property, playing a role in his accumulation of money owed. It could be predicted that he placed such a high value on ownership, he was willing to accept the costs, or simply didn’t care. This could be said of much of his property. Back to his slaves, if his writings of them were truly his beliefs, it may as well have been that he owned them solely to grant him more money for the capital he so deeply desired. That would explain his giving unusual freedom to them in his home, which indicates hesitation. Yet, everything that filled him with happiness needed not to be entirely property. Obviously, the women of his life provided great amusement to him, which is increasingly tangible as evidenced by the great pains he took to make his daughters capable of entertainment of their future husbands. But, as it is too often true, if you invest too much happiness in anything, even property, if it is taken or at risk you stand to lose not only it but your life’s joy. Thomas Jefferson most likely did mean to substitute happiness for property in the Declaration of Independence, but what does that mean for Americans? Even if that meant property is a guaranteed right to own, as the author intended for it to be happiness, it is not necessarily a productive opportunity to be taken advantage of. Why? Thomas Jefferson’s debt speaks for itself. Unfortunately, quite a few people interpreted the Declaration of Independence with the hidden intended meaning of “happiness” as property, with similar results as Thomas Jefferson experienced. When will the United States ever learn that every indulgence comes at a cost?
