Appropriating Thomas Jefferson, 1929-1945: We Are All Jeffersonians Now 3631793677, 9783631793671

Table of contents :
Appropriating Thomas Jefferson, 1929-1945: We Are All Jeffersonians Now
Acknowledgments
Contents
Introduction - “We Are All Jeffersonians Now”
1 The First Blossoms of a New Bloom: The Southern Agrarians
1.1 Davidson’s Jefferson: The Home-Grown “Aristocrat”
1.2 Owsley’s Jefferson: The Adversary of Alexander Hamilton
1.3 Fletcher’s Jefferson: The Natural Aristoi or “Intellectual Elite”
1.4 Nixon’s and Wade’s Jefferson: The Father of Populism and Practical Philosopher
1.5 Lytle’s Jefferson: Subsistence and Independence as “Pursuit of Happiness”
1.6 Tate’s Jefferson: Caught in between Praise and Derision
2 Memorializing Jefferson
2.1 Construction of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C.
2.1.1 Moral Entrepreneurs of Thomas Jefferson
The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission (TJMC)
2.1.2 The Site(s) – Picking Sites, Choosing Sides
2.1.3 The Purpose and Design of the Jefferson Memorial
Utilitarian Memorial Proposals
Architectural Competition Proposal
2.1.4 Cornerstone Laying of the Memorial, November 15, 1939
2.1.5 Inscriptions in the Memorial Room: Frieze and Panels
The Committee of Three: Senator Thomas, Stuart Gibboney, and Brigadier General Jefferson Randolph Kean
2.1.6 The Statue and the Pediment
The Pediment: Telling a Story
2.1.7 Dedication of the Memorial, April 13, 1943
2.2 (Jefferson) National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis (JNEM)
2.3 Memorializing Jefferson’s Birthday: April 13, 1743
2.3.1 Declaring Jefferson’s Birthday a Holiday
2.3.2 Celebration of the Bicentennial of Jefferson’s Birth
2.3.3 Library of Congress Symposium on the Dedication of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial
2.3.4 New Masses Special Jefferson Issue, 13 April 1943
Creative Portion: Poetry Contest Winner and Louis Lerman’s Allegory
3 Appropriating Jefferson
3.1 The Political and Rhetorical Tradition of the Jefferson Day Speeches
From 1830 to the 1930s
3.2 Jefferson Attributions—Appropriating Jefferson
3.2.1 Jefferson as Humanitarian
Humanitarianism in the Jefferson Day Address of Joseph B. Shannon (D-MO), 1934
James Beck’s Republican Version of Jefferson’s Humanitarianism, 1934
Jefferson Appropriation in 1935 – Humanitarianism Expanded
Humanitarianism in 1936: Rebuffing the American Liberty League
Humanitarianism and Antislavery Sentiments
Humanitarianism and Asylum
Humanitarianism – Pacifism, Neutrality, and Trade
3.2.2 Jefferson as States’ Rights Advocate and Strict Constructionist
Elected vs. Appointed Officials and the Issuesof Patronage and the Spoils System
Jefferson as Opponent of Bureaucracy – the Hatch Act
Jefferson and the Courts: Constitutional Checks and Balances
Third and Fourth Term Controversy and the Elective Office of the Presidency
Checks and Balances: The Supreme Court and the Democratic Party
Anti-Lynching Bill 1938 – States’ Rights and the Aftermath of Slavery
Debt – Centralization, Bureaucracy, and War
3.2.3 Jefferson as Communist or Socialist?
“A Century of Progress in Applying Jefferson’s Philosophy of Education”
Practical Idealism and Education as Bulwark against Intolerance
Education in American History Survey 1943 – Lessons of History
Republican Appropriation: James Davis and the American History Survey
Practical Idealism’s Relation to Agriculture and Conservation
Practical Idealism and the National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee (NAJBC)
Practical Idealism of Scientific Advancement and the Patent System
Science and its Relation to Liberty and Freedom of the Press
3.3 FDR’s Undelivered Jefferson Day Speech of 1945
Conclusion
Appendix
List of Figures
Works Cited
Works Analyzed
Works Consulted
Index
Backmatter

Citation preview

Appropriating Thomas Jefferson, 1929-1945

Mainzer Studien zur Amerikanistik Begründet von Prof. Dr. Hans Galinsky (Mainz) Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Renate von Bardeleben und Prof. Dr. Winfried Herget

Band 74

Caroline Heller

Appropriating Thomas Jefferson, 1929-1945 We Are All Jeffersonians Now

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Doctoral scholarship of the Cusanuswerk Photo credits: Pati D’Amico, “He should be so pictured, should he not?” (2019) Printed on age-resistant, acid-free paper. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ISSN 0170-9135 ISBN 978-3-631-79367-1 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-79397-8 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-79398-5 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-79399-2 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b15933 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2019 All rights reserved. Peter Lang – Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

For Sylvia—my role model and indispensable helper, Florian—my valuable hidden support, Joachim—my helper in his own wonderful ways, Maria—my guiding spirit, Jeremy—the final phase.

Acknowledgments Appropriating Thomas Jefferson evolved out of a Southern Literature class taken at Middlebury College in 2009, in which I was introduced to Robert Penn Warren. Warren’s absence from this work illustrates that research can take a scholar along unknown, winding paths that lead away from one’s initial interest and questions. Along this route, Dr. Winfried Herget has been my advisor for my masters and then for my doctoral thesis. Besides his invaluable academic support and dedication to my work, he has given generous advice on life questions and allowed me to continue and finish my dissertation and this book while I was working at the University of Mississippi. Without his support and flexibility this work would never have been completed. I want to thank the staff and librarians at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Small Special Collections at the University of Virginia, and the Beinecke Library at Yale. Their knowledgeability, friendliness, and support during my archival research have contributed immensely to the completion of this book and the direction my research was taking. Last but not least, I  want to acknowledge the academic community of Cusanuswerk, the Doktorandenkolloquium and colleagues at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, and my colleagues at the University of Mississippi. Discussions about my work, an encouraging word, constructive criticism, and other advice have made this book possible.

Contents Introduction - “We Are All Jeffersonians Now” ................................  13 1 The First Blossoms of a New Bloom: The Southern Agrarians ........................................................................................................  29 1.1 Davidson’s Jefferson: The Home-Grown “Aristocrat” ...........................  33 1.2 Owsley’s Jefferson: The Adversary of Alexander Hamilton ..................  35 1.3 Fletcher’s Jefferson: The Natural Aristoi or “Intellectual Elite” ............  40 1.4 Nixon’s and Wade’s Jefferson: The Father of Populism and Practical Philosopher ................................................................................  42 1. 5 Lytle’s Jefferson: Subsistence and Independence as “Pursuit of Happiness” ..................................................................................................  44 1.6 Tate’s Jefferson: Caught in between Praise and Derision ......................  48

2 Memorializing Jefferson ...........................................................................  55 2.1 Construction of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Washington D.C. ......  60 2.1.1 Moral Entrepreneurs of Thomas Jefferson ......................................  62 The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission (TJMC) ................  62 2.1.2 The Site(s) – Picking Sites, Choosing Sides .....................................  65 2.1.3 The Purpose and Design of the Jefferson Memorial ......................  80 Utilitarian Memorial Proposals ........................................................  86 Architectural Competition Proposal ...............................................  99 2.1.4 Cornerstone Laying of the Memorial, November 15, 1939 ..........  108 2.1.5 Inscriptions in the Memorial Room: Frieze and Panels ................  112 The Committee of Three: Senator Thomas, Stuart Gibboney, and Brigadier General Jefferson Randolph Kean ...........................  119 2.1.6 The Statue and the Pediment ............................................................  136 The Pediment: Telling a Story ...........................................................  155 2.1.7 Dedication of the Memorial, April 13, 1943 ...................................  158

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2.2 (Jefferson) National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis (JNEM) ..........  166 2.3 Memorializing Jefferson’s Birthday: April 13, 1743 ...............................  171 2.3.1 Declaring Jefferson’s Birthday a Holiday .........................................  171 2.3.2 Celebration of the Bicentennial of Jefferson’s Birth .......................  174 2.3.3 Library of Congress Symposium on the Dedication of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial ..............................................................  179 2.3.4 New Masses Special Jefferson Issue, 13 April 1943 .........................  187 Jefferson: 200 Years and Robert Minor’s “Titan of Freedom” and Avrom Landy’s “Marxism is Democracy” ...............................  196 Creative Portion: Poetry Contest Winner and Louis Lerman’s Allegory ...............................................................................................  211

3 Appropriating Jefferson ...........................................................................  219 3.1 The Political and Rhetorical Tradition of the Jefferson Day Speeches .......  220 3.2 Jefferson Attributions—Appropriating Jefferson ...................................  227 3.2.1 Jefferson as Humanitarian .................................................................  232 Humanitarianism in the Jefferson Day Address of Joseph B. Shannon (D-MO), 1934 ................................................................  234 James Beck’s Republican Version of Jefferson’s Humanitarianism, 1934 .....................................................................  237 Jefferson Appropriation in 1935 – Humanitarianism Expanded .............................................................................................  239 Humanitarianism in 1936: Rebuffing the American Liberty League ..................................................................................................  244 Humanitarianism and Antislavery Sentiments ..............................  255 Humanitarianism and Asylum .........................................................  257 Humanitarianism – Pacifism, Neutrality, and Trade .....................  259 3.2.2 Jefferson as States’ Rights Advocate and Strict Constructionist ....... 274 Elected vs. Appointed Officials and the Issues of Patronage and the Spoils System .........................................................................  274 Jefferson as Opponent of Bureaucracy – the Hatch Act ................  278 Jefferson and the Courts: Constitutional Checks and Balances ........ 280 Third and Fourth Term Controversy and the Elective Office of the Presidency ................................................................................  282

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Checks and Balances: The Supreme Court and the Democratic Party ................................................................................  287 Anti-Lynching Bill 1938 – States’ Rights and the Aftermath of Slavery .............................................................................................  294 Debt – Centralization, Bureaucracy, and War ................................  296 3.2.3 Jefferson as Communist or Socialist? ...............................................  305 3.2.4 Jefferson as Practical Idealist .............................................................  328 Wallace’s Speech – “Thomas Jefferson: Practical Idealist ..............  332 Practical Idealism in the Congressional Discourse ........................  340 “A Century of Progress in Applying Jefferson’s Philosophy of Education” ...........................................................................................  347 Practical Idealism and Education as Bulwark against Intolerance ...........................................................................................  351 Education in American History Survey 1943 – Lessons of History .................................................................................................  354 Republican Appropriation: James Davis and the American History Survey ....................................................................................  355 Practical Idealism’s Relation to Agriculture and Conservation ....  356 Practical Idealism and the National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee (NAJBC) ....................................................  360 Practical Idealism of Scientific Advancement and the Patent System ..................................................................................................  363 Science and its Relation to Liberty and Freedom of the Press ......  365 3.3 FDR’s Undelivered Jefferson Day Speech of 1945 ..................................  367

Conclusion ..........................................................................................................  379 Appendix ..............................................................................................................  393 List of Figures ....................................................................................................  399 Works Cited ........................................................................................................  401 Index ......................................................................................................................  439

Introduction - “We Are All Jeffersonians Now” In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson described the ferocious election campaign euphemistically as a “contest of opinion” and urged national unity through his proclamation, “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”1 Spoken at the height of factional animosity, his invocation eventually became part of America’s collective memory; yet the acrimonious disagreements over Jefferson—his personality, his theories, and his policies—remained as contentious as they had been in 1800 well into the twentieth century. By the 1930s diverse public, political, and private figures, however, began to transform Jefferson’s “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists” into a multitoned, ambiguously connotated chorus “We are all Jeffersonians now” in response to the anxiety of values in the modern, industrial-capitalist society and its collapse which ushered in the Great Depression. Scholars have researched the transmutation of Jefferson’s reputation ever since Merrill D. Peterson’s expansive study Jefferson Image in the American Mind (1960) spanning from Jefferson’s death in 1826 to 1943. More recent studies, by Francis D. Cogliano, Andrew Burstein, Joseph J. Ellis, and Brian Steele,2 provide valuable insights of the political and public debates on Thomas Jefferson. Burstein begins in 1943, where Peterson left off, and investigates how the presidents used Thomas Jefferson. Ellis writes about the Jefferson icon on his two-hundred-andfiftieth birthday anniversary in 1993, but without discussing the term icon and only to introduce his analysis of the character of Jefferson. And Steele focuses on Jeffersonian legacies in the “age of Gatsby” with respect to political discourses of the founding of the nation. 1 Thomas Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801.” The Avalon Project:  Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy. . Web. 23 February 2017. N.p. 2 Merrill D. Peterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind. 1960. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. Print; Francis D.  Cogliano, Thomas Jefferson:  Reputation and Legacy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2006. Print; Andrew Burstein, Democracy’s Muse: How Thomas Jefferson became an FDR Liberal, a Reagan Republican, and a Tea Party Fanatic, All the while Being Dead. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2015. Print; Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. 1996. New York: Vintage Books, 1998. Print; Brian Steele, “Thinking with Jefferson in the Age of Gatsby: Narratives of the Founding in American Political Discourse.” Amerikastudien-American Studies 61.1 (2016): 69–94. Print.

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These scholars read the completed Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., proposed in 1934 and dedicated in 1943, as evidence of Jefferson’s transcendence into non-partisan collective memory. They attribute the memorial and the turn toward Jefferson to Franklin D. Roosevelt. By doing so they present a hegemonic theory of Thomas Jefferson’s apodosis which privileges a grand metanarrative over individual micronarratives. However, Jefferson’s rise in the public discourse and imaginary primarily rests upon the insecurity of values in modern society and people’s needs for role models that provide answers to their questions. The discourse analysis of Jefferson appropriations between 1929 and 1945 challenges the hegemonic reading by locating the creation of the Jefferson icon in the multitude of competing Jefferson versions in different forms of representation created by his moral entrepreneurs across the socio-political spectrum. The term moral entrepreneur has been applied to the field of memory studies by Robin Wagner-Pacifici.3 It signifies the agents participating in the public discourse on societal values and codes, who have the ability or power to give their point of view validity and credibility against competing opinions. It derives its usefulness from the two compounded terms. The first reflects that these agents promoted their interpretation of Jefferson to establish guiding values and behavioral codes for their fellow citizens in the socio-economic crisis.4 As entrepreneurs, they invested in their self-created version of Jefferson and assumed the risk of

3 The term moral entrepreneur is first used by Howard Becker in labeling theory. Although Howard Becker titles chapter eight, moral entrepreneurs, his definition of what they are is rather short: “Rules are the products of someone’s initiative and we can think of the people who exhibit such enterprise as moral entrepreneurs. Two related species—rule creators and rule enforcers—will occupy our attention” (147). After this definition, he fails to engage with the term and does not use it anymore in any operative sense, instead he analyzes “crusading reformers” and “law enforcers.” While his work focuses on deviance and societal rules in the context of drug abuse, Robin Wagner-Pacifici ignores these connotations and employs the term in her study on collective memory. (Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. 1969. New York: The Free Press, 1973. 147. Robin Wagner-Pacifici, “Memories in the Making: The Shapes of Things that Went.” Qualitative Sociology 19.3 (1996): 301–21. Print.) Wagner-Pacifici’s article appeared in an edited version in Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy (eds.), The Collective Memory Reader. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. 394–97. Print. In the updated version as in other articles, she employs the term moral entrepreneurs. For further discussion see Chapter 2.1.1 Moral Entrepreneurs of Thomas Jefferson. 4 Bernard Gert, and Joshua Gert, “The Definition of Morality.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition). Ed. Edward N. Zalta. .

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failing to sell it as they competed with other entrepreneurs for public approval. Thus, they engaged in a struggle over the profit of their investment. To be successful, a moral entrepreneur had to find ways to either market an already established product or create interest and desirability for a new or updated one. This latter idea interlinks moral entrepreneurship with the terms icon and iconic augmentation as iconization requires the metamorphoses of the historical figure into something that can be made useful to the contemporary situation. The contest among different moral entrepreneurs of Jefferson was thus tied to the cultural, social, and political realities and anxieties rather than Roosevelt who was one actor reacting to them. Hence, the rise of Jefferson in people’s appreciation already began for members of the Southern Agrarians in the mid-1920s as they perceived the tenuous nature of the prosperity after World War I  and the social costs of industrialization, commercialization, and consumerism. Their search for values and meaning resulted in I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (ITMS) which appeared a year after the Great Crash of 1929. It serves as the first publication in which and over which contests of opinion occurred. Chapter one thus analyzes the specific references to Jefferson’s name or works in seven of the twelve collected essays to evaluate how the unity and diversity within this relatively distinct group already offered differing readings and interpretations of Jefferson. In different ways their ideas offered tangential points to the American Communists’ and American Liberty League’s memorialization and appropriation attempts and reverberated in the Jefferson Agricultural Bicentenary Committee of 1943. Chapter two of the study picks up after the immediate crisis of the Great Depression had been weathered through Roosevelt’s infusion of hope and through the relief and reform programs, including public building projects that were to give work to the unemployed. This created the opportunity for certain moral entrepreneurs, in the spring of 1934, to propose the erection of a Thomas Jefferson Memorial, in Washington, D.C. and a (Jefferson) National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis (JNEM). These projects were to be overseen by appointed congressional committees. Others sought to memorialize Jefferson by promoting a bill which would establish his birthday as a holiday in the American civil religious calendar. While these measures were proposed and debated in congress, the Congressional Record also contained numerous Jefferson Day panegyrics and appropriations of him for specific bills or topics. For organizational purposes, my analysis separates the latter two as outright appropriations from the memorialization efforts. The latter took the form of the D.C. and St. Louis memorials, the declaration of Jefferson’s birthday as national holiday, and the bicentennial events—the dedication of the D.C.  memorial,

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the New Masses special issue, and the Library of Congress Symposium. While memorialization efforts are never devoid of appropriations, they are couched in procedural and aesthetic considerations and thus take on a different quality. Furthermore, the panegyrics and other appropriating speeches follow their own logic of rhetorical conventions, which deserve a detailed analysis. In a few instances the neat separation will be opened up to fully analyze the intricacies of the creation of the Jefferson icon through the intersection of different discourses. The term icon is used in two variations throughout this study:  first, the Jefferson Memorial including its statue and pediment are regarded as modern variations of the paintings of saints on wood to which the term icon was originally employed;5 second, the term applies to moral entrepreneurs’ praise narratives of Jefferson with which they elevated him to semi-divine status. While these panegyrics shared rhetorical, structural, and thematic parallels, each moral entrepreneur had to select specific points of praise. By reviewing the life of the historical Jefferson, they focused on those aspects that correlated most strongly with their own situation. In the process, they grafted their own understanding onto the historical figure, and thereby somewhat changed and augmented the original—a process described as iconic augmentation.6 By sharing their augmented Jefferson icon with the public, they relied on abbreviated signs of communication. Reading or deciphering these signs, individuals created other instances of augmentation. While an icon’s strength and status in a society is predicated upon achieving a broad consensus, scholars have noted that an icon also grows by its varied applicability and interpretations. Both phenomena are observable in the creation of the Jefferson icon. Francis Cogliano and Andrew Burstein both comment on the completed Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. Cogliano argues that its frieze inscription constituted a “unifying message” pertinent in times of a nation at war.7 In Democracy’s Muse (2015), Burstein agrees with Peterson’s favorable 5 Refer to Chapter 2, “Memorializing Jefferson,” for a more detailed discussion of the term icon. 6 The philosopher Paul Ricœur borrowed François Dagognet’s term iconic augmentation to argue against Plato’s negative reading of capturing and preserving reality or the original image in the form of writing or painting as a mere “shadow of reality.” For a detailed discussion of iconic augmentation, attributions, and appropriations consult Chapter 3 and Chapter 3.2. 7 Cogliano 2006, 5.  In Thomas Jefferson:  Reputation and Legacy, Cogliano explores Jefferson’s attempts to manage his own reputation to ensure the spread and survival of republican government. He only comments on the finished and dedicated memorial to introduce the fourth stage of the reputation development. Cogliano states that he

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judgment of the appropriateness of the design.8 Comparing it to the “unimaginative” Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial which lacked his “log cabin simplicity,” Burstein felt that “[o]‌nly the Jefferson Memorial says something historically accurate about the man it honors.”9 While Cogliano’s statement is correct, it only focuses on one aspect of the memorial at a specific point in time. Burstein’s relates the memorials on the mall to each other, however without considering the historical context or how the same considerations influenced the moral entrepreneurs and their aims of bringing the three memorials into a conversation with each other. The analysis of the official minutes of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission (TJMC), its correspondence, the debates about the memorial in congress, and the accompanying newspaper reports, are key sources for gaining a more differentiated insight into the Depression and early war period. They not only help uncover the discussions about the design, location, and purpose of the memorial, but also the various interpretations of what the memorial was attempting to communicate to the nation and how this meaning-making attempt was shaped by the moral entrepreneurs and their reactions to domestic and international events. This focus on the decision-making process of the TJMC and the opinions voiced in its meetings matter if one considers Émile Durkheim’s argument that those engaged in the discourse about someone or something are, in fact, telling a story about themselves rather than about the topic of discourse. This idea shifts the focus from Jefferson to his moral entrepreneurs. Such a shift allows for a different reading than Peterson or Cogliano have proposed with respect to the many alternative Jefferson Memorial proposals. According to Peterson, they were made to kill the TJMC’s memorial. However, a consideration of their agents and arguments reveals that they primarily tried to defeat the memorial location in the Tidal Basin, as it would not increase

followed Richard B. Bernstein’s four-part classification of the development of Jefferson’s reputation. 8 “Lustrously mirrored in the waters below, offering vistas from its portico of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, commanding reverence in its form, declaring the highest ideals in its inscriptions, presenting the hero in strong and clear lines—the Jefferson Memorial was a success. After all allowance is made for their critics, President Roosevelt and the commission better understood not only the requisite of a fitting monument to Jefferson in the national capital, but also and more significantly the meaning which it ought to carry two centuries after his death” (Peterson 1985, 431–2). 9 Burstein 2015, xiv.

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tourism, and thus the economic situation in any of neighborhoods vied with each other for different memorials. Peterson and Cogliano noted that these tried to affirm the “livingness” of Jefferson, which Peterson defined as a continued faith in “the rights of man.”10 Yet this denominator obscures the many aspects that moral entrepreneurs regarded as still alive and worth commemorating. His division of them into “prospective,” that is, “living memorials” and “retrospective” memorials expressing the “spirit of Jefferson”11 underrepresents the debates about utilitarian and commemorative memorials, which took place against the backdrop of modernism in architecture. An analysis of Frank Lloyd Wright’s opinion letter to Roosevelt and of articles in the Magazine of Art, used in the political and public debates, corrects this oversight and buttresses my argument that cultural events and circumstances had a greater influence on the creation of the Jefferson icon than Roosevelt. The influence of shifting circumstances becomes also evident when considering the international situation between 1934 and 1945. With respect to the D.C.  memorial, Peterson discusses how people connected the possible felling of Japanese cherry trees with the issue of international relations. Yet he ignored the transatlantic connections created between the cherry tree rebellion and the Nazis’ rise to power and their increasingly repressive and brutal actions against German Jews. Cogliano and Burstein discuss the transatlantic significance of the memorial after America’s entry into the war by describing the frieze inscription as “unifying”12 or as an “obvious act of defiance to the nazi menace.”13 Roosevelt’s dedication speech delivered on the bicentennial of Jefferson’s birth additionally affirmed that the nation was fighting to safeguard Jeffersonian values at home and abroad. Burstein reads the speech within this international context and emphasizes that FDR used “historical analogies” which “collaps[ed] the distance” between 1943 and Jefferson’s time.14 Despite his insightful comments, he overlooks that the rhetorical structure of the speech, its arguments and main ideas, reflect the issues raised by the nation’s representatives and the TJMC from 1934 to 1943. Therefore, the speech has to be read as a record of the minds of the times, a democratic distillation of thoughts on Jefferson and the nation,

1 0 11 12 13 14

Peterson 1985, 378. Peterson 1985, 425. Cogliano 2006, 5. Burstein 2015, 3. Burstein 2015, 21.

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rather than as an isolated effusion of FDR’s rhetorical skills as the analysis in Chapter 2.1.7 reveals.15 Around the same time that the D.C. Jefferson Memorial was proposed, another memorial was planned to carry Jefferson’s illustrious name and significance—the (Jefferson) National Expansion Memorial to be built in St. Louis, the gateway to the West. The project, which became plagued with a political real-estate scandal and cronyism, nevertheless attempted to celebrate the exploration and settling of the West made possible through Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase. The measure, which is investigated in Chapter 2.2, was pushed by John Cochran, the Democratic senator from Missouri. Cochran initially claimed that the proposal merely sought national recognition, not an appropriation from Congress—a fact which quickly changed. The St. Louis memorial opens yet another facet of Thomas Jefferson’s iconicity, which competed and merged with other Jeffersonian versions, and it introduces different moral entrepreneurs. Besides giving insights on Cochran, the most vocal advocate through the preamble and his arguments before Congress, the study reveals how William Lambertson, a Kansas Republican senator, became Jefferson’s moral entrepreneur by fighting against the real-estate scheme and by contrasting the machinations of the St. Louis politicians with Jefferson’s record. Lambertson’s points of criticism regarding the memorial tied in with Republican’s appropriations of Jefferson against specific bills and the New Deal in general, which converged at the bicentennial of Jefferson’s birth with respect to the D.C. memorial. Regarding the bicentennial Cogliano addresses other measures proposed to increase Jefferson’s fame.16 His extensive list includes the newly commissioned edition of Jefferson’s writings that the Thomas Jefferson Bicentennial Commission proposed as a tribute, but it overlooks the subsidiary of this commission, the National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee (NAJBC).17 The Committee and its proposed founding preamble evoke the Southern Agrarians’ arguments and serve as the last remnants of Jefferson’s agrarian vision, while also paying honor to Jefferson, the promoter of agricultural sciences. Chapter 2.3.2 discusses the extensive revisions made before the preamble was attached to the bill which created the committee. The revisions can be read as a commentary on 15 By Jefferson’s own account, the words [of the Declaration of Independence] he had drawn from a seventh-century Englishman were never meant to do more than express the collective mind and combined political will of American patriots” (Burstein 2015, 45). 16 Cf. Cogliano 2006, 6. 17 Cf. Cogliano 2006, 6.

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the nation’s development from an agricultural to an industrial society—a change that the first draft ignores. Which purposes the revisions served will be analyzed with respect to the bill’s agents and supporters. Chapters 2.3.3 and 2.3.4 close gaps in Jeffersonian scholarship by analyzing two ideologically diverse memorializations of the bicentennial year, both archived in the Library of Congress. The first is the “Verbatim Transcript of the Library of Congress Symposium on the Occasion of the Dedication of the Jefferson Memorial” organized by Archibald MacLeish its head Librarian.18 The second is one of the more unorthodox testimonies—the New Masses Thomas Jefferson Special Issue.19 A study of the symposium expands our understanding of and connects the Agrarians’ and Communists’ appropriation of Jefferson through the commentaries of the intellectual historian Howard Mumford Jones, the former Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, the journalist Walter Lippmann, the Jefferson scholar Gilbert Chinard, and the historian Allan Nevins.20 They had been invited discuss the meaning of Thomas Jefferson for their own moment in history and would publish a collective newspaper statement on the results of their discussion. The analysis discloses how these intellectuals arrived at a collective statement about Jefferson and it represented their understanding of Jefferson through the lens of the contemporary situation. The New Masses:  Thomas Jefferson 200 Years marks the culmination of the Communists’ Jefferson discourse which began at sesquicentennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1926.21 While scholars have commented on the Popular Front appropriation of “Jeffersonian rhetoric” which Irving Howe described as sometimes “skillful,” and more often “absurd,”22 without defining his terms, Peterson quoted from Heywood Brown’s 1938 article in which he could 18 Library of Congress. “Verbatim Transcript. Meeting: Symposium on the Occasion of the Dedication of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. In the Office of the Librarian of Congress. Reported by Office for Emergency Management, Division of Central Administrative Service, Minutes and Reports Section. Washington, D.C. 13 Apr. 1943.” Library of Congress: Rare Book & Special Collections. 19 “Thomas Jefferson: 200 Years.” [Special issue] New Masses 47.2 (13 April 1943). Print. 20 Gilbert Chinard, Thomas Jefferson: Apostle of Americanism. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1929. Print. 21 In discussing the sesquicentennial, Peterson argues that it raised “Jefferson’s stature on the scale of patriotic veneration” (Peterson 1985, 350). This statement, naturally, excludes an analysis of the Communists celebration of the sesquicentennial and their adoption of this revolutionary tradition also by means of Jefferson. 22 Irving Howe, Socialism and America. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1985. Print. 91.

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find no reason “why Communists should not claim Thomas Jefferson,” as he was a “free-thinker, a pacifist, a revolutionist, and an equalitarian,” and therefore a “good inspiration”23 for them. While the contributors to the special issue drew on these earlier appropriations, the changed cultural circumstances required them to create another iconic augmentation which altered the pacifist attribution praised in the 1930s in support of the Soviet-American war effort. Accounting for the changed cultural circumstances from the Popular Front 1930s to the Democratic Front also advances the scholarship on this little studied period of the New Masses history and significance. About the Depression period Peterson rightfully claims, “Jefferson shaded the entire political spectrum from the American Liberty League on the far right to the Communist party on the far left.”24 Peterson’s, at times detailed, but broad analysis leads to generalizations such as reading the dedication of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. as the death of the Jefferson’s political tradition, establishing Jefferson as “American hero,” “full-born at last.”25 Yet, I argue that the hero becomes all the more epitomized in many controversial issues on both sides of the argument, as each individual is in need of a different hero. The Republican April 13, 1943 speeches bear witness to this fact and might lead us to a broader understanding of the term “political tradition.” Peterson himself might have suggested this considering his claim, seconded by Burstein and Cogliano, that “[p]‌oliticians were the main carriers of Jefferson’s reputation,” which he explained through the influence of a strong “sense of tradition in American politics.”26 To explain the allure of this “sense of tradition,” Peterson depicted Jefferson as the “most eloquent exponent of political ideals which were to be called democratic and which were to become synonymous with the American ideal.”27 Though his statement carries weight, it obscures the personal reasons behind Jefferson’s moral entrepreneurs’ wish to identify with and seek answers from him.28 By analyzing their background, I will explore those personal reasons, which sheds light on the diversity of Jefferson’s appropriators. Peterson regarded the eulogies given 2 3 Peterson 1985, 366. 24 Peterson 1985, 363. 25 Peterson 1985, 332. Here Peterson employs another grand term, as Jefferson becomes the “hero of civilization” (378). 26 Peterson 1985, 444. 27 Peterson 1985, 444. 28 Given that Peterson criticizes Jefferson’s failure “to codify his political ideas and doctrines” (Peterson 1985, 444), his claim that Jefferson was quoted because he was the most gifted of the founders in expressing his ideas weakens his assessment.

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Introduction - “We Are All Jeffersonians Now”

after Jefferson’s death in 1826 and the first Jefferson Day Dinner (JDD) of 183029 as part of this “sense of tradition.” At the first JDD, speeches were given to promote the political tradition of Thomas Jefferson and to negotiate the direction of the Democratic Party. Yet, Peterson privileged the discussion of issues over an analysis of the rhetorical traditions and conventions within those speeches, which continued into the twentieth century. Chapter three thus analyzes the Jefferson Day speeches contained in the Congressional Record between 1934 and 1943 by remarking upon the rhetorical strategies and suggesting the relation between rhetoric and politics in the creation of iconicity. The moral entrepreneur giving a Jefferson Day speech sought to appropriate Jefferson for specific purposes by ascribing attributions to Jefferson. These attributions served the moral entrepreneurs as means of self-understanding by creating iconic augmentations of Thomas Jefferson.30 While the purposes of appropriation were manifold and varied from congressman to congressman, the study crystalizes four overarching attributions that played out in variety of ways. They serve as a structuring device in this study and constitute common denominators: “Jefferson as Humanitarian;” “Jefferson as States’ Rights Advocate and Strict Constructionist;” “Jefferson as Communist, or Socialist;” and “Jefferson as Practical Idealist.”31 Yet, the study also reveals that these attributions were not separate from each other but overlapped and intertwined. Some of these attributions intertwine with or reflect Peterson’s assertion that men quoted Jefferson because he “was implicated in the successive crises of the democratic experiment.”32 Peterson divided these into two different periods with varying core problematics: from the founding of the republic to Civil War witnessed the tug of war between republicanism and democracy and thereafter the opposing ideals were individualistic and anti-statist clauses versus humanitarian and progressive clauses. However, the JD speeches disclose that this periodization is only an academic helpmate, as politicians from both sides passionately debated republicanism versus democracy even during the Depression and beyond. A  detailed rhetorical analysis of the JD speeches and debates in Congress together with an analysis of the Corpus of Historical American English will bring clarity to the application of the nebulous terms republican, democratic, 2 9 Peterson 1985, 9. 30 For a detailed discussion of “iconic augmentation,” attributions, and appropriations consult Chapter 3 and Chapter 3.2. 31 For further discussion of these attributions and their relation to the question of iconicity and appropriation, see Chapter 3.2. 32 Peterson 1985, 444.

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humanitarian, and progressive, and their various connotations. Considering the etymology of the terms provides insights on how Jefferson’s “political image was reshaped in such a way as to complement the New Deal project of humane reform,”33 but what is more, we learn how the speakers comprehended their attitudes toward the New Deal project of humane reform for themselves and their constituents through language. Burstein stresses the importance of a rhetorical analysis with respect to presidents’ appropriations of Jefferson by remarking on the “subtle language” they employed, calling FDR’s efforts a “loose construction,” contrasting it with Ronald Reagan’s “strict construction[…].”34 The latter, I argue, finds its origin in republican congressmen’s rhetoric in the 1930s, which the Chapter  3.2.2 “Jefferson as States’ Rights Advocate and Strict Constructionist” will explicate. Burstein explains the presidents’ differing appropriations by noting that “As democracy’s muse Thomas Jefferson wavers for one simple reason: democracy is itself volatile. It does not dispense with domination and control, and it does not distribute liberty in equal shares.”35 If applied to congressmen’s appropriations of Jefferson, Burstein’s statement can be applied to the changing coalitions and collaborations between congressmen—sometimes bipartisan—as they interpreted and fulfilled their legislative role within the system of checks and balances. While Peterson’s study engages with a number of congressmen like Samuel Pettengill, or the Republican James M.  Beck, his analysis of Maury Maverick, the eccentric representative from Texas, for example, reveals the shortcomings of a work of such breadth. Peterson only addresses Maverick’s denunciation of the Liberty League and never discusses his dig at the “liberals.” A full analysis of Maverick’s comments, however, lets us draw parallels to his founding of the group, known as the Young Turks. This group of mostly freshman congressmen was more left-leaning than was FDR. I analyze how Maverick used Jefferson’s radical humanitarianism to communicate his weariness of the self-proclaimed ‘liberals’ and how he thus responded to James Truslow Adams’s The Living Jefferson. While Andrew Burstein and Merrill D.  Peterson exaggerated Roosevelt’s role in the revival of Thomas Jefferson, it is certainly true that he promoted others’ attempts at imbuing the New Deal with Jefferson’s sanction. Peterson, for example, quotes Thurman Arnold, who claimed that the “Jefferson symbol” was

3 3 Burstein 2015, 3. 34 Burstein 2015, 78. 35 Burstein 2015, xiii. Similarly, Merrill D. Peterson writes in his preface that the Jefferson image is “highly complex, never uniform, and never stationary” (1985, n.p.).

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used to ‘define […] the crucial need of intelligent statesmanship.’36 Omitting any further discussion of the idea of “intelligent statesmanship,” Peterson continues to comment on FDR’s Independence Day speech given at Monticello in 1936 in which FDR portrayed Jefferson, and thus himself, as the best combination of a “great gentleman” and a “great commoner.”37 FDR suggested that this combination was fortunate for the nation and was closely tied to his own leadership role. Yet most congressmen did not focus on Jefferson’s aristocratic character; rather, his moral entrepreneurs chose to downplay it and to promote the idea of Jefferson as a common man who felt connected with and was shaped by the people. Jefferson’s quality of empathy could then be neatly tied to the attribute of humanitarianism. The discourse analysis of the representatives’ speeches illustrates the correlations between statesmanship and the attribute of Jefferson’s humanitarianism, as discussed in Chapter  3.2.1, and the attribute of practical idealism explored in Chapter  3.2.4. While Peterson and Burstein mention the term “practical idealism” or speak of Jefferson as “practical-minded idealist,”38 they leave the concept unexplained. A critical discourse analysis reveals the historical evolution and use of the phrase in the 1930s in the fields of religion, science, and education. It will disclose the religious component of humanitarianism that certain moral entrepreneurs sought to promote in correlation with Thomas Jefferson. A critical discourse analysis of the congressional speeches and debates supplies the necessary information to read FDR’s last undelivered speech as a unifying collection and distillation of the representatives’ thoughts on Jefferson. The speech was supposed to be given in honor of Jefferson’s birthday on April 13, 1945, and to be broadcast to the nation and to over two hundred individual Jefferson Day Dinner celebrations throughout the states. Burstein identifies as the central point of the speech that FDR attempted to link Jefferson’s advocacy of science to the issue of “world peace.”39 FDR’s recourse to science, however, also draws heavily on the congressmen’s attribution of Jefferson’s practical idealism, to name only one example of FDR’s borrowing of attributions. As Chapter 3.3 3 6 Qtd. in Peterson 1985, 355. 37 Peterson 1985, 360. Andrew Burstein states that FDR “polished his own credentials by blurring the meaning of class. The New York patrician said of the Virginia patriarch and political architect: “He was a great gentleman. He was a great commoner. The two are not incompatible” (Burstein 2015, 11). 38 Burstein 2015, 4. “Roosevelt began to channel the liberal humanist version of Jefferson, the practical-minded idealist, while his party was in disarray.” 39 Burstein 2015, 28.

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will reveal, FDR’s undelivered Jefferson Day speech reverberated the sonorous “We are all Jeffersonians now.” Chapter  1 investigates the first “Jeffersonians” identified in this study, the Southern Agrarians. Their at times implicit, at times explicit, appropriations of Thomas Jefferson evolved out of discussions during the mid-1920s on industrialism and Southern culture. Despite the group’s unity expressed in the “Statement of Principles” of I’ll Take My Stand (1930), it is revealed how their Jefferson references reflected their respective personal backgrounds and ideologies. After this analysis of the first bloom of Jeffersonianism before the Great Depression, the study turns toward the theoretical frameworks of memory studies, civil religion, and iconicity to consider the physical memorialization attempts. These theories advance the arguments that the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. (2.1) became a modern-variation of the traditional icons and that it communicated more about those engaged in the debates than about the essence of Jefferson as represented in the memorial building and its statue. Besides the discourse of the TJMC, Chapter 2.1 analyzes the discourses of several citizen groups and architectural associations, the Fine Arts Commission (FAC), and the National Park Service (NPS) about the various aspects of the Jefferson Memorial in D.C. reflecting the diversity of opinions and appropriations. Aspect of their discourse infused other discussions of Jefferson during his bicentennial celebrations. The groundwork on memory studies and iconicity, which was laid by analyzing the D.C. Jefferson Memorial discussion, is also relevant for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis (2.2). Turning away from the nation’s political center, the focus on the westward expansion highlighted Jefferson’s role in the nation’s continuous development. The focus shifts to a different aspect of Jefferson’s and America’s character. The project that was first promoted by the Democratic Congressman John Cochran and eventually became engulfed in a real estate scandal brought another moral entrepreneur of Jefferson to the public stage, William Lambertson, the Republican senator from Kansas. The chapter investigates the shift from Cochran’s initial appropriation of Jefferson to Lambertson’s combination of defending Jefferson’s honor and principles and agitating against the real estate scheme. The various attempts to celebrate Jefferson’s lasting value for society culminated in the activities on the occasion of the bicentennial of his birth on April 13, 1943. From the mid-1930s onward, different congressmen promoted various bills to make Jefferson’s birthday a national holiday and to enshrine him in the civil religious calendar. These attempts eventually came to fruition in the Presidential Proclamation 2267 on March 21, 1938. The time it took to bring

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Introduction - “We Are All Jeffersonians Now”

about the proclamation implies the still-contested role of Jefferson, which will become apparent in Chapter  2.3.1. In 1943 the celebration of his birthday was expanded by the Thomas Jefferson Bicentennial Commission and its subsidiary, the National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee (NAJBC), discussed in Chapter 3.2.4. Each of these governmental bodies decided which aspects of Jefferson were worthy of the public’s attention and how to best celebrate and display them. Besides these “governmental” versions of Jefferson, as evoked by the various political and public commission members, my analysis in Chapters 2.3.2 and 2.3.3 focuses on two different but no less controversial interpretations and celebrations of Jefferson—the Thomas Jefferson Symposium organized by the Librarian of Congress and the New Masses Jefferson special issue. These suggest to a certain degree how iconicity could be created not only through a material form such as the memorial building and its statue, but also by means of invoking a version of Jefferson through language and writing. This second idea is taken up in Chapter 3 with a specific focus on understanding the rhetorical traditions of the Jefferson Day Dinner speeches and their adaptation in the Depression and early-war period illustrated in Chapter 3.1. Some of these speeches were delivered before Congress but most were first delivered at a Jefferson Day Dinner and then inserted into the Congressional Record (Cong. Rec.) by a congressional colleague. Given these networks, we pay particular attention to congressmen’s double-appropriations of Jefferson in Chapter 3.2, and therefore comprehend the commonalities of diverse members of the Democratic and the Republican Party. The commonalities, however, also transcended party lines and are captured in the Jefferson attributions, “humanitarian,” “states’ right advocate and strict constructionist,” “Socialist or Communist,” and “practical idealist,” analyzed in Chapters  3.2.1 to 3.2.4. At the same time, the discourse analysis illuminates the plethora of differing interpretations that found room under these larger denominators and highlights Paul Ricœur’s borrowed concept of iconic augmentation. It takes into account the national and international developments in addition to the personal background of Jefferson’s promoters and the networks they created in order to orient themselves in the volatile Depression period. The final chapter of this study, by analyzing Franklin D. Roosevelt’s last undelivered Jefferson Day speech, summarizes the findings of the critical discourse analysis of the congressional speeches and debates. The study is organized chronologically, moving from the 1930 to 1945, and within that structure specific categories or attributes used in relation to Thomas Jefferson are explored. Due to the separation of the memorial discourse (covered in Chapter 2) from the

Introduction - “We Are All Jeffersonians Now”

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Jefferson Day Speeches and bills debated in Congress (analyzed in Chapter 3), the chronology is interrupted. Chapter 3, like Chapter 2, investigates the period between 1934 and 1943, with each subchapter roughly following the same chronology.

1 The First Blossoms of a New Bloom: The Southern Agrarians Around the time of the sesquicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, as American Communists began to claim American’s revolutionary heritage and Thomas Jefferson’s role in this “first” American Revolution, the Southern Agrarians began to envision a symposium to rediscover Southern history and culture in an effort to counter capitalism and its gross materialism of the 1920s. Five years of letter writing among some of the “Twelve Southerners,” resulted in their symposium I’ll Take My Stand:  The South and the Agrarian Tradition (ITMS), published in November 1930. The book’s subtitle and the group’s selfgiven name suggests that the Agrarians’ critique of industrial capitalism took a vastly different approach than that of the American Communists. Despite their different approaches and conclusions, the Southern Agrarians and the American Communists shared various appropriations of Thomas Jefferson as anticapitalist. Their respective appropriations of Jefferson were not momentary and self-contained incidents but extended and interlinked with other Jefferson appropriations all the way through the Great Depression into Jefferson’s bicentennial in 1943.1 Even though the Nashville Agrarians did not honor Jefferson’s bicentennial, the National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee’s induction preamble continued ideas of the Agrarian manifesto. Similarly, the Library of Congress’s Jefferson Bicentennial Symposium reverberated with the Agrarians’ attempts to 1 1936 marked an important year in that progression; Communists embraced the Popular Front and moved into America’s political mainstream by invoking Thomas Jefferson. Earl Browder’s campaign slogan “Communism is Twentieth Century Americanism” paved the way for the 1943 New Masses Jefferson special issue. 1936 also witnessed the second, and last, Agrarian manifesto Who Owns America?: A New Declaration of Independence. It was edited by one of the original contributors to ITMS, Allen Tate, who was joined by Herbert Agar. It will not be further discussed in this study. Suffice it to say that of the original Agrarians only Tate in “Notes on Liberty and Property” (80–93) and Owsley in “The Foundations of Democracy” (52–67) named Jefferson in their articles, whereas the other eight Agrarians omitted him. Some new contributors to the second manifest employed Jefferson: John C. Rawe “Agriculture and the Property State” (36–51), T. J. Cauley “The Illusion of the Leisure State” (283–94), and Henry C. Evans, Jr. “Liberty Under the Old Deal” (295–310). Tate mentioned the Jefferson vs. Hamilton dichotomy (90). Owsley attacked the Liberty League’s association with Jefferson.

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formulate a viable position for the individual in an industrial society, which drew on Jeffersonian philosophy. In discussing the Agrarians as Jeffersonians, a portrayal they would have subscribed to and scholars have given credence to, the question however arises as to whether the phrase agrarian tradition, without any direct reference to Jefferson, conjured up his societal vision. Was Jefferson’s agrarianism so ubiquitous that the “Twelve Southerners” did not need to mention his name nor quote from his statements on agrarianism? In fact, the curious absence of Jefferson’s name, ideas, and statements on agrarianism in the title and the “Statement of Principles” of ITMS, and the, at times, obscure references to him in seven of the twelve essays, invite an investigation into the nature of the Agrarians’ appropriation. Charles R. Wilson identifies the intricate relation of the ‘Agrarian Tradition’ to Thomas Jefferson2 and traces a succession, “From Thomas Jefferson’s farmers as God’s chosen people to the defense of agrarianism by the writers of I’ll Take My Stand (1930),”3 yet one has to ask whether this relation is as clear-cut, as Wilson’s obvious Jefferson reference is never employed by the Agrarians. What made scholars pronounce that the Agrarians “justified” their defense of a “traditional, pre-industrial way of life” “by Jeffersonian values”4 when the Agrarians, except Owsley and Fletcher, only indirectly used Jefferson’s ideas? Based on what evidence, does Virginia Rock claim that the Agrarians as “constitutional democrats” were “obviously Jeffersonian in their politico-economic orientation”5? Rock, for example, oversimplifies the unity of the group and even Thomas Jefferson’s own view when she writes: Like Jefferson, they wished for a government whose policies were determined by and for a citizenry composed largely of yeoman farmers. They feared overcentralization and emphasized the importance of local government, protection of minority rights against majority rule, and the preservation of sectional individuality from national standardization.6

2 Charles R. Wilson, “Mythology and Southern Identity.” Myth, Manners, & Memory. Ed. Charles R. Wilson. Vol. 4. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2006. 1–8. Print. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. 4. 3 Wilson 2006, 1–2. 4 Richard H. Pells, Radical Visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Print. 519. 5 Virginia J. Rock, “The Making and Meaning of I’ll Take My Stand: A Study in UtopianConservatism, 1925–1939.” Ph.D. University of Minnesota, 1961. Print. 320. 6 Rock 1961, 320.

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While some of her conjectures about the Agrarian’s position spring from the “Statement of Principles,”7 which all contributors subscribed to, she omits further textual evidence for her pronouncements. Scholars commented on the progression from Jefferson to the Agrarians in their appraisals of the manifesto,8 discussed the cohesion of the views of the contributors to I’ll Take My Stand in general9 and in reference to the “Statement of Principles,”10 and analyzed the development from ITMS to Who Owns America?. However, no study exists that analyzes how the direct and indirect references to Thomas Jefferson function within the essays and whether they coalesce into a coherent image of Jefferson or present several conflicting

7 “An agrarian society is one in which agriculture is the leading vocation, whether for wealth, for pleasure, or prestige—a form of labor that is pursued with intelligence and leisure. [….] The theory of agrarianism is that the culture of the soil is the best and most sensitive of vocations, and that therefore it should have the economic preference and enlist the maximum number of workers” (ITMS 1930, li). 8 Christopher M. Duncan, Fugitive Theory: Political Theory, the Southern Agrarians, and America. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2000. Print. 8. Alexander Karanikas, Tillers of a Myth: Southern Agrarians as Social and Literary Critics. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1969. Print. His analysis draws mostly on works after I’ll Take My Stand. “With Thomas Jefferson, the Agrarians had a more complex problem in attempting to use this powerful Southerner for their current Agrarian crusade. Those aspects of Jefferson’s philosophy in accord with their modern ‘stand’ were retained and savored; the rest were conveniently ignored” (1969, 95). Karanikas’s statement is not surprising since all appropriations draw on the useful parts, ignoring those that are jarring. 9 Rock 1961, 268. She argues that the symposium “was unified in purpose and showed continuity of thought” (268). Cf. Paul K.  Conkin, The Southern Agrarians.1st. Knoxville:  U of Tennessee P, 1988. Print. x.  Thomas L.  Connelly, “Robert Penn Warren as Historian.” A Southern Renaissance Man: Views of Robert Penn Warren. Ed. Walter B. Edgar. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1984. 1–17. Connelly understands Agrarianism as a “search for order out of the chaos of time and change” (14). Their search shared a common Southern origin, both in nature and culture. Rubin argues that “Agrarianism […] was defined in general terms, and the course of action to be followed varied from essay to essay.” Louis D. Rubin, The Wary Fugitives: Four Poets and the South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1978. Print. Walter Lynwood Flemming Lectures in Southern History. 207. 10 William Bedford Clark, The American Vision of Robert Penn Warren. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1991. Print. 26. Clark regards ITMS and its “Statement of Principles” as an indictment of “the path American democracy seemed to have taken […]” and an effort to counter “a leveling conformity of mass production and an economy that abstracted labor from its proper orientation toward the soil” (26).

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images. Did the Agrarians merely produce a “grotesque exaggeration of Jefferson’s traditional, Southern and agrarian features,”11 as Merrill Peterson claims, and what were those features? In order to answer these questions, the ITMS contributor’s backgrounds, their contributions’ purpose and argumentative structure have to be investigated. Havard and Sullivan argue that the Agrarians’ “pragmatic political and social orientation[s]‌” ranged “from traditional, paternalistic conservatives through the advocates of the yeoman middle class as the necessary solid base of a well-ordered society, to those who viewed the populist cause with sympathy and were later proponents of many of the New Deal programs.”12 This diversity13 also imbued the style and argumentative techniques, which suggests that they were drawn to different aspects of Jefferson’s life and philosophy yet often depicted those in such a way as to arrive at similar conclusions. Only seven of the “Twelve Southerners”—Davidson, Owsley, Fletcher, Nixon, Wade, Lytle, and Tate—referenced Thomas Jefferson in their essays. Some seemed to randomly mention him while others quoted from him, and Allen Tate was the only one to criticize him. The discourse analysis focuses on these seven contributors, combining Nixon and Wade in one subchapter, and only references the remaining five Agrarians to highlight continuities that support their vision of agrarianism as related to Thomas Jefferson. Donald Davidson’s essay “A Mirror for Artists” contained the first two Jefferson references, which though used explicitly in regard to the name are used implicitly in regard to their connotations.

1 1 Peterson 1985, 364–5. 12 William C.  Havard, and Walter Sullivan, “Introduction.” A Band of Prophets:  The Vanderbilt Agrarians After Fifty Years. Ed. William C. Havard and Walter Sullivan. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1982. 1–17. Print. 5. 13 Rubin 1978, i. Louis D. Rubin’s table of contents in The Wary Fugitives: Four Poets and the South suggests poetry as unifying interest but affirms their diversity and diverse occupational backgrounds; he focuses on those Agrarians who were integral members of The Fugitives in the 1920s. Cf. Allan Carson, The New Agrarian Mind. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2000. Print. 99–100. Carson points out that Rubin focused on the literary, philosophical, and religious humanist essays within the collection written by Ransom, Davidson, Tate, Young, and Wade. He contrasts these with the two writers he regards as quite literally promoting a return to the land, who dealt with “history, agrarianism, and farming seriously”—Lytle and Owsley (899–100).

Davidson’s Jefferson: The Home-Grown “Aristocrat”

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1.1 Davidson’s Jefferson: The Home-Grown “Aristocrat” Donald Davidson addressed the contemporary Southern artist’s dilemma— the unavailability of Southern history as creative material. To argue his point, Davidson explained how Southern culture was formed and its continued importance for contemporary art. After twenty-five pages, in which Davidson tried to disclaim the industrialists’ arguments that industrialism fosters and democratizes art and education, he arrived at Jefferson’s name. It appeared in connection with other politicians and two writers under the broad topic of Southern culture, which he had described as “stable, religious, agrarian,” and disinterested in the “material values of industrialism” (Davidson 1930, 29).14 Repeating the core argument of the “Statement of Principles,”15 which set the agrarian South against the industrial North, he claimed that the South offered the nation a chance for an “integrated life,” as its “historical consciousness” reached back into “eighteenth century European America” (Davidson 53).16 The South’s culture17 had been shaped by “a fair balance of aristocratic and democratic elements. Plantation affected frontier; frontier affected plantation” (53). Davidson illustrated “[t]‌he balance […] by pairings,” stipulating, “it was no purely aristocratic or purely democratic South that produced Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, Robert E.  Lee and Stonewall Jackson, John C.  Calhoun and Andrew Johnson, Poe and Simms. There was diversity within unity” (53).18 While Jefferson, Lee, and

14 Cf. Ransom 1930, 12. Ransom claimed that in the South “life [was] not measured by industrial and material output.” While he admits that the South had a “good many faults,” it was not “intemperately addicted to work and to gross material prosperity. The South never conceded that the whole duty of man was to increase material production, or that the index to the degree of his culture was the volume of his material production” (12). 15 “All the articles bear in the same sense upon the book’s title-subject: all tend to support a Southern way of life against what may be called the American or prevailing way; and all as much as agree that the best terms in which to represent the distinction are contained in the phrase, Agrarian versus Industrial” (1930, xli). 16 Other contributors and the “Statement of Principles” emphasized the Anglo tradition of the American South, a culture shaped by the soil and less religious than the culture of New England. 17 Ransom traced the South’s unique culture to European principles of leisureliness, claiming that the colonials, while shaped by work, were not consumed by it, but left “time for the work of the mind” (1930, 5). 18 With these pairings, Davidson foreshadowed Andrew N. Lytle’s insistence that the planters had developed from the common man (cf. 1930, 209).

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Calhoun tended toward the “aristocratic” side, their counterparts approached the “democratic” side, and yet they were all united in the agrarian society. Davidson foregrounded the plantation and the frontier conditions as agrarian, not the yeoman farmers whom Jefferson had called God’s chosen people. For Davidson, Jefferson functioned as a plantation “aristocrat,” but only in the sense of the colonies and the new republic, which meant that Jefferson and the South lacked European aristocracy’s extravagance and solid social structures. Yet, Davidson suggested that these plantation aristocrats retained European cultural traditions like classical and humanist learning.19 Therefore, the South was a “gracious civilization” based on “leisureliness, devotion to family and neighborhood, local self-sufficiency and self-government, and a capacity, up through the ‘sixties, for developing leaders” (Davidson 54).20 While Davidson did not connect these ideas to Jefferson directly, Jefferson’s presence in Southern history automatically made him an advocate of these values for Davidson, who praised a hierarchical political structure in which the cultural and wealthy elite sat on top of local self-sufficiency and self-government. Davidson claimed that the arts had flourished in the past’s “gracious civilization” (53). However, the general trend of industrialization with its decline of communities and the arts even left its mark on the South. While Davidson praised the Southern writers James Branch Cabell and Ellen Glasgow, he critically asked: “Why does Mr. Cabell seem so much nearer Paris than to Richmond, to Anatole France than to Lee and Jefferson?” (58). Again, Davidson put Lee and Jefferson in proximity; and yet the North’s denigration of the Southern tradition barred it from being useful to Southern artists. Davidson’s reference to Cabell and Anatole France in relation to Jefferson revealed his conviction that invoking a Jeffersonian tradition, a native tradition, would equally have carried Cabell’s criticism of industrial capitalism and the “social norms of his time.” Though Cabell was born to a prominent Richmond family, his most famous novel Jurgen (1919) was set in a “mythical French province”21 and the socialist Anatole France’s Isle of 19 Ransom, too, considered the South not as “aristocratic” in the European sense, as the settlers of the South were “mostly home-made and countrified” “squires,” in a system of “loosely graduated social orders” (13–4). 20 This non-Jeffersonian passage is similar to Rock’s definition of Jeffersonian political theories (cf. 1961, 320). 21 James Branch Cabell:  Man of Letters and Libraries. Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries. Web. 1 June 2017 .

Owsley’s Jefferson: The Adversary of Alexander Hamilton

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Penguins22 was a satire of European history stretching from the Germanic tribes’ christianization to the industrial age. At the end, a revolution destroys the technological society and brings about a return to a rural life reminiscent of the early modern era, starting the cycle of development all over again. Rather than revolt against the fully established technological society of France’s book, the Agrarians wanted to hinder industry from taking full control in the South and proposed to counter it through a predominantly agrarian, “Jeffersonian” tradition. While this “Southern tradition in which these writers would share has been discredited and made artistically inaccessible” (59),23 Davidson was puzzled that these writers, instead, “should adopt somebody else’s geography and contrarily write like a Northerner […] made sick by an overdose of their own industrialism” (59). Davidson suggested with these indirect references that Jefferson was the South’s truly cultured plantation agrarian, without however describing his writings on agriculture or his plantation home Monticello. Davidson created a highly cultured southern past in lieu of contrast with the industrial North, and his two Jefferson references on those grounds made Jefferson into Davidson’s ideal plantation agrarian, who combined the life of the soil with the life of the mind, and therefore had no clout with socialist or communist ideas.

1.2 Owsley’s Jefferson: The Adversary of Alexander Hamilton Frank Lawrence Owsley, a historian by profession, stipulated in the eponymously titled essay that “the irrepressible conflict” between the North and the South was between their dichotomous economic bases: the agrarian South versus the industrial North (cf. 1930, 69). Owsley’s argument employed the historical school of William Dunnings of Columbia University, which began to demote the “myth” that the Civil War was fought over the moral issue of slavery; rather, the writings gave credibility to the South’s states' rights argument used against government 22 Ransom indirectly used the Isle of Penguins when he quoted from Dean Inge’s lecture “The Idea of Progress,” in which Inge surmised that ‘We may have to look forward to such a change as is imagined by Anatole France at the end of his Isle of the Penguins, when, after an orgy of revolution and destruction, we shall slide back into the quiet rural life of the early modern period. If so, the authors of the revolution will have cut their own throats, for there can be no great manufacturing towns in such a society. Their disappearance will be no great loss. The race will have tried a great experiment, and will have rejected it as unsatisfying.’ According to Ransom, “the South has an important part to play, if she will, in such a counter-revolution” (1930, 26). 23 John Fletcher and Frank Owsley discussed how the North had tried to re-educate the South.

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centralization, to the South’s opposition to the high protective tariff, and to the issues of westward expansion. Narrating the historical development of the nation, Owsley drew on the adversarial relation between Jefferson and Hamilton, employing Jefferson, the agrarian, as a historical actor in a much more direct way than Davidson did. For Owsley and the Agrarians, the Dunnings school offered a justification and glorification of the antebellum Southern society. While the agrarian South lost the Civil War, it retained its “spirit” (63) and kept fighting the “re-education” through Northern schoolbooks (64), in which the South had been depicted as the sole “war criminal,” deficient of moral values, and devoid of any tradition to instill pride in its citizens.24 To support that the South’s reasons for fighting were “reasonable and sound” (67), Owsley, like his colleagues, outlined the English and agrarian roots of the South, including Jefferson’s role in shaping the those “reasonable and sound” values. As the settlers of the South had been primarily English country people, their “[t]‌houghts, words, ideas, concepts, life itself grew from the soil” and “[t]he environment all pointed toward an endless enjoyment of the fruits of the soil” (69). This first indirect Jeffersonian reference became explicit when Owsley continued: “Jefferson, not visualizing the industrial revolution which whipped up the multiplication of populations and tore their roots from the soil, dreamed of America, free from England, as a boundless Utopia of farms taking a thousand generations to fill” (69–70). Owsley’s reference was the most explicit statement and affirmation of Jefferson’s agrarian vision for America in the entire volume, and it focused on farms rather than plantations, and therefore on Jefferson’s democratic vision. Yet Owsley and his colleagues seemed to consciously avoid using the word democracy. Owsley’s choice of the word Utopia was pertinent in two ways. On one hand, he suggested that Jefferson’s vision failed to become reality, as it was corrupted by the industrial revolution; and, on the other hand, it implied Owsley’s own defense of the goodness of agrarian life, which he romanticized for its leisureliness by ignoring that the planter’s leisure was carried on the back of race-slavery. Owsley regarded slavery as “part of the agrarian system, but only one element and not an essential one” (73). Insisting that the virtue of the South was fostered through the soil and opposed the ‘logic’ of material “gain” (73), Owsley disregarded that slavery and the plantation system produced, through exploitation, what he was denying the South was after—wealth. He demonstrated his

24 Owsley echoed Davidson’s claim that Northerners discredited Southern history for its own artists and citizens.

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argumentative inconsistency when he admitted that “slavery was an economic necessity” for the South (82). A  cursory reader or readers in sympathy with Owsley, however, would have seen his Jefferson reference in light of the nonmaterialistic values of farming on which a nation of freeholders would be based. In trying to “right” the historical narrative, Owsley portrayed the abolitionist movement as dangerously interfering with Southern life, as it turned the South, “which had tended heretofore to incline to Jeffersonian liberalism of the deistic type” to a scriptural defense of slavery. By blaming the abolitionists for the South’s “devoutly orthodox,” and “literal […] theology” (80–1), Owsley seemed to criticize the religious fundamentalism that had stigmatized the South. The analysis of Tate’s essay will reveal that he debunked the “Jeffersonian liberalism of the deistic type.” As much as Owsley differentiated Jefferson’s religious sentiments from laterday Southerners, he affirmed that Jefferson and Washington had espoused the same ideas as their contemporaries regarding slavery, miscegenation, race prejudice, abolition, and colonization of the freedmen. Owsley insisted that every Southerner was an abolitionist, yet the “the old fear which we have spoken of [miscegenation], common to all in the days of the Revolution and in the days when Jefferson and Washington were advocating emancipation only on condition that the freedman be sent from the country” (83), kept Southerners from freeing their slaves. Owsley, who had previously excused slavery by saying it was forced upon the South by England, employed the argument of historical necessity to excuse Jefferson and his fellow Southerners and sought refuge in the rightfulness of the majority and great leading figures. Owsley ignored that what he described as the “old fear” was in fact practiced in the South and even by Jefferson himself.25 Owsley appropriated Jefferson, the abolitionist, in a second way. By claiming that slavery was not a moral issue, he sought to dissolve the South’s defense of states’ rights from being tied to the issue of slavery. He affirmed this view by stating that “Jefferson was an abolitionist, as nearly all the Southern people at the time the doctrine [of states’ rights] was evolved and stated by Jefferson” (85). It followed, for Owsley, that states’ rights was the South’s only protection against the centralization of government perpetrated in the interest of the industrial northeast through taxation “for internal improvement” only beneficial to the railroad interests and land speculators of the northeast.

25 Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 1997.

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Owsley saw the opposing sides in political and economic terms embodied in the figures of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson: “The one was extreme centralization, the other was extreme decentralization; the one was nationalistic and the other provincial; the first was called Federalism, the other State Rights […]” (85). For Owsley, Jefferson stood unremittingly “for the South” (85) and for an “unmixed agrarian society” which needed no “positive program” of internal improvement (88).Thus Owsley ignored that Jefferson, when in office, supported internal improvements for the benefit of the whole nation to the degree that he also came to admit that the nation needed manufacturers in order to be self-sufficient with respect to other nations. However, these details and acknowledging Jefferson’s change of mind would have weakened Owsley’s states’ rights argument. Even though Owsley denied that Jefferson could have foreseen the industrial development, his essay suggested that Jefferson’s states’ rights argument was pronounced because he feared the industrial and commercial intrusion of the Northeast. Owsley continued this focus on Jefferson’s earlier stance in life and to some degree his appropriation of Jefferson as “provincial” by quoting Jefferson’s inaugural address, which “called for only enough government to prevent men form injuring one another” (88). The society which Jefferson thereby promoted “was by its very nature, a laissez faire society, and individualistic society where land, water, and timber were practically free. It only asked to be let  alone” (88).26 Owsley ignored that the laissez-faire doctrine, with the rise of industrialization and commerce, in fact contributed to injuring the individual he was trying to defend and that growing population numbers made the idealized freedom of resources impossible. Owsley preferred to imply that the federal government corrupted Jefferson’s idea of laissez faire in the early years of the republic by extending favors to railroads, land speculators, and manufacturers. Southerners, however, defended such an individualistic society as states’ rights secured these “fundamental rights which Jefferson had called the ‘inalienable rights of men’ and Locke and Rousseau had called the ‘natural rights’—right of life, liberty, property, and the free pursuit of happiness […]” (89).27 Owsley added the term free and the right of “property” to the trinity of “life liberty, 26 Once more, Owsley denied slavery. As slaves were regarded property, not human beings, injuring them by depriving them of freedom did not violate that government had to “keep men from injuring one another.” 27 Owsley once again stressed the Anglo roots of the American South when he claimed that ‘personal liberty’ was first expressed in the Magna Carta yet only came to fruition through the American Revolution (89).

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and the pursuit of happiness” that Jefferson inscribed into the Declaration of Independence, thereby altering Jefferson’s emphasis without explaining the consequences of such a change.28 Owsley instead name-dropped “[t]‌he famous Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798–9” as evidence that Jefferson had always worked against “the violation of these [personal] liberties” (89). Without explaining that Jefferson wrote the Virginia Resolution to oppose the Alien and Sedition Acts for curtailing the freedom of speech and due process clauses of the Bill of Rights, Owsley stressed that the Alien and Sedition Acts were born out of “the excesses of the centralizing party of the East” (90). Thus, “Jefferson and Madison […] proclaimed that the federal government had […] shown itself to be an unsafe protector of liberty” (90). Owsley suggested that the people shared Jefferson’s opinion and thus elected him president. Jefferson’s first inaugural address further corroborated that he urged all to support “ ‘the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations of our domestic concerns and the surest bulwark against anti-republican tendencies’ ” (90). Owsley’s explication of the historical debate and his insistence on Jefferson’s rightfulness, constituted the fundamental position of the Southern Agrarians of the 1930s. He reinforced that Jefferson founded the Democratic Party, as the “party of the agrarian South and West” and thereby gave a historical precedent for Ransom’s hope that the Democratic Party if it followed principles “defined as agrarian, conservative, anti-industrial […],” will be on their side in battling the industrial spirit and Herbert Hoover, who had been accused of blindly following the empty industrial slogan of progress (Ransom 1930, 27). Owsley portrayed Jefferson as a provincial, agrarian purist—a notion that even the Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Wallace, would try to disclaim in his speech “Thomas Jefferson: Practical Idealist” in 1935.29 Yet, the Jefferson-Hamilton controversy remained a favorite of many Democratic congressmen throughout the 1930s. By making Jefferson the exact opposite of Hamilton, and the South the opposite of the North, Owsley made him a stronger advocate of states’ rights, an individualistic society, and pure agrarian economy than he really was. Owsley selectively foregrounded and appropriated Jefferson’s younger years through direct references to the Virginia Resolution and Jefferson’s first inaugural

28 Owsley alteration, contrasted with Warren’s accurate treatment in “A French View of Thomas Jefferson.” 29 The speech by Henry A. Wallace will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3.2.4. Suffice it to say that Wallace proclaimed that Jefferson was not a “dyed-in-the-wool agrarian” (1935, 2).

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address, in which states’ rights defended personal liberties, including the possession of property, and the uniqueness of the agrarian South and West. While the quotes from those documents are the most direct appropriation, Owsley’s point of view blinded his interpretation of historical facts. Owsley omitted to explain how property in an agrarian society influenced the political structure except for claiming that it made for a more integrated life. Neither Davidson, nor Owsley discussed the interrelation of property and self-sufficiency in Jefferson’s political philosophy.

1.3 Fletcher’s Jefferson: The Natural Aristoi or “Intellectual Elite” John Gould Fletcher’s essay “Education, Past and Present” attempted to right the image of Jefferson, the educator, as promoted by the industrialized North and the liberals.30 Fletcher attacked the North’s educational philosophy and practice and its encroachment on the South. Standardized education was aimed at producing members of the industrial workforce and not good citizens. Fletcher suggested that education, as currently employed, was not a panacea for the ills of industrial society, an idea that Davidson already refuted in regard to art. Fletcher called on history to buttress his position, praising that “the object of public education in the American Colonies and the later states up to 1865, was to produce good men” (1930, 95). However, this goal was lost soon after the Revolution when Americans mistakenly made Thomas Jefferson the “parent” of public education that was free and equal for every pupil (Fletcher 104). By quoting and analyzing the “ ‘bill for a more general diffusion of knowledge,’ which [Jefferson] introduced into the Virginia Legislature as early as 1779,” Fletcher clarified that the bill provided that free public schools should be available to all those (and here Fletcher quoted from the bill) who “ ‘nature endowed with genius and virtue’ ” (105). Jefferson thus never demanded that “all should receive the same type of education in the same way, at the public expense, as is now done;” (105). While it was “true [that] he wished elementary education” to be free to all, Jefferson’s wish for “a system of competitive scholarship for the poorer classes” (105) and the other proposals were “to mitigate the sting of economic inequality, that to this day prevails in America […]” (106). Therefore, “Jefferson was a democrat only in so far as he sought to make it possible to educate the poor on equal terms with the rich” (106–7). Fletcher is the only one

30 Cf. Peterson 1985, 364.

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who uses the word democrat in conjunction with Thomas Jefferson31 and his use merely suggested that Jefferson was motivated by an instinct for equal justice in education, a leveling, which did not mean sacrificing and lowering the standard, but finding merit and talent to raise the standard. Fletcher thereby promoted a specialization or elitism which fit with his own cultural and educational background, such as his attendance of Harvard and his participation in the imagist movement. He expressed his cultural elitism when he complained about the “corrupted and vulgar modern age,”32 motivating him in his attack on a standardized, low-achievement educational system focused on industry, not culture. In order to uphold a notion of culture fed by nurturing talent, Fletcher, similar to other Agrarians, disputed that Andrew Jackson was a pure Jeffersonian when he discussed his educational policies derived from a misrepresentation of Jefferson’s ideas. Jackson’s federal government paid out money per student to the states in a democratic way, but the money, in many cases, got lost through corruption or was put into educational funds that were barely appropriated. Fletcher argued that Jefferson, in contrast to Jackson, would have invested the money in a national university located in Washington, D.C. and thereby guaranteed that the leadership in arts and letters could come from the South, not New England (108). Fletcher alluded to the true purpose of Jefferson’s educational proposals based on a selective tier system—the promotion of cultural public leaders. The South’s failure to follow Jefferson’s proposals and its adoption of standardization of education for which the industrial theory advocated led to a loss of vitality in society. Rejecting Horace Mann’s educational ideal, Fletcher promoted diversification when he said, “Either Jefferson’s idea of only training the best and most promising, or the idea of combining precise agricultural knowledge along with some amount of general culture, would have been better for the South than what was actually adopted” (111).33 To reverse this trend, “[s]‌chools of manual training, arts, and crafts” should receive “equal honor along with our high schools” (121), as they were more valuable in an agricultural society and deserving of support along with the agricultural colleges and black institutions: Tuskegee College and Hampton Institute. 31 Davidson had considered Jefferson a squire, member of the highest social group, yet one that was not aristocratic in the European sense but influenced by leveling or democratic frontier virtues (cf. 1930, 53). 32 Conkin 1988, 58. 33 Davidson suggested education “can do comparatively little to aid the cause of the arts as long as it must turn out graduates into an industrialized society which demands specialists in vocational, technical, and scientific subjects” (1930, 37).

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To illustrate the absurdity of the “democratization” of education, Fletcher pointed out that no one would call the selective promotion of athletes in schools “undemocratic” (117).34 Following this logic, he argued that only a separation of students according to their talents and interests—and skin color, though Fletcher never explicitly stated it—could free the high schools from lowering standards. A selective process, as Fletcher said, will once again produce “culture” and an “intellectual élite—a thing we had from the Revolution down to the Civil War” (121). Jefferson was not only a member of this elite—as Davidson, Owsley, Lytle, Nixon, and Wade proclaimed35—but the Agrarians suggested that he regarded it as the best safeguard against the anti-republican tendencies of centralization. Fletcher insisted that unless these changes were implemented, “nothing will remain of the local color, the diversity, the humanity, the charm of our South,” “in another generation” (121). Instead the South would “become assimilated outwardly and inwardly to the street gangs of New York and Chicago” (121).36 Someone familiar with Jefferson’s writings could read this last line as reminiscent of Jefferson’s warning against the mobs of the cities; yet, Fletcher did not make this connection explicit, but left the reader with this unsettling, dystopian vision. As a contrast, Fletcher reclaimed Jefferson’s vision of a natural aristocracy cultivated by a selective education.

1.4 Nixon’s and Wade’s Jefferson: The Father of Populism and Practical Philosopher In “Wither Southern Economy,” Herman C. Nixon, an historian and the member of the group who would influence New Deal agricultural policies, drew on Lyle 34 Fletcher lamented: the current system “gives no opportunity to the youth who has in him the spark of desire to rise intellectually. In fact, if it did, it would have to limit itself to youths of that type, and become thereby not standardized, but selective, not industrial but cultural, and thereby ‘undemocratic’ in the eyes of the taxpayers” (117). This double standard was regrettable, but “such is the logic of our industrialized America” (117–118). Fletcher echoed Davidson’s critique that the system was dominated by “industrial methods of administration—the entire repulsive fabric of standards, credits, units, scientific pedagogy, over-organization” (1930, 38). 35 Davidson 1930, 53; Owsley 1930, 88. Nixon 1930, 180; Lytle 1930, 209; Wade 1930, 273. 36 Ransom already held up the South’s different philosophies of learning and knowledge as cures to contemporary society but admitted that “Southern intellectual life” was not as deep as Europe’s. “They had a certain amount of […] classical and humanistic learning, not highly scientific, and not widely scattered about over a variety of special studies” (14).

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Lanier’s explications on the deceptiveness of the ideal of “industrial ‘progress’ or ‘prosperity’ ” (Lanier 1930, 122–3), which “is about to become part of the Southern mind” (Nixon 1930, 176).37 Currently “agrarianmindedness [still] predominates in the face of a long exposure to the industrial Revolution” (178). After reviewing the statistics of the Southern economy, Nixon concluded that its commerce and banking were still “largely built around agriculture” (180). Nixon, a scholar of Iowa populism with an interest in the Social Gospel Movement and the needs of the poor,38 chastised these commercial interests, in particular the Southern cotton dealers who “run afoul of a senatorial anti-trust inquisition” (180). Nixon contrasted these dishonorable middle men’s practices with the past when “[i]‌t was largely agriculture that has given economic status to […] Washington, Jefferson and Jefferson Davis” (180). Nixon deliberately ignores that this positively connotated “economic status” was based on the exploitation of slave labor. As a social scientist, Nixon focused on the socio-economic realities by suggesting that “a majority of Southern college students with their comparatively large flair formerly for politics and later for literary productivity” have come from an agricultural background (181). Nixon’s excursion into the realm of political and cultural leadership in the South first seemed at odds with his statistical, economic defense of an agrarian society, however, it fitted well with the emphasis on Jefferson’s leadership espoused by the preceding Agrarians and John Donald Wade’s “The Life and Death of Cousin Lucius.” Wade wrote a semi-fictional biographical sketch39 of a Southern gentleman born before the Civil War and his success at living an “integrated,” well-balanced life in the face of increasing industrialization under the New South doctrine. Wade’s hero, Cousin Lucius, attended a Methodist college after the war and engaged in gentlemanly traditional college activities. Wade imagined that Lucius, his fellows, and his teachers “were large hearted man, in way of being philosophical, and they felt a pity for their own people, in their poverty and in their political banishment from a land that 37 Lanier 1930, 122–123. The North had been identified by the Southerners as an industrial society that considered its own way of life and education as progressive. The central claim of Lanier’s essay was that “progress” was only a “slogan,” “a device for social control” (122), and “the central psychological factor in the maintenance of our top-heavy industrial superstructure” (123). 38 Conkin 1988, 67. 39 Conkin 1988, 65–66. Wade, a colleague of Davidson in the English Department, was interested in “Southern humor, the Methodist church, and biography” (Conkin 1988, 64) which found expression in his own work.

