Douglas Mercer
October 26 2024
It was Jefferson who said that all men are created equal and he didn’t stop there. No sooner was that howler out of his mouth than he compounded his error by saying that not only was the statement true but it was so obvious as to be self-evidently true. And I understand that he did not mean what later people said he meant by that but that is irrelevant. We are all responsible for everything we do or say and we are all responsible for every ramification that flows from everything we do or say. It is the only iron law of the universe and it goes thus wise: what goes around comes around. And so the lesson is that just as you should be very careful what you wish for you should be very careful what you say. If you need time to think it over that’s fine but once you’ve gone on the record the words no longer belong to you. That is the second iron law of the universe. There is no third.
The say that Thomas Jefferson was quite the Beau Brummel and fashion plate and he liked to keep steadily abreast of all the latest sartorial styles in London Town and buy them so he could tailor them to his lanky and rangy frame. That is he was totally modish and of the mode and wanted to know not only what society was thinking but wearing as well. He also had a mania for coaches and carriages and when a new version appeared on the streets of the metropole, he was sure to know about it from the latest newspaper. And no sooner did this wonderwork appear than he would send his factotums to acquire it for him and bring it forthwith to Philadelphia where he could parade around the streets in high fashion after the manner of a grandee of the best gentry. No matter that he was an inveterate spendthrift who lived massively beyond his means; and no matter that by the time the contraption had been ferried across the Atlantic it had fallen apart due to the rough seas and was useless to him. What mattered was that he had accrued the best and the finest and could crow about the conspicuous consumption as if he had just killed a calf.
They also say that at some point he began to fret that his books were not quite in order when some gizmo from England that he droolingly coveted was out of his price range. So he decided to bring a money-man to Monticello to speak things over and see what could be done about it. He was Thomas Jefferson after all and he had written immortal words of independence. When the green eyeshade bureaucrat got a look at his tallies he was green to the gills and he told Jefferson that it was worse than it looked. Fretting that an exclusive and rarefied object d’art might slip though his grasping hands Jefferson plaintively (and somewhat sheepishly) queried if there was not perhaps something that might be done. The banker and paper pusher said indeed there was, that Jefferson could take out a loan; but that would require collateral. At this Jefferson blanched and said that given his dire financial straits he feared he had nothing that would work in that regard. The clerk was somewhat taken aback by this assertion and said sure you do. Ever the naïf Jefferson said he did not think he did and asked what that something might be. And in the manner of a world-weary adult who has seen it all who has in exasperation and condescension to explain the facts of life to a small child the numbers man beckoned the great man over to the window of the study. He then pointed at a gaggle of black men in the field who were busy making nails. Do you see them negros? the man asked and Jefferson averred that he did. The man said you own them, correct? and Jefferson confirmed that it was so. Well, that’s your collateral. And Jefferson no sooner heard those magic words than a great weight was lifted from his shoulders and he already imagined how his prized possession would look amid his stately halls, and how the bewigged and bejeweled glitterati would ooh and ahh over it on festive occasions. And on that note the Sage of Virginia took pen to paper, not for the first time, and struck a deal. There is a moral to every story but the moral of this one is not the one of popular legend. For just so you know I am not offended slightwise by the fact that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, a negro is neither more nor less than the miscellaneous debris of the universe, the flotsam and the jetsam of time; and one more or less here or there never made any difference to the real world. But what offends me greatly is that a vainglorious trifling fop and effete dandy who foisted an impracticable Utopian vision on my people and who could not refrain from shooting his mouth off at the most inopportune of times and is heralded far and wide as one of the true immortals should simply not know diddly-squat about how the world works. That is it’s not the crimes that get my blood up, it’s the blunders.
