Thomas Jefferson IV

As a coda to my reading experience of The Hemingses of Monticello which of course is the corollary to the public life of Thomas Jefferson, the story we never heard, I want to add a few more observations. For as much as I've said at an earlier time how the inner contradictions of his life were bizarre, in some ways it got more bizarre as he got older, and withdrew to Monticello. For me it is a larger than life demonstration of the ego system being foolproof but not God proof, as the Course famously puts it. (ACIM:T5.VI.10:6) In short, hypocrisy, inner contradiction, etc. is part of the human condition, because it is innate to the ego system, which is the opposite of wholeness by its very nature, so our living arrangements never ever add up. And sometimes other people or historical figures can hold up the mirror very nicely. For Jefferson it was certainly an interesting evolution of how he embraced the rights of man, spoke out publicly for emancipation and against slavery, while harboring two slaves (under american law), but then gradually abandons that rhetoric back in Virginia, no doubt in part because of the political realities, but also because he himself was totally dependent on the system. He could not live with it, and he could not live without it, and the apparent compromises are just fascinating human drama, even if much must be guessed at for want of evidence.

The final denouement was something to behold, for all his seeming wealth more or less imploded pursuant to his death, collapsing under his massive debts, to the point that he almost posthumously became a symbol of a system that was broke, but that would not be deconstructed till afterwards. His wealth really came from his wife, but by the time he passed away it was all gone. Meanwhile it seems as if he lived quite contentedly on his estate, except for periodically fleeing from the many visitors, and enjoyed his private life with Sally, happily ignoring the fact that it was frowned upon by contemporary society. And she apparently got out of it what she wanted: freedom for her offspring.