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they had governed—no one in his senses would say meanly—through Jefferson and Calhoun and Lee” (273). Wade praised the hierarchical order of Southern society and argued that even Northerners would admit they had been practical politicians, great leaders, but also philosophical and connected to the common people. Wade constructed a unity of interests despite the undemocratic structure of Southern society and joined his colleagues in condemning Congressional Reconstruction, which had disenfranchised the old Southern leaders, who, for Wade, remained an inspiration to virtuous men. The importance of political and cultural leadership also emerged in Nixon’s contribution, who himself eventually sought the same kind of leadership in the patrician, humanitarian Franklin D. Roosevelt.40 To discuss the issue of leadership, Nixon noted that after the World War “Southern-Western agrarian protest” against industrialism declined and was “much weaker [now] than in the days of Jefferson and Bryan” (194).41 Nixon, the scholar, was familiar with the Jeffersonian tradition within the populist movement embodied by William Jennings Bryan, and, like Owsley, he emphasized that Jefferson was their ancestor in the struggle against industrial encroachment, who had organized and rallied the yeomen of the country. Nixon’s appropriation of Jefferson, not just as a Southern politician and leader, but a national leader who stood for the interests of the common people, individualism, and personal liberties, was also reflected in Andrew N. Lytle’s “The Hind Tit.” Nixon advocated for a revival of this Jeffersonian struggle in which the South by “subordinating industrial process […,] exemplif[ied] a cultural emergence from a too acquisitive society” (199–200). Unlike John Wade’s Jefferson, the philosophical and political leader of the South, Nixon’s Jefferson was more progressive, populist and democratic. Following that kind of progressivism, Nixon implied, would mean to shape industrialism to the cultural needs of the South, rather than to banish it.

1.5 Lytle’s Jefferson: Subsistence and Independence as “Pursuit of Happiness” In “The Hind Tit,” Andrew Lytle took up the Agrarians’ critique of the North’s materialistic, acquisitive economic philosophy when he refuted the slogan that society at large was more “prosperous” (1930, 201) than it ever had been before.

4 0 Conkin calls Nixon a “fervent supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt” (1988, 67). 41 With less neo-confederate vehemence, Nixon rehashed Ransom‘s argument that industrialism was “a foreign invasion of Southern soil” (Ransom 1930, 23).

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Rather, the individual experienced “the labors and pains” (201) of chasing after this much talked about prosperity, which remained elusive. Lytle contrasted these conditions with the “high expectations held universally by the founders of the American Union for a more perfect order of society” (201). Lytle appropriated Jefferson as teacher and pioneer in their struggle for a more perfect order and against industrialism by making Jefferson the first in a historical progression and the opposite of Hamilton: “We have been taught by Jefferson’s struggles with Hamilton, by Calhoun’s with Webster, and in the woods of Shiloh or along the ravines of Fort Donaldson where the long hunter’s rifle spoke defiance to the more accelerated Springfields, that the triumph of industry, commerce, trade brings misfortunes to those who live on the land” (202). Lytle’s list of Southern leaders indicated that Jefferson was in fact on the Confederate side in its fight for an agricultural way of life. Since most Confederate soldiers had hailed from farms rather than plantations, Lytle’s phrase “those who live on the land” emphasized the yeoman farmer or tenant farmer as primary victims of the war and industrialism. Besides the Jefferson-Hamilton reference, Lytle also drew on Owsley’s insistence that Jefferson could not foresee the Industrial Revolution by stating that “technology,” “now, in the twentieth, not in the eighteenth, century for the first time,” threatened the “ordinary human functions of living” (202). The industrial empire had undertaken the “conquest of the earth’s goods and markets,” which Lytle worried might lead to war between nations. Domestically, Lytle argued, the terrific effort to manufacture ammunition—that is, wealth—so that imperialism may prevail, has brought upon the social body a more deadly conflict, one which promises to deprive it, not of life, but of living; take the concept of liberty from the political consciousness; and turn the pursuit of happiness into a nervous running-around which is without the logic, even, of a dog chasing its tail. (122)

By referencing Jefferson’s language of the Declaration of Independence, Lytle continued his earlier insistence on Jefferson as heroic leader in the struggle against the commercial and imperialistic interests. Like the American Communists of 1926, Lytle ironically commented on the betrayed or unrealized idealism of the Declaration of Independence. Lytle departed from the Communists, however, by indicting the industrial system for producing a society lacking even the instinct of a “dog chasing its tail.” Modernity, industrialism, and the focus on wealth had created a society which lacked higher values and a cultured life worth living. Lytle echoed the “Statement of Principles,” arguing that the only salvation “lies in a return to a society where agriculture is practiced by most of the people. It is in fact impossible for any culture to be sound and healthy without the

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proper respect and proper regard for the soil” (Lytle 1930, 203).42 He dispelled the industrialists’ promises of riches through farm technology as false promises when he proclaimed: “A farm is not a place to grow wealthy, it is a place to grow corn” (205). Agriculture and Jefferson were depicted as disinterested in wealth or material acquisitions. Like his colleagues, Lytle argued that the South was mainly filled with “plain people” and that “[f]‌rom them the planter class was made” (209). Lytle, who detailed the day-to-day workings of a small farm later in his essay, thereby displayed a “visceral and deep commitment to the South and its ordinary yeomen,” which according to Conkin, made him “much more equalitarian Jeffersonian”43 than Ransom, the philosopher. Despite this commitment to the yeoman, Lytle acknowledged the cultural power and leadership of the plantation owners without saying that Jefferson was one of them, as “they were the more vigorous, the more intelligent, the more fortunate— the strong men of their particular culture” (209) in regard to the battle over political leadership before 1860.44 Lytle insisted that Jefferson’s “self-sufficient republic of freeholders did not contemplate” Andrew Jackson’s idea of democracy (209). For Lytle, John C. Calhoun, not Jackson, defended the Jeffersonian idea of leadership and culture, which albeit had too little time to become ingrained in Southern society before being destroyed by the Civil War (cf. 210). Lytle praised Calhoun by calling him “a philosopher as well as logician” and implied that he followed Jefferson’s tradition (210). Calhoun, unlike the practically minded Jackson and Clay, had the vision and intellect to perceive that a well-ordered, hierarchical society with strong leadership was vital for the survival of culture and that standardization and democratization threatened to destroy the very individual that Jackson attempted to protect. Lytle’s sketch describing the interaction between the planter, politician, and yeoman farmer in their respective roles attested to the “balance” in a hierarchical ante-bellum society (213). Hence, the Southern Agrarians promoted the cultural tradition that was based in Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun rather than following Andrew Jackson. Due to their emphasis on hierarchy, the Agrarians have been attacked

4 2 “Statement of Principles” 1930, li. 43 Conkin 1988, 62. 44 Lytle remarked that a “society which recognizes the supremacy of nature and man’s frailty” respected the efforts of each person who attempted to make a living according “to his capacity and desires.” Hence, “those who accumulate great estates deserve whatever reward attends them, for they have striven mightily” (210).

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as elitist thinkers,45 removed from reality, and became tainted as fascists by their critics when they published articles in Seward Collin’s American Review.46 Not only their attitude toward culture and learning, but also their religiosity, distinguished the Southern Agrarians from the ordinary rural farmers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers. While Southern religiosity in the 1920s and 1930s was still imbued with a literal, fundamentalist strain that Owsley had contrasted with Jefferson’s deistic type, Charles P. Roland suggests that the Agrarians did not fall in either category.47 Southerners, no matter their class and church affiliation, typically defended the belief that ‘man holds a position in the universe under divine guidance’ and “refused to convert science into a religion,”48 which the North had done, according to the Agrarians.49 The Southern Agrarians while in agreement on the false veneration of science, were not as unanimous on religion itself. Thomas D. Young states that “Few, if any, of the Nashville group believed in man’s natural goodness, or in his perfectibility, not to mention his divinity. All of the Agrarians perhaps–and surely Ransom, Tate, Davidson, and Warren–would have disagreed with Emerson’s proclamation that as Jesus was divine so are we all.”50 Paul Murphy suggests that John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate were “conservative modernists concerned with the decline of religious authority in modern life,”51 which becomes obvious in Tate’s contribution to ITMS. Murphy considered it “the most difficult and,

45 Michael Kreyling, The Inventing of Southern Literature. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1998. Print. He argues: the “Agrarian project was and must be seen as a willed campaign on the part of the elite to establish and control ‘the South’ in a period of intense cultural maneuvering. [They] knew full well there were other ‘Souths’ than the one they touted; they deliberately presented a fabricated South as the one and only real thing” (xii). 46 Cf. Kreyling, “Southern Literary and Intellectual History in the Twentieth Century: The Agrarians to Richard Weaver.” American Cultural Critics. Ed. David Murray. Exeter: U of Exeter P, 1995. 11–32. Print. Exeter Studies in American and Commonwealth Arts VI. 21; Cf. Paul V. Murphy, The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2001. Print. 71. 47 Charles P. Roland, “The South of the Agrarians.” A Band of Prophets: The Vanderbilt Agrarians After Fifty Years. Ed. William C.  Havard and Walter Sullivan. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1982. 19–39. Print. 29. 48 Roland 1982, 27. 49 Cf. Lanier “A Critique of the Philosophy of Progress” 1930. 50 Thomas D. Young, Waking Their Neighbors Up: The Nashville Agrarians Rediscovered. Athens: The U of Georgia P, 1982. Print. Lamar Memorial Lectures 24. 62. Cf. Roland 1982, 29. 51 Murphy 2001, 4–5.

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in some ways, discordant essay in the collection,”52 and the same can be said in respect to Tate’s Jefferson appropriation.

1.6 Tate’s Jefferson: Caught in between Praise and Derision In “Remarks on Southern Religion,” Allen Tate argued for a renewal of religious faith in the South that the modern developments had destroyed. For Tate religion and tradition, like myth, “should be in conviction immediate, direct, overwhelming,” yet “the appreciation of that kind of imagery,” he stipulated, “is an art lost to the modern mind” (1930, 156). In discussing “the modern mind,” Tate eventually drew on Thomas Jefferson; yet this reference can only be understood by comprehending Tate’s thoughts about the components and prerequisites for religion and its ideal relation to society. Tate positioned his sense of religion, for which he introduced the image of the whole horse, the grass-feeding creature, against modern society’s half-religion of the “half-horse,” which saw only the horse’s practical and workable part, that is the “horsepower” (157). He continued this idea in discussing two different approaches to history and tradition, only one of which yielded a concrete experience—the short view of history. The “Long View” of history, in contrast, lost its concreteness by seeing history only as an idea, an abstraction (cf. 161). As religious conviction needed to be instantaneous, Tate posited that tradition and history also needed to be accepted for whatever they were. The act of selecting from different traditions or versions of history obliterated it, as the decision would be based not on faith, but on “utility, and workableness, of the religious objects [or history] with respect to the practical aims of society” (163). This denunciation of “practicality” played a major role for Tate’s rebuttal of Thomas Jefferson and the modern mind.53 Tate located the beginnings “practicality” and “abstraction” in America when he compared John Adams with Thomas Jefferson in their discussion on the “possibility of morals” (170).While Tate sorrowfully admitted that Southern culture lacked a true religion tied to its agrarian life (cf. 166), he nonetheless held that the South was still closer to the feudal religion than New England as represented by John Adams’ view on morality (170). Tate criticized that Adams considered morality as a “process of moral reasoning,” an abstraction. Jefferson, in contrast, 5 2 Murphy 2001, 23. 53 Tate admitted his inconsistency: “I am trying to discover the place that religion holds with logical, abstract instruments, which of course tend to put religion in some logical system or series, where it vanishes” (163).

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located a sense for morality in every human being relying on “custom, breeding, [and] ingrained moral decision,” not a process of reasoning (170). Jefferson made his moral decisions intuitively, informed by custom and breeding, which for Tate was still suggestive of “Higher Things” (155) and a vital tradition. Had Jefferson still served as a more positive example as compared to Adams in terms of morality, Tate attacked the “rationalistic legacy of Jefferson”54 and expressed his “uneasiness of establishing a tradition through politics”55 at the end of his essay. Tate reiterated the premise that the “Western mind” was radically divided between “the religious, contemplative, the qualitative […] and the scientific, the natural, the practical” and argued that “the scientific mind always plays havoc with the spiritual life when it is not powerfully enlisted in its cause” (173). Tate identified Jefferson as the epitome of the scientific mind “operating alone,” and criticized the disastrous consequences. Jefferson’s scientific mind, according to Tate, worked with the “formula: [t]‌he ends of man are sufficiently contained in his political destiny” (173). While Tate never clarified how he arrived at this “Jeffersonian” formula, Jefferson’s primary concern with the new nation’s political organization to secure the peoples’ rights might explain Tate’s conjectures. Tate defined the idea of “political destiny of men” by saying it “is the way they work, and the ends they hope to achieve collectively by the operation of mechanical laws” (173). While Tate considered this idea Jeffersonian, it sounded rather like Marx’s historical materialism. Tate did not clarify what he meant by “mechanical laws,” which leaves us to assume that he contrasted the laws of custom and tradition, which he had praised in relation to Jefferson’s morality, with laws that work like machinery, regulated and schematically toward some practical end on the basis of cause and effect. A society built on such laws devoid of humanity,56 Tate seemed to suggest, participated in a half-religion. Given these conjectures and repeated denunciations of “practicality,” Tate’s claim that “the ante-bellum Southerners never profoundly believed [Jefferson’s formula]”, while “they acted as if they did” (173–4), implied the incongruity of Jefferson’s scientific, practical mind with other Southerners. Tate opined that Southerners expressed a “good deal of dissent” and repudiated Jefferson’s

5 4 Murphy 2001, 82. 55 Rock 1961, 291. 56 Tate had insisted that Southerners “saw themselves as human beings living by humane principles from which they were unwilling to subtract the human so as to set the principle free to operate on an unlimited program of practicality” (1930, 172).

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formula at the “Virginia Constitutional Convention,” which Tate wrongfully dated in 1832 (174). Regardless of the wrong date, the convention was the “first step” of repudiation, “but the last step was so far off that it could not possibly have preceded 1861” (Tate 1930, 174). No scholar has commented on Tate’s elusive opinions in these next to last paragraphs of the essay. Tate’s comments regarding the Virginia Constitutional Convention can be explained by Susan Dunn’s analysis of Jefferson’s lingering role in the convention57 which was sought by the disenfranchised small-scale famers of the western part of Virginia on whose side Jefferson supposedly stood. The political power resided with the plantation and slave owners of the eastern Tidewater region and the absence of checks and balances made an all-powerful Congress rule from above and appoint local officers and judges. Dunn argues that this ran counter to Jefferson’s vision, who complained that is was “ ‘an elective despotism’ […] ‘[and] not the government we fought for’ ”58 and “ ‘an usurpation of the minority over the majority.’ ”59 Jefferson’s main concern regarding the Constitution was that it did not allow for constitutional amendments.60 The progressives drew on Jefferson’s authority and arguments, which he had made public in 1824 at the first attempt of holding a Constitutional Convention. More illuminating than the arguments of the progressives, who called Jefferson ‘the great Apostle of human liberty’ whose ‘spirit of reform has never slept,’61 however, was the rebuttal from the conservative John Randolph of Roanoke, which lined up with Tate’s comments. Dunn describes Randolph’s comments and quotes him directly: “A Jefferson might thrive on the redesign of constitutions just as he had relished continuously redesigning Monticello, but for Randolph, the Jeffersonian ‘lust of innovation’ was irrational, malignant, and damnable.

57 Susan Dunn, Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison, and the Decline of Virginia. New York: Basic Books, 2007. Print. 152. 58 Dunn 2007, 151. 59 Dunn 2007, 152. “Virginia had rejected the kind of vital, democratic, self-governing townships that Jefferson admired in New England, where citizens took part in the administration of their public affairs and elected their own county judges and officers” (Dunn 2007, 151). 60 Dunn 2007, 151. 61 Dunn writes that his heirs believed Virginia’s “backwardness in agriculture and in industry” was directly tied to the monolithic Constitution, which denied the franchise to “good citizens,” as it drove the best minds and talented citizens out of Virginia and kept others out. The advocates for reform also wished for the government to become more active for society, to improve schools or transportation (2007, 154).

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‘[…] Sir, if there be any point in which the authority of Mr. Jefferson might be considered valid, it is in the mechanism of a plough.’ ”62 The word mechanism returns us to Tate’s vilification of the “mechanical laws” that Jefferson’s formula produced. Tate defended unchanging traditions and a stable religion which he had described as intuitive, instantaneous acts of faith and non-political. In contrast, Jefferson advocated change and reasoned that one generation could not bind the current generation, thereby obliterating tradition in its broadest sense. Jefferson’s penchant to “redesign” constitutions and buildings verged on practicality and a will to improve based on the idea of man’s ability to order nature and one’s affairs. For Tate, this conception of perfectibility and practicality ignored the volatility of nature, which only a true religion could account for.63 Paul Murphy declares that Tate saw Jefferson as “[t]‌he southern model of abstract thinking64”; however, the analysis revealed that Tate considered Jefferson as an overly practical thinker who believed in the perfectibility of men and institutions through constant re-evaluation, reasoning, and change. “Tate saw Jefferson’s political legacy as the South’s only hope—albeit a paradoxical one— for regaining its tradition,” writes Murphy. Tate did in fact proclaim that “the modern southerner inherits the Jeffersonian formula,” yet he lamented that it was a “concrete and very unsatisfactory history” (174), as the political tradition,

6 2 Dunn 2007, 159. 63 Dunn highlights another point of Tate’s Jefferson criticism when she writes: “Randolph saved most of his contempt for the ‘monstrous tyranny’ of what he called ‘King Numbers,’ that is, the principle of majority rule, the same principle that Jefferson had enshrined in his inaugural address” with the words: ‘The will of the majority is in all cases to prevail’ (2007, 159). The Agrarians criticized that democracy, albeit mostly in conjunction with the rise and manipulation of big business, in fact threatened the ‘old individualism’ (cf. Lanier 1930, 131–132) and a well-ordered society. Lanier’s comments upon the rise of democracy, which “culminated […] in the formation of the American and French republics,” echoed his Agrarian colleagues’ remarks on the unhappy alliance of government and industry, as America’s democratic tendency “was now complicated by a counter influence in the form of the industrial revolution. We say ‘counter’ influence because the political democracy of these republics was based upon an agrarian economy, upon an individualism which permitted great personal autonomy in the conduct of all phases of living, and which at the same time promoted social stability through attachment, in one form or another, to land” (131). These Agrarian economies in America, however, became “disrupted by industrialism […] and a train of attendant phenomena” (Lanier 1930, 131–32). 64 Murphy 2001, 23.

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Tate seemed to argue, was merely a system of practicality not based on a sense of “Higher Things” but on everyday earthly matters of an economic nature. The South, according to Tate, never had “a body of doctrine setting forth its true conviction that the ends of man require more for their realization than politics” (174). Had the South had that doctrine it “would not have been defeated” (174). This higher purpose was the undeveloped tradition of the South he sought to “take hold of ” (174), that could not be erected from within as it never existed in the first place. In order to “re-establish a private, self-contained, and essentially spiritual life” (175), the method would have to be “active, political […] violent and revolutionary,” Tate claimed, yet did not admit that this would be the Jeffersonian tradition he was reluctant to draw on. The Agrarians’ process of appropriation of Thomas Jefferson primarily rested upon their creation of the South’s history, culture, and values, with more or less evidence, within which Jefferson was placed. Together with the promise of agrarianism as a better social system than industrialism, the Agrarians opened the path to fitting Jefferson into their penchant for localism, individualism, and a stratified and tradition-minded socio-cultural system. The Agrarians must have assumed that people knew Jefferson for a Southerner, that he owned a plantation, and that he belonged to the political leaders of the time. Beyond this knowledge, the Agrarians did further the reader’s knowledge about Jefferson in three concrete instances:  the Bill on the Diffusion of More General Knowledge, the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Resolution, and the first inaugural address. Fletcher corrected how people had read and applied Jefferson’s education bill, while Owsley and Lytle depicted Jefferson as a states’ rights advocate and thus proponent of the Confederate cause. A second strategy in this appropriation was the grouping of Jefferson together with such Southern leaders as John Calhoun and Robert E. Lee or by contrasting Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, the uncultured democrat, or Alexander Hamilton and who had been made to stand for the modern-day industrial capitalism. The general tenor of the Agrarians’ Jefferson appropriation was one of lament for the South’s not having followed Jefferson, the cultured plantation aristocrat, who was politically provincial as he advocated local self-government. Repeated calls for upholding personal liberties, including the right to autonomous living and property, were tied to Jefferson—almost mirroring the conservative, business-oriented American Liberty League rhetoric. Yet, they left unexplained why Jefferson favored common men’s ownership and work in agriculture. In fact, none of the Agrarians quoted from his written work that would have supported the value of an agrarian life in its interplay with the liberties, education, and political organization.

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From the Agrarians and their manifesto which unbeknownst to them at the onset of the Great Depression produced a timely commentary on industrial overexpansion and financial speculation, my analysis moves into the Depression year of 1934 to trace a more obvious turn to Thomas Jefferson. In the intervening years, Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency against Herbert Hoover whom Ransom had accused of blindly following the empty slogans of progress. Roosevelt’s first action, the bank closure, was quickly followed by emergency legislation. By 1934, the nation had weathered the immediate danger and moved on to a more or less well-defined program of recovery and reform measures, such as federal investment in infrastructure projects to stimulate job growth. A shift from state responsibility and funding of public works to the federal level coincided with a revival of Thomas Jefferson’s ideas and eventually found expression in the proposal to erect a Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. and a Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, MO. Further proof of Jefferson’s emergence into the public discourse appeared in the form of attempts at making Jefferson’s birthday a national holiday. These forms of honoring Jefferson developed throughout the Depression years and culminated in the dedication of the D.C. Jefferson Memorial on Jefferson’s Two Hundred’s Birthday Anniversary in 1943. How these movements continued, expanded, or challenged the Agrarians’ notion of Thomas Jefferson’s value for the nation in the twentieth century in a different form and how these memories of Jefferson influenced American civil religion and the concept of iconicity is explored in the next chapter.

2 Memorializing Jefferson Most notable among memory formations regarding Thomas Jefferson were the proposals to erect the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis. Both measures were initiated in Congress in 1934. While the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in D.C. was finished in 1947, the National Expansion Memorial was not completed until the 1970s. Another attempt to memorialize Jefferson was to declare his birthday, April 13th, a national holiday, and thereby mark the date as a central, even official, event in the “annual ritual calendar for the civil religion.”1 On the two-hundredth anniversary of Jefferson’s birth in 1943, the celebration consisted of various forms of memorialization: the dedication of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, a Library of Congress’s panel discussion, the Jefferson special issue of the New Masses, and the creation of the National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee. The Jefferson Memorial even became the scene of the Easter Sunday Service held by the Federation of Christian Youth. Even though these forms differed in terms of their materiality and performativity, they shared significant similarities insofar as memorialization required a negotiation of what one wants to memorialize and how. These questions, according to Émile Durkheim and Wagner-Pacifici, are inextricably linked to the people or group that seeks to memorialize someone or something. Wagner-Pacifici thus describes the agent, the “ ‘moral entrepreneur’ who has the energy and memorializing discourse to give [selected memories] collective shape.”2 Even though she uses the singular “moral entrepreneur,” a term which she borrowed and transformed from Howard Becker’s theories of deviance,3 in the case of memorializing Jefferson we have to extend this modified term to several agents and groups. Moral entrepreneurs, as the term is being used in this book, organize and manage the form of selected memories, and assume the risk of failing to sell their interpretation and representation of that memory in their attempt to reap a moral profit. The aspect of material gain or interest contained in the term entrepreneur is connected to an improvement in morality, that is, to

1 Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America.” Daedalus 96.1 Religion in America (Winter 1967): 1–21. Print. 11. 2 Wagner-Pacifici 1996, 394. 3 Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. London: Free Press of Glencoe, 1969. Print. 147.

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increasing the awareness of the fundamental values and norms which connect the individuals of a society. Specific interests, material or political, of different groups or members of groups influence any memorializing endeavor and at times compete with one another. Thus, moral entrepreneurship touches upon the topics of collective and contested memories and upon the issue of hegemonic or counterhegemonic use(s) of the past, which also lie at the heart of the term icon, as Walter Hölbling suggests.4 Similarly, Paul Connerton considers the “control of a society’s memory” as a political issue, which “largely conditions the hierarchy of power.”5 However, a closer investigation of Jefferson’s moral entrepreneurs and their divisions calls this narrow, hegemonic interpretation into question. Barry Schwartz and Wagner-Pacifici maintain that the issue of hegemony is “complicated by the supplemental issue of what it really means to remember something.”6 It would be too simple to say that the ruling classes use images of collectivity to dominate and indoctrinate the common people. Rather, remembering goes hand-in-hand with the process of forgetting,7 which means that people are “perhaps ‘merely’ not being encouraged to remember certain things that, at one point, everybody ‘knew’.”8 With regard to Jefferson this aspect became most apparent in relation to the topic of slavery. Furthermore, Richard J. Morris reminds us that the term memor (mindful) implies that “[t]‌o be mindful of something […] is necessarily to engage in a creative, third-order, symbolic process that simultaneously is a concrete, abstract, incomplete, and evaluative effort to evoke or establish memory of the ‘memorable’ […] in some specific way.”9 Thus, as much as a group might strive for specificity and concreteness, the process of arriving at those qualities as well as the end product remain instable and incomplete.

4 Walter Hölbling, et al., eds., US Icons and Iconicity. Wien: LIT, 2006. Print. American Studies in Austria 4. 7. 5 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. Print. Themes in the Social Sciences. 1. 6 Schwartz qtd. in Wagner-Pacifici 1996, 395–6. 7 Charlene Mires, Independence Hall in American Memory. Philadelphia:  U of Pennsylvania P, 2002. Print. viii. Mires makes the same statement though her word choice “preserving some aspects of the past while obscuring others” communicates more agency and intent than Schwartz and Wagner-Pacifici emphasize. 8 Schwartz qtd. in Wagner-Pacifici 1996, 396. 9 Richard J. Morris, Sinners, Lovers, and Heroes: An Essay on Memorializing in Three American Cultures. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Print. SUNY Series in Communication and the Struggle for Identity in Postmodernity. 37.

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In relation to the Jefferson Memorial, Congress and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission (TJMC) engaged in this ‘creative, third-order, symbolic process’ and thus are the primary moral entrepreneurs to be investigated in the following subchapters. The analysis will explain how and with which provisions Congress established the TJMC. As “decisions about buildings [are] made within definable groups,” the buildings “capture and project the values of their builders” and enter into a dynamic interchange with their surroundings, such as the landscape and the community.10 Therefore, the business community in Washington, D.C., the Fine Arts Commission (FAC), the National Park and Planning Commission, and organizations of American Architects and Landscape Architects, all of whom participated in the memorializing discourse on Jefferson have to be taken into account. The analysis focuses on the individual members within these groups, their collaborations and disagreement, and the changing composition of the groups, as much as how various groups interacted with each other. By sharing and exchanging their memories or interpretations of the past, group members sought affirmation on their interpretative validity. Additionally, Émile Durkheim believed that groups, through discourse about the memorable, “might find a way to tell the truth about themselves. [… T]he more varied the voices engaged in that common dialogue, the more likely the accuracy of what would be recalled.”11 That is, by exploring the past through discourse about things remembered, groups also defined themselves in the present. Therefore, an analysis of the Jefferson icon considers how far it expresses the ideals and values of the time rather than of the past. Two interrelated processes are thus at work in the memorialization of Thomas Jefferson. On the one hand, the groups sought to define and establish certain memories about Jefferson and Jeffersonian attributions as truthful. On the other hand, this effort influenced the group’s self-understanding. Hence, it might well be that a group was telling the “truth” about itself through its dialogue on Thomas Jefferson, even while it remained questionable whether it narrated the “truth” about Jefferson. Whether the Durkheimian thesis is correct in the case at hand will be revealed by analyzing the evaluative processes in which the various groups were involved when creating the Jefferson memorials.

1 0 Cf. Mires 2002, xiv, xi. 11 Richard Sennett, “Disturbing Memories.” Memory. Ed. Patricia Fara and Karalyn Patterson. Cambridge:  Cambridge UP, 1998. 10–26. Print. The Darwin College Lectures. 12.

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The analysis takes place against the backdrop of two central debates in memory studies. The first regards whether one can speak of “historical truth” or not, which focuses on differentiating memory from history. The second debate between ‘presentists’ and ‘essentialists’ revolves around whether groups can freely interpret and reinterpret the past depending on their present needs, or whether they are limited due to “the structure of available pasts and the rhetorical structure of available pasts and the rhetorical structure of social organization that makes some facets of the past more salient than others.”12 The different sides of these scholarly debates can be exemplified by means of the Jefferson Memorial, which reflected the middle ground of the discussion. Wagner-Pacifici alludes to the same interdependency of past and present when she says that “chronologically prior to” the moral entrepreneur in determining the saliency of specific memories is the “event/code fit.”13 A  fruitful discourse on memorialization needs to correlate with the cultural situation or event and vice versa. This relation between event and cultural encoding operates “with a kind of combined moral, political and aesthetic categorical imperative.”14 When applying this idea to the Jefferson icon and memorial, it becomes evident that the Great Depression, with its various political, social, and cultural processes and upheavals, was a precondition for the process of constructing the Jefferson icon. In particular, the analysis explores the way in which certain historical events, at home and abroad, influenced Jefferson’s moral entrepreneurs in their decision-making. In a time of uncertainty and seemingly shifting values, the TJMC’s consensus on Jefferson consisted first and foremost of asserting Jefferson’s place in American civil religion and thereby in promoting a sense of stable values. According to Ronald Weed and John Heyking stability is achieved in society when a “particular set of political/social arrangements come to acquire an aura of the sacred.”15 Robert Bellah similarly writes “the religious dimension in political life […] provides a transcendent goal for the political process”16 that asserts that Americans and their nation will not perish as long as the democratic process 12 Michael Schudson, “The Past in the Present versus the Present in the Past.” Communication 11 (1989): 105–113. Print. 112. 13 Wagner-Pacifici 1996, 394. 14 Wagner-Pacifici 1996, 394. 15 Ronald L. Weed, and John V. Heyking, eds., Civil Religion in Political Thought: Its Perennial Questions and Enduring Relevance in North America. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010. Print. vii. 16 Bellah 1967, 4.

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continues. Richard Fenn corroborates the importance of transcendence when he reminds us that victory over death is at the core of civil religion17 and thereby the idea that the nation was ordained to endure the vicissitudes of time. Its citizens, despite their short human existence, become part of this enduring nation as they and all who came before and after them are tied into the nation’s larger context. In the 1930s, the Declaration of Independence, which embodied these beliefs and meanings, and its author Thomas Jefferson, emerged prominently among the “sacred things […] institutionalized in collectivity.”18 It remains to be asked what Weed and Heyking, Bellah, and Fenn mean when they use the term sacred or the Sacred, a concept also employed in relation to iconicity. Fenn, who sees civil religion as “determin[ing] the range of legitimate possibility and aspiration”19 of a society, argues that ‘the Sacred,’ in a secularizing society, denotes “unknown possibilities, both positive and negative.”20 He claims that such a society “allows images and icons to point beyond themselves to the Sacred; secularity opens the Sacred up to discourse rather than veneration.”21 Weed and Heyking and Bellah similarly criticize excessive veneration because civil religion can degenerate into “dangerous idolatry”22 and has “not always [been] invoked for worthy causes.”23 W. J. T. Mitchell defines idol as an “image which has an unwarranted, irrational power over somebody; it has become an object of worship, a repository of powers which someone has projected into it, but which it in fact does not possess.”24 A rigid adoration of unifying symbols and rituals, critics warn, fosters fascism and encourages the “attack on nonconformist and liberal ideas and groups of all kind.”25 This aspect is of significance in the 1930s and 1940s as various Congressional investigative committees of un-American activities created a public climate within which the Jefferson Memorial discourse—both within the TJMC and in public—took place.

17 Cf. Richard K. Fenn, Beyond Idols: The Shape of a Secular Society. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. Print. 74. 18 Bellah 1967, 8. 19 Fenn 2004, 26. 20 Fenn 2004, 4. 21 Fenn 2004, 9. 22 Weed and Heyking 2010, vii. Weed and Heyking choose the term idolatry with circumspection, as an idol connotes an image without substance. 23 Bellah 1967, 14. 24 W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986. Print. 113. 25 Bellah 1967, 14.

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Echoing Pierre Nora’s idea of “sites of memory,” Mires describes buildings “as depositories, providing places to create and store material connections to the past. They are conduits, communicating perceptions of the past into the future.”26 The vague formulation “perceptions of the past” expresses the aporia of memory studies—that the past can be read and interpreted in different ways. This phenomenon becomes apparent through the different attributions of Jefferson that are stressed in the Jefferson Memorial in D.C. and in the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. As the construction of a memorial, like the construction of a narrative, is based on selecting and ordering of what should be depicted this chapter focuses on the process of creating, through selection and discourse, the Jefferson Memorial in D.C. and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis and the moral entrepreneurs that procured them.

2.1 Construction of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. The processes and issues detailed in the introduction to this chapter underlie the creation of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. I will show how the debates on and the construction of the Jefferson Memorial enshrined Jefferson permanently as an icon of American civil religion. I  argue that the memorial building and the Jefferson statue within the building are icons; the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission planned them as modern, civil religious variations of the traditional icons of the Byzantine and Orthodox churches. Besides being used in this religious sense, Plato used the term eikōn, which means “likeness, image, picture,”27 to describe a “mere shadow of reality,”28 and thus critiqued the idea of preserving a memory in written or pictorial form. However, Paul Ricœur, borrowing François Dagognet’s concept of “iconic augmentation,”29 counters this negative reading. Ricœur compares writing with painting, as both focus on detail, give a different perspective, and rely on “contraction and miniaturization” to communicate an experience of reality. He suggests that this “strategy,” “by handling less” material “yields more”; that is, one “increase[s]‌the meaning of the universe by capturing it in the network of its

2 6 Mires 2002, x–ix. 27 Robin Cormack, Icons. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2007. Print. 7. 28 Paul Ricœur, Interpretation Theory:  Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University, 1976. Print. 40. 29 François Dagognet, Ecriture et Iconographie. Paris: J. Vrin, 1973. Print.

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abbreviated signs.”30 The term network suggests an intricate system of relations, of tangential points, and a multitude of connections between these abbreviated signs, and thereby becomes the perfect metaphor for a plethora of meanings and realities that can arise from deciphering the icon. What happens in the creation of an icon is neither a mere production nor a reproduction, but a metamorphosis,31 which comes about through the interpretation of these abbreviated signs. Similar to Fenn, who asserts that a society can replace veneration of the Sacred with discourse, Ricœur suggests that a society through its remembrance can transform its icons in a productive, creative way.32 This non-religious, discursive aspect of iconicity, will become more evident in the chapter “Appropriating Jefferson,” even though it is also relevant for the Jefferson Memorial. Iconicity is not instantaneous but a process33 in which the basic needs of people living in a society and the “mythological structure of reality”34 are negotiated and renegotiated, sought out and expressed through a symbolic figure. Especially in times of crisis, society adjusts and readjusts its needs, hopes, and aspirations to the contemporary situation, which is always in flux. Therefore, the symbols embodying these hopes and values are subject to changes. This event/code fit in relation to the discourse on Thomas Jefferson and the Great Depression can be inferred from the fact that two Jefferson memorials at different significant locations—in the nation’s capital, the political center, and in St. Louis, the gateway to the West—were suggested in the early 1930s. The capital symbolized the institutions of its democracy, while the westward movement signified the idea of progress and Manifest Destiny. That both these concepts were evoked in the time of crisis and identified with Thomas Jefferson bespeaks that the discourse on the two Jefferson memorials touched the very core of the American nation. The significance of this coincidence is striking considering that the Democratic Congressman John J. Boylan (NY)35 had petitioned Congress several times in the 3 0 31 32 33

Ricœur 1976, 40–41. Ricœur 1976, 40–41. Ricœur 1976, 42. Stephen R. Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Print. 37. 34 Marshall Fishwick, “Icons of America:  Introduction.” Icons of America. Ed. Ray B. Browne. Bowling Green: Popular Press, 1978. 3–12. Print. 3. 35 John J. Boylan was elected a New York Democrat to the House of Representatives in 1923. Cf. “Boylan, John Joseph.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present. Web. 27 February 2013 .

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late 1920s and early 1930s to enact a bill which would authorize the erection of a national Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.36 but only met with success on January 15, 1934. Boylan, “who fancied himself a Jeffersonian,”37 had become active in continuing the memory of Jefferson in the Spring of 1926, when he had argued against erecting a Theodore Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C.38 In part, the positive development of Boylan’s memorial plans for Jefferson in the 1930s can be attributed to the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Once the immediate crisis of 1933 was alleviated and Roosevelt had restored the peoples’ confidence, the opportunity for building a Jefferson Memorial under the idea of public works seemed to gain ground. For given reasons the memorial plan arose to prominence in 1934. Joseph Martin, a Republican Congressman from Massachusetts, corroborated the event/code correlation when he asked Boylan “if there is any significance in the fact that all these Jefferson memorials or monuments are coming up this year,” when “Jefferson has been dead a good many years […]. The gentleman Boylan is not afraid [Jefferson’s] memory is going to be forgotten in any way?” (Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1934: 12166). Boylan promptly negated this insinuation but argued that “we are a neglectful Republic, inasmuch as in my mind the debt of gratitude we owe Thomas Jefferson is second to no other man who helped in the formation of this country.” He insisted that the TJMC should be established to end “our ingratitude and neglect of the past” (12166). Boylan thus used the strategy of shaming to reach his goal and to rectify this disgrace.

2.1.1 Moral Entrepreneurs of Thomas Jefferson The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission (TJMC) John J. Boylan, Jefferson’s first moral entrepreneur, continued his efforts to honor Jefferson on June 13, 1934, by seeking the establishment of “a Federal Memorial Commission to consider and formulate plans for the construction of […] a permanent memorial to the memory of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence” (Cong. Rec. 13 Jun. 1934: 11252; Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1934: 12166). The Joint Resolution 371 was carried three days later and provided that the TJMC “shall be composed of 12 3 6 Cf. Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1934: 12166. 37 Alan Havig, “Presidential Images, History, and Homage: Memorializing Theodore Roosevelt, 1919–1967.” American Quarterly 30.4 (1978): 514–32. JSTOR. Web. 8 May 2015. 528. 38 Cf. Peterson 1985, 422–427; 431.

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commissioners.” The commission was bipartisan, a fact that Boylan stressed when defending the Commission’s plans against attacks by members of Congress (cf. Cong. Rec. 29  May  1936:  8353). Representatives John J.  Boylan (D‒NY), Howard W. Smith (D‒VA), and Francis D. Culkin (R‒NY) served on the commission together with Senators Charles L. McNary (R‒OR), Elbert D. Thomas (D‒UT), and Augustine Lonergan (D‒CT). Additionally, the president appointed Jefferson Coolidge and Hollins Randolph, “both lineal descendants of Thomas Jefferson,” and Joseph Tumulty to the commission. The remaining three positions were filled by Stewart Gibboney of New York, the president of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation; Fiske Kimball, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Philadelphia and authority on Jefferson’s architecture; and Dr.  George Ryan of New  York, “who was instrumental in raising funds for the purchase of Monticello” (Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8353). During the years, the TJMC underwent some personal changes.39 For example, after the death of chairman Boylan in October 1938, Stewart Gibboney replaced him, and his death in 1944 led to the appointment of Josephus Daniels.40 The retirement of Joseph P. Tumulty crucially impacted the work of the commission, insofar as his successor General Randolph Kean, also a descendant of Jefferson, became co-author of the panel inscriptions.41

39 Cong. Rec. 24 Jan. 1939: 762. Fritz G. Lanham (D-TX) filled the vacancy of John J. Boylan. Lanham was chairman of the House Committee on Public Buildings. Cf. “Auditorium Plan Pushed on 3 Fronts.” The Washington Post 23 Jan. 1937. Front page; Cong. Rec. 9 Feb. 1939: 1267. Senator Charles O. Andrews (D-FL) replaced Senator Lonergan, who was not reelected to the Senate in 1938. Hollins Randolph died in the spring of 1938. FDR instructed Steve Early to find a Jefferson descendant as a replacement. Cf. Memorandum for the President by the Secretary of Commerce, 3 May 1938. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President, Official File 1505; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York; Franklin D. Roosevelt, Memo For MAC and STEVE, 13 May 1938, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President, Official File 1505; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. 40 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Memo to Mr. Latta, 13 May 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President, Personal File 5319; Official File 1505; M. C. L., Memorandum to FDR, 1 June 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Presidential Personal Files; Frank E. Houston, Letter to FDR, 27 May 1944, FDR Presidential Personal Files; Maverick, Maury, Letter to Judge Rosenman, 3 May 1944, PPF 5319; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. 41 Official Minutes of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission (TJMC), 9 Jan. 1940: 25; 22 Mar. 1940: 32; 21 Feb. 1941: 46–50. Howard W. Smith Papers; Stuart Gibboney, Letter to FDR, 13 May 1941; Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission;

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When the president of the Fine Arts Commission Charles Moore resigned in August 1937, his colleague Gilmore David Clarke filled his vacancy. Both had been assisting the TJMC, as stipulated by the congressional resolution.42 Despite the fact that the FAC was only an advisory body to the TJMC, its role in the process of planning the memorial became pivotal after the resignation of Charles Moore. The arising controversy about the design of the memorial between the TJMC and the FAC, which was joined by the American Architectural Association/ American Institute of Architecture, ignited the tempers and opinions of members of Congress and of the business community in the capital. Besides these moral entrepreneurs, one has to consider the role Franklin D.  Roosevelt played in creating the memorial. The Congressional Record, the newspaper reports of the time, and most significantly the letters between FDR and several members of the TJMC reveal that FDR was, to say the least, very interested in the memorial’s message, if not actively trying to shape it by voicing his opinion on the site and design of the memorial as well as the design of the Jefferson statue. In Dr.  Kimball and Mr. Jefferson,43 Hugh Howard argues the McMillian commission, out of which the establishment of the FAC resulted, had already considered a Jefferson memorial but “the idea had lacked a powerful champion until Roosevelt prompted Congress to act in 1934.”44 Howard seems to suggest that John Boylan, whose “boyhood hero” was Thomas Jefferson, acted solely on behalf of the president. I argue that FDR did not use Boylan as a puppet, but that two moral entrepreneurs had a coincidental interest in Jefferson at this specific point in time. As Brian Steele notes, FDR, like Boylan, advocated for Jefferson in the 1920s in his book review of Claude Bowers’s Jefferson and Hamilton, entitled “Is There a Jefferson on the Horizon?”45 Boylan’s opposition to the Roosevelt Memorial and his championing of Jefferson in 1926 works against Howard’s conjecture. As New Yorkers and politicians of the Democratic Party, Boylan and FDR were connected through Tammany Hall on the state level

42 43 4 4 45

Franklin D.  Roosevelt:  Official Files; Franklin D.  Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. Section 2b of the bill creating the TJMC said that it “[m]‌ay avail itself of the assistance and advice of the Commission of Fine Arts, and the Commission of Fine Arts shall, upon request, render such assistance and advice” (Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1936: 8361). Hugh Howard, Dr. Kimball and Mr. Jefferson: Rediscovering the Founding Fathers of American Architecture. New York: Bloomsbury, 2006. Print. Howard 2006, 231. Steele 2016, 76. The review was published in the American Mercury in 1925.

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which certainly pandered to and abetted their coming together in their common interest regarding Thomas Jefferson. The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission, created by an act of Congress in June 1934, had its first organizational meeting on April 12, 1935,46 at which John Boylan was elected chairman and Howard W.  Smith, the Representative from Jefferson’s home state Virginia, became its secretary. The second meeting on June 5, 1935, began with the commissioner’s statements based on a report of the various advantages and disadvantages of six possible memorial sites (Fig. 1): (1) Lincoln Park, (2) East end of East Capitol Street on Anacostia River, (3) South side of Mall between 7th and 9th Streets, opposite the Archives Building, (4) Apex Block, (5) the Mall opposite to and symmetrical with the George Washington Memorial Building, (6) Site on the Cross Axis of the Central Composition in Tidal Basin Area.47

2.1.2  The Site(s) – Picking Sites, Choosing Sides In the sacred spaces of Washington D.C. and on its most hallowed grounds, the National Mall, the contest for commemorative visibility manifests itself in the struggle for the best lot of memory. The particular positions and constructions of individual monuments and memorials have become increasingly relational, dialogic and comparative in the ever-more multivocal fields of national and transnational memories. (Hebel, “In Lieu of an Epilogue,” 393)

The term icon was predominantly used for designating “the paintings on wood panels made for public use in the rituals and decoration of the Byzantine and Orthodox church,”48 which were often built on significant, even holy, ground. The icon and the scared place interacted with each other and imbued one another with an aura of mystique and sacredness. The church, Robin Cormack argues, often gave the icon an “active presence.”49 This interrelation between the 46 John J. Boylan, Letter to Howard W. Smith, 4 April 1935. Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. 47 Official Minutes of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission, 5 June 1935. Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. The George Washington Memorial Building was repurposed in 1937 and would become the National Gallery of Art. 48 Cormack 2007, 8. 49 Cormack 2007, 7.

Fig. 1:  Possible memorial locations in Washington, D.C. from left to right (6) Site on the Cross Axis of the Central Composition in Tidal Basin Area, (3) South side of Mall between 7th and 9th streets, opposite the Archives Building, (4) Apex Block, (5) the Mall opposite to and symmetrical with the George Washington Memorial Building, (1) Lincoln Park (Square), (2) East end of East Capitol Street on Anacostia River. Locations were added by the author to the Works Progress Administration Guide Map to Washington, D.C. (1937).

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traditional icon and a sacred place becomes apparent in the discussion of the TJMC and the FAC, in regards to the suggested sites for the Jefferson Memorial. Among the sites was the so-called “apex block” located at the cross section of “Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues.”50 John Boylan considered it “the appropriate place” for the memorial as he valued its proximity to the Archives Building, which “is of particular and special artistic value,” because it hosts the Declaration of Independence. Gilmore Clarke and William Partridge, of the FAC, agreed with Boylan; however, they also noted that the site would be too small,51 suggesting that the degree of indebtedness of the nation or the greatness of the figure to be memorialized should correlate with the size of the building. Boylan believed that the artistic value of the Archives Building would increase the artistic value of the memorial, affirming Hebel’s claim of the dialogic and comparative nature of memorials in a memorial landscape.52 The Republican Frederick A. Britten even saw any memorial as contributing to the beauty of the site and city. Therefore, the site should be “preserved for a fitting memorial to one of our heroes […] whether he was a Democrat or Republican” and “embellished with something along the line of the gentleman’s [Boylan’s] suggestion” to make it “the most beautiful capital and the most beautiful city in the world […]” (Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1934: 12166). Britten spoke of a monument to one of our heroes, which implied that a monument, as a sacred image, functioned “as concrete model […] of heroic experience.”53 Britten was joined by various members of the

50 Cong. Rec. 13 Jun. 1934:  11252. House Joint Resolution 371. Cong. Rec. 15 Jun. 1934: 11938. Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1934: 12072–12073. Resolution passed. It had been mentioned in the joint resolution introduced by John Boylan on June 13, 1934. 51 Gilmore D. Clarke and William T. Partridge, Memorandum with Reference to Proposed Sites for a Memorial to Thomas Jefferson in the National Capital, August 8, 1935. Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. 52 Udo Hebel, “In Lieu of an Epilogue:  Whereto American(ist) Memory Studies?” The Merits of Memory: Concepts, Contexts, Debates. Ed. Hans J. Grabbe and Sabine Schindler. Heidelberg: Winter, 2008. 389–95. Print. 393. 53 Gregor Goethals, “Sacred-Secular Icons.” Icons of America. Ed. Ray B. Browne. Bowling Green: Popular Press, 1978. 24–34. Print. 25. The term “heroic” reappears in the debates about the Jefferson statue to be placed inside the memorial in the Congressional Record and in The Washington Post—Dec 2, 1936 pg. X1; Mar.21, 1937 pg. B7; Apr. 11, 1937 pg. 1; Apr. 26, 1943 pg. 1.

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TJMC and the president of the FAC in his consideration of beautifying the capital with a memorial to Jefferson and vice versa.54 Utah Senator Elbert D. Thomas’s comments on the possible memorial sites extended the correlation between the memorial and the capital to include the whole polity when he depicted the capital as the seat of government: “Personally, I think we are building something very much higher than a Memorial to Thomas Jefferson. We are actually about to add another cornerstone in the formation of a structure which we may call the American National Cult.”55 Thomas’s term “cult” stressed the nascent state of what Bellah would later term “American Civil Religion” (1967). Thomas reinforced the beginnings of a civil religion by using the terms “cornerstone” and “formation of a structure.” He implied that the relative neglect of Jefferson in the public’s imagination left the national structure unfinished. By adding this last piece, this “cult” may produce a civil religion. Other members of the TJMC would stress Christian images within the civil religion in arguing for a suitable memorial site and design, while Thomas focused on the civil and political within that term as Jefferson “won” one of the cornerstones of the “American system of government” and his “ideals of democracy and his support of the Constitution” secured the continuance of the nation. Like the FAC, Thomas argued that the size of the memorial reflected the importance of its message, when he urged, “We must think in the big, in order to ensure the outcome of this picture.” Size was, however, just one of the considerations influencing the location of the memorial. More important for Thomas was the relative location within the capital, because “[t]‌o put this monument in any place but a commanding position” would belittle Jefferson and make him a “minor person.” By “commanding” Thomas meant a position that was clearly visible, on a site which would attract attention and respect and therefore give the memorial authority. For two reasons that would achieve this, Thomas believed that the Anacostia site would be best suited for the Jefferson Memorial. Thomas first argued for the Anacostia site56 because the city would grow east from the Capitol, and a memorial there would “beautify its growth.” He proposed to “widen […] East Capitol Street” and make it “equal to Unter den Linden, or any of the great Streets which are memorial streets, and by naming the Street

54 Cf. Gilmore D. Clarke and William T. Partridge, Memorandum, August 8, 1935; Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935; Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. 55 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 65. 56 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 66.

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‘Jefferson Street’ you would stamp Jefferson so completely on the consciousness of this city that he would forever assume his proper place.” Placing a “Memorial Temple” at the end of this “Memorial Street,” similar to the Lincoln Memorial in “form and dignity,” would “forever command the attention of our whole populace,” Thomas maintained. He stressed the idea of futurity and the religious aspect of the proposed “Memorial Temple.”57 By explicitly comparing the imagined “Jefferson Street” to “Unter den Linden” in Berlin, Elbert Thomas alluded to the transnational significance of the planned memorial, an idea that would become more prominent as the Second World War approached. Secondly, he argued that Anacostia would give the memorial authority and weight by raising Jefferson to the relative position of Lincoln and Washington:58 With Lincoln at one end and Jefferson at the other of the National Capitol’s permanent and longest axis—stopped on each end by nature’s water—and with Washington in the middle, we shall have joined together in art what men have long joined in their minds, the three names which will as long as America endures be the outstanding names of American Democracy.59

Thomas hereby suggested memorial buildings stand in an active relation to their surroundings in particular other memorials in the capital’s landscape. Dr.  Kimball used the same argument for promoting the Tidal Basin site, as a memorial there would complete the central cross that L’Enfant, together with Washington and Jefferson, had envisioned for the capital.60 He maintained that this location would ensure the spatial proximity and connectedness of the memorials, and thus reflect and affirm the insolubility of these key figures, their ideals, and hopes for the nation.61 Hollins Randolph, one of the Jefferson descendants, emphasized the same proximity when he referred to the three former presidents as “the trinity.” He extended this Christian image by connecting it to the L’Enfant cross and thereby to the Christian symbol of the cross in which no hierarchy exists. Randolph said, “[…] all of them, should sit as near together as the law allows and the topography allows and the original plan of

5 7 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 67. 58 “[…] memorials have become increasingly relational, dialogic and comparative in the ever-more multivocal fields of national and transnational memories” (Hebel, “In Lieu of an Epilogue,” 393). 59 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 72. 60 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 80–88. 61 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 80–88.

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this city allows.”62 Randolph, therefore, favored the Tidal Basin, followed by the Anacostia site. While looking at maps of the capital, Dr. Kimball, like other supporters of completing the cross with the Jefferson Memorial, used Washington and Jefferson’s original63 intent as a selling point. He insisted that they planned the capital with a “central area” — “between the Capitol, the White House, and the Potomac”—as the “front yard of the nation […] where its greatest men would best be memorialized.” Because city planning reflected the political structure, Dr.  Kimball asserted that their “definite idea in Washington [was] to indicate [the] primacy of the legislative and executive branches.”64 He continued:  “If Jefferson be left out of the constellation—I think there would be joy in Gath if we did it […]. I know it would be fine to develop a backward section of the city but is it wise to do it?”65 With this reference to constellation, the cosmic order, and to Gath, that is, God’s order, Dr. Kimball testified to the idea of the continuity of the nation in God’s world through Jeffersonian principles that should be commemorated in the memorial. Similar to the ideas stressed by Dr. Kimball, Goethals argues in “Sacred-Secular Icons” that icons are “symbolizations of order that transcend the individual.”66 According to Francis Culkin, the Republican Representative from New York serving on the TJMC, Dr. Kimball proved in one of the commission’s meetings67

6 2 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 76–77. 63 Barry Schwartz highlights Mircea Eliade’s concept of the ‘sanctification of origins’ in his article, “The Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory.” Social Forces 61.2 (1982): 374–404. Print. 375. Origins are seen as “prototypical events,” which “set a pattern which affects subsequent developments” (376). 64 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 80. 65 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 80–81. The biblical reference of 2 Samuel 1:20, “Don’t announce the news in Gath, don’t proclaim it in the streets of Ashkelon, or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice and the pagans will laugh in triumph,” echoed John Boylan’s strategy of reprimanding and shaming the nation for having been neglectful of Jefferson’s deeds. Dr. Kimball built upon this by claiming that the enemies of Jeffersonian ideals will laugh at America if it fails to procure a proper memorial to him and to the idea of democracy. As moral entrepreneur, Dr. Kimball was not willing to “gamble” with this responsibility. 66 Goethals 1978, 25. 67 Cong. Rec. 7 Jun. 1938: 8445. “An expert on the subject of Jefferson, and Jefferson architecture, brought into our committee a sketch by Jefferson made before L’Enfant came to America, showing the plan of Washington which was subsequently accredited to L’Enfant.”

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that the Memorial should be located on the “last major monumental site under the original L’Enfant plan,” because it was not “in its original conception L’Enfant’s plan. It was the Jefferson plan, with the Capitol in the center and the streets approaching from an angle.”68 Culkin employed Kimball’s authority on this subject when defending the chosen site before Congress, arguing Jefferson had imagined a monument on this site, so it would be fitting if he himself were memorialized there. By including Jefferson in that famed cross, which already honored Washington, Lincoln and the legislative and executive branches of government, proponents of this plan elevated Jefferson to the iconic status of his predecessors in office. Franklin D.  Roosevelt took up this argument at the groundbreaking of the memorial on December 15, 1938; however, documents reveal that FDR only a year earlier had not been entirely convinced that the Tidal Basin was the only appropriate site. In December 1937, FDR received a memorandum from his Secretary of Commerce Daniel Roper (D-SC), who proposed two alternative sites for the memorial.69 FDR, in turn, instructed Roper to inquire about the TJMC’s progress70 and suggested that “an artistic Memorial should be kept on or close to the main axis. I want [it] to be as effective and in as prominent a place as George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s.”71 Where exactly that spot would be, FDR had not yet decided. In order to make up his mind about the Tidal Basin site, FDR made a “weekend-trip on the Potomac” with Senator Theodore F. Green (D-RI) in May 1938.72 Senator Green afterwards thanked the president and recommended, in reference to their talk about the Jefferson Memorial, that the president should read the “current issue of the Magazine of Art” and the enclosed article 6 8 Cong. Rec. 7 Jun. 1938: 8439. 69 Memorandum for the President from the Secretary of Commerce, 21 Dec. 1937; Folder: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission 1936–1945; Papers as President, Official File 1505; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. 70 Memorandum for the Secretary of Commerce from Franklin D. Roosevelt, 27 Dec. 1937; Folder: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission 1936–1945; Papers as President, Official File 1505; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. 71 Memorandum for the Secretary of Commerce from Franklin D.  Roosevelt, 27 Dec. 1937; 72 Theodore Green, even though seemingly opposed to the Jefferson Memorial plans, respected his colleagues on the TJMC and agreed with Senator Thomas regarding certain policy issues. This becomes clear when noting that Theodore Green inserted Senator Thomas’s Jefferson Day Address of 1938 into the Congressional Record of April 20, 1938.

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“Competitions for Federal Buildings.”73 Both documents reflected Green’s own point of view, which he expressed in the June 15, 1938 Senate debate about the appropriation of $500,000 for beginning construction of the memorial at the Tidal Basin. This debate is of importance insofar as Howard W. Smith archived a copy of it and John Boylan sent Dr. Kimball a telegram, which read: “appropriation for memorial passed senate this completes legislative action stop congratulations.”74 During the Senate debate, Green proposed an amendment that would make it “obligatory” for the FAC to sign off on the memorial design of the TJMC (Cong. Rec. 15 Jun. 1938: 12368). He noted the “universal demand for a suitable memorial to Jefferson” and introduced his vision of an “alternative site,” which would be on the “opposite shore of the Potomac […] so that in one straight line would be the Capitol and memorials to these three great Americans” (Cong. Rec. 15 Jun. 1938: 12368). This way the monument would even be in Jefferson’s native state, Virginia, and it would be a memorial not to a “dead statesman,” but to the “living spirit” of Jefferson. Senator Green’s Democratic colleague William H. King, who served on the Park and Planning Commission, while endorsing Green’s observation of an “almost universal demand” for a Jefferson Memorial, asserted that the Tidal Basin was the best possible site and that the TJMC had done a splendid job.75 Howard W.  Smith, the Virginia Congressman, was in favor of moving the memorial to the state of Virginia, which Theodore Green, a citizen group from Alexandria, VA,76 and other citizens77 advocated. In the second commission 73 Letter, Theodore Francis Green to FDR, 20 May 1938, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Official File 1505 or President’s Personal File 1769; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. 74 Howard 2006, 247. 75 William Henry King (D-UT) had introduced a bill in January 1937 that would have instructed the TJMC to build an auditorium in Jefferson’s honor. This proposal would have combined the work of the TJMC with the District Auditorium Commission (“Auditorium Plan Pushed on Three Fronts.” The Washington Post. 23 Jan. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 http://search.proquest.com). 76 Letter to Howard W. Smith from Arlington County, 28 Dec. 1936. Howard W. Smith Papers. Cf. Letter to FDR from Dr. Louise C. Hall, 6 May 1937; Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers as President; Official File 1505; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. Dr. Hall is president of the Society of Virginia Women in New York and proposed to erect the memorial “on a prominent hill on the Virginia site of the Potomac River.” 77 Nellie Van Meter, “Cherry Trees and Shrines.” The Washington Post 14 Apr. 1937. --. “Jefferson Memorial Sites.” The Washington Post 23. Aug. 1937; W. F. Wilmoth, “Sites for

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meeting, however, Smith spoke up for the Tidal Basin. He praised Jefferson for having done so much for the nation and asserted that Jefferson remained “primarily, first, and last, and all the time a Virginian.” Jefferson was most influential in “putting [the capital] up here on the banks of the Potomac, so why put him off somewhere else?” The memorial, Smith maintained, “ought to be right on the banks of the Potomac River commanding a view of the Virginia hills.” Smith lauded the Tidal Basin site because it would not “disturb the serenity of the view” as would the gashouse at the Anacostia site.78 The terms serenity, beauty, dignity and the ideas of futurity79 and permanence reoccurred in the commission’s discussion to characterize Jefferson and as attributes that Jefferson would have deemed important in his life and in the creation of the capital. Therefore, the commissioners sought to incorporate these qualities into the site for the memorial. Jefferson’s past views were regarded as inspiration and guidance for the present. However, the commission’s members disagreed about which site would best bring forth these attributes or the importance of Jefferson. Senators August Lonergan and Elbert Thomas argued in the meeting of June 5, 1935 that the Tidal Basin site would “crowd” the memorials together and thereby diminish the importance of Jefferson,80 an argument which would be repeated by opponents of the Tidal Basin scheme.81 Additionally, Thomas pointed out that the cherry

7 8 79 80 81

the Jefferson Memorial.” The Washington Post 28 Apr. 1937; “Citizens Assail Memorial Site at Tidal Basin.” The Washington Post 9. May 1937. The report says that a site in Virginia was approved of by the Society of Virginia Women in New York, Inc.; “Hang It from Balloons?” The Washington Post 15 July 1937; “Truck and Railway Tubes under Potomac.” The Washington Post 3. Oct. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 88. August Lonergan, the senator from Connecticut, also stressed this aspect when he said: “I think what we are about to do is to build for the centuries.” Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1934. 79. Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 71. Cong Rec. 17 Aug. 1937: 9158. Rep. Luckey (D-NE) voiced the same opinion. The Washington Post published a series of articles that revealed several comments made by the TJMC members in the commission meetings. One article reprinted a shortened version of Senator Elbert Thomas’s statement given at the Jun. 5, 1935 meeting regarding his opposition to the Tidal Basin and the crowding of memorials. The Washington Post printed many news items and letters to the editor containing the same sentiment. Cf. Gerald W. Gross. “Impasse Caused Two Senators to Approve Site of Memorial.” The Washington Post 22 Apr. 1937; “Memorial Site Compromise Is Denounced.” The Washington Post 14 Jul. 1937. “Compromise Site on Memorial Hit.”

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trees made the Tidal Basin very beautiful and that this beauty could hardly be increased by a memorial. Hollins Randolph also worried about the cherry trees, which Thomas had called “a memorial to friendship and peace with Japan,” signifying “international good will.”82 Randolph, however, believed that one might even “add […] to its beauty” if the trees were left undisturbed.83 Both of these opinions would later find their way into the newspaper articles.84 Senator Thomas became the augur of events to come when he prophesized: “The people of Washington, no, the people of America will resent our doing anything to this Cherry Blossom Memorial. The popular reaction would be bad.”85 Thomas hereby suggested Charlene Mires’s theory that memorial buildings stand in an active relation to their surroundings—both geographically and in terms of the community. Thomas also predicted the geographical debate when he discussed the site on the Mall, opposite to and symmetrical with the George Washington Memorial Building, and highlighted the idea that a specific place influences the meaning of an icon. Elbert Thomas emphasized that “the position on the Mall half way between the Washington Monument and the Capitol” would be of significance because “[t]‌he future intellectual and social center of Washington will develop around the Libraries and the Supreme Court building and the Capitol.” Thus, the memorial would “fit[…] into the environment of the Mall and its relationship to other monuments.” To capture the ideas of “intellectual” development and the memorial’s relationality, he proposed two memorial buildings: a “rather simple monument in the line of the Mall, and then a large memorial lining up with the buildings on the south from the Mall to take care of different ideas.”86 Dr. Kimball liked Thomas’s idea, but he believed that “the center of the Mall” would hardly

82

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The Washington Post 14 Jul. 1937. “Jefferson Shrine Report Due to Go to House Today.” The Washington Post 22 Jul. 1937. “Jefferson Memorial Sites.” The Washington Post 23 Aug. 1937. “In Jefferson’s Memory.” The Washington Post 1. Sep. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 71. Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3417. The Democrat from California, Byron Nicholson Scott spoke of “this unique monument to international friendship which helps to draw this country into closer relations with our great Pacific neighbor—Japan.” Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 77. Gerald W. Gross, “Jefferson Kin Takes 2 Stands on Shrine Site: Randolph, on Boylan Body, Opposed, Then Favored Basin Location.” The Washington Post 23 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web 15 Apr. 2014 . Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 72. Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 68.

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provide enough “room” for Thomas’s grand plans. It was decided to contact “Mr. Nolen or Mr. Eliot of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission” and Dr.  Moore of the FAC, who, according to a “surprise[d]” Dr.  Kimball, “spoke with considerable favor of the Potomac [Tidal Basin] site.”87 By August 1935 Gilmore D. Clarke and his associate William T. Partridge gave a report on the proposed sites. As spokespeople of the FAC, they reiterated size and environment issues in relation to the Lincoln Park site:  “[N]‌either the site nor the type of monument suitable to the site (no matter how large in scale) would measure up to the importance of the man to be memorialized here,” they argued, and continued, “[t]he square does not possess now, nor will it in its future form, by reasons of topography and environment, a setting sufficiently dignified and simple as befitting Jefferson.”88 The FAC, as another moral entrepreneur, thereby agreed with the points stressed by the TJMC—futurity, site-monument interrelation, dignity, and simplicity. They wanted to create a “distinctive” memorial, echoing Thomas’s use of “commanding.” Therefore, the FAC argued against the site opposite the national archives, as a building there would not be recognizable surrounded by all the departmental buildings. For the same reason, they also argued against the site on the Mall that Thomas had preferred, because it would “deprive such a structure of all individuality—it would become one of a miscellaneous row ranging from the Department of Agriculture, a private Art Gallery, and the official greenhouse. In addition, no background could be planned.”89 The FAC sided with Dr. Kimball, noting the Tidal Basin’s “appropriateness” as it would complete the “frame work of the ‘Central Area’ as laid down by the McMillian Commission of 1901.” They concluded with a rather drastic statement: “If this plan is worthy of completion, and the individual measures up to a standard demanding the only remaining major site left on that plan, then any physical factors blocking its realization should be removed at almost any cost.”90 The FAC addressed two important aspects which would be at the center of the memorial discussion—the cost and funding of the memorial, which were directly influenced by the “physical factors.” Both aspects were discussed in additional 8 7 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935. 97. 88 Clarke and Partridge “Memorandum” August 8, 1935. N.p. Papers of Howard Worth Smith. 89 Clarke and Partridge “Memorandum” August 8, 1935. N.p. Papers of Howard Worth Smith. 90 Clarke and Partridge “Memorandum” August 8, 1935. N.p. Papers of Howard Worth Smith.

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commission meetings and in Congress when the TJMC sought the ratification of its plans. Even though the groundbreaking for the memorial occurred on December 15, 1938 at the Tidal Basin, the public and congressional discussion of its appropriate site and form would not disappear. Opponents of the Tidal Basin had issues with traffic conditions, the memorial blocking the vista from the White House to the Tidal Basin, and the impossibility to find bedrock at the site. A myriad of articles were published in November 1938 in The Washington Post, Washington Evening Star, Washington Daily News, and The Washington Times, which would be renamed Washington Times-Herald, discussing the Tidal Basin site and the cherry trees. Some of these articles were discussed at the TJMC meeting of November 29, 1938.91 Even though some considered the tree debate a cheap trick to postpone or even prevent the erection of any kind of memorial to Jefferson, others believed that the fight for the cherry trees was primarily undertaken because the D.C. businessmen were worried about declining business and would have preferred a Jefferson Memorial Stadium in a different part of the city. This way they could still benefit from the beauty of the cherry trees, while the new stadium would draw additional tourists. Whatever the real purpose, the cherry tree fight is of importance insofar as these articles and letters to the editor (all) stress that Jefferson was deserving of a memorial; more particularly, these articles often contained laudable Jeffersonian attributions and thereby contributed to the process of iconization, while challenging the TJMC’s dominant idea. In the period between June 2, 1936 (at which date The Washington Post announced “Congress Votes Memorial Here for Jefferson, Both Branches Approve a $3,000,000 Monument to Great Leader”) and the end of 1937, The Washington Post carried 136 news items, 90 articles, 45 letters to the editor, and one cartoon, related to the Jefferson Memorial in D.C. 67 of these news items contained protests against the Tidal Basin site and appeals to save the cherry trees, paired, at times, with different propositions regarding how and where to honor Jefferson more appropriately. Only two letters to the editor spoke favorably of the Tidal Basin site, suggesting that there was “room for improvement in that area.”92 N. G. Sherouse said, “when it is all done the cherry trees will make 91 Cf. Howard W. Smith Papers. Box 266; Folder 1; “To Be Taken Up at the Next Meeting” was printed on the folder which contained an excerpt of 29 articles protesting the Tidal Basin site and the tree removal. 92 N. G. Sherouse, “The Memorial.” The Washington Post 10 May 1937. ProQuest. Web. 14 Apr. 2014 . Cf. Zack Pratt, “Approve Memorial Plans.” The Washington Post 27 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 14 Apr. 2014 .

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a much better appearance than at present” and maintained that the memorial as “already planned” would, in the “proper location” of the Basin, “balance those memorials already built.”93 The other writer Zack Pratt called the Tidal Basin, which was used for flushing, a “hideous,” “walled-up mudhole” and proposed to replace it and the “coarse rock wall” with “ornate marble.” He argued that the “memorial would add more drives in that area”94 so that tourists could enjoy the cherry blossoms more and that traffic would be decongested. Mr. Moore of the FAC stressed the same ideas when he advocated for distributing the trees throughout the Park system as part of the Tidal Basin re-landscaping.95 Moore and the two writers employed the same argument that opponents of the basin site and defenders of the cherry trees liked to use, namely, that Jefferson stood for the “creation of beauty”96 rather than its destruction.97 They corroborated this argument by asserting: “Jefferson, himself a lover of nature, would be the strongest opponent of such a money-making desecration.”98 These citizens alluded to Jefferson’s agrarianism and his simplicity as opposed to grass materialism and moneyed interests99 and implied that Jefferson was a conservationist. Russell T. Edwards, the editor of the Forestry News Digest, thus proposed to use the memorial funds to create a “Jefferson Memorial Soil Restoration Commission,” which would create and preserve forests and employ “every idle man in the United States” for the “next 25 years” and thereby establish an enduring Jefferson Memorial.100 In a letter to the editor, he called the erection of

9 3 Sherouse 1937, n.p. 94 Pratt 1937, n.p. 95 “Moore Seeks Wider Planting of Cherry Trees to Aid Shrine: Fine Arts Commission Head Believes Greater Distribution Would Lend Favor to Jefferson Memorial at Tidal Basin.” The Washington Post 26 May 1937. “Not Yet Won.” The Washington Post 31 May 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 96 “Entirely Out of Keeping.” The Washington Post 25 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 97 Cf. Wilda P. Mackenzie, “Letter to the Editor.” The Washington Post 10 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 98 M.W. McKinnley, Ello L. Burns, Frank Runkle, “Letter to the Editor.” The Washington Post 18 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 99 Cf. “Famous Trees of the National Capital.” The Washington Sunday Star 10 Nov 1938. Print. “Jefferson another lover of trees came to the White House […]. Often he planted seeds and trees he had gathered with his own hands.” The trees are of “great value to civilization spiritually, mentally and materially.” 100 Russell T. Edwards, “Jefferson Funds for Forest Asked.” The Washington Post 4 Mar. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 .

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“a building” the most “stupid” thing to do “in an attempt to honor Jefferson.”101 Even though Edwards did not receive support from a Congressman, the issue of Jefferson’s agrarianism and concern for nature would be used repeatedly in various Jefferson Day speeches in Congress. Defenders of the cherry trees in the newspapers and the congressional discussion102 implied that Jefferson would be against this “desecration” because the trees were a “token of […] friendship”103—even a “token of the growing friendship”104—between Japan and America. Jefferson, as friend of the people and a lover of peace would not stand for offending the Japanese105 by tearing down this “gift of friendship,”106 this “international memorial to good will.”107 Gerald W. Gross, a staff reporter of The Washington Post, started this argument in his front-page article, the first in series covering the Tidal Basin debate. Gross referred to the cherry trees as an issue of “international complication”108 and made the memorial a “National Issue” as well as “international in scope,”109 contrasting this assessment with the idea that the TJMC of twelve had almost “dictatorial” 101 Russell T. Edwards, “The Proposed Jefferson Memorial.” The Washington Post 5 Dec. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 102 Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3417. Byron N. Scott (D-CA) spoke of the “unique monument to international friendship.” Cf. Cong. Rec. 22 Apr. 1937: 3745. 103 Alethea J. Morgan, “Letter to the Editor.” The Washington Post 19 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 104 “No Case for the Memorial.” The Washington Post 23 Apr. 1937. “Preliminary Victory.” The Washington Post 29 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014  . 105 Cf. “A National Issue.” The Washington Post 22 Apr. 1937. Mrs. Henry A. Strong, “Letter to the Editor – 2.” The Washington Post 1 May 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 106 “Basin Site for Shrine Assailed In House on Eve of Hearings.” The Washington Post 23 Apr. 1937. Cf. “Bill Forbidding Shrine to Go to House Tuesday.” The Washington Post 30 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 107 Gerald W. Gross, “Boylan Board Has Sole Right to Pick Jefferson Shrine Site.” The Washington Post 19 Apr. 1937; Louis M. Jiggitts, “Fulpan on Cherry Tree Issue.” The Washington Post 13 May 1937. “Japan’s good will.” The Washington Post 13 May 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 108 Gerald W. Gross, “Jefferson Shrine Row Involves Japan, Hadrian, Even Tammany.” The Washington Post 11 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 109 Cf. “A National Issue.” The Washington Post 22 Apr. 1937. “No Case for the Memorial.” The Washington Post 23 Apr. 1937. “Preliminary Victory.” The Washington Post 29 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 .

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powers, insofar as it was legally free to decide the memorial site and its design.110 A  year later, under changed circumstances, this argument of Japanese friendship seemed ironic as Guy L. Moser, a New Deal Democrat from Pennsylvania, illustrated. He chastised those who had attacked the TJMC for now turning the other corner and seeking a resolution to levy economic sanctions on Japan. Guy Moser quipped that he could have asserted, “Jefferson, the savior of mankind, inveighed against the tree that bloomed and did not bear fruit” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 3331).111 While many citizens attributed to Jefferson a will for international friendship and a love of nature that was connected to nonmaterialistic interests, they were, at the same time, hard-pressed in following his example in the time of the Great Depression. Michael Kammen observes in Mystic Chords of Memory, “Ever since the 1920s and ’30s the history of American traditions […] has been increasingly intertwined with entrepreneurial opportunities in general and tourism in particular […].”112 The articles and the debates reflect this idea as they emphasize the revenue of cherry-blossom tourism for the businesses of the city.113 William L.  Nelson, a Democrat from Missouri, went so far as to point

1 10 Gerald W. Gross, “Boylan Board” The Washington Post 19 Apr. 1937. 111 The deterioration of the American and Japanese ‘friendship’ was caused by Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. 112 Michael G. Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 1991. Print. 13. 113 Several people and congressmen speak of the “commercial” value of the cherry blossoms. Cf. “Cold Drizzle Again Delays Blossom Fete.” The Washington Post 10 Apr. 1937. “Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association” deplore “esthetic and commercial loss” that would incur from the destruction of cherry trees; “The Commercial Angle.” The Washington Post 10 Apr. 1937; “Jefferson Shrine Site Protest to Confront Congress Today.” The Washington Post 13 Apr. 1937. “American Automobile Association deplores missing out on the ‘revenue derived from these visitors.’ ”; “House Blocks $500,000 Sum for Memorial.” The Washington Post 29 Apr. 1937; “Preliminary Victory.” The Washington Post 29 Apr. 1937; “A New Site Needed.” The Washington Post 25 Jul. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . Congressman William Lester Nelson (D-MO) pointed out the ‘considerable mercenary spirit’ that dominated the talks about the Tidal Basin. Cong. Rec. 22 Apr. 1937: 3746. “Cherry Tree Removal Seen as Trade Threat.” Washington Herald 14 Nov 1938. “Trade Groups Unite to Save Cherry Trees.” Washington Times 15 Nov 1938. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President: Official File 1505. Folder: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission. Washington Evening Star 16 Nov 1938. “Southeast Citizens’ Association” pointed out that the stadium at Anacostia would be a “self-liquidating memorial.”

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out that a “mercenary spirit”114 dominated the congressional and public debates. This spirit also revealed itself when different citizens’ and business associations proposed their own Jefferson memorial site in their respective area, arguing for example, that Temple Heights would be appropriate because it had been “owned by a friend of Jefferson and he visited there.”115 The various citizen groups advocated different sites depending on which memorial type they preferred; most often they favored a useful building, as the next chapter will detail.

2.1.3 The Purpose and Design of the Jefferson Memorial The TJMC, Congress, the FAC, and the public—the business community, various associations of architects, individual citizens, and journalists—intertwined the issue of the memorial’s design with its purpose or function. The question of whether one should build a utilitarian memorial rather than a monument became mixed up with questions of whether the memorial should be in the classicist tradition or an expression of modernism. As classicist memorials followed culturally accepted conventions, their message as contained in the structure was clear and understood by the majority of people. Similarly, orthodox icons left little room for “virtuosity or artistic creativity but insisted on conformity […] to standards prescribed by Church tradition.”116 As the icon was not merely a work of art, but was intended to “communicat[e]‌higher ideas,” it needed to conform to the culturally accepted signs to adequately convey its message.117 Yet, icons were “never simple in their message,”118 as long as they exuded the “power of peaceful and clear imagery,”119 an air of mystery or “mystique,”120 it was able to communicate, what Goethals calls, a “residual of the sacred.”121

1 14 Cong. Rec. 22 Apr. 1937: 3746. 115 “Two Citizens Groups Oppose Shrine at Basin: Jefferson Memorial Would Disfigure Contour of the Park, they Say.” The Washington Post 13 Apr. 1937. “Kalorama Citizens’ Head Thinks Local Government Is Basically Sound, But Sees Great Possibilities If Residents Secured Vote.” The Washington Post 18 Oct. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 116 Donald Langmead, Icons of American Architecture: From the Alamo to the World Trade Center. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2009. Print. Greenwood Icons. xvi. 117 Langmead 2009, xvi. 118 Cormack 2007, 7 119 Cormack 2007, 7. 120 Maria Boshteyn, The Making of a Counter-Culture Icon: Henry Miller’s Dostoevsky. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2007. Print. 24. 121 Goethals 1978, 25.

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Within these trajectories—modernist-classicist, utilitarian-monumental— different groups and individuals negotiated how to represent Jefferson across the dividing line of party affiliation. Like the TJMC, the groups opposed to the design or function of the memorial, in part or as a whole, were often bipartisan. The different points of view on the memorial coalesced in one important aspect, namely, that Jefferson deserved to be honored by the nation; however, questions arose regarding the timeliness of spending $3,000,000. The participants of these debates based their arguments on their “truthful, or correct” understanding of Jefferson’s positive attributes, or on their perception of Jefferson’s own wishes and preferences. Stuart Gibboney, for example, came out for “a monument […] of much more utilitarian purpose than just beautiful columns” and added, “I think Mr. Jefferson preferred something of a useful nature himself.”122 Dr.  Kimball and Senator Thomas, seconded Gibboney, as they did not want a memorial “in the ordinary sense in which you erect a tombstone over a dead man” but a “monument to the American people,” that is, “to the democratic political system of America” of which Jefferson was “the founder.”123 Thomas suggested by compromise that the utilitarian aspect could be incorporated as the Tidal Basin site would be in need of flood control work.124 During the same meeting, Hollins Randolph raised the larger question whether an inspirational monument could be utilitarian. He argued, “We have fallen on perilous times and as practical men we have to consider that,”125 echoing Senator Thomas’s sentiment that “democracy is being questioned in some parts of the world.” Thomas thus stated that the memorial’s message “will be a good influence to bring up at this time with the world on fire,” answering “the one great question […] whether you are going to have government by force or coercion or government by common consent and liberty.” Senator Thomas’s opinion that “This is a monument to those two last ideas,”126 gained significance as Europe moved closer to the brink of war and as America debated the Neutrality Legislation and the Lend-Lease Program. Though the issue of timeliness was sufficiently discussed in respect to the memorial’s message, the timeliness of a $3,000,000 expenditure was omitted at this early junction.

1 22 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 24 Mar. 1936: 216. 123 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 24 Mar. 1936: 229. 124 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 24 Mar. 1936: 240–1. 125 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 24 Mar. 1936: 236. 126 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 24 Mar. 1936: 228–9.

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Despite these discussions within the TJMC, it eventually voted and accepted the majority opinion unanimously—a classicist memorial at the Tidal Basin designed by John Russell Pope.127 Pope, the renowned architect of the National Archives,128 had been chosen primarily on Dr.  Kimball’s suggestion.129 In the TJMC meeting of December 1, 1936, Pope’s associates read out his sales pitch that accompanied his drawings, which was partly published in The Washington Post on February 19, 1937.130 Pope emphasized that “consideration was given to [Jefferson] as a Statesman, a Scholar, an Architect, the Third President of the United States, the Drafter of the Declaration of Independence, an Adviser on the drawing up of the Constitution, and the Founder of the University of Virginia.”131 In terms of Jefferson’s interest in architecture, Pope stressed that the “Pantheon in Rome and the Villa Rotunda in Vienna” served as prime examples.132 He “utilized and adapted” these “majestic” forms to make them correlate with the memorial’s “important location.” A circular colonnade gave the building “static simplicity”133 and the “main approach is accented simply and adequately by the Portico on and facing the White House axis.”134 These features enshrined simplicity in stability and permanence and made the memorial approachable. To describe the interior, Pope once again stressed that he modified the classic prototype “to conform in spirit to a simpler era of which Jefferson was reputed to be the foremost and greatest exponent.”135 While Pope implied the correlation between these architectural ideas—simplicity, stability, and permanence— and a monument to Jefferson and the American people, the TJMC made these correlations obvious in future statements. Shortly before Pope’s pitch appeared in The Washington Post, Joseph Tumulty suggested the public discussion when he argued that a utilitarian monument “would be demeaning.”136 He was “against connecting Jefferson with anything 1 27 Cong. Rec. 15 Jun. 1938: 12368–9. 128 Cf. Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8353. 129 Howard 2006, 232. 130 “Basin Chosen as Jefferson Memorial Site, Non-Utilitarian Temple to be Marble, Says Committee.” The Washington Post 19 Feb. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 131 Cf. “Basin Chosen” 132 Official Minutes, 1 Dec. 1936: 246–7. 133 Official Minutes, 1 Dec. 1936: 246–7. 134 Also printed in the article of February 19, 1937. 135 Official Minutes, 1 Dec. 1936: 247. 136 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 18 Feb. 1937: 273.Cf. Peterson 1985, 427. Peterson also notes that proponents of the classical memorial feared that the utilitarian side would

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that is gymnastics,” “anything commercial or utilitarian.” He warned that public hearings on the matter would “open up a wound” that would never close. Thomas, who supported Tumulty’s point of view, in particular the idea of commercialism, explained that a utilitarian memorial would cater to the interest of a specific group und thus would be out of “harmony” with the idea of creating a national memorial to Jefferson and to all people.137 The various proposals for a utilitarian memorial, or, as supporters liked to call it, “a living monument,”138 both affirmed and disproved Thomas’s thesis, as will be shown in the course of this chapter. Already in his first statement in 1935, Thomas had alluded to the difficulty of differentiating between the respective usefulness and expressive character of utilitarian and non-utilitarian monuments. He had proposed to erect a monument “to preserve those writings that every one likes to read; the Declaration of Independence, the Northwest Proviso, the comparative study of the Gospels, the great variety of his scholarship” in “an imperishable form.” This monument would instruct and “command […] the attention of the thoughtful people above all other monuments in the world.”139 Congress also debated whether inspiration,140 education, and spiritual guidance were useful (utilitarian) and could be achieved through a marble memorial. It was suggested that a hospital141 or auditorium in honor of Jefferson was more suitable. Some argued that the country could afford neither memorial because the humanitarian needs of and the debts of the nation were so great.142 The argument for the inspirational value in times of democratic crisis and its relation to Pope’s design and statements was taken up by Arthur Upham Pope in an article published in the June 1937 issue of the Magazine of Art. Arthur U. Pope, who had taught philosophy and aesthetics at UC Berkley and became eclipse the real meaning of Jefferson. They argued that picking a utilitarian measure would, in the end, only reflect favorably on themselves, not on Jefferson. Interestingly enough, Elbert Thomas, in the discussion on the Jefferson Memorial’s inscriptions, focused on exactly this point when he tried to make the memorial correlate with twentieth-century liberalism. 137 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 18 Feb. 1937: 273. 138 Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8357. 139 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1935: 69. 140 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5435. The Chairman of the TJMC, John Boylan expressed this point of view; Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8358. Ernest Lundeen (Farmer-Laborite-MN); Cong. Rec. 3 Jun. 1936: 8874. Louis L. Ludlow (D-IN); 141 Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8525. 142 Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8355–6. Cong. Rec. 1 Jun. 1936: 8536. Cong. Rec. 7 Jun. 1937: 8440. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1936: 8531.

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the primary advocate for Persian art in America,143 was not related to John Russell Pope, which he stressed at the beginning of the article. Arthur Pope’s interest in aesthetics and art might have motivated his defense of Pope’s design. He did so by mirroring Thomas’s ideas on democracy and world significance when he stated, “Democracy […] is not an affair of the moment as dictators would have us believe, and it ought to be symbolized in forms that have proven their capacity to endure, in forms deeply grounded in human nature and human experience, and which carry world-wide conviction.”144 Arthur Pope asserted that the design reflected simplicity, serenity, and spaciousness and “enshrined in a universal […] form” the “eternal values of justice, proportion, dignity, and ordered grace, which are the heritage of all humanity.” He employed the idea that an icon had to comply with accepted, artistic conventions,145 in order to communicate a higher, eternal message and countered that the design was derived from a “general form […] once used to proclaim the authority of Roman religion.” Arthur Pope also drew on the architect’s design explanations when he proposed that Pope “enriched, refined, and humanized” the “elemental dignity and grandeur” of that older form. He retained the good qualities and discarded the inappropriate features of the older form to “express the validity of the democratic ideal.”146 Thus, the “humanized” grandeur and the idea of “permanence should help renew in all the faith in the sorely tried democratic ideal, and sustain our will that it shall not perish.”147 True to the theory of icons, the memorial was to signify “heroic” endurance and restore the people’s faith. The simplicity, inspirational, and educational nature of the memorial temple or shrine would influence “the spiritual life of the whole nation.”148 In contrast, any modern memorial,

143 Yuka Kadoi, “Arthur Upham Pope and his ‘Research Methods in Muhammadan Art’: Persian Carpets.” Journal of Art Historiography 6 (Jun. 2012): 1–12. Web. 13 March 2017 . 2; Kishwar Rizvi, “Art History and the Nation: Arthur Upham Pope and the Discourse on ‘Persian Art’ in the Early Twentieth Century.” Muquarnas 24 (2007):  45–65. History and Ideology: Architectural Heritage of the ‘Lands of Rum.’ Web. 13 March 2017 . 47. 144 Arthur Upham Pope, “In Defense of the Jefferson Memorial.” Magazine of Art 30.6 (Jun. 1937): 364–7. 365. 145 Cf. Langmead 2009, xvi. 146 Pope, “In Defense” 1937, 365. 147 Pope, “In Defense” 1937, 365. 148 Pope, “In Defense” 1937, 364.

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according to Arthur Pope and other defenders of the classical architecture,149 would only reflect “our very own selves and our raw mechanistic utilitarian age, however transient it may be.” Pope’s arguments reflected that classicist architecture, especially Greek architecture, embodied the idea of cosmic order.150 David G. Orr suggests that “monumental visual icons […] externalize our own quest for cultural identity” and the “Parthenon form is [used as an] iconically strong visual image of stability, balance, permanence.”151 While these contemporary scholars affirm the vision of Russel Pope, Arthur Pope, and the TJMC, the proponents of the modernist and utilitarian monument could not be convinced with these arguments. The proponents of a modernist and/or utilitarian design instead advocated for some sort of “living memorial,”152 which would serve a useful purpose.153 149 Rebecca. “Letter to the Editor.” The Washington Post 30 Jan. 1937. Rebecca wrote that it is “unthinkable that the name of Thomas Jefferson should be used as an excuse—or reason—to acquire some necessary building for the District of Columbia (a building which would be out of date in 15 or 20 years). He is entitled to a monument of massive and enduring stone, as permanent as those of Washington and Lincoln.” Charles H. Probert, “Classical Architecture in 1937.” The Washington Post 1 Mar. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . Probert argues that there is “nothing inappropriate” in the “published sketch” because it “has been inspired by a building of the University of Virginia designed by Jefferson himself. And it was chiefly as the founder of this institution that this great man hoped to be remembered.” Furthermore, “[t]‌he history of many of the fine arts largely refutes the theory of progress. Perhaps our greatest absorption in science and in ‘practical’ problems has atrophied our more humane instincts.” Jefferson and the founders were fond of the Roman republic, and the Roman Pantheon has been used as a Christian church for many hundreds of years now, so there was “no original sin” there. Finally, Probert argued that there was “no native American architecture” anyway. Even the skyscraper was of Roman origin. 150 Langmead 2009, 290. Langmead also discusses Jefferson’s home, Monticello, which was also based on his favorite architectural forms that Pope tried to combine in the Jefferson Memorial. 151 David Gerald Orr, “The Icon in the Time Tunnel.” Icons of America. Ed. Ray B. Browne. Bowling Green: Popular Press, 1978: 13–23. Print. 20–1. 152 Cf. Josephine McCormack, “Letter to the Editor: “More on Jefferson Memorial Plans.”” Washington Post. 17 Apr. 1937, page 6; Cong. Rec. 7 Jun. 1938: 8441; Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1898. 153 Cf. Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936, 8356–8. Everett Dirksen (R-IL), Henry Luckey (D-NE), Vito Marcantonio (R-NY); Cf. Cong. Rec. 1 Jun. 1937, 8536. Verner Main (R-MI); Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937, 3420. Byron Scott (D-CA); Cf. Cong. Rec. 5 May 1937, 1074. John Hunter (D-OH); Cf. Cong. Rec. 7 Jun. 1938, 8438. Jed Joseph Johnson (D-OK);

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Numerous proposals were made by various groups of people, competing with each other over how to best represent Jefferson and over whose interpretation of Jefferson’s works and life was “the right one” to follow and display. Often these were bipartisan and garnered the support of different public organizations or interest groups. Furthermore, it has to be noted that these proposals emerged at different times in the congressional debates, even as late as 1943.154 Some measures coincided in their general intent even though their sponsors had different projects in mind.

Utilitarian Memorial Proposals Everett M.  Dirksen, the Republican representative from Illinois, illustrated reasons for opposing the non-utilitarian Pope design on May 29, 1936. In his first election campaign of 1932, Dirksen “revealed his willingness to revisit traditional Republican approaches to the unprecedented problems of the times.”155 The crisis made him an advocate of “federal relief for the unemployed,” according to Byron C. Hulsey.156 In the light of these positions, Dirksen’s opposition to “spend[ing] $3,000,000 on a great building that is cold and lifeless and not given to any kind of inspiration,” should be regarded as revealing a sincere concern for the more pressing problems of the time, rather than an attempt to spite the Democrats. Dirksen, like advocates of the classicist memorial, noted that “[a]‌ny discussion of memorials is necessarily an appeal to the religious nature of every man on this floor,” emphasizing that Jefferson already dwelled in the hearts of the people and inspired them. He argued his case by explicating: [Jefferson] stands out as an exemplar of the spirit of democracy, trying to bring human hearts together. As I  survey the American scene today I  sometimes wonder whether

Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938, 8525–31. Maury F. Maverick (D-TX), David Terry (D-AR), Robert Rich (R-PA); Allen Treadway (R-MA), Samuel Hobbs (D-AL). 154 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1898. John Murdock (D-AZ) stated that the memorial was beautiful but there was always need for “living memorials.” Murdock, who had already advocated for financial assistance to the states for education in 1939, introduced H.R. 2533, “A Bill to create a revolving educational trust fund as a memorial to Thomas Jefferson by providing for the use of unclaimed deposits in national banks for the purpose of making loans to young men and women to assist them in obtaining a higher education, and for other purposes;” Cf. Russell T. Edwards, “The Proposed Jefferson Memorial.” The Washington Post 5 Dec. 1936. Pg. X10. 155 Byron C. Hulsey, Everett Dirksen and His Presidents: How a Senate Giant Shaped American Politics. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 2000. Print. 17. 156 Hulsey 2000, 16. Dirksen voted for the NIRA, FERA, and AAA.

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we have made a single bit of progress since the teachings of the Carpenter of Nazareth in bringing human hearts together. How light would be our burden, how easy of solution would be our problem if there was not forever that spirit of contest, that spirit of difference that translates itself into invectives and terms of vituperation. That is the thing that Thomas Jefferson taught–democracy. We have missed the goal. (Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8356)157

Dirksen thereby linked Jesus and Jefferson and suggested that democracy is part of the religious nature that is inherent in every person’s soul, implying that not to heed the democratically elected representatives’ objections would be to disregard Jesus and Jefferson’s teachings. To perpetuate their ideals, Dirksen maintained, congressmen should vote against the memorial and for a “verile [sic] and living memorial” (8356). The attribution of virility resurfaced in the discussion on the Jefferson statue and correlated with attempts at depicting Jesus as virile, which Bruce Barton had started in The Man Nobody Knows (1925).158 Everett Dirksen proposed that if Congress had that sum of money, it should spend it “properly” on school districts with inadequate educational facilities. By improving the children’s situation, the money would be put to a “more practical use,” addressing “the practical needs of the distressed people of this nation.” Dirksen’s argument serves to illustrate Thomas’s claim that a utilitarian monument would benefit a certain group while honoring Jefferson.159 Dirksen also suggested the Jefferson attribution of “practical idealist,” which will be discussed in Chapter 3. Henry C. Luckey (D-NE) built on Dirksen’s proposal and revealed the bipartisanship of the general idea, but advocated support for the “National Training School for Girls in this city,” which was in “deplorable conditions.”160 A few days 157 Similar analogies between Jesus and Jefferson occurred in many of the annual speeches honoring Jefferson on his birthday. Among them the Republican Congressman James M. Beck, discussed in Chapter 3. 158 Cf. Matthew Hedstrom, The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century. New  York:  Oxford UP, 2013. Print. 25. Furthermore, Prothero notes that Bruce Barton “elevated the pursuit of happiness to a religious goal” (2003, 293). This reveals the early interrelations between Jefferson and Jesus that were refigured later on in the Jefferson Day speeches. 159 Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8532. John O’Connor (D-NY) argued that the Jefferson Memorial from the outset never “got a square deal” but “selfish motives” tried to “dictate to Congress what we shall do within our own functions.” By this O’Connor referred to the business interest in the District of Columbia, which would profit more from an auditorium, because the city could “rent it out with its hot-dog stands, and so forth.” 160 Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8357. Newspapers mentioned Luckey as an advocate of the auditorium idea. He reflects in his memoir that he voted with the conviction that his

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later, Verner Main (R-MI) also proposed investing in the education of the next generation.161 Jesse Wolcott (R-MI) expressed the central argument by introducing a specific attribution: Jefferson as “the great humanitarian” would “never consent” to building a memorial “under these conditions,” referring to poverty, starvation, homelessness, and unemployment. Similarly, Vito Marcantonio, the socialist Republican from New York’s Harlem district, suggested that the money could be used to fund W.P.A. projects, as “Jefferson[,]‌were [he] alive today [, …] would vote to furnish work to the unemployed.”162 Andrew May (D-KY), an early advocate of the memorial to honor the “matchless humanitarian” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1934:  10890), tried to correct Marcantonio’s statement when he said that 80 percent of the $3,000,000 “will go for wages” (Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8358). This aspect had already been mentioned in the TJMC meetings, in Congress,163 and in a newspaper article.164 vote, one of 435, would decide the “weal or woe of the country”; therefore, he decided to cast his votes “regardless of party affiliation” (Henry Carl Luckey, 85 Years: Memoirs of a Nebraska Congressman. New York: Exposition Press, 1955. Print. 78.). Luckey’s first voted against the administration regarding the “gag rule,” which would have increased the number of votes required to “call up a bill by petition from 145 to 218.” Luckey thus advocated a stronger legislative and protection of minority interests (79). In evaluating the New Deal programs, Luckey criticized “pulling weed […] and doing other useless tasks,” but praised the useful “projects of a permanent value”, like two bridges, post offices, new auditoriums, sewers and sewage disposal plants; “all these were good and necessary, tending to relieve unemployment and siphon money into the general channels of public trade and business” (91). 161 Cong. Rec. 1 Jun. 1936: 8536. “And $3,000,000 is too much money to put into a project at this time that does not contribute in some recurring and continuous manner to the well-being and improvement of social and economic conditions. [It] … would build and equip 10 school buildings designed for special education of youth comparable to the Ann J. Kellogg School… those millions should be devoted to keeping the idealism of Jefferson a living, vital force throughout the length and breadth of our land.” 162 Cong. Rec. 29 May 1938: 8358. Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8532. Earl C. Michener (R-MI) and Edward H. Rees (R-KS) both suggested using the money to relieve the unemployment situation, if it had to be spent. 163 Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8360. Congressman Keller even noted that 95 percent of the $3,000,000 would be labor cost. Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8532. John O’Connor (D-NY) equated the memorial with “any other building” and argued that “practically the entire cost, in the last analysis, goes into wages.” 164 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 1 Dec. 1936: 256. “Rep. Boylan Defends Plans for Shrine.” The Washington Post 30 Mar. 1937. ProQuest. Web 15 Apr. 2014 . The importance of construction work as a countercyclical tool, especially of state government, is pointed out by David M. Kennedy. He explains that

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Marcantonio considered it worthy to use the money to “send out to the members of the Liberty League and the proponents of various alien and sedition legislation some of the teachings of Thomas Jefferson.”165 Marcantonio thus praised Jefferson as proponent of giving asylum to oppressed people. Samuel Hobbs (D-AL), similarly, made Jefferson side with the “unknown or forgotten man,” when he argued for incorporating a school of government for choice youth in the memorial, in order to provide America with what was needed most: “adequate leadership for better government.”166 Similar David D. Terry (D-AR) revived Byron Scott’s idea (D-CA)167 from the previous day.168 Terry asked, to “endow […] a course in government in some of the universities of this country[.]‌”169 Maury Maverick (D-TX), who was associated with Scott through the “Young Turks” or “Mavericks” progressive discussion group, supported this proposition, because

the federal government was limited in its available funds and available projects to be realized during the Great Depression, as the states had “paid out ten times” more than the federal government had done. Cf. David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print. 57. This might explain why John Russell Pope who reworked the sketches of the Theodore Roosevelt memorial for purposes of the Jefferson Memorial was chosen. He, at least, already had a sketch to work from which theoretically would have accelerated the Jefferson Memorial project, had there not been the need for reworking of these sketches because of their enormous size and cost. 165 Cong. Rec. 29 May 1938: 8357. 166 Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8531. Hobbs’s idea is reminiscent of the Agrarian Fletcher’s conjecture that Jefferson, unlike Andrew Jackson, would have used federal money to fund a university in Washington, D.C. for training political and artistic leaders. 167 Cf. Paul Bullock, Jerry Voorhis: The Idealist as Politician. New York: Vantage Press, 1978. Print. 119. Byron Scott attempted to regain his congressional seat in 1940. In his campaign ad, he stressed that he favored “Immediate and Powerful National Defense,” “Rights of Organized Labor,” “Adequate Relief Program,” “Veteran’s Benefits,” “Old Age Security,” “Preservation of Civil Liberties,” “A Better Break for Young People,” “Federal Aid to Homeowners,” “Federal Deposit Insurance,” and “R. F. C. Aid to Businesses.” Most of these concerns already animated Scott in Congress in the 1930s. History, Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives, “Byron Nicholson Scott Campaign Matchbook.” Web. 27 May 2017 . 168 Cf. Cong. Rec. 7 Jun. 1938: 8441. “I do not believe that a cold memorial of that type typifies Thomas Jefferson […]. it would be better if the memorial were of the utilitarian nature […]. I made the suggestion that the amount of money contemplated in the original expenditure, $3,000,000, might very well be used to endow a school of government at the university Thomas Jefferson started, the University of Virginia.” 169 Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8525.

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“Jefferson was unpretentious, scholarly, shy—a lover of humanity and a believer in science. He wanted science to be developed—for humanity.”170 Jefferson was stylized as a humble, unpretentious advocate for the people, who believed in promoting their well-being through education. Surprisingly, congressmen from the entire political spectrum affirmed this attribute of Thomas Jefferson Jefferson’s humanitarianism, his concern for the needs and welfare of the common people, stressed by Dirksen, Marcantonio, Luckey, Main, and William Bankhead (D-AL), a proponent of the memorial,171 in 1936 resurfaced two years later through the Democrats Jed Johnson (OK),172 Samuel Hobbs (AL),173 and Maury Maverick (TX).174 While scholars have observed that “the public rhetoric of the New Deal often evoke[d]‌[…] humanitarianism,”175 it became clear that Jefferson’s humanitarianism was a bipartisan issue. As a case in point, Maverick and Marcantonio both argued against the American Liberty League and tried to disassociate Jefferson from it.176 Maverick expressed his respect for Marcantonio, 1 70 Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8525. 171 Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8360. William Bankhead (D-AL), the Speaker of the House, was surprised that congressmen opposed authorizing the money to erect this “memorial to the greatest political philosopher and humanitarian of the age” (Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8360). 172 Cong. Rec. 7 Jun. 1938:  8438. Jed Johnson argued that helping the children in a receiving home for homeless children near the Capitol, which was in a dire situation, would be in keeping with Jefferson’s ideals of human rights, more so than “to erect a ‘marble shaft’ to the memory of Jefferson.” 173 Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8531. Hobbs said Jefferson, as “prophet of the unknown and forgotten man” “labored practically and […] to make [his] dreams reality,” “loathed pomp,” and “believed in combining beauty with utility.” Therefore, Hobbs suggested “to combine it with the idea incorporated in Wesley Disney’s bill for the creation of an academy of choice youth for service in our Government at home and abroad—to supply the greatest need of our Nation, adequate leadership for better government.” 174 Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8525. Maverick, who was in favor of memorializing Jefferson and considered himself a great fan of Jefferson, mentioned tuberculosis, syphilis, and poverty. He said, “We have poverty here, and we have dwellings here that are an outrage to the capital of a civilized nation.” 175 Howard Zinn, New Deal Thought. Indianapolis:  Bobbs-Merrill, 1966. Print. American Heritage Series 70. Cf. William M. Morgan, Questionable Charity: Gender, Humanitarianism, and Complicity in U.S. Literary Realism. Hanover: UP of New England, 2004. Morgan discusses the “New Deal language of humanitarianism” (186). 176 Cf. Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8357; Cf. Cong. Rec. 18 May 1936: 7445. “In America today the Liberty Leaguers and the reactionaries have dug up Thomas Jefferson, trying to make him a model reactionary who ordered his descendants to keep forever the law exactly as it was immediately following the Revolution.”

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“the left-wing Republican,”177 when he publicly pinned a pink elephant with a blue ribbon on Marcantonio and gave him a “scroll that congratulated him for being an ‘off-color Republican.’ ”178 Even though they did not agree on all political issues,179 they both regarded Jefferson as a humanitarian; that is, as the friend of the common people. The diversity of those who intertwined Jefferson’s efforts on behalf of general education of the masses and political education and humanitarianism can be seen in nine news items that appeared in the Washington Post from June 1936 to January 1938.180 Senator Lewis B. Schwellenbach (D-WA), for example, proposed a “Thomas Jefferson School of American Government” to honor his “shaping the destiny of American Government and the joining of that work with his other great accomplishment at the University of Virginia.”181 The erection of a university was proposed by the Georgetown Progressive Citizens Association, as well as the creation of an educational trust fund and a political

177 Richard B. Henderson, Maury Maverick: A Political Biography. Austin: U of Texas P, 1970. Print. 178 Henderson 1970, 72. 179 Henderson later on distances Maverick and Marcantonio when he cites Roger N. Baldwin, director of the American Civil Liberties Union: “[Maverick] headed the liberal bloc; he ignored the false saviors of civil liberties like Marcantonio” (88). Why Baldwin called Marcantonio “the false savior” could be traced back to the idea that Marcantonio “for a lengthy period on the 1930s and 1940s followed the communist party line” (Jeffreys-Jones 2013, 41). In contrast Maverick, although having been called a communist by his opponents, and although he tried to grant them freedom of speech, did not side with them (Henderson 1970, 58–9); Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The American Left: Its Impact on Politics and Society since 1900. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2013. Print. 180 Edward T. Russell, “The Proposed Jefferson Memorial.” The Washington Post 5 Dec. 1937. “Question of Site of Memorial Still Undecided.” The Washington Post 9 Dec. 1937. Josephine McCormack, “Letter to the Editor: ”More on Jefferson Memorial Plans.” Washington Post 17 Apr. 1937, page 6; Gerald W. Gross, “Citizens’ Group Urges Stadium as Memorial.” The Washington Post 18 Apr. 1937. “Cherry Trees Total Only 564, Boylan Finds.” The Washington Post 24 Apr. 1937. “Planners Ask Restudy of Site for Shrine.” The Washington Post 2 May 1937. “The Memorial: Letter to the Editor.” The Washington Post 10 May 1937. “Garden Club of Virginia Rose Show Saturday.” The Washington Post 23 May 1937. “In Jefferson’s Memory.” The Washington Post 1 Sep. 1937. 181 “Cherry Trees Total Only 564, Boylan Finds.”

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science school182 at the University of Virginia (UVA). The latter proposal proved popular with the Virginia Garden Club and UVA President Newcomb who had already volunteered to erect the Jefferson Memorial at his institution instead of at the Tidal Basin.183 Such educational measures would be “eminently more fitting than a hollow building in Washington,” the Washington Post editor opined “In Jefferson’s Memory.”184 According to Josephine McCormack in her letter to the editor, an educational revolving fund would give “young men a chance of becoming part of one of Jefferson’s dreams-come-true.”185 The same sentiment that Jefferson’s “interest was in the people on this earth and not anything away above us,” was used by Adolph J.  Sabath (D-IL), who argued against a planetarium to honor Jefferson. Sabath thereby contradicted his democratic colleague Alfred N. Phillips (CT), who had suggested this memorial “of practical value” “because […] as long as men endure their interest in the stars and their courses will remain.”186 Phillips, while disagreeing with the TJMC on the memorial design, nonetheless emphasized the permanency of the American nation under Jefferson’s political ideals and the cosmic order. Sabath further argued that Jefferson’s interest in the people’s health and his fight against all forms of tyranny would be represented if one would combine Maury Maverick’s proposal of a cancer research center with the memorial. The Jefferson Memorial Health Research Institution would fight “the most horrible disease […] that terrorizes so many of our people” as John F. Hunter (D-OH), another advocate of this proposal, argued. Jefferson, the lover of science, would be perfectly memorialized in this “humanitarian” and “practical” institution which would “bring even greater fame to a great name” in the world at large (Cong. Rec. 5 May 1937: 1074). Hunter’s suggestion received a favorable report in the Washington Post,187 which had carried citizens’ advocacy for a “health

182 Edward T. Russell, “The Proposed Jefferson Memorial.” The Washington Post 5 Dec. 1937; “In Jefferson’s Memory.” The Washington Post 1 Sep. 1937. 183 “Garden Club of Virginia Plans Rose Show Saturday.” The Washington Post 23 May 1937. 184 “In Jefferson’s Memory.” The Washington Post 1 Sep. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 185 “More on the Jefferson Memorial Plans: Letter to the Editor.” The Washington Post 17 Apr. 1937. 186 Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8533. 187 “Cancer Clinic for Jefferson Shrine Asked:  Proposed Center Would Be ‘Living Memorial’ Rep. Hunter Says.” The Washington Post 6 May 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 .

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center,”188 a “great clinic”189 or a “modern, fully equipped hospital with endowment enough to cover its budget,” which would meet “the most crying need of our Capital city.”190 The Post also featured the article “For Posterity, for All Time,” which praised Thomas L. Blanton’s (D-TX) proposal of a “model maternity hospital in Washington.”191 The plethora of medical memorial suggestions, illustrated that while moral entrepreneurs agreed on Jefferson’s concern for the people’s welfare and acknowledged the current need, they could not agree which medical institution was most Jeffersonian and most needed. Another proposal of a slightly different nature, the erection of a Jefferson auditorium ‘dedicated to free speech,’ competed against the educational and humanitarian proposals. Sol Bloom (D-NY), whom the Washington Post called a “veteran democratic leader,”192 sponsored this memorial hall. He imagined it as “original,” “with a little heart in it,” “hous[ing] a collection of Jefferson’s written works.”193 By January 1937, “William H.  King [D-UT] of the Senate District Committee introduced a joint resolution directing the TJMC to build an auditorium as a monument to the Third President.”194 The Post claimed that even FDR acknowledged the need for such a structure and Congressman Smith of the TJMC was reported to be in favor of the proposal. Furthermore Byron Scott (D-CA) claimed that “the distinguished Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Ickes also has endorsed an auditorium” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3420). Scott considered it a “timely” undertaking in “these crucial times” of declining democracies abroad, because it would furnish a democratic meeting space and “serve through the years not only to perpetuate [Jefferson’s] name but actually inculcate the great statesman’s ideals of liberty and democracy in the minds of millions yet unborn” (3420). A  Republican, Robert F.  Rich of Pennsylvania, concurred with Bloom

188 “Question of Site of Memorial Still Undecided.” The Washington Post 9 Dec. 1936. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 189 “And More on the Jefferson Memorial.” The Washington Post 16 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 190 Mrs. Henry A. Strong. “Letter to the Editor – 2.” The Washington Post 1 May 1937. 191 “For Posterity, for All Time.” The Washington Post 4 May 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 192 “Rep. Bloom Favors Monument Hall.” The Washington Post 16 Dec. 1936. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 193 “Rep. Bloom Favors Monument Hall.” The Washington Post 16 Dec. 1936. 194 “Auditorium Plan Pushed on Three Fronts.” The Washington Post 23 Jan. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . Subtitled: “Need Cited by Roosevelt: Proposal to Make Hall Jefferson Memorial Gains Impetus.”

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and Scott and affirmed a year later that the auditorium “will stand for all the high things that Jefferson stood for” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938:  8528–9). While these three congressmen found a consensus on Jefferson’s contribution to democracy and freedom, their ideological background could not have been more different. Even Scott and Bloom, the two Democrats, often differed in their political position as Scott, like Maury Maverick and Vito Marcantonio a “Young Turk” stood considerably to the left of Bloom on many issues. The Washington Post considered the free speech symbolism of an auditorium appropriate and defended the League for Progress in Architecture from Boylan’s accusation that they were responsible for unfair criticism of Pope’s design, while most of its members lived on government salaries.195 The newspaper rebuked Boylan by saying that “it is a curious honor to Jefferson to intimate that those working for the public have no right to an opinion on the character of the memorial.”196 The Post implied that Boylan, as opposed to Jefferson’s principles, was repressing the freedom of speech. However, the Republican on the TJMC, Charles L. McNary, indirectly came to Boylan’s defense by saying: “I hardly think that a building which eventually would be used for prize fights and as a skating rink would be in character with the dignity of the man to be honored.”197 The TJMC stood fast on its idea that the “non-commercial, non-utilitarian monument […] will symbolize the character of Jefferson” in the best possible way.198 The auditorium proponents suggested that a “classical structure” would be “painful to Jefferson’s practical mind” and was “not expressive of his character but only of his architectural tastes.” The “useful auditorium” would stand for Jefferson as “a leader who trusted the common man.”199 Or, as expressed in a letter to the editor, Jefferson, “the distinguished patriot,” saw “great value in the every day life of our people” and would therefore endorse the “civic auditorium” or “cultural center.”200 The Piney Branch and Kalorama Citizens’ Associations,201

195 Cf. “Boylan Defends Memorial Site And Architect.” The Washington Post 22 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 196 “No Case for the Memorial.” The Washington Post 23 Apr. 1937. 197 “Auditorium Plan Pushed on Three Fronts.” The Washington Post 23 Jan. 1937. 198 “Auditorium Plan Pushed on Three Fronts.” The Washington Post 23 Jan. 1937. 199 “Another Mausoleum.” The Washington Post 21 Feb. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 200 Bessemer, Louis. “Mausoleum to Jefferson?: Letter to the Editor.” The Washington Post 11 Mar. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 201 “2 U.S. Groups to Meet Today on Memorial.” The Washington Post 20 Mar. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 .

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the Federation of Women’s Clubs,202 and the Junior Board of Commerce203 came out in support of the auditorium, as paraphrased by The Post’s editorial. It cited Elbert Thomas’s commission statement, in which he had advocated for a “ ‘great temple of some kind, with meeting rooms,’ […] in keeping with Jefferson’s always practical interest in the welfare of the masses,” to garner support for the measure. The editorial concluded: “All of these ideas [the auditorium, planetarium, hospital, and stadium] center on the appropriateness of having the memorial exhibit those socially helpful characteristics which were so dominant in Jefferson’s own personality.”204 These socially helpful characteristics became a stand-in for Jefferson’s humanitarian qualities. Arguably the least socially helpful of these proposals was the Jefferson Memorial Stadium. It first featured in a news report of June 2, 1936, in which a possible location—at the foot of East Capitol Street—was named.205 This “sports stadium”206 was urged upon Congress by the Southeast Businessmen Association, which would benefit from this location.”207 The “Federation of Citizens’ Association” announced their support of the proposal in a headline in the Washington Post,208 which inspired a reader of the paper to write a letter to the editor. The “reader” “was greatly in favor of a fitting memorial,” but suggested a “bridge […] as a lasting memorial,” which would “ensure the security of the thousands that cross it daily.” Like others, the “reader” vacillated on the precise form of the practical memorial, but admitted that which others had tried to circumvent; namely, that a stadium would be a “fitting memorial and a source of income.”209 Even though the reader’s concern should not be undervalued during 202 “War in House on Tidal Basin Site Continues.” The Washington Post 27 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 203 “Cancer Clinic for Jefferson Shrine Asked:  Proposed Center Would Be ‘Living Memorial’ Rep. Hunter Says.” The Washington Post 6 May 1937. 204 “For Posterity, for All Time.” The Washington Post 4 May 1937. 205 “Congress Votes Memorial Here for Jefferson, Both Branches Approve a $3,000,000 Monument to great Leader.” The Washington Post 2 Jun. 1936. This site had already been proposed for the Jefferson Memorial. 206 “McNary Fights Tidal Basin Site for Memorial.” The Washington Post 6 Dec. 1936. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 207 “Public Utilities Commission Inquiry Asked by Civic Club.” The Washington Post 15 Dec. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 208 Gross, “Citizens’ Group Urges Stadium as Memorial.” The Washington Post 18 Apr. 1937. 209 A Reader. “Letter to the Editor 1 -- No Title.” The Washington Post 19 Apr. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . Emphasis added.

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an economic depression, it does not come as a surprise that the “reader” chose to remain anonymous in his attempt to connect Jefferson with this commercial undertaking.210 Another reader with the initials W.E.D. likewise suggested that Jefferson cared for the needs of the people, urging “let’s have a stadium or something that we really need.”211 W.E.D. negated that inspiration and education through a monument was needed. In April 1937, Representatives Allen T. Treadway (R-MA) and John Rankin (D-MS) connected the memorial to another important structure and institution when they criticized the newly erected Supreme Court building as “unfitted for its purpose.” Treadway called the new building an “architectural absurdity,” “elaborate and gaudy.” Rankin agreed that it was “the superb model of inconvenience” because of its bad acoustics and lighting. Treadway proposed to prevent making the same mistake by voting against the Jefferson Memorial plans at the Tidal Basin. In support of his argument, Treadway quoted Elbert Thomas’s commission statement of 1935 that had appeared in excerpted form in The Washington Post that morning.212 This debate moved John Rankin to propose yet another “suitable” Jefferson memorial a few days later, and the temporal connection proves that the issue of the Supreme Court building was a precondition for Rankin’s Jefferson memorial proposal. Rankin first noted the “ ‘ominous suddenness’ of all this reverence for Jefferson […] 111 years after his death” (Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1937: 3833). Noting the “international aspect” of the cherry trees, as well as considerations of “economy, patriotism, and democracy,” Ranking suggested to “move the Supreme Court of the United States back into the Capitol, where it belongs, and use that building for the Jefferson Memorial” or “museum”. He hoped that moving the court back into the Capitol would mend the “unconscious breach” between Congress and the Supreme Court—the legislature and the judiciary—which had appeared after the court had been moved to the new building.213 Rankin announced that 210 Gerald W. Gross, “Secret Rift In Jefferson Shrine Board Is Disclosed.” The Washington Post 21 Apr. 1937. “Kenneth P. Armstrong, Delegate to Citizens Federation, Fought Proposed Jefferson Memorial for Tidal Basin; Advocates Anacostia Stadium.” The Washington Post 22 Oct. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 211 W.E.D., “Memorial Protest.” The Washington Post 22 Feb. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 212 Cong Rec. 21 Apr. 1937: 3701; Cong Rec. 22 Apr. 1937: 3744–5. 213 Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1937: 3833. Cf. Kennedy 1999, 328. “In the first week of 1936 the Court took up residence in its new classic-revival temple on Capitol Hill. ‘It is a magnificent structure,’ said a New Yorker writer, ‘with fine big windows to throw the

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Jefferson, who “wrote his name on the hearts of liberty-loving humanity […] needs no monument, save the indestructible substance of his own greatness, to commend him to the consideration of all coming ages” (3833–3834).214 Rankin implied that the checks and balances of government were vital for its perpetuation and for guaranteeing freedom. By following Rankin’s suggestion, the “freedom-loving” citizens would affirm their patriotism and Jefferson’s will. Rankin argued his proposal would benefit the economy by saving money and democracy. His proposal was timely in respect to the opposition that arose against FDR’s court reorganization, a plan which John Rankin, unlike many congressmen from the South as well as North, supported to the fullest.215 Treadway proposed another money saving memorialization in June 1937, which was to “rechristen[…] the Library of Congress” as “[t]‌he nucleus of the great collection of books in the great Congressional Library was the books bought from Thomas Jefferson. Certainly there could be no finer memorial to Jefferson than to name the Congressional Library the Jefferson Memorial Library” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1937: 8529). By December the proposal had found its way into a bill, albeit in a modified version. Therein Treadway sought the “erection of a statue of Thomas Jefferson at the entrance of the library” and requested “the proper setting for Jefferson’s collection within the library.”216 This measure would be a testimony to his “characteristic simplicity” and “combine [the memorial] with an obvious need for a new central public library building for the City of Washington.” As this proposal would connect Jefferson’s concern for the education of the masses with his love of books and his interest in the needs of the people, Treadway believed that his proposal “might well be considered.”217

New Deal out of.’ ” Cf. Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933–1941. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Print. 639. On January 6, 1936 the Agricultural Adjustment Act was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and many more pieces of legislation were to follow suit. 214 Rankin said he quoted from “Carving a Name” by Horatio Alger, which ended: “ ‘If I would have my name endure/I’ll write it on the hearts of man.’ ” (3834). 215 Cf. Martha Swain, Pat Harrison: The New Deal Years. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 1978. Print. 149. 216 “Name Library for Jefferson, Bill Proposes.” The Washington Post 3 Dec. 1937. “A Memorial Library.” The Washington Post 4 Dec. 1937. Treadway estimated a cost of $35,000 for both measures. 217 “A Memorial Library.” The Washington Post 4 Dec. 1937.

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All these different proposals identified specific attributes of Jefferson as memorable. It became evident that the attributions were not connected to party affiliation revolved around Jefferson’s humanitarianism,218 that is, his concern for the common man, his advocacy of education to procure informed citizens for political leadership, and his interest in science as a tool for improving the situation of the common people. Sol Bloom, who had associated Jefferson primarily with freedom of speech through the auditorium idea, stressed that Jefferson was a practical and innovative man, thus “[t]‌o attempt to duplicate […] another work of art means failure” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3420). Byron Scott similarly argued against a “marble mausoleum” which only “imitates” Jefferson’s “skill in architecture” but not his “liberal, progressive, and versatile mind” and “many-sided genius” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937:  3419).219 The American Architectural Association, the American Institute of Architecture,220 The League for Progress in Architecture,221 Designers of Shelter in America; the American Sculptors Society;222 the National Competitions Committee for Architecture and the Allied Arts;223 the FAC; the Committee on Architecture and Industrial Art of the Museum of Modern Art, New  York;224 and Frank Lloyd Wright concurred with Bloom and Scott and criticized the Pope design and its selection process.

218 Cf. “Bill Would Ban Tidal Basin as Memorial Site.” The Washington Post 24 Apr. 1937. Senator William E. Borah (R-IA) said: “If we want to manifest our sincere respect for the great political philosopher and humanitarian, Thomas Jefferson, we will not at this time attempt to build a $3,000,000 […] monument and at the same time manifest our good faith in the matter of economy.” 219 Scott complained about the “completely hackneyed, unoriginal, and trite design” and urged, “let us create something that will reflect his ideals and spirit […]” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3419). 220 Francis P. Sullivan wrote Smith, the Secretary of the TJMC: “The American Institute of Architecture is much interested in the memorial because of the great influence which Jefferson played upon the development of American Architecture […].” Francis P.  Sullivan, Letter to Howard W.  Smith, 4 Sept. 1935. Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. 221 Cf. “The Jefferson Memorial.” New Republic. 7 April 1937: 265–6. Print. 222 Cf. New Republic. 14 April 1937: 297. 223 Cf. New Republic. 10 August 1937: 20–1. 224 Resolution passed by the Committee on Architecture and Industrial Art of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Howard W. Smith Papers. 4 April 1939.

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Architectural Competition Proposal Congressman Otha Wearin (D-IA) insinuated that the memorial was a result of “wire pulling or political influence”225 and therefore un-Jeffersonian. Instead the memorial design should be chosen through an anonymous architectural competition “under the supervision of the American Institute of Architects” to give young, progressive architects “an opportunity to rise in their profession”. The focus on the merit of the design rather than the name of the architect would be “democratic” and thereby reflect Jefferson as “the great commoner” (Cong. Rec. 19 Jun. 1936: 10312). The League for Progress in Architecture even went one step further by proposing to hold a “competition on Program, to bring out ideas as to what a memorial to Jefferson might be, and where it should be, and about what it might be like, and then an architectural competition, open to all, for the development of that program.”226 To procure these objectives, the League approached Representative Henry Ellenbogen (D-PA) who had criticized the TJMC for not holding an “open competition”.227 These ideas received support from Frank Lloyd Wright who mordantly summarized some of the criticisms in an essay to Franklin D. Roosevelt entitled “O Government!” in March 1937.228 It is interesting to see how the voice of this famous architect mingled with less famous opinions such as that of the editor of The Washington Post or Marchis Child’s comment in the Magazine of Art. Wright first attested that Jefferson was a “cultured democrat […] honored by all,” therefore, it was incomprehensible that John R. Pope designed this “fashionable effigy of reaction”229 which was an “arrogant insult to the memory of Jefferson.” This “bureaucratic architecture,”230 “the dead weight upon the spirit of our progress”

225 Marquis Childs, “Mr. Pope’s Memorial.” Magazine of Art 30.4 (April 1937): 200–202. Print. “What Jefferson would want would be public buildings designed by men […] undistracted by the art of wire-pulling” (202). 226 “The Jefferson Memorial.” New Republic 7 April 1937: 265–6. 227 “Jefferson Shrine Plan, Costs Scored.” The Washington Post 16 Mar. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 228 Frank Lloyd Wright, “O Government!” 30 March 1937: 1–4. Roosevelt, Franklin D.: Papers as President: Official File 1505. Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission 1936–1945. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. Cf. Howard 2006, 241. Howard notes: “The spring pages of the Magazine of Art were ablaze with overheated polemics. Frank Lloyd Wright chimed in, too, writing directly to President Roosevelt. ‘This proposed design is one more world-famous miscarriage of grace.’ ” 229 Wright 1937, 2. 230 Wright 1937, 1. Wright calls it a “reactionary monument.”

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was wasting American substance, Wright argued. He agreed with the editor of The Post,231 and stressing the quality of simplicity as John R. and Arthur U. Pope had done, Wright, as advocate of modern architecture, located that quality in a different form. Like other opponents of the classic design, Wright observed that Jefferson himself promoted scientific progress, was more advanced than his contemporaries, and “had a mind [that] would certainly have kept pace with his country’s growth.”232 Therefore, he would be the “first to scorn the stupid erudition” and, as a proponent of simplicity,233 “condemn both the folly and the waste.” Wright called the classic design a “gangrene of sentimentality” “memorializ[ing] him to his own people in terms of the feudal art.”234 This feudal, antidemocratic aspect was also captured in the expressions “another Hadrian’s Tomb”235 or “mausoleum,”236 231 “Viscount Bryce’s Warning.” The Washington Post 21 Mar. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . This “homage to Roman Imperialism” “would be another addition to Washington’s nonutilitarian structures,” “that symmetry can be overdone,” and that “ ‘uniformity usually ends in monotony.’ ” The editor concluded: “It would be ironical if the memorial to Jefferson, a lover of simplicity and variety, should only serve to make the national Capital only more monotonously pompous.” 232 “Memorial Protest: League Representatives Deride Basin Shrine for Jefferson.” The Washington Post 21 Mar. 1937. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . The League for Progress in Architecture noted that Jefferson was “the first creative architect,” “delighted in originality and inventive genius,” and “would be more modern and forward-thinking.” 233 Childs 1937, 201. Childs even wrote about Jefferson’s “Spartan simplicity.” 234 Wright 1937, 2. 235 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937:  3420. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938:  8523. Cong. Rec. 7 Jun. 1938: 8442. Cf. “The Jefferson Memorial.” New Republic. 7 April 1937: 265. The League for Progress in Architecture wrote: “The whole is an ‘adaptation’ – inspiration is too strong a word – from the so-called Pantheon of the Emperor Hadrian.” Cf. Resolution of Committee on Architecture and Industrial Art, 4 April 1939. Howard W. Smith Papers; UVA. 236 Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1817. Cf. Cong. Rec. 17 Aug. 1937: 9157. Cf. “Another Mausoleum.” The Washington Post 21 Feb. 1937; Bessemer, Louis. “Mausoleum to Jefferson?: Letter to the Editor.” The Washington Post 11 Mar. 1937; “Strange Honor to Jefferson.” The Washington Post 14 Mar. 1937; Taxpayer. “Memorial Doubts.” The Washington Post 29 Mar. 1937; “No More Cherry Blossoms?” The Washington Post 7 Apr. 1937; Josephine McCormack, “More on the Jefferson Memorial Plans: Letter to the Editor.” The Washington Post 17 Apr. 1937; “Preliminary Victory.” The Washington Post 29 Apr. 1937; “ ‘For Posterity, for All Time’.” The Washington Post 4 May 1937; “Another Stormy Axis.” The Washington Post 7 Apr. 1938; “ ‘For All Time’.” The Washington Post 13 Jun. 1938; “Tree Removal Called Insult to Jefferson: 3,000 Members of D. of

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which Byron Scott loved to employ and which were depicted by a cartoonist. In the cartoon, Scott explained before Congress, “the ghost of Emperor Hadrian” says to Jefferson: “That’s my temple; and if you’ll pardon me for saying so, I think somebody is nuts for moving it to Washington and putting your name on it. Jefferson, old boy, it isn’t even a bit like you” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3419–20). Similarly, Marquis Childs noted the “profound irony” of choosing a design “of imperial splendor to hallow the memory of a man who was a free spirit, free thinker, unabashed by any of the implications of the bold political philosophy that he held.”237 Both these criticisms, which served as appraisals of Jefferson’s progressive democratic philosophy, relied on religious metaphors. While the words “temple,” and “shrine” were repeatedly employed by the defenders of Pope’s design, his opponent, Childs, also spoke of hallowing Jefferson, and he thereby proved that “a civil religion is inevitably a source of division.”238 Fenn’s observation is pertinent in respect to Wright’s attempt to construct the idea of adversity between “Official America” and “the people.” Advocates of a modern design claimed that so many public buildings in Washington D.C. were in the classical style, which “is merely hollow, sterile, and exceedingly dull.” Childs wrote that the “long dreary colonnades on Constitution Avenue [are] singularly depressing and barren” and that “they feel out of scale with a democracy of plain humanity.”239 Similarly, Wright attacked the whole bureaucratic and monumental architecture as evidence of “provincial grando-mania,”240 negating that Pope’s design communicated “eternal values” through a universal form. Instead of promoting “indigenous creative art,” “Official America” did the opposite and remained unaware that the “whole world of culture has laughed and laughs now” because of the classical design. This, according to Wright, revealed

A. Protest Defacement of Park for Site of Mausoleum.” Washington Herald 28 Nov 1938; “Daughters Join Trees Protest.” Washington Times 28 Nov 1938. All these articles designated the memorial as mausoleum. Even the TJMC talked about this topic in relation to the color of the marble that they were going to use. Representative Fritz Lanham remarked: “[…] total whiteness is not especially desired inasmuch as we are not building a tomb but a memorial, which in itself indicated that the man in his work and in his influence on America is still living and consequently abstractly it seems to me that is should not be a sepulchre whiteness or cream. It is not a mausoleum, it is a memorial.” Official Minutes of the TJMC 3 Apr. 1939: 13. 237 Childs 1937, 201. 238 Fenn 2004, 141–142. 239 Childs 1937, 202. 240 Wright 1937, 3.

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that “American authority is neither scholar nor gentleman[.]‌No scholar because unaware of the trend of honest advanced thought in the world of culture:  no gentleman because willing to betray its own youth to senility or deserved ridicule.”241 Instead of “sacrific[ing] living spirit to dead letter,” government, that is the TJMC, should see to it that “Jefferson’s book-architecture, his furniture and utensils, his tastes remain with his mortal body in his tomb. They too are his mortal remains.” Wright’s concluding paragraph harkened back to Byron Scott’s auditorium proposal and to the nature-lover attribution of the ‘Save the Cherry Trees Movement.’242 Wright implored FDR and the TJMC:  “O Government, if you cannot learn how to say honor to Thomas Jefferson with true significance and grace as architecture—then say it with green spaces, noble trees and splendid masses of verdure and bloom. Or say it simply by way of a great forum where his own people may find a voice or consciously be one.”243 Wright emphasized Jefferson’s concern for the people’s welfare and his respect of their capabilities of self-government. The utilitarian monument discussion proved Wagner-Pacifici’s code/event correlation: because the humanitarian needs of the common people were ubiquitous in the 1930s, the proponents of a utilitarian monument found ample examples of grievances that Jefferson—the great humanitarian—would like to see addressed or even abolished.244 Humanitarianism became the pivotal Jefferson attribute that the supporters of the Jefferson Memorial at the Tidal Basin and its various opponents employed; this attribute even found its way into the Jefferson Day speeches.245 2 41 Wright 1937, 2. 242 Papers of Howard W. Smith. Box 266; Folder 1; “To Be Taken Up at the Next Meeting,” containing 29 newspaper articles. 243 Wright 1937, 4. Cf. Childs 1937, 200. “Enshrine his memory in pubic place of assemblage with purpose.” 244 Cf. Telegram to FDR undersigned by several individuals from different states, 17 November 1938. The signers of the telegram called the memorial a waste because of “the need for health, educational and social facilities in the District. And the extension or improvement of any of these services will prove a fitting memorial to the great Democratic Leader.” 245 Cf. Cong. Rec. and Gerald W.  Gross, “Memorial Site Termed ‘Folly’ on House Floor: Four Organizations Join Fight as Scott Hits at Commission.” The Washington Post 14 Apr. 1937. In this connection Gerald Gross also reported of the gathering of 200 members of the Society of Virginia “to mark the 194th anniversary of [Jefferson’s] birth,” where he “was eulogized last night as the founder of world democracy.” “Mrs. McMillian pointed to Jefferson’s achievements as a philosopher, humanitarian,

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Amid all these protests, and four days after the firm of John Pope “was instructed to stop work on the project, Jack Pope died on August 27, 1937.”246 Howard narrates that Dr. Kimball “was determined to see the Jefferson Memorial through to completion,”247 arguing in a eulogy in the American Architect248 that Pope had been an “artist of authentic gifts, who enriched [American architecture] with works of abiding value.” Pope’s art had only been attacked because “[i]‌t is human for youth to identify value only with the newer, to regard the older as worthless obstruction.” In contrast, Dr. Kimball asserted that it was possible to create great art with traditional elements. He advocated for “neo-classicist artists,” depicting them as a compromise between old and new and thereby “appeal[ed] to those politicians and members of the public who, uncertain about the new Modernism, weren’t quite ready to reject all that came before.”249 Even though Kimball succeeded in changing the “terms of the debate,” Howard also admits that the continuation of the work on the memorial as conceived by John Pope had little to do with Kimball’s article. Neither was the decision influenced by the TJMC’s hiring of a public relations firm to counter the location-and-design opponents’ ad campaign. Howard asserts that a “behind-thescenes exchange settled the matter” in June 1938. Pope’s widow wrote to Franklin D. Roosevelt, a cousin by marriage, and demanded that the memorial be built.250 While the documents in the archives reveal that some communication took place,251 Howard’s account draws a rather simple picture of the moral entrepreneurs of the Jefferson Memorial, especially of FDR.

champion of education for the masses, architect, agriculturalist, inventor, and defender of freedom of thought, speech and religious worship,” Gross noted (emphasis added). 246 Howard 2006, 241. 247 Howard 2006, 244. 248 Fiske Kimball, “John Russell Pope:  1874–1937.” American Architect 151 (Oct. 1937). Print. 249 Howard 2006, 246. 250 Howard 2006, 246. 251 John Boylan to Colonel Marvin H. McIntyre, Secretary to the President, 16 March 1938. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President, Official File 1505; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York; R. B. Memorandum for M.H.M., 6 April 1938. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President, Official File 1505; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. Both documents discuss that Mrs. Pope sought to withdraw her late-husband’s designs, but as he had been paid by the TJMC, Mr. Pope had given up the rights.

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In December 1937, a memorandum by FDR to the Secretary of Commerce [Daniel C.  Roper, SC]252 revealed FDR’s point of view concerning the debate between the utilitarian and non-utilitarian memorial.253 Roper reported that a “stalemate” had been reached on the Hill254 and that he, himself, wanted to give “vitality” to the exterior of the memorial by making the interior a “living memorial.” Roper imagined the interior could be used to “depict our development in science and industry,” because Jefferson “delighted in inventiveness and had deep interest in education and the welfare of humanity.” Roper thereby suggested yet another idea that would further the education of the nation. In his answer to Roper, FDR remarked that “at least a dozen utilitarian plans have been suggested” and voiced his concern that “we will get nowhere by trying to combine utility with a purely artistic Memorial.” Addressing Roper’s idea, FDR estimated that the interior of memorial would be “too small […] to use for utilitarian purposes” and borrowing the authority of Congress, FDR stated that it “has definitely decided in favor of the purely artistic Memorial.” He instructed Roper “do try to get some action in the Congress to get a bill through deciding on: (a) Design (b) Location.” FDR stressed the impossibility of picking a utilitarian measure while still sustaining the national character of the memorial. FDR’s inquiry revealed his continued interest in procuring a Jefferson Memorial255 and his direct and indirect communication with the TJMC.256

252 G. W. Domhoff, and Michael J. Webber, Class and Power in the New Deal: Corporate Moderates, Southern Democrats, and the Liberal-Labor Coalition. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2011. Print. Studies in Social Inequality. 113. Roper hoped to receive the president’s opinion on his own ideas for the memorial. Roper was “Southern-born,” had been a “lobbyist for corporations with extensive contacts throughout the corporate world,” and had served on FDR’s “Business Advisory Council” before becoming Secretary of Commerce. 253 Memorandum for the Secretary of Commerce from Franklin D.  Roosevelt, 27 Dec. 1937. 254 Memorandum, for the President, from Secretary of Commerce, 21 Dec. 1937. 255 Official Minutes of TJMC, 24 Mar. 1936. Dr. Kimball asserted that “[t]‌he President wants further studies made” concerning the site and design of the memorial. Cf. Report of the Capital Park and Planning Commission, 20 March 1937; Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers as President; Official File 1505; The Jefferson Memorial proposals by Pope were considered in comparison to the Lincoln Memorial’s design, cost, and size. 256 Cf. Memo for MAC from FDR, 11 January 1938; Franklin D. Roosevelt Official Papers; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. The memo said: “Congressman Howard Smith is Acting Chairman of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission in place of John J. Boylan, and I do want to see him.”

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No one was more outspoken in connecting the Jefferson Memorial with FDR than Gilmore D. Clarke, the president of the FAC. On October 1, 1938, approximately two months before the groundbreaking, Clarke attempted to influence FDR by way of implying that the FAC’s rejection of the Pope design was in FDR’s and the nation’s “best interest,” because “a design indefensibly pedantic cannot represent the modern social feelings and character of your administration and our time and suitably honor Jefferson.”257 Clarke elucidated on this concept criticizing Pope’s design: “a Pantheon, a symbol of Imperial Rome, a slavish copy of a building erected by the Emperor Hadrian, is not representative of Thomas Jefferson and his significant contributions to the Nation still pertinent to today’s problems.”258 Despite the harsh criticism of the design and the Tidal Basin , FDR decided in favor of the TJMC. The Post reported that the “much and bitterly criticized enterprise will become an accomplished fact. Further protestation, therefore, would be as pointless and inappropriate as the protestants have believed the monument itself to be.”259 The groundbreaking, therefore, took place on December 15, 1938, and in his short speech, which was broadcast nationwide, FDR promoted the memorial plans260 by emphasizing the tradition of the L’Enfant plan for ordering the national capital, in order to affirm that Jefferson contributed even more to the ordering and perpetuation of the nation. FDR reviewed the debates surrounding the decision on the location of the memorial, looking even further back to the erection of the Washington Monument and of the Lincoln Memorial. In this way, Roosevelt situated Jefferson within the framework of two great presidents and national figures:  “For very many years it has seemed appropriate, with Washington and Lincoln, [Jefferson’s] services should be held in memory by the erection of a monument of equal dignity” (Cong. Rec. 20 Jan. 1939: 218). FDR emphasized the role of Congress and the Commission in order to depict the memorial as an expression of the public will by citing from the bill’s preamble, which stated that “the American people feel a deep gratitude to Thomas Jefferson”. FDR claimed that

257 Letter, from Gilmore D. Clarke to FDR, 1 October 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President; Official File; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. 258 Letter, from Gilmore D. Clarke to FDR, 1 October 1936. 259 “Broken Ground.” The Washington Post 15 Dec. 1938. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 260 National Park Service, n.p. Cf. Cong. Rec. 20 Jan. 1939: 218.

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[…] the third President of the United States, has been recognized by our citizens not only for the outstanding part which he took in drafting of the Declaration of Independence itself, not only for his authorship of the Virginia statute for religious freedom, but also for the services rendered in establishing the practical operation of the American Government as a democracy and not an autocracy. (Cong. Rec. 20 Jan. 1939: 218)

FDR’s formulation of “outstanding part” proclaimed in accordance with panegyric tradition that Jefferson had been the leading and supreme figure and thinker at the time. Secondly, the Virginia statute for religious freedom was cited as one of Jefferson’s main accomplishments, as it expanded human rights. Furthermore, Jefferson’s altruistic service was stressed, and thus his idealism. Within the same sentence, FDR also emphasized Jefferson’s practical nature in terms of ‘the practical operation of the American Government as a democracy and not an autocracy.’ As corollary, FDR portrayed Jefferson as a practical idealist, albeit without using the term. By distinguishing clearly between these two forms of government, FDR linked Jefferson with the former and thereby tried to establish that he, himself, stood for Jeffersonian democracy, despite attacks from his opponents who insisted that he was a dictator or autocrat. FDR affirmed that the democratic ideal at home was important as a contrast to the dictatorship of Hitler and Mussolini. Already in April of 1938, the Washington Post had connected the memorial with current world problems in an article entitled “Another Stormy Axis,”261 which claimed, It is not the Berlin-Rome axis but that running south from the White House which is currently causing the greatest concern to Washingtonians. On this local axis, at a spot about as far distant from the Washington Monument as is the latter from the President’s home, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission insists upon placing the marble mausoleum which so greatly intrigues its fancy.

The article emphasized the “un-Jeffersonian” way of deciding on the memorial design and site by disregarding the public will similar to advocates of Otha Wearin’s architectural competition proposal It therefore directly opposed what FDR’s portrayal at the groundbreaking. On November 20, 1938, a poem was forwarded to FDR via Katherine C. Blackburn, the director of the Division of Press Intelligence, which emphasized the folly of the memorial opponents, specifically the women who had chained themselves to the trees and stormed the White House. The poem written by Mrs. Chester T. Crowell was entitled, “We Have Cherry Trees to Save”; 261 “Another Stormy Axis.” The Washington Post 7 Apr. 1938: X10. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 .

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however, it opened with a description of autocratic Germany: “The Nazis pelt the Jews / With rocks that fall like rain; / Their pleas for mercy rise; / They plead, but plead in vain.” Only after this first stanza did she comment on the cherry trees announced in her headline. She wrote: “Ah, sad! Too bad, too bad! / But in our land so brave, / We’ve a more pressing problem, / We’ve cherry trees to save.” In the fourth stanza, she derided the “ladies of the capital” for distracting the president from “world affairs.” She contrasted the enormity of “war” and “grief ” with the insignificant matter of the cherry trees. As they kept the president but also Congress from more important work, she implied that the ladies’ acts were not representative of Jefferson’s patriotism and concern for the welfare of the people, no matter what their religious affiliation. The president, by exposing the cherry-tree defenders’ actions as “flimflam,” had rendered the nation a service by ending this turmoil. Mrs. Corwell’s anger expressed in the poem has to be seen through the lens of the Night of the Broken Glass of November 11, 1938. As a corollary, FDR’s remarks at the groundbreaking gained in significance, as they echoed Elbert Thomas’s argument that Jeffersonian democracy stood in opposition to the autocracy that was spreading in many parts of the world. FDR positioned himself, his administration, and “the millions of American citizens who each year visit the National Capital” (218) in the discipleship of Jefferson which stood against the cruelty and inhumanity of Nazi Germany. The permanency of the memorial and the national outreach alluded to by FDR in his final remarks at the groundbreaking contained the idea that Jefferson was, in fact, an icon for all Americans of all ages and an inspiration to millions. On December 16, the Washington Post heralded on its front page, “Cheers Great Roosevelt at Memorial Site,”262 but reported that the president “ignored the controversial aspects of the project” and quoted FDR’s paragraph on Jefferson’s services, including the line that posited Jeffersonian democracy against autocracy. It spoke of a “Monument of Dignity” and quoted Stuart Gibboney, who said that the memorial “will be acclaimed by the American people […] as a shrine dedicated to the undying liberal principles for which Thomas Jefferson fought so valiantly and so successfully.”263 Gibboney thereby corroborated FDR’s interpretation of the meaning of Jefferson and the Jefferson Memorial to the American 262 “Only Cheers Great Roosevelt at Jefferson Shrine Exercises.” The Washington Post 16 Dec. 1938. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . On page 3, where the article was continued, it announced in more religious terms: “Only Cheers Great Roosevelt at Jefferson Shrine Exercises.” 263 “Only Cheers Great Roosevelt at Jefferson Shrine Exercises.” The Washington Post 16 Dec. 1938. ProQuest.

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Fig. 2:  “President Roosevelt lays Block 208 at Thomas Jefferson Memorial. Washington, D.C. November 15. President Roosevelt today laid the cornerstone at the unfinished $3,000,000 Thomas Jefferson Memorial. To the stonecutter who made the stone, it was better identified as simply ‘Number 208.’ Photo shows the president as he weilded trowel handed down through generations since George Washington”. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing, LC-DIG-hec-47514.

people and suggested that liberty was hard won. FDR continued this theme at the Cornerstone Laying of the Memorial (Fig. 2) which occurred a little less than a year after the groundbreaking. Yet the changed international crisis and domestic situation altered the perception of the memorial and FDR’s comments at the groundbreaking.

2.1.4 Cornerstone Laying of the Memorial, November 15, 1939 At the TJMC meeting of October 19, 1939, the commission discussed which items it should place in the cornerstone which would reflect something about

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Jefferson and the memorial the cornerstone would start. After a member of the commission proposed a newspaper as one of the items, Dr. Kimball said, “I think Jefferson’s great work was his statesmanship. The only newspaper that would last would be a copy of the rag edition of the New York Times. To put ordinary newspapers in would be a waste of time.”264 Despite Kimball’s objection, the commission placed a copy each of The Washington Post, Washington Evening Star, Washington Times-Herald, and Washington Daily News in the cornerstone. This reflected Jefferson’s famous aphorism, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter,” which expressed the importance of public education and information for governing the people. The inclusion of these newspapers also acknowledged the public debates on the design and purpose of the memorial. TJMC discussed whether a Bible should be placed in the cornerstone. Dr. Kimball voiced his opinion, “if you put a Bible in you should also put in a copy of Jefferson’s ‘Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.’ ”265 General Kean concurred seeing “that book” as Jefferson’s correction of the Bible as Jefferson only retained “what Jesus said himself.”266 General Kean seemed to imply that only by complementing the Bible with Jefferson’s “Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth” would Jefferson be represented correctly. Therefore, the TJMC chose to leave out the Bible entirely and filled the cornerstone with a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, and a ten volume The Writings of Thomas Jefferson by Ford,267 together with a copy of the Annual Report of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission of 1939. The Washington Post advertised the cornerstone laying on November 14, 1939. It stressed the traditions that marked the event; namely, that FDR would use the “same trowel that George Washington used for similar ceremonies for the Capitol,” and that he would tap the cornerstone with a gavel made from an elm tree that Jefferson himself had planted on his estate, Monticello. The Post reported, “Simplicity and dignity will mark the cornerstone laying […] in accord with the President’s wishes.” These attributions had been amply employed by many a critic of the memorial, as well as by the TJMC in relation to Jefferson and

2 64 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 43. 265 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 41–42. 266 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 42. 267 Letter, F. F. Gillen to Stuart Gibboney, 25 Oct. 1939, Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville,  Va.

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FDR’s wish for simplicity and dignity, reflected the illusion of similarity between Jefferson and himself. The Post reported on the cornerstone laying ceremonies in its article “Roosevelt Hits Dictatorship in Jefferson Talk: Lauds Democracy as He Lays Cornerstone for Memorial Here.”268 The caption below the picture of the cornerstone laying emphasized FDR’s praise of “Jefferson as the architect, not of the Democratic Party, but of democracy itself.” The article continued with a quote in which FDR noted the similarity between Jefferson’s time and 1939—both times America faced a crisis that was epitomized by the contrast between American democracy and dictatorship. While FDR discussed these points toward the end of his short speech, the Washington Post opened its report with them and emphasized the third from last and penultimate paragraphs with slight alterations. The original read: During all the years that have followed Thomas Jefferson, the United States has expanded his philosophy into a greater achievement of security of the nation, security of the individual and national unity, than in any other part of the world. It may be that the conflict between the two forms of philosophy will continue for centuries to come; but we in the United States are more than ever satisfied with the republican form of Government based on regularly recurring opportunities to our citizens to choose their leaders for themselves.269

The Washington Post used these sentences in an abbreviated form—it had cut out the last subordinate clause—as a springboard to insist that while FDR “extolled Jefferson’s many-sided qualities and the ‘vitality’ of his type of Americanism,” he had not addressed Jefferson’s opposition to a third presidential term. The Post argued that Jefferson had “qualms over unlimited terms for Presidents” and implied that the possibility of FDR’s running for a third term verged on American democracy developing into a lifelong dictatorship, despite FDR’s assurance that the liberty of the American people was now more secure than ever. This impression was attenuated because The Post omitted that the republican form of government was “based on regularly recurring opportunities to our citizens to choose their leaders for themselves.”270 This opportunity of election, FDR

268 “Roosevelt Hits Dictatorship in Jefferson Talk:  Lauds Democracy as He Lays Cornerstone for Memorial Here.” The Washington Post 16 Nov 1939. 269 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at the Cornerstone Laying of the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C., November 15, 1939.” The American Presidency Project. Ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley. . N.p. Cf. The Washington Post 16 Nov 1939. 270 Roosevelt, 1939 “Address at the Cornerstone Laying.”

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argued, “satisfied” the people of the United States, implying that political power ultimately derived from the people and remained their responsibility. As a corollary, FDR suggested that his running for a third term was democratic and not dictatorial, because the people were to decide whether he should be entrusted with government once again or whether someone else would be a better political leader. Besides commenting on these paragraphs, the Washington Post surmised that FDR’s wish at the beginning of the speech, namely, to have the opportunity to come to the memorial’s dedication once again in 1941, might be seen as a hint of his intentions regarding the election year of 1940. These speculations were followed with a few sentences on the groundbreaking and cherry tree controversy, before the article described the ceremony and quoted the passage in which FDR compared Jefferson’s ‘many-sided qualities’ with those of Lincoln and Washington. Furthermore, the article summarized that FDR recalled Jefferson’s artistic interests in respect to the memorial’s architecture. The president’s address was printed on page eight in full and deserves more detailed explication than The Post applied to it, especially in respect to FDR’s constructing the memorial and Jefferson as icons of the national life and unity. FDR first discussed the significance of the National Capitol to the American people, in its capacity of representing all regions and peoples of this nation. While many leaders of the American republic had been commemorated with a memorial in the capital, FDR emphasized that “it has been reserved to two of those leaders to receive special tribute […] by the erection of national shrines perpetuating their memories, over and above the appreciation and the regard tendered to other great citizens of the Republic.”271 With the cornerstone laying, a third shrine and name was added to the two already existing ones to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Once more, FDR referred back to the L’Enfant plan and stressed Jefferson’s greatness by depicting him as equal to Washington and Lincoln. FDR explained that the national capital embodied the “vitality” of the nation and in turn “envisage[d]‌many sided-interests;” hence, the memorials to these three great men fitted in the capital, as the men themselves reflected “many sided-qualities.”272 Furthermore, Jefferson embodied the unity and diversity of the nation within his many-sided qualities. 2 71 Roosevelt, 1939 “Address at the Cornerstone Laying.” 272 This rhetoric harked back to FDR’s Jefferson Day Dinner Address in St. Paul, Minnesota on April 18, 1932. In the earlier speech, which served simultaneously as a campaign speech, FDR had maintained, “It was the purpose of Jefferson to teach the country that the solidarity of Federalism was only a practical one, that it represented only a

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After having discussed Washington and Lincoln’s qualities, FDR demonstrated Jefferson’s service, not just to his nation, but to all of mankind.273 He explained that Americans remembered Jefferson’s achievements listed on his tombstone and illustrated his centrality in the civil religious calendar. To enhance the audience’s understanding of Jefferson’s perpetual influence, FDR employed the rhetorical devices of repetition and anaphora: When in the year of 1939 America speaks of its Bill of Rights, we think of the author of the Statute for religious liberty in Virginia. When today Americans celebrate the anniversary of the Fourth of July 1776, our minds revert to Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. And when each spring we take part in commencement exercises […], we go back to the days of Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia.

FDR continued by lauding Jefferson for his successes in science, agriculture, and architecture, but conceded that “it was in the field of political philosophy that Jefferson’s significance is transcendent,” a philosophy which the American people have expanded ever since Jefferson’s time. After the two paragraphs already explicated in connection with the Washington Post article, FDR concluded his speech with the words: “Therefore, in memory of the many-sided Thomas Jefferson and in honor of the ever-present vitality of his type of Americanism, we lay the cornerstone of this shrine.”274 FDR’s language reflected the civil religious discourse by insisting on the transcendent values to be embodied in the soon-to-be erected shrine (Fig. 3).

2.1.5  Inscriptions in the Memorial Room: Frieze and Panels The TJMC met on March 2, 1939 to discuss the four panels placed in the Southwest, Northwest, Northeast, and Southeast directions of the circular memorial room. Originally, these four panels were to depict the “four freedoms” in “bas

minority of the people, that to build a great Nation the interest of all groups in every part must be considered, and that only in a large, national unity could real security be found. The whole life and all of the methods of Jefferson were an exemplification of this fundamental” (Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at Jefferson Day Dinner in St. Paul, Minnesota, April 18, 1932.” The American Presidency Project. Ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley. Web 15 Apr. 2014 ). 273 “To those we add today another American of many parts-not Jefferson the founder of a party, but the Jefferson whose influence is felt today in many of the current activities of mankind” (Roosevelt, 1939 “Address at the Cornerstone Laying”). 274 Roosevelt, 1939 “Address at the Cornerstone Laying.”

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Fig. 3:  “Jefferson Memorial under construction.” 1940. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing, LC-DIG-hec-28499.

relief.” Dr. Kimball elucidated: “The first one was the freedom of the land; The second was the freedom of the body to liberty; The third was the freedom of the mind to universal education; and, The fourth was the freedom of the soul.” Even though this was a “wonderful conception,” Dr. Kimball proposed to find “brief inscriptions […] to fit those four walls” instead and that he had already found one that “the President would like very much. ‘I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man.’ I would like to see it run along the frieze.”275 The architect Mr. Eggers took up the sentence again when he explained that “77 letters” fit in “frieze around the Memorial Room.”276 2 75 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 2 Mar. 1939: 68–9. 276 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 53.

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Stuart Gibboney elucidated that it appears in Jefferson’s letter to Benjamin Rush when he was attacked for his religious beliefs during the presidential campaign in 1800.277 Yet, Kimball, ignoring the context, preferred the phrase “over all other excerpts, in that while he has elsewhere expressed his hostility to political tyranny, or religious tyranny, or other forms of tyranny, in those words he covers all forms of tyranny.”278 The phrase was not only politically useful, but it also applied to broader questions of social and cultural life in the United States. Its wide applicability made it the perfect aphorism for the frieze, as it offered the greatest opportunities for identification and inspiration. The commission’s concern to choose inscriptions that most people would be able to relate to became apparent in an odd exchange between Senator Thomas and Dr. Kimball, in which they experimented if these words could be “twisted,” as “[i]‌t is terrible when somebody can find something obscene in it.”279 They adopted the phrase, when all agreed that there could be no objection against Jefferson’s own words and that the quotation was easily understood because it was “the purest kind of English” except for the already Anglicized words “tyranny” and “hostility.” Thomas asserted, “I do not know what better quotation you could get to show what American Democracy stands for. ‘The Mind of Man’ certainly refers to the individual and the ‘Tyranny’ which cramps man hurts all of the four ‘Freedoms’ […].”280 As this quotation encapsulated the essence of American democracy and therefore the work of Congress, Thomas expressed his hope that the public “will charge this sentence up to each member of the Commission and we can all take credit for writing it.”281 Senator Thomas thereby transferred the past into the present and affirmed that the TJMC was inevitably intertwined with Jefferson and the message that the memorial was to communicate. Thomas’s concern for the people’s opinion on the memorial even went as far as to consider whether “the word ‘Sworn’ ” would “offend the Quakers.” Dr.  Kimball retorted that “[t]he Quakers revere this man, and know he did a great deal for them and they will not object.”282 2 77 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 54. 278 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 54. 279 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 56. 280 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 56–7. 281 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 57. 282 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 58. The Quakers did not swear on the Bible, and thus were granted to take an oath in 1695. Cf. “William III, 1695–6: An Act that the Solemne Affirmation & Declaration of the People called Quakers shall be accepted instead of an Oath in the usual Forme. [Chapter XXXIV. Rot. Parl. 7 & 8 Gul. III. p.9. n.3.].” Statutes of the Realm: Volume 7, 1695–1701. Ed. John Raithby.

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The Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes proposed the same “inscription worthy of him” as “characteristic of his great spirit,”283 to FDR. While Ickes commented on the context in which Jefferson wrote the sentence, his evaluation of the sentence differed from Gibboney’s religious emphasis, and this alteration reflects that an election year had gone by between the Commission’s discussion and Ickes’s proposal. He said that the sentence was written “during the height of his campaign for the Presidency,” and he continued, “The savage bitterness of the opposition to him, particularly on the part of the vested interest and obscurantist elements, remind one of another campaign—that of 1940. I hope you agree with me that those words of Jefferson’s deserve to be engraved in stone for all the world to see for generations to come.”284 Stressing once more the transcendence of time, Ickes’s and Stuart Gibboney’s suggestion was approved by FDR, who wrote Gibboney: “It seems pretty good to me.”285 Like Gilmore Clarke, when he connected Jefferson, FDR, and modern architecture in terms of their shared “modern social feelings,” Ickes saw FDR and Jefferson united as all great men face severe opposition; in fact, panegyric tradition teaches that overcoming one’s opposition marks a truly great man. They each were elected President in their time and were therefore proven right in their fight for the common man against the ‘vested interest,’ as well as in their progressive legislation. Ickes’s letter was among FDR’s papers, which contained a list of people and organizations which had come out in support of FDR’s third term, including Stuart Gibboney who had published a favorable article in the New York Times. One argument for the third term was that in times of crisis, it would be wise to re-elect FDR, the most experienced candidate about national and international problems. It seems fitting, therefore, that Ickes highlighted the world significance and relevance of Jefferson’s words at the time. The process of finding a fitting inscription for frieze proved relatively easy one as the 77-letter constriction limited the commission’s options and thereby

Great Britain Record Commission, 1820. 152. British History Online. Web. 22 February 2017 . Kimball is probably referring to the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. 283 Letter, from Stuart Gibboney to FDR, 29 Nov 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President; Official File 1505. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. 284 Letter, from Stuart Gibboney to FDR, 29 Nov 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President. 285 Memorandum, from FDR to Stuart Gibboney, 23 Dec. 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President; Official File 1505. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.

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smoothed the way to establishing a consensus. A somewhat different story has to be told regarding the four panel inscriptions, which Dr. Kimball mentioned when he suggested FDR’s favorite Jefferson phrase for the frieze. In order to tackle the four panel inscriptions, each limited to 500 words, the TJMC created the committee of three at its commission meeting on October 19, 1939. The committee of the three was comprised of Stuart Gibboney, General Kean, and Senator Thomas, who proposed that they should each “bring […] four suggestions, and then the Commission would have those paragraphs to work on?”286 Dr. Kimball offered to send them the material he had already collected. Besides including familiar words from the Declaration of Independence, which could be read in the Archives Building and in the Congressional Library, Thomas said it would be beneficial “if we can find […] any ringing sentences that will be important to us today.” By choosing lesser known but resonating quotes, Thomas wanted to “contribut[e]‌to an expansion of the American appreciation of him.”287 Senator Thomas implied and explicated that only an exact knowledge of Jefferson’s words would speak positively for the commission’s work and for Jefferson himself. He narrated being approached by a man who would not believe that Jefferson had substituted the term ‘Common Defense’ for ‘National Defense’ in the Neutrality Act. Thomas had to show the man the words in the records before he believed Thomas and approved of the TJMC by saying: “ ‘If that is what [you] have been doing all the time that is all right.’ ” Thomas added that this word choice, combined with “the Constitutional development,” proves to the “ ‘Nine Old Gentlemen,’ ” that “you must do so much more for the common […] than for the national defense.” Thomas argued, if the Supreme Court listened to Jefferson, “it would be pretty hard for them to turn it aside.” Once again Thomas, as moral entrepreneur, dovetailed the praise of Jefferson with his own political attitudes regarding the Supreme Court and its decisions. At their next meeting, Stuart Gibboney stated that the Declaration of Independence was an obvious choice for the panel,288 and Culkin proposed that the whole preamble should be used “to get the popular view of it,” because every school boy “has memorized it” and “is impressed by it” when he sees it here in Washington.289 Thomas wondered whether they were “justified” to use similarly well-known statements, like “ ‘Man is a free agent’, which is the very basis of

2 86 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 71. 287 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 71. 288 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jan. 1940: 25. 289 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jan. 1940: 27.

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liberty and freedom.” The commissioners Culkin and Thomas agreed that “it is concise and speaks volumes” and therefore, it “appeals” not only to the man of “deep learning,” but also to the “popular man.”290 This aspect was important to Culkin and fitted well with the applicability of the frieze phrase. Applicability and outreach to all citizens, permeated the creation of the inscriptions and thus the creation of the Jefferson icon itself. General Kean, a member of the committee of three, reminded them that the last part of the Declaration’s preamble would not fit.291 The conundrum was paraphrased by Dr.  Kimball while the Declaration of Independence or even “characteristic excerpts” from it would be too long,” “[i]‌n the other ‘Freedoms’, the difficulty is to get the quotations long enough.”292 Representative Fritz Lanham (TX) therefore suggested “it would be fine” and “somewhat of an innovation” to use “some unrelated epigrams.” Dr. Kimball concurred, “You may have three or four paragraphs.” The proposition which was later taken up by the committee of three. Stuart Gibboney gave one example regarding “Jefferson’s contribution to the cause of freeing the slaves, of which he was the first protagonist in this country”, yet “[…] if you took his quotations on that subject there would be very little but if you undertook to show what he had done, why right in the Northwest Territory Ordinance he placed slavery [restricting it from spreading out] in that ordinance and got it finally adopted by Congress.” Astonishingly the TJMC discussed whether Jefferson was the first to oppose slavery, or whether the Germans in Philadelphia preceded him. Thomas opined that as long as it “does not say he was the first to oppose American slavery” or “back[…] up your statement with some secondary statements that he was the first” there was no problem in using anything Jefferson said against slavery.293 No commissioner questioned why Jefferson did not free his slaves or how Jefferson reconciled his ideals of human freedom with participating in this cruelest from of human bondage and exploitation, nor the fact that Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings.294 2 90 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jan. 1940: 29. 291 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jan. 1940: 27. 292 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jan. 1940: 28. 293 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jan. 1940: 26. Papers of Howard W. Smith. University of Virginia. 294 These oversights or omissions have been addressed and redressed in several scholarly publications after Merrill D. Peterson’s book appeared in 1960. The first scholar to address the issue defensively was John Chester Miller in The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. New  York:  The Free Press, 1977. Print. One of the most ardent accusers of Jefferson’s views and practices is Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the

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On March 22, 1940, Thomas, asking for more time, outlined “two different arrangements of [the Jefferson] material” that he was testing: “The one is in regard to four separate statements and the other is as to a continuous running essay for the whole four parts.”295 Thomas’s most striking discoveries during this process were the wealth of good quotations and American’s infatuation with monuments. Thomas suggested therefore that “at Jefferson’s Shrine we can do even more […i] f we can make this place a study where a man can read over and over again the things we offer […] it may be that there will be six instead of just one report.”296 Thomas thereby illustrated that the strength of an icon derived from the myriad possibilities that it offers for identification and for speaking to the people’s needs. By stressing that men will “read over and over again the thing we offer,” Thomas also suggested the agency and power of the moral entrepreneurs in shaping the collective memories of Jefferson. This polyphonic quality of Jefferson was also illustrated in Archibald MacLeish’s suggestions for the panel inscriptions, whose opinions as Librarian of Congress and as initiator of the Library of Congress Symposium in honor of the Jefferson Bicentennial is significant. On December 30, 1940, FDR inquired in a memorandum to Archibald MacLeish whether he had “any thoughts on quotations from Jefferson” fitting for the memorial.297 The commission called MacLeish’s suggestions—categorized as “On the Constitution,” “On Education and Free Speech,” “On Liberty,” “On Political Economy,” “On Agriculture,” and “On Democracy”—“excellent,”298 but did not directly include them. Rather, Senator Thomas saw them as a confirmation of the commission’s work because “[w]‌e have very much what he suggested.”299 MacLeish’s letter to FDR additionally drew a parallel between FDR and Jefferson: “Dictating these [Jeffersonian sayings], I am impressed anew by

Founder: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson. 2 ed. Armonk: Sharpe, 2001. A more recent and vehement scholar to right the record is Henry Wiencek, Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. Print. A more nuanced and defensive text is Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (1997). Andrew Burstein, Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello. New York: Basic Books, 2005. Print. See in particular chapters five and six; Garry Wills, “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Print. 295 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 22 Mar. 1940: 33. 296 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 22 Mar. 1940: 33. 297 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 31–32. 298 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 32. 299 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 32.

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the feeling that many of these sentences might have come straight from your hand.”300

The Committee of Three: Senator Thomas, Stuart Gibboney, and Brigadier General Jefferson Randolph Kean In February 1941, the committee of three made its presentation. Senator Thomas said that he combined his ideas with Stuart Gibboney’s and Dr.  Kimball’s suggestions, while trying to fit the results representing each of “Jefferson’s four freedoms”301 on the respective panels. Thomas tried to arrive at a “complete statement of Jefferson, of his philosophy,” by “adher[ing] entirely to Jefferson’s words” and “by starting a process of arrangement, leaving out the elements of time, and then just by eliminating all of the unnecessary words.”302 According to an amazed and excited Thomas, this process led to a “simple little statement” containing “forty-eight” different “American political concepts.” As that was not enough, he “tried another proposition […] to take [Jefferson] as of the year 1941 and the public involved, and what he said has been the basis of our system of today, making Jefferson, of course, practically the creator of the rest of us. And this ends up with something very much bigger than just American political philosophy; it is universal, […].” Thomas stressed that he was “satisfied” with document and that it was “Jeffersonian,” but worried that he had “become almost too strong, too dogmatic,” even though he had used “Jefferson’s words.”303 As Thomas did not regard Jefferson as dogmatic, he was disinclined to make his draft impart that attribution to Jefferson. Nevertheless, he justified the draft because the changes owed to the fact that the “first part of the nineteenth century is not nineteen forty and it will always be farther away from the future it is today.”304 Therefore, he “decided” that “when it comes to monumental wording” and how it contributes most “towards making America what she is today and what she is to become 300 Letter, from Archibald MacLeish to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 3 Jan. 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President; Official File 1505. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. 301 Cf. Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941:  32–3. 41. Note that Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his famous “Four Freedoms Speech” on January 6, 1941. 302 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 33. 303 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 34–5. Dr. Kimball later agreed with Thomas: “I was very much impressed […]. I think it is a very valuable work […]. In reflection, it appears a little more dogmatic through the elimination of qualifying words” (Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 64). 304 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 41.

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was the most important thing” to consider.305 Thomas, as moral entrepreneur, attested to his own liberal ideas and internationalism in choosing the following words of Jefferson. Thomas opened the first panel inscription: “Man was destined for society. His morality is part of his nature. Society reserves to each individual freedom consistent with peace and order,” and continued with an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal, they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.306

Even though Thomas mentioned the individual in the phrases “individual freedom” and “all men,” he emphasized that the individual was inextricably linked with others in society. Through the term “morality,” that is, rules of conduct that a society gives itself, and through the idea that individual freedom was limited by rules of peace and order, Thomas stressed the categorical imperative and portrayed Jefferson as an advocate of benevolence. In the second panel, Thomas asserted that “when we find our constitution insufficient to secure the happiness of our people, we assume and set it right.” With this quotation, Thomas promoted the power of the people and the idea that the constitution was to serve them in gaining the greatest possible amount of welfare for the greatest number. While Thomas affirmed the checks and balances of the different government branches in the next paragraph, he asserted that “the people are the guardians of their liberty.”307 This liberty, Thomas implied in the next sentences, by quoting words from the “Virginia Act of Establishing Religious Freedom” (1786), was secure because “God created the mind free. No man shall be compelled to support any religious ministry nor suffer on account of his beliefs; all men have liberty of religious opinion. Civil rights have no dependence on religious opinions.”308 Only the freedom of the mind and of religion therein contained would guarantee government in the interest of the people, Thomas’s selection implied. He ended the second panel with the quotation: “I

3 05 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 41. 306 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 35. Refer to the Appendix for the Panel Inscription Draft. 307 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 36. 308 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 36.

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know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively,” harking back to the categorical imperative as moral code.309 Thomas tried to incorporate Jefferson’s statements on the freedom of the mind with the idea of morality, as defined in panel one. These freedoms were defined as a prerequisite for a government that would serve the people.310 Thomas’s third panel connected the freedom of the mind with the freedom of the body and addressed the topic of slavery, as well as good legislation for the happiness of the people. Referring back to morality and to the Declaration of Independence, the first sentence, taken from the Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), read: “God who gave us life gave us liberty.” Thomas followed this sentence with an excerpt from Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), which focused on the idea of liberty with regard to American slavery. James Loewen criticized the “grafting” of those two sentences, as the passage “on masters and slaves” “implies that the [first] passage was about slavery, when it wasn’t.”311 Rather, “God who gave us life gave us liberty” was about the American colonies justifying their resistance to British taxation. Jefferson asked in the sentence on masters and slaves from Notes on the State of Virginia: Can the liberties of a nation be secured when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of god? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that god is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slaves is despotism.

Thomas thereby deplored slavery and the injustice arising from it and followed up this idea with “These people are to be free,” taken from Jefferson’s Autobiography. He then continued with ideas on government and education, which were to guarantee the happiness of the people:  “[T]‌hat people will be happiest whose laws are the best. Those worthy by education without regard to wealth or birth

309 Thomas took this quote from Jefferson’s letter to James Madison, written in Paris on August 28, 1789. Jefferson contrasted the British “rogues” with the French in their conduct toward colonial America and the attempt of the new nation to enter into international relations with both countries. Thomas Jefferson, “To James Madison: August 28, 1789.” The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: 27 March 1789 to 30 November 1789. By Thomas Jefferson. Ed. Julian P. Boyd. Vol. 15. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1958. 364–69. Print. 15. 310 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 36. 311 James W.  Loewen, Lies across America:  What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Print. 309.

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should administer them. To insure honest administration introduce the people into every department of government.”312 The linkage of this paragraph with “these people are to be free” is especially striking, as Jefferson elucidated in his Autobiography that freedmen could not live under the same government as white people, as “[n]‌ature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.”313 Under consideration of the racial inequality, segregation, lynchings, and notions of white supremacy in America, it can be argued that Jefferson was rather realistic in addressing white attitudes. Whereas “habit” and “opinion” could potentially be changed, Jefferson’s insistence that “nature […] has drawn indelible lines of distinction” catered to ideologies of white supremacy and racial stereotyping. Senator Thomas, however, denied that white people perpetuated this “distinction.” His arrangement and the elimination of certain sentences and contexts made Jefferson into a 1941 liberal, insofar as the senator made Jefferson more progressive than he had been on the question of racial equality and justice. By suggesting that education for government service should not be tied to anything but talent and merit, Thomas implied that African Americans were eligible for government service, even though poll taxes and other discriminatory barriers still prevented them from the basic democratic function of voting. In the fourth panel, Thomas asserted equality before the law, in particular in respect to gender. He stressed the linkage between education and politics contained in the words, “To preserve freedom crusade against ignorance; diffuse knowledge; follow truth wherever it may lead; truth will prevail; improve the law for educating the people at the common expense. Health and morality must not be sacrificed to learning.” Thomas cautioned against the power of money in politics when he quoted:  “Prevent the accumulation of wealth in select families.” While he asserted that Jefferson had favored “peace and friendship with all mankind,” and had urged America to “[m]‌ake our hemisphere that of freedom,” Jefferson knew that a nation had to be ready to defend itself: “An attack on one is an attack on the whole.”314 Through Thomas’s arrangement, Jefferson and thus 1940s America was portrayed as adhering to the Monroe Doctrine.315 Thomas included Jefferson’s admonition that there was no profit in war, which together

3 12 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 38. 313 Thomas Jefferson, Patriot from Virginia:  Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson and Selected Writings. Salem: Nova Anglia Co., 1999. Print. 314 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 39. 315 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 41.

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with the warning to prevent accumulation of wealth in select families, mirrored the interventionist interpretation of World War I; namely, that America entered the war in order to protect investments abroad. Thomas argued it was important that Americans understood “these fundamentals” regarding “international law” and the “Monroe Doctrine” which “has now become our fixed and firm policy.” Only this understanding would make the Jefferson memorial into a monument “to the whole American people.”316 Thomas clearly portrayed what he believed Jefferson stood for in the context of the Neutrality Act and New Deal social legislation. Dr.  Ryan expressed his agreement with Thomas when he said: “In fact, if you will read in the year 1941 the predictions made […] by Jefferson in regard to the policy of this country on foreign and international situations, it is quite apparent today that he was a far-seeing man.”317 Dr.  Ryan thereby affirmed the pertinency of Jefferson’s ideas to today’s problems which Thomas used when arguing that his own rendition of Jefferson’s words was a truthful account. “No violence is done to Jefferson’s thought and […] to Jefferson’s expression and I am sure no violence can be done in the interpretation of Jefferson,” Thomas asserted in his letter to Stuart Gibboney, read at the TJMC meeting.318 In particular, Thomas illustrated the verity of the abbreviated sentences on the third panel. The original sentence, which can be found “[o]‌n page  812 of the Encyclopedia,” read:  “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual affair of the most unremitting despotism on the one part and degrading frictions on the other.” Thomas then proclaimed, “[…] there is no doubt in anyone’s mind but what Jefferson thought that commerce between master and slave is despotism, because he said it in spite of the fact that he used more words than that.”319 Thomas was invested in producing a panel that would portray Jefferson as the Great Emancipator’s predecessor. Jefferson’s “abolitionism,” a point that Frank Owsley had employed differently, lay also at the heart of General Kean who criticized Thomas’s panel for not emphasizing Jefferson’s opposition to slavery “as directly as I have, […] I begin with the suggestion that ‘Slavery is

3 16 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 66–67. 317 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 45. 318 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 43. 319 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 43. The italics indicate the abbreviation that Thomas suggested.

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despotism.’ ”320 Kean asked to share his memorandum “in order that I can show […] how that [Jefferson’s opposition to slavery] runs like a red thread through his life […].”321 Because Kean had devoted “one panel to one thought,”322 the third panel was entitled “The Freedom of the Slaves.”323 It followed the panels on “Freedom of Men,” containing an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence, and “Freedom of Religion,” quoting excerpts from the Statute for Religious Freedom in Virginia. Kean emphasized the importance of printing the date “at the bottom […] because a great many people have no ideas of dates, and I think they should know when these words were written.”324 Stuart Gibboney preferred Kean’s panels on Freedom of Men, Religion and Education, but was “not so sure” about the one on “The Freedom of the Slaves.”325 He said, “Maybe I am the only man in this room whose father was a Confederate soldier.”326 But Kean’s and Lanham’s fathers also fought as Confederates, which did not seem a sufficient reason, so Tumulty asked Gibboney to explain his objection. Gibboney replied: “It seems to me we have the Lincoln Memorial […] and Lincoln has been identified with the Emancipation Proclamation and with the kind of thing you state Jefferson cited, but I do not think we want to mix Jefferson up with Lincoln on the freedom of the slaves.”327 Tumulty confirmed Gibboney’s apprehension and thus liked Thomas’s “brief reference.”328 He was anxious that it will look as if we are attempting to arouse resentment, and why go back and dig out these ghosts of the past except for a noble reason? Why not stick to the great principle? My people were on the Northern side, but I just think it is going back to a past that we ought to try to forget, and people are so sensitive when they look at those things. It just arouses that old feeling again.329

Tumulty reiterated that “[t]‌here are a lot of other great principles” which do “not stick out like a sore thumb, like you are pointing an accusing finger, and I think a

320 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 44. Thomas explained that he had started this panel with “God who gave us life gave us liberty” because he wanted to ensure the continuity of thought between the panels. 321 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 44–5. 322 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941:45. 323 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 49. See Appendix for the panel inscriptions. 324 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 46. 325 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 50. 326 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 51. 327 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 51. 328 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 51. 329 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 51–2.

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lot of people in the South would feel kind of sensitive. Indeed, they might say that some members of the Commission were trying to bring that out.”330 With this last statement Tumulty alluded to the fact that the TJMC had been derided in the newspapers as an institution of Tammany Hall due to the New York connections of many TJMC members. Tumulty reflected that slavery, sectionalism, the Civil War, and its consequences were still sensitive issues. Some commission members revealed more concern for not insulting white supremacists in their own party than for standing up for African American equality, which Tumulty did not consider a “noble reason,” at least not if it clouded the memorial. The discussion brings to the fore what Michael Kammen identifies as the “tendency in the United States to depoliticize traditions for the sake of ‘reconciliation’ ”331; in this particular case, the reconciliation between the white North and the white South rather than racial reconciliation, which was a politically explosive topic in the 1930s and still is today. Joseph Tumulty had assured FDR of his loyalty in his letter accepting his appointment to the commission and knew that FDR depended on the Southern Democrats for his legislative program and could not afford to alienate them. The court-packing debate, in which especially the Southern Congressmen had withdrawn their support from FDR, had proven their power. Yet FDR also relied on the support of African Americans in the North. Tumulty tried to negotiate a compromise between those two groups of the FDR coalition. Jefferson’s opposition to slavery could not be left out of the memorial yet could not be addressed too fiercely in order to not alienate the Southern Congressmen. In contrast to this political tiptoeing, General Kean’s family reputation depended on asserting and interpreting Jefferson’s comments against slavery in the right way. Kean suggested this in his memorandum on inscriptions, in which he explained the “purpose of memorials” was to “cultivate a spirit of historical retrospect; to give us an appreciation of the relation of each generation to those that have gone before, so that, as Andrew Lang says, the little present may not elbow the great past out of our view.”332 That the past and the present were closely intertwined was reflected in the three memorials to Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson on the Mall. The memorials which marked the present revealed that these three figures “within sight of each other […] have a certain relation,” Kean

3 30 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 52. 331 Kammen 1991, 13. 332 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 53.

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claimed.333 After reviewing what the memorials to Washington and Lincoln stood for, Kean asserted that “[t]‌he third memorial is to Jefferson and is, in a happy way, associated with the other two, as his ideals and his life’s work are intimately connected with those of the other two.” While the Declaration of Independence proved Jefferson’s connection with the fight for which Washington stood, Kean proposed that Jefferson’s “connection with the work of Lincoln is not so well known” which should be rectified by choosing the inscriptions. General Kean stated that “the youthful rail-splitter” came into contact with Jefferson on a “spiritual” basis when he started studying politics and the documents of the early republic.334 Lincoln “adopted the Jeffersonian policy of attack on slavery,” which was “prevent[ing] slaves from coming into the country” and “prevent[ing] [slavery’s] extension to the new territory west of the Allegheny Mountains.”335 Kean showed which measures or letters of Jefferson proved this policy and tried to relate Lincoln’s actions and words to them. He proposed the counterfactual history that “if [Jefferson] had been a member of the [Constitutional] Convention, [… he] might have exposed and defeated the ‘joker’ […] which protected the slave trade from interference by Congress for 20  years.”336 It was self-evident for Kean that the memorial would be incomplete without “show[ing] Jefferson’s life-long interest in this cause,” which “will place this Memorial in its logical historical position with regard to the Lincoln Memorial.” He insisted with an agrarian image that “Jefferson was the sower who broke the ground and planted the seed, while Abraham Lincoln in 1865 consummated the task begun by Thomas Jefferson in 1769.”337 Only in this way the Memorial would not alienate the “colored person” who visits it. According to General Kean, “It is fitting that every colored person who […] reads its

333 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941:  53. The Washington Monument proclaimed that he “won our fight for Independence” and created “a more perfect Union.” The Lincoln Memorial spoke to the fact that he “saved this Union” and was responsible for the “termination of the dangerous anomaly of slavery in this free country.” Yet “slavery was […] a secondary matter” as Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greely, Aug. 22, 1862, shows. 334 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 54. 335 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 55. 336 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941:  59. Corroborating his proposition, Kean said, “At this expiration of that time he was President and […] congratulated [Congress] on the approach of the period at which the slave trade could constitutionally be abolished.” 337 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 59.

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inscriptions should take away with him the knowledge that his fate is indebted to Thomas Jefferson as the statesman who began the first fight against African slavery in the United States, and secured the abolition of the slave trade.”338 It would clear up misperceptions which Kean encountered when a black boy claimed, “Stonewall Jackson made the colored people free”; “[I]‌n view of that I think that the colored people ought to be better informed.”339 Stuart Gibboney, however, felt uneasy about this inscription and proposed an excerpt from a letter Jefferson had written to Samuel Kercheval in 1816,340 which read: I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. But I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.341

With this letter, Stuart Gibboney wanted to stress that Jefferson was “forward-looking,”342 an attribute that had been emphasized by all commission members. One can only conjecture why Gibboney was apprehensive about the slavery issue. As the president of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Gibboney was in charge of restorations at Monticello including the slave quarters. It seems as if Gibboney was more aware than other commission members that Jefferson’s alleged opposition to slavery did not square up with his possession of slaves. The slave quarters on Mulberry Road next to Jefferson’s mansion bore witness to this inconsistency. Gibboney and Dr. Kimball suggested that the issue of slavery was contained in the “civil liberty.”343 Dr. Kimball praised Jefferson’s words on the Freedom of the Slaves, “But it seems to me the conception is in […] ‘all men are created equal,’ […].” Kimball’s belief must be considered as another liberally modern

3 38 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 59–60. 339 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941, 60. 340 Thomas Jefferson, “Samuel Kercheval: July 12, 1816.” Writings. Ed. Merrill D. Peterson. New York. Literary Classics of the U.S.; Fitzroy Dearborn, 1984. 1395–403. Print. The Library of America 17. 341 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941, 61. 342 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941, 62. 343 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 64.

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interpretation of the phrase and its original intention.344 Even within the TJMC, Andrews and Smith questioned what ‘all men are created equal’ had really meant. Senator Thomas agreed with Dr. Kimball as he saw Jefferson’s opposition to slavery as one part of his “world philosophy of liberty in all its meanings,” “and if possible you want to make the monument reflect all of the great fundamentals which have become part of our life.”345 Thomas argued that “there is actually a new order being set up in the world,” and “once you get that spirit, America looms as the land of destiny.”346 Mr. Tumulty concurred insofar as he believed that “now when everybody is pleading for unity, might we not bring discord and dissatisfaction by emphasizing [slavery]?” In the next commission meeting on May 15, 1941, Mr. Culkin reiterated Tumulty’s argument, even though he and Stuart Gibboney assented to General Kean’s memorandum, which had proven that “Thomas Jefferson was the first Abolitionist in America”[…] he liberated slaves in his will, and even before that.”347 But Gibboney opined that including the fight against slavery in the memorial “would be somewhat like waving the bloody shirt,”348 which summarized the commission member’s sentiments. The

344 Cf. Carl Lotus Becker, The Declaration of Independence:  A Study on the History of Political Ideas. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1922. Web. 26 June 2017 ; Cf. Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Garden City: Doubleday, 1978. Print. Cf. Pauline Maier, American Scripture:  Making the Declaration of Independence. New  York:  Knopf, 1997. Print; David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2007. Print; Stephen E. Lucas, “The Rhetorical Ancestry of the Declaration of Independence.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 1.2 (Summer 1998): 143– 184. Project MUSE. Web. 20 June 2017; Danielle S. Allen, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality. New  York:  Liveright Publishing, 2014. Print; Joseph J.  Ellis, ed., What Did the Declaration Declare? Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999. Print. Historians at Work; Ari, Helo, Thomas Jefferson’s Ethics and the Politics of Human Progress: The Morality of a Slaveholder. New York: Cambridge UP, 2014. Print. Cambridge Studies on the American South; Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. New York: Nation Books, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central. Web. 22 June 2017 . Part II of Kendi’s book presents a very nuanced view, which considers the cultural context and ideological contests of the times (cf. Kendi 2016, 104–05). 345 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 65. 346 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 66. 347 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 15 May 1941: 3. 348 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 15 May 1941: 5.

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TJMC therefore revealed that their personal opinions at times contrasted with their position as public figures who had to keep public opinion in mind. Even though the TJMC consulted FDR as moral entrepreneur, the correspondence did not show FDR’s opinion on the topic of slavery.349 On May 15, 1941, FDR wrote that “these inscriptions are excellent” but that he “miss[ed] the last paragraph of the Declaration of Independence,” especially because it seems “so familiar and so important that it should appear somewhere.”350 Stuart Gibboney assured the president that his suggestion, We ---- solemnly publish and declare, that these colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States ---- and for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.351

would receive favorable attention by the committee. In October 1941, Stuart Gibboney informed FDR that they included his suggestion at the end of panel one.352 The move might have been conditioned by the crisis in Europe which triggered America’s shoring up its own defenses, the signing of the lend-lease law in the spring of 1941, and the extension of the peace-time draft in mid-August of 1941. Pauline Maier, in American Scripture, criticizes that none of the commission members knew or dared to inform FDR that most of these lines had not been written by Jefferson, but “by Richard Henry Lee.”353 Maier, like the critics of the conglomerated inscriptions, asserts that Jefferson would have disliked it, as he had denounced the changes that the delegates had made to his draft.354 One could argue that Maier overstates the seriousness of the case, as Richard H. Lee for the most part shortened Jefferson’s original words. His only major alteration to Jefferson’s draft was the insertion “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.” That the TJMC left the final decision to the committee of three foreshadowed the difficulty of arriving at one accepted interpretation of Jefferson’s sayings. 349 Letter, Stuart Gibboney to FDR, 15 May 1941. Franklin D.  Roosevelt:  Papers as President. 350 Letter, FDR to Stuart Gibboney, 15 May 1941. Franklin D.  Roosevelt:  Papers as President. 351 Letter, Stuart Gibboney to FDR, 19 May 1941. Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers: Papers as President; Official File; 352 Letter, Stuart Gibboney to FDR, 1 Oct. 1941. Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers: Papers as President; Official File; 353 Maier 1997, 211. 354 Maier 1997, 211.

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Howard Smith at this late stage feared “by taking […] sentences from […] different things and putting them all in one place that you may get a document that Jefferson never thought about.”355 Kimball opined that “Thomas has arranged it so that he does not contradict the philosophy of Jefferson” and achieved to bring out less familiar sentences,356 and Lanham agreed that more of Jefferson’s philosophies would find a place in the memorial this way; however, other commissioners remained skeptical.357 Culkin wanted to remedy this problem by providing the sources of the statements.358 Mr. Lanham, in agreement with Dr. Kimball, stressed, “It is really an advantage that all the Senators are not the same and they are learning something of Jefferson […] rather than reiterating what everyone knows […].”359 Therefore, he praised Thomas’s work for succeeding in doing just that and thus “teach[ing] the beholder the philosophy of his life in its entirety.” These and other remarks resulted in an altered version for the four panels that combined Senator Thomas, General Kean, Stuart Gibboney, and FDR’s suggestions. On August 19, 1941, the members of the TJMC received the proposal of the committee of three. Interestingly enough, Senator Andrews criticized certain words of Panel I in the commission meeting and in a letter to other members of the commission360 Senator Andrews drew attention to the fact that it was 1941, saying this would always be considered when people read Jefferson’s words. He proposed to leave out the “unessential” five words ‘created equal: that they are’ because there had always been a discussion on “whether all men are created equal.”361 Senator Andrews, a Democrat from Florida, asserted that “[a]‌s a matter of fact they are not.” And what is more, “[a]t the time this was written […] we had slavery. No one could assume that the great Anglo Saxons as were Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were created equal with the poor savages, without clothes, that had come out of Africa, and at that time we did not consider ourselves the equal of Indians.”362 Andrews claimed that Jefferson could have meant only that

3 55 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 15 May 1941: 7. 356 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 15 May 1941: 7; 16; 17. 357 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 15 May 1941: 12. 358 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 15 May 1941: 10. 359 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 15 May 1941: 18. 360 Letter, Charles O.  Andrews to Stuart Gibboney, 6 Sep.  1941. Papers of Howard W.  Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. 361 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 30 Sep. 1941: 14. 362 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 30 Sep. 1941: 14–15.

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“the people who constituted the Government […] were the equal of any English parliament or parliamentary government.”363 After correcting the historical context, Andrews mentioned something he “did not intend to mention,” namely, why these words on equality would be dangerous at this time. “We,” the Southerner explained, “came up with the humble negro, and we have an affection for the negro that is most difficult for other people in the world to understand.” Then addressing his own experiences as a judge, Andrews claimed he sentenced black people “nearly always” less harshly than whites “because the white man should have known better and been an example to him.”364 He concluded his speech: We are going to have trouble, I am afraid, here in Washington by reason of the thought among the worst element of both races. We face that situation now and all they have got to do is for people to feel they have been ill-treated and they are entitled to the same accommodations at hotels and the same room with you, etc., and eat with you at the same table. Then they read that and it is misleading to them and they are not to blame.365

Andrews addressed segregation in the South and portrayed himself paternalistically as a friend of African Americans by acknowledging that their inequality was a direct result of slavery. Yet he intended to gloss over these issues by altering the wording. He hoped to prevent inciting feelings of injustice, already simmering within certain groups, and the violent reaction against these feelings by certain white people or groups. Furthermore, Andrews suggested that the problem of racial justice was limited to “the worst element of both races,” downplaying widespread inequality, and depicting the racial situation as unacceptable only in terms of erupting violence, if African Americans started agitating for justice more fiercely. In his letter, Andrews excluded the reference to his grandfather and to segregation. However, he suggested deleting the lines about masters and slaves because it would be “stating something that does not exist and will be displeasing to at least a third of the population […] who are descendants of pioneers.” In order to evade the problem of slavery and racism, Andrews also proposed to turn ‘these’ into ‘all’ in the sentence, “These people ought to be free.”366 Senator Andrews additionally proposed to delete the words “or abolish” from the sentences of the Declaration of Independence, because the colonials “revolt[ed] against an arbitrary or oppressive foreign government […]; while at present we have a constitution which should only be altered by the will of

3 63 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 30 Sep. 1941: 15. 364 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 30 Sep. 1941: 15. 365 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 30 Sep. 1941: 15–16. 366 Letter, Charles O. Andrews to Stuart Gibboney 6 Sep. 1941: 2.

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the people at any time.” He feared that the “word ‘abolish’ would encourage Communists, Fascists and Nazists, including Fifth Columnists, to try to ‘abolish’ the Constitution and set up some other kind of government, and then point to this particular word as their fundamental authority.” Because he viewed the panels not as “quoted inscriptions,” but rather as an “expression of our government as it exists now and will, I hope, exists forever.” He concluded his suggestions were “made in best of faith, and in my judgment will best represent the American way of thinking, including Jefferson if he were now living.”367 Andrews revealed that the past was interpreted with the present perspective and goals in mind, while his extrapolations on the historical context of the Declaration of Independence laid bare what others wanted to forget or repress. Representative Howard W.  Smith, a Southerner from Virginia, assured Andrews, “I am in thorough accord with the suggested changes which you offer. I have been particularly disturbed about the words ‘or abolish’ in panel one.”368 Other commissioners did not comment on Andrews’s fears. Panel I, placed in the southwest quadrant of the memorial, eventually contained most of General Kean’s and Stuart Gibboney’s excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, but ended with FDR’s suggestion. The line about the abolition of oppressive forms of government, the parts “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” and to “alter and abolish it,” as well as certain other words were eliminated. These and the other changes made by the commission, according to James Loewen, would not have been approved by Jefferson, “for whenever he sent correspondents a copy of the Declaration he took pains to show what the Continental Congress had added to his draft and what it had cut.”369 Loewen, who wrongfully attributes the edited inscriptions to Saul Padover, thereby reiterated criticism that had been voiced by adversaries of the TJMC,370 such as the Mississippi Democrat John Rankin. Rankin challenged the memorial inscriptions and those responsible for them in Congress by asking reproachfully:371 “Why all this conglomeration, why 3 67 Letter, Charles O. Andrews to Stuart Gibboney 6 Sep. 1941: 2. 368 Letter, Howard W. Smith to Charles O. Andrews, 9 Sep. 1941. Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. 369 Loewen 2000, 307. “Saul Padover, assistant to the secretary of the interior under FDR chose the monument’s quotations while writing an adulatory biography of Jefferson published in 1942.” 370 Cf. Cong. Rec. 4 Oct. 1943: 8039. 371 Congress debated the establishment of a National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee.

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all this distortion of the words of Jefferson? Why all this changing and mixing of phrases and the elimination of statements in order to misrepresent to the children of the coming generations the greatest democratic statesman the world has ever seen?”372 Rankin affirmed the pedagogical function of memorials, yet disagreed on the method and content because this “conglomeration […] makes Thomas Jefferson look like a Communist, just as far from Jeffersonian philosophy of government as could possibly be” (cf. Cong. Rec. 4 Oct. 1943: 8039). While Rankin’s criticism of this “conglomeration” has validity, Jefferson, the communist, eludes our initial comprehension. While much of the rhetoric can be explained by Hofstadter’s paranoid style of American politics,373 Rankin’s disgust about the inscriptions is rooted in the relationship between the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) and African Americans, and Rankin’s oppositions to both groups. The CPUSA tried to recruit African Americans and considered them equal members, at least in their ideology. Whereas only the most influential individuals within the CPUSA “took the red-black equation seriously;”374 American Communists were the first party to seriously run an African American, James W.  Ford, as Vice-Presidential candidate in 1932, 1936 and 1940. Communists also supported African Americans by sponsoring test cases. This relation stirred Rankin’s ire as it combined the two things he seemed to hate most. Rankin was known for calling African Americans “Nigger” and for praising the Ku Klux Klan375 in Congress.376 As white supremacist, he worked for the 3 72 Cong. Rec. 4 Oct. 1943: 8039. 373 Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” 1963. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. 374 Jeffreys-Jones 2013, 62. 375 Cf. Edward Humes, “How the GI Bill Shunted Blacks into Vocational Training.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 53 (Autumn 2006): 92–104. JSTOR. Web. 24 July 2013. 98. Humes reveals how “Rankin and his segregationist allies in Congress had been devious […] in constructing a G.I. Bill that, on its face, was free of discrimination […] however, […] the practical administration of those benefits […] remained in ‘safe’ hands[…] that wouldn’t rock the boat of Jim Crow” (95). Humes describes that Rankin’s “shining moment [TVA law] was followed by years of racist, anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi, Red-baiting demagoguery” (96). 376 Cf. Anthony S. Chen, “ ‘The Hitlerian Rule of Quotas’: Racial Conservatism and the Politics of Fair Employment Legislation in New York State, 1941–1945.” The Journal of American History 92.4 (March 2006): 1238–1264. JSTOR. Web. 24 July 2013. 1257; Cf. Bell Clement, “Pushback: The White Community’s Dissent from ‘Bolling’.” Washington History 16.2. Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Brown and Bolling (Fall/ Winter 2004/2005): 86–109. JSTOR. Web. 24 July 2013. 87; Cf. James McGregor Burns, Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970. Print. 216.

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institutional discrimination of African Americans. Walter Goodman, in his book on the House Un-American Activities Committee, in fact says : “That [Rankin] despised Negroes, Jews, aliens, and liberals was, to be sure, his foremost claim to Americanism.”377 Before investigating Rankin’s appropriation of Jefferson for his own version of Americanism, an analysis of the “mixing of phrases” reveals how the panels might have communicated that Jefferson was more radical and equalitarian than fitted with Rankin’s racism and anticommunism. The depiction of Jefferson as the friend of black people who believed in one God-given “absolute moral code”378 was ludicrous to Rankin; however, this idea could be read into panel three, which opens with affirming the right to freedom of the body,379 followed by two passages on education from different letters. In the letters, Jefferson recommended:  “establish a law for educating the common people” and “This it is the business of the state and on a general plan.”380 Following right after the pronouncements on African American rights and freedoms, the sentences could be construed as an advocacy of governmental interference in education to bring about equality of opportunity for both races. While the latter sentence could be read as invoking the responsibility of each state to further education, the phrase “on a general plan” implied the intervention of the federal government, which most congressmen opposed on grounds of states’ rights. Rankin, as segregationist and in the hysterical fashion of some anticommunists, might have equated federal “interference” with communist theories and rejected federal intervention in racial matters in the South through education.

Burns attests to Rankin’s ideas of white supremacy and racism not only toward blacks, and Jews but also the Japanese. 377 Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. New York: Strauss and Giroux, 1968. Print. 167. 378 Loewen 2000, 308; Cf. Cong. Rec. 12 Sep. 1949: 13375. 379 Jefferson’s lament about “the harmful impact of slavery […] on whites” was omitted which, according to Loewen, led to a “much tamer impression than Jefferson’s original.” The disengagement of, “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever,” from its context masked that Jefferson, as a slaveholder, was actually addressing his fear of a slave rebellion. On the panel, the sentence rather seemed like a “vague warning” to the nation that the inequality between black and white was an injustice that would not go unpunished (Loewen 2000, 310). 380 Letter to George Wythe of August 13, 1786; Letter to George Washington of January 4, 1780.

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The fourth panel contains clues as to Jefferson’s alleged radicalism which would put him into the communist camp. The adverb certainly and the term untried were removed from the first sentence reading: “I am [certainly] not an advocate for frequent [and untried] changes in laws and constitutions.”381 By omitting these words and the subsequent sentence,382 Jefferson was portrayed as more revolutionary, which was furthered in the rest of the letter: But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

In light of the exaggerated fear that revolutionary communist ideas meandered freely in America, John Rankin’s disapproval of the depiction of Jefferson as a radical and revolutionary who advocated change can be understood. Rankin negated Jefferson’s insistence that civilized society had to change to meet contemporary circumstances when he proposed to replace the inscriptions with the sixteen points of Jefferson’s first inaugural that “announced to the world and prosperity […] the sum of good government” (Cong. Rec. 4 Oct. 1943: 8039). Whereas the sixteen points were concrete recommendations on how to govern the nation,383 the excerpts chosen by the committee espoused moral paradigms with broader social implications.384 To further his own view of Jefferson, Rankin called him a patriot and Christian individualist with a solid, unchangeable plan of government.385 This depiction removed Jefferson from entertaining any foreign, collectivist, irreligious ideas and therefore made him into an anticommunist. Rankin’s Jefferson served as stark contrast to the American Communist

3 81 Letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval) of July 12, 1816. 382 “I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects.” 383 No discussion takes place on whether these recommendations made when the United States were an agrarian nation are still equally valid in an industrial society. 384 Senator Andrews’s objection to “all men are created equal” testifies to the TJMC’s awareness of the social implications of the wording. 385 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1801.

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Party’s foreign connection to the Soviet Union which Rankin saw as a threat to America’s institutions.386 While Rankin attempted to absolved Jefferson from the communist stigma in 1943, Jefferson as an advocate of freedom of thought and expression, lent himself as an iconic figure for American Communists.387 In what ways American Communists made use of this Jefferson appropriation will become evident in the analysis of the New Masses special issue on Thomas Jefferson and in the congressional debates on this topic. The Christian individualism that Rankin tried to depict as one of Jefferson’s iconic attributes, however, was not insignificant either, which the TJMC’s debate about the cornerstone laying ceremonies and the congressional debates and speeches in the reveal.

2.1.6 The Statue and the Pediment While the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission discussed and eventually celebrated the cornerstone laying, it also deliberated on the Jefferson statue to be placed in the middle of this national shrine and on the design of the pediment. The TJMC seemed to have learned from criticism as it decided to conduct an “unlimited, national competition” to determine the sculptor and sculpture.388 The Washington Post described this process as “worthy of the subject” and extrapolated, “The result should be the best that America can produce to honor one of our greatest Presidents.”389 It will “counteract the ill-feelings aroused by the arbitrary award of the architectural contract.” The anonymous competition was open

386 Cf. Alfred Kazin, American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. New York: Knopf, 2011. Print. 157. 387 The relationship between Jefferson and ideas of communism imported from Russia was satirized by the cartoonist Herbert Block in the April 24, 1949 The Washington Post:  “You read books, eh?” shows members of “State and local ‘Anti-subversive’ Committees in the U.S. ransacking a school teacher’s classroom, terrorizing her with questions about reading books, preparing to cut the Soviet Union out of a map of Europe […] and noting, with displeasure, a portrait of Thomas Jefferson hanging on the wall” (Herbert Block, “You Read Books, eh?” Library of Congress Catalog. Web. 3 Jan. 2015. .)   The cartoon criticized the HUAC’s exaggerated fears and curtailment of intellectual freedom and revealed that Jefferson, communism, and education had become intertwined by 1949. This interconnection, however, was already perceivable in the 1930s and early 1940s. 388 “Contest Set for Statue of Jefferson.” The Washington Post 13 May 1939: 17. 389 “Jefferson’s Statue.” The Washington Post 15 May 1939: 8.

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to “every American sculptor over 25 years of age,” thus the chosen statue “will reflect the democratic tradition which Jefferson symbolizes in the mind of the people.”390 The TJMC offered $35,000 to the winner of the Statue Competition, wherein $1,000 each would be awarded to the six best models. The six finalists would be chosen by a commission consisting of Henri Marceau, secretary of the Fairmont Park Association of Philadelphia, and the sculptors James Earl Fraser and Heinz Warneke based on submitted photographs. The finalists would then “submit actual plaster models one-sixth the size of the final [bronze] statue.” The TJMC recommended that a seated Jefferson statue should be 13 feet tall, while a standing figure should be 18 ½ feet.391 A sculpture subcommittee of the TJMC had arrived at these recommendations with input from the Commission of Fine Arts which was represented by Paul Manship, a sculptor member, Hans Paul Caemmerer, the secretary, and Edward Rowan and Ensell Hopper, representatives of the Section of Fine Arts of the Procurement Division of the Treasury Department. Elbert Thomas, Francis Culkin, Jefferson Coolidge, Joseph Tumulty, and Dr. Kimball first focused on the “character, size and material of the sculpture” before the debating the selection of the sculptor.392 The committee’s discussion harked back to the argument that the memorial and its statue are modern variants of traditional icons. The firm of the late John Russell Pope, represented by the architects Eggers and Higgins, also advised the TJMC as they were interested in a statue that would suit the memorial building and vice versa. They recommended a “dark colored marble pedestal” for a bronze statue with a gold leaf and antiqued finish, which would “assist the modelling” and “compensate for the reflected light” in the memorial room.393 Concerning the pose of the statue, the two architects noted, “[B]‌ecause of the vertical lines of the architecture […] a seated figure would be more appropriate and possibly more dignified than a standing figure.” They thereby introduced the quality of dignity that the TJMC had already stressed in discussions about the memorial design. They also favored a statue of “heroic size” and emphasized that an experienced sculptor was needed for work on such a scale. This also mirrored the TJMC’s concern with the relation of the 3 90 “Jefferson’s Statue.” The Washington Post 15 May 1939: 8. 391 “$35,000 Offered in Jefferson Memorial Statue Competition.” The Washington Post 16 May 1939: 30. 392 Official Minutes of the TJMC. Subcommittee on Sculpture. 14 Mar. 1939: 2. 393 Eggers and Higgins, Letter to Dr. Kimball and Howard W. Smith, 11 Mar. 1939. Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

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size and the importance of the memorial and reflects Richard Morris’s observation that “[t]he Jefferson memorial […] exemplifies the cultural and rhetorical tendency to equate size with merit and significance. Both the structure […] and the statue […] are monumental in their proportions. But […] the statue presents viewers with a quiet, dignified, idealized Heroist image of Jefferson.”394 Eggers and Higgins probably hoped to achieve just what Morris noted. They closed their report with recommendations on the remaining sculpture work, namely, the pediment and the four interior panels. They assumed that “Jefferson’s ‘Four Freedoms’ might be very satisfactory subjects, treated symbolically;”395 an idea that Senator Thomas referenced at the subcommittee meeting in March 1939. Robin Cormack notes that icons occurred in two different forms:  portrait or scenic drawing. Both forms were to produce reverence in the beholder and create a desire to emulate the icon or the behavior depicted in the scenic drawing. To create a “proper” and “timely” Jefferson statue, Senator Thomas advocated for enriching the portrait sculpture with a symbolic depiction of the ‘Four Freedoms;’ only in this way would it be “a monument to the American people,” Thomas argued again. Rowan responded, “[T]‌hese various symbols that you wish to use as evidence of the man’s monument in truth might rob the central figure of its effectiveness.”396 And Paul Manship agreed that “the more successful way to do it is to dissociate the story-telling phase from the portrait, if it be in another form, say, in relief form.”397 These two experts tried to ensure that the message remained clear and universal, qualities that were crucial in traditional icons. However, they did not deny the function of storytelling in the creation of national icons, which reflects Goethals’s theory that traditional icons followed a strict formulae for visual representation and fabrication of the image. […] in both Eastern and Western Christianity the subject matter or motifs of the sacred images are derived from sacred scriptures or from narrative traditions about heroes and saints of faith. The images present or represent persons or events from sacred history. Past, present and future are linked through the revelations of sacred scripture, and images issue from these revelations.398

While icons represented the Sacred or were sacred themselves depending on the individual believer, they were not equal to the deity itself. Dr. Kimball, Mr.

3 94 Morris 1997, 143. 395 Eggers and Higgins, Letter to Dr. Kimball and Howard W. Smith, 11 Mar. 1939. 396 Official Minutes of the TJMC. Subcommittee on Sculpture. 14 Mar. 1939: 12. 397 Official Minutes of the TJMC. Subcommittee on Sculpture. 14 Mar. 1939: 13. 398 Goethals 1978, 31.

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Rowan and Mr. Manship discussed the issue of sacredness and the potential for deification in relation to the appropriate size of the statue. The first newspaper reports in 1936 had spoken of a statue of monumental or heroic size.399 Dr. Kimball stressed in this respect: “We have the idea that Jefferson was one of our heroes. […] On the other hand, there was the feeling on the part of some of the Commissioners that any suggestion of deification would be quite out of place, and that something, therefore, much smaller would be more suitable.”400 Mr. Manship, as an outsider, retorted:  “Well, if the frame has to do with the making of the picture, then I should say you have already gone on record as deifying Jefferson, as Lincoln was deified in his memorial.”401 Besides establishing a similarity between the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, Mr. Manship questioned whether deification had to be undesirable. Mr. Rowan agreed “that the figure should be monumental in appeal,” asking whether “there was any difference in […] the word ‘deified’ and the word ‘monumental’.” He came to the conclusion that “it would be a mistake to deify Jefferson, and yet I do not think it would be a mistake to present the statue in such a way that it reflects his monumental mind and ideals and the infinite variety and invention of him, so that if you could still have the best monument and yet not deify him.”402 Mr. Rowan reiterated the attributions FDR had already made at the cornerstone laying, namely, Jefferson’s many-sided qualities and interests. These aspects were further discussed when the six finalists submitted their plaster models for the next stage of the competition on December 31, 1939.403 399 Cf. Official Minutes of the TJMC, 1 Dec. 1936: 247. Cf. Christine Sadler, “The Post Goes on Construction Tour, Watches Town Grow” The Washington Post 20 Sep. 1940. “Beautiful […] Jefferson Memorial nears completion […]. Circular in form and adorned by 54 columns, structure architecturally is ‘something Jefferson would have liked.’ Heroic-sized statue of the third President will be placed in rotunda center on high pedestal.” 400 Official Minutes of the TJMC. Subcommittee on Sculpture. 14 Mar. 1939: 15. 401 Official Minutes of the TJMC. Subcommittee on Sculpture. 14 Mar. 1939: 15. 402 Official Minutes of the TJMC. Subcommittee on Sculpture. 14 Mar. 1939: 15–16. 403 Even though the competition was favorably received by The Post in May 1939, it printed an attack of the American Sculptors Guild, Inc. on the procedure which complained that Henri Marceau was associated with Dr. Fiske Kimball and James Earl Fraser with the firm of the late John Russell Pope. On July 27, 1939, the committee announced the finalists after having looked at 100 photographs. The Post gave the finalists names and mentioned some of the works that five of the six had executed before. The sculptors were Rudolf Evans, Raoul Josset, Lee Lawrie, Maurice Sterne (William Zorach), Sidney Waugh, and A. A. Weinman. They were given until Dec. 31, 1939 to prepare a model. Cf. “Sculptors Attack Competition for Jefferson Statue.” The Washington Post 21 Jun.

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The first commentator on these six models was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who wrote to Stuart Gibboney on January 24, 1940: “I am sorry to have to tell you in utter frankness that I do not like any of them!”404 He stated that he did not want to influence the commission but that the aim of the competition was to find a statue that was “thoroughly original and completely indicative of Jefferson’s part in our history—something, in other words, which would receive the same public acclaim that the statue of Lincoln got when it was put up in the Lincoln Memorial.” In a follow-up letter, he again revealed his desire of “getting something so good that it will rank with the Lincoln statue in public approval.”405 If this objective could not be met with the selected models, maybe the committee should reject them and ask for revisions. FDR criticized that two models were “painfully slim—one of them a mere caricature and the other with a face and head like Lincoln […].” Models number two and four were “banal,” insofar as number two—“standing with the right hand extended and the left hand holding a scroll” was similar to at least fifty statues in public buildings or parks. It was an “excellent statue” but lacked originality. The same was true for number four, FDR said, and added that “the over-sized hand hides the face and when you see it your first impression is ‘hand’.” FDR continued: “No. 3 - the seated statue - is excellent but is a definite cross between the seated Lincoln on the Lincoln Memorial here and the seated Lincoln in Lincoln Park, Chicago.” Finally, FDR commented on number six, “the model of Jefferson breaking the chain I like except for the general feeling on my part that breaking a chain has been used in various statues commemorating the freeing of the slaves at the time of the War Between the States.” Even though he considered it “the best of the six,” he “hesitate[d]‌a bit on the symbolism of the chain.”406 FDR’s evaluation revealed that he was primarily concerned that the statue was recognizable as Jefferson that the likeness of the

1939: 28; “6 Finalists Named to Make Model of Jefferson Statue.” The Washington Post 28 Jul. 1939: 11; “Judges Frown on 100 Models of Jefferson.” The Washington Post 12 Apr. 1940: 21; Cong. Rec. 6 May 1940: 2729–30. 404 Memorandum, Franklin D. Roosevelt to Stuart Gibboney, 24 Jan. 1940. Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Official File 1505. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President, Official File 1505; Franklin D.  Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New  York. Official Minutes of the TJMC, 25 Jul. 1939: 1–9. 405 Letter, Franklin D. Roosevelt to Stuart Gibboney, 31 Jan. 1940. Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Official File 1505. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President, Official File 1505; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. 406 Memorandum, Franklin D. Roosevelt to Stuart Gibboney, 24 Jan. 1940. Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Official File 1505.

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head and face would be exact and that it was “completely indicative of Jefferson’s part in our history.” FDR thereby alluded to the idea that icons tell the story of the depicted saint and, in this case, the story of the nation. In March 1940, the jury reported on the submitted models, which they had viewed on January 19, 1940.407 They explained their objectives and procedure in a preface, addressing the questions of likeness and story in the “model which will best typify the man.” They considered, Jefferson was not an orator, neither was he a man of great physical action. On the contrary, he was a thinker and a philosopher. Therefore, in the first step of the work, these characteristics should be indicated more definitely than the likeness of head and body; whereas, in the next stage, and on a larger scale, the latter points can be more easily achieved. The first rough impulse of the sketch model must give the Jefferson mental characteristics by pose, action and design, or here is little chance that they will ever be obtained.408

The jury agreed that only model number one—the one that FDR had called “painfully slim”—“show[ed] that type of man.” It could be developed to “be the most original, the best in character, and will have the finest and simplest contours,” because “[i]‌t distinctly carries throughout the movement the philosopher and thinker”409 and “reflects the atmosphere of Jefferson.”410 The terms “spirit” and “atmosphere” tried to describe the essence of an icon. As the statue was “not photographic,” the revision should focus on a “better likeness, better proportions, and more detailed form, without losing the simplicity of its lines and volume.” The sculptor should correct the “elongations in the design” which “suggest an old man.” The jury wanted to see Jefferson represented “at the height of his achievement,” “in his early sixties when he was President.”411 They arrived 407 Letter, Dr. Kimball to Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, 27 Jan. 1940. Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. 408 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 22 Mar. 1940: 3–4. These sentences would be quoted in R. P. Harriss, “White Columns and Cherry Blossoms.” The Baltimore Sun 13 Apr. 1940. Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. Francis Culkin (R-NY) inserted it in the Cong. Rec. because “Mr. Harriss caught the spirit of the memorial so effectively” (Cong. Rec. 6 May 1940: 2729). 409 Also quoted in “Judges Frown on 100 Models of Jefferson: New York Sculptor’s Design, However, Said to Show Promise.” The Washington Post 12 Apr. 1940: 21. 410 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 22 Mar. 1940: 4. Cf. R. P. Harriss “White Columns and Cherry Blossoms.” 411 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 22 Mar. 1940: 4–5.

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at these recommendations after comparing and evaluating the advantages of the other models and their “relation to the hall and dome.”412 The architect Eggers criticized the same aspects—“the extraordinary attenuation” and the “dour look and expression of extreme age”. He advocated “more human proportions” and a “more gracious presence.”413 He disliked the statue’s “relation to the hall and dome” and believed that the treatment of the base revealed that the sculptor belonged to the “radicals” and would therefore be less willing to change his conception to “satisfy everyone involved.” Eggers emphasized that what the jury identified as the “virtues of Submission #1” constituted “the very points that the sculptor may be asked to modify or even eliminate in his further study” and thus “might very well relegate what is now admittedly a very compelling piece of work to the realm of banality.”414 Eggers thereby addressed what FDR had mentioned and the TJMC would take up, namely, the topic of banality vs. originality. The TJMC, which had been advised by the jury and the Commission of Fine Arts, instructed Lee Lawrie, the sculptor of figure number one, to prepare a restudy of his model within three months’ time, which would take into account the recommendations.415 Senator Thomas drafted a resolution which described the TJMC’s expectations of the statue:  “[I]‌t should bespeak Jefferson the philosopher, the doer of things, a prototype of the man of thought, a planner for people and country in our democracy, in the fullness of his vigor and achievement—not the heroics of oratory or the dignity of Governor and President but the citizen-statesman.”416 The last part of the resolution was derived from the criticism voiced in relation to the other models: figure four (with the oversized extended hand) resembled “in gesture and pose” too much “the orator,” while the “too apparent attention to details of costume” did not express the simplicity that the commission hoped for. Thomas’s resolution indirectly addressed the question of the age at which Jefferson should best be depicted. After a meeting with

4 12 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 22 Mar. 1940: 4. 413 Letter, Otto R. Eggers to Dr. Kimball, 8 Mar. 1940. Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville,  Va. 414 Letter, Otto R. Eggers to Dr. Kimball, 8 Mar. 1940. 415 Letter, Stuart Gibboney to FDR, 13 Jun. 1940, Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Official File 1505. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Papers as President, Official File 1505; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. Stuart Gibboney explained that the FAC believed Lawrie would submit an “acceptable” statue; however, Gibboney “and at least the majority of the Commission do not believe that [it] will be at all acceptable.” 416 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 22 Mar. 1940: 10–11.

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the committee, Lawrie wrote a letter in April 1940, thanking them for their help “in setting [his] mind in the proper direction.” He was “aware of the inadequacy” as a “sculptural representation of Jefferson” but asserted that his “idea and design do what [he] intended.”417 The Commission inspected and discussed the revised model in their meeting of September 13, 1940, which Lee Lawrie opened by explaining his design and its origin. He said he wanted to create a Jefferson figure that was “not posed.” His first conception of Jefferson was that “[h]‌e was a great statesman. He might have been a great horseman but I would figure that you cannot make a statue of that type—that phase of him does not belong in this hall.”418 Lawrie thus correlated Jefferson’s age and his worldview: the age shown in the statue should fit the sentiments expressed in the inscriptions. Dr. Kimball assured Lawrie that “we ought to show him at the height of his career as President, and show the way he wears his hair in Stuart’s.”419 As early as March 1936, and in contrast to the jury’s and the TJMC’s preference of depicting Jefferson as President, Dr. Kimball had proposed to create the Jefferson statue after a “portrait of the Revolutionary figure […] if we could work from the one in the New York Historical Society.”420 Dr. Kimball alluded to Jean Antoine Houdon’s portrait bust for which Jefferson sat in 1789,421 asserting “it is not hard to make the Houdon head.” In Mr. Lawrie’s statue, “[Jefferson’s] head is thrown upward; he is fired with zeal. Jefferson was a young radical; he was a red radical, in bronze. However, what Mr. Lawrie is suggesting here is the older man, more pensive. He must make it less defying, and the more animation he can get, the better.” Dr. Kimball eventually admitted that Lanham’s earlier suggestion “of lowering the head is good” and that he “cannot fight for the Houdon head.”422 Mr. Lanham had criticized that the head’s position gave one “the impression that there is a little suggestion of confusion there” and advocated, “[Y]‌ou might make it a little more serene.”423 Because “there is too much repose”424 in the figure,

417 Letter, Lee Lawrie to Dr. Kimball, 27 Apr. 1940. Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville,  Va. 418 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 30 Sep. 1940: 3. 419 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 30 Sep. 1940: 6. 420 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 24 Mar. 1936: 242. 421 “Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826).” New-York Historical Society: Museum & Library. Web. 7 Jan. 2015. . 422 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 20. 423 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 14. 424 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 13.

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he suggested that “a little more animation would show more serious thinking, and not the little suggestion of the conquest of man.”425 Stuart Gibboney explicated Lanham’s criticism saying that the statue “does not indicate that [Jefferson] was the great political leader that he was.”426 Dr. Kimball agreed that more animation of the expression would free it from depicting “Jefferson in defeat” and reveal that he was “notably successful—he had an uninterrupted career of victory.”427 The expression “looks a little bit too subdued,” Mr. Lanham concurred, marring Jefferson’s “assertiveness and standing up for the rights of the people.” “It shows a thinker,” Lanham argued, while Gibboney suggested Jefferson should be shown as “thinker” and “actor,”428 attributes that were constantly stressed in the Jefferson Day speeches as well. While Mr. Lawrie’s Jefferson seemed too old, and therefore depicted him as fragile and weak, the Houdon bust implied too much the idea of Jefferson as a young, even red, radical. Mr. Marceau explained that when he studied the statue in profile he saw “the man’s determination,” a quality that would not be as common in an old man as in a middle aged one. It also expressed “silent dignity,” a quality that one was looking for in “a creative work of art” in which Jefferson was “still […] recognizable.”429 Dr. Kimball similarly wanted to see the qualities of likeness and originality combined, recalling Eggers’s fear of “falling into conventionality and banality”430 and argued, after Marceau had given his opinion, that Lawrie “has got there something new to see of Jefferson.” Even though some said the statue was similar to Lincoln, Kimball believed that “there is a certain analogy” between them as both were “tall” and “thoughtful” and shared a “humanitarian trend, both being a friend of man.”431 Despite this “new idea” that Lawrie’s statue expressed, Dr. Kimball, like the president, Stuart Gibboney, and Otto Eggers,432 asserted that the statue must “conform to popular conception.”433 Here again, we find parallels to icons, namely, that their power lies in their ability to address common ideas and values, while they offer the beholder the chance of reinterpretation. 4 25 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 13. 426 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 14. 427 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 14–15. 428 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 15. 429 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 18. 430 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 31. 431 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 31. 432 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 27. 433 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 31–32.

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Dr.  Kimball argued that “we might be doing [Jefferson] a great service” by choosing the Lawrie model, because he “may be creating a more elevated idea of Jefferson than the people ever had,” as “[i]‌t creates for him the ideal of dignity, friendship for man […] that make him different.”434 Senator Thomas concurred as these qualities would counteract the way in which “Jefferson and his son-in-law, Senator Eppes” were portrayed in the latest movie about Alexander Hamilton.435 However, other members of the commission remained skeptical about the revised Lawrie model. Therefore, Dr. Kimball summed up, “There was one that no one liked. We did not care for the Jefferson that looked like Patrick Henry the orator, nor did we care for the symbolical figure breaking the chains, with its implied symbolism” and proposed to work with the sculptors “whose work apparently everyone liked.” In the end, the TJMC decided to ask not only Lee Lawrie, but also A.  A. Weinman and Rudulph Evans to submit revised models of their statues. The whole procedure went well into the year 1941. During this process, the TJMC reiterated that the statue had to be expressive of certain Jeffersonian qualities, like his “dignity and repose,” “monumental character,” and “simplicity.” A simplicity that was, despite its large size, captured in “the rich study of forms, lines and planes.”436 The sculpture subcommittee stressed that “This simplicity of stance [of Lawrie’s model] is shared in some degree by the model of Mr. Evans, in which the head, based closely on the head painted by Stuart, is the familiar likeness of Jefferson.”437 In contrast, the committee stated Lawrie’s model still did not achieve the likeness of the head but it did achieve an “inspirational quality […] a mystery, even a poetry, of the ‘brooding, dreaming man’, which embodies the spirit of Jefferson, and his own embodiment of the spirit of his time and achievement.”438 This report was signed by Dr.  Kimball, Senator Thomas, and Joseph Tumulty. The sculptor jury agreed that the head of the Lawrie model was not a good likeness of Jefferson but expressed a “sort of spiritual quality.”439 They praised the 4 34 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 32. 435 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 32. 436 Report of the Committee on Sculpture, 21 Feb. 1941. Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Official File 1505. Franklin D.  Roosevelt:  Papers as President, Official File 1505; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York; Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 4. 437 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 4. 438 Official Minutes of the TJMC, Report of the Committee on Sculpture, 21 Feb. 1941: 5. 439 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 8.

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hands in the new model as expressing “something of the man and the work he did in these hands,” emphasizing again that Jefferson was not a mere thinker, but also a doer. In contrast to their assessment, Lanham still thought the statue was “too serene, that there is a little too much the expression of a dreamer rather than of a practical, experienced statesman. Not only was he a statesman but he was an inventor and many things.” Dr. Ryan, who had lauded the model for representing “the entire historical record of Jefferson, his independence and his thoughtfulness” concurred that Jefferson “was a many-sided man” and “the dreamy element of his nature was subdued in his practical accomplishments and it should not be accentuated unduly.”440 Lanham lauded that the “simplicity” of the Evans’s statue was “harmonious with the spirit of democracy that he tried to teach.” It expressed an “alertness” and “attentive[ness]” and had a “directness [… which] would have a very ready appeal to the non-technical beholder.”441 Lanham liked the “democratic atmosphere” but believed that the figure was “too bulky.”442 The adjective “bulky” was on the opposite end of the spectrum from “painfully slim” and “feminine,” which had been used to describe other models, including Lawrie’s.443 The commissioners agreed that Jefferson was a “slender[…]”444 man yet should not come across as too thin because he would not be considered virile. The majority of the TJMC favored the Lawrie model in February 1941, and in all the indecision, Gibboney showed “them another photograph of a different model by Evans with a long coat like the one in the West Point portrait of Jefferson made by Sully.” Marceau and Fraser liked that photograph better than the present model. Because the commission was not satisfied with the photographic enlargements of the three sculptures (Figs. 4–7) when they were displayed in the memorial room, they instructed the sculptors to submit revised models.445 By September 1941, Rudulph Evans sent his Jefferson statue, wearing the coat of Sully’s portrait, into the running (Figs. 6 and 8). At the final meeting of the commission, Senator Andrews joined Representatives Smith and Lanham, in praising Evans’s statue, which had 4 40 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 18. 441 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 19. 442 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 21. 443 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 22 Mar. 1940: 7; Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 19. 444 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 30 Sep. 1941: 6. 445 Letter, Stuart Gibboney to FDR, 19 May 1941. Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers: Papers as President;

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Fig. 4:  Photographic enlargement of one of the Jefferson statues in the memorial room. Entry 399, Box 6, Records of the Jefferson Memorial Commission, Records Group 79, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. In all likelihood, this is the statue made by the sculptor Weinman.

Jefferson wearing a long coat and holding a scroll in one hand, because “the scroll, is the foundation of everything.”446 Dr. Kimball stressed that Evans had “overcome” the previous failures and created an “admirable” statue “embodying […] the mental ideal of Thomas Jefferson,”447 while Lanham emphasized “the detail is worked out wonderfully.” When comparing the gesture of the hand with those in the other two models which seemed “lifeless,” Evans’s statue had the “hand of a virile man.” Similarly, Evans “handled the slenderness very nicely by the coat […].” The emphasis on virility and manliness also occurred in the

4 46 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 30 Sep. 1941: 3. 447 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 30 Sep. 1941: 6.

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Fig. 5:  Photographic enlargement of one of the Jefferson statues in the memorial room. Entry 399, Box 6, Records of the Jefferson Memorial Commission, Records Group 79, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.

Jefferson Day Speeches.448 Even though the commission seemed to be unable to find a sculpture that would express what it was looking for and had even discussed erecting an “altar of fire” rather than an imperfect statue,449 Gibboney wrote to FDR that the TJMC “unanimously favored the model submitted by Mr. Evans” on October 1, 1941.450 Gibboney attached two pictures, on which FDR 448 Cf. Prothero 2003, 293; Hedstrom 2013, 25. As Jefferson was linked to Jesus in these attributes of courage and practicality, the assertion of Jefferson’s virility echoed Bruce Barton’s appropriation of the virile Jesus. 449 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 30 Sep. 1941: 12. 450 Letter, Stuart Gibboney to FDR, 1 Oct. 1941.

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Fig. 6:  Photographic enlargement of one of the Jefferson statues in the memorial room. Entry 399, Box 6, Records of the Jefferson Memorial Commission, Records Group 79, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.

commented: “As far as I can tell […] I like the selected statue. It has dignity, simplicity, and correct proportions.”451 A week later, The Post printed a standalone photograph with the caption “Jefferson Memorial Statue Approved,” noting that it would be a “standing figure about 18 feet in height, to be cast in bronze” by “Rudulph Evans, a native of Washington.”452 Interestingly enough FDR, who had favored Lawrie’s statue except for the still-lacking likeness in the middle of March 1941,453 received a letter from Ruth 451 Letter, FDR to Stuart Gibboney, 3 Oct. 1941, Franklin D.  Roosevelt; Papers as President; Official File; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. 452 “Jefferson Memorial Statue Approved.” The Washington Post 8 Oct. 1941: 21. ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2014 . 453 Letter, FDR to Fiske Kimball, 21 Mar. 1941; Franklin D.  Roosevelt Papers; Folder: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission.

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Fig. 7:  Photographic enlargement of one of the Jefferson statues in the memorial room. Entry 399, Box 6, Records of the Jefferson Memorial Commission, Records Group 79, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.

Bryan Owen Rohde in April 1941. The daughter of William Jennings Bryan, and a “longtime family friend”454 of FDR, advocated the selection of Rudulph Evans. She wrote that Evans had done the “statue of [her] father in Statuary Hall in the Capitol,” which “has been a source of so much satisfaction to our family and friends.” Evans was “both accurate and sympathetic in his portrait sculpture and […] has portrayed Jefferson with such a vitality and beauty as to make his statue

454 “Ruth Bryan Owen.” Women in Congress, 1917 to the Present. Prepared under the direction of the Committee on House Administration by the Office of History & Preservation, U.S. House of Representatives. Washington: Gov. Printing Office, 2006. Web. 7 Jan. 2015. . N.p. After her term ended, FDR appointed her Minister to Denmark in 1933, making her the first American women to head a diplomatic delegation.

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Fig. 8:  Rudulph Evans’s Jefferson statue in the memorial room. Historic Photograph File, Box 15, 79-G, Records Group 79, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.

worthy of a place in the new Memorial.” She asked FDR for his “personal interest in the matter.”455 FDR instructed his secretary to answer: “The President wished me to assure you that he has noted both the photograph and your remarks with much interest.”456 As Owen had campaigned for FDR, served as a Democrat in Congress, and was appointed by him to serve as Minister to Denmark in 1933,457 it is reasonable to assume that FDR valued her opinion. However, to what extent

4 55 Letter, Ruth Bryan Owen to FDR, 5 Apr. 1941. 456 Letter, FDR [Secretary Watson] to Ruth Bryan Owen. 457 Wayne Flynt, Duncan Upshaw Fletcher: Dixie’s Reluctant Progressive. Tallahassee: Florida UP, 1971. Print. 168. Flynt mentions that she helped Fletcher “to swing Florida into the Roosevelt camp” in 1932.

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FDR was influenced by her and in turn influenced the TJMC’s decision cannot be known. Stuart Gibboney’s letter suggests that FDR had not been consulted before the final decision, because Gibboney included information on Rudulph Evans when he informed the president that Evans’ statue, a statue “worthy of Jefferson,” had been selected. He wrote that Evans was “a portrait sculptor of note” who had done the statue of Robert E.  Lee in the Virginia Capitol. This information on Evans and Gibboney’s sentence “[w]‌e trust that you will like the model as much as we do,” implied that FDR had no role in choosing the Evans statue (Fig. 8).458 All these intricacies and opinions are a testament to the diversity of opinions and tastes, and differences in imagination and conception, of who Jefferson was, what he looked like, and what values this look communicated. The TJMC was anxious about the differences of opinion and tastes in relation to the small corn and tobacco symbols that adorned the two visible columns at the back side of Jefferson’s coat. Evans included them to express Jefferson’s interest in and active pursuit of agriculture. Jefferson himself, Dr. Kimball asserted, had used the “tobacco design for the pedestal for his sun dial at Monticello.”459 Anxious about the rejection of the statue, the commission did not consult the National Park Service in respect to the corn and tobacco design, because its opinions had been so “arbitrary.” Therefore, the TJMC decided that the public approval the statue received after the first pictures had been published in the newspapers was all the affirmation they needed for their work. The commission’s doubts about the statue’s public perception or of any Jefferson representation became evident when the commission honestly considered installing an “Altar of Freedom”460 in the middle of the memorial room. The idea of expressing the eternal truth and vitality of Jefferson’s philosophy and spirit of democracy through an altar of fire highlighted the difficulty of creating the one Jefferson statue—the one representation—that everyone could believe in. Rather than representing a false conception of Jefferson, the commission, in reminiscence of Senator Thomas’s assertion that the memorial would be for Jefferson and to the American people, would have symbolized the continuance of Jeffersonian democracy through a never-dying flame.461

4 58 Letter, Stuart Gibboney to FDR, 1 Oct. 1941. 459 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1941: 4. 460 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 30 Sep. 1941: 7, 12. “altar with fire” 461 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 5 Jun. 1942: 5.

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The idea of dedicating the memorial with an altar of fire rather than a statue proved another important facet in its construction. Although the TJMC revered Jefferson in an uncritical way portraying him more favorably, it did not seek to establish a personality cult462 around him. Even though the Jefferson nickel, which was first given out in 1938, spread Jefferson’s profile and his home Monticello all through the nation, the memorial in the nation’s capital would have been without a statue.463 The lack of a Jefferson statue, except for the small one in Statuary Hall, had prompted several congressmen to support the Jefferson Memorial plan.464 Though it is certainly true that the TJMC wanted to make Jefferson more prominent and relevant in the minds of the people, they did not, as they said, intend to deify him. Even though FDR and the TJMC emphasized parallels between Jefferson’s time and the 1940s, and in extension between Jefferson and FDR as political leaders, the protests in the newspapers and the opinions expressed in Congress demonstrated that the democratic system ensured the right of free expression and the right to a contrary opinion. In Congress, Republicans voiced this opposition early on when the TJMC asked for their plans for the building to be approved on May 29, 1936. The Republican Charles Gifford of Massachusetts asked John Boylan whether the design included a “profile of Jefferson himself ” and suggested “if there is to be a profile of Jefferson himself, it be made with tears streaming down the cheeks” (Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8353). Gifford explained his proposal by stating: “Our liberties have gone; and he [Jefferson] would be feeling dreadfully about it were he alive. He should be so pictured, should he not?” Gifford concluded that this depiction was especially true in so far as the monument would be honoring “[o]‌nly a memory” (8353). In the further debate, Gifford opined it was harder to get lost liberties back from government bureaucracy than from a dictator. When Gifford tried to list “the many tenets that [Jefferson] held sacred” that “his own followers repudiated,” he was unable to produce any “at this moment.” Despite this lapse,

462 The commission’s and the administration’s appropriation of Jefferson was not used for oppression and propaganda as was the Soviet Union’s personality cult of Stalin. Stalin had coopted the figure of Lenin, and leading philosophes and had created a personality cult around his own figure (Robert C. Tucker, “The Rise of Stalin’s Personality Cult.” American Historical Review 84.2 (Apr. 1979): 347–366. Print. 352.) 463 Letter, Stuart Gibboney to Board of Governors of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 12 Apr. 1938; Folder: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation; Franklin D. Roosevelt; Presidential Personal File; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. 464 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5436.

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Gifford once more asserted: “I was not entirely facetious when I suggested […] that Jefferson ought to be pictured with tears streaming down his face” (8354). During the same discussion, Harold Knutson, the Republican from Minnesota, introduced an amendment465 to Boylan’s resolution. The amendment would allow the spending of $3,000,000 to erect the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, but only “[p]‌rovided, That there shall be inscribed upon [it] the oath taken by Mr. Roosevelt to ‘I mplicitly follow and observe the principles and teachings of government enunciated by Thomas Jefferson’ ” (8354). This amendment echoed another Republican proposal of 1934. Ralph R. Eltse of California had favored the erection of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. as opposed to St. Louis, if there was “inscribed on it […] that ‘Government is an evil, a necessary evil, and the less of it the better,’ or words to this effect” (10888). Even at the dedication of the memorial in 1943, congressmen spoke critically about the memorial and the idea that Democrats and FDR wanted to coopt it by claiming Jefferson as their predecessor. As a symbol of American civil religion, the icon Jefferson, that is, a picture of Evans’s Jefferson statue and the story of the memorial shrine and the Declaration of Independence, were used in an advertisement for the second war bond drive, which was to begin on Jefferson’s birthday, April 13, 1943. The Washington Evening Star printed the full-page advertisement which stated, “13 is our lucky number, Mr. Jefferson,” and went on to explain: For it was on the 13th of April, just two hundred years ago, that you were given life. You, who documented our Nation! You, who gave birth to our four freedoms! You, who became democracy’s staunch advocate for and one of the founders of our … 13 Original States, brave beginning of today’s bulwark of freedom for the world! It is only fitting then, that we should pledge to you, on the 13th day of April 1943, as the nation dedicates a lasting memorial to you and the principles for which you stood, that we shall do our part toward preserving those inalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, by oversubscribing our … 13 Billion Dollar War Bond Issue. We shall deem it a privilege, Mr. Jefferson, for each time we invest in a share of America, we sign in spirit your immortal declaration … “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” Then surely we can, and will, pledge our dollars.

The first sentence echoed panel number two within the Jefferson Memorial: ‘The God who gave us Life gave us Liberty.’ As God was the giver of life and liberty in Jefferson’s original sentence, the war bond ad implied that it was the destiny 465 The amendment had been prepared by Robert Rich, a Republican from Pennsylvania, who had to leave the chamber on other business.

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of the American people to enjoy the four freedoms that God and Jefferson had given them. The four freedoms were the principles of Jefferson and the “lasting memorial” erected in his honor, and his “immortal document” proved that America would preserve them in this war for freedom. The ad called the people into the fellowship of Jefferson and the founders; it encouraged them to follow their heroic example of pledging their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the god-sanctioned cause of freedom. Freely giving or sacrificing $13 billion was an easy duty compared to the sacrifices Jefferson and the founders had made. The revolutionary, young Jefferson, who had dared to sign his life away to establish the new nation, had always been epitomized by the Houdon bust, as Dr. Kimball had asserted in one of the commission’s meetings. This depiction, however, had instantly been replaced by Evans’s Jefferson statue in the advertisement. The dedication of the memorial and its new statue on April 13 fitted well into the concept; however, the advertisement testified that the new statue was recognizable and iconic at the moment of its formal dedication. It was used to communicate what the commission had hoped for—the dignity of America in the face of an enemy that threatened its foundational rights, the active fight of Jefferson and the nation for those rights, and the determination to persevere.

The Pediment: Telling a Story John Russell Pope had designed the Jefferson Memorial by blending Thomas Jefferson’s two favorite architectural styles, and the design called for a pediment. After Russell Pope passed away, Otto R. Eggers and Daniel P. Higgins took over and gave their opinion on all matters relating to the sculptural work. In March 1939, they suggested to the TJMC that the “sculpture should be confined to the central part of the tympanum only. Possibly a two figure composition. […] an eagle with spread wings, in fairly high relief ” because the pediment was constructed with a “low rake.”466 While they explained that the eagle would “aid in giving the building an early republic character which in view of its purpose, may be most desirable,”467 the TJMC wondered whether the eagle had not been coopted by Hitler and Mussolini, who also used it.468 In January 1940, Senator Thomas questioned again:  “Do we want an eagle symbolizing Jefferson?,” and 466 Letter, Otto R. Eggers to Dr. Kimball, 11 Mar. 1939, Papers of Howard Worth Smith, Accession #8731, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville,  Va. 467 Letter, Otto R. Eggers to Dr. Kimball, 11 Mar. 1939. 468 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 19 Oct. 1939: 62.

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General Kean agreed.469 Even though Lee Lawrie included an eagle figure on the pedestal of his Jefferson statue, the sculpture jury also doubted whether the eagle was “essential to the design.”470 Thomas’s dissatisfaction with the eagle led him to suggest and design a different sculptural artwork—one that told the story of the deliberation of the Declaration of Independence. The sculptor A. A. Weinman worked out Thomas’s initial sketch but voiced his preference for the figure of Columbia and the eagle in the TJMC meeting of July 1940, because these two figures were more symbolic and thus more fitting to the architecture.471 The architect Otto R. Eggers believed that “[i]‌f Jefferson had been the architect of the building he would have stuck to the architecture and not the pictorial.”472 Dr. Kimball, the expert on Jeffersonian architecture, supported Eggers’s judgment, asserting that Jefferson “took liberties” and “exercised a little more freedom” in respect to ornamentation only for his private purposes, but not when he designed public buildings. However, Thomas emphasized that he would rather leave the pediment empty than “put something up there with [no] real meaning,” because the commission would otherwise “simply waste one of the finest opportunities […] in giving the people in America a lesson that they want and which they need right now.”473 Thomas wished to show something similar to John Trumbull’s “Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776” in the Rotunda of the Capital, depicting Jefferson and John Hancock, together with the committee that was appointed by the Continental Congress to draft the Declaration. This group of five was also printed on the two dollars note. Senator Thomas’s idea was criticized because it was believed that the image would have to be quite small to fit the pediment and thus would not be recognizable when visitors stood at the steps of the memorial and looked up. Despite Kimball’s previous objection and preference for the more traditional treatment, he suggested Thomas’s desired lesson might be taught by “increase[ing] the scale of the figures and symboliz[ing], perhaps more abstractly and ideally the process of deliberation in Democracy.” In the next meeting Thomas, still fighting for his idea, explicated the lesson he saw in that scene. It was “the actuality of the working of the American government, the meeting of the minds and arguing; […] the setting up of the government around the notion not of a single will but of the many

4 69 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jan. 1940: 20. 470 Official Minutes of the TJMC, Report of the Committee on Sculpture, 21 Feb. 1941: 5. 471 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jul. 1940: 6. 472 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 14 Jun. 1940: 12. 473 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 14 Jun. 1940: 17.

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Fig. 9:  Jefferson Memorial pediment. Image taken and edited by the author.

wills, and that is the situation right here.” Every schoolchild would ask who these men are and would figure it out when they saw the “Fathers of the American Government” (Fig. 9). In order to persuade the sculptor Weinman to favor this image, Thomas claimed that he did not know of any “theme” “anywhere in the whole world” that would have “so much in it for an artist,” because the scene was “taken from actual life and actuality.”474 Thomas inquired how any symbol could ever live up to this practical application of democracy. He thereby re-affirmed that Jefferson’s political ideas were the iconic ideas that Americans followed— and have to follow—in order to live in freedom. The Jefferson Memorial was more than an attempt to give the memories about Jefferson a distinctive form; it was a testimony to the self-government of the American people. Culkin concurred with Thomas that a standing Jefferson figure in the pediment would show the visitors what to expect inside the memorial when they approached the statue. Culkin said: “[T]‌he whole spirit that prompted the erection of the Memorial is embodied in the contemplated sculpture and in this pediment. […] and it brings about reflection.”475 Culkin implied that visitors through reflection of all elements of the memorial, would be led to realize and reaffirm that the deliberation of all opinions and granting the validity of another’s opinion constituted the basis for the American government and nation. Like Thomas, Culkin stressed the timeliness of this “historically impressive” scene, “from the standpoint of inculcating and promoting the American spirit.”476 Considering “the great masses of people who will come to view this structure,” Culkin argued that the scene “puts them on notice […] to the purpose of having a Memorial to Thomas Jefferson, […] whose whole teachings involved the essence of Democratic spirit which we are trying to preserve for the Nation and the world” [sic].477 Senator Thomas and Representative Culkin had conjured up a vision of

4 74 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jul. 1940: 7. 475 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jul. 1940: 10. 476 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jul. 1940: 11. 477 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jul. 1940: 11–12.

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Jefferson’s America being a beacon of democracy in a world reigned by oppressive regimes already in 1934. The continuous deterioration of the situation in Europe only affirmed their faith in this vision. The TJMC seemed to agree that despite the dictates and rules of architecture concerning the design of the pediment, this vision as symbolized by the scene of deliberation, could be eternalized and affirmed through the memorial. To that purpose Thomas argued: “We are never afraid of [instituting changes] because if we had become frightened of those things we would not have had a Declaration of Independence.”478 While the classicist design won out over a modern memorial design, the TJMC dared follow change when it came to the pediment. Whether the opposition against the classicist design had influenced the commission to be more progressive pertaining to the pediment remains an open question.

2.1.7 Dedication of the Memorial, April 13, 1943 While the TJMC debated various detailed aspects about the memorial, it began to plan the dedication ceremony.479 In October 1941, FDR had planned the dedication of the memorial for April 13, 1942, but after careful consideration and consultation with advisers, FDR proposed to postpone it for a year. In January 1942, he wrote “at this particular stage of the war the dedication might be regarded as a sort of intrusion” and by waiting a year “we would have the advantage of the two hundredth anniversary of Jefferson’s birth, thereby getting a springboard on which to focus attention.”480 Therefore, he suggested to “let the public up on the steps of the Memorial and rope off the inside awaiting the statue and the dedication.” He closed the memo by stating, “This will whet their interest.”481 The correspondence reveals FDR’s continued interest in the memorial and Wagner-Pacifici’s event code fit. Even though he stated that he had nothing to do with the project and that his part at the respective ceremonies should be very short,482 the analysis of the speeches at the groundbreaking, cornerstone laying, 4 78 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 9 Jul. 1940: 21. 479 Letter, Stuart Gibboney to FDR, 12 Jul. 1940; Papers of Franklin D.  Roosevelt; Presidential Personal Files; 480 Memorandum, Franklin D. Roosevelt to Stuart Gibboney, 27 Jan. 1942; Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt; 481 File Memo, 29 Jan. 1942, G. G. T. Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Papers as President; Official File; 482 Memorandum for PA, from FDR, 9 Jan. 1943. Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Papers as President; Official File; “Tell him also that my part in it will be very simple and short—not more than a five or six minute speech.”

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and dedication attested that FDR as moral entrepreneur cared about the publics’ opinion. The question of public approval became apparent through FDR’s correspondence with Stuart Gibboney. FDR wondered who else served on the Thomas Jefferson Bicentennial Commission, and whether the situation of war required them to curtail the ceremonies. While Gibboney assured FDR that the commission would abide by his wishes, he promoted the opposite of FDR’s suggestion by quoting his fellow commission member who had argued: Think for a moment what would be done in any other country, if the great anniversary of the founder of the system they were defending fell into the midst of a great war. So far from curtailing any celebration, they would magnify it. So far from abandoning any publication of the writings of that founder, they would emphasize them still further and make them more widely available. We are fighting for democracy, so let us magnify and celebrate the founder of American democracy, not less, but more.483

The quote implied that the Jefferson Memorial dedication in the nation’s capital would be the coronation of American democracy and its fighting spirit. This idea was further advocated when FDR suggested that the functions planned by the Library of Congress and the National Art Gallery could be “advertised at the outdoor dedication.” Archibald MacLeish had invited FDR to the ceremony to commemorate “Thomas Jefferson and his Foster Child the Library of Congress.” FDR believed Gibboney and MacLeish could “combine or tie together the whole celebration in one great meeting.”484 The TJMC discussed whether the dedication should be opened with an invocation. As Jefferson “stood for freedom of religion,” Senator Andrews assumed “it is all right”485 to have an invocation, and Kimball asserted that “Jefferson claimed to be a devout follower of Jesus and he was a member of the Vestry of Christ’s Church.”486 Lanham supported Dr. Kimball’s point and stressed that the invocation “will help to attenuate the fact that we have due regard for religion, even stamping it upon our coins ‘In God we trust’ and having it in our National Anthem in contrast to the people we are now fighting who do not believe in religion.”487 The memorial to Jefferson represented the entire nation and was 483 Letter, Stuart Gibboney to FDR, 27 Jan. 1942; Folder: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission; Franklin D. Roosevelt; Papers as President; Official File; 484 Letter, Archibald MacLeish to FDR, 9 Dec. 1942; Folder: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission; Franklin D. Roosevelt; Papers as President; Official File; 485 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 27 Jan. 1943: 5. 486 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 27 Jan. 1943: 6. 487 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 27 Jan. 1943: 6.

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therefore connected to American civil religion. Totalitarian states opposed the freedom of religion, and therefore, following Jeffersonian principles to affirm devotion to religion and adhere to the doctrine of religious freedom was the mark of a truly democratic country. Dr. Kimball therefore claimed that it “is one of the outstanding things that the Jews, the Protestants and the Catholics revere his Statutes [of Religious Freedom].” In order to mirror their reference, Kimball sought to have a member of each religious group play a role in the dedication ceremony. The Episcopal Bishop was to give the invocation, while a Catholic Divine was to pronounce the Benediction. All that was left was to include a Rabbi, and the commission would have “covered” Jefferson’s “statement” on religious freedom.488 Interestingly enough, Dr. Kimball found a function for the Christian church leaders before incorporating the Rabbi in the dedication ceremony. Elbert Thomas’s description of the dedication in Congress on April 14, 1943 picked up this point when he said that “the heads of the Episcopal and Catholic Churches, representing the religious activities of America, were most appropriate […].” Furthermore, Thomas described that Miss Grace Moore sung the Star-Spangled Banner (cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: 3346). Thomas, as a member of the TJMC, was very satisfied and narrated that “the elements [of the celebration] were in keeping with the memory of our great American, as the weather was that of a perfect spring day” (3346). With this imagery of spring, Thomas suggested that Jefferson was still a living force and America still in bloom because of his principles. After this introduction, the president’s address, which had been broadcast, appeared in the Congressional Record. At the dedication, Stuart Gibboney first addressed the assembled crowd before Roosevelt delivered his speech, which had been composed from a draft by the Librarian of Congress, MacLeish, and a separate memorandum from an unidentified person.489 The larger text and ideas were taken from MacLeish’s draft. Roosevelt intoned: “Today in the midst of a great war for freedom, we dedicate a shrine to freedom. To Thomas Jefferson, apostle of freedom, we are paying a debt long overdue” (3346). Roosevelt echoed Senator Thomas and the newspapers that had used to term shrine490 and employed this religious term in connection with the idea of freedom in a world engulfed in a war for freedom. Only at the

4 88 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 27 Jan. 1943: 6. 489 Both drafts are contained in Franklin D.  Roosevelt’s speech file at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. 490 From the first report on the Jefferson Memorial in the summer of 1936 to the end of 1937, the word shrine appeared in 25 out of 137 article headlines.

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beginning of the second sentence did Roosevelt pronounce Jefferson’s name and intertwined him, the ‘apostle of freedom,’ with the memorial, ‘the shrine to freedom.’ Roosevelt made Jefferson into a quasi-religious figure, into a patron saint of freedom. At this point in the history of the United States, Roosevelt omitted previous references to the L’Enfant plan, or to Washington and Lincoln, and solely focused on the principles of freedom that Jefferson embodied. Roosevelt’s rhetoric emphasized the parallelism between Jefferson’s historical reality and the present time. In contrast to accusations that the memorial was merely a tomb or mausoleum, not expressive of a living thought or inspiration,491 Roosevelt, by stressing the parallels, affirmed the inspirational aspect of the shrine. Employing sentences from MacLeish’s draft, FDR explained why the payment of this “long overdue” debt was important at this time: “[T]‌here are reasons of gratitude that this occasion falls within our time; for our generation of Americans can understand much in Jefferson’s life which intervening generations could not see as well as we.”492 Roosevelt connected the current war to the Revolutionary War as [Jefferson] “faced the fact that men who will not fight for liberty can lose it. We, too, have faced that fact” (3346). The present generation’s understanding of Jefferson, according to FDR and MacLeish, came also from the fact that “[h]e lived in a world in which freedom of conscience and freedom of mind were battles still to be fought through—not principles already accepted of all men. We, too, have lived in such a world.” And he mentioned a third parallel, namely, that Jefferson “on more than one occasion […] was forced to choose between [peace and liberty],” while “[w]e, too, have been compelled to make that choice” (3346). MacLeish’s draft went on to affirm that this generation understood best what it owed him and mentioned the three achievements Jefferson had imprinted on this tombstone. Roosevelt, however, came straight to MacLeish’s next point, which stressed the parallelism again: “Generations which understand each other across the distance of history are the generations united by a common experience and a common cause. Jefferson, across 150 years of time, is closer by much to living men than many of our leaders of the years between.” He thus employed the assurance of American civil religion that the nation endured beyond the

491 Cong. Rec. 7 Jun. 1938: 8440–8442; Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3420; Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8523; Cong Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1817; Cong. Rec. 17 Aug. 1937: 9157; Cong. Rec. 6 May 1940: 2730. 492 Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: 3346. Archibald, MacLeish, “Suggested Draft of an Address at the Dedication of the Jefferson Memorial.” 4 Apr. 1943. Speech File;

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individual lives and gave them a purpose—“a common experience and common cause.” With the next sentence, FDR refuted the accusations that Democrats or Americans were merely paying lip service to Jefferson’s teachings, when he justified both wars: “His cause was a cause to which we also are committed, not only by our words alone but by our sacrifice.” MacLeish had suggested the word “lives,” but FDR’s revision expanded the meaning beyond the soldiers to all Americans contributing to the war effort. While the term sacrifice addressed the practical, active service of all Americans, it also alluded to Jefferson’s idealism as it connoted a heroic act of altruism. Roosevelt seemed to imply that while Americans had a choice in fighting for freedom, they fulfilled their destiny in choosing to fight. He further elucidated the topic of sacrifice with passages from the anonymous draft: “For faith and ideals imply renunciations. Spiritual advancement throughout all our history has called for temporal sacrifice.” History taught us, like Jefferson, that one had to make sacrifices to gain something but Roosevelt expressed hope that the future would bring better times. FDR continued his speech, “The Declaration of Independence and the very purposes of the Revolution itself, while seeking freedoms, called for the abandonment of privileges.” Again, the passage highlighted the need for deeds and for renouncing the belief that inactivity and fantasies, or imaginations of better times, will produce any positive results. “Jefferson was no dreamer,” FDR stressed. On the contrary, “for half a century he led his State and his Nation in fact and in deed.” Roosevelt thereby called on all Americans to actively follow Jefferson’s practical example; the example was motivated by idealistic thoughts, as Jefferson did not think “in terms of today and yesterday” but rather “in terms of the morrow as well as the day,” that is for future generations of Americans. Roosevelt supported the idea that Jefferson’s pragmatism was grounded in higher ideals by saying: “We judge him by the application of his philosophy to the circumstances of his lifetime. But in such applying we come to understand that his life was given for those deeper values which persist throughout all time.” By stressing the lasting significance of Jeffersonian values and Jefferson’s leadership “in the philosophy of government, in education, in the arts, in efforts to lighten the toil of mankind,” FDR elevated him above other Americans both past and present. Roosevelt adumbrated Jefferson’s humanitarianism when he claimed that Jefferson was the “leader […] in efforts to lighten the toil of mankind.” Roosevelt did not specify what oppressed humankind or from what circumstances the toil originated, so once again he broadened the scope of Jefferson’s humanitarianism and extended his praiseworthiness. In the next sentence, FDR called Jefferson an “exponent of plannings [sic] for the future” and

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asserted that Jefferson thereby “led the steps of America into the path of the permanent integrity of the Republic.” Roosevelt stressed Jefferson’s concern for futurity, his leadership qualities, honesty, and moral righteousness, affirming that America was still a republic that followed Jefferson’s ideals. To better describe their “integrity,” Roosevelt continued the speech with another parallelism suggested by MacLeish: Thomas Jefferson believed, as we believe, in Man. He believed, as we believe, that men are capable of their own government, and that no king, no tyrant, no dictator can govern for them as wisely as they can govern for themselves. He believed, as we believe, in certain inalienable rights. He, as we, saw those principles and freedoms challenged. He fought for them, as we fight for them.

Sharing this belief in the common man and in self-government with Thomas Jefferson constituted the integrity of the republic. Jefferson had already proven, according to Roosevelt and MacLeish, “that the seeming eclipse of liberty can well become the dawn of more liberty. Those who fight the tyranny of our own time will come to learn that old lesson.” Roosevelt portrayed Jefferson as a guiding light for the present. FDR highlighted the international significance of Jefferson’s ideas for freedom by saying, “Among all the peoples of the earth, the cruelties and oppressions of its would-be masters have taught this generation what the liberties can mean. This lesson, so bitterly learned, will never be forgotten while this generation lives.” Harking back to the idea that the present generation best understood Jefferson, Roosevelt declared: “The words which we have chosen for this memorial speak Jefferson’s noblest and most urgent meaning; and we are proud indeed to understand and share it: ‘I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.’ ” FDR ended his speech with the frieze inscription which encapsulated humanity in general and every individual in particular. It stressed Jefferson’s humanitarianism, which was considered a fight against oppression of any kind. The significance of this specific quotation arose from Roosevelt’s comments on the war and his denunciation of the dictators of the time. The propaganda and inculcation of ideas of nationalism and superiority of one’s nation or race could only be countered, he implied, if people were brave enough to think for themselves, and if they questioned the information spread by authorities. Jefferson, in believing and furthering this sort of individualism through education, the arts, and his philosophy of government, fought against every form of tranny over the mind of man and worshipped God by it. FDR’s speech therefore called Americans into the service and worship of Thomas Jefferson’s ideals.

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Roosevelt altered MacLeish’s draft by stressing the ideals and freedoms for which Jefferson fought and for which America now fights, over the enemy they were fighting. He thereby paid greater tribute to the frieze inscription, which emphasized that suppressing freedom of expression was the source of tyranny. Surrendering one’s independent and critical thought to self-proclaimed leaders led to dictatorship.493 Newspapers published FDR’s speech and speeches by other important public figures alongside photographs depicting the marines who carried the bulletproof, encased Declaration of Independence to the Jefferson Memorial to be displayed at the foot of the “heroic statue of Thomas Jefferson.”494 The weeklong display of the original document was fitting as the Declaration of Independence was represented in the memorial twice—excerpts from its text and the process of deliberation in the sculptural pediment. The Declaration was on display close to the Jefferson statue, rather than in front of the first panel. The statue itself “was the center of a simple and colorful ceremony,” the newspaper reported, and continued: “As Grace Moore, Metropolitan soprano, sang the national anthem, the youngest-known direct descendant of Jefferson pulled a cord and furled American flags suspended about the statue.”495 The TJMC thereby achieved what it had hoped, namely, that “the unfurling of the flag during the national anthem can be just as dramatic as the unveiling of the statue,”496 and it had been

493 Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, a FDR appointee who had served on the presidents Brain Trust, continued this idea in his Jefferson Day speech at the Library of Congress. He suggested that dictators misused modern media to arouse passions, which contrasted with Jefferson’s insistence on reason and an informed citizenry as the basis for good government. Frankfurter wrote that Jefferson knew “that the popular will can steer a proper course only when sufficiently enlightened.” He used his speech to remind the people that Jefferson knew “freedom and democracy are unremitting endeavors, not achievements.” The historian Charles A. Beard stressed this same sentiment in his talk at UVA which the Washington Evening Star also featured. “Beard Says Jefferson Believed in Restraint of ‘Popular Power’: Held That Majorities Were as Dangerous as Single Tyrant.” Washington Evening Star 13 April 1943: A6. (Felix Frankfurter, “The Permanence of Jefferson.” 13 April 1943. Freedom’s Fortress: The Library of Congress, 1939–1953, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Web 11 Jan. 2015 ). Cf. “Democracy Requires Patience: Frankfurter Speech Seen as Criticizing Public’s Judgment.” Washington Evening Star 14 Apr. 1943: A11; Associated Press. 494 “Jefferson.” The Evening Star 13 April 1943: A6. Print. 495 “Jefferson” The Evening Star 13 April 1943: A6. Print. 496 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 27 Jan. 1943: 13.

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Fig. 10:  Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C. aerial view. Image taken and edited by the author.

agreed upon “to get the best singer possible” because this singer would “add luster to the occasion” and not “gain luster from” it.497 The commission had expected 5,000 people,498 but according to The Evening Star of April 13th, around 10,000 attended the ceremony,499 while a report, which featured a picture of the “Jefferson Shrine” from the Washington Monument taken at the dedication, even listed the figure as 20,000.500 As Roosevelt had hoped, the newspapers called the dedication the “high light of many celebrations and observances in Washington” to celebrate the “champion of the freedom which is at stake on world battlefields.”501 These newspaper reports and the war bond drive indicate that the war had changed the public opinion about the Memorial (Fig. 10) and intensified Jefferson as icon for the freedom of thought and expression, while he was also used for propaganda purposes. The memorial as modern variant of traditional icons and its cooption for propaganda illustrate the flexibility of the Jefferson icon.

4 97 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 27 Jan. 1943: 14. 498 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 27 Jan. 1943: 14. 499 “Jefferson” The Evening Star 13 April 1943: A6. 500 “New View of Jefferson Shrine.” The Evening Star 14 April 1943: A3. Print. 501 “Jefferson” The Evening Star 13 April 1943: A6.

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2.2 (Jefferson) National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis (JNEM) Around the same time as the proposal of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., another project was introduced that was to carry Jefferson’s name but highlighted other aspects of his life. On June 8, 1934, John Cochran (D-MO), the sponsor of the House Resolution 356 and moral entrepreneur of Jefferson, explained that it “authorizes the creation of a Federal Memorial Commission to consider and formulate plans for the men and women who made possible the territorial expansion of the United States, which includes Thomas Jefferson, Livingston, Monroe, and those who negotiated the Louisiana Purchase” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1934:10883). Moreover, he stated that the resolution did not ask for an appropriation of money but simply for the official recognition of the services rendered (10883). The resolution was supported by the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association (JNEMA), which, according to Cochran, wished “to erect the memorial on the banks of the Mississippi River at St. Louis” (10884). Cochran quoted from their statement: “It is well to honor Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, Livingston, and Monroe, and that galaxy of statesmen, patriots, and pioneers who had this great vision of national expansion that was to be. Every great movement must have its leaders. They should be honored” (10884). JNEMA highlighted that the national expansion was a collective achievement in which Jefferson played an important role. By using the phrase “galaxy of statesmen,” JNEMA elevated the group together with Jefferson into ‘heavenly spheres.’ The word vision was often associated with religion or the supernatural and with Jefferson in the Jefferson Day Speeches502 and suggested statesmanlike foresight and higher

502 Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6582. “political wisdom and intellectual foresight.” Cong. Rec. 18 Jun. 1934: 12568. “[…] natural gateway of the West, where Jefferson’s vision found its greatest impetus and development.” Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1935: 5607. “But Jefferson never faltered; his vision was keener than theirs, his trust greater, his understanding deeper.” Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1935: 5922. “[…] he envisioned, and aided in developing to cap the system of public education, a State-supported university.” Cong. Rec. 15 Apr. 1935: 5718. “[…] it was due to his vision and foresight that this section became a part of the United States of America.” Cong. Rec. 9 May 1935: 7272. “Like all men of vision, and leaders in advanced thought, he had much opposition […]” Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5435. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5438. “He visioned all this from the borders of the 17 States then in existence, when the opponents of the purchase saw there only a vast wilderness.” Cong. Rec. 20 Apr. 1936: 5742: “Jefferson, in his vision and wisdom, saw this Nation expanding until it reached the from ocean to ocean.” Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1936: 5764. “[…] But even with his broad vision he did not foresee

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ideals. The term statesman, or statesmanship, carries two distinct connotations. Besides resonating with the idea of “deeper values,” which Lincolnian scholar Norbert Graebner calls “wisdom” and “morality,” the term “is a measure of performance, demanding nothing less than the competence and determination necessary to wield power effectively in pursuit of some conscious goal,” that is a goal not devoid of morality.503 Graebner’s definition of the term thus combines the pragmatic with the ideal and suggests the quality of practical idealism, a quality which was tied to Thomas Jefferson in the memorial debates, by FDR, and in the general political discourse. John Cochran ended his speech by emphasizing that the resolution transgressed party lines and found support with both Democrats and Republicans (cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1934: 10883). The debate that followed Cochran’s remarks highlighted some of the themes addressed above and during the Jefferson Memorial debate in Washington, D.C. (10885–10890). Despite controversial opinions, Cochran’s motion was accepted, leading to the establishment of the “United States Territorial Expansion Memorial Commission.” Similar to the TJMC, it was to be composed of “[t]‌hree persons to be appointed by the President […], 3 Senators by the President of the Senate, 3 Members of the House of Representatives by the Speaker of the House […], and 6 members of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association to be selected by such association” (10890). JNEMA thus was strongly represented. By June 18, 1934, the commission had been renamed and was referred to as the Jefferson Federal Memorial Commission. The preamble of the bill was changed and highlighted Thomas Jefferson’s role in the territorial expansion. The commission was still authorized to make plans and to construct “a permanent that a time would come when the press, as frankly money-making institution, would sell its constitutional birthright for financial support and a few dollars’ worth of advertising.”; Cong. Rec. 3 Jun. 1936: 8873. “[…] a memorial to this great statesman is to be erected in the Capital of the country which, thanks largely to his wisdom and vision, is, and for all ages to come will be, the common man’s greatest land of opportunity.” Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1527; Cong. Rec. 12 Apr. 1940: 4436. “Jefferson saw a vision of things as the Creator intended them to be. He saw the possibility of a society based on equal rights and opportunities, with its foundations laid in the brotherhood of man, capable of developing the highest form of manhood and womanhood and of ultimately ushering in the maximum of human happiness on earth, […] in the language of the old hymn: ‘This is heaven’s borderland.”; Cong. Rec. 3 Nov. 1941:8460. Cong. Rec. 17 Nov. 1941: 8936. 503 N. A. Graebner, “Abraham Lincoln: Conservative Statesman.” The Enduring Lincoln. Ed. Norman A. Graebner. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1959. 67–94. Print. 67.

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memorial to the men who made possible the territorial expansion of the United States, particularly President Thomas Jefferson and his aides, Livingston and Monroe, who negotiated the Louisiana Purchase” (Cong. Rec. 18 Jun. 1934: 12448, emphasis added). It cannot be accounted for under whose authority this change was made, yet Cochran’s additional remarks504 in the Congressional Record promoted the Jefferson theme. Furthermore, the new name “Jefferson Federal Memorial Commission,” which was substituted for the United States Territorial Expansion Commission, highlighted the “federal” aspect of acquiring the Louisiana Territory. Even though this was a regional project of St. Louis, the commission wanted to stress the pivotal role that Jefferson and St. Louis, as the gate to the west, played in creating several states out of the newly acquired territory. Furthermore, the renaming suggested that Jefferson’s name was a powerful influence in arguments for establishing bipartisan commissions.505 Though John Cochran (D-MO) repeatedly asserted that the commission was not asking for an appropriation from the federal government for this project, as an earlier bill had done,506 such a request came to Congress at a later date. In March 1936, Robert Rich (R-PA) sought an explanation from John Boylan for the authorization of $30,000,000 that the Public Works Administration made for the St. Louis memorial; however, he was not able to account for the request, as he was not involved in the matter.507 About a month later, Rich criticized FDR’s Executive order of December 21, 1935 which had allocated $6,750,000 toward the project.508 He thereby suggested that Roosevelt had become a moral 5 04 Cf. Cong. Rec. 18 Jun. 1934: 12568–12571; Cf. Cong. Rec. 15 Apr. 1935: 5718–5720. 505 On June 18, 1934, “the Vice President appointed as members of the commission on the part of the senate Alben Barkley [D-KY], Frederick Van Nuys [D-IN], and James John Davis [R-PA]” (Cong. Rec. 18 Jun. 1934: 12448). In the House announcement of the same day, the Speaker designated “[John Nicholas] Sandlin, of Louisiana [D]‌; [Kent Ellsworth] Keller, of Illinois [D]; and [Lloyd] Thurston, of Iowa [R]” (Cong. Rec. 18 Jun. 1934: 12567) as members of the commission. President Roosevelt choose Gen. Jefferson Randolph Kean of Washington, D.C., William T. Kemper of Kansas City, and J. Lionberger Davis of St. Louis, while the Jefferson National Expansion Association nominated Newton D. Baker of Ohio, William Allen White of Kansas, Amon G. Carter of Texas, Charles E. Merriam of Illinois, Matthew Woll of New York, and Luther Ely Smith of Missouri. The association elected Senator Barkley of Kentucky as chairman. (Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis. 7 March 2013 ). 506 Cf. Cong. Rec. 18 Jun. 1934: 10884. John Taber (R-NY) and Louis McFadden (R-PA). 507 Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Mar. 1936: 3740. 508 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5442.

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entrepreneur of this Jefferson Memorial in St. Louis and criticized the president and the expenditure when he stated that the money was needed elsewhere to relieve suffering. Rich pointed out that “the second memorial to Thomas Jefferson is not a necessity in St. Louis,” which already had a memorial to him on 1,200 acres of land.509 William Lambertson, the Kansas Republican, also objected to the federal spending in a discussion on the appropriations bill for 1937. He stated that the president had allocated $5 million for the St. Louis project and that the “city is only required to pay $1 for every $2 we put up.” This expenditure of a total of $30 million should be questioned rather than the $3 million estimated for the Jefferson Memorial in D.C., Lambertson concluded, revealing the competition between these memorials. All these figures and further discussions510 prove that the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial was soon enough only debated in Congress because of its excessive cost. Except for the initial debates, Andrew Jackson May’s speech on June 8, 1934, and the preamble of the Act Creating the United States Territorial Expansion Memorial Commission, the topic of Jefferson’s role in relation to the national expansion became overshadowed by the corrupt practices brought to light by Lambertson, one of the earliest and most persistent critics. Three years after Congress had created the commission, Lambertson once again argued against the “The Second Thomas Jefferson Memorial” and the absurdity of erecting a monument for which 37 blocks of the city had to be destroyed. The destruction, Lambertson argued, stood in contrast to the idea the monument’s design was to express. Charles Nagel, a juror and secretary for the JNEM Competition, had stated in St. Louis Post-Despatch that “[t]‌he design adopted should give emphasis to the peaceful method by which the Louisiana Territory was acquired by President Jefferson.”511 Lambertson said that the beautiful

509 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936:  5443. Robert Rich refers to the Jefferson Memorial in Forest Park. 510 Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 May 1937: 4518. Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1937: 5434–8. Cf. Cong. Rec. 15 Jun. 1937: 5771; Cf. Cong. Rec. 23 Jun. 1937: 6235–6; Cf. Cong. Rec. 1 Jul. 1937: 1662; Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jul. 1937: 6926–8; Cf. Cong. Rec. 15 Jul. 1937: 1806; Cf. Cong. Rec. 3 Aug. 1937, 8117–8; Cf. Cong. Rec. 12 Aug. 1937: 8770–1; Cf. Cong. Rec. 16 Aug. 1937: 2550; Cf. Cong. Rec. 15 Nov 1937: 15–6; Cf. Cong. Rec. 19 Nov 1937, 117; Cf. Cong. Rec. 22 Nov 1937: 259–61; Cf. Cong. Rec. 3 Jun. 1938: 2349–50; Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1939: 4404; Cf. Cong. Rec. 1 May 1939: 1753–5; Cf. Cong. Rec. Jun. 26, 1939: 2857–8. 511 Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1937: 5434.

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monument to Jefferson in Forest Park was more expressive of Jefferson’s peaceloving nature than the destruction of 37 blocks. One of his many speeches on the corrupt financial and real estate aspects of the St. Louis Memorial was entitled “A Memorial Is Only as Valuable as the Popular Respect It Inspires: Conceived to Deceive, and Bottomed on Fraud and Corruption, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis Has Lost the Respect of All but Its Promoters.”512 Lambertson argued it was incongruous with “the great American, Thomas Jefferson, whose principles of honesty and democracy are beyond question.” When future generations looked at the memorial, they would “point to it as a monument to fraud, corruption, graft, and waste.”513 In contrast to this deception, Lambertson presented “18 cardinal principles,” “articles of Democratic Faith as laid down by Thomas Jefferson.” He urged the Representatives to follow them, as laid down in Jefferson’s first inaugural, and to thereby prevent this “waste of the public funds.”514 The first principle was “1. The People the only source of legislative power” and the third point read:  “the freedom, sovereignty, and independence of the respective States.”515 In order to drive his message home, Lambertson laid down as fourth and fifths points, the following sentences: “4. The Union a confederacy, a compact; neither a consolidation nor a centralization” and “5. The Constitution of the Union, a special writ of guaranteed powers, limited and defined” (Cong. Rec. 15 Jul. 1937: 1807). With the eleventh principle, “No national debt if possible,” Lambertson implied that no federal money should have gone into this state project as it transgressed the sovereignty of the respective state. Among the negative consequences of the federal interference in state matters was the waste

5 12 Cong. Rec. 20 Aug. 1937: 2234. 513 Cong. Rec. 15 Jul. 1937: 1806. 514 Cong. Rec. 15 Jul. 1937: 1806. “[….]. 2. The absolute and everlasting severance of church and state. [….] 6. The civil paramount to the military power. 7. The Representative to obey the instructions of his constituents. 8. Elections free and suffrage universal. 9. No hereditary office, or order, or title. 10. No taxation beyond public want. [….] 12. No costly splendor of administration. 13. No prescription of opinion or public discussion. 14. No unnecessary interference in individual conduct, property, or speech. 15. No favored classes and no monopolies. 16. No public moneys expended except by warrant of special appropriation. 17. No mysteries of Government inaccessible to the public eye. 18. Public compensation for public service; salaries moderate and pervading economy.” 515 Cong. Rec. 15 Jul. 1937: 1806–7.

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and corruption on a larger scale. As Jefferson had stood for states’ rights and hated waste and corruption, Lambertson disclosed the obvious contradiction between Jeffersonian principles and the current government. In a previous speech, Lambertson had drawn attention to citizens living and earning their money within the 37 blocks. He suggested that these people would not be compensated in a proper way if the government bought up their places; therefore, the fourteenth article of democratic faith applied to this situation. It advocated for “[n]‌o unnecessary interference in individual conduct, property, or speech.” Two years later Lambertson was still agitated by the deceptive practices in relation to the memorial and thus entitled another speech “Desecrating the Name of Democracy” (cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1939: 4235). He related how the mayor of St. Louis and other prominent figures involved in the fraudulent Jefferson Memorial project made a “Patriotic Pilgrimage to Monticello” and laid a wreath at the Jefferson Memorial in D.C. Considering their underhanded measures of fraud, patronage, and corruption, their pilgrimage desecrated the name of Jefferson and the democratic principles for which he stood (cf. 4235). Lambertson once more used religious language when he closed his denunciations with the words: “May the Lord God of Hosts deliver us from the kind of democracy represented by Bernhard F.  Dickman, James A.  Waechter, and Joseph Hannauer” (4236). This last sentence implied Lambertson had lost his faith in the executive or legislative branches of government to procure an investigation and to stop the undemocratic, deceptive machinations of the Democratic party bosses in Kansas and Missouri.

2.3 Memorializing Jefferson’s Birthday: April 13, 1743 Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 and died July 4, 1826, fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. While Jefferson’s peculiar day of death, which occurred on the same day that John Adams passed away, was integral to the American civil religious calendar, Jefferson’s birthday, April 13, had not been memorialized like the Fourth of July. In the 1930s, congressmen tried to establish Jefferson’s birthday as a constant and prominent date of American civil religion by promoting several measures which sought to bring the memory of Jefferson into the national consciousness.

2.3.1 Declaring Jefferson’s Birthday a Holiday In 1934, a motion was introduced in Congress that sought to declare April 13th a holiday in the District of Columbia, while another motion even sought to make it a national holiday. Joseph B.  Shannon of Missouri referred to the

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House Resolution 4009 and, in advocacy of the bill, opened his Jefferson Day speech by describing the process of making April 13th a legal holiday in Missouri in 1931516 and how it was celebrated with events in schools and other ceremonies. He praised Missouri and its legislature for enacting the bill which “received the vote of every member present of both houses of the general assembly” and hoped that “Congress will, in atonement for the long-neglected duty, pass a law declaring the birthday of this great American a public holiday in the District of Columbia” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6579–80). The Missouri bill had bipartisan support, and the Republican Governor who signed the bill jibed: “ ‘Tell Shannon I am a better Jeffersonian than he ever dared to be.’ [Laughter]” (6579). This short statement, though uttered as a jest and reiterated by Shannon as a tribute to Jefferson’s bipartisan acclaim, disclosed that the debates brought up who had the right to call himself “Jeffersonian” and whose interpretation of Jefferson’s principles was correct. Shannon, however, stressed that there was “no politics” in celebrating this day in the schools of Missouri or in Congress. The sole purpose was to recognize “his great services” for his country and for the schools and inspire the next generation in the pursuit of Jefferson’s ideals. Shannon explained which of Jefferson’s accomplishments predestined him to be honored by the nation. Jefferson was the “presumptive founder of a political party” and the author of the Declaration of Independence, the crusader for our Bill of Rights, the apostle of freedom for white and black, the friend of free education for the masses, the far-visioned prophet of the Nation’s territorial expansion, and the explorer of its wilderness expanses where unborn States lay waiting for the tides of humanity and prosperity that his wisdom and foresight saw in its destiny. (6580)

Shannon appreciated Jefferson’s “unselfish devotion to the Republic” and praised his achievements as contributing to the “welfare of the people.” While Shannon attributed to Jefferson the quality of idealism in the phrases “unselfish devotion” and “welfare of the people,” he also attributed to Jefferson a practical and active role by using the terms “crusader” and “explorer of its wilderness expanses.” Furthermore, Shannon tapped into the semantic field of religion describing Jefferson as “crusader,” “apostle,” and “far-visioned prophet.” The passage abounds with words and references that express what others would describe in the Jefferson Day speeches as Jefferson’s “practical idealism.” Shannon, therefore, 516 Cf. John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992. Print. 188.

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became not only an advocate for the bill, but also re-introduced it in 1935 (cf. Cong. Rec. 3 Jan. 1935: 47). By 1936 some congressmen went even further and considered making Jefferson’s birthday a national holiday. After John Boylan’s Jefferson Day Address before Congress, his fellow Democrat, Charles Colden of California,517 asked him: “What does the gentleman think of the idea of making Jefferson’s birthday a national holiday” (cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936:  5437). Boylan, like Shannon, believed that this measure would atone for the country’s long neglect of Jefferson’s services. He criticized that the people thought too much about their present and future gain. Therefore, he advocated setting an example for the appreciation of the Jefferson’s role in the national history, which would teach that there were higher values in the nation than the thought, ‘[w]‌hat will I get out of it?’ (5437). A year later, Boylan announced that he had introduced the H.J. Res. 284 to establish Jefferson’s birthday as a legal public holiday, provided [t]‌hat the President […] is authorized and directed to issue a proclamation calling upon officials of the Government to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on April 13 of each year, and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies in commemoration of the birth of Thomas Jefferson. (Cong. Rec. 19 Apr. 1937: 3599)

A motion to reconsider the bill was also laid on the table, and it took another year before President Roosevelt issued the Presidential Proclamation 2267.518 However, the proclamation did not declare the day a legal holiday, but merely considered it appropriate for the people to honor Jefferson in “suitable places,” including schools and churches. Jefferson was thereby intertwined with the religious and civil religious life of the nation. While this measure enshrined Jefferson in the minds of the people, the time that elapsed between the first proposal, its reintroduction, and the presidential proclamation demonstrated that the Jefferson icon was not uncontested and that the event/code relation was inextricably linked to a temporal variable, which also becomes obvious under consideration of a measure introduced in 1942.

517 Charles Colden had a background in education before he was elected to Congress, which he served until his death on 15 April 1938. “Colden, Charles J.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present. Web. 27 Feb. 2013 . 518 36 USC § 141. Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday. 8 April 2013 .

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With the upcoming two-hundredth anniversary of Jefferson’s birthday in 1943, Horace J. Voorhis (D-CA) introduced a resolution of the California Pensioners Union in May 1942. Voorhis had working-class experiences before he became a teacher and even headmaster and trustee of his own school.519 He believed cooperatives and published extensively on the subject. His efforts on behalf of the Pensioners Union therefore stems from a deep interest in community values. Paul Bullock, therefore, entitled his biography, Jerry Voorhis:  The Idealist as Politician. Bullock emphasizes Voorhis’s participation in the progressive bloc in Congress, listing him with Maury Maverick of Texas, who had advocated for a Jefferson memorial which would further the people’s education or health.520 The resolution of the Pensioners Union asked that the birthday of Jefferson be declared a “universal holiday” and “we request the Congress of the United States to inaugurate the measure necessary, and provide the means, to extend to all nations, peoples, kindred, and tongues an invitation to join in the observance of Thomas Jefferson’s bicentennial birthday” (Cong. Rec. 26 May 1942: A1941). The preamble explained that this “world celebration” would “be appropriate and exceedingly fitting and very advantageous to the great cause of human freedom,” because “there is now a great world struggle to make the world safe for the political and economic principles that Jefferson exemplified in the American Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights” (A1941). It also referred to Jefferson’s “sociological principles” but did not elucidate the concept. The war alliance between the United States, Britain, France and the USSR extended the scope of Jefferson among this particular local group of Americans who were organized to win the support of Congressman Voorhis. The local and communitarian interpretation of Jefferson became intertwined with a global one, recognizing Jefferson’s and one’s own role in this world.

2.3.2 Celebration of the Bicentennial of Jefferson’s Birth In addition to the Pensioners Union, the nation prepared to celebrate the bicentennial of Thomas Jefferson’s birth. To that effect, Kent Keller, the Chairman of the Committee on the Library, read the Joint Resolution 445 “to establish a

519 Cf. “Voorhis, Horace Jeremiah (Jerry).” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present. Web. 27 February 2013 . 520 Bullock 1978, vii–viii. Both Maverick and Voorhis belonged to the “Young Turks.” Voorhis devoted his life to programs: free school lunches, social welfare, and the international peace organization.

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commission for the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson.”521 It received congressional support and was promoted by Stuart Gibboney and the president, who told Gibboney that “it was none too early to bring about the passage of this resolution”522 in July 1940. It was signed into law in September 1940, and by October, Howard W.  Smith (D-VA) and John J. Culkin (R-NY) who were serving on the TJMC were appointed to the Bicentennial Commission.523 They were joined by the Democratic congressmen Sol Bloom (NY), proponent of the Jefferson auditorium, and Edward Eugene Cox (GA), opponent of the marble Jefferson Memorial.524 From the Senate the Democrats Carter Glass and Harry F. Byrd (VA), Frederick Van Nuys (IN), and Alben Barkley (KT), who had introduced the resolution, were appointed.525 The nine presidential appointees were named only in December. Among them were Stuart Gibboney and Dr.  Fiske Kimball of the TJMC. Dr.  John L.  Newcomb, the President of the University of Virginia; as well as William Gibbs McAdoo, unsuccessful democratic presidential candidate in the 1920s; Breckenridge Long; Randolph H. Perry; and F. Harold Dubord were appointed. On the day of their appointment, John Rankin, who would criticize the memorial inscriptions as conglomerations, availed himself to advise the commissioners to make the celebration “brief ” so it will “carry that simplicity and economy that Jefferson would advocate.”526 Whether the Commission heeded his advice remains an open question; however, a year and a half went by until the commission’s plans were up for approval in Congress. In February 1941,527 the Bicentennial Commission transmitted its report to the Senate,528 recommending:

5 21 Cong. Rec. 12 Mar. 1940: 2756. 522 Letter, Franklin D.  Roosevelt to Stuart Gibboney 16 Jul. 1940; Franklin D.  Roosevelt:  Papers as President; Official File 1505; Letter, Stuart Gibboney to Franklin D. Roosevelt 12 Jul. 1940; 523 Official title: United States Commission for the Celebration of the Two-Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Thomas Jefferson; hereafter Bicentennial Commission. (cf. Cong. Rec. 15 Oct. 1940: 13576; Cong. Rec. 4 Oct. 1940: 13230). 524 Cong. Rec. 4 Oct. 1940: 13230. 525 Cf. Cong. Rec. 15 Oct. 1940: 13576. 526 Cong. Rec. 30 Dec. 1940: 14009. 527 As these nine men were only appointed in Dec. 1940, Howard W. Smith offered a resolution that would change the due date of the bicentennial commission’s report from January to February 15, 1941. 528 Cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Feb. 1941: 997.

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to prepare as a congressional memorial to Thomas Jefferson a new edition of the writings of Thomas Jefferson, including additional material and unpublished manuscripts preserved in the Library of Congress and elsewhere, at a cost not to exceed $50,000 for the preparation of the manuscript. Such new edition shall be printed and bound at the Government Printing Office and shall be in suitable form.529

The printing and binding of this new edition was not to exceed the cost of $150,000. The proposal mirrored Stuart Gibboney’s recommendation to FDR to publish the “writings of that founder [of democracy] and make them more widely available. We are fighting for democracy, so let us magnify and celebrate the founder of American democracy, not less, but more.”530 The Commission was to oversee the ceremonies at schools and universities and other places connected with Jefferson and was charged to produce a movie on the most important events in Jefferson’s life, for which $10,000 was appropriated. Besides the movie, 100,000 copies of a photolithographic portrait of Jefferson were to be produced and mailed out to all members of Congress, the Residential Commissioners, and Delegates. The Bicentennial Commission was to receive support from government agencies and executive departments as well as private institutions. The total appropriation of $230,000 lay nowhere near the $3  million appropriated for the Jefferson Memorial, yet it was considerable at a time when the federal debt held by the public as a share of the GDP amounted to 62 percent in 1942 and rose to 77.1 percent in 1943.531 That is, the debt was $72,422,445,116,22 in 1942 and even increased to $136,696,090,329.90 by 1943.532 In consideration of these figures, John Rankin’s (D-MS) wish for a “truly Jeffersonian” bicentennial becomes understandable.533 The proposed measures were designed to spread and enrich the knowledge of Jefferson by preserving and collecting his writings in an unprecedented depth and broadness.534 5 29 Cong. Rec. 9 Mar. 1942: 2070. 530 Letter, Stuart Gibboney to FDR, 27 Jan. 1942; Folder: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission; Franklin D. Roosevelt; Papers as President; Official File; 531 Government Accountability Office. “Federal Debt Held by the Public as a Share of GDP (1797 – 2010).” April 4, 2013 . 532 United States Department of the Treasury. “Historical Debt Outstanding: Annual 1900 – 1949.” April 4, 2013 . 533 Cong. Rec. 15 Oct. 1940: 14010. 534 For a full analysis of the new edition of Jefferson’s Papers authorized by the Thomas Jefferson Bicentennial Commission, see Francis D. Cogliano’s in-depth treatment in Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy.

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Another example of the continuance of the discourse on Thomas Jefferson’s legacy came from Senator Byrd of Virginia of the Bicentennial Commission. He proposed to establish a National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee535 which would aid the Commission in educating the public on Jefferson’s “services and contributions to the farmers and agriculture of the Nation.”536 The preamble with its eleven points can be read as a statement proclaiming Jefferson’s iconicity as a trailblazer in the field of agriculture. In its original form, Senator Byrd highlighted Jefferson’s agrarian ideal in its sixth and sevenths points. The sixth point lauded Jefferson because “throughout his whole social philosophy runs a theme which recognizes the dignity of the agricultural way of life and a deep appreciation of the satisfactions which accrue, through science, education, and faith, to the farm family and the rural community.”537 Except for the reference to science, the passage is reminiscent of the Southern Agrarians’ praise of the agrarian life as an integrated life. Additionally, Jefferson “recognized the importance of the perpetuation of a sound agriculture as a paramount factor in the development of the economy and the permanence of our national institutions,” which he promoted by his “contributions to agricultural philosophy, science and education.”538 The preamble expressed the very ideas that congressmen discussed under the attribute of “practical idealism.” Agriculture, science, education, and the dignity of human life were central to this attribute, which will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3.2.4. The final and shortened version of the bill was agreed upon only on November 18, 1943, after it had undergone several revisions and re-phrasings suggested by the House.539 In the new preamble, Jefferson’s practical application of science in respect to agriculture rather than his ideal of a nation of agrarian freeholders was emphasized. The bill recognized Jefferson as a “farmer, agricultural philosopher, inventive genius, educator, and leader in scientific agriculture”540 but did not detail Jefferson’s agricultural philosophy. The change reflected the nation’s reliance on the scientific, technological industrial agriculture which fed the nation and its allies during the war. Small-scale family farming, that is Jefferson’s nation of freeholders, would not have been able to meet the heightened demand

5 35 Cf. Cong. Rec. 12 Apr. 1943: 3264. 536 Cong. Rec. 12 Apr. 1943: 3264. 537 Cong. Rec. 22 Apr. 1943: 3701. 538 Cong. Rec. 22 Apr. 1943: 3701. 539 Cf. Cong. Rec. 18 Nov 1943: 9670. 540 Cong. Rec. 18 Nov 1943: 9670.

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for food when much of the nation’s manpower was tied up in the arms industry or in the military. The bill declared that the Secretary of Agriculture was empowered to organize said committee, while the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate were to nominate five members respectively. Together with “public and private institutions in the service of agriculture, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the State colleges of agriculture and organizations composed of farmers and their families,” the committee was to organize events to perpetuate Jefferson’s agricultural legacy. The agricultural press, scientific and learned societies dealing, and the Office of Education were to assist them.541 The inclusion of all these organizations in the fields of education, vocational or academic, and in agriculture, confirmed the multivalent attributions that were bestowed upon the icon Thomas Jefferson. The same intersection between political attempts to iconize Jefferson and the publics’ reception and contribution to this iconization became evident in the description of the plans for the Thomas Jefferson Bicentennial Exercises at the University of Virginia.542 The Senior Senator from Kentucky, Alben Barkley, was to deliver a speech to celebrate the occasion, which was to be held on July 4 and broadcast throughout the nation by the blue network (cf. Cong. Rec. 25 Jun. 1943: 6458). The attribution of Jefferson as the great educator echoed the House Resolution 2593 which sought to create “a revolving educational trust fund […] by providing for the use of unclaimed deposits in national banks for the purpose of making loans to young men and women to assist them in obtaining a higher education, and for other purposes” (Cong. Rec. 17 Apr.: 1943: 3536). Similar projects had been suggested as a living memorial to Jefferson and the resurfacing proves the durability of the attribution of Jefferson as the great educator and practical idealist. As much as the agricultural committee stressed the modern-day applications of Jefferson’s love and interest for agriculture, the educational trust fund also pointed toward Jefferson’s progressive thought that favored social advancement through science. Both measures sought to locate Jefferson’s ideas in the twentieth century in the moral entrepreneurs’ situation, and the appropriateness of doing this Archibald MacLeish considered worthwhile debating with intellectuals and public figures in a closed symposium.

5 41 Cong. Rec. 22 Apr. 1943: 3700. 542 Cf. Cong. Rec. 25 Jun. 1943: 6458–9.

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2.3.3 Library of Congress Symposium on the Dedication of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial The Evening Star reported extensively on the ceremonies and dedication of the Jefferson Memorial, announcing: “Jefferson’s ideals were discussed behind closed doors yesterday at the Library of Congress in a symposium in which several distinguished historians, scholars, and men in public life participated.”543 A  verbatim transcript was made and the group published a short statement regarding their results in several newspapers. The Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, was in charge and guided the discussion drawing on aspects of his draft of the president’s memorial dedication speech. Thus, the chapter sheds further light on MacLeish’s construction of the Jefferson icon. However, MacLeish’s panelists shared their ideas on Jefferson in the twentieth century and broadened the discussion of his legacy considerably. MacLeish had invited Julian Boyd, the Librarian of Princeton University and the editor of the new Jefferson collection. He was joined by Dumas Malone and Gilbert Chinard, both Jefferson historians. Chinard was a French scholar and author of Thomas Jefferson: Apostle of Americanism, which had been reviewed by the Agrarian Robert Penn Warren in 1930 for the liberal weekly New Republic, whose former literary and later main editor, Malcolm Cowley, also participated in the symposium. Even a decade after these publications Chinard’s thoughts on and interpretations of Jefferson still proved relevant. MacLeish welcomed the author van Wyck Brooks; the editor of the Saturday Review of Literature Henry Seidel Canby; the scholar Howard Mumford Jones of Harvard University; Dr.  Fiske Kimball, the renowned architectural historian and member of the TJMC; and the journalist Walter Lippmann. The historian Allan Nevins, professor of history at Columbia University, and Wendell Willkie, former Republican presidential candidate who had recently traveled to Europe, Asia, and the Far East as observer and reporter, completed the group.544

5 43 “Further Rites Mark Jefferson Bicentennial.” The Evening Star 14 Apr. 1943: B-1. Print. 544 Allan Nevins was Philip Foner’s PhD adviser. Foner’s book Thomas Jefferson: Selections from his Writings was reviewed by Francis Franklin in the New Masses’s special issue: Thomas Jefferson: 200 Years. Nevins had conducted the history survey among 7,000 college freshman, whose dismal performance shocked the nation in 1943. Besides igniting discussions in Congress, the survey was discussed in the New Masses Jefferson issue under the heading “Learn from Our History.” The New Masses 47.2 (13 April 1943): 5. Print.

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An analysis of the symposium illuminates aspects regarding Thomas Jefferson and Russian Communism, which will be reflected in the chapter on the special issue of the New Masses. The symposium inadvertently ties together Jefferson appropriations of different moral entrepreneurs and time periods already analyzed or still to be analyzed, and explores how these appropriations were echoed, transformed, or reemployed in 1943 by a group of intellectuals. Archibald MacLeish asked his panelists to assume that there was an empty chair in the room, occupied by “the spirit of Jefferson” to whose “mind” and “intelligence” “we would like very much to be able to submit” “the situations, problems, conditions” of our times (2–3).545 Despite the analogies that Roosevelt had established between Jefferson’s time and their fight for freedom, MacLeish had pointed out that “[t]‌here are some who say” that Jefferson’s fight was “affirmative,” whereas the current war might be considered “negative.” Or as MacLeish put it, in order then to refute the opinion: “Jefferson fought to establish liberty throughout the world, whereas we fight only to defend so much of liberty as has already been established; that Jefferson lived at the dawn and we at the evening, of the day of liberty” (3). MacLeish and Roosevelt denied this view because Jefferson never forgot that “to establish the worth and dignity and freedom of mankind is an ancient struggle with a history of many changes.”546 While the panelists agreed with MacLeish, Dumas Malone and Gilbert Chinard also stressed that there existed great differences between Jefferson’s time and their own. Malone, who answered first and who had recently published on the subject in The Virginia Quarterly, depicted Jefferson as an “implacable foe of tyranny in any form” which was the “spirit of Jefferson,” inscribed in the frieze of the memorial. Malone warned against quoting “the letter of Jefferson” rather than his “spirit” or to “quote any statesman of the past […] on a practical question and regard his judgment of any particular importance, because he didn’t have that question” (3). Quoting from the Jefferson Encyclopedia was “more like the old reference to the Bible,” Malone stated, and emphasized, “The proof means nothing” (4). As an example, Malone addressed the third term debate, which had been raised in congressional Jefferson Day speeches. Instead of quoting Jefferson’s letter to the Vermont legislature, in which he gave his reasons against his own running for a third term, people should focus on what he “said about the rule of

545 Library of Congress. “Verbatim Transcript. Meeting: Symposium on the Occasion of the Dedication of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.” Washington, D.C. 13 Apr. 1945. 1–59. 2–3. Hereafter quoted within the text. 546 MacLeish, “Suggested Draft” n.p.

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the people,” namely, that “the voice of the majority had to be followed.” Malone echoed FDR’s appropriation of Jefferson at the cornerstone laying of the memorial, in that the people, in whom political power rested, were to decide whether to entrust the president with an unprecedented, but not unconstitutional, third term. Malone reiterated that Jefferson’s “great contribution to us” was “his spirit,” and the “extraordinary flexibility” of his mind (4), echoing Roosevelt’s attribution of the “many-sided Jefferson” and Chinard’s idea of Jefferson’s “double-track intellect.” Walter Lippmann believed that geography determined whether the struggle for freedom could be regarded as affirmative or negative (6). He thereby suggested that Jefferson’s struggle for freedom was a universal struggle and changed over time. Chinard addressed the same aspect after having been asked by MacLeish how “affirmative” that struggle was “in Jefferson’s day,” and “[h]‌ow revolutionary […was] the movement inaugurated by Jefferson?” Chinard proposed that Jefferson held “two positions”; the first was that “a certain number of fundamental, general principles existed […] of lasting […] almost universal value” and the current generation had to decide “whether the fundamentals of Jefferson are changed or not.” The second principle concerned the organization of government, which was “a problem of many adaptations,” as Jefferson said. Chinard explained that Jefferson used the word “adaptation” to mean “the adaptation of his lasting principles” to the situation at hand, “and there you have your flexibility” (6). Chinard promoted Jefferson’s practical idealism and left for others to decide how revolutionary Jefferson’s movement was. Malcom Cowley, who had held communist sympathies but still grappled with Stalin’s purge which he had covered for the New Republic,547 suggested in this respect that Jefferson’s revolution had not been carried out to the end, and thus his principles were as revolutionary today as they had been then.548 He defined Jefferson’s spirit as his “belief in the capabilities of man” and continued to assert that Jefferson had “said ‘man’ but really meant ‘men’ ” (9). Cowley believed that humankind was “in the period of reaction against that belief,” which Jefferson had always foreseen, “even practically expected” (9). Cowley thereby created a Jefferson who was inclusionary and practically realistic, despite his high ideals, 547 Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism. 1961. New York: Columbia UP, 1992. Print. 337. 548 Appropriations of American Communists in 1926, during the Popular Front, and in the New Masses Jefferson special issue suggested the same idea. The promise of the Declaration of Independence, they lamented, had been betrayed by the reactionary Constitution. See the following Chapter 2.3.4.

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hopes, and faith in reason. Additionally, Cowley invoked Jefferson, the practical idealist, for his antifascist stance when he defined fascism as “a disbelief in the capacities of men” (9). Howard Mumford Jones commented on the relation or opposition between the rational choice of the people in the democratic process and fascism, refuting that we mean the same thing when we speak of freedom as Jefferson did. Psychologists have pointed out how the “irrational […] unconscious qualities of man determine his choice,” which makes “liberty” a “subjective concept” inextricably linked to personal emotions (12). This change of understanding of human nature has been grasped and utilized by fascist regimes by means of propaganda, which give the people a “simulacrum of liberty.” America was opposed to this, as it still worked under the “[e]‌ighteenth [c]entury assumption that the franchise is a sufficient means by which people can arrive at liberty, at individual choice.” Once the main aim of an individual living in society became ‘What I want is my liberty’ (12), the emotional side seemed to trump the voice of reason which had, in Jefferson’s mind, regulated an ordered and peaceful society with certain moral rules. Jones therefore suggested that Jefferson’s belief in rugged individualism, used by conservatives like the American Liberty League to defend their own right to property and unregulated businesses, was misapplied. Malcolm Cowley reverted to the “irrational […] unconscious qualities of man,” which had been more or less ignored in eighteenth century philosophies, stating that “the disbelief in human nature and human reason [was] due to” the new discoveries of Freud in psychology and new theories of Marx in economics; however, it was also true that these new ideas and the development of the industrial system were “some of the greatest achievements of human reason, that […] have made it possible, in a way, to extend human reason into new territories” (35–36). Unfortunately, these new territories and new “instruments for dealing with a more complicated human nature” were more effectively used by “our enemies.” “We are not using them in our education; and our press and our radio; and so on, are still calculated to deal with Eighteenth Century man” (36). Allan Nevins claimed that Jefferson stood for more than the political, “for something more fundamental” (14), as Jefferson was “one of the shining band of leaders which have stood for the relation of fellowship as distinguished from the relation of use or exploitation” (14). Whereas this concept can be observed in Jefferson’s politics against the ‘aristocracy’ and belief in the equal dignity of every human being, the trait of fellowship was not “distinctly” observable “in the economic sphere” (15). Nevins identified this last point as one of Jefferson’s “deficiencies,” arguing that Jefferson “witnessed the steam engine” and yet did not “appreciate the magnitude or importance or impact of that revolution” (15).

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While the industrial revolution created economic opportunities for the common man, it also increased the “power of exploitation” for those who “believed in the philosophy of use, the relationship of use” (16). The relation of fellowship that Nevins advocated as Jeffersonian spirit was connected to “the belief in keeping small men free and independent and self-sufficient, exempt from exploitation by industrial overlords as from political overlords” (16). Jefferson “stood for social freedom, but also for political freedom,” and his “relation of fellowship” was needed in the nineteenth century, and even more so today with an everexpanding industrial system, Nevins argued. MacLeish subsumed from Nevins’s comments that Jefferson, even though he had believed in the capabilities of man, “somehow failed to envisage the capabilities of man in industrial terms” (17). Regarding this point, Wendell Willkie stated his belief that proper education would ensure that the “indefinite perfectibility of man” could be made to work “in the large industrial aggregations; both of capital and man” (20)—an idea that Donald Davidson and John Gould Fletcher had denied in 1930. As examples of Jefferson’s faith in the “individual development of man” even under an industrial society, Willkie mentioned Russia and the Far East. He believed that people in masses had to be taught to resist “the impact of the force of [their] own group,” which could best be achieved through education that made them “an individual [again]” (20). Willkie’s evaluation of Russia and the Far East was surprising in its quite positive perspective. Van Wyck Brooks equally identified Jefferson’s “trusting of human nature” as a “spiritual thing and not a political thing at all” and concluded that Jefferson “might be called the only revolutionist” (20) on these terms. Jefferson started a tradition that was continued by Emerson, who believed that one could trust in oneself, and Whitman, who believed in trusting the people. If men had an ingrained moral sentiment, as Jefferson believed, people could trust themselves and therefore trust one another (cf. 21). Allen Tate, the Southern Agrarian, had praised Jefferson’s belief in an ingrained moral sense, but had rejected the political implications Jefferson drew from it. Allan Nevins commenting on the issue of trust and the question of human nature and politics, asserted that Jefferson believed “if we trusted human beings enough they would (a)  rule themselves much better than a few could rule, and (b) they could live in much greater degree of peace and amity and fellowship than under any other circumstances” (37). Nevins thereby corrected MacLeish’s assumption that Jefferson could not envision the capabilities of man in industrial over agrarian terms. Nevins argued that Jefferson’s vision of a relation of fellowship was more likely to be attained because modern “changes in communication enable us to educate and bring people closer together” (38). He emphasized the increased leisure time

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that technology had created, leaves “more time for the arts; the arts belonging to what I call the fellowship of man, […] as distinct from the relation of exploitation” (38). Nevins’s conception mirrored the Southern Agrarian’s idea of the value of art in society. Yet, no discussion followed whether the art of the mass cultural industry would have the same beneficial effect, which Donald Davidson had refuted in “A Mirror for the Artist,” nor whether he defined “the arts” as high art exclusively. Contrary to Nevins’s opinion on the positive effects of industrialization and coming nearest to the Agrarian’s well-ordered integrated life, Walter Lippmann wondered whether there were limitations on the perfectibility of men besides economic determinism and the Freudian concept of human nature. Lippmann suggested that Jefferson’s idea of perfectibility and his idea of liberating human nature from external bonds had been framed and controlled by the idea that man existed in “polite, organized society.” Consequently, man had learned to exercise “self-restraints.” When Jefferson spoke of perfectibility, Lippmann argued, he “thought of human nature, as formed in his time, and among more or less the elite of his time” (13). Ascribing to Jefferson an elitism or reliance on the natural aristocracy, which John Fletcher, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, and Frank Owsley had done, Lippmann claimed that Jefferson “shrank from” seeing the signs and reading “the effects of real proletarianism,” which meant the “destruction of the old institutions, the old customs” (13) that had helped to form man.549 Nowadays, Lippmann maintained, “[M]‌an is completely divorced from the social controls that had been developed over centuries” (13). Therefore, Lippmann asserted that liberalism was not enough for American society and that “the failure to recognize where the perfectibility has its limitations may be the cause of the distress of liberty” (25). Wendell Willkie similarly stated that “industrial society, perhaps, requires—and I don’t like the term—some kind of collective idea of liberty in addition to an individual idea of liberty” (55). While these scholars argued for the development of the capabilities of each individual through education, according to the liberal tradition, they nonetheless observed that the lack of societal controls had freed the individual from too many responsibilities toward his fellow human beings. Regarding the world at large and the current war, the editor of the Saturday Review of Literature Henry Canby contributed to this discussion by explaining that Jefferson’s ideas “have suddenly become intensely revolutionary again” (29). Harking back to the

549 Lippmann’s distinction had been and would continue to be ignored by Jefferson’s communist followers.

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“excellent term of the fellowship,” Canby considered proposals for “world cooperation, as it is being thought in this country” as “an extension and a revivification of Jeffersonian ideals” (29).550 His remarks turned the discussion toward foreign affairs, and Lippmann brought up the “popular phrase” on Jefferson’s opposition to “entangling alliances,” emphasizing as a contrast that “by 1823 Jefferson saw that Monroe’s phrase of the ‘concert of agreement’ ” in foreign affairs was valid (29–30). Chinard suggested that Jefferson’s “general principle was more the brotherhood of man,” not isolationism, because he “foresaw the part America could play in the affairs of the world, and play in a very active fashion, […] restoring liberty to the people of Europe, if ever their liberty was again endangered” (31–2). Chinard left open “[w]‌hether or not we are in that position just now” (32) and no one else offered his judgment. Rather the panelists turned to the question of whether Jefferson’s ideas had world influence. Malcolm Cowley referred to Wendell Willkie’s book which dealt with “the effect of something resembling the Jeffersonian revolution on the Middle East and on Russia to some extent and on China” (55). Cowley confessed that he was “impressed” even “somewhat frightened” by Willkie’s report. Willkie responded with the idea that industrial society might require “some kind of collective idea of liberty,” continuing with a lengthy explication on the situation in Russia and how people evaluate the “Russian experiment” (55): Now, as far as the individual is concerned in Russia, of course, it is clearly quite a superficial observation. One reason he is so enamored with his system is that all barriers to his individual progress have been removed—just as Napoleon produced great marshals because all inhibitions to the common soldier, if he had the capacity to become a marshal, awakened the energies of every man in his army. That has happened in Russia. But, in addition to that, there has happened in Russia this notion that the people in their entirety, jointly, are making certain definite specific progress. (55–6)

Willkie went on to assert that Russia was “the other force in this world,” and “its dynamo [was] in the opportunities to individuals plus a belief that it offers something worth aspiring to jointly,” despite the fact that this awakening in Russia came “without any freedom in our sense of the Jeffersonian freedoms” (57). America, which had the Jeffersonian individual freedoms, however, as a modern, democratic, industrial society, “had to develop something […] which gives to men in groups, or in the whole nation, some kind of an aspiration” (56).

550 Compare Jerry Voorhis’s and the California Pensioners Union’s resolution urging the celebration of Jefferson’s birthday in all nations in order to celebrate his values and the cooperative effort.

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Otherwise, people would “become sort of tired and inured with just struggling for the old individual liberties” (57). But they needed an “active mind” to fight in an “idea combat with the other forceful economic and social organizations in this world” (57). Even though America and Russia were allies, Willkie’s formulation “idea combat” forshadowed at the Cold War developments. While Willkie had refuted that the Russian experiment of giving the individual opportunities for development contained any of the Jeffersonian individual freedoms, Canby saw the situation a little differently. As a literary critic, he had praised Clara Weatherwax’s Marching! Marching! in 1935, as “humanitarian” and as the “first story of the American proletariat that succeeds in conveying its passion to the reader without benefit of previous conversion to the cause.”551 During the symposium, he mentioned “defeatism” had spread through America and that the people looking to Europe believed and hoped that “they have something new; they have something better in Europe; it is going to work” (58). And even though he stated, “Of course, it hasn’t worked,” Seidel feared and questioned if we see the explosive effect of the Jeffersonian ideas in the other parts of the world, if we see an economy in which the individual, widespread, is given opportunities—I am talking about Russia, which Jefferson certainly would have sympathized with as far as it went—if we see that, isn’t that going to revivify our own conflicts here? (58)

He portrayed Jefferson as a revolutionary who welcomed experiments that would expand the opportunities of the common people in other countries. Despite his fear of conflict in America, he concluded that “our own feelings are likely to be vitalized and seem more important if these general principles turn out to be working elsewhere in the world” (59). Chinard counted among these general principles the idea of “self-government” and used the term because Jefferson had barely employed the term “democracy” (53). MacLeish concurred because Jefferson spoke about “men throwing off the shackles and gaining for themselves the security of self-government” (53), which was the central idea for MacLeish which found expression in the official statement of the symposium: Thomas Jefferson’s ideas of freedom for the individual in a republic of self-government would be as explosive today, if they could reach the minds of the people in one-half to three-quarters of the world, as they were when they cracked and largely destroyed an

551 Qtd. in Barbara Foley, Radical Representations: Politics and Form in U.S. Proletarian Fiction, 1929–1941. Durham:  Duke UP, 1993. Print. Post-Contemporary Interventions. 11.

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existing order. But Jefferson’s ideals are not enough for an industrialized democratic society, which requires in addition some sort of common aspiration for men in groups or in a nation.552

The statement was reminiscent of Senator Thomas, who had tried to emphasize in his draft for the inscription that “[m]‌an was destined for society. His morality is part of his nature. Society reserves to each individual freedom consistent with peace and order.”553 While Thomas’s focus lay on the domestic sphere, his Jefferson appropriation by 1943 had a determinably international point of view, as his contribution to the New Masses Jefferson Bicentennial issue “World Citizen” proved. This attribution to Jefferson became useful to American Communists during the Popular and Democratic Front periods. Interestingly enough, the symposium members avoided the term “collective,” which Willkie had disliked using during the discussion, and used the phrase “common aspiration for men in groups or in a nation.” They were aware that the term would taint their symposium as communist, which all contributors, despite their sympathies toward the Russian experiment, wanted to discourage.

2.3.4 New Masses Special Jefferson Issue, 13 April 1943 Unlike the popular liberal weeklies such as the Nation or the New Republic, the communist magazine New Masses honored the bicentennial of Jefferson’s birth by publishing a special issue: “Thomas Jefferson: 200 Years.”554 It took pride in its own efforts to memorialize him and chastised its competitors for not following suit,555 suggesting that it confirmed that Thomas Jefferson, whom most people connected with the theories of liberalism, democracy, and republicanism, was the precursor of Marxist theory. For many years and in different waves, communists had challenged the misrepresentation of Jefferson that the class in power and its handymen had perpetuated in its own interest and against the common people. Finally, in 1943, Jefferson had come into his true status as pre-Marxist, anticapitalist, the New Masses suggested, and the articles, reviews, and poems printed in special issue all paid tribute to this claim. The editorial board of New Masses printed an essay entitled “Titan of Freedom” by Robert Minor, an accompanying shorter essay “Marxism is Democracy” 5 52 “Further Rites Mark Jefferson Bicentennial.” The Evening Star 14 Apr. 1943: B-1. Print 553 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 35. 554 “Thomas Jefferson:  200 Years.” [Special issue] The New Masses 47.2 (13 April 1943). Print. 555 “Cat Got Your Tongue?” The New Masses 47.4 (27 April 1943): 8. Print.

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by Avrom Landy, a panegyric titled “World Citizen” by Senator E.  Thomas (D-UT), a book review by Francis Franklin of Philip S. Foner’s edition of Thomas Jefferson: Selections from his Writings, the allegory “Mr. Jefferson’s Plow” by Louis Lerman, and the poem “Tom Writes a Declaration” by Edwin G. Burrows who had won the poetry contest of the New Masses. The contributors ranged from a New Deal Senator, who served on the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission; to Robert Minor, the former acting general secretary of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA); to Edwin G. Burrows an unknown figure and radio program director. This breadth of contributors, as well as the variety of genres and angles, epitomized and harked back to the traditions and philosophies of the Popular Front556 during which the CP sought allies on the left and in the ‘petty bourgeoisie,’ which led to a dilution of communists’ ideologies and a move into the mainstream of society. This change allowed for greater use of a nation’s cultural heritage and for input from sympathizers of socialism or the middleclass, who had heretofore been vilified as the handmaidens of capitalism.557 The range of contributors also reflected New Masses’s editorial traditions of publishing literature by workers rather than by professionals who wrote about the working class and the class struggle and its later development toward the very middle-class professionals first shunned. The shift in, or broadening of readership, suggests that New Masses underwent positional revisions as much as Marxist theory and its practical outgrowth of communism.558 To adequately describe the magazine’s ideology in 1943 and, in particular, the special issue’s its relations with CPUSA, the Communist International,559 and the American public have to be analyzed. Scholars note that any understanding of CPUSA’s changing policies hinges upon its relation to Soviet Russia’s national interests and 556 The Popular Front was a communist tactic practiced in the United States between 1936 to late August 1939. It had originated from the experience of European communists, who had realized that fascism had become too powerful for the Communist Party (CP) to work apart from other parties and groups battling fascism. 557 CPUSA extended its base and power by the “multiplication of influential sectors and the creation of a social movement,” which came at the cost of ceasing to be “a workingclass party in the strict sense of the term” (Paul Buhle, Marxism in the United States: A History of the American Left. New York: Verso, 2013. Print. 187). 558 Taylor H.  Overton, The Classical Liberalism, Marxism, and the Twentieth Century: Lectures Delivered at the Thomas Jefferson Center for Studies in Political Economy. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1960. Print. 70. 559 Comintern was founded to ‘combat without mercy’ against the old ‘right wing’ socialists and to prod the proletariat of every nation to seize state power (qtd. in Kazin 2011, 151).

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the Comintern.560 Earl Browder’s proclamation of the Popular Front line561 after his visit to Moscow and meeting with the Comintern proves that the CPUSA, of which Earl Browder was the general secretary from 1930 to 1945, was largely governed by Soviet directives.562 The major shifts in communist policies and tactics from the Popular Front (1936–1939)—via the years of the Ribbentrop-Molotov-Nonaggression Pact (August 23, 1939 to June 22, 1941)—to the revival of the Popular Front in June 1941563 is pivotal for the analysis of the New Masses as a party-affiliated, “Communist left”564 magazine.565 Scholarly literature, which defines the magazine as espousing ‘Stalinist’ Communism in the 1930s,566 offers few comments on the New Masses during the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the revived Popular Front in which the special edition appeared. An understanding of the earlier Popular Front New Masses and the relation between its editorial policies and ideological fetters, I  argue, helps illuminate the little scrutinized later period of the magazine’s publication. Alan Wald suggests that differences of opinion among 560 Despite the Comintern’s claim of being the ‘single communist party of the entire world’ made up of equal national party sections, the Comintern was dominated by Soviet Russia (qtd. in Theodore Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia: The Formative Period. 1960. New York: Vintage Books, 1986. Print. 163). 561 The Comintern’s introduction of the Popular Front was “appreciated” by the national parties, allowing them “to sink ‘deep roots’ into their national soil” (Kevin McDermott, and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Print. 135.) 562 Howe 1985, 89. 563 After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Stalin directed Dimitrov, the head of the Comintern, “the task of the Comintern and communist parties was now to defend the USSR and defeat fascism, not to propagate ideas of socialist revolutions. These instructions formed the basis of Comintern activity until May [15,] 1943” (McDermott and Agnew 1997, 206), when it was dissolved, yet again through Stalin’s urging (cf. McDermott and Agnew 1997, 204). 564 Michael Denning, The Cultural Front:  The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. London: Verso, 1996. Print. The Haymarket Series. 39. 565 During the Third Period (1928–1935/6) communists opposed socialists and liberals, as their reforms helped buttress the capitalist system and thereby worked against capitalism’s inevitable demise. 566 The New Masses adhered to a Stalinist Communism vs. the Partisan Review which espoused a Trotskyite position (Alan M. Wald, Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2012. Print. 134); Robert Shulman, The Power of Political Art:  The 1930s Literary Left Reconsidered. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2000. Print. 9.

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the changing editorial board567 over the years reveals the “practical constraint of publishing a magazine that mediated between a Party organically linked to a Soviet-led global communist movement and an indigenous cultural rebellion.”568 While the magazine was not engaging in “proletarian ideological exercises” during the Popular Front,569 it retained an allegiance to the Soviet’s Comintern in all stages of its existence.570 Yet, from 1939 onward the editors “denied any direct connection with the Communist Party,”571 and an editorial positioned the magazine as “ ‘independent, militant, anti-fascist journal of democratic opinion,’ ‘affiliated to no political party.’ ”572 It sought to counter the perception of New Masses as CPUSA organ and therefore as an organ of Russia and the Comintern.573 After the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the New Masses sought to reclaim its Popular Front stance and readership, advertising with prominent CPUSA figures’ and the Socialist Theodore Dreiser’s comments under the headline “A magazine for the people who lead.”574 Their quotes575 and the headline implied that the New 5 67 Cf. Michael Corris, Ad Reinhardt. London: Reaktion, 2008. Print. 178. 568 Wald 2012, 108. 569 Buhle 2013, 178. 570 Helen Langa, ““At least half the pages will consist of pictures”:  New Masses and Politicized Visual Art.” American Periodicals 21.1 (2011): 24–49. Print. 44–45. In analyzing the magazine’s art, she notes the omission of many Soviet events that would have necessitated a critical examination of Russia by US communists. She concludes, “despite its Popular Front façade, the journal maintained its Soviet connections into the 1940s” (Langa 2011, 44–45). 571 Andrew Hemingway, Artists on the Left:  American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926–1956. New Haven:  Yale UP, 2002. Print. 107. New Masses was denounced by Father Coughlin, the fascist radio priest, as ‘Bolshevik literature’ in 1939. In a response, New Masses refuted his accusations. 572 Qtd. in Hemingway 2002, 107. Editorial appeared in New Masses 32.8 of August 15, 1939 shortly before the Nazi-Soviet Pact (cf. Hemingway 2002, 302). The term “militant” implied forceful writing and reporting, as it was considered necessary and justified in respect to the enemy they were fighting: fascism. 573 New Masses advertised for John L. Spivak’s series against the fascist Father Coughlin, as “a journal of democratic opinion” which has made a “genuine contribution to the cherished American ideals of democracy and tolerance” (“Back Matter.” Science & Society 4.1 (Winter 1940)). This self-image mitigated an ad from 1937, in which it was “America’s Revolutionary Weekly,” which carried undertones of the communist world revolution (“Back Matter.” Science & Society 1.3 (Spring 1937): n.p. Web 7 July 2016). 574 “Back Matter.” Science & Society 6.1 (Winter 1942). 575 Browder took up the term “the people” rather than the narrower term ‘workers’ when he opined, “New Masses represents the great creative movement of the people in its broadest sense.” Dreiser praised New Masses for having “carried the banner of

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Masses deserved a larger readership, suggesting that the middle class, embodied in the term “the people,” should be embraced. While New Masses sought closeness to CPUSA in the year of the special issue, it also made clear that CPUSA had “disaffiliated from the Comintern in 1940.”576 The advertisement and notice of disaffiliation can be read as New Massses’s reaction to American public opinion, which had condemned the USSR for fraternizing with Germany from lateAugust 1939 to mid-June 1941.577 The Nazi-Soviet Pact intensified the already negative image of Russia578 that had been fueled in the mid-1930s by news of Stalin’s.579 Yet some on left, who regarded the Soviet Union as an example of individual freedom and an economy that ‘worked’ at a time of economic crisis in other nations,580 closed their eyes to this reality. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union and America became the Soviet’s ally, public opinion slowly shifted

honesty in writing for some thirty years.” Foster declared it “the best weekly publication in the United States devoted to current events and the arts,” followed by Robeson’s statement: “I find New Masses indispensable.” “Back Matter.” Science & Society 6.1 (Winter 1942). 576 “The Communist International.” The New Masses 47.9 (1 June 1943): 5. Print. Corris list as editors of the New Masses, James Dugan, Barbara Giles, Crockett Johnson [David Liesk], Joshua Kunitz, Ruth McKenney, A. B. Magil, Joseph North, Samuel Sillen and Joseph Starobin” (2008, 178). 577 Jeffreys-Jones argues the pact destroyed Communists’ moral high ground and argumentative angle (75). An opinion poll of spring 1941 revealed that before the rupture of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 70 percent of Americans wanted to outlaw the Communist Party (Kazin 2011, 157). 578 America was disappointed that the Soviet Union did not meet its debt payments, which inhibited trade and tourism, furthering the idea of the Soviet Union as “a remote, barbaric, threatening power” (Peter G. Boyle, American-Soviet Relations: From the Russian Revolution to the Fall of Communism. London, New York: Routledge, 1993. Print. 33; 34). At an America First rally, Charles Lindbergh remarked on the “cruelty, the godlessness, and barbarism that exist in Soviet Russia” (Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight over World War II, 1939–1941. New York: Random House, 2013. Print. 346). 579 Cf. Buhle 2013, 197. Some on the left deceived themselves to believe the confessions of the accused Soviet Party members. New Masses ran a subscription offer that included the “published testimony of the trials” yet “[t]‌he Trials became the key symbol of the division within the left” (Hemingway 2002, 108). Cf. Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of our Time. New York: Liveright Publ. Corp., 2013. Print. 12. 580 “[The communists’] ideological convictions were further reinforced by the fact that the Soviet economy was not greatly affected by the Depression” (Domhoff 2011, 86).

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to a more favorable view of the Soviets and communism more generally.581 As “25  percent of Americans favored socialism and another 35  percent had an open mind about it” in a 1942 Fortune poll, 582 Denning argues that the Popular Front583 must have left a positive residue in America, which matters considering that the New Masses’s potential readership.584 From the late thirties’ subscription drive we can learn that New Masses trageted “the middle class and professional people who should be reading the magazine and aren’t.”585 It sought to enlist 20,000 new subscribers “from that strata,”586 which would have almost doubled their numbers estimated at 25,000 in 1936.587 If the favorable opinion toward socialism continued from the 1930s 581 Cf. Boyle 1993, 43. Even the anticommunist Henry Luce’s Life praised Lenin as one of the greatest men, and the resilience, gallantry, and bravery of the Soviets in fighting Hitler. 582 Denning 1996, 4; Chris Vials, Haunted by Hitler: Liberals, the Left, and the Fight against Fascism in the United States. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 2014. Print. 32. 583 Analysis of Gallup polls of the 1930s suggested to McElvaine that ‘Most working- and middle-class Americans in the Depression were not socialist in any strict ideological sense but they were certainly leaning toward the left’ (qtd. in Denning 1996, 9). 584 Maxwell Geismar, Andrew Hemingway, and Alan Wald discuss the importance of readership but with differing conclusions. Geismar stipulates that the New Masses was “the magazine of the period” (1969, 6), indicating that the thirties’ New Masses was more influential than that of the revived Popular Front. The Nazi-Soviet Pact caused a declining readership, but it “weathered the crisis […] and in the 1940s it thrived and prospered again” (Maxwell Geismar, “Introduction.” The New Masses: An Anthology of the Rebel Thirties. Ed. Joseph North. New York: International Publishers, 1969. 5–13. Print. 9). However, Hemingway suggests that it experienced “continual” financial problems, which lets us assume worsened between 1940 to 1941. Its survival through that period testifies to its resilience and justifies the assumption that the magazine’s lot improved again after June 1941 (cf. Hemingway 2002, 107). Wald supports Geismar’s first evaluation on the popularity of the magazine, as it “was outselling the New Republic and had newsstand sales greater than both the New Republic and the Nation combined” (2012, 108). (The New Masses had cost 15 cents at the newsstand, similar to Times). However, Wald agrees with Hemingway about the magazine’s later setbacks, stating that it “endured as a news and cultural weekly until March 1948” (2012, 108). The term “endured” counters Geismar’s narrative of success expressed in “thrived and prospered,” which exaggerated the magazine’s financial stability. 585 Qtd. in Hemingway 2002, 107. 586 Hemingway 2002, 107. 587 Hemingway 2002, 302; He gathers this number from a New Masses ad, but Wald confirms the number for January 1935 as an accomplishment for the short period New Masses had appeared as a weekly (2012, 108).

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into the 1940, except for the Nazi-Soviet Pact, one might argue that the readership of New Masses mirrored the development. During the Popular Front it expressed “a large-scale turn in middle-class opinion,”588 reflecting the middle classes’ left-leaning tendencies […] during the Depression.589 Buhle states that the “[New Masses] implied without ever adequately stating that Marxist ideas had a place in American life.”590 It seems that New Masses of 1943 availed itself of former Popular Front ideas and rhetoric,591 imbued with an appeal to America’s democratic and native revolutionary traditions in an attempt to build a broader movement592 for several social justice causes dear to the left.593 This also becomes evident in the Jefferson special issue, in which Robert Minor enlisted Jefferson in this fight. Irving Howe criticized the selling out of Marxist ideology and move to the center during the Popular Front as “Marxist jargon was replaced by the slogans of liberalism and an appreciation of—sometimes skillful, often absurd— Jeffersonian rhetoric.”594 Howe, the anticommunist scholar, neither clarifies his definition of “Jeffersonian rhetoric,” nor the parameters of his judgment of “skillful” or “absurd.” While the analysis of the New Masses Jefferson issue will avoid categorizing what Howe labels “skillful” or “absurd” appropriations, it will disambiguate Howe’s phrase “Jeffersonian rhetoric.” I will disclose how the contributors to the special edition availed themselves of particular utterances or acts of Thomas Jefferson, all the while interpreting these in their own favor

5 88 Buhle 2013, 178. 589 Cf. Denning 1996, 9. 590 Buhle 2013, 178. 591 Buhle 2013, 144. With ushering in the Popular Front, Communists realized the “futility of revolutionary language” for building a wider social movement, as that type of language alienated many moderates. 592 The Popular Front led to an increased membership in the CPUSA. In 1932, CPUSA had an estimated 12,000 members; by 1939 the number had increased to 80,000. (cf. Boyle 1993, 31). Kazin’s numbers are more conservative, estimating “seventyfive thousand” at the “zenith” in 1939 (2011, 172). Kazin notes the impact of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-Aggression Pact, as “several thousand deserted the Party” (174). Considering that half the members of the CPUSA lived in New York and that a majority of these were Jews, it is not surprising that they left the party in large numbers. 593 “The Party sponsored broad ad hoc coalitions on a variety of issues, from federal anti-lynching law to voting rights to battling against fascism as a system of explicit race hatred” (Kazin 2011, 196). Cf. Buhle 2013, 185. 594 Howe 1985, 91.

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through a democratic-Marxist perspective within the constraints of the sociocultural and political climate. New Masses reflected the general trajectory of late Popular Front communism, which “consolidated and extended” its successes of the Popular Front period “through subtle, polycentrist drift away from Party central authority.”595 This becomes evident in the different contributors and in their return to and extensions of appropriations and reevaluations of the American revolutionary heritage, which originated with Jay Lovestone, Bertram D. Wolfe, and William F. Dunne in 1926. Their appropriation of the American revolutionary heritage in the sesquicentennial year of the American Revolution596 had remained within the pale of the policies of the Comintern.597 While they depicted Jefferson as “democratic” and, thus, as more revolutionary than other leaders, they had focused on the Declaration of Independence, lamenting it had long been repurposed by the bourgeois reactionaries. Jefferson’s character or ideas beyond that document were not relevant which drastically changed by 1943. Robert Minor,598 the writer of the “Titan of Freedom,” had worked with Jay Lovestone599 and was, “a slavish follower, first of Lovestone, then of Browder.”600 While “Titan of Freedom” echoes Lovestone’s and the “1926er” communists’ re-appropriation to some degree, Minor did not acknowledge this debt.601 When 5 95 Buhle 2013, 185. 596 Bertram D. Wolfe, Jay Lovestone, and William F. Dunne, eds. Our Heritage from 1776: A Working Class View of the First American Revolution. New York: Workers School, 1926. Print. The Workers School Library Vol. I. Their collected articles first appeared in The Daily Worker and in the Worker’s Monthly in 1926. The articles by Dunne, Wolfe, and Lovestone appropriated the American Revolution, in particular the words of the Declaration of Independence. They foregrounded revolutionary techniques—foreign aid and money, Committees of Correspondence, force, confiscation, imprisonment, and deportations—while criticizing the reactionary character of the Constitution and the reactionary reinterpretation of the revolution as natural evolution. All three emphasized that the proletarian revolution would overthrow the current ruling class and establish a new system. 597 Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism. 1957. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2003. Print. 272. 598 Robert Minor, “Titan of Freedom.” The New Masses 47.2 (13 April 1943): 10–13. Print. 599 Draper, Soviet Russia 1960, 267. 600 Draper, Roots 1957, 418. 601 Lovestone was demoted by the Comintern and founded a rival communist party with Bertram D. Wolfe in 1929, which might explain Minor’s silence. Wolfe contributed to Our Heritage of 1776, and Lovestone had made Wolfe the editor of The Worker’s Monthly (cf. Draper, Soviet Russia 1960, 267). Minor’s affiliation with Jefferson

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Earl Browder became general secretary of the CPUSA, Minor worked with Browder who named him “acting general secretary” during his own imprisonment in 1940.602 During the Popular Front, Browder, Minor’s second mentor, paid greater attention to Jefferson than the “1926” communists had done. Quoting the “eminent historian” John Lothrop Motley, Browder declared in 1935, “Washington, Adams, and Jefferson—all were rebels.”603 The term “rebels” went beyond any praise the 1926s had granted Jefferson. Motley insisted that the right “to rise against oppression” was in the Anglo-Saxon blood. Therefore, “rebels” “is no word of reproach,” as they were “sustained by the consciousness of right when they overthrew established authority [….] There can be nothing plainer, then, than the American right of revolution.”604 Browder went further by advocating not just a national right of revolution but the spread of ideas over national boundaries.605 While Browder did not contribute to “Thomas Jefferson: 200 Years,” he had employed Jefferson in the debate “Is Communism a Menace?” published in the preceding issue.606 Negating the question of the debate, Browder emphasized the democratic origin of communism with the Communist Manifesto (1943, 11). He connected these ideas to the development of democracy in America, that is, to Jefferson’s agrarian vision of the distribution of land “among large numbers of smallholders” (18). Browder argued, “Our own Thomas Jefferson placed so much stress upon this economic foundation for democracy that he molded all his policies upon the aim of preserving the small landholder as the central and major factor in the nation, being convinced that only thus could democracy be perpetuated” (18). Browder’s statements sounded more agrarian than even those of the Southern Agrarians in 1929. While this Jeffersonian vision was extended beyond the Lovestone connection, as his ancestor General John Minor “had served as Jefferson’s campaign manager for the presidency” (Draper, Roots 1957, 121). 602 Klehr, “Minor” 2010, 2. 603 Earl Browder, Communism in the United States. 1933. New  York:  International Publishers, 1935. Print. 174. 604 Motley qtd. in Browder, Communism 1935, 174. 605 Browder pointed out the irony that the reactionary forces in America and Russia in historical perspective accused the progressive forces in their respective countries of getting their ideas from alien quarters. “Today the same comedy is repeated, but this time the revolution is said to be ‘imported from Moscow.’ In both cases […] the country attacked is the one that is showing the way to the solution of the problems of the people” (Browder, Communism 1935, 236). 606 Earl Browder, and George E. Sokolosky. “Is Communism a Menace? Debate.” The New Masses 47.1 (6 April 1943): 11–26. Print.

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eventually overpowered by the industrial revolution “with its great accumulation and concentration of capital on one hand and its massing of propertyless wage workers on the other,” the communists “set out to find a path by which democracy could still be given an economic foundation and thereby perpetuated” (18). As it would be “retrogressive,” and simply impossible, to break up the industrial apparatus and return to “individual handicraft production,” the only “progressive” solution leading to “a higher type of civilization” is the “democratic control of the basic national economy,” Browder argued (18). This would guarantee the “political forms of democracy” (18). Even though Browder advocated to overthrow government, his formulation that communism or socialism would lead to “a higher type of civilization” resounded with notes of ‘natural’ evolution rather than violent revolution. It serves as one example of Browder’s concession to the realization of the “futility of revolutionary language.”607 While analyzing Robert Minor’s “Titan of Freedom,” the main contribution to the New Masses special issue in respect to its length and position, I will point out how Minor contradicts, mirrors, or expands these earlier appropriations, while tying the changes to the different communist tactics and cultural circumstances of 1943.

Jefferson: 200 Years and Robert Minor’s “Titan of Freedom” and Avrom Landy’s “Marxism is Democracy” Had the 1926 communists set themselves the goal of debunking the revolutionary fathers’ status as “demigods,”608 Minor willfully appropriated the status for Thomas Jefferson in calling him the “Titan of Freedom.” The titans were primordial deities and giants of incredible strength, and by bestowing Jefferson with these qualities and stressing that the “Revolution of this pioneer people” needed leaders of this caliber, Minor emphasized Jefferson’s original role during the birth of the new nation. Even though Washington was the soldier and father 6 07 Buhle, Marxism 2013, 144. 608 Wolfe argued with Lenin that the CPUSA was still “infantile leftist,” had not yet claimed its revolutionary heritage. Wolfe explained the revolutionary tactics of force and violence that the “revolutionary ‘fathers’ ”—“smuggling merchants,” “ ‘bootlegging’ manufacturers” (388), and the farmers and workers—employed during the first American Revolution. By naming the minority group of instigators and their tactics, Wolfe denied the claim that the American Revolution was an “evolution” and “unrevolutionary” (390). He demystified and “debunked” the honorable character of the revolutionists and the revolution as “a vindication of the eternal rights of man, the institutions created as classless and eternal and unimprovable” (388).

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of the country, Jefferson “looms largest above the horizon as the great creative figure of thought and action, as the architect of this republic” (Minor 10), and thereby was portrayed as a practical idealist. Minor saw the “American revolution as part of two centuries of progress of humankind” (10), an idea that the 1926er had stressed when referring to the revolutionary forces as the “first shock troops of struggling humanity” (Wolfe 392). From this, Minor further emphasized the international significance of the revolution when he described it as a “mighty torrent […] that has swept through and transformed most of the world” (10). Here again Minor merely reiterated the appropriation of the 1926ers who had believed in their proletarian world revolution and had found confirmation in the inevitability of the spread of great ideas. Introducing the term “world revolution” by saying that Jefferson was the representative of the “cultural and political world revolution,” Minor uncovered an aspect that neither the 1926ers nor Browder had acknowledged, namely, the cultural significance of Jefferson in the world. Minor depicted Jefferson as of the same kind of genius as Leonardo da Vinci and other “figures of the Renaissance,” calling him “the most highly educated man in the sciences and arts” and “the heir[…] of those ‘founders of the modern world’ ” (10). With the help of Frederick Engels’s assertions in Dialectics of Nature, Minor praised Jefferson’s “many-sided knowledge,” and “creativity” in the “scientific and cultural achievement of all peoples” (10). Citing Engels, Minor suggested that Jefferson and the Renaissance men, despite founding the “modern rule of the bourgeoisie,” had been free of “bourgeois limitations” and “pursue[d]‌their lives and activities in the midst of the contemporary movements, in the practical struggle; they […] join[ed] in the fight” (10). Jefferson’s “political, scientific and general scholarship gave greater power to the[…] revolutionary service,” and Jefferson thus was the supreme “link of the American revolution to the revolutionary culture of France” (10). As a contrast to Jefferson and to explain the “bourgeois limitations,” Minor utilized the contest between Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, whom the 1926ers had called “the Mellon of his day” (Wolfe 392). Minor pronounced that “the most flatulent of the present-day bourgeoisie consider Alexander Hamilton their especial prophet and representative” (10). He enumerated Hamilton’s “reactionary tendencies,” such as his advocacy of “life tenure” and his penchant toward “aristocracy” and “state centralization” (10). Through Jefferson, the “pioneer people” became the “free, reckless force […] to found […] the country of the most advanced technique of production and the most enormous accumulation of wealth that history has ever known” (10). Minor pointed out the seeming contradiction that Jefferson, the “humane, highly cultured democrat” and

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“profound and many-sided revolutionist,” led “in breaking this trail […] for the very best interests of the modern capitalist system” (10); however the Communist Manifesto (1848) cleared up this contradiction, as the bourgeois was necessary for overcoming “all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations,” leaving only “naked self-interest,” “egotistical calculation,” and debunking “religion” (10). While Hamilton was made the “key representative” (10) of egotistical calculation, Minor absolved Jefferson from these traits of the capitalist system. Minor praised Jefferson for “dar[ing] to fructify the bourgeois revolution by expressing its great progressive significance to the ages when, in the list of his aims, he substituted for property, ‘pursuit of happiness’ ” (10). Minor slightly deviated from the 1926ers, who had considered the aims of the Declaration of Independence as hollow sham and mocked the idea of “pursuit of happiness,” as “pursuit” did not mean “catching up” (10) for the common people.609 Yet, Minor saw Jefferson’s “assault on ‘property’ ” successfully employed, in his attack on “ ‘property’ of the form embodied in laws of entailment and primogeniture” (10). Minor thereby suggested that Jefferson fought against the concentrated accumulation of property, wealth, and power in the hands of a few, not against the possession of property all together. Minor used these explanations to cast Jefferson with his “broad revolutionary vision,” as a prophet of the “principles [of] the Sixteenth Amendment,” which Minor labeled a “tax upon wealth in the interest of the masses” (10). He tied his appropriation to the contention between conservatives and progressives since 1913 when the 16th Amendment which gave Congress the “power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived” was signed into law.610 Minor’s appropriation uncovered two larger problems being debated in America. War spending had increased the need for revenue and pushed the

6 09 Wolfe 1926, 388. 610 The discussion raged in the 1930s as many New Dealers proposed that “the simple phrase” “from whatever source” should be taken literally and criticized the Supreme Court’s interpretation of it. Homer T. Bone said the court “warped and twisted it by reasoning which I think cannot be sustained in logic” (Cong. Rec. 27 Jan. 1937: 568). Elbert D. Thomas, the TJMC member, applied the phrase to the idea that the will of the people should be paramount and that the Supreme Court, which its ruling had violated the legislative right of the people. Thomas said that the “current attempt to place the sixteenth amendment back in the Constitution” was “a lesson in constitutional government” (Cong. Rec. 25 Apr. 1938: 1637). Both Democrats used Jefferson in their argument to criticize the Supreme Court’s power and to defend democracy in terms of defending the will of the people.

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question of taxation and income tax rates into the public and political discourse. Furthermore, by showing that Jefferson’s actions on behalf of the welfare of the general masses resulted in positive achievements but also contributed to the stabilization and extension of the capitalist system, Minor implied that only the dictatorship of the proletariat would eventually sweep away all hindrances to the people’s security and happiness. Minor only hinted at the limitations of bourgeois revolutions, which his predecessors had made much more explicit.611 Even though Jefferson’s ideas and policies strengthened the bourgeois economic system and contributed to the “internal solidity [of the nation],” advocating “one nation firmly hooped together” (10),612 Minor suggested that Jefferson, the practical idealist, adjusted his policies to the situation at hand. Only when the “politics of Europe rendered it necessary” (10) did Jefferson promote stronger centralization in the US. Jefferson never lost sight of his vision “both [of] higher education and the universal free education of the entire population at the expense of the state,” which challenged the bourgeois limitations exacerbated through the centralization. Emphasizing Jefferson’s trailblazing qualities at the birth of the nation, Minor allegorized Jefferson as “pioneer leader” and “great revolutionary woodsman, clearing the wilderness of modern bourgeois society” (10). Even though Minor praised intellectual advances, Jefferson was yet again portrayed as an active and courageous participant in the national development when described in these homely terms. Part of the intellectual advancement and fight against ignorance and for the people’s rights was Jefferson’s “father[ing]” of the Bill of Rights, which was “directed against the men of property” (10). For this reason, Minor praised Jefferson’s “service of forcing [it] into the Constitution” (13). Minor portrayed Jefferson as much more vigorous and forceful than the 1926ers or Earl Browder had done, as they had not associated Jefferson with the Bill of Rights. Minor’s predecessors rather claimed that the reactionary forces invoked the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as the highest principle, when, in fact, the “[t]‌he bourgeoisie does not need, does not desire freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom of 611 The remembrance of the first American Revolution “should be the occasion for strengthening the revolutionary tradition of this nation which the workers and farmers alone can carry out to its final and inevitable conclusion—a workers’ and farmers’ government” (Dunne 1926, 1). 612 Marxist ideology saw a ‘scientific’ place in the development of capitalism in a particular phase of history. “Following Marx, [CPUSA] argued that capitalism had done its historical duty by developing the means of production, but that era of necessity had now passed” (Kazin 2011, 164).

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assemblage” (Wolfe 392). They had also censured the Constitution for upholding property requirements. Minor argued that the Bill of Rights, this “act of the democratic majority of the American people registering and asserting the permanence of the political freedom” (13), by establishing some property guarantees was necessary for the stability of the “social organism” and the “development of the huge and wealthy capitalist nation” (11). These “political freedoms,” however can only be “enforced” if there existed a “mass willingness to fight for its preservation” (13). Minor thereby reflected the Popular Front idea of building a mass movement to fight against oppression. Minor suggested there still existed a divide of “haves and have nots” and that Jefferson discerned the inchoate “class struggle within the great bourgeois society” (11). Hamilton acknowledged the “division” when distinguishing between the “few and the many” (11); he regarded the “rich and well-born” as the few who were capable of political power and of controlling the “turbulent” masses (11). While seeing “class lines,” “Jefferson was of the opposite view,” (11) but his recognition of this “class antagonism” explained the development of the two political parties and the “election of 1800” (12), Minor argued. The 1926ers had already argued that the revolution only ended in 1800 and had criticized the Alien and Sedition laws and the Constitution as reactionary, whereas Jefferson as democrat speaking for the farmers and workers tried to counter these developments (Lovestone 1926, 7).613 Continuing the discussion of class divides, Minor explored Jefferson’s “lifelong struggle against slavery” (12). The communists had considered slaves the most exploited working class in Jefferson’s day. While the 1926ers had pointed out the irony that the revolutionary fathers, without naming Jefferson in person, and men of wealth kept owning slaves even after the declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ (Wolfe 388), Minor ignored this fact. He focused on Jefferson’s practical consideration of opposing slavery, which was that the country’s “future development” in respect to a free market economy with free and competitive labor “required the expunging of the filth and contaminating relic of a vanishing period” (12). He suggested, similar to the Agrarians, that slavery was a feudal relic, imported by Great Britain; yet while Minor welcomed free labor

613 Jay Lovestone, “Second Thoughts on the Fourth of July.” The New Magazine Supplement of the Daily Worker III.147 (3 July 1926):  9. Print. --, “Second Thoughts on the Fourth of July.” The New Magazine Supplement of The Daily Worker III.151 (10 July 1926): 7. Print.

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and market competition in an industrial society, the Agrarians favored the same conditions for a dominantly agricultural society. Minor saw Jefferson as progressive in his battle against slavery who ultimately provided the ideas for the Civil War, “the second revolution” which was necessary to “set free the forces of production” (12). Jefferson’s motives had been economic and moral. The latter motif Minor emphasized by calling Jefferson “humanitarian;” that is, he not only supported emancipation but also fought against “discrimination” when he advocated the scientific study of the “grade of understanding” of free African Americans. In 1809 after a study was published, Jefferson urged people to place them “ ‘on par with ourselves,’ ” asserting the “equal footing” of races (12). Minor’s appropriation attempted to square Jefferson with one of the most important impulses of the Popular Front: the fight against racism.614 Trying to build an “interracial movement,”615 communists and socialists were championing the rights of African Americans against disenfranchisement, discrimination, lynchings, and segregation both in the South and in the U.S. armed forces while fighting for human freedom.616 Minor further tied Jefferson and Lincoln together because both “saw the historic prerogative of revolutionary transformation as inhering solely in the forces of progress” (12). Jefferson based these ideas “on scientific terms,” a fact that is often ignored, Minor claimed, indirectly suggesting that Jefferson foreshadowed Marx’s scientific approach to economic and social development. Minor supported his appraisal by quoting Jefferson:  “Social upheavals are ‘as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical’ ” (12). Implying the violent nature of a revolution by comparing it to a storm as well as the naturalness of a revolution, Minor, with Jefferson’s aid, challenged the idea that revolution and its sister, destruction, are “un-American.” In contrast to the 1926ers, who had claimed the same, Minor focused on revising the popular image of Jefferson, the man. He urged the reader, “Let’s erase the picture of Jefferson, the benevolent

614 Kazin comments that the communists of the Popular Front “fertilized a campaign against segregationist laws and practices that would reach its full flowering a generation later” (2011, 179). 615 Denning 1996, 34. Rossinow agrees with Denning: “Only in the mid-1930s, through the vehicle of the Popular Front, did leftists, black and white, import antiracism into American liberalism’s mainstream” (Doug Rossinow, “Partners for Progress? Liberals in the Long Twentieth Century.” Making Sense of American Liberalism. Ed. Jonathan Bell. Baltimore: U of Illinois P, 2012. 17–37. Print. 28.) 616 Nancy Whitelaw, Rebels and Revolutionaries:  Voices of American Labor. Greensboro: Morgan Reynolds Publishing, 2007. Print. 122.

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old gentleman dreading violence, for Jefferson knew that his time was one of inevitable, destructive revolutionary war” (12). Of course, Jefferson was not an old man but in his mid-thirties during the revolutionary struggle. Minor simplified the picture, quoting from writings of Jefferson’s younger years on the developments of the French Revolution to prove his calm attitude toward and recognition of the inevitability, even his welcoming of revolutionary methods against oppression.617 Dr. Kimball’s description of Mr. Lawrie’s statue comes to mind in this respect: “[Jefferson’s] head is thrown upward; he is fired with zeal. Jefferson was a young radical; he was a red radical, in bronze.”618 Minor implied that Jefferson’s revolutionary mind made him a “fiery partisan” of the French Revolution. Jefferson observed swings and differing circumstances in the foreign developments and thus criticized Napoleon’s “imperialist war,” but praised Napoleon’s later justified fight for “ ‘the cause of his nation and that of all mankind, the rights of every people to independence and self-government’ ” (12). Minor used these sentiments to justify the defensive war that America and the Soviet Union were fighting and to explain away the Soviet Union’s changing position from the Nazi-Soviet Pact to joining the allies. The CPUSA had denounced Britain and France for waging an imperialist war, being no different from the fascist countries, and if different only in the degree of oppressiveness.619 The communists’ pacifism was born out of the idea that the workers fought and suffered most in any war, while the industrialists and capitalists profited by selling war materials that the state and therefore the ordinary tax payers financed. Workers thus carried a double burden when a nation went to war.620 617 Minor quoted Jefferson, who wrote in 1793 on the “revolutionary developments in France: ‘The liberty of the whole earth was dependent on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed I would have seen half the earth desolated, were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than it now is’ ” (Minor 1943, 12). 618 Official Minutes of the TJMC, 13 Sep. 1940: 20. 619 Cf. Jeffreys-Jones 2013, 74. Before this turn, the communists [Georgi Dimitrov] had defined fascism as “ ‘open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary elements of finance capitalism.’ To combat this ruthless enemy, Communists everywhere were now instructed to work with any individual or group willing to defend democracy, ‘bourgeois’ though it and they might be” (Kazin 2011, 170). 620 Cf. Kazin quotes the resolution of the Second International of 1907, to which communists pointed for their arguments against war:  “ ‘the proletariat, which contributes most of the soldiers and makes most of the material sacrifices, is a natural opponent of war’ ” (2011, 146).

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The right of the people to independence and self-government was expressed in the Declaration of Independence in the phrase, “governments […] derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” and that the people have the right “to alter or abolish” that government if it becomes oppressive (12). Stressing the novelty of the document, which was Jefferson’s “contribution to the theory of the state” (12), Minor said: “Written for the first time into the founding law of a nation was the prerogative of the popular masses to overthrow any outgrown form of state” (12). Minor exaggerated the purpose and achievements of the Declaration of Independence, as only the Articles of Confederation and later the Constitution created the nation with its political organization. Furthermore, the phrase “outgrown form of state” is pertinent, as Minor suggested that not just the political form—that is, government—had run its course; additionally, Minor hinted at the interconnectedness between the political and economic systems of a state. By deviating from the language of the Declaration, which says, “the form of government,” Minor displayed his Marxist point of view by attacking “the form of state” and thereby the very concept of the state as well. Continuing with the Declaration of Independence, Minor asserted the right of the people “ ‘to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms, as to them shall seems most likely to effect their safety and happiness’ ” (12).621 He valued the progressiveness of the old time bourgeois society in relation Marxist conception of history, when he claimed that Jefferson’s ideas on the “safety and happiness” of the masses, as a “theory of state,” was not only a theory but “magnificently combined in practice” (12). Even more “tantalizing” about Jefferson, however, were his ruminations, as “utopian and speculative, non-historical” as they were, on “the subject of the ultimate dying-out of the state and the possibility of existence of a free society” (12).622 While Minor suggested similarities of thought and vision between Jefferson and Marx, he also indicated the difference between “the wide horizon of Jefferson’s mind” and “Marx’ views in respect to the ‘withering away’ of the

621 The passage, with the slight alteration of inserting “(based on the mass organization of the working class)” as condition for “in such forms” appears in (Jay Lovestone, “The Spirit of the First Revolution: Review of John C. Fitzpatrick’s The Spirit of the First Revolution.” Workers Monthly V.13 (1926): 615–17. Print. 615. 622 As proof he quoted Jefferson’s musings, “whether ‘no law, as among the savage Americans, or too much law among civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil’; ‘one who had seen both […] would pronounce it to be the last; and that the sheep are happier of themselves, than under the care of the wolves’ ” (12).

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state after performance of its last historic task”: Jefferson’s were utopian, while Marx’s had a scientific base (12). Minor stressed Marxism’s and Jeffersonianism’s penchant for progress for the betterment of mankind by quoting Jefferson: “laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind [….] And lastly, let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods” (12). Minor used the inscription of the fourth panel of the Jefferson memorial,623 and revealed that Senator Smith and Andrews’s fears of “to alter or abolish” were, while exaggerated (considering CPUSA’s numerical weakness even during the height of the Depression), not unfounded. Furthermore, omitting the words on the panel would not have erased them from the original document. Continuing with ideas of progress, Minor admitted that the Louisiana Purchase was a “bending,” even a “violation of the law and the Constitution,” but he excused Jefferson who tested through “action” his “concept of democratic constitutions” (13). Jefferson “treated” the Constitution “not in the least binding against future and more advanced achievements in the process of social development” but merely as a tool “against slipping backward” (13). To pull Jefferson into the folds of communism, Minor showed the similarity of these ideas to Stalin’s evaluation of the Soviet Constitution of 1936 as “legislative consolidation of those conquests which have already been achieved” (13). Jefferson’s bold action secured America as a “country of free land” for almost a century, which was pivotal for its progress, as a “portion of population tending to sink through poverty into the proletariat could ‘Go West’ ” (12). Jefferson’s ideas fulfilled the necessary historical precondition for “the unparalleled development of labor-saving machinery in the United States and the huge development of the customs-free continental market, and the world’s largest best pre-socialist model of mass production” (12–13). Minor, therefore, claimed that both the Bill of Rights and the Constitution were “ratchet[s]‌on the wheel of democratic progress” and “never an obstacle to moving forward” (13; 12). In his conclusion Minor acknowledged the 200  years and the changes it brought since Jefferson’s birth. Under consideration of such developments as the industrialization, Minor excused Jefferson once more when he argued that he could not be expected to have understood “the basic role of the material forces of production” (13). With this insistence, Minor contradicted Browder who had portrayed Jefferson as realizing the importance of the “economic foundation”

623 Jefferson’s letter sent to “Samuel Kercheval:  July 12, 1816.” Writings. Ed. Merrill D. Peterson. 1395–403.

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of society and democracy (“Menace” 1943, 18). Whereas Browder praised Jefferson’s vision of a democracy based on agriculture, Minor insisted, “That Jefferson had scant comprehension of the decisive role of economic phenomena was indicated by his early obsession that the United States could remain an agricultural country” (13). Minor admitted that Jefferson somewhat changed his mind on the topic of industry and manufacture in “later life,” but misrepresented that Jefferson was fully aware of Marx’s realization of “the economic structure of society—the real foundation, on which rise the legal and political structure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness” (13). Both Lincoln and Jefferson represented “the bourgeoisie […], when it was, on a world-scale, the leading revolutionary class of society, when it was the defender of modern science and political progress, when it was not yet ‘haunted’ by the ‘spectre’ of a more advanced class” (13), Minor reiterated at the end of his essay. His “sketch,” suggestive of a “direction of thoughts” on Jefferson’s role in the world thus was suggestive of contemporary times: “Above all, […] when martial deeds and bold thinking are the reason for the lives of nations, let us develop that part of our thought on Jefferson which the ‘liberal’ custodians of the craft of history tend to obscure—[…] Jefferson as a leader in desperate war, ready and willing to strike ruthlessly with the sharpest tools of war” (13). Like his communist predecessors had done regarding the revolution, Minor attacked the traditional historiography specifically for having depicted Jefferson as a temperate, moderate thinker. Minor instead stressed that he was “bold in thought and courage,” a “man of historical vision,” seeing “revolutionary progress,” and that one’s “national interest places [one] within the world as a whole” (13). These qualities endeared Jefferson to communists and facilitated their attempt to claim Jefferson as favoring America’s “liaison with the growing parts,” the Soviet Union and allies in order to ward of the “flatulent and unseeing men who are dreaming now in America of cutting our ties with the living part of the world and binding us to the hideous Nazi cancer that mean our death” (13). Foreshadowing Senator Thomas’s “World Citizen”, Minor asserted “Thomas Jefferson was a democrat” (13). This ending serves as a great transition into the next article of the special edition, entitled, “Marxism is Democracy” by Avrom Landy, which can be read as a supplement to and broadening of Minor’s article.624 Besides giving an account of the historical development of Marxism, Landy, a less well-known figure, challenged Henry A.  Wallace, the Vice President of the United States, comments

624 Avrom Landy, “Marxism and Democracy.” The New Masses 47.2 (1943): 16–18. Print.

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about communism. Landy explained the rich interconnections and continued relevancy between “Jeffersonian democracy and the democratic philosophy and practice of Marxism” (13) for the struggle against fascism. He asserted that the bourgeois form of democracy was not the sole form; in fact, he argued with the 1926er communists that the so-called bourgeois ‘democracy’ was unfulfilled,625 as it did not meet “the test of democracy, even as set up by Wallace,” which was to assure the “service to the common man, the preservation of the true dignity of man” (16; 18). Russian Marxism, however, fulfilled the test “more completely” than the “capitalist United States” (16), as the capitalist democracy “emphasizes the primacy of property and not of man, whereas Marxism makes the dignity of man and the supremacy of the human being the foundation and end of its whole outlook” (16). Landy emphasized that the modern bourgeois revolutions of America, France, and Russia were “fought by the people in stubborn and costly struggles against the ‘well-born and wealthy’ ” (16). Because the British colonies, as a “copy of England,” retained “all its class distinctions,”, the American revolution was, like all wars, one of class struggle. Even after the Declaration, Jefferson “led the people’s forces […] in the struggle to assure that the American republic meant American democracy” against schemes “to curb democracy” (16–17). The reactionaries’ efforts of distinguishing between “republic and democracy” was still part of the tactics of today and merely an “expression of the fear of democracy” (17). It was similar to the exaggerated fear of Marxism, which, contrary to public opinion, “has always been part of the democratic mainstream” as it is “identified with that class in society, the working class, which has most to gain a from the complete realization of democracy” (17). Marxism, in fact, existed to bring about the fullest mass participation in democracy. From its beginning, Marxism had been “the international democratic movement,” seeking to “enlarge the rights of the common people, to promote their welfare, and ultimately to replace the economic and political rule of a privileged minority by the genuine rule of the exploited majority” (17). Landy derived proof from the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which stated as “the first goal of the working class ‘to win the battle of democracy,’ the elevation of the proletariat to political power (18). Marxism, therefore, was the “most advanced expression” of democracy, while “never mak[ing] a fetish of the word or treat[ing] it as an abstraction without history or a concrete social and economic character”

625 Landy argued, at the end, that Marxists have always “appreciate the limitations of formal democracy” (18).

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(18), a statement which harked back to the scientific character of Marxism. This character was once more emphasized when Landy argued that Marx and Engels had studied the writings of Thomas Jefferson, receiving a “detailed and accurate knowledge of its history” with which they defended the workability of a democracy by pointing its critic, Carlyle, toward America, “ ‘the North American republic’ ” (18). Nevertheless, Marx and Engels were “fully aware that the achievement of the greater democracy of socialism was unlikely, except as a transition from the more limited democracy of the bourgeois republic” (18). Minor had already explained and praised Jefferson’s contribution to that kind of republic of a bourgeois society, which was necessary for Marxism’s historical theory.626 Landy argued that Lenin and Stalin followed in these scientific footsteps when they “made the profoundest study and analysis of the question of democracy, its relationship to the labor movement, and its place in the evolution of society” (18), calling them “masters of the dynamics of democratic change” (18). But what was more, Landy claimed that “our own Thomas Jefferson had made such a significant contribution” to that “science” (18). Never proving his assertion, Landy continued praising Stalin and Lenin as “efficient and scientifically competent in the establishment […] of that unrestricted democracy of the masses” (18). The Russian or Bolshevik revolution, therefore, had brought a new form of democracy into existence, which was already on a “higher stage of social development” than bourgeois democracy (18). Landy mirrored Minor’s rhetoric of evolution and argued that the recognition of the Soviet’s social and political achievements was essential for the “survival of a free world,” especially during this “war for national independence” (18). Yet, he warned against “national arrogance […] the earmark of reactionary imperialism” (18) and held up Jefferson and Russia as examples from which to learn to avoid “the pitfalls of a stereotyped, lifeless conception of democracy which condemns us to historical backwardness and keeps us from firmly grasping the political realities necessary for national survival today” (18). Landy praised Jefferson as the best embodiment of the “thought and experience which demonstrate the historic link between Marxism and democracy” and studying his “life and work will help us to grasp the deeper meaning of our history, to recognize our enemies and acknowledge our friends” (18). Landy’s appropriation and insistence on “acknowledging our friends” contradicted his position of the early 1930s, when he had vilified any liberal,

626 Kazin points out that “Marxian socialists celebrated the progress of industry, technology, and theoretical knowledge; they girded themselves with a ‘scientific’ certainty that history was moving their way” (2011, 110).

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progressive, or socialist as “social-fascist.”627 Instead of, for example, taking Edmund Wilson’s outreaching hand, who had argued for a turn toward communism by liberals, and building an alliance, Landy concluded that Wilson was “ ‘a liberal talking ‘Communism,’ but headed straight towards fascism.’ ”628 Landy’s appropriation of Jefferson in 1943 proved once more how the directives of the Comintern influenced the interpretation and tactics of American Communists. As the Comintern was dissolved in 1943, American Communists became freer in their tactical maneuvers, thus returning to a strategy that had worked well for them in the years 1936 to 1939—the move toward the center left of American politics by the appropriation of the radical democrat Thomas Jefferson. The essay part of the special edition was concluded by Francis Franklin’s book review, “Jefferson Said…,” on Dr. Philip S. Foner’s Thomas Jefferson: Selections from his Writings, published by International Publishers. Franklin seemed a suitable choice for reviewing Foner’s book, as he himself had been working on a book, entitled The Rise of the American Nation, 1789–1824, which appeared with the same publisher in 1943. Franklin was a history faculty member was to speak at the Jefferson Anniversary Meeting organized by the Workers School of New York, for which New Masses advertised. As a native of Virginia who had attended the UVA, Franklin said his book’s introduction that “Marx and Engels […] first opened my eyes to the grandeur of Thomas Jefferson as a world figure,” revealing the “great role” that America “played in the world history.”629 Franklin’s review highlighted the correlatives between his own Marxist interpretation of America’s early history and Jefferson’s role in it and Foner’s selected passages. Philip Foner had received his PhD in history from Columbia University where he had studied under Allan Nevins, a participant in the Library of Congresses Jefferson Symposium. In 1941, Dr. Foner had been one of 50 victims of the RappCoudert Committee, a state legislative body investigating Communist activities,

627 Harvey Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism:  The Depression Decade. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Print. 78. As case in point, Klehr quotes Landy’s denunciation of Edmund Wilson, who enunciated his opposition to the capitalist system in an essay called “An Appeal to Progressives.” Wilson suggested that liberalism suffered from an economic crisis and an even severer psychological one, and thus “[i]‌t was time for Socialism in America.” As the Communist Party was “too small and ineffective,” he advocated and urged “American radicals and progressives” that they “ ‘must take Communism away from the Communists’ ” (qtd. in Klehr, Heyday 1984, 78). 628 Qtd. in Klehr, Heyday 1984, 78. 629 Francis Franklin, The Rise of the American Nation, 1789–1824. New York: International Publishers, 1943. Print. 8.

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and he was dismissed from New York City College. He became an editor630 and the author of Thomas Jefferson, and only a year later of Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Lamenting that Americans had hardly read anything by Jefferson besides the Declaration of Independence, and not even Jefferson’s draft which included the “paragraph denouncing George III for maintaining the horrors of slavery,” Francis Franklin became the defender of Jefferson’s sincerity in pronouncing his “revolutionary philosophy” (24). Like his communist predecessors, Franklin argued that the “full program [of the Declaration] has not even today been secured in our country” and denounced people’s cynicism that “these words were written tongue in cheek, for the purpose of deluding the masses” (24).631 On the contrary, Jefferson was “as sincere a leader as the people ever had” and meant every word he said. “A Virginian who hated slavery,” Jefferson’s failure in ending “all forms of exploitation” was due to the “limitations of his time,” in particular through the opposition from “slaveholders and slavetraders,” which Franklin had mentioned in connection with Jefferson’s attack on George III and slavery (24).632 Franklin praised Foner’s selections as “genuinely representative of the man,” “typical of Jefferson’s whole work” (24) and explained that the selections have been “organized to reveal his internationalism, his democracy, his hatred of slavery, his religious and educational and scientific opinions” (24). Franklin emphasized that the representativeness was based on the fact that there existed many more passages not included in the book, which would prove the same Jeffersonian opinions. 630 Lawrence Van Gelder, “Philip S. Foner, Labor Historian and Professor, 84.” Obituary. The New York Times 15 Dec. 1994. Web 28 June 2016. 631 See a similar claim made by Alexander Bittleman, “Coolidge and the Declaration of Independence.” The New Magazine: Supplement to the New Masses 10 July (1926): 1. Print. 1; Bertram D. Wolfe, “Whose Revolution Is It?” The Worker’s Monthly 10.9 (1926): 387–92. Print. 388. 632 Cf. Franklin’s book: “The Declaration of Independence proclaimed not only the rights of the United States but voiced the most democratic version of the contract theory of the state, with its accompanying doctrines of the rights of nations in general, of the unqualified equality of all men, and of their possessions of natural and inalienable rights. This philosophy was held in common at the time by the most advanced spokesmen for the peoples of all the countries of Europe. Jefferson and others definitely regarded these doctrines as applying to Negroes as well as white. The longest paragraph in the original draft of the Declaration was a burning attack on George III for maintaining the horrors of slavery, but the slave traders succeeded in removing this passage” (17).

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The first opinion that Franklin considered was the “freedom of all nations” and their “collaborations” to preserve peace. Jefferson regarded “national freedom as the absolute right of the majority within the nation to rule” and Jefferson “recognized that majority rule meant rule by the laboring population” (24). Secondly Foner stressed Jefferson’s fight for equal rights, regardless of race, and against discrimination, using the same letters concerning the ‘scientific’ study of free African Americans’ achievements, which Minor had explicated. Franklin finds Jefferson’s position striking, considering his “Virginian background,” as it “demonstrates how sincere was Jefferson’s belief in the equality of man” (24). Franklin made Jefferson into “the greatest predecessor of the Marxists” when he emphasized his efforts in education and science next to the topic of equality, as they were the “positive program for the material and cultural advancement of mankind” (24). Again, the parallels to Minor’s article become obvious and are explored in greater detail in Franklin’s book. Drawing on ideas from his book, Franklin corrected Foner on two aspects, while weighing these corrections as “slight in comparison with the total strength of his work” (25). Franklin asserted that Jefferson’s father was “a pioneering small farmer who represented the democratic back-country in the Virginia House of Burgesses” and not from the “aristocracy” like Jefferson’s mother, ideas that had been stressed by the Southern Agrarians (24). “[F]‌rom his father and his small farmer neighbors […] Jefferson first derived his democratic views,” growing up in a “simple frame house; a child of the frontier, shaped by the frontier” (24–5).633 Similarly, Franklin argued against Foner’s interpretation that Jefferson’s election in 1800 had ‘correctly’ been called a revolution. Franklin merely thought it prevented the “counter-revolution,” as it did not overthrow a class, the economic life, or the political structure. Franklin, like his colleagues, praised Jefferson’s administration for stabilizing and extending democracy and the bourgeois state. Even though Jefferson’s ideas were derived from John Locke and eighteenthcentury French philosophy, Jefferson “was in many respects more advanced” and yet all shared a democratic basis which Americans needed to study in order to “fully understand the character of our democracy” and Marxism (25). Reiterating

633 Cf. Franklin’s analysis in his book: “[C]‌hild of the western frontier of colonial Virginia, Jefferson was born into the democratic movement. His pioneer father, […], had become the political leader of his neighbors […] [and] had reared his son in democratic principles from his birth. Jefferson’s mother was a Randolph, […] one of the oldest […] slaveholder families. Through her, Jefferson obtained all the culture of her class” (121–2).

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Landy’s ideas Franklin concluded: “Every Marxist is first and foremost a democrat, nor can anyone who is not a democrat be a Marxist” (25). Chris Vials argues that the antifascism of the New Masses was expressed in its editorial choices of the review section which focused on works of ‘psychological depth’ and ‘ordinary’ individuals, rather than on villains and heroes. “As such, it advocated an antifascist aesthetic,” explains Vials, “capable of probing the nature of fascism’s appeal to the average citizen, not one that simply revealed behindthe-scenes machinations of power.”634 Francis Franklin’s review undoubtedly celebrated Jefferson as a hero of the revolution, while it tried to assert that Jefferson’s leadership was always democratic in the sense that he devoted his life to serve the extension of democracy by battling the concentration of wealth and power. In that function, Franklin seems to suggest, Jefferson was taking a stand with the free and democratic masses in the United States and with the Soviet allies abroad against fascism. Jefferson’s dual position as hero and man for, if not fully of, the people, can also be found in Edwin G.  Burrows’s and Louis Lerman’s creative accounts of Jefferson, which reveal how artistic creativity influenced the understanding of Thomas Jefferson in 1943.

Creative Portion: Poetry Contest Winner and Louis Lerman’s Allegory The New Masses held a poetry contest to honor the bicentennial, asking for subscriptions “most suitable for publication in our Jefferson Anniversary issue,” which “need not necessarily refer to Jefferson or his work” but “which best expresses the spirit of Jefferson in terms of the issues of today” (8).635 So the New Masses, like the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission and Dumas Malone, emphasized the idea to carry Jefferson’s spirit into one’s contemporary time. The winning poem was written by Edwin G. Burrows and was entitled “Tom Writes a Declaration.”636 Burrows, the New Masses informed its reader, was twenty-five years old, and had come to some acclaim as a poet by winning the 1940 Avery Hopwood award at the University of Michigan where he received his M.A. At the time of publication, Burrows worked as “program director of W45D, the FM station of the Detroit ‘News’ ” (17). Burrows, as a professional, yet not a professional poet, therefore fit right into the intended readership of the Popular Front New

6 34 Vials 2014, 81. 635 “Deadline!” New Masses (1943): 8. Print. It announced, “William Rose Benet, Eda Lou Walton, and Ridgely Torrence will act as judges” (8). 636 Edwin G.  Burrows, “Tom Writes a Declaration.” The New Masses 47.2 (13 April 1943): 17. Print.

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Masses. Even though Burrows was not working class, his in-between status as middle-class professional met the New Masses’s initial mission, to publish literature by workers, half way. Burrows can be considered one of the cultural workers, a new group of working-class people emerging with the development of mass culture or a culture industry during the Popular Front period.637 Burrows established familiarity between the reader and the figure Thomas Jefferson in the title of his poem by using the abbreviated, endearing form of his first name—Tom. At the beginning of the first and second stanza, Burrows zoomed into Tom’s “[v]‌eined hand arched in a bridge from edge to edge/of the rubbed paper clinging electric to desktop—” and “the hand wrote and the moving bridge designed / fierce waters for its spanning, black canals / to ferry meaning, freight of rich demands / all but appeasements in a log of wrongs—” (1–2; 8–11). The veined hand suggested the blood flow and life originating from Jefferson and his words; the shocking importance of these words was captured in the electricity that made the paper cling to the desktop. By remarking on the “rich demands”, Burrows suggested that words had to be backed up by action and reflected the communists’ greatest grievance; namely, that the promises or rich demands of the Declaration of Independence had not yet been fulfilled but had been betrayed by the exploiting classes.638 The image of the “black canal” of “fierce waters” contributed to the revolutionary purpose and aim of Jefferson’s voicing of the grievances symbolized through the “log of wrongs.” Burrows contrasted this intimate view with the surrounding world which he set apart by parentheses, “(the pigeons bedded in the tower make/a careful mockery of clanging hours […]” (3–4). The belfry and its “clanging” bells heralded in the new ideas and a new age. The contrast became even sharper when Burrows continued within the parentheses: “the weathercock ridiculously creaked, / like a clucking Tory by the wind persuaded, / spun deftly by the rumpnip of the breeze)” (5–7). Burrows criticized the Tory weathercock for being old and rusty, as it “ridiculously” creaked. This second image conveyed the volatility of the “clucking Tory,” the fearful Tory who was only “persuaded” to join the revolution by “the rump-nip of the breeze” (6–7).

6 37 Cf. Denning 1996, 98–9, 113. 638 Vials praises the communists’ reworking of American tradition for looking at the promise, that is looking into the future, rather than merely backward; looking back to resurrect and strive for the realization of the promise and ideals contained in the founding documents and actions (cf. Vials 2014, 64–65).

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While Jefferson was writing: “(curtains bellied with the faun-sweet lungs of June, / a roan hoarse clattered, the kernel of a shout / was stolen by distance leaving syllabic husks, / the whisks of wings in a vortex whorl of leaves)” (12–15; sic). Referencing a faun, the Roman god of country life, and employing such terms as “husk,” “kernel,” and the “vortex whorl of leaves,” Burrows made Jefferson a country figure, implying his agrarian vision for America. Furthermore, Burrows set up the stage for the next stanza when he implied the geographical but also ideological distance between the colonies and England as “the kernel of a shout / was stolen by distance leaving syllabic husks” (13–14). This realization of not being heard properly by England leads Tom to the “precipice of anger” (16). Proving Tom’s revolutionary ideas, Burrows said of Tom:     writing not ‘life, liberty, and property’ but a dictum unpurloined from privilege, a rabble gospel, heretic phrase compounded of flight not tin-limbered weathercocks, of the horse hard-ridden, the salutation of comrades, the free wind in the whistling screens:       pursuit of happiness! (17–23)

Burrows connected the idea of “property” to the idea of special “privilege” and revealed that Jefferson expressed the “gospel” of the people (i.e. “rabble”), which those in power would consider heresy. This gospel was equated with the “free wind”, which made the “pursuit of happiness,“ set apart in the poem for emphasis of the uniqueness of this “rabble gospel,” as natural as any other natural element. The phrase became “the salutation of comrades” and drove out the “tin-limbered weathercocks,” the weak and old Tories, mocked in the first stanza. Even though Burrows described “the pursuit of happiness” as “rabble gospel” and invoked magical qualities when he called the idea sweeping in as “faunsweet lungs of June” (12), he asserted in the next stanza that       The day  was unbiblical, no walls at trumpets tumbled, no Mosaic thunders roared or seas split, nor empires of Solomon in brazen decay crashed through the crust of humbled histories; (24–28)

He stressed that no miracles or wonders happened; it was not the life of kings and prophets that was influenced, but the ordinary people’s lives were changed by the dictum. Burrows implied that the “pursuit of happiness” was a practical dictum, not a mere sham as religion and the biblical stories. So, Burrows

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continued his poem by explaining the ordinary course of events that day even using some humor toward the end:     a goodwife in the dooryard hummed remembering easy departure of four sons to the Continentals, the old men’s tankards in the ale-house clinked, the talk was of siege, retreat, and partisans of Washington, Knox, Green and Hamilton, of taxes and tea, and all broad mouths were clenched and even the toothless felt resolve like brands burn in the gums, the rally-fires of freedom. (29–36)

“It is hard to believe a few words made such a difference,” Burrows continued, “but here in the ‘pursuit of happiness’ was a cause, / a thing to do, not goods or chattels owned, / not deathful pocket-loads or props of fame, / but a heart call, a blood seeking, a standard equal for all” (37–41). Emphasizing the “bloody” nature of revolution and fighting for this “standard equal,” Burrows claimed that “Tom made his choice” (44), which was relevant for today, as        […] the  hand is raised, the lip alive, and weary eye warmed, from Stalingrad, from Kharkov, Guadalcanal, from Kiska, Seyastopol, Hunan, and Rangoon, Marseille, El Alamein, and Leningrad: Thanks, Tom! (45–50)

Tom’s words were not only alive in America, but throughout all the revolutionary world, Burrows claimed in the context of World War II. In all cities, on all continents, “men [are] by their occupations called” (51–52) to fight as they are “(each enemy of the Enormous Lie, the uncreed of unlove, the horned gods valiant in their armored hate)” (51–53). Burrows’ word choice implied that every worker no matter his “occupation,” “even as a coon-capped regulator,” was the enemy of the Nazi oppressors, and each worker “with pursuit of happiness not property / before them” (57–8) fought in all the world inspired by Tom’s idea. So, Burrows closed the poem with a simple: “thanks, Tom! WE SHALL PURSUE!” Within 63 lines and six stanzas, Burrows moved from 1776 and Thomas Jefferson’s revision of the idea of property to the pursuit of happiness and the revolution against “the log of wrongs,” to 1943 and the struggle of the working people of all nations against fascism and the “uncreed of unlove”. Thomas Jefferson, even after 200  years, inspired the people to fight for more than property, for more than “goods,” “chattels,” or even “fame,” and instead for the simple standard that all men possess the innate right to “pursue happiness.” In this world war,

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thanks to Jefferson, Burrows affirmed “WE SHALL PURSUE” this higher purpose of humanity. Like communists in 1926, Burrows implied that the American Revolution was part of the inevitable historical development that paved the way for the eventual revolution of the proletariat. By including the goodwife’s sons who fought in the Continental army, Burrows, like the 1926ers, suggested that the ordinary people fought the revolutionary war and still did the fighting today in “ships, plane and tank, mud-ditch and jungle, / tangle and breach” (60–61), while the Tories, the well-off and highborn sympathizers of those in power, the weathercocks and chickens, only grudgingly, if at all, supported the revolutionary effort. Complementary to Burrows poem, and the essays of the special issue, appeared Louis Lerman’s allegory “Mr. Jefferson’s Plow.”639 Like Francis Franklin, Lerman lamented that there were many people who knew nothing or not enough about Thomas Jefferson. The “fancy” piece of knowledge would be of his role as a “Founding Father,” but that would ignore his many-sided interests, such as gardening, inventions, playing the fiddle, writing the Declaration of Independence, building a university, and finding “the time to be President of the United States in his spare time” (14). Lerman wrote these first two paragraphs in a jocular tone, implying that Jefferson seemed to do all these things with little effort. Lerman continued in this colloquial style, telling his readers “this story about the 530,000,000 acres of land he bought in Louisiana” (14) and Jefferson’s thoughts and actions regarding the Louisiana Purchase. Putting thoughts in Jefferson’s head and words into his mouth, Lerman imagined: Here’s this big stretch of country […] close on as big as all of Europe put together. Needs something big to plow up that piece of land so’s people can settle on it and begin to grow things. All those old plows they been using don’t dig down deep enough, don’t move fast enough. I guess I better invent me a new kind of plow. (14)

Jefferson did as he said and invented “the New Consolidated United American Freedom Plow, Improved Model.” Lerman praised it as “A mile high / Ten miles 639 Louis Lerman, “Mr. Jefferson’s Plow.” The New Masses 47.2 (13 April 1943): 14–15. Print. Lerman had published a book on the Rapp-Coudert Committee, which had ousted Philip S. Foner from CCNY. His book was entitled Winter Soldiers: The Story of a Conspiracy against the Schools and appeared in 1941. His text was accompanied by artists’ drawings supporting the Committee for Defense of Public Education. Lerman was investigated by the Committee, as he worked as a clerk for CCNY and published in the New Masses. “Guide to the Investigation Files of the Rapp-Coudert Committee.” Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive. Web. 13 July 2016. .

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wide / Crossed eighteen rivers / In one big stride / A mile high / Ten engines long / Plowed the earth / With a giant song / Plowed down the old soil / Turned up new / That’s the way America grew” (14). Lerman continued the allegory by suggesting that Jefferson was courageous and far-seeing while others doubted that the plow, that is freedom and democracy, would work. The plow “needed more than half the people in the land pushing all together […], to get [it] started” (14). Again, he interspersed his narration with the lines of the song, calling the plow a “Freedom Plow / It had no chains” (14) and “Ran by an idea / From Jefferson’s pen” (14). Lerman willfully ignored criticizing the chains of slavery that were still responsible for creating wealth in the new Republic, and he thereby idealized Jefferson’s idea of democracy, majority rule, and freedom. The plow was a stand-in for the abstract idea of freedom, which however, did not remain abstract but became practically employed when people “get to plantin’ that Liberty Tree” (14). Here Lerman omitted mentioning that the liberty tree in question was to be watered with “the blood of tyrants” from time to time. Jefferson, therefore, was portrayed less radically than in previous appropriations, and the idea of plowing and planting suggested a common, man-made, but organic development.640 Lerman followed the historical development to the New Hampshire nullification crisis during which Jefferson spoke and tested the plow “to convince [them] the new thing’s good” (14) […]. Needs lots of oil, different kind of oil—unity oil, first grade” (14). It “ran pretty good” and only its screws “needed a little tightening” (14), thought Jefferson and most people agreed. “Ebenezer Drew, New Hampshire man,” however, doubted that it was even a plow, as it was running without “chains,” “horses,” or “men,” despite Jefferson’s proof that it turns up new soil. The man could not be convinced but Jefferson would not give up trying even if it “takes me the next hundred-fifty years to do it in” (15). Lerman then turned this doubter into a Southern farmer “sowing that old brand of King and Emperor Corn, […] that didn’t grow so good after 1776,” (15) but what was even worse, he “then put in that Slavery Seed,” which brought him only “spindlin’ crops” (15). Having set up the contrast between Jefferson 640 The socialist Victor Berger appropriated Friedrich Engels and Jefferson in 1905, arguing that both advocated arming the workers. He quoted Engels’ idea: “ ‘Give every citizen a good rifle and fifty cartridges and you have the best guarantee for the liberty of the people.’ Thomas Jefferson held the same views exactly…. With the nation armed, the workingmen are not in danger of being shot down like dogs on the least provocation” (qtd. in Seymour M. Lipset, and Gary Marks, It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States. New York: Norton, 2001. Print. 197).

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and Ebenezer Drew, Lerman maintained this difference when Ebenezer was transformed into a Southern slaveholder. Once again, Lerman glossed over Jefferson’s own complicity in the institution of slavery. Jefferson, who had been depicted as the foremost advocate against slavery, similarly offered to plow the man’s orchard for free, being so set on eradicating the seed of slavery, and instead to plant that “Liberty Tree” because “That tree needs men / With brave men’s souls / And hands that clasp united / […] And eyes that see tomorrow’s sun / Rise on a world not blighted / With slavery’s shame / In free men’s name / Will justice be a’righted” (15). Once again, Jefferson therefore became the outright opponent of slavery, whose ideals influenced that Second Revolutionary generation. Lerman revealed Jefferson’s revolutionary nature when Jefferson sat on the plow with Ebenezer, “whispering to himself, ‘All right! She’ll go like hell afire’ ” (15). On hearing this, Ebenezer, who had been scared all along, screamed to get off “ ‘this new-fangled devils plow’ ” (15), but the neighbors had given it a push and there was no stopping it. “Trouble is, Mr. Jefferson he’d forgotten to put a stopping handle on that plow. Or maybe he didn’t forget” (15), implying that he wanted it to go “through that 530,000,000 acres of land […] across the Atlantic Ocean, […] through France and England, and all these other countries before they finally came back” (15). Jefferson and his plow instigated a world revolution and the world has “never been the same since. […] But not for Ebenezer” who remained a reactionary, “still riding the backwood trails” (15). In contrast, Jefferson’s plow “rides on […] For everyone” / “Runs by an idea / From Jefferson’s pen. / For Jefferson said / Men will be free / When they get to planting / That Liberty Tree” (15). On that note Lerman concluded the allegory, suggesting that Communists had only started to plant “That Liberty Tree” and worked in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson for a revolution in America and throughout the world in 1943 and beyond. While the New Masses special issue celebrated “200 Years” of Jefferson and memorialized its version of him in this printed form, it appropriated Jefferson as Marx’s predecessor. Though not a magazine of the CPUSA, Earl Browder certainly approved of the Jefferson special issue and its range of contributors highlighted the broad Popular and Democratic Fronts. Hence, Jefferson became the chief supporter of the American and Russian alliance that fought on the side of the ordinary people and workers against the threat of fascism. By depicting Jefferson as trailblazer and intellectual visionary, they won him for their cause, while they additionally stressed that he had worked within the practical constraints and limitations of his time. This combination enabled the New Masses and the American Communists to justify their own tactical maneuvers while still adhering to their vision that communism (the communist revolution)

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would be the most progressive, humanitarian, and inevitable development. Even though it can be assumed that Senator Thomas would not have agreed with this communist conclusion, he shared with them a concern for the common people, an international world view, and detested the fascist regimes so much so that he partially shared in the communist vision by participating in their memorialization of Jefferson. The Jefferson Memorial became the physical form for preserving the nation’s memory of Thomas Jefferson, and it was intertwined with the performative aspects of collective memory when it served as a platform for the celebration of the bicentennial of Jefferson’s birth on its dedication date, April 13, 1943. The celebration of the bicentennial illustrated that dates, significant to the nation’s birth and development, played an important part in the American civil religious calendar. While the official celebration communicated to the nation a specific unified idea of Jeffersonian values and their worth for the nation, the special issue of the New Masses revealed that non-hegemonic ideas of Jefferson were also allowed to exist parallel to the official portrait and competed for recognition. Senator Thomas’s article in the special issue, entitled “World Citizen” or “Jefferson and the New World” also appeared in the Congressional Record. The Democratic Senator also served on the TJMC and thus was part of a governmental institution established by the legislative branch of government. As member of the incumbent Democratic Party, he also faced party pressure. Senator Thomas’s article, that is Thomas’s narrative of Thomas Jefferson, therefore revealed the interconnection between the hegemonic story and the alternate interpretation of Jefferson. The Symposium of the Library of Congress on Thomas Jefferson and the New Masses special Jefferson issue illustrated that the memorializing discourse was always influenced, to different degrees, by aspects of appropriation. This aspect will be further explicated in the next chapter.

3 Appropriating Jefferson The bicentennial celebration of Jefferson’s birthday on April 13, 1943 marked a special event for the nation and the declaration of Jefferson’s birthday as public holiday contributed to making Jefferson a more important element of the civil religious calendar. However, Jefferson’s birthday had not entirely been forgotten since his death in 1826. Members of the Democratic Party had organized a Jefferson Day Dinner (JDD) in Washington, D.C., in 1830, starting a tradition all over the country which continued well into the twentieth century. The 1830 dinner, which featured six speeches, interspersed by twenty-four toasts, was the first partisan event in which politicians appropriated Jefferson for furthering their own interest in a public, national, and performative way.1 The significance of this tradition for the years 1934 to 1943 becomes evident through the number of Jefferson Day speeches in the Congressional Record (Cong. Rec.) which increased from the 1920s and peaked in 1943. Of the sixty speeches published between 1934 and 1943, only twelve were delivered by Republicans and they occurred primarily after the Republican Party had regained some of its strength, culminating at the Jefferson Bicentennial. Twenty-seven of the sixty speeches had previously been given at a JDD hosted by the Democratic Party or Democratic clubs. The inclusion of these speeches in the Cong. Rec. attests to the fluidity between the political and public discourses and interconnection of different forms of memorialization. By inserting a Jefferson Day speech into the Cong. Rec., congressmen reached wider audiences through the franking privilege. Next to these appropriations that were closely intertwined with Jefferson’s birthday, congressmen appropriated his writings, policy measures, and behavior—in relation to specific bills and current issues debated in Congress and by the public. These moral entrepreneurs of Jefferson tied their argumentation to praising Jefferson, using the rhetorical technique of the Jefferson Day speeches. The sheer number of speakers, the manifold applications of Jefferson’s sayings, and the diverse attributions to Jefferson for means of appropriation that

1 Peterson 1985, 53. Peterson notes that Jefferson, by 1828, had become the South Carolina Nullifier’s “armor of safety […]. Chanting his name and doctrine, celebrating his birthday, showering him with oratory […] was a ritual in South Carolina politics […]” (53). The dinner of 1830, however, propelled the topic onto the national stage.

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the speakers created justify a closer look at these bills, debates, and underlying issues. Some of these issues had already been debated during the 1830 Jefferson Day Dinner, albeit only by members of the Democratic or Jacksonian Party. The bipartisan appropriation of Jefferson only flourished in the 1930s. A discussion of the similarities and differences between the 1830 and 1930s Jefferson Day speeches with reference to the rhetorical devices of epideictic and symbouleutic oratory, shed light on how these moral entrepreneurs through their narratives on Thomas Jefferson constructed his iconicity. They painted a word picture of Jefferson and his deeds that were to affect the audience by making him the “evocation[…] of questions and resolutions” and into a model of “heroic human experience.”2 They borrowed his authority for various causes which addressed specific problems, but each also touched the core values of society, negotiating its public memory: “a body of beliefs and ideas about the past that help a […] society understand both its past, present, and by implication, its future.”3 Given this definition of public memory, an analysis of the origin of the Jefferson Day celebration illuminates functions and methods used in the 1930s and early 1940s.

3.1 The Political and Rhetorical Tradition of the Jefferson Day Speeches The Popular Memory Group argues that “all political activity is intrinsically a process of historical argument […] involve[ing] some construction of the past as well as the future.”4 This assertion becomes evident in the 1830 Jefferson Day Dinner organized by prominent Democrats allegedly to celebrate Jefferson and the general program of the party. Though the dinner was masked as a public celebration, a faction of the Democratic Party had designed it to convince Andrew Jackson of the nullification theory through speeches and toasts about Jefferson. This chicanery illustrates that political power “involves historical definition. History—in particular popular memory—is at stake in the constant struggle for

2 Goethals 1978, 24–25. 3 Bodnar 1992, 266. 4 Popular Memory Group, “Popular Memory: Theory, Politics, and Methods.” Making Histories: Studies in History-Writing and Politics. Ed. Richard Johnson. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982. 205–52. Print. 213.

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hegemony.”5 This struggle relies on successful communication, which, in turn, is contingent upon the adherence to certain genre conventions.6 The moral entrepreneurs of the first JDD incorporated time-honored rites derived from the Forefathers’ Day celebrations into their own political event,7 creating specific rhetorical practices that evolved into 1930s. While the speeches at the JDD drew on aspects of the funeral panegyrics delivered in Jefferson’s honor after his death,8 and therefore on epideictic genre conventions, the political nature of Jefferson’s moral entrepreneurs also requires an investigation of the deliberative and juridical genres. A study of the purpose and effect of dovetailing these genres clarifies how iconicity is created through speeches and written texts. Depending on differing terminologies of rhetoricians,9 commemorative speeches are known as encomia (speech of praise) or eulogies. The “panegyrical funeral speech, belonging to that category,” was marked by “ritualistic, ornamental, and commemorative” aspects.10 With the increasing distance between Jefferson’s death and the celebrations, the ritualistic elements became more important as the expression of grief was transformed into one of gratitude for the services rendered to the nation by the deceased. Panegyric as “a speech or 5 Popular Memory Group 1982, 213. The term “hegemony” has to be problematized. While it is true that politicians refer to the founders or founding events to legitimatize their allegiance to traditions, and thereby vie for the voters’ faith in their ability to lead the nation, this undertaking relies on the successful use of spoken and written language, which is contingent upon the rules of production, that is, the observance of genre conventions. 6 These aspects become apparent in the protocol and progression of the 1830 JDD which can be analyzed through the online archive 19th Century U. S. Newspapers. Martin Van Buren’s Autobiography also narrates the events leading to the 1830 JDD and his and Andrew Jackson’s preparation for the event. Finally, Marquis James recounts the first dinner in the biography Andrew Jackson: Portrait of a President (1937). 7 Udo Hebel, “The Rise and Fall of Forefathers’ Day as a Site of National Memory.” Sites of Memory in American Literatures and Cultures. Ed. Udo Hebel. Heidelberg: Winter, 2003. Print. 8 Cf. “[Common; Thomas Jefferson; John Adams].” Albany Argus 11 July 1826:  3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers. Web. 14 May 2019. . 9 “Panegyric, n.”. Ronald Green, et al., eds. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. 4th ed. Princeton: Princeton UP, op. 2012. Print. 994. 10 Roger Rees, “Panegyric.” A Companion to Roman Rhetoric. Eds. William Dominik and Jon Hall. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. 136–148. Print. 138.

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poem in praise of some person, object, or event”11 delivered in a public forum12 could be used to “project and reinforce a specific ideology of patriotism, collectivity, and citizenship.”13 Panegyrics thus were means of shaping a culture’s ideals and values14 and instructions on how to write them sounded more like “moral philosophy” than “rhetorical instructions.”15 Regarding moral philosophy, nine virtues figured prominently within panegyrics, such as “justice, courage, wisdom, magnificence, magnanimity,16 liberality,17 gentleness, prudence, and intelligence.”18 An orator could structure the speech according to the different virtues, explicating each by detailing important achievements from the subject’s life. Or, the orator could point to the most important events in a person’s life and illustrate their relation to the catalogue of virtues chronologically, even adding a person’s “later reputation or legacy.”19 The rigidity of these approaches was considerably broken up by the 1930s; yet the devices to heighten the praise remained the same. To testify to the subject’s achievements it is beneficial to “show that a man is the first one or the only one 1 1 Rees 2007, 136. 12 “Panegyric, n.”. Princeton Encyclopedia, 994. At “Greek festivals” or Roman “plenary assembl[ies].” 13 Jon Hesk, “Types of Oratory.” The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric. Ed. Erik Gunderson. New York: Cambridge UP, 2009. 145–161. Print.157. Besides Hesk, William D. Harpine notes in his essay that epideictic speeches “appeal to traditions,” “reinforce beliefs and values,” and instruct by giving examples of good and bad. Cf. William D. Harpine. “ ‘We Want Yer, McKinley’: Epideictic Rhetoric in Songs from the 1896 Presidential Campaign.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34.1 (2004): 73–88. JSTOR. Web. 6 June 2013. 75. 14 Cf. Rees 2007, 137; Cf. Joy Connolly, “The Politics of Rhetorical Education.” The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric. Ed. Erik Gunderson. New York: Cambridge UP, 2009. 126–144. Print. 127; Cf. John Dugan, “Rhetoric and the Roman Republic.” The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric. Ed. Erik Gunderson. New York: Cambridge UP, 2009. 178–193. Print. 180. “The identity of the orator is part of a larger imagined community that he constructs in his speech, as res publica (“affair of the people”) to whose nature and values Roman oratory repeatedly returns.” 15 Rees 2007, 137. 16 Edward Corbett, ed., Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. New York: Oxford UP, 1971. Print. 153. 17 Corbett 1971, 153. 18 Rees 2007, 137; Corbett 1971. 153. Four of these, justice, courage, temperance, and wisdom were canonical. 19 Rees 2007, 138. Cf. Abraham Lincoln’s opinion of Jefferson in the April-13 speeches of the 1930s to 1943.

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or almost the only one to do something, [and] […] has done something better than anyone else, for superiority of any kind is thought to reveal excellence.”20 Moreover, “it will redound more to his credit if he has accomplished something under adverse conditions.”21 Another strategy was drawing comparisons22 “with others, good or bad, real or fictional, contemporary or not,”23 and the comparison of the subject with other great men increased the fame of the man praised.24 In the Jefferson Day speeches, comparisons to George Washington or Abraham Lincoln added rather than distracted from Jefferson’s fame by extending his influence. A comparative approach was also appropriate in so far as each virtue could be matched with a complementary vice.25 The arch enemy of Jefferson that the Agrarians focused on and that appears in the Jefferson Day speeches was Alexander Hamilton, whose influence was often extended and vices exaggerated to increase Jefferson’s positive virtues. Praise and invective are opposites in epideictic oratory, which means “fit for display” and was early on stigmatized as “showing off.”26 Thus, orators embellished their speeches with hyperbolic and euphemistic statements to glorify their subject. As such embellishments could tarnish the narrative’s “truthfulness,” Romans considered epideictic “everything respectable historiography should not be.”27 Despite the tendency toward exaggeration, aspects of epideictic rhetoric could usefully be incorporated in forensic and deliberative oratory, for instance, when composing a character testimonial in a legal defense.28 In a similar way, moral entrepreneurs of Jefferson used a positive character testimonial that they themselves had constructed of him, in order to aid their argumentation. Corbett explains that “in praising a great man, [the orator] was suggesting, indirectly at least, that his audience go and do likewise; and in thus suggesting a course of action he was moving over into the realm of deliberative discourse.”29 To affect the

2 0 Corbett 1971, 154–5. 21 Corbett 1971, 155. 22 Cf. Rees 2007, 137. 23 Rees 2007, 140. 24 Cf. Corbett 1971, 155. 25 Corbett 1971, 153. 26 epideictic. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Ed. Alexander P.  Kazhdan. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. 710. 27 Rees 2007, 136. 28 Cf. Rees 2007, 138. 29 Corbett 1971, 152. Orators encouraged the listeners to emulate the deceased (Hesk 2009, 157).

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audience, Ricœur explains, the orator has to “mak[e]‌the probable more attractive,” namely, that which makes most sense for one’s individual worldview at the time.30 Given this correlation, all processes of discourse rely on Wagner-Pacifici’s event/code fit and the degree of probability and compatibility is inextricably linked to the individual auditor. While some moments of compatibility might be shared with the fellow audience and similar values might coalesce, one has to assume that a multitude of varying correlations can arise in an audience at various moments during the speech process. Dennis and Susan G. Hall argue that such “a contest of possible meanings and values makes up the drawing power of an icon, and makes it dynamic, rather than static, evolving, rather than securely definable.”31 The dynamism of iconicity through narration is further increased, argues Ricœur, because writing inscribes the memories to be “shaped” and retained on material support, which leads to the “the semantic autonomy of the text as regards both the speaker and the hearer.” Thus, “the works of language become as self-contained as sculptures” and the “readability of the narrative […] generates visibility in quasi ‘portraiture.’ ”32 Moral entrepreneurs painted a word picture of Jefferson, shaping and producing a specific self-contained icon of him. In the next step, they made “cunning use of the prestige of the image used in the service of rendering praise.” Ricœur speaks of “the rule-governed exploitation of praise discourse,”33 a formulation which supports that such exploitation is tied to the rules of the genre, the event/code fit, and one’s understanding of the relation between past, present, and future. Epideictic rhetoric connects matters of the present with the remembrance of the past and a look forward34 and though it is mainly used to praise or to blame, Hesk argues, similar to Ricœur, that “other concepts can be deployed with that telos in mind,”35 indicating the political repurposing of praise discourse,36 which, according to James Jasinski, can

3 0 Ricœur 1976, 48. 31 Dennis Hall, and Susan G. Hall, eds., American Icons: An Encyclopedia of the People, Places, and Things That Have Shaped Our Culture. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print. xviii. 32 Ricœur 1976, 33. 33 Ricœur 2006, 265. 34 Hesk 2009, 145. 35 Hesk 2009, 146. 36 Popular Memory Group 1982, 258.

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also be used for a rearticulation or reinterpretation of a dominant historical narrative.37 The importance of rhetoric and epideictic speeches in politics becomes evident through the “discursive knot” which intertwines “virtue, politics, and eloquence.”38 The political is defined by the qualities that distinguish humans from beasts, that is, by their ability to reflect on feelings and to communicate these reflections reasonably.39 Through communication the likelihood of misunderstanding within a group is minimalized and the potential for violent conflict alleviated. This process increases “the good of all, and thus transform[s]‌their community into one whose rules may rightly be called ‘political.’ ”40 Walter Lippmann, a moral entrepreneur of Jefferson during the Library of Congress Symposium, expressed this when he countered those tired and unnerved by the public dialogue in the 1930s: “Deride the talk as much as you like; it is the civilized substitute for street brawls, gang, conspiracies, assassinations, private armies. No other substitute has yet been discovered.”41 The form of a group’s political organization governs the power relations inherent in it and defines the “distribution of power between the speaker and the audience.”42 The speaker relies on the “flexibility and slipperiness of language and performance,”43 to communicate his message, which might not be understood, or understood differently, by single members of the audience or the audience as a whole. Thus, the power relations in these rituals of social practice can be challenged, leading members to question the hegemonic authority of the speaker. Panegyric could be used counter hegemonically as “civic petition,” which “stretch[ed] the function […] beyond the purely epideictic or propagandistic”44 and the praise “is better understood as the most plausible means the orator could devise to secure his agenda than as evidence for central control

37 James Jasinski, “Rearticulating History in Epideictic: Frederick Douglass’s ‘The Meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro.’ ” Rhetoric and Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1997. 71–89. 78. 38 Connolly 2009, 127. 39 Cf. Connolly 2009, 127. 40 Connolly 2009, 127. 41 Qtd. in Barnet Baskerville, The People’s Voice:  The Orator in American Society. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1979. Print. 197. Walter P. Lippmann, Interpretations: 1933– 1935. New York: Macmillan, 1936. Print. 305. 42 Connolly 2009, 137. 43 Connolly 2009, 137. 44 Rees 2007, 145.

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over what was said.”45 Rees, like Schwartz and Ricœur, thereby complicates the issue of hegemony. While the speeches “stake[d]‌out one’s cultural authority,”46 the success of this attempt depended on each addressee. These interrelations of power over what is being said and what or whose rules are to be followed play an important role in regard to the construction and employment of an icon, according to Walter Hölbling.47

From 1830 to the 1930s The rhetorical strategies and its purposes outlined above were carried over into the Jefferson Day speeches of the 1930s and early 1940s. Had Democrats expressed their wish that “even Republicans will have Jefferson day dinners”48 in 1899, by the1930s, Republicans had at least some Jefferson Day speeches to show for and took over the genre in 1943 in contributions to the Cong. Rec. While newspaper reports increased the audience at the earliest Jefferson Day dinners, the community of interest was additionally expanded through the radio in the 1930s. The medium ushered in a “dramatic renaissance of political speaking” as “prime instrument for the conduct of public affairs.”49 Even though the airwaves were free and open to all, the medium underlined the “prominence and power” of the executive; he could speak with one voice, whereas five hundred congressmen could not do so.50 Nonetheless, it must be noted that they employed this device, and like FDR, used it “to appeal directly to the voters.”51 Between 1934 and 1943, the Congressional Record contains eight speeches given by federal or state legislators or Jefferson Club members that were broadcast additionally to having been delivered at a JDD. All speeches went beyond mere praise, as they strongly appropriated Thomas Jefferson, their object of praise, for specific socio-political purposes or motifs using Jefferson as anchor in the continuously changing socio-political and economic landscape that the nation experienced after Jefferson’s death in 1826. While the Democratic Party

4 5 46 47 48

Rees 2007, 145. Hesk 2009, 160. Cf. Hölbling 2006, 7. “Notes and Comments.” Milwaukee Journal [Milwaukee, WI] 29 Mar. 1899: 6. America’s Historical Newspapers. Web. 8 Mar. 2013. 49 Baskerville 1979, 171–172. 5 0 Baskerville 1979, 182. Radio “came to maturity at precisely the right time for Franklin D. Roosevelt.” 51 Baskerville 1979, 183.

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had hosted the first JDD, the Cong. Rec. reveals that the dinners of the 1930s and 1940s were hosted by various democratic political clubs across the country. Therefore, it seems as if the dinner tradition developed into a grassroots movement that was marked by local interests. Despite this appearance of lacking a centralized force, Roosevelt, as presidential candidate, had used the JDD of 1932 to “endorse national economic planning.”52 He also intended to bring these local followers of Jefferson together by broadcasting his 1945 speech to 250 Jefferson Dinners all over the country.53 However, Roosevelt died on April 12. The speech was subsequently published in newspapers and delivered in parts at a meeting held in preparation for the United Nations Security Conference, which took place in San Francisco on April 25, 1945.54 Roosevelt’s last undelivered Jefferson Day Dinner speech stands at the end of the investigation of the political discourse on Thomas Jefferson, which is based on the speeches given in Congress in honor of his birthday between 1934 and 1943 and the myriad attributions they developed in order to praise and appropriate Thomas Jefferson.

3.2 Jefferson Attributions—Appropriating Jefferson After this excursion into the historical origins and developments of politically motivated praise discourse in the Jefferson Day speeches, its relationship to theories of icons and iconicity has to be further established. Political-praise narrative which through preservation in writing was freed of the face-to-face situation, Ricoeur argues, becomes independent and the memories shaped therein become autonomous. The same process applies when a speech was recorded and broadcast. Ricœur’s adaptation of the theory of “iconic augmentation,” sheds light on how political-praise narratives about Jefferson contributed to turning him into an icon for the people. Ricœur stresses the similarities between the art of painting and writing regarding their attempt to portray reality and criticized Plato’s idea that an eikōn was only a “shadow of reality.”55 Rather, Ricœur, borrowing François Dagognet’s concept of “iconic augmentation,”56 emphasizes that 52 John C. Chalberg, “New Deal Memories.” Rev. of In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, by William Leuchtenberg. Commentary. 77.5 (May 1984): 74–77. Print. 77. 53 Associated Press. “President’s Undelivered Speech Stresses Need for Banning War. The Evening Star (Washington, District of Columbia) 14 Apr. 1945: A4. 54 “Thousands Attend Peace Dedication.” The Washington Post 23 Apr. 1945: 7. ProQuest. Web. 11 May 2014. 55 Ricœur 1976, 40. 56 François Dagognet, Ecriture et Iconographie. Paris: J. Vrin,1973. Print.

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writing and painting try to “reconstruct reality,” by focusing on detail, giving perspective, and relying on “contraction and miniaturization.” An image works against the chaos of optical perception, and writing structures meaning from the chaos of competing facts; therefore, each uses contraction and culmination. Both techniques do not subtract anything from the original but expand its meaning. What happens in the creation of an icon, therefore, is neither a production nor a reproduction, but a metamorphosis of reality or of the real figure.57 Ricœur suggests that a society through remembrance can transform its icons in a productive, creative way. Even though each moral entrepreneur tried to arrive at a normative truth in the process of memorialization and iconization of Jefferson, the act of transforming a historical figure into an icon meant that the transformer entered into a “process of augmentation where the apparent denial of reality is the condition for the glorification of the non-figurative essence of things. Iconicity, then, means the revelation of a real, more real than ordinary reality.”58 Thus, the narratives on Jefferson serve as an “aesthetic augmentation of reality” and represent attempts of the “re-writing of reality.”59 Iconic augmentation involves both an internal, (un)conscious, and an external process, for each moral entrepreneur. The moral entrepreneur bestowed the historical figure Thomas Jefferson with certain attributes—Humanitarian, Practical Idealist, Communist or Socialist, Strict Constructionist and States’ Rights Advocate—and thereby added some quality or qualities to Jefferson. The attribution gave additional meaning to the figure of Jefferson, which can be understood as an external process that expanded the original figure. At the same time, the moral entrepreneur engaged in a meaning-making process for himself, as he selected the attributes to be highlighted in connection with Jefferson. In trying to understand himself in this world and in the national crisis of the Depression Era, the moral entrepreneur sought to make his own situation fit with the answers and guidelines he strove to find in the historic Jefferson. This internal process that was linked to the moral entrepreneur’s reading of Jefferson’s works or secondary literature, and his own and the nation’s situation. This internal process was necessary because Jefferson was spatially and temporally removed from the moral entrepreneurs. To overcome that distance, the moral entrepreneur needed to make that which was foreign and distant familiar. “To appropriate,” Ricœur reminds us, “is to make ‘one’s own’ what was

5 7 Ricœur 1976, 40–41. 58 Ricœur 1976, 42. 59 Ricœur 1976, 42.

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‘alien.’ ”60 The word field of appropriate also contains such words as to “ ‘impute,’ ‘accountable’ (take upon one’s own account, be accountable, or hold someone else accountable).”61 In other words, if a moral entrepreneur took it upon himself to identify with Jefferson through the various attributions, he was accountable for that narrative, while he was trying to hold others accountable to the values he espoused through his Jefferson narrative. The moral entrepreneur used attributions to overcome the estrangement62 and by trying to interpret and appropriate Jefferson, he ultimately “aim[ed] at the extension of self-understanding.”63 If the self or one’s identity is shaped by the values, traditions and beliefs one lives by, and if those same parameters prevail in a nation, this extension of self-understanding also reflects a collective, national search for meaning and identity. This connection is all the more relevant, as the moral entrepreneurs served as the people’s representatives participating in the nation’s political and public discourse. The process of iconizing Jefferson, therefore, falls into the realm of creating “cultural fictions,” which are needed “[t]‌o make others seem real to us.”64 In a nation of diverse peoples, only these “beliefs […] allow [them] to have confidence that […] they are part of a larger moral community that holds dear the same values and will make the same sacrifices.”65 Moral entrepreneurs made Thomas Jefferson into the embodiment of those shared beliefs after they had bridged the divide that separated the historical figure from the current populace, and made him into an icon.

6 0 Ricœur 1976, 43. 61 Paul Ricœur, History, Memory, Forgetting. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006. Print. 125. The words concern and ascription belong to the same ethico-judicial field together with punishment and reward. Ricœur states that “those who can account for their actions to themselves are ‘accountable.’ They can impute these actions to themselves (§ 26). Other expressions follow suit: being accountable is also being ‘concerned’ (we recognize in this term the Latin cura). [….] The shift to a judicial vocabulary is not far off. The transitional concept is that of ‘person,’ the other ‘name for this self ’ (§ 26). What makes it a synonym for the self, despite its ‘forensic’ character? The fact that it signifies that the self ‘reconciles’ and ‘appropriates,’ that is to say, assigns, allocates to consciousness the ownership of its acts. The vocabulary is extremely dense here: the verb ‘to appropriate’ plays on the possessive and on the verbs signifying to own and to impute to oneself (§ 26)” (107). 62 Ricœur also notes the “distance between the property appropriated and the owner” (2006, 125). 63 Ricœur 1976, 43. 64 Fenn 2004, 21. 65 Fenn 2004, 21.

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It is fair to claim that the moral entrepreneurs’ reading of Jefferson’s works “rescue[d]‌” the “meaning of the text […] from the estrangement of distanciation and put in a new proximity which suppresse[d] and preserve[d] the cultural distance and include[d] the otherness within the ownness.”66 Through their Jefferson narratives, the moral entrepreneurs gave their interpretation of his life and works “actualiz[ing]” Jefferson for the contemporary audience. Their engagement with the historical Jefferson, made possible the wider acknowledgement of the Jefferson icon. The question remained how “faithful” their interpretative account was to the original.67 Moral entrepreneurs disputed this consistently as they were both, agents and audience, in this search and contest for shaping cultural identity. The relationship between the moral entrepreneur and his audience was described by the tradition of panegyrics as moral instruction. By lauding Jefferson, the moral entrepreneur made an appeal to the audience to go and do likewise.68 The appropriations can be described as a “fusion of horizons: the world horizon of the reader [or audience] is fused with the world horizon of the writer [moral entrepreneur]. And the ideality of the text [and speech] is the mediating link in this process of horizon fusing.”69 When the Jefferson Day speeches were printed and distributed, or inserted into the Cong. Rec., moral entrepreneurs achieved a “universalization of the audience.” Dissolving the face-to-face situation also made the discourse “more spiritual in the sense that it is liberated […].”70 The liberation of the Jefferson narrative culminated in congressmen’s borrowing and re-appropriating of their colleagues’ speeches. This double-appropriation led to 66 Ricœur 1976, 43; 92. Ricœur explains that Aristotle introduced the “category of otherness into the heart of the relation between the eikōn, reinterpreted as an inscription, and the initial affection” (2006, 19). That is, “the eikōn contains within itself the other of the original affection” (Ricœur 2006, 51). 67 “Tradition only becomes problematic when this first naiveté [of first certainty] is lost. Then we have to retrieve its meaning through and beyond estrangement. Henceforth appropriation of the past proceeds along an endless struggle with distanciation. Interpretation, philosophically understood, is nothing else than an attempt to make estrangement and distanciation productive” (Ricœur 1976, 44). 68 Cf. Corbett 1971, 152. 69 Ricœur 1976, 93. 70 Ricœur 1976, 31. “Thanks to writing, man and only man has a world and not just a situation. This extension is one more example of the spiritual implications of the substitution of material marks for the bodily support of oral discourse. In the same manner that the text frees its meaning from the tutelage of the mental intention, it frees its reference from the limits of situational reference” (Ricœur 1976, 36).

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an ever-wider dissemination of the Jefferson icon and to even greater flexibility and iconic augmentation. Congressmen created active networks of discourse on Jefferson and the political situation which strengthened the icon’s relevance for their situation. By inserting a speech into the Cong. Rec., congressmen secured themselves the ‘franking’ privilege which allowed them to distribute these speeches for free to their constituents and others.71 To recapitulate, sixty Jefferson Day speeches were given in Congress between 1934 and 1943. Of those sixty, only twelve were given by Republicans, and their participation in the ritual of the Democratic Party culminated on Jefferson’s Bicentennial. Prior to the bicentennial, James M.  Beck’s two Jefferson Day speeches (1934 and 1936) and Charles A. Plumley’s two Jefferson Day speeches (1936 and 1940) were inserted into the Cong. Rec. Republicans were more vocal when it came to discussing the Jefferson Memorial, or appropriated Jefferson in connection with specific bills and topics, such as the third term, the Monroe Doctrine, and patronage. Of the remaining forty-eight speeches, twenty-seven had been delivered at a Jefferson Day Dinner in the same year as the speech was inserted into the Cong. Rec. Additionally, eight out of those forty-eight were broadcast via different radio stations. One of those eight was a speech by the Vermont Republican Charles Plumley which had been delivered on April 13, 1940, and in addition to being broadcast it was inserted into the Cong. Rec. by Plumley’s colleague William Ditter from Pennsylvania. Within all these speeches and discussions, four Jefferson attributions emerge and give meaning to the icon Jefferson:  the Humanitarian, the Strict Constructionist and States’ Rights Advocate, the Socialist, or Communist, and the Practical Idealist. These attributions are interrelated in different and intricate ways, and the moral entrepreneurs’ understanding and application of these attributions, while sharing points of convergence and agreement, at times vary significantly. I  argue that the broad range of similarities and differences contribute to the power of the Jefferson icon. While the similarities created the feeling of inclusion, union, and agreement, the variations within these abstract and elusive attributions bespeak the productive ambiguity that pervades the process of appropriation and iconization, while reflecting the diversity of the American nation. The analysis will reveal how the personal and political background of the respective moral entrepreneurs and their and the nation’s situation influenced which attributions proved meaningful in their appropriation of the

71 Bullock 1978, 51.

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Jefferson icon, or in their attempt to actualize the meaning of the Jefferson icon for the nation. The next four subchapters are a case study of the various moral entrepreneurs and their use of the four attributions in specific situations to create and appropriate the Jefferson icon in order to argue their own socio-political position and vision for America in the time of uncertainty and national crisis. The case study attempts to adhere to chronology within the subchapters while also striving for thematic consistency across ideological differences.

3.2.1 Jefferson as Humanitarian The attribution of humanitarian was often used in debates about the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and in the Jefferson Day speeches contained in the Congressional Record.72 The abstract term or some variant of it, proved a highly flexible attribution employed by all groups, though it was most helpful to liberal New Dealers. As derived from the French humanitarisme, it was early on (1837) used in a “depreciative” way, describing “excessive sentimentality”73 toward the poor and criminals.74 Yet by the 1930s, an analysis of the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA),75 attests only to positive associations. It was used whenever people were praised for rendering a service to humanity, or more specifically, to the needy or weak. The definition of service comprised medical treatment or relief work. The term applied to public figures working for peace, or to artists and social and racial justice advocates working against inequality. Thus, humanitarians strove to raise up humankind intellectually and morally.76 Margaret Abruzzo notes that humanitarian movements were formed to “ease

72 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6581; Cong. Rec. 9 May 1935: 7272; Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1935: 10890; Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1935: 5766; Cong. Rec. 20 Apr. 1936: 5730–1; Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8355, 8360; Cong. Rec. 3 Jun. 1936: 8874; Cong. Rec. 7 Jun. 1938: 8440; Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1939: 4271; Cong. Rec. 12 Apr. 1940: 4436; Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3335; Cong. Rec. 28 Apr. 1941: A1937; 73 “humanitarian, n. and adj.”. OED Online. March 2013. Oxford UP. 17 April 2013. 74 “humanitarianism, n.”. OED Online. March 2013. Oxford UP. 17 April 2013. John Boylan noted with pride that Jefferson worked toward “humaniz[ing] criminal laws” to “further democracy in Virginia” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3406). 75 TIME Corpus; Corpus of Historical American English. 76 Aura May Hollen, Consciousness and Its Purpose. Hollywood: The Keats Publications, 1931. Corpus of Historical American English. A humanitarian strove “to lift thought to a higher level and to give the thinking mass a new standard of ideal”; Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5455.

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pain or abolish its infliction,”77 thus a humanitarian can be broadly described as someone who alleviates human suffering in all of its forms and fights against all forms of oppression. Abruzzo expands this definition by stressing altruism and sacrifice as “[h]‌umanitarianism denounced cruelty and praised those who sacrificed personal interests to relieve the suffering of others.”78 Abruzzo notes that the rise of humanitarianism pre-necessitated a “transformation of the moral thinking of pain.”79 Pain had been considered an “inevitable,” God-given affliction, “God’s loving discipline.” The Fall of Man initiated the “universal estrangement between God and creation,” which Jesus atoned for through his suffering on the cross. Pain had been considered spiritually useful and symbolized salvation through suffering. Over time, however, humanitarian movements developed on the basis that unnecessary pain was avoidable through human action. Humanitarianism became connected to Christian doctrines of altruism, love of neighbor, and service to one’s fellows which was pivotal for Jefferson’s moral entrepreneurs. While they used these attributions with Jefferson to bolster national morale and unity and advance individual charity, it has to be observed that the federal state largely assumed responsibilities previously held by philanthropic clubs and private charities. Olivier Zunz notes that the momentousness of the Depression had led to their incapacity to meet the needs of all the unemployed.80 A redefinition of “unnecessary pain” therefore occurred when Roosevelt declared that a rich country like America could not afford so much poverty. The turn toward social welfare began to change the ideal of the individual bonding with the less fortunate through charity. New Dealers used Jefferson’s humanitarianism to counter this trend and at the same time to explain social welfare. Others, however, questioned this altered concept of unnecessary pain by promoting, through panegyrics on Jeffersonian individualism, ideas of vigor, strength, and creativity that overcame want and poverty.

77 Margaret N. Abruzzo, Polemical Pain: Slavery, Cruelty, and the Rise of Humanitarianism. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2011. Print. New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History. 1. 78 Abruzzo 2011, 3. 79 Abruzzo 2011, 3. 80 Olivier Zunz, Philanthropy in America: A History. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2012. Print. Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America. “Even though private citizens increased their private charitable giving,” it was ‘pathetically inadequate,’ writes David Kennedy (1999, 88).The unemployment rate rose as high as 25 percent and never sank below 14 percent during the Great Depression (cf. Kennedy 1999, 56).

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The analysis of congressmen’s appropriation of Jefferson’s humanitarianism proceeds along chronological lines through case studies from 1934 to 1936. They lay the groundwork for speeches of later years, which are organized by themes—antislavery, asylum, and neutrality, pacifism, trade. Considerations of thematic coherence and the diversity of appropriations of similar ideas at times require minor breaks with chronology. The analysis considers speeches that lack the term humanitarian but employ its definition and connotations, thus even congressmen’s attribution of Jefferson as the friend of the common people81 carried implications of humanitarian ideas or deeds. Often congressmen intensified Jefferson’s humanitarianism by connecting it to Jesus Christ. This occurred in speeches given by high-ranking and lesser-known Democrats82 in both houses of Congress and in speeches by Republicans. They used the panegyric strategies of comparison and superiority to suggest that as much as God loved humankind to sacrifice his only son by making him human and subjecting him to suffering to procure salvation, so did Jefferson love and suffer for humanity. Both felt human agonies, understood the people’s needs, and with their ideas and deeds bettered their situation.83 How these connections played out specifically and to what purpose is analyzed in the following pages.

Humanitarianism in the Jefferson Day Address of Joseph B. Shannon (D-MO), 1934 Already in 1934, Joseph B.  Shannon, a Democrat from Missouri, connected Jefferson’s humanitarianism with the sacred text of the Declaration of

81 Cf. Rep. Ludlow (D-IN): “a real humanitarian and devoted friend of the common people” (Cong. Rec. 3 Jun. 1936: 8874). Rep. Michener (R-MI): “friend of the masses” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8532). John Coffee (D-WA) (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1814). Harry Byrd (D-VA): “[…] the father of democracy. His love for the common people of the Nation was as ardent as that of Jackson or Lincoln” (Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1938: 1662). Homer Angell (R-OR): “the Friend of the Common Man” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3320). John Overton (D-LA): “friend of the underprivileged and of the masses” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1517). 82 Rep. Ludlow (D-IN):  “197  years ago tomorrow there was born […] the greatest humanitarian 19 centuries have produced since the great human God trod the hills of Nazareth” (Cong. Rec. 12 Apr. 1940: 4436). 83 Sen. Barkley (D-KT), the Senate Majority Leader, intoned: “The Fourth of July without Jefferson would be like Christmas without the Man of Sorrows” (Cong. Rec. 7 Jul. 1943: A3574). This analogy between the birth of Christianity and the birth of a nation connected Christianity to what Bellah would call American civil religion.

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Independence. Four years earlier, Shannon had published Thomas Jefferson: The Advocate of Truth, Freedom and Equality,84 a collection of his Jefferson Day Speeches in which he also used the attribution. He strengthened it when he held up the Jefferson Bible as “bear[ing] witness to the fact that Jefferson was supreme, not only in his pure American statesmanship and ideals, but he was also supreme in his humanitarianism and practical Christianity” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6581).85 In this book, which Jefferson had called The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, he had copied out excerpts from the gospels, deleting everything that he regarded as ‘contrary to reason.’86 Jefferson thereby edited the Bible, focusing on the parables, moral teachings, and “the actual words of the founder of Christianity” which was a “novel idea” from which Jefferson sought practical guidance for private and public life (6581). Shannon correlated the attribution of humanitarianism with “practical Christianity” and expanded his comments on this Jeffersonian virtue by stressing “charity,” “peace,” “common wants,” and “common aids” (6581). To strengthen that Jefferson was the successor of Christ and not an “atheist” as his enemies had claimed, Shannon cited from Jefferson’s letter to Charles Thomason, stating “ ‘[the Jefferson Bible] is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus’ ” (6581). Shannon depicted the relation between Christian doctrines and Jefferson’s ideas as producing practical measures for addressing the problems of the time. Despite this pragmatism, Jefferson never departed from eternal ideals but with Jesus’ guidance was a “pioneer in the way of truth, honor, and honesty in public life,” arriving at the trinity “that all men were created free and equal and by their creator endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (6581). Shannon dovetailed Jefferson’s moral and ethical considerations with his political ideals and actions

84 Joseph B. Shannon, Thomas Jefferson: The Advocate of Truth, Freedom and Equality. Public Speeches of Joseph B.  Shannon, Touching upon Unfamiliar Phases of the Life and Teachings of the Great American Statesman. Kansas City: Press of the C. S. Demaree Stationery Comp., 1930. Print. 85 Norbert Graebner defined the term statesmanship by the effectiveness and skill with which one’s conscious political goal is being fulfilled—a goal which is based on both “morality” and “wisdom” (1959, 67). 86 Qtd. in Harry R.  Rubenstein, and Barbara Clark Smith, “History of the Jefferson Bible.” The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French & English. Smithsonian Edition. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2011. Print. 11–35.

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and claimed that these were homogenous and constant, deriving from a stable source. By quoting from the political and moral Declaration of Independence, and claiming that Jefferson “added to our Constitution the forgotten rights of the individual man” in form of the Bill of Rights, Shannon referred back to the idea that “Jefferson was supreme in his […] pure American statesmanship” (6581). Jefferson’s humanitarianism was thereby inextricably linked to Christianity and the republican form of government. By praising Jefferson’s “unselfish devotion to the Republic” and “welfare of the people” (6580), Shannon indicated that Jefferson as (practical Christian) humanitarian fought for the welfare and rights of the common people. Various Democratic Jefferson Day speeches would employ this idea. Shannon elevated Jefferson to a semi-divine level by linking him to the “human God” and these superlatives and affirmations of sacrifice and altruism created the Jefferson icon. Like the traditional icons, it became the evocation of questions and answers, transcended time, and served as a concrete model of heroic experience.87 Shannon stressed these qualities by reviewing Jefferson’s achievements which had laid the groundwork for shared national values and ideals sustaining the nation. Yet, he noted that in this time of “emergency,” the “political principles” of Jefferson were “honored more in the breach” (6580) while “the spirit of Jefferson is still alive and […] must be kept alive if we are to return to the wise counsel and rational doctrines he bequeathed upon us” (6579). Shannon‘s commemorative speech proved that Jefferson’s ideas were “still alive” in his memory and in Jefferson’s documents. However, he expressed the conundrum of trying to be loyal to his party while being unable to square the party policies with his own understanding of Jefferson’s doctrines. He attempted to dissolve this discrepancy and touched the core of the problem by marking the difference between Jefferson’s ‘spirit’ and ‘rational doctrines,’ a topic which pervaded the Cong. Rec. and the Jefferson Symposium at the Library of Congress. Moreover, he suggested why this distinction had to be made as Jefferson already feared that “changing conditions, the growth of industrial enterprise, and the ambitions of its great captains” (6584) would influence his doctrines. Shannon asserted that the nation would return to a strict application of his principles once the emergency, which had been caused by “followers of the Hamiltonian system” (6580), passed. While Hamilton favored “monarchy of some kind,” Jefferson advocated “government by the people” and urged ‘eternal

87 Cf. Goethals 1978, 25.

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vigilance’ against anti-republican tendencies. Shannon used this admonition to bridge the past and the present, praising a “congressional committee investigating the utterances of one individual concerning an alleged contemplated change in our government” (6581). Thus, he called Jefferson’s blessing on the newly formed McCormack-Dickstein Committee on un-American activities.88 Yet, he distinguished between attempts to overthrow the government and agitating for change through freedom of speech. Thus, Shannon emphasized the virtue of tolerance as outgrowth of Jefferson’s humanitarianism and practical Christianity which he proved by quoting Jefferson: “I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ with me in opinion without imputing to them criminality” (6584). Debates thus were the whetstone of democracy, and Shannon thereby attempted to unify both parties in their goal to preserve the nation. In two brief instances, Shannon co-opted Jefferson’s birthday panegyric to comment on current politics, interpreting them through the lens of his reading of Jefferson, his political affiliation, and his own religious and ethical preferences. Shannon was not the sole originator of interlinking Jefferson’s humanitarianism, practical Christianity, and democracy, yet his remarks serve as the earliest and rather neutral example for many similar attributions within the Cong. Rec. Liberal Democrats, and Republicans extended this appropriation in a number of ways, adapting it to the socio-political context of their rhetorical situation and political preferences as seen in Republican James M. Beck’s speech.

James Beck’s Republican Version of Jefferson’s Humanitarianism, 1934 Representative James Beck of Massachusetts started his speech with similar appropriations as Joseph Shannon had done three days earlier, but he arrived at different conclusions. Beck saw Jefferson as the successor of Christ and identified their common values. While he preferred to think that democracy “in its broadest and most catholic sense” originated not from Jefferson but from Jesus, he nonetheless believed that Jefferson was one of the first men to perpetuate Jesus’ idea of democracy (Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1934: 6867). He connected both figures to democracy which he defined “in a catholic sense,” as an “unbroken faith in the people” and a “desire for the common welfare” (6867). Beck equated a humanitarian, without using the term, with an advocate for the people’s welfare.

88 Cf. George Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives: A History of the American Liberty League, 1934–1940. Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Print. 85.

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He praised Shannon’s speech, agreeing that Jefferson’s humanitarianism was derived from Jesus and vital to the Union’s endurance (6867). Beck considered an attack on the Constitution as an attack on the people’s welfare, which he made apparent by quoting part of Jefferson’s inaugural as “the noblest interpretation of an ideal form of government” (6867). Beck, through Jefferson, defined “as the ideal of America ‘a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned’ ” (6867–8). Through this quote, he linked the concept of unnecessary pain and the people’s welfare to the survival of the American form of government. Beck believed that no party still followed Jefferson’s doctrines (6867). While “the extreme pressure of the times” might account for it (6869), he countered Shannon’s idea that a return to these principles was immanent once the emergency was over. Beck, who like Shannon had voted against the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA),89 advocated a return to Jefferson’s principles and thus an end to the federal government’s interference “in trade relations and the commercial intercourse” (6868).90 To uncover the absurdity of regulations, Beck asked rhetorically: What would Jefferson have thought of a theory of the ‘brain trust’ that a man who simply pressed a pair of pantaloons and delivered them around the corner could be controlled in respect to the price that he was to charge for his own labor? Jefferson inveighed against that […] when he said: ‘You shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.’ [… .] If he cannot sell his labor except as permitted by the Federal Government, is he truly a free man? Would Jefferson have so characterized him? (6869)

With the last point which took up another aspect of unnecessary pain, Beck argued that the regimentation of government “destroy[ed] the very soul of the individual,” which Jefferson “worshipped above everything else” (6869). Beck revealed that the freedom of the individual soul could not be separated from economic considerations, a point that liberal Democrats would employ constantly

89 Voting record of May 26, 1933 on House Resolution 5755, the National Industrial Recovery Act, creating the National Industrial Recovery Administration (“To Pass H.R. 5755.” Govtrack.us Web. 5 Aug. 2015 ). 90 Cf. Rep. Edward Rees’s (R-KS) advocacy of returning to Jefferson’s principles and argument against the monument because it was not supporting the “welfare of the Nation” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8532).

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with regard to Jefferson’s humanitarianism. However, he claimed that Jefferson would disapprove of the administration’s policies (6869).91 While Beck spoke favorably of the relief extended to the hungry and unemployed, he believed that the NIRA hindered their earning of wages and thereby pushed the people into relief programs. Had the individual worker been left to regulate his own pursuits instead of blinding him with “un-Jeffersonian and undemocratic interferences with individual liberty, he would have been farther along today on the road of recovery” (6869). Beck echoed Hoover’s simile that the Depression was like a flu that would pass if left alone, depicting “recovery […] already in progress” in 1932 but halted by the election and interregnum (6869). While the New Deal helped with the symptoms, it did not battle the cause but threatened the patient because of the negative side effects. For Beck, Jefferson’s humanitarianism thus was first tied to the people’s individual liberties and then to the general welfare.

Jefferson Appropriation in 1935 – Humanitarianism Expanded By April 1935 the New Deal was in another important phase, as the mid-term election of 1934 had given Democrats majorities in the House and Senate.92 Many of FDR’s reforms were enacted into law. As Republicans had been weakened by the election, the conservative business-oriented American Liberty League usurped its position if not as opposition party, so as opposition group. New Dealers not only faced challenges from the right for being too radical but also from the left for being too tame in dealing with the crisis. To invalidate accusations from either extreme, they continued to appropriate Jefferson’s “practical Christianity and humanitarianism” and attempted to disassociate him from these groups, while they tried to win him for their respective camp even if the term humanitarian was only used in its implications. Lewis Schwellenbach, the Senator from Washington, reveals a New Dealer’s appropriation of Jefferson’s Christian radicalism on behalf of the laborers. As a 91 Republicans: Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6869. Beck; Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1934: 10885, 10888. Eltse; Cf. Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8353; Knutson Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8354; Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3410. Plumley; Cf. Cong. Rec. 17 Aug. 1937: 9157. Knutson; Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8532. Rees; Cf. Cong. Rec. 31 Mar. 1943: 2776. Vorys; Cf. Cong. Rec. 9 Apr. 1943: 3231. Dondero; 92 The Emergency Relief Appropriations Act passed on April 8, 1935. The Banking Act, the Wagner National Labor Relations Act, the Public Utilities Holding Companies Act, and the Social Security Act followed. In January of 1935, FDR suffered defeat when Congress voted against America’s participation in the World Court.

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“liberal” from Washington, a “liberal state,”93 he asserted that the election showed that his Democratic duty was to carry out the New Deal program.94 Yet, he would freely consult with any liberal irrespective of party affiliation to solve social and economic problems. He justified the New Deal by expanding and placing a stronger value judgement on Jefferson’s humanitarianism. Like Shannon, he defined Jefferson’s idea of democracy as political leadership that “must have a heart. [….] Jefferson believed the best safeguard for democratic government to be a capable, honest, understanding leadership springing from the common people” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1935: 5730). He reiterated Jefferson’s honesty, practicability, and empathy with the people who were the source of all political power, which they exercised through their vote. Though Jefferson regarded this system as imperfect, as it was dependent on educated leaders and citizens, the people “were more capable of guaranteeing to themselves fair and just decisions” (5730) than kings or feudal lords who oppressed them. Thus, he “dedicated his life to the task of creating a new government under which oligarchies could not long exist” (cf. 5730). Yet, there remained “the few” which in the 1930s were the “industrial and financial interests just as powerful, just as lustful, just as corrupt, and just as inconsiderate of the rights of the people as any Jefferson gave his life work to destroy” (5731). Equating FDR’s and Jefferson’s fights against “the few” and “for a permanent guarantee that never again shall the American people know anguish, want, and suffering” (5731), he stressed their devotion to the people as alleviators of pain, highlighting the iconic qualities as hallmarks of humanitarians. As the off-year election had been conducted according to law, Schwellenbach concluded that the New Deal was neither unlawful, nor, as the opposition claimed, “radical.” He refuted the charge by turning radical into a positive term and situating it in the past, thus “propos[ing] change that seem[ed] consistent with a society’s values” as “[n]‌on-traditional change is likely to be regarded with suspicion as threatening or even revolutionary.”95 Reminding his colleagues, “the crime of which Christ was convicted […] was […] the teaching of a then radical

93 Lewis B. Schwellenbach, “What I Intend to Do as United States Senator: The First of Four Articles by Hon. Lewis B. Schwellenbach.” Spokane Press 18 Dec. 1934: n.p. Box 6, Lewis B. Schwellenbach Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 94 David M.  Kennedy remarked that Schwellenbach was an “ardent New Deal senator[…]” (1999, 348). 95 Kammen 1991, 7.

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doctrine” (5731)96 and connecting Jesus’ radical humanitarianism to Jefferson and FDR, he displayed their ‘heroic’ ideas, deeds, and sacrifice. As Jesus’ doctrines were paramount in a Christian nation, his radicalness made Jefferson’s and FDR’s non-threatening. These ideas were also present at the state and local level where they were modified to address the concerns of the constituents of Compton White, the Representative of Idaho’s First District.97 White inserted the JD speech “The Ideals of Jefferson” by George Meffan, the “former State Senator, now United States marshal for Idaho,” into the Cong. Rec. Meffan buttressed his argument by saying: “Jefferson was a real humanitarian, a man of defiance, unusual mentality, courage, and success in its broadest meaning” who “carried to his heart the burdens of our race” (Cong Rec. 9  May  1935:  7272).98 His empathy with suffering humankind led him to establish “new code of government” (7272), embodied in his democratic doctrine “ ‘Man over money, human rights over property rights, equal and exact justice to the rich and the poor, with special privilege to none’ ” (7272).99 This creed proved Jefferson a man of “vision” and “leader[] of advanced thought” who was opposed by those who “rebel against progress” (7272). True to panegyric conventions, Meffan compared Jefferson to Socrates who had been opposed by the Athenians and to Christ whom the Jews had not recognized. They “displayed wisdom and courage” which “our worthy

96 Cf. Jefferson, ‘the illustrious chief, whom once insulted, now presides over the union’ to ‘him who, once insulted, now presides over the universe.’ He then compared those who voted against Jefferson with Jews who refused to accept Jesus as their Messiah. (Abraham Bishop, Oration Delivered in Wallingford of the 11th of March 1801, Before the Republicans of the State of Connecticut, at Their General Thanksgiving for the Election of Thomas Jefferson. New Haven: William W. Morse, 1801, p. 7); (Qtd. in Prothero 2003, 20). 97 Randall Jordan Doyle, A Political Dynasty in North Idaho, 1933–1967: Compton White, Sr. & Compton White, Jr. Lanham: UP of America, 2004. xi. 98 Boylan showed Jefferson triumphing over those who believed that the freedom Jefferson fought for would bring the people only greater suffering. But Jefferson as “leader who traveled life’s common way ‘in cheerful godliness,’ yet assumed life’s lowliest burdens and duties on behalf of those who could not do so themselves” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1935: 5607). Christian altruism was related to the self-government and equality (cf. 5607). 99 Cf. Sen. Rayburn (D-AK): “He respected both men and money; but whenever a conflict of interests came he stood foursquare for man” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1526). Or Rep. Coffee (D-WA): “With Jefferson, man must be master and money the servant” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1814).

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President” (7273) emulated. Meffan thereby used “radicalism” to praise FDR for having taken the country off the gold standard, stabilizing financial institutions, creating employment, and securing the farm population (7273).100 In contrast, “plutocrats”—“[t]‌he United States Chamber of Commerce (the mouthpiece of all big-business monopolies and financial institutions), the Liberty League, and other selfish and unpatriotic agencies”—were driven by “intolerance, narrowness, and bigotry” (7273). Meffan was the first Democrat to position Jefferson and FDR against the League in a Jefferson Day Address. His position was tied to Idaho’s silver mining interests and farmers who benefitted from “cheap” money and their natural opposition to Wall Street. Meffan revealed the Liberty League’s hypocrisy regarding debt by narrating how the protection of their financial interests abroad had plunged the United States into World War I, increasing the national debt while they made profits (cf. 7273). He contrasted the industrialists’ selfish behavior with Jefferson’s humanitarianism and justified the Silver Purchase Act101 and the debt incurred because of the “humane impulse […] to perpetuate life and security for millions of destitute American citizens” (7273, emphasis added). He illustrated that Jefferson’s “special privilege to none” had not always been observed and could only be restored in favor of his farming constituents through FDR’s fight against “maldistribution” which was already improving farmers and small business owners’ lives (7273). Meffan, unlike Schwellenbach, displayed the counterhegemonic appropriation of Jefferson’s humanitarianism by speaking out in favor of the Debt Default Plan and therefore against FDR, who only supported the bill introduced by the liberal, isolationist mid-westerners to gain their favor for other measures.102 Meffan and White, sharing the bill’s sponsors’ geographical and ideological background, praised it for forbidding U.S. loans to any nation in

100 On June 5, 1933, FDR took America off the Gold Standard. James Farley, the Postmaster General stressed: “our greatest Presidents functioned under the barrage of complaint frequently reaching the point of defamation and yet history records their administrations as conspicuous successes […].” (Cong. Rec. 29 Apr. 1935: 6512). 101 The Silver Purchase Act was to combat inflation driven by the country’s increasing debt for relief measures. It was a compromise between midwestern Silverites and FDR (Doyle 2004, 11). 102 Debt Default Plan properly known as “Hiram Johnson Debt Default Act” (cf. Kennedy 1999, 39).

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default on World War I debts, and saw it as a measure to curb industrialists’ profits.103 It would contribute to the general welfare by embodying Jefferson’s maxim ‘special privileges to none.’ Meffan used these same ideas to criticize all tax-exempt wealth and advocate for a change in the tax law (7273), calling it and other measures to be brought about—pensions, hour regulation, public utilities, limitation of interest rate and incomes, expansion of currency, and judiciary reform—“legislation of a humane nature” (7273, emphasis added).104 These laws would regulate the “centralized wealth” that had accumulated to a degree that the framers of the Constitution could never have imagined. He proposed to amend the Constitution so that these “constructive” laws for the general welfare that “affected the rights of the States,” would not be declared ‘unconstitutional’ (7273), alluding to the pending Supreme Court cases.105 George Meffan and by proxy Compton I. White displayed both hegemonic and counterhegemonic appropriations of Jefferson. While they supported the New Deal, their advocacy of the Debt Default Act revealed their local roots and the strength of midwestern, isolationist opinion. Their concern with a constitutional amendment revealed that White was, “at heart, a Southern Democrat,”106 who turned against FDR when he proposed a quicker way to solve the Supreme Court problem. It serves as proof against FDR’s intentional orchestration of Jefferson appropriations and as testament to the ubiquity and usefulness of Jefferson’s humanitarianism during the economic collapse.

103 Boylan also alluded to and supported the Debt Default Plan with Jefferson (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1935: 5607). 104 Cf. Reps. Cochran (D-MO)/Rudolph (WV):  Quoting FDR’s tribute to Jefferson ‘drinking in the needs of the people of every walk of life’ (5718), he commented on the old-age pension of the Social Security Bill. “The Man of Galilee said: ‘I was hungry and ye fed me, […], inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it also even unto me’ ” (5719). This was the “philosophy of life” of “the leader of these United States” who had the “whole-hearted backing of the people of this Nation” (5719). The Jefferson Day speech employed the qualities connected to humanitarianism without using the term itself. (Cong. Rec. 15 Apr. 1935: 5718–5720). 105 On May 6, 1935, the Railroad Retirement Act was declared unconstitutional, which was seen as a bad sign for other pending cases. Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad Co., 295 U.S. 330 (1935). 106 Doyle 2004, 12.

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Humanitarianism in 1936: Rebuffing the American Liberty League While the Cong. Rec. contained fewer JD speeches in 1936 as compared to 1935,107 they became more polemical due to election campaigning. The term humanitarian disappeared except in references to the memorial, but the associations that orators had created in 1935 continued and were used even more to contrast Jefferson and the New Deal with the American Liberty League. The rebuttal of the League at times coincided with further criticism of the Supreme Court’s decisions or pending decisions against the New Deal as the League had sponsored the lawsuit which declared the NIRA codes of fair competition—regulating minimum wages and maximum hours and allowing collective bargaining—unconstitutional.108 The League, founded in August 1934 by the leaders of economic power,109 sought to teach the respect for property and to remind government of its duty to allow and foster private initiative to guarantee people the acquisition and lawful use of property.110 It claimed to be a nonpartisan,111 even though it was

107 Democrats Boylan (NY), Shannon (MO), Faddis (PA), and George Earle, Governor of Pennsylvania, whose speech was inserted by Sen. Guffey (PA). The political climate before and briefly after the election in 1936 was one in which staunch New Dealers, like Guffey and Earle, and more moderate Democrats, like Faddis and Shannon, supported and defended FDR. Only in January 1937, did this begin to change with FDR’s court-packing scheme. Theodore Christianson (R-MN) inserted James Beck’s speech, delivered at the JDD of the Sons of the Revolution in 1928. Farley used Jefferson Day rhetoric in “Issues of the Impending Campaign”. Furthermore, Verner Main (R-MN) and Louis Ludlow (D-IN) reviewed Jefferson’s achievement in speeches on the memorial which are comparable to the Jefferson Day speeches. 108 Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935). Decided on May 27, 1935. 109 Frederick Rudolph, “The American Liberty League, 1934–1940.” The American Historical Review 56.1 (Oct. 1950): 19–33. JSTOR. Web. 15 April 2013. 19. He lists “its officers” and “chief financial contributors” (19). 110 Paraphrased from: American Liberty League: A Statements of Its Principles and Purposes (Washington, 1934). Qtd. in Rudolph 1950, 20. 111 Cf. Wolfskill 1962, 24, 27. “Everyone, it seemed, dismissed [the bipartisan claim]” (1962, 35). The League said it was “definitely not anti-Roosevelt” in an article (qtd. in Rudolph 1950, 29; Originally published in New York Times, August 23, 1934). Many ex-Democrats were members or spokesmen, like Alfred Smith and John Davis, former presidential candidates; Cf. Cong. Rec. 20 Apr. 1936: 5742. Faddis thought it odd that Smith was the keynote at a League Dinner because Republicans had attacked him for his Catholicism during the 1928 election. Republicans thus were anti-Jeffersonian as ‘civil rights have no dependence on religious opinion’.

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considered “the most articulate spokesmen of American conservative thought”112 and the voice of a diminished Republican Party. The League thus served as a counterweight to the New Deal and Rudolph asserts “[b]‌oth […] were constructed of American materials […],” including Jeffersonian ideals,113 in an attempt to respond to “the anguish of American values in a time of severe economic collapse.”114 Democrats and the Republicans Marcantonio and William Borah, by countering the League, suggested which Jeffersonian materials it employed or misused. Before I outline the shared argumentative structure of the democratic speeches as a basis from which to highlight specific appropriations that stand out with respect to individual moral entrepreneurs, a Washington Day Address which discusses Jefferson serves as an example of his ubiquity and versatility for defending the New Deal against attacks from the left and right in 1936. Chronologically prior to the JD speeches, Representative Aubert Dunn (D-MS) used Jefferson’s Christian humanitarianism and tolerance to criticize the anti-Semitic, demagogic radio priest Father Coughlin’s and the Republican Party’s attacks against Roosevelt.115 Like Meffan, he accused the latter for having violated Jefferson’s adage ‘special privileges to none’ in favor of their own “cohorts” (Cong. Rec. 4 Mar. 1936: 3295).116 But now they “shout that Franklin D. Roosevelt had libeled the principles of Washington as well as those of Thomas Jefferson” (3295). Dunn argued that Republicans and those “alined with them,” if in power, would “disintegrate” the presidents’ principle—“a free Government for a free people,” that is, free of the financial power of the few (3295). Accusing those inveighing against the New Deal for doing so for their own “monetary 112 Wolfskill 1962, 137. An article about the League’s Dinner, called them the “ ‘most conservative group [….] dominated by Republicans’ ” (qtd. in Rudolph 1950, 30). 113 Cf. Rudolph 1950, 31. 114 Rudolph 1950, 32. He continued the first sentence with “but those [American materials] which went into the New Deal, given the facts with which they were intended to cope, built a more durable structure” (32). 115 Coughlin joined with Townsendites and Share-the-Wealth members in the Union Party by June 1936, which profited from portraying the New Deal in line with the moneyed interests, as during a rally: ‘pull down these huge piles of gold until there shall be a real job […] real spending money […] Ford in the garage, new suit, Thomas Jefferson, Jesus Christ, red, white, and blue job for every man’ (qtd. in Kennedy 1999, 283). 116 Shannon had mildly criticized his party in 1934. By 1936, he derided the “former beneficiaries of special privilege,” later naming the Liberty League for trying to co-opt Jefferson (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5438)

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gain” (3295), Dunn described listening to Coughlin’s “tirade of pusillanimous nothingness” and its effects: I wonder whether this so-called disciple of a beautiful faith [Coughlin] can really rest his head in peace […] after such an exhibition of political chicanery and dissipated opportunity, knowing full well that the preachments of the man Christ tended always toward solace, peace on earth, and good will toward men. […] I am afraid that he [Coughlin] is the antithesis of the very principles announced by Thomas Jefferson when he [Jefferson] said, “Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions.” (3295)

Dunn displayed the absurdity of the accusations against the New Deal by revealing that even a priest pushed the decorum with his invectives against the government. Instead of participating reasonably in the “forum of public discussion,” the priest ignored Jefferson’s tolerance toward the opinion of others (cf. 3295). He suggested that the people should not accept infringements on their religious or civil rights. Jesus, Jefferson, and FDR “attack[ed]” the “social conditions” of their times, “depart[ing] quite a little from the formulas found in the laboratory of human experience” (3295). Consequently, Dunn praised the radicalness of their humanitarian ideas, suggesting that experience needed to be supplemented with experimentation to cope with differing social conditions and problems. Dunn thereby highlighted the issue on which any interpretation of Jefferson in the 1930s hinged; namely, the shift from a rural, agricultural economy of Jefferson’s time to an urban, industrial one and its socio-political effects. To discuss the aforementioned shift’s implications for interpreting Jefferson, Democrats challenged the validity of laissez-faire in a changed economic system.117 The term appeared in 1851 and became retrospectively applied to Jefferson’s economic

117 Cf. Rep. Faddis reviewed Jefferson’s framing of American institutions at a time when “the largest percent of our population was practically self-sustaining. Land was cheap and plentiful and each community produced almost everything it needed. Today we are practically interdependent upon each other for our livelihood and certainly dependent upon the aristocracy of wealth for greater opportunities than a mere living” (Cong. Rec. 20 Apr. 1936: 5742). Cf. Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1938: 1673. Coffee: “Today, when the vested interest of this Nation is making its daily onslaught […] of recapturing our Government and moving it back from Washington, where it is and where it rightly belongs, to Wall Street in New York City, it is imperative that we awaken anew the fighting spirit of Thomas Jefferson. Otherwise we may forget […] that ‘the main purpose of government is to restrain men from injuring one another and see to it that the bread which labor earns is not taken from its mouth.’ ” For this “humane purpose” (1673)—note the language of humanitarianism—FDR was elected.

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and political theories.118 Though only two democrats used it in their speeches,119 others described the agricultural economy, abundance of land, smaller population and different conditions for individual liberty to contrast these facts with the modern industrial society.120 This was necessary to establish that laissez-faire was only a Jeffersonian method tied to the exact conditions of his time to guarantee “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for the greatest number of people. It reflected the distinction between Jeffersonian doctrines and his intentions or spirit. Whereas laissez-faire had been the economic doctrine to assure a largely self-sustaining people’s liberty from the oppression of kings, feudal lords, or a wealthy ‘aristocracy,’ it only benefited the latter in an industrial economy in which most people were no longer self-sustaining farmers. Democrats argued that oppression no longer emanated from an arbitrary political power but from the economic leaders or the industrial capitalist system. Thus, they depicted government regulation of it as serving the general welfare, protecting the majority from exploitation by a minority pursuing class privilege. They justified the new method of government by claiming that its aims reflected Jefferson’s humanitarianism and ideal of government under different circumstances.121 118 According to COHA, the term laissez-faire appeared in 1851and its use rose exponentially until the 1930s. 119 Justice Terrell/Fletcher (D-FL): in Jefferson’s time “rugged individualism under an economic laissez-faire policy experienced its greater development. The democracy of Jefferson was a product of this order […]” (Cong. Rec. 4 January 1934: 106). He tied laissez-faire, rugged individualism to the “democracy of Jefferson”. Rep. Hildebrandt (D-SD) clarified that Jefferson’s, ‘the government is best which governs least,’ “was made in the early days of the Nation, when governmental interference with private matters was likely to be exercised in the interest of the wealthy. At that time the doctrine of minimum interference, laissez faire, was most conducive to the preservation of human rights. Nowadays the reverse is true” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1935: 5766). 120 Cf. Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1938: 1662: Byrd (VA)/Logan (KT) both represented farmers, and using the same Jefferson Day speech nonetheless voted differently on the Farm Bill. “To Pass S. 2787.” Govtrack.us. 121 Cf. Meffan/White: “Whenever monopolies and centralized wealth get strangleholds on the populace, of course, the Government, which is the agency of the people […] should restrain and dictate.” This “is just as justifiable […] as when it restrains criminals from violating the human and property rights of others” (Cong. Rec. 9 May 1935: 7273–4). Cochran (D-MO)/Randolph (D-WV): the only liberties taken away from the captains of industry were those that harmed and oppressed others: “the right to exploit child labor, to operate unsanitary sweat shops, and to deny to organized labor the right to collective bargaining. […] the liberty of unscrupulous bankers to destroy communities and cities has been denied. Fake brokers and stock salesmen have had their

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Connected to this argumentative trajectory were such underlying questions on how to achieve Jefferson’s definition of the function of government, his understanding of the individual, inherent rights of the Declaration of Independence, and his interpretation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution’s public welfare clause. To debate the latter question, Democrats and Republicans gave Jefferson a greater role in shaping and procuring these documents to receive more authoritative power from them to affirm that Jefferson wanted a democratic government which was conducted for and by the majority.122 With respect to the preamble of liberty taken […] which they used to sell worthless securities to trusting investors” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1935: 5719). In favor of the Wagner and Social Security Acts. Cf. The liberal Sen. Pepper (D-FL) called the economic leaders the “disciples of a system” which promulgated a “slavery” “far more real than the tyranny of King George III” and Jefferson’s concern was for the people’s fate under “economic forces more exacting in their tyranny than […] the most oppressive [raving] of a mad George” (Cong. Rec. 15 Jun. 1938: 3295). His speech contrasted with Republican Party chairman D. M. Hamilton’s of the same day (cf. Peterson 1985, 369). Cf. Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1939: 1522. Edward C. Eicher, Securities Exchange Commissioner/Houston (D-KS). 122 Cf. Rep. Faddis made Jefferson formulate individual rights and the idea of “solidarity” as he founded “a new […] theory that government to be practical should be conducted in the interest of all the people and be participated in by all the people” (Cong. Rec. 20 Apr. 1936: 5742). He attributed to him a greater role in the drafting and adopting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as “[H]‌is hand and genius molded that document […] popular and not autocratic in form,” with “logic and reason” and led by a “faith in the people” (5742). Orators from both party’s made Jefferson the initiator or the Bill of Rights to increase his role in the nation’s history. Cf. Shannon’s speeches Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6581 and Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5438: Jefferson, on reading the Constitution, found “certain rights dear to the vision of a great American” missing: “It was Jefferson’s influence that formulated these human rights into the first ten amendments […]” (5441). Shannon criticized the Supreme Court’s decisions using Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory as “precedent” (5440) of the broadness of the “public welfare” clause of the Constitution (5438; 5439, 5440; 5441). See also: Greenwood (D-IN) Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8355; Cf. Coffee (D-WA) Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1814; Cf. Barkley (D-KY) Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 5385; Cf. Rayburn (D-TX)/Farley (D-NY) Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1526; Cf. Michener (R-MI) Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8531; Cf. Moser (D-PA) Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 3331; Cf. Barkley (D-KT)/Pepper (D-FL) Cong. Rec. 15 Jun. 1938: 3295; Cf. Barkley (D-KY) Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1939; Cf. Ludlow (D-IN) Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1939:  4270; Cf. Anderson (D-MO) Cong. Rec. 27 Apr. 1939; Cf. Ludlow (D-IN) Cong. Rec. 12 Apr. 1940: 4437; Cf. Green (D-RI)/Minton (D-IN) Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1940: 2129–2131; Cf. Ellis (D-AR)/Johnson (D-WV) Cong. Rec. 28 Apr. 1941: A1937; Cf. Youngdahl (R-MN) Cong. Rec. 2 May 1941: A2073; Cf.

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the Declaration of Independence debates arose as to the meaning of Jefferson’s substitution of “pursuit of happiness” in exchange for “property.” Here, Democrats argued regarding the meaning of individual rights that “property rights” were secondary to other human rights for Jefferson as only the latter would ensure the greatest good to the greatest number.123 For a minority in the Democratic Party, the construction of an opposition or hierarchy between human and property rights was somewhat contested, revealing its ideological diversity and connection points to Republicans.124 To prove the dominant democratic argument, Voorhis (D-CA) Cong. Rec. 26 May 1942: A1941; Cf. Blackney (R-MI) Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1804; Cf. Rankin (D-MS) Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1800–1; Cf. Mead (D-NY)/Barbour (R-NJ) Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: 3343; Cf. Morrison Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: 3319; Cf. Josephus Daniels/Gov. Broughton (D-NC)/Hill (D-AL) Cong. Rec. 19 Apr. 1943: A1914. 123 Jefferson “was the champion of the rights of the masses as opposed to the privileges of the classes” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5741). Jefferson’s ideal of “solidarity,” akin to the general welfare and tolerance and for giving the people “a status as individuals which makes us the envy of most of the earth” (5741). Faddis used Jefferson’s humanitarianism as opposed to the Liberty League’s selfishness like his more liberal colleagues: New Deal Sen. Guffey/Gov. Earle (PA) praised Jefferson for laying down “[t]‌he principle of human rights” which “are felt through the medium of Jefferson’s great Democratic successor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and they are feared by the rich and powerful enemies [the Liberty League] our President has made” (Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1936: 5764). Alsop and Kintner satirize Guffey’s reversal of ideology who had become rich through oil speculation and worked for a securities’ holding company. Yet, later he fought against the very oligarchs to become or remain one of the most important bosses in American politics. Cf. Joseph, Alsop and Robert Kintner, “The Guffey: Biography of a Boss, New Style.” The Saturday Evening Post 26 March 1938, 210.39: 5–7; 98–99; 101–102. Print. Cf. Overton/Ellender (D-LA) claimed that property rights would only promote legislation in support of class privilege (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1515). Coffee (D-WA) cited Jefferson, ‘I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny […]’ declaring “Jefferson demanded subordination of property rights to human rights” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1814). 124 Justice Terrell/Fletcher (D-FL) called this construction “vicious and misleading” because it “stigmatize[d]‌the ownership of private property as an unholy and detestable ambition” (Cong. Rec. 4 Jan 1935: 107). Duncan Fletcher raised questions rather than provided answers with Terrell’s speech. Fletcher as a conservative sought protection of private property, but served an agrarian-small business constituency and worked against the power of monopolies, trusts, and Wall Street (Flynt 1971, 194, 196; Cf. Ronald Mulder, The Insurgent Progressives in the United States Senate and the New Deal, 1933–1939. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1979. Print. Modern American History. 70). His sympathy toward the “economically disinherited” (Flynt

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Jefferson’s fight against the Hamiltonians and against entail and primogeniture125 were used, which revealed that Jefferson did not attack the concept of property itself, but the accumulation of excessive wealth by a minority to the detriment of the majority. As the Liberty League defined its existence by the defense of the right to property under the concepts of liberty, individual rights or individualism, and constitutionalism, it was pivotal for the debate. Joseph Shannon’s 1936 speech was based on this structure and on his 1934 speech on Jefferson’s humanitarianism. It stands out by drawing a correlation between Hamiltonians-Liberty League special interests and their financial ability to control the media and thus the power over collective memory and public opinion. During the Gilded Age, Shannon claimed, Jefferson’s name had been “anathema to the high priests of the opposition party,” who had his ideas on democracy and equality erased from the schools as they controlled the school boards and textbook editors (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5438).126 While crediting Democrats for restoring Jefferson and his true values, he accused the League of 1971, 166) together with the emergency, led Fletcher to become a loyal New Dealer (Flynt 1971, 167). As chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee, he was a vital for investigating the deception of shareholders. It spurred Fletcher’s advocacy of procuring public welfare and the Banking and Securities reform bills (Securities Exchange Act 1934, Banking Act 1935, and Public Utilities Holding Company Act) (Flynt 1971, 173). Fletcher realized that “the most treasured possessions of the genuine conservative” could only be ensured if the general mass of the people was not “burdened by social ostracism or economic peonage” and in his desire to maintain order, he put his faith in FDR’s “experimental” program, valuing “activity, pragmatism, and constituent needs” rather than ideological constraints (Flynt 1971, 196). These considerations explain Fletcher’s insertion of Glen Terrell’s speech, which reflects his ongoing negotiation of his political affiliation and moral concerns. 125 See for example, Sen. Overton/Ellender (D-LA) Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1516. 126 Rep. Coffee (D-WA) gave the same reason (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1938: 1814). He had been the secretary of the advisory board of the NIRA and belonged to the “progressive open forum discussion group,” the Young Turks. (cf. Dennis N. Mihelich, “The Congressional Mavericks: The ‘Radical’ Populist Progressive Heritage and the New Deal.” Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress: The New Deal and Its Aftermath. Ed. Thomas P. Wolf. Armonk: Sharpe, 2001. 14–25. 14. Print.). Coffee was to the left of FDR as he was backed by his constituents and the strength of the Commonwealth Federation in Washington state, while FDR had to consider broader coalitions (cf. Howe 1985, 92). Several congressmen relevant to the discussion of Jeffersonianism belonged to the Mavericks: Democrats: Hildebrandt (SD); Houston (KS); Keller (IL); Scott (CA); Voorhis (CA); and Zioncheck (WA). The Republican Marcantonio (NY) and the Farmer-Laborite Lundeen (MN).

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opportunism and insincerity for misusing him for “their vilifying campaign–liberty, constitutionalism, and what they are pleased to call the American system” (5438). Jefferson had been able to amend the Constitution because “there was no ultrarich editor, operating a large chain of publications, nor was there a Liberty League […], and the Supreme Court of that period had not shown a disposition to take over powers it was never intended that it should have” (5441). Shannon criticized the centralized wealth and power of Hearst publications that supported the League,127 its corruption of the freedom of the press and sponsoring of test cases128 for the benefit of a minority. He suggested that the Supreme Court had become the bastion of minority rights as against the laws made by the representatives and thus the majority will.129 While the League on the surface assented to ‘equality of rights under the Constitution and before the law,’130 these actions invalidated that sentiment. Despite its populist language, the League had a hard time disassociating itself from “radical rightists,”131 which alienated progressive Republicans, like Vito Marcantonio, who attacked its anti-immigration stance by wanting to send them “[…] some of the teachings of Thomas Jefferson” (Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8358). The Midwesterner William E.  Borah criticized their industrial monopolies as “ ‘[t]‌he power which closes the door of opportunity […] in the business world leaves me cold to all their panegyrics about liberty [….] There is no liberty worthy of the name without economic freedom and social justice.’ ”132 Marcantonio and Borah, by mentioning social justice and opportunity, objected to the League’s

127 Cf. Gov. Earle/Guffey (D-PA):  though the Jeffersonian democratic government, based on human rights, won, the Hamiltonians, the “financial interests,” remained a “menace” to “representative government” because they “control […] 80 percent of the American press” (Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1936: 5764). Cf. Rudolph 1950, 22. 128 Cf. Rudolph 1950, 24; Wolfskill 1962, 71. Cf. Clement E. Vose, “Litigation as Form of Pressure Group Activity.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 319 (1958): 20–31. Print. 25. 129 These questions emanated from the different interpretations of the wording of the Constitution and from the discussion on the effect that changed socio-economic conditions should have on its interpretation. Cf. 3.2.1. 130 Rudolph 1950, 28. 131 Wolfskill 1962, 98. 132 Qtd. in Rudolph 1950, 23. Sen. Borah (ID) was “fiercely independent, scrupulously honest, and sublimely inconsistent [… He] espoused the causes close to the hearts of struggling pioneers—inflation, silver, prohibition, anti-Big Business, humanitarianism, and international isolation” (Wolfskill 1962, 193).

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social Darwinism.133 Borah suggested that one’s economic freedom could only go so far as not to injure others, which some, including James Beck, saw embodied in Jefferson’s first inaugural. To shroud its appeal to minority rights, the Liberty League (mis)used the concept of (rugged) individualism.134 They linked it to an individual’s ability to rise socially through industry and talent and sold it as the ‘romanticized’ American success story of self-sufficiency and the self-made man.135 In 1922, Herbert Hoover coined American ‘rugged individualism’ (1922) in contrast to European “paternalism and state socialism,”136 emphasizing that it was not “selfish or solipsistic” but “communal and cooperative” and defined by “service” rooted in the “faith in the better self of each citizen.”137 However, Hoover’s seeming inactivity and reliance on failing voluntarism of business obliterated these connotations. Democrats countered the League by co-opting the communal and cooperative aspects that Hoover had intended the term to carry.138 That these debates bridged the political and public discourse is illustrated by the Texan Maury Maverick whose Jeffersonian denunciation of the League differs from other Democrats on that account and because of his own ideological position and independent mind. Representative Maverick responded to James Truslow Adams’s The Living Jefferson by publishing a critical review and presenting it before the assembled Congress (Cong. Rec. 18 May 1936: 7445).139 Though described as a “Rooseveltian 1 33 Cf. Wolfskill 1962, 122–125; Rudolph 1950, 28. 134 For example, Sen. Schwellenbach criticized: “American individualism is a snare and delusion” having lost its original Jeffersonian meaning of “equal opportunity,” now designated “unlicensed and unbridled privilege upon the part of the few to cheat and destroy at the expense of the great mass of the people. Who can say that in a nation where 4 percent of the population had 85 percent of the wealth that the term ‘individualism’ or the term ‘equality of opportunity’ had any real meaning?” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1935: 5731). 135 Cf. Rudolph 1950, 20, 30. Or social Darwinism. 136 Qtd. in Daniel J. Boorstin, America and the Image of Europe: Reflections on American Thought. Gloucester:  Smith, 1960. Print. Meridian Books. 32. Herbert Hoover, American Individualism (1922). 137 Kennedy 1999, 47. 138 Cf. Ludlow: His tombstone inscription revealed, he wanted to be known, not for his offices, but for “the service he had rendered to humanity” (Cong. Rec. 3 Jun. 1936: 8874). Cf. Sherman/Rep. Thomas (D-TX) Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1938: 1606. Cf. Thomas (D-UT)/Hill (D-AL): “Aristotle taught man was a social animal, Jesus discovered the individual and his worth, and Jefferson gave that individual his proper place in society” (Cong. Rec. 16. Apr. 1943: A1877). 139 The review was also published in the New Republic.

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liberal,”140 Maverick as ‘leader’ of the Young Turks stood to the left of FDR and most Democrats. The title of his speech “ ‘Beating the Living with the Bones of the Dead’: Jefferson Advised against It; and now the Liberty Leaguers Try to Misrepresent Jefferson’s Views” (7445), however suggested Democrats’ main argument. He, too, chastised the self-interested “twist[ing]” of public figures done by “reactionaries” who “have had the money and power” to do so:  “In America today the Liberty Leaguers […] have dug up Thomas Jefferson, trying to make him a model reactionary who ordered his descendants to keep forever the law exactly as it was” (7445).141 As a correction, Maverick included some Jeffersonian statements “fairly representative of his ideas about politics and government,” which might be considered radical,142 because “if […] a modern public official” would make them “he would undoubtedly be run out of the country” (7445). He, too, portrayed Jefferson’s radicalism as a positive virtue rather than as un-American. Maverick, however, did not connect this radicalness to liberalism as other democrats had done but said: “Mr. Adams appears to be like a lot of the ‘liberals’ I  know. They are great on antiques, art, and Shakespeare, and such like, but when their prejudices about wealth are touched in any way they go into a frenzy. Thus, Mr. Adams […] has gotten himself all excited and has twisted Jefferson […]” (7445). By placing liberal in quotation marks, Maverick attacked Adams for posing as a liberal and questioned the term when he addressed the cultural aloofness. In truth, Adams’s book was a conservative attack on the New Deal and a poor “attempt to reconcile Jeffersonian and Rugged Individualism,” (7446) which meant “a low standard of living for millions of people because of a false economic system, or by means of which a small group either by inheritance

1 40 Kennedy 1999, 348. 141 Rep. Faddis (D-PA): Jefferson knew “it [was] necessary for government to keep pace with changing economic and social conditions,” so “neither the property nor contract rights can be absolute” to guarantee the essentials rights of the majority (Cong Rec. 20 Apr. 1936: 5742). Similarly, Boylan called Jefferson the “apostle of human liberty” who believed that “the function of government [was] to safeguard and guarantee those rights” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5435). 142 Cf. Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8359. Lundeen: Jefferson “had an infinite faith in the common people at a time when democracy was only a name. He was more than a liberal, a progressive […] He was a radical. […] author of the most revolutionary document ever written. He is the great inspiration of forward-looking people today” (8359).

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or power could exploit the millions” (7445). Maverick thus employed the associations of a humanitarian with Jefferson to make his point. Adams neglected to interpret the “living Jefferson” (7445), meaning he ignored the changed economic system, saying much on “Jefferson’s philosophy of individuality based on liberty and the use of land” but not applying “it to the problems of a civilization based upon machines, industrial monopoly and central financial control” (7445). Thus, one could conclude: Mr. Jefferson, speaking through Mr. Adams, does grudgingly and cautiously approve the vigorous action of Roosevelt in those dark days in March and April, 1933. So long as the strong arm of government is extended to aid banks and railroads all is well, but any attempt to extend this aid to the ordinary citizen, the farmer, the unemployed and the indigent aged is a frontal attack upon “Americanism.” (7446)

The League depicted the aid to the ordinary citizen as a “redistribution of American wealth,”143 seeking to feed on the fear of communist collective property. This fear also reverberated in the criticism that Adams did not discuss the “inherent right of the citizens to the means of livelihood and a participation in the means of production under the present method” (7445). By italicizing “present method,” Maverick distanced himself and the New Deal from communism while using Popular Front rhetoric in speaking of a “false economic system” (7445) and reprimanding Adams for “paint[ing] Jefferson patronizingly […] as a ‘liberal’ (but a respectable liberal, an example of ‘soundness’ and ‘practicality’), a man who was out with a glittering but safe sword to balance the budget for the bond boys of New York” (7446). Taking another stab at the League and the ‘liberals,’ Maverick displayed his “American radicalism” based in Jefferson’s progressivism and the freedom of speech,144 which Jefferson valued above all other liberties in “any civilized government” (7445). Maverick created a Jefferson that was more radical than the liberals as he, like others of the Young Turks, “accepted the New Deal as minimal approach”145 while also rejecting Communism as panacea.146

1 43 Rudolph 1950, 27. 144 Henderson 1970, 13. He had learned the principles of “free inquiry and freedom of expression” from him. 145 Mihelich 2001, 14. 146 The protagonist of Maverick’s unfinished war novel “rejected the socialists” by saying: ‘Radicalism in this country must be American. We have no proletariat, no working class—only people who expect to get rich’ (Henderson 1970, 45). Cf. Werner Sombart, Why is There No Socialism in the United States? 1906. Ed. with an introductory essay by C. T. Husbands. White Plains: Sharpe, 1976. Print.

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Rudolph remarked that the League “discovered that Thomas Jefferson proved to be a more effective symbol for the left than for the right”147 because iconic figures can only be used if they stand for something the masses can identify with. The discrepancy between the League’s wealth and American poverty barred it from using Jefferson to defend their excess whilst they denied laborers collective bargaining rights. Democrats’ techniques to highlight the opposition between the people and the League and to absolve Jefferson from rugged individualism proved successful. Thus, the latter strategy continued throughout the later 1930s, even without referencing the weakened League after the voters’ affirmation of the New Deal in the 1936 election. For example, Representative Snyder (PA), co-author of coal bill, and Senator Barkley (KT), who voted against his Southern colleagues and for the Fair Labor Standards Act, used it to argue for collective bargaining.148

Humanitarianism and Antislavery Sentiments A more cruel and institutionalized form of oppression was addressed in many democratic speeches, namely, African American slavery and Jefferson’s alleged opposition to its existence and his pioneer role and foresight in criticizing and attacking it.149 Northeastern and western Democrats—New York, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Missouri, and Washington—employed this attribution but kept silent about his owning slaves and fathering children with Sally Hemings. They preferred to narrate that Jefferson did what he could being faced with opposition

1 47 Cf. Rudolph 1950, 31. 148 Snyder used Dr. E. Dumbauld’s Jefferson speech in which he quoted Jefferson: ‘I felt enough of the effect of withdrawing from the world then to see that it led to an antisocial and misanthropic state of mind, which severely punished him who gives in to it […]’ (Cong. Rec. 17 Aug. 1937: 2142). Barkley: “Thomas Jefferson repeatedly emphasized the necessity to ‘unite in common effort for the common good’ ” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 5384), suggesting the idea of collective bargaining. Cf. More broadly Rep. Ludlow asked to learn Jefferson’s “lesson that society is interdependent [….]. He was the founder of the School of Give. The beauty of the Jeffersonian philosophy is that it fosters comradeship” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1939: 4271). He espoused Christian Jeffersonianism which valued spiritual over material prosperity and abhorred special privilege as hindrance to developing the natural aristocracy in which every ambitious citizen could partake. 149 Cf. Besides Boylan and Shannon, see Clyde Ellis (D-AR) before Thomas Jefferson Club at Parkersburg, W. Va. inserted by George W. Johnson (D-WV) Cong. Rec. 28 Apr. 1941: A1936-A1938.

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from the people and leaders of the time—the old forces,150 using the same points General Kean explained in his memorandum on inscriptions,151 including that Lincoln, the great emancipator, followed Jefferson, finishing what Jefferson had begun.152 Thereby they tried to assimilate both presidents as their guides in order to suggest to northern, urban African Americans to vote for the Democratic Party which embodied freedom and equality for white and black.153 As members of a party whose southern members—excepting to some degree Pepper, Maverick, and Hill—remained the greatest hindrance to racial justice and equality, these westerners and northerners used Jefferson to counter that image of their party. 150 Cf. Boylan declared that Jefferson’s attempts at including provisions against the slave trade and slavery in the founding documents were “well known,” such as his denunciation of the “inhuman traffic in human beings” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5436). He asserted apologetically it “was omitted in the final draft out of deference to Adams and Franklin” (5436). Cf. Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1938: 3099; Rep. Coffee (D-WA): “if the party advocated something which he believed was inimical to the welfare of the common citizen he frankly opposed it. Thus he lost the support of Congress in his second term on the slavery question […]” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1814). 151 Chapter 2.1.5. 152 To extend and affirm Jefferson’s antislavery position, Boylan and Shannon, like Gen. Kean, established a connection of succession between Jefferson and Lincoln (cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3409; Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1938: 3099). See also Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 3331. Guy Moser; Cf. Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1938: 3062. Samuel Pettengill; Cf. Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8358. Ernest Lundeen; Cf. Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1935: 5731; Guy Moser (D-PA) praised Jefferson’s involvement in drawing up the Northwest Ordinance with its “most notable provision” prohibiting “slavery or involuntary servitude […] otherwise than in punishment for crime” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 3333). 153 Faddis (D-PA) imputed Republicans with “fool[ing] the people of this Nation for ever so many years by pretending to represent the policies of Abraham Lincoln” (Cong. Rec. 20 Apr. 1936: 5742). But they had awoken to the truth, so Republicans “decided to […] fasten onto the shade of someone with whom the people were seemingly not so well educated. It almost baffles understanding, but they selected the finest Democrat of all time and then […] tried to sell the country on the idea that President Roosevelt […] had renounced the Jeffersonian principle” (5742). He claimed that Republicans were unsuccessful which might explain why they did not use the Jefferson-Lincoln connection nor abolition to further their interests. For John Boylan emancipation was also linked to education which had implication for politics, as Jefferson’s “program to further democracy in Virginia” included abolition and universal education (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3406; 3409). He thereby allusively advocated for the equality of black and white regarding educational opportunity and participation in democracy—an idea that found expression later on in the Jefferson Memorial inscriptions. Even though Boylan did not suggest the inscriptions as he died in 1938.

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Secondly, Joseph Shannon and Fred Hildebrandt used Jefferson’s opposition to the exploitative system of slave labor to comment on the current labor questions and in the process revealed their differing ideological positions despite being members of the same party. Joseph Shannon claimed that Jefferson “was the first statemen who gave thought and study to the labor questions, which though simplified in those days of slavery, he foresaw would one day become a vital problem” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6582), followed by “He was the apostle of freedom for the Negro slaves and wrote the first document that in later days became the language of the emancipation proclamation, the thirteenth amendment” (6582). Though the sentences seemed to boil down the horrific nature of slavery to a labor problem, his appropriation of Jefferson’s practical Christian humanitarianism countered this reading. Shannon thus praised Jefferson as the “eminent citizen of the South, whose Heaven was not to be curtailed or hopes of happiness bounded by any earthly considerations of race, color, or party” (6584). He used these comments as affirmation of the aims of the New Deal which embodied Jefferson’s “spirit” but not his doctrines. Representative Hildebrandt (D-SD), a member of the Young Turks, represented the fierceness of Jefferson’s opposition to slavery in “Thomas Jefferson, the Outstanding Radical.” Hildebrandt used his remarks to urge Democrats into a more radical, social democratic New Deal, thus he claimed, “Confronted by the existing crisis Thomas Jefferson, whose burning words so scorchingly lashed slavery and injustice, would [now] deliver fiery excoriations of capitalism itself ” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1935: 5767). He rested this evaluation on Jefferson’s opposition to human exploitation, ignoring Jefferson’s own complicity in it and conflated forced and “free” labor in differing economic systems. His indictment of capitalism, however, distinguished him from Shannon and the majority of Democrats. Combining his criticism of capitalist exploitation with racial justice might by extension also have criticized industrialists’ practice of (mis)using African Americans as strikebreakers. As such Hildebrandt would have been considered a radical with respect to improving racial, economic equality in the name of Thomas Jefferson, the humanitarian, and the liberal factions of the Democratic Party

Humanitarianism and Asylum Another expression of Jefferson’s humanitarianism used by northeasterners was his defense of America as the refuge for people fleeing from oppression which gained significance due to America’s immigration quotas at a time when European

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Jews sought to emigrate. Representative Emanuel Celler (D-NY) petitioned for an adjustment respecting America’s history and status as the last asylum for oppressed people which Jefferson as the friend of the “underprivileged” and the “masses” supported (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1938: 1485). Celler cited Emma Lazarus’s poem inscribed on a plague on the Statue of Liberty154 and commented: “The great Jefferson […] was deeply imbued with the spirit obtained in the aforesaid poetry. President Roosevelt happily follows Jefferson’s example” (1485). Celler praised Jefferson’s “eloquent words and effective action” (1485) in abolishing the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798155 which proved that “[he], more than any other, helped to establish and maintain [asylum] as an American tradition” (1485). Jefferson affirmed this in his first inaugural address by asking: “Shall we refuse the unhappy fugitive from distress that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness extended to our forefathers […]? Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe?” Celler tied the affirmative answer and Jefferson’s principle of “equality of opportunity for immigrants” (1485) to his right of asylum measure, H. R. 7640. Urging America to receive refugees from “present-day tyrannies,” he asked the State and Labor Departments to aid them, connecting the foreign and domestic policies of the United States. As the situation in Europe deteriorated, other Democratic congressmen,156 primarily from New York, commented on the same attribution. Representative Michael Edelstein inserted Attorney at Law Alexander Rorke’s speech into the Cong. Rec. They suggested that “Tammany,” New  York’s Democratic political organization, followed the guidance of its “sachem” Thomas Jefferson in respect to his solicitude of “foreigners who desired to become citizens of the United States, particularly those whose political opinions and religious beliefs had driven them from their native land” (Cong. Rec. 23 Apr. 1941: A1859). For Edelstein who had immigrated to the US as a child with his parents from Poland

154 “Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,/Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me;/I lift my lamp beside the golden door” 155 Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 3333. Guy Moser (D-PA) and Vito Marcantonio (R-NY) also addressed this topic. Rep. Celler (D-NY) favored the erection of the Jefferson Memorial (cf. Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1934: 12166). 156 Shannon argued against the repeal of the Neutrality Laws as the US “stands as the sole free refuge of the victims of tyranny and despotism on this war-torn globe” and that the founders wanted America to be the “symbol of freedom and justice,” not the bringer of these values (Cong. Rec. 3 Nov. 1941: 8459).

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in 1888, these Jeffersonian principles mirrored his personal experience as an American citizen.157 James Mead (D-NY) and his colleague William Barbour, a Republican from New Jersey, who had supported FDR’s request for $552  million for defense spending158 revealed that America’s entry into the war had changed the political alignments. They proclaimed that “our country—has taken up the sword of freedom” in defense against the “hosts of tyranny” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: 3343). By including “some little known sayings by Jefferson” which they called the “Bill of Rights Sesquicentennial Committee of the Council against Intolerance in America,”159 they asserted that asylum seekers, if they received equal opportunity, could become patriots who beneficially contributed to America’s development. Although some of the “sayings” could have been read as supporting the idea of the US as role model and neutral place of refuge, they were used to justify the preparations to land troops in Europe and as assertion of America’s nonimperialistic war aims. These debates about interventionism and isolationism had also been tied to international trade, World War I debts, neutrality legislation, and what form America’s sympathy with France and Britain should take.

Humanitarianism – Pacifism, Neutrality, and Trade In 1935, John Boylan, like George Meffan and Compton White, commented on the Hiram Johnson or Debt Default Act, which was passed in April 1934 and attached to the Neutrality Law of October 1935. To argue for it and for peace, Boylan depicted Jefferson as a pioneer in foreign relations, receiving his

157 “Edelstein, Morris Michael,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present. Web. 5 Dec. 2018 . He died in June 1941. 158 Robert E. Jenner, FDR’s Republicans: Domestic Political Realignment and American Foreign Policy. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010. Print. 109–10. In 1939, “Senator Barbour [...] demanded the liquidation of the WPA” (Jenner 2010, 109). 159 “Little known sayings”: Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our Government. It is our glory that we first put the ball of liberty into motion. I think it fortunate for the United States to have become the asylum for so many virtuous patriots of different denominations. The preservation of the holy fire [of liberty] is confided to us by the world, and the sparks which will emanate from it will ever serve to rekindle it in other quarters of the globe. The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us. We are destined to be a barrier against the return of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side [….]. (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: 3343).

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sanction from Washington as Jefferson’s warning of ‘entangling alliances’ was uttered “nine years before Washington’s Farewell Address” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1935: 5607). Boylan stressed Jefferson’s dedication to “universal emancipation,” and at least at home he established a government based on the “consent of the governed” (5607), freeing the people from oppression which had implications for humanity. In 1936 with “democracy under attack,” Boylan repeated these ideas, stressing that Jefferson established respect for the young nation abroad (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5435).160 From Jefferson’s many diplomatic “despatches” [sic], Boylan quoted one161 to reveal how “modern” Jefferson’s sentiments on isolationism, friendly trade, peace, and America’s ability to defend itself were.162 A year later Representative James Shanley (D-CT) suggested that one could support isolationism, serving as role model, and interventionism, becoming the international implementer of Jefferson’s “inalienable rights” with his words due to their interpretative flexibility (Cong. Rec. 16 Mar. 1937: 2308). He tied these remarks to the Fourth Neutrality Act163 and the Pittman and McReynolds Bills164 under debate, because the Neutrality Act was to expire in May 1937. Shanley argued for the McReynolds Bill which would have given the president discretion as to when and how to apply cash-and-carry, whereas the Pittman Bill provided

160 Lundeen (FL-MN), a Young Turk, used a similar phrase to justify the memorial (cf. Mihelich 2001, 16). Jefferson the “foremost apostle of human liberty” said, “freedom comes only after bitter strife and is preserved and fostered by struggle,” thus ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’ (Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8358). 161 ‘We love and we value peace: we know its blessings from experience: we abhor the follies of war and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we have hoped that our distance and our disposition would have left us free in the example and indulgence of peace with all the world. * * * We confide in our strength without boasting of it; we respect that of others without fearing it’ (5436). 162 Cf. Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8356. Culkin (R-NY) on TJMC; Cf. Cong. Rec. 1 Jun. 1936: 8536. Verner Main (R-MI); Cong. Rec. 4 May 1936: 6654. Robert Rich (R-PA). 163 Cong. Rec. 16 Mar. 1936: 2307. “U.S. citizens were forbidden from traveling on belligerent ships, and American merchant ships were prevented from transporting arms to belligerents even if those arms were produced outside of the United States; The President was given the authority to bar all belligerent ships from U.S. waters and to extend the export embargo to any additional ‘articles or materials’ ” (2307). 164 He was the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs from March 1933 to his death in 1939. “McReynolds, Samuel Davis.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present. Web. 30 May 2017 .

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that its provisions take effect with the president’s acknowledgement of a state of war or civil war.165 Shanley, like McReynolds, wanted to keep trade as free as possible166 because Jefferson, together with Franklin, believed that “trade has been the real avenue of hope to downtrodden and harassed peoples” (2305).167 To prove this humanitarian point, he called Jefferson a “realist” possessed with “common sense” when lauding the Treaty with Prussia which declared as a right of neutrals that “nothing should be contraband” (2305). On this topic and the freedom of the seas Jefferson had been more advanced than others as excerpts from his letters168 revealed, but Shanley conceded that they “are not worth a war” (2306); he favored “peaceable coercions,” that is, limits on trade, but not as prescribed by the “dogmatic, unyielding, and automatic section of the Pittman bill” (2307). Another solution to assert the freedom of the seas and trade was international cooperation: “All through these extracts [of Jefferson’s] we see the hope for a ‘common tribunal’, a ‘confederacy of nations’, and somehow a ‘league of neutrals’ ” (2306), but Shanley lamented that no such body existed even though it would protect the “rights of the common people” (2306). Shanley criticized that cash-and-carry left all risk with the purchaser; thus, America abandoned the sea to “the caprice of every belligerent vessel,” taking the profits without regard for the consequences. He feared this was a “sure way to shorten a war” (2308) by

165 Cf. H.  L., “The United States’ Neutrality Legislation.” Bulletin of International Legislation 13.19 (Mar. 20, 1937): 3–8. JSTOR. Web. 28 April 2015. 6. 166 Cf. Philip C.  Jessup, “Neutrality Legislation—1937.” The American Journal of International Law. 31.2 (Apr. 1937): 306–313. JSTOR. Web. 28 April 2015. 309. 167 Cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1526. Farley (D-NY)/Rayburn (D-TX): Jefferson “stood for international peace which alone can come from a reasonable commerce through all the customs of the world.” 168 Excerpt from the letter to Thomas Pinckney of 1793: “Reason and usage have established that when two nations go to war, those who choose to live in peace retain natural right to pursue their agriculture, manufactures, and other ordinary vocations; to carry the product of their industry, for exchange, to all nations, belligerent or neutral, as usual; to go and come freely without injury or molestation; and, in short, that the war among others shall be for them as if it did not exist” (qtd. in Cong. Rec. 16 Mar. 1937: 2305); Snyder (D-PA)/Dr. Edward Dumbauld (Department of Justice) on the letter to Thomas Pinckney. “[…] the law of nations was enriched by notable state papers penned by Jefferson” (Cong. Rec. 17 Aug. 1937: 2142). The second letter: Thomas Jefferson, “The U.S. Minister to France (Robert R. Livingston): September 9, 1801.” Writings. Ed. Merrill D. Peterson. 1090–95. Shanley did not provide names and dates.

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helping the oppressors win, and questioned America’s the moral obligation in this regard. Shanley claimed it was possible to infer from the Declaration of Independence Jefferson’s advocacy of the freedom of trade169 and America’s moral mandate “to be the international keeper of all our struggling brothers in the world” (2308); however, “if we wish to implement the Declaration of Independence, in a world sense [….], the American people ought to know and pass upon [it]” (2308). Thus, he affirmed Jefferson’s principle of self-government in deciding whether to help others “alter or abolish” the form of government which had become destructive of its ends (2308). Shanley thereby alluded to his support of Ludlow’s war referendum170 which the administration opposed. Yet, Shanley defended FDR for “[c]‌onstructively, patiently, humanely, with a message of good-neighbor policy” using Jefferson’s “the greatest weapon of peace […]—trade, honest and sincere” (2308). The Republican Charles Plumley, a Representative from Vermont, had been elected in 1934 because he “successfully exploited the progressive tide that derided privilege.”171 In his speech, which also addressed the memorial, he lauded Jefferson as the “most influential exponent of both liberalism and Americanism” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3407) and “greatest […] expounder of human rights that the world has ever produced” (3408). Jefferson possessed a “most remarkable independence of thought” and had “studied the principles, development, and degeneration of free institutions” (3408). Jefferson “saw America unhampered by hoary traditionalism, free to […] preserve and extend already existing liberties, 169 Shanley cited the grievance against George III of ‘cutting of our trade with all parts of the world’ equating his tyranny with the possibility that the European dictators might truncate free trade (2308). 170 Walter R. Griffin, “Louis Ludlow and the War Referendum Crusade, 1935–1941.” Indiana Magazine of History 64.4 (Dec. 1968): 267–88. JSTOR. Web. 11 May 2015. Ludlow had repeatedly tried to bring it to a vote since 1935. By January 10, 1938, the European situation provided enough public pressure, so congressmen voted on the discharge of the bill from the committee, which failed 194 to 215. Shanley together with his Democrats Cochran (MO), Coffee (WA), Hildebrandt (SD), Houston (KS), Hunter (OH), Johnson (OK), Luckey (NE), Moser (PA), Murdock (AZ), Phillips (CT), Rankin (MS), Shannon (MO), and Voorhis (CA) voted for it (“To Discharge the Comm. on Rules from Further Consideration of H. Res. 165, a Rule to Make H. J. Res. 199, Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the U.S. to Provide for a Referendum on War, a Special Order of Business.” Govtrack.us Web. 6 Sep. 2015 ). 171 Jenner 2010, 48.

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fulfilling her duty to mankind” (3408). Yet, Jefferson was seen as tempering with the “established social order,” which did alienate him from many Virginians who even today regarded him as a “renegade” (3408). Plumley claimed that the individual freedoms had the power to change the “established social order” and implied that the New Deal regimentation hampered the common people’s efforts to rise socially. As individual freedoms were non-existent in totalitarian regimes, Plumley urged America to return to them and serve as a role model. Like the Democrat Shanley, Plumley voted for the Neutrality Law of 1937 and for discharging the Ludlow referendum from the committee,172 proving that the issues transcended party lines. By voting with the public opinion rather than following his military predisposition as former president of the Norwich Military Academy,173 Plumley assured his reelection. After Germany had accomplished the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, Democratic Representatives and Senators mainly from the South, together with Boylan (NY) and Coffee (WA), used the Jefferson Day speeches for three interrelated purposes. They affirmed that Jeffersonian principles at home, including international trade, were a bulwark against totalitarianism and war.174 Contrasting the exceptional nature of the American government and the way in which the New Deal reforms alleviated suffering to the situation abroad where totalitarian regimes grew on the suffering and existential fears of the people.175 172 “To Pass S. J. Res. 51, (P. Res. 27), The Neutrality Act of 1937.” Govtrack.us Web. 6 Sep.  2015  ; “To Discharge the Comm. on Rules from Further Consideration of H. Res. 165, a Rule to Make H. J. Res. 199, Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the U.S. to Provide for a Referendum on War, a Special Order of Business.” Govtrack.us Web. 6 Sep. 2015 . 173 Cf. Jenner 2010, 16, 94. 174 Barkley (D-KT) (cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 5384). ‘Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none,’ remained the American maxim and his advice of maintaining a “well-disciplined militia” (5385); Radio address by O’Mahoney(D-WY)/Adams (D-CO) (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1504); Rayburn/ Farley (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938:  1527); Sherman/Thomason (Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1938: 1606). Cox (D-GA) (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1938: 5346–50). 175 Farley (D-NY)/Woodrum (D-VA) emphasized American exceptionalism a month after Germany had invaded Czechoslovakia: “Had all nations followed the eternal principles of equality and justice advocated by Jefferson, we would have today a contented, peaceful, and prosperous civilization […not the fear of] another world war” (Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1939: 1685). “Liberty and freedom can never be extinguished while the torchlight of Jeffersonian democracy is held aloft by the citizens of this Republic” (1685). (James E. Sargent, “Clifton A. Woodrum of Virginia: A Southern

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And they suggested that Jefferson even as pacifist was advocating military preparedness for defense,176 giving his actions against the Barbary pirates as proof of his “small and efficient navy” although he was at heart a “vigorous pacifist” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1814).177 The Democrat Clyde L.  Herring (IA) inserted the radio address by the “middle-of-the-road Democrat,”178 Guy M.  Gillette of Iowa, as an extension of remarks, celebrating the births of President Jefferson and Monroe. He also reacted to Roosevelt’s public message to Hitler and Mussolini in which thirtyone countries asked them not to attack them for ten years in a feeble attempt to encumber the aggressors.179 Herring and Gillette as mid-westerners advocated isolationism and neutrality but, unlike Meffan and White in 1935, they bolstered their position by creating the impression that Jefferson was such a great influence on Monroe that he could in fact have written the Monroe Doctrine (Cong. Rec. 20 Apr. 1939: 1556). Additionally, Jefferson used “language even stronger” than Monroe in two letters,180 one written “even three years before” the famous doctrine. Monroe repeatedly sought advice from Jefferson and Gillette praised that “Jefferson, perhaps, with clearer vision than any, comprehended the full import of the proposed declaration of policy” (1556). He proved that Jefferson

Progressive in Congress, 1923–1945.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 89.3 (July 1981): 341–64. JSTOR. Web. 6 June 2015). Woodrum, like the Republican Barbour, led the attack on WPA on the Appropriations Committee in 1939 (Jenner 2010, 110). 176 Pepper (D-FL)/Barkley (D-KT):  Independence Day Address, Institute of Public Affairs in Charlottesville, VA. Among Jefferson’s services, he listed his fight against the Barbary pirates (Cong. Rec. 15 Jun. 1938: 3295): “How fitting it would be as a memorial to Thomas Jefferson of the achievements of this democracy […] to fling back […] the dictators of the world. In the name […] of this great man Jefferson our democracy […] shall not fail. The subtle genius of democracy shall so order its course to the changing times that America shall ever be the land of the free and the home of the brave” (3297). 177 John Coffee (D-WA). Cf. Rayburn (D-TX)/Farley: “He stood for that international peace which alone can come from a reasonable flow of commerce through all […] the world” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1526). 178 Bullock 1978, 172. 179 Cf. Kennedy 1999, 423. 180 “America, North and South, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe and peculiarly her own. She should, therefore, have a system of her own separate and apart from that of Europe. While the last is laboring to become the domicile of despotism, our endeavor should surely be to make our hemisphere that of freedom.”

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was the first to have held these ideas because their “germ”181 was contained in the letter written “three years before” to William Short (1556).182 Gillette used the two presidents’ opinion to endorse his support of “the great principle of government and rule of conduct” (1556). Gillette stressed the perpetuity of the Jeffersonian doctrines, claiming that America’s stance as enunciated therein was one of “strength” (1557) that was respected by other nations. He supported Roosevelt’s Pan American address which stressed that ‘The American peace which we are celebrating today had no quality of weakness’ (1557). He made clear that FDR applied the doctrine, according to Jefferson, strictly to the “Western Hemisphere,” serving only as an “intermediary” striving for peace, not war (1557). Jefferson’s relation to or framing of the Monroe Doctrine183 as related to the matter of peace and trade reappeared repeatedly, though developments in Europe shifted the debate in June 1940. The British loss of most of its army equipment during the evacuation at Dunkirk, the swift surrender of the French army thereafter, and Italy’s declaration of war against France and Britain, drove the United States to respond by debating to extend the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 to bolster national security.184 Emanuel Celler (NY) declared that changed conditions demanded an adjusted declaration of America’s foreign policy (Cong. Rec. 18 June 1940: 8558). While the second part of the Monroe Doctrine spoke against European land acquisition, the House Joint Resolution 556185 would amend it to forbid land

181 “[…] the importance of ‘an American system of policy totally independent of and unconnected with that of Europe’ ” (Cong. Rec. 20 Apr. 1939: 1556). Gillette used Jefferson’s quote from the letter in his own sentence. 182 The day is not distant when we may formally require a meridian of partition through the ocean which separates the two hemispheres on the hither side of which no European gun shall ever be heard, nor an American on the other; and when during the rage of the eternal wars of Europe the lion and the lamb within our regions shall lie down together in peace * * *. 183 Garrett/Smith (D-TX), Chairman of the Railroad Commission: “While Secretary of State, he enunciated the principle that later was to become known as the Monroe Doctrine” (Cong. Rec. Aug 3, 1939: 3815). 184 American observers who had relied on French strength, the power of the British Royal Navy, and the breadth of the Atlantic for American security were surprised by the swiftness of events (cf. Kennedy 1999, 439). 185 Joint Resolution 556 was introduced on June 3, 1940 and amended in a committee meeting two days later. The resolution debated read: “Resolved, etc. (1) That the United States would not recognize any transfer, and would not acquiesce in any attempt to transfer any geographic region of the Western hemisphere from one non-American power to another non-American power; and (2) That if such transfer or attempt to

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transfer from one non-American power to another in the Western hemisphere. During the debate Republicans186 also stressed that Jefferson’s ideas predated the doctrine, thus Gillie (R-IN) believed that Jefferson’s letter would contribute to “a clearer understanding of the historical background […], and the resolution under discussion” (8552).187 His colleague Tinkham (R-MA) quoted from it to stress the hierarchy of maxims: “ ‘Our first and fundamental maxim should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe; our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs’ ” (8552). Thus, he proposed an amendment containing both parts of the Monroe Doctrine (8558), but to no avail. The “one-sided” extension of the doctrine’s second part passed with 381 yeas (8559),188 that is with 88 percent,189 demonstrating Congress’s unity. The Republican Representative Ulysses Guyer (KS) however kept insisting on the importance of the first part of the Monroe Doctrine that Tinkham had tried to reassert in his amendment. Guyer’s remarks, occurring three months after the

transfer should appear likely, the United States shall, in addition to other measures, immediately consult with the other American republics to determine upon the steps which should be taken to safeguard their common interests.” This resolution was accepted with the “following committee amendment: Page 1, line 5, after the word ‘of ’, strike out ‘the Western Hemisphere’ and insert ‘this hemisphere’ ” (Cong. Rec. 18 Jun. 1940: 8556.); Lawrence Martin, “The Geography of the Monroe Doctrine and the Limits of the Western Hemisphere.” Geographical Review 30.3 (July 1940): 525–528. JSTOR. Web. 5 June 2015. 525. 186 Celler: Monroe merely “gave expression to that which had been smoldering in the minds of […] others” as “Jefferson had [already] suggested the Gulf Stream as dividing line” between Europe and America (8558). Republicans agreed that it was “the consensus of opinion of many of the great minds of Monroe’s time,” including Thomas Jefferson (8552). Smith/Garrett (D-TX) (Cong. Rec. 3 Aug. 1939: 3815). 187 Thomas Jefferson, “The President of the United States (James Monroe): October 24, 1823.” Writings. Ed. Merrill D. Peterson. 1481–84. 188 Cf. Seven Republicans and one Democrat voted against the resolution. Nineteen Democrats abstained from voting, among them Houston (KS), Rankin (MS), Sabath (IL), and Shannon (MO), who would speak up against the repeal of the Neutrality Legislation by appropriating Jefferson in November 1941. Twenty-one Republicans did not participate in the vote (“To Pass H.J. Res. 556, Concerning the Maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine.” Govtrack.us Web. 4 Mai 2015 ). The 76th Congress: 262 Democrats, 169 Republicans, 2 Progressives, and 1 Farmer-Laborite and 1 American Labor. 189 The administration was strongly opposed to declaring that America would not meddle in European affairs. Bloom argued that Tinkham’s amendment had been considered but rejected by the State Department and the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

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first peacetime draft and one month after FDR’s reelection, addressed the bloody nature and the political domestic consequences of war. Guyer quoted Jefferson’s “warnings about national debt and a standing army in peacetime” and “to guard our republican form of government from degeneracy of dictatorship certain to obtain in a war and pretty sure to endure after such a struggle” (Cong. Rec. 23 Dec. 1940: 6975).190 Guyer suggested that people wanted a strong leader in war but that this could turn into a dictatorship, alluding to the charges that the New Deal had concentrated the political power in the president to such a degree that he had become a dictator and, as commander-in-chief, could entangle America in European wars. In reaction to the Lend-Lease Bill and the inclusion of Iceland and Greenland in the Western Hemisphere William Stratton, the Representative from Illinois, appropriated Jefferson as the rock of “common sense” and protector of “the interests of the American people” when “the passions and excitements of war” threaten to overcome both (Cong. Rec. 24  July  1941:  A3574). Like Guyer, the isolationist Stratton saw Jefferson as a warning voice when he said that neutrality, while inflicting “ ‘frequent injuries,’ ” was in the end synonymous with “ ‘multiplying, improving, prosperity beyond all example’ ” (A3574). Secondly,191 190 Cf. Cong. Rec. 2 Dec. 1940: 6767. Rep. Charles Hawks, Jr. (R-WI) made a similar statement. Rep. Dondero (R-MI) commented on the breach of constitutional government and the terminology used in “Our Form of Government—A Republic” (Cong. Rec. 23 Jun. 1939: 7828–7831). The revision of the Neutrality Law to reinstate cash-andcarry, made him ask: “Since when was ‘democracy’ substituted for the ‘republic’ as established under the Constitution?” (7828). Even past Democratic Party platforms “adhere[d]‌very properly to the terminology of Thomas Jefferson […]” (7828). By quoting from Hamilton, Madison, Washington, and Jefferson, he defined the republican form of government, countering the claim of “recent years” that America was a democracy like France and Britain (cf. 7829). He disliked the misuse of terminology and its “entangling implications which are calculated to make Thomas Jefferson, who warned against foreign entangling alliance, turn over in his grave” (7829). As “stanch believer in the republican form of government,” Jefferson was the leader of the Republican Party “in the fundamental sense,” not as republican was understood today (7829). While he hailed Jefferson as the authority on republican government, he nonetheless had voted for discharging the Ludlow war referendum, which would have extended democracy to a degree yet unknown. His vote, his distinction between American and European forms of government, and his third term opposition served the purpose of most midwestern congressmen—to keep America out of the war. 191 Stratton gave another excerpt from Jefferson’s letter: ‘When these gladiators shall have worried each other into ruin or reason, instead of lying among the dead on the bloody arena, we shall have acquired a growth and strength which will place us hors d’insulte.

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Jefferson referred to Don Quixote’s unrealistic optimism and the proximity of heroic deeds and insanity, when he argued that America could not set the world right. Thus, Guyer and Stratton iconized Jefferson as pacifist and isolationist whose realization that war was not profitable had to be re-affirmed.192 The Democrat Joseph Shannon agreed with these Republics in “My Attitude on the Repeal of the Neutrality Act,” providing additional evidence. Jefferson opposed war because history had shown that it did not solve conflict but fathered new wars. Jefferson, “the apostle of democracy, the idealist of the Republic, the founding father who saw farther into the future than any statesman of his time” (Cong. Rec. 3 Nov. 1941: 8460), thus should be heard before Congress voted on the repeal. Jefferson had favored the discontinuation of diplomatic relations to punish a nation’s misbehavior and said that if this caused war, “ ‘we will meet it like men’ ” (8460, 8461). While Shannon followed his Democratic colleagues Celler, Mead, Edelstein and the Republican Barbour in promoting America as the “refuge” (8459), he sided with the Republicans Plumley, Tinkham, Gillie, Schafer, Stratton, and Guyer on the necessity to remain at peace. They relied on the first part of the Monroe Doctrine and Jefferson’s trade embargo193 to make their case, but without considering the difference between the fledgling republic of Jefferson’s time and the 1930s. The foremost Democratic advocate of Jeffersonian pacifism as outgrowth of his humanitarianism the Indiana Representative Ludlow appropriated these ideas for his war referendum measure which found bipartisan support.194 Jefferson’s Peace, then, has been our principle, peace is our interest, and peace has saved to the world this only plant of free and rational government now existing in it’ (A3574). “ ‘It would have been a perfect Quixotism […] to have undertaken to redress of all wrongs against a world avowedly rejecting all regard to right’ ” (A3574). 192 The House voted on an extended version of the neutrality law which included a ban on the sale of implements not only during war, but also peace time. Guyer (R-KS) voted for it and the Young Turks—Maverick, Coffee, Hildebrandt, Scott. As did Ludlow, Luckey, Murdock, Voorhis, Rankin, and the Republicans Lambertson, Knutson, Culkin, Ditter, Dirksen, Dondero and Gifford, all of whom had appropriated Jefferson between 1934 and 1943. But the vote failed 121 to 283. 193 Shannon cited Jefferson’s affirmation of a clean conscience because he had not fought a war in which millions of his countrymen died as Napoleon had done (cf. Cong. Rec. 3 Nov. 1941: 8459). 194 “With […] war threatening the peace of the world, with our national debt piling up mountain high, and millions of our citizens […] looking in vain for work […] we should reconsecrate ourselves at the feet of Jefferson and seek to derive from his life and example a guide to better days” (Cong. Rec. 13 April 1939: 4270).

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“passion for peace,” “faith in the people,” and life-effort to “enlarg[e]‌the frontiers of democracy,” inspired him to re-propose a people’s referendum on whether or not the country should go to war (Cong. Rec. 13 April 1939: 4270).195 The world crisis propelled him to speak for the referendum again, which “would make all men equal when it comes to the greatest and most tragic of all decisions” (4270). It “would be [Jefferson’s] twentieth century contribution to democracy” (4270). By tracing the common desire to remain at peace,196 to Jefferson’s ideas of democracy and equality, and by evoking the irony that people can “decide on the location of a sewer” but not on “the death of his loved ones,” Ludlow made an emotional appeal (4270). He achieved this even though Jefferson did not favor direct participation, but representative government.197 Jefferson, as contrasted with Hamilton, however stood for equality and against a ruling class that prospered by the labor of the common people (4270), an idea which Ludlow used to justify the second part of the referendum which he addressed a year later. Three days before Ludlow’s 1940 speech, Germany had invaded Norway and Denmark and in reaction, “one set of fighting powers [was] placing orders in American factories for a billion dollars of bombing planes to kill human beings wholesale,” Ludlow announced (Cong. Rec. 12 Apr. 1940: 4436). At the anniversary of Jefferson’s birth America had the opportunity to “take stock of our wanderings from the Jeffersonian faith” (4436). Jefferson had not promoted “international meddling,” nor to become “the arsenal to furnish lethal instruments”198 because he had warned against participating in the “profitable war trade,” which would “draw us ever closer to the yawing chasm of war” (4436). Ludlow thereby attacked the Fourth Neutrality Act which had lifted the arms embargo, reestablished cash-and-carry, and as a substantial revision allowed the 195 Smith/Garrett (D-TX) supported the Ludlow Referendum, even after it had failed, quoting Jefferson: ‘The care of human life and the happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government’ (Cong. Rec. Aug 3, 1939: 3814). Smith could not square Jefferson’s humanitarianism with war. 196 The voting record and Griffin provide proof: “The wide advocacy of such a plan at that time, both by a large segment of the American public and a substantial number of congressmen, has usually been interpreted by historians as a manifestation of the resurgence of isolationism and as an indication of the weakening of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s control of Congress” (1968, 267). Yet FDR’s maneuvering of his aids to bring about a negative vote, reveals that he had not relinquished all of his influence. 197 Opponents argued it violated “the American system of representative democracy” (Griffin 1968, 279). 198 The speech occurred eight months before FDR’s “Arsenal of Democracy Speech” which proposed the idea.

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allies to order combat aircraft. By referring to the “profitable war trade,” he again criticized that industrialists not the workers reaped despicable profits, an idea that mirrored the Nye committee’s report.199 Thus, Ludlow’s referendum carried a provision allowing the president to seize all private and public businesses and their manpower whenever war had been rightfully declared.200 At the end of his 1940 speech, Ludlow again lamented the failure of his referendum by asserting that on January 10, 1938  “democracy was murdered” because “a combination of our leaders, elected under the name and emblem of the Democratic Party […] joined to prevent even the consideration of my resolution” (4436).201 He referred to the time when the administration through Speaker Bankhead (AL); Majority Leader Rayburn (TX); Emanuel Celler (NY); and Hatton Sumners (TX), chairman of the judiciary committee, had worked against it after a discharge petition had gained enough signatures by December 1937.202 After America’s entry into the war, other quotes and actions suggested that Jefferson was a world citizen concerned with the rights of all mankind. Lister Hill, the progressive Alabama Democrat, included an article by his Senate colleague Elbert Thomas of Utah, into the Congressional Record, which had appeared in the New Masses special issue under the heading “Jefferson World Citizen.” Therein Thomas proclaimed: “In Jefferson above all the world’s great revolutionaries we have the key to the new world for he was in very deed ‘Sometimes a Virginian, sometimes an American, always a citizen of the world’ ” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1943:  A1876). The term revolutionary echoed the term radical, which he, too, used with a positive connotation, depicting Jefferson as strongly imbedded in 199 Ludlow had responded to the Nye report in disbelief and with disgust: “[…] that there are creatures who call themselves business men who are such strangers to the common impulses of humanity that they eagerly, by bribery and chicanery whenever necessary, promote wars to slaughter their fellow human beings for the sake of filthy dollars” (qtd. in Griffin 1968, 272). 200 Qtd. in Griffin 1968, 273. The owners to be compensated “not in excess of 4 percent based on tax values assessed in the year preceding the war” (273). 201 In contrast, Farley argued that Jeffersonian democracy was still intact and diametrically opposed to the “onward march of the dictators […], preying on the fears, the insecurity, and the unhappiness of the masses […] the failure in the proper functioning of democratic institutions” (Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1939: 1683). 202 Griffin 1968, 276. Griffin writes that “151 of the 329 Democrats, 55 of the 90 Republicans, 4 of the 5 Farmer-Laborites, and all 8 Progressives” had signed the discharge petition irrespective of party or geographical divisions. Among the strongest supporters were Hamilton Fish (R-NY), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Maury Maverick (D-TX), and Everett Dirksen (R-IL).

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society locally and globally. He promoted Jefferson’s philosophy for a new and more democratic world. Thomas devoted a second speech to justify the war and clarify its aims by establishing a connection between “common men everywhere” through Thomas Jefferson. It was broadcast by the National Broadcasting Co.’s Victory Hour Program under the title of “Jefferson Gave us our War Aims.” Jefferson’s “service” to “common men throughout the world” was “that all men are created equal and that they can govern themselves” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1943: A1876). As “world citizen,” he thus “wanted the ‘four freedoms’ […] for common men everywhere” (A1876). While the first two of Roosevelt’s four freedoms—speech/press and religion—were contained in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the other two, Thomas explained, were subliminally present when Jefferson advocated “freedom from want” in the phrases “freedom of opportunity, and especially freedom of educational opportunity” (A1876). The fourth, freedom from fear, he read in Jefferson’s hope that “the great experiment in a people’s government here in America would prove to the world that men can be made secure in their persons and their property, despite the conflicts of interest […]” (A1876). He suggested that these securities were essential for democracy203 and appealed to Americans to keep fighting for their establishment abroad because “[Jefferson] furnishes us one of our great war aims—the aim to make all men free” (A1876). Thomas claimed, “Jefferson would, of course, be fighting the Axis Powers. He would insist that nations be as moral as we expect individuals to be” (A1876). Thomas, one of the architects of the progressive memorial inscriptions, made Jefferson into a fighter for mankind’s welfare even through war. His insistence on the morality of nations and the idea that “[t]‌he present war, if made purposeful, must to be given meaning” (A1876), expressed his belief that America was not fighting for imperialistic reasons even though the idea of Manifest Destiny had often been misused in this respect.204 Representative Sabath and Senator

203 “American democracy offers a tested plan which can serve all mankind” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1943: A1876). 204 While many referred to America’s destiny in connection with Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, this acquisition was not seen as an imperialistic scheme but as a necessity for keeping America, which was surrounded by warring European powers, at peace. Thomas connected the issue of morality to America’s motto and thus instructed his colleagues: “[…] read the motto of the Great Seal of the United States engraved on [the silver dollar], and feel the real driving power and the eternal spirit of the found[ers]. Annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum. (He, God, has smiled on our undertakings). This is important to the world today” (A1876).

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Barkley in their own ways appropriated Jefferson to give the war meaning. Sabath tinged his speech with Christian overtones of the “Golden Rule” which Jefferson would want to see established abroad (Cong. Rec. 12 Apr. 1943: A1794). Barkley portrayed Jefferson as a revolutionary for self-government—at home and abroad205 and thus indicted the unpatriotic, “timid souls” who did not want to fight (Cong. Rec. 7 Jul. 1943: A3575). This echoed Edwin Burrows’s shaming of the “tin-limbered weathercocks” and their parallel technique suggested that the Democrat Barkley at least agreed with Communists that defeating fascism gave the war meaning. Even though the necessity for fighting the war with a purpose was a bipartisan concern, Herman Eberharter, the Democratic representative from Pennsylvania, admonished Republicans that “to really and wholeheartedly embrace the principles and the ideals and policies of Thomas Jefferson” they should give “united service to […] [this administration’s] efforts to forcefully prosecute the war to an early and successful conclusion” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3325). The words united service highlighted the principle of the common effort for the common good. Even though he implied that Republicans did not support this idea to the fullest, Republicans begged to differ from his estimation, as did Hugh Scott (R-PA) in “Thomas Jefferson: Patriot and Prophet.” Although Scott proclaimed that Jefferson “would not understand” the government regimentation, he nonetheless agreed with Democrats on Jefferson’s continued influence on America

205 Sabath defined Jefferson’s greatness as guiding principle: “The sooner we free others from tyranny of leaders who know not the first principle of greatness—the Golden Rule—the sooner will they know and grow and thrive upon greatness themselves” (Cong. Rec. 12 Apr. 1943: A1794). “I saw the essence of [greatness] grow and the truth of it spread. […] Jefferson’s greatness was in one man at one time, but it is not limited even to some men at some time. We’re fighting now for [it]—[…] for all men at all times” (A1794). Sabath stressed that all were contributing to the fight, and thus to the spread of Jeffersonian principles which gave them a clear purpose. Cf. Barkley (D-KT)/ Byrd (D-VA) JD speech at UVA on the Fourth of July. Jefferson “became a revolutionist for the special purposes he set out to accomplish for mankind” and “recommended revolution to all peoples and all generations as a remedy against the same or similar intolerable conditions as those which he […] helped to overthrow” (Cong. Rec. 7 Jul. 1943: A3575). Lincoln, as one of the “greatest disciples of Thomas Jefferson” (A3576), stood for the consent of the governed, liberty, and the equality of men. Thus, Barkley explained the reason for fighting by borrowing the Gettysburg Address. He praised those courageously following Jefferson’s example and denunciated those not fighting as being “unworthy” of him. He thereby challenged people’s patriotism to free their “timid souls” (A3576) of their fears and to gain their support for this war of freedom.

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and its foreign policy (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3324). “It is thanks to him that the immortal charter of our liberties is today no musty document attesting merely the memory of high hopes unrealized, but a living thing,” Hugh Scott proclaimed, and asserted, “Americans have lived by it. Americans are dying for it today and for the spirit of freedom which it illuminates” (3323). While Scott’s remarks206 and his Jefferson passage stressed many aspects mentioned by the Democrats, America’s principal war aim remained its preservation of democracy. This became evident in his last sentence through the words “his people” when Scott hopefully proclaimed: “In the days of victory to come we must not forget. He did not fail his people. We must not fail him” (3324). Scott, too, used shaming to urge patriotism and to give victory meaning beyond vanquishing the enemy. On June 30, 1943 William P. Elmer of Missouri still tried to argue for American isolationism with the support of Thomas Jefferson. His speech was triggered by his opposition to the Fulbright resolution207 which Elmer contrasted with the first five presidents’ clear foreign policy:  ‘Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all; entangling alliances with none’ (Cong. Rec. 30 Jun. 1943: A3343). The resolution would entangle America further with Europe, threaten its sovereignty, its independence, and safety. As America “never needed an international alliance to carry out the[…] beneficial things” (A3342) outlined in its Constitution, he used history as proof that prosperity was only achieved by isolationism. Jefferson was still a guide and as isolationist, pacifist, and humanitarian was concerned for the welfare of his people and their freedom from oppression of tyranny or war. Throughout the speeches relating to Jefferson as humanitarian and Jefferson as advocate for the rights of the common people, his radicalness and revolutionary character, his vision, nobility, and intellectual universal power were stressed. The attribution, as seen in Elmer’s speech for example, also intersected with states’ rights and constitutionalism regarding the sources of oppression and the limitations of certain freedoms.

206 Jefferson had argued that by ‘avoiding all offenses’ the Nation ‘might expect to live in peace and consider itself as a member of the great family of mankind’ (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3324) 207 “That the Congress hereby expresses itself as favoring the creation of appropriate international machinery with power adequate to establish and to maintain a just and lasting peace among the nations of the world, and as favoring participation by the United States therein” (Cong. Rec. 30 Jun. 1943: A3341).

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3.2.2 Jefferson as States’ Rights Advocate and Strict Constructionist Merrill Peterson amplifies in his discussion of the first Jefferson Day Dinner that the claim of the Calhounites on Jefferson’s advocacy of states’ rights and the doctrine of nullification, was questionable. Peterson explains that the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and Jefferson’s draft thereof “made his opinion more ambiguous […].”208 Peterson reveals the difference between the aims of the resolutions of ‘98 and the later state rights advocates’ aims; Jefferson’s resolution against the Alien and Sedition Laws sought to strengthen majority power, which was built upon the freedom of expression and political agitation, while the Calhounites wanted to “protect[…] exclusive state and sectional interests from the majority power of the Union.”209 The specific aims of congressmen’s appropriation of Jefferson’s states’ rights tendencies and strict constructionism in the 1930s and early 1940s will be explicated in the following analysis by considering the interrelated topics of federal centralization, patronage, local and self-government, checks and balances, and the Supreme Court. Reminiscent of the thematic in the 1830s, these appropriations differed in their aims and degree of states’ rights in its relation to the Constitution depending on the background of the speaker.

Elected vs. Appointed Officials and the Issues of Patronage and the Spoils System After the sweeping legislative activity of the first one hundred days, James Farley, Roosevelt’s “sagacious patronage dispenser,”210 rewarded those who had enacted the recovery program establishing the PWA, CWA, NRA, and TVA. These 208 Peterson 1985, 57. Peterson notes that decisions of a single state to dissolve the Union would contravene the majority principle, which “Jefferson called ‘the vital principle of republicanism, from which there is no appeal but to force.’ ” (57). Furthermore, he relates that Jefferson acknowledged the authorship first in a private letter in 1821, and he therefore concludes that Jefferson did not consider the resolution “enduring dogma” (64). He also highlights that Calhoun reversed the relation between states’ rights and the concepts of individual liberty and local self-government. Calhoun “converted states rights into an essentially defensive weapon against democratic centralization. […] Jefferson conceived of states rights as a means of buttressing a union identified with his fundamental principles. Calhoun’s doctrine worked toward the disruption of that union, along with the destruction of states rights” (Peterson 1985, 64–5). 209 Peterson 1985, 65. 210 Henry Fountain Ashurst, A Many-Colored Toga: Diary. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 1962. Print. 333–4.

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agencies increased the number of government employees to a yet unknown degree in American history. While employment for these agencies was regulated by the civil service law, Republicans soon vociferated their grievances about the system of political patronage, the activities the New Deal agencies were engaged in, and their manner of attending to their duties. In February 1934, the Massachusetts Republican Charles Gifford used several Jefferson quotations to support his colleague John Cooper’s denunciation of democratic patronage. Cooper argued that Democrats, and especially Thomas Blanton of Texas, sought to blame “any little mistakes” within the New Deal agencies on “some poor, insignificant fellow that was called a Republican” (Cong. Rec. 26 Feb. 1934: 3267). However, the administration was at fault as it had appointed officials who turned these relief agencies into spoils systems by “buy[ing] votes” and privileging political associates (3267). Gifford considered these practices as un-Jeffersonian and concluded: “This year Republicans must celebrate the birthday of Thomas Jefferson. Assuredly the present-day Democrats cannot do so” (3319). He affirmed what “has been truly said recently,” namely that “Jefferson would have decided that the Republicans were a rather sensible lot. They were against all this silly business of concentrating every sort of power and authority in the Federal Government” (3319). He thereby made Republicans the present-day Jeffersonians, as they adhered to states’ rights and the distribution of power in the local and state governments administered by elected, not appointed, officials accountable to the people through the ballot. Under the caption “Thomas Jefferson on State Rights,” Gifford thus comprised excerpts from four letters,211 two quotations from James Parton’s Jefferson biography, and an anecdote. In the first letter, Jefferson opined that the United States was too large to “have all its affairs directed by a single government” and an extensive federal structure obscured responsibility and encouraged “public agents to corruption, plunder, and waste” (3320). Gifford’s distrust in “public officials and ‘politicians,’ ” who would only cause “mismanagement,” became obvious when he fought Jerry Voorhis’s Banking Reform.212 Jefferson stated that “[t]‌he true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves and united as to everything

211 Letter to Gideon Granger in 1800; letter to Destutt Tracy in 1811; letter to James Monroe 1797; and a letter to W. C. Nicholas 1799. 212 Bullock 1978, 100. Voorhis believed the government should issue money. Thus, he proposed that the Federal Reserve should be brought under federal control and that the banks should be owned by the government.

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respecting foreign nations” (3320). Gifford thus defined a strict constructionist as one who believed in the constitutional limitation of the Federal government to foreign affairs, while the states’ responsibilities pertained to ‘everything within themselves.’ The next Jefferson letter proclaimed the “State governments” “the true barriers of our liberty […]” (3320) which connected individual liberties with the states, as addressed in the third letter: “We are willing to sacrifice to the Union and the Constitution everything but the rights of self-government […] in which alone we see liberty, safety, and happiness” (3320). All these Jeffersonian quotes enunciated Gifford’s preference for self-government on the state and local level. The anecdote revealed Jefferson’s principled character who even in the face of partisanship and selfish interests believed that self-government meant the government by all eligible voters.213 Therefore, the administration had no right to become the sole legislator that displayed a disregard for the (Republican) minority of eligible voters. In order to argue against the New Deal bureaucracy by means of criticizing the agencies implementing the government regulation and thus against the erosion of states’ rights through federal centralization, Republicans sought historical approbation in the struggle between Jefferson and Hamilton.214 Senator Beck

213 Cf. Cong. Rec. 27 Feb. 1934: 3320. Cf. James Beck commented on self-governance, in his JD speech of 1934, when he attacked the codes of the NIRA for inhibiting the average workers or artisans from setting their hours and wages. Thus, the federal government had overstepped its authority in meddling with the responsibilities of the sovereign states and by infringing upon individual rights. This was un-Jeffersonian, a sentiment that Republican colleagues asserted during discussions on the two proposed Jefferson memorials. For Rep. Eltse (R-CA) it was incompressible that the Democrats wanted to honor Jefferson, “a believer in States rights,” “when they have pulled away so far from” his principles (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1934: 10885); Rep. McFadden (R-PA), a former banker, wanted to honor Jefferson who “gave us this great charter under which we have been operating until just recently;” calling Democrats’ appropriation a “travesty” as they had undone “all that Jefferson stood for […] as to the necessity of maintaining constitutional government” (10889). 214 Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8531. Earl Michener (R-MI): “In our early history there was a division of thought as to whether the strong centralized government philosophy of Alexander Hamilton or the local community responsibility and States’ rights philosophy of Thomas Jefferson was more important in our system of government. Time has convinced all of us that both were right. We have the strong centralized government envisioned by Hamilton. I am sure that for the time being at least the philosophy of Hamilton is being realized to the nth degree, and there was never greater need for

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(PA), “a conservative among conservatives,”215 had long been concerned with these topics, even under Republican leadership. He extended the ideas of The Vanishing Rights of the States (1926) in Our Wonderland of Bureaucracy: A Study of the Growth of Bureaucracy in the Federal Government, and Its Destructive Effect upon the Constitution (1932). In 1934, he saw these earlier tendencies fulfilled to the greatest degree: […] no one, I  think, can seriously question that this administration […] is realizing beyond any dream of Alexander Hamilton his ideas as to the nature of our Government and what its desired form should be. His dream was the absorption of the States in the Federal Government. That dream has come to pass to an alarming extent. (Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1934: 6868)

Beck had framed this moment of truth by his praise of Thomas Jefferson, so as to reveal how the NIRA violated states’ rights and made the state legislatures and its officials subservient to the president. Jefferson, “believ[ing] that the Union could not be indissoluble unless the States were indestructible” (6868–9), Beck concluded, would have rejected it. But the “emergency had confused our ideas of right and wrong, of liberty and bondage, of constitutionality and unconstitutionality” (6869). He considered the NIRA codes an infringement on, not an increase of, civil liberties in the form of economic security. By eroding individual and states’ rights through government regulations administered by a growing number of bureaucrats, the New Deal endangered the basis of the Union. Jefferson’s principles of self-government and his denunciation of the spoils system remained the main avenues of attack for Republicans during the New Deal.216 Robert Rich, a Pennsylvania Representative, addressed this with respect to the civil service.217 He lamented the excessive spending estimates of the Jefferson practical application of the Thomas Jefferson theory of government than confronts us today. […] the last 5 years must convince any of us of the truth of this assertion.” 215 Wolfskill 1962, 45. Merrill Peterson even describes Beck as a “long-time worshipper at Hamilton’s shrine and peerless exemplar of constitutional fetishism in the decade prior to the New Deal” (1985, 370). 216 Rep. Church (R-IL) contrasted constitutional government and its prerequisite of states’ rights with the New Deal (cf. Cong. Rec. 18 May 1936: 7448). While FDR’s platform of 1932 had pledged adherence to Jeffersonian principles, FDR abandoned it when he “pursued a program of national regimentation and control” (7448). Thus, FDR went against the self-government of the people. 217 Even the Democrat Guy Moser (PA) used Jefferson to amplify some general flaws of the civil-service examination. He argued that “[t]‌he Government of the Nation […], as administered by bureaucrats” would not have accepted Jefferson because of a ‘lack of experience,’ even though Jefferson “spent a life so full of usefulness to his country

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Memorial and called Jefferson “a great States’ rights Democrat” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5442). He praised the democratic Jefferson Day speeches, only to urge the administration to realize the ways it disregarded his principles. By criticizing the centralization of government, the patronage system, and the “waste of money going on under the W. P. A. program,” Rich identified the points he considered un-Jeffersonian (5443). As a remedy, he suggested that “expenditures of public funds” for “projects to be erected to a great man like Thomas Jefferson” should be authorized by Congress “not the President” or the brain trust (5543), which he contrasted with elected officials and the lawful power of Congress. By linking Jefferson to Congress, he revealed the constitutional power of the legislative in contrast to the executive and claimed that the President and his brain trust were un-Jeffersonian. Two years later, Rich thus still insisted, Jefferson “was not a new dealer. He believed in the Constitution and what it stood for” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938:  8528). While many Democrats would have disagreed with Rich on the extremity of his view, some regarded the growing bureaucracy with its public workforce as much in need of control as they thought business and industry should be controlled and regulated.

Jefferson as Opponent of Bureaucracy – the Hatch Act As the public workforce increased up to 3.3 million workers before the election of 1938, many lawmakers, including FDR, advocated for regulation of its political activity. After an investigation had revealed the mishandling of WPA funds and workers in the Democratic campaigns of 1938 in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania, the Democrat Carl Hatch drafted a bill to ‘Prevent Pernicious Political Activities.’ The Hatch Act of 1939218 sought to prevent the “exploitation of relief workers in political campaigns,”219 and stated that, “No officer or employee in diplomacy and statesmanship” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1936: 3334). Moser suggested that “some trade or craftsmanship” (3334) was the only experience needed in the civil service nowadays. The Civil Service Commission when following patronage hindered the national development by excluding those with merit and talent—a problem which had been compounded by the enlargement of bureaucracy. 218 Margaret Rung details that section 9A of the Hatch Act “responded to the fears of communism,” as it “denied federal jobs to applicants who belonged to any organization or party that advocated the overthrow of the government” (Margaret C. Rung, Servants of the State: Managing Diversity & Democracy in the Federal Workforce, 1933–1953. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2002. Print. 87.). 219 David Porter, “Senator Carl Hatch and the Hatch Act of 1939.” New Mexico Historical Review 48.2 (1973): 151–65. Print. 154.

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in the Executive Branch of the federal government, or any agency or department thereof, shall take part in political management or political campaigns.”220 David Porter argues that Hatch designed the second provision to curb the power of the “rival […] faction in New Mexico”221 and thus it arose from specifically local and personal concerns. But the provision had much wider implications as the administration feared that it could be applied to Roosevelt and all political officials and make their participation in the fundraising Jefferson and Jackson Day Dinners unlawful.222 Opponents of the bill—Emanuel Celler, Sherman Minton, Charles Faddis, Guy Moser, and Joseph Guffey—attempted to attack it on the grounds that it violated employees’ freedom of speech, but to no avail.223 With the approaching election year 1940, Hatch, with Jefferson’s help, tried to extend the bill’s provisions to state and local government employees’ participation in federal elections, if they were paid by “the Federal Treasury” (Cong. Rec. 11 Jan. 1940: 265). Hatch argued that Jefferson “definitely declared his opposition to […]” and “attempted to stop electioneering by governmental employees” (268)224 and thus wrote to his cabinet that any attempt to control or influence “the free exercise of the elective right” contravened the Constitution and threated the “mutual independence” of American institutions (268). Jefferson’s message to his cabinet explicitly chastised the attempt on part of the “Executive of the Union” to influence elections, a judgment that would have been fitting during the Roosevelt’s ‘Purge’ of 1938. Hatch resorted to the rhetorical tools employed

220 Qtd. in Robert A. Cropf, American Public Administration: Public Service for the 21st Century. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. Print. 331. 221 Porter 1973, 154. 222 Cf. Porter 1973, 157. 223 Cf. Porter 1973, 160. The congressmen listed were moral entrepreneurs of Jefferson. 224 Jefferson’s cabinet message was quoted in full with few elisions. “ ‘The President of the United States has seen with dissatisfaction officers of the General Government taking, on various occasions, active part in elections of the public functionaries, whether of the General or the State Governments. Freedom of election being essential to the mutual independence of governments * * * so vitally cherished by most of our constitutions, it is deemed improper–’ I remind the Senators that I am still quoting from Thomas Jefferson–‘it is deemed improper for officers depending on the Executive of the Union to attempt to control or influence the free exercise of the elective right. * * * The right of nay officer to give his vote at elections as a qualified citizen is not meant to be restrained, nor however given, shall it have any effect to his prejudice; but it is expected that he will not attempt to influence the vote of others nor take any part in the business of electioneering that being deemed inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution and his duties to it.’ ”

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by other Democrats—Jefferson’s sainthood, patriotism, and concern for the general welfare—to support his bill and to perpetuate the timeless applicability of Jeffersonian doctrines. The Senate passed the amendment in March 1940 by a majority of 29 votes. Even after passage of the Hatch Act, Republicans continued to regard the sheer size and centralization of the bureaucratic apparatus as a grave danger to the Constitution. During the infamous 1938 election, Karl Mundt (SD) had run for office claiming that “his version of liberalism was still that of Jeffersonianism.”225 In respect to patronage and FDR’s third term re-election, Representative Mundt thus recalled “words uttered by Thomas Jefferson, who in a more glorious era of the Democratic Party was considered to be its patron saint” (Cong. Rec. 17 Nov. 1941: 8936). Jefferson’s “far-seeing vision” had made him enunciate, ‘The elective principle becomes nothing if it may be smothered by the enormous patronage of the general Government’ and ‘government should be the servant and not the master of the common people’ (8936). By implication, Mundt attacked the bureaucracy of the New Deal and criticized that it served only the interest of the Democratic Party, in-so-far as the employees in order to secure their jobs re-elected democrats and by implication FDR. As this served its own special interest, Mundt argued, it did not contribute to the general welfare.

Jefferson and the Courts: Constitutional Checks and Balances Vermont Republican Charles Plumley called Jefferson a “strict constructionist” in one subheading of his Jefferson Day speech (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3408), explicating that this meant that the Constitution had to be read and obeyed as the framers intended it. Even though Plumley admitted that Jefferson “favor[ed] such changes as might be necessary to meet the changing needs,” he insisted “that such changes be made after careful consideration and by orderly amendment” (3408). Otherwise an “individual or group” could “usurp[…]” power, which Jefferson disliked because political power derived from all the people, which meant that “though [Jefferson] was a staunch proponent and defender of State’s rights, he was for the Union first” (3408). Plumley indicated that the Union was equivalent to “We the people,” as decreed in the Constitution’s preamble. His skillful use of populist rhetoric and Jeffersonian democracy had gotten him elected in 1932 and secured his seat throughout the Depression.

225 Cf. Scott N. Heidepriem, A Fair Chance for a Free People: Biography of Karl E. Mundt, United States Senator. Madison: Leader Printing Company, 1988. Print. 23.

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Charles Plumley’s remarks on the Jeffersonian prerequisites of careful consideration and orderly amendment were topical with respect to the debates about Roosevelt’s Judiciary Reorganization Bill—better known as his court packing scheme. FDR had first announced it to the democratic party leaders who were shocked226 at the provision to install up to six more Supreme Court Justices to aid those justices over seventy-and-a-half years. Introduced in the House in February 1937 by the liberal Maury Maverick (D-TX),227 it met with opposition228 as people disliked FDR’s pretense of aiding the ailing justices, knowing he sought to make the Supreme Court more liberal to judge the New Deal legislation more favorably.229 Extending the court without the long process of a constitutional amendment, they thought, showed FDR’s contempt for the system of government. Aligning the court with the administration’s ideology, would create a vassal institution dependent on or eclipsed by the executive or even legislative. This would eliminate the constitutional checks and balances. For given reasons, Plumley argued that any attempt “to change, alter, or amend the Constitution in any manner […] not provided for by that document” would “mock[…]” constitutional government from which only “anarchy or despotism” could result (3408). Plumley connected these negative tendencies to the rise of bureaucracy and the “centralization of strength and power” (3408). Under consideration of the Democrats’ majority in Congress, Plumley’s apprehension that Congress or the executive might undertake (il-)legal measures to change the Constitution became comprehensible. Yet, the stiff bipartisan opposition to and

226 Speaker Bankhead; the judiciary committee members Ashurst and Sumners; the majority leaders Robinson and Rayburn; and Harrison, the chairman of the Finance Committee, were at the meeting. 227 In 1936, Maverick had attacked the Liberty League and its attempts to influence the court decisions. 228 Cf. Swain 1978, 148; Cf. Anthony Champagne, “Sam Rayburn and FDR.” Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress: The New Deal and Its Aftermath. Ed. Thomas P. Wolf. Vol. 2. Armonk: Sharpe, 2001. 62–78. Print. 69–70. 229 Cf. Kennedy 1999, 331. Accessing the putative radicalness of the Judicial Procedures Reform Act (1937), Kennedy asserts that it was mild as it did not re-define the “constitutional role for the Court” or sought to replace the incumbents. Due to the tense atmosphere of the sit-down-strikes and Americans’ reverence of the court, the measure was decried as radical and given the derogatory name of “Court-packing” (331). Sen. Barkley (D-KT) inserted the JD speech of Postmaster General Farley. He admitted openly that the bill would change the alignment of the Supreme Court making it confer more with the administration (Cong. Rec. 15 April 1937: 850).

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the final vote against the measure in July 1937, revealed that Plumley somewhat exaggerated the president’s alleged dictatorial powers.230

Third and Fourth Term Controversy and the Elective Office of the Presidency After the judicial reform fight, the strength of the reinvigorated moderate and conservative democratic congressmen did not vane but continued till the war issue once again shifted the alignments in congress. Together with Republicans, these Democrats had asserted the independence of the legislature and served as a check on the executive. Thereafter it became increasingly harder for FDR to pass his desired legislation as his own party no longer carried him as it had done during the first one-hundred days or even during the second New Deal. Nevertheless, Republicans continued to criticize the centralization of government in the hands of the President which became acerbated in 1939 due to the possibility of FDR’s seeking an unprecedented third term in office; and more so, when it became clear that FDR would run for a fourth term and, if elected, would continue as commander-in-chief in the ongoing war. While there was no constitutional limit for presidential terms, no president had theretofore served for more than two terms nor been a candidate more than twice. Republicans thus could only appeal to the two-term tradition, which had been established by historical precedent, including Jefferson’s own stepping down after two terms.231 Representative Francis Culkin (NY), the Republican on the TJMC, was the first to make that argument which he based on Jefferson’s letter written in response to the Vermont legislature asking him to consider running for a third term (Cong. Rec. 23 May 1939: 3091). After he stressed Jefferson’s affirmation of Washington’s ‘sound precedent’ contained in the letter, Culkin quoted and replicated the main part of the letter in the Cong. Rec. (3091).232 It 230 He stated that through the New Deal a revolution had been set into motion, “civil in character” but unpredictable (3408). Henry Ashurst (D-AZ), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who commented on the limitation of jurisdiction in injunction cases, supported this idea (cf. Cong Rec. 29 Jan. 1937: 561–565). 231 Culkin (R-NY) on TJMC) – (Cong. Rec. 23 May 1939: 3091); Green/Daniel Reed (R-NY) – Newspaper media (Cong. Rec. 6 July 1939: 3091); Plumley (R-VT) – draws on state’s history and autobiography (Cong. Rec. 24 Jan. 1940: 358); Smith (D-VA) – (Cong. Rec. 13. Apr. 1943: 1806). 232 “ ‘That I should lay down my charge at a proper period is as much a duty as to have borne it faithfully. If some termination to the services of the Chief Magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution, or supplied by practice, his office, nominally for years, will in fact become for life; and history shows how easily that degenerates into an inheritance.

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was the very letter, Dumas Malone would disregard as evidence in the Library of Congress Symposium. Yet, to those opposed to a third term the letter was foolproof evidence. The letter, together with other Jeffersonian evidence, undergirded an editorial written by Raleigh T. Green for the Culpeper (VA) Exponent that Republican Daniel Reed of New  York inserted into the Cong. Rec. Green compared the circumstances surrounding Jefferson’s decision with FDR’s, reporting that cabinet members had proposed that Roosevelt should seek a third term, while the president maintained a “sphinxlike silence” (Cong. Rec. 6  July  1939:  3091). In contrast, Jefferson had declined the third term even though he had been asked by several state legislatures, and thus 86 of the 89 electoral votes, and, as his many letters revealed, even advocated “a constitutional inhibition against a third term” (3091). While Jefferson was portrayed as open and frank, FDR was secretive and potentially dangerous which showed the difference between their statesmanship and their deeper character. To illustrate this and to show how Jefferson “punctured his trial balloon” (3091), Green quoted from Jefferson’s letter233 and concluded that to disregard it would dishonor Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt. In January 1940, Charles Plumley (VT), one of the most active Jefferson appropriators in the 1930s, additionally to the Vermont letter drew on Jefferson’s autobiography, in which he retrospectively explained that his opposition to the reeligibility of the President was based on “ ‘the importance of the office, on the fierce contentions it might excite among ourselves if continuable for life, and the dangers of interference either with money or arms by foreign nations to whom the choice of an American President might become interesting’ (Cong. Rec. 24 Jan. 1940: 358). This admonition reiterated Jefferson’s slippery-slope argument that centralization and re-electability could lead to an office for life which could degenerate into an inheritance and thus reestablish some form of monarchy which Hamilton favored. For Republicans, the term ‘monarchy’ became replaced by the term totalitarian dictator;234 however, Jefferson’s second fear of the dangers Believing that a representative government, responsible at short periods of election, is that which produces the greatest sum of happiness to mankind, I feel it a duty to do no act which shall essentially impair that principle; and I should unwillingly be the person who, disregarding sound precedent set by an illustrious predecessor, should furnish the first example of prolongation beyond the second term of office’ ” (Cong. Rec. 23 May 1939: 3091). 233 See previous footnote. 234 “It is not difficult to imagine what Jefferson would say of any plan […] to erect and establish here in the United States of America a centralized, authoritarian, economic totalitarian state, all at the sacrifice of the liberalism, individualism, and Americanism”

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of foreign interference remained equally relevant for them in particular with respect to the European war. Thus, Charles Jr. Hawks’ (R-WI) announced in the House the foundation of a group called The Jeffersonians which was founded by Republicans, yet consisted of non-partisan “distinguished” or “patriotic Americans” (Cong. Rec. 2 Dec. 1940:  6766). Hawks declared that their principles “will appeal to many Americans who have grave apprehensions for the future of representative government” (6766)235 as they favored “the amendment of the Constitution forbidding a third term for any President” (6767). As this amendment was only ratified in 1951, Republicans George Dondero (MI),236 Hamilton Fish (NY),237 Max Schwabe (MO),238 John Vorys (R-OH),239 Edward Moore (OK), and E.  V. Robertson (R-WY),240 together with the Democrats Howard Smith

(Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1940: 2227). Plumley’s Jefferson Day Radio Address inserted into the Cong. Rec. by William Ditter (R-PA). 235 The Jeffersonians decried “concentrating all the powers of the American states in the president’s hands, and the use of such powers to encroach upon the authority of Congress and the courts” (6767). 236 Cong. Rec. 9 Apr. 1943: 3231. “[…] Jefferson bitterly opposed a Presidential third term […]” and “resisted all temptation stating emphatically—‘That should a President consent to be a candidate for a third election, I trust he would be rejected on this demonstration of ambitious views.’ ” Dondero (R-MI). 237 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3319. “[…] Roosevelt, who professes to follow the teachings of Thomas Jefferson, like St. Peter of old, has followed from afar, and has lost track very largely […], particularly as the third term and in regard to not entering into entangling alliances, those were the words of Jefferson and not of Washington, and with respect to setting up a government of concentrated powers in the city of Washington.” Fish (R-NY). 238 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3322. “Mr. Jefferson was in favor of rotation in the holding of public office. He is very clear […] and he leaves no doubt as to his convictions.” Schwabe (R-MO). 239 John M. Vorys (R-OH) (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3320–222) and (Cong. Rec. 31 Mar. 1943: 2776). “Jefferson’s Spirit” was his republicanism. While it covered “almost all of us,” Vorys stated, it excluded “those who believe in monocracy, in perpetuation in office against which Thomas Jefferson fought all his life” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3320). All those favoring the fourth candidacy “are not united with Thomas Jefferson in principle, in memory, or in spirit” (3320). He related this issue to the Constitution and states’ rights with his rhetorical question, “Is it not a fact that Jefferson said that government is best which governs least” (3322). 240 Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: A1820. Edward