Fordham Law Review Volume 64 Issue 5 Article 1 1996 Thomas Jefferson, Equality, and the Creation of a Civil Society Gordon S. Wood Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Gordon S. Wood, Thomas Jefferson, Equality, and the Creation of a Civil Society, 64 Fordham L. Rev. 2133 (1996). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol64/iss5/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Law Review by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Thomas Jefferson, Equality, and the Creation of a Civil Society Cover Page Footnote Gordon S. Wood is a University Professor and Professor of History at Brown University. This Address draws greatly from Professor Wood's book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992); readers interested in the historical references of this Address should refer to this source. This article is available in Fordham Law Review: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol64/iss5/1 REMARKS THOMAS JEFFERSON, EQUALITY, AND THE CREATION OF A CIVIL SOCIETY* Gordon S. Wood** It is a distinct honor to be delivering the Robert Levine Lecture at Fordham Law School, and I am very grateful for the invitation to be part of this distinguished lecture series. I spent last year in Washington D.C., and, as you New Yorkers know, it's a very strange place. Washington was, of course, a place that Thomas Jefferson never liked or put much stock in. To put it bluntly, Jefferson had very little faith in the capacities of the federal government to do much of anything, at least not after he had left the presidency. "Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap," he wrote in his autobiography in 1821, "we should soon want bread."' But Washington, being a city that has no sense of irony, has ignored all these insults and has honored Jefferson with a magnificent memorial that is rivaled by only those of Washington and Lincoln. Maybe public officials have such a special place in their heart for Jefferson because they know so little of what he actually believed in. Jefferson is so important to President William Jefferson Clinton that a year or so ago he and Mrs. Clinton held a dinner in Jefferson's honor, to which my wife and I were invited. I hoped it might be a dinner for eight, but it turned out to be a dinner for 180! It was held on April 12, the day before Jefferson's 251st birthday. Apparently the administra- tion wanted to celebrate Jefferson's 250th birthday, but forgot about it until the last moment and just got in before Jefferson turned 251. At any rate the President's dinner was a grand occasion. There were no lengthy speeches. The President introduced an impersonator of Jefferson who neither looked nor sounded like Jefferson looked or presumably sounded. The President seemed out of sorts, perhaps be- cause of a gaffe that earlier I had committed in the receiving line. My wife and I were near the end of the long line of 180 guests, whose hands President and Mrs. Clinton were relentlessly shaking. When it * Professor Wood delivered these remarks on October 19, 1995, as part of the Levine Distinguished Lecture Series, an annual lecture series at Fordham Law SchooL ** Gordon S. Wood is a University Professor and Professor of History at Brown University. This Address draws greatly from Professor Wood's book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992); readers interested in the historical references of this Address should refer to this source. 1. Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson, reprinted in 1 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson 1, 122 (Andrew A. Lipscomb & Albert Elley Berghi eds., 1904) [hereinafter Autobiography]. 2133 2134 FORDHAM LAW REVIEW [Vol. 64 came my turn to shake the President's hand, with about a dozen or so guests to go, I decided I would say to him something other than the usual how-do-you-do. Feeling bad for him with all those hands to shake, I said to him: "Well, you don't have much longer." It wasn't quite what he wanted to hear-I know that because he looked very startled and gave me an icy stare. Mrs. Clinton, who was exchanging pleasantries with my wife, suddenly whipped around and likewise glared at me. It took me a moment to grasp what had happened and to mumble something about only a few more hands to shake in the receiving line. But it was too late: The deed was done. I'm sure that President Clinton held his commemorative dinner be- cause he believes he has a special kinship with Jefferson, for his name if for no other reason. But also because all politicians these days seem to want to get right with Jefferson. Although conservatives and Republicans have usually made Hamilton their hero, many of them have increasingly found affinities with Jefferson. George Will has called Jefferson the man of the millennium.' Massachusetts Governor Weld describes himself as a Jeffersonian. So did Ronald Reagan: He called upon Jefferson in order to justify his attempts to reduce the size of the federal government; indeed, he urged us all to "pluck a flower from Thomas Jefferson's life, and wear it in our soul forever."4 More recently Speaker of the House Gingrich has become very interested in Jefferson. And so has the Cato Institute.6 But during the past sixty years or so it has been the Democrats that have made the most of Jefferson. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the one who captured Jefferson for the Democrats. Of course, it was no easy task to turn a man who hated the federal government and believed in states rights into a sym- bol of the New Deal. But the Democrats pulled it off. Roosevelt put Jefferson into many of his speeches. In 1938 he personally manipu- lated to have Jefferson replace Lincoln on the three-cent stamp, the carrier of nearly every first-class letter at the time, and his administra- tion saw to it that Jefferson was taken off the scarce two-dollar bill, where the Republicans had relegated him, and placed on the popular nickel. And in Jefferson's bicentennial year, 1943, Roosevelt dedi- cated the Jefferson Memorial, which certainly was the high point of this country's celebration of Jefferson. If you have been to the Memo- rial recently, you'll recall that on the four walls of the temple there are 2. George F. Will, Person of the Millennium, Wash. Post, Dec. 16, 1990, at K7. 3. See Alex Beam, The Truth About Tiresome Tom, Boston Globe, Apr. 12, 1993, at 11. 4. John McClaughry, Jefferson's Vision, N.Y. Times, Apr. 13, 1982, at A27. 5. See R.W. Apple Jr., States of Mind: You Say You Want a Devolution, N.Y. Tumes, Jan. 29, 1995, § 4, at 1. 6. See Keith B. Richburg, Washington Awash in Think Tanks: Conservatives, Liberals, Clerics Compete for Minds of Policy Makers, Lawgivers, Wash. Post, Dec. 7, 1984, at A25. 1996] THOMAS JEFFERSONAND EQUALITY 2135 some stirring quotations from Jefferson. Nothing, however, about minimal government, states rights, or the fear of executive power. Even today Jefferson has a special appeal for Democrats. Several years ago, in February 1990 to be exact, two other historians and I received a call from Congressman Steny Hoyer, who is chairman of the Democratic Caucus, inviting us to address the annual meeting of the Caucus, which is composed of the Democratic congressmen and congresswomen who sit in the House of Representatives. Every year the members of the Caucus retreat to a secluded hotel or resort for a couple of days, to hold committee meetings and plan party strategy. Normally after a busy day of talking and hearing committee reports the members were used to having some light entertainment in the eve- ning. But this particular year, Congressman Hoyer told us, would be different. In the winter of 1990 the Democratic Party was in low spir- its-perhaps not as low as it is right now, but low enough-and it needed to get a hold of itself, needed to get back to its roots and reinvigorate its thinking. So instead of dancing girls or whatever, the Caucus wanted three historians each to talk about one of the Demo- cratic Party's favorite presidents-Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jack- son, and Franklin Roosevelt. We were given ten minutes each. I was to lead off and talk about Jefferson, the presumed founder of the Democratic Party. It was no easy task summing up Jefferson in ten minutes, especially to modem Democratic congressmen who have somewhat different ideas about government, especially the federal government, from those Jefferson had. I tried to get the members of the Caucus in a good mood by telling them that in Jefferson's time they, the Democratic Caucus, would not just meet to issue committee reports to each other, but would actually nominate the Democratic presidential candidate. They liked that. But then I had to tell these Democrats about Jefferson's ideas of minimal government, that he fervently believed that the best govern- ment was the one that governs least, that he disliked all federal taxes, that he had no programs for the cities, and that he in fact hated all cities and wanted America not to develop any.