#early republic

Label: “During the early 19th century, women’s dresses had fashionably high waistlines and flowing fabrics in a variety of printed patterns.

This silk dress brocaded with silver stars glittered by candlelight when worn on a formal occasion. Unfortunately, no history survives with this garment, but one could imagine it fashionably worn in the new American Republic.”

Inaugural Address of President John Adams (p. 1), 3/4/1797

File Unit: Presidential Messages to the 5th Congress, 1797 - 1799

Series: Presidential Messages, 1789 - 1875

Record Group 46: Records of the U.S. Senate, 1789 - 2015

Transcription:

...we have one last glimpse of him thanks to Samuel Henley. Henley would have known Winkfield well from their daily interactions in the Great Hall; Henley taught at William and Mary from 1770 to 1775 before he returned to England, where he made his mark as an antiquarian.  

And in that role, Henley added a note to a 1785 edition of The Merchant of Venice where the Prince of Morocco proclaims, “Bring me the fairest creature northward born, / Where Phoebus’ fire scarce thaws the icicles, / And let us make incision for your love, / To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine” (II, I, 4-7).

In his note, Henley quotes “a n*gro slave in Virginia,” clearly a man of “spirit and candour,” in his blunt asservation of equality. It is surely Winkfield who replies to Henley’s interrogation:

I remember reading this book right around the same time that I took a stroll through the Jefferson memorial in DC. It was super weird to look at all these displays lionizing Jefferson while remembering the content of this book.

Jefferson’s Daughters is, as the subtitle indicates, about Thomas Jefferson’s three daughters who survived to adulthood: His white daughters, Martha Jr. and Maria (with Martha Wayles Jefferson), and his black daughter, Harriet Hemings (with Sally Hemings). These three young women were treated very differently, based upon their race.

Martha and Maria received a fairly typical education for women of their race and class–although Martha’s education in particular was a little more extensive than usual, and she would value learning all her life.  Maria and Martha were also expected to serve as Jefferson’s emotional support for the rest of their lives.  Their half sister Harriet, on the other hand, was probably never even taught how to read, and she was smuggled away from Monticello in her early twenties so that she could pose as a lower-class white woman in DC. The lives of her white sisters are well-documented, but Harriet disappears from the historical record after this point. We only know, based on the recollections of one of her brothers, that she married a white man and passed as white for the rest of her life.

Jefferson seems to have been in on the plan to send Harriet north so that she could live a freer life–although he wanted her to go to Philadelphia so that she’d be even harder to connect back to him. But he never freed her, because doing so would have been a tacit admission that she was, in fact, his child. And that’s very characteristic of him, and of his relationship with his white daughters: They found their black siblings embarrassing, and Jefferson tried to soothe those feelings. Martha–the white sister who lived to old age–actually spent the rest of her life lying about the existence of her black siblings, usually by slandering Sally Hemings.

Sally Hemings was her half-aunt, btw, which makes this behavior even crappier.

Author Catherine Kerrison makes it very clear that to Thomas Jefferson, his only social and intellectual equals were other rich white men. His daughters, white or black, existed to serve him in one way or another. This is just my own personal opinion, but I think Jefferson was surprisingly okay with never having a legitimate white son because he didn’t want the competition at home. He liked having daughters because he believed they could not challenge him, and because he’d brow-beaten his white daughters into focusing all their energies on his comfort.

Kerisson also makes a lot of great points about white southern womanhood during this era, especially by focusing on Martha Jefferson. Martha Jefferson and HER daughters were deeply invested in burnishing the Jefferson image and downplaying his relationship with Hemings. As elite white women without fortunes to match, the only thing that made them “special” was their Jefferson blood. To share that blood with slaves was to undermine its “specialness.” Hence, the centuries-long insistence that Jefferson didn’t exploit Hemings into becoming his mistress, despite ample, contemporaneous evidence to the contrary.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Adams retained all of Washington’s cabinet at his time of leaving office. Hamilton was not a part of this because he had already left the cabinet during Washington’s administration. This meant that Adams could not have fired him, despite their disagreements.  

Adams did call Hamilton a “bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar,” and may have been jealous of Hamilton’s close relationship with Washington. Adams was always slightly jealous of the reputation of men like Washington and Hamilton, for he had done just as much for the Revolution and Early Republic as they had without half so much credit. Adams did however, appoint Washington and Hamilton as second in command, should a war with France break out. The feud between Adams and Hamilton just kept growing, even though Hamilton was not an actual part of the government anymore. 

Sources: the following sources were used - the collected letters/writings of Alexander Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton the Revolution, Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton, The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton by Allan McLane Hamilton, Hamilton by Richard Syllia, and Charles Cerami’s book called Young Patriots. In addition, War of Two by John Sedgwick and Washington and Hamilton by Tony Williams were used throughout. Proclamation of Neutrality: https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/neutrality-proclamation/. 

I cannot afford to buy an 18th century home, so I have settled for the next best thing: I applied for and was approved to rent a very early 1800s home built by a Revolutionary War veteran. We begin moving in next month.