Statesmen Of The Old South - Taschenbuch

FROM RADICALISM TO CONSERVATIVE REVOLT PREFACE THE substance of the following papers has been presented in the form of popular lec tures at the University of California, the University of Indiana, the University of Chicago, Richmond and Randolph Macon Colleges and it cannot be expected that the treatment of these interesting 1 Southern leaders of the olden time will be found entirely free from the defects of the lecture method. Still it is hoped that the point of view and the interpretation of certain facts and conditions of the Southern and national evolution may justify the publication of these studies. The author is under obligations to Mr. C. D. Johns, of the University of Chicago, for reading the entire proof and for making the index. WM. E. Dor D, University of Chicago July 20, 1911 STATESMEN OF THE OLD, SOUTH THOMAS JEFFERSON I THOMAS JEFFERSON is a name to conjure with in the United States. Extreme individualists who desire to exploit the resources of the nation and re-establish feudalism in the world, make pious pilgrimages to Monti cello radical democrats who feel that the principles of the Declaration of Independence are about to perish from the earth, regard the great Virginia leader as their patron saint and social ists appeal to the writings of Jefferson for grave opinions to justify the regime of the future. Andrew Jackson overturned the old Jefferson party in the name of its founder and Abrahafn Lincoln based his arguments against slavery upon well-known passages from the famous Notes on 2 STATESMEN OF THE OLD SOUTH Virginia, while Jefferson Davis believed from the bottom of his heart that secession and civil war, even on behalf of slavery, was only an appli cation ofthe doctrine of the Virginia and Ken tucky resolutions And Jefferson himself gave reason for many of these divergent and irrecon cilable views in his published writings there is abundant justification for the contentions of these present-day followers, though the man, were he still with us, would speedily repudiate any and all who deny the full and complete application of the doctrine of democracy, that is the democracy of Lincoln as against slavery, of Bryan as against Wall street, of the West as against the East. Jefferson would have been a populist in 1892 or an insurgent in 1910. Jefferson, the populist 5 With this rather startling idea in mind, let us look into the life of the Man of the Mountain, as John Randolph was accustomed to say. Peter Jefferson, the father of Thomas, was a westerner, a land surveyor and Indian fighter, a character not unlike that of Daniel Boone, vigor ous, rough, close-fisted. The colony of Virginia, THOMAS JEFFERSON 3 employed him to survey her southern boundary line and like most other surveyors of land he patented a good deal for himself and settled upon it during the fourth decade of the eighteenth century to grow up with the back-country. He came into such good standing with Isham Randolph of Dungeness that he was given one of the daughters, of whom there were usually many among the great clans of Virginia, to wife. Thomas was therefore well born, though no aris tocrat. The young boy was put to school with a Scotch pedagogue in Louisa county the home at that time of radical democracy and hard-headed Presbyterian dissent. But the schooling was good and the environment better in view of the coming career of the boy. In Louisa county men wore buckskinbreeches, Indian moccasins and hunting shirts without coats to cover them, crowned with coonskin caps. There was still much hunting of deer and turkeys among the hills and mountains of Louisa the fine country made famous a hundred years later by the marches of Lee and Jackson and the two great battles at Manassas and a slender stooping 4 STATESMEN OF THE OLD SOUTH youth from neighboring Hanover had already made a name for himself in that region by his long hunts and popular ways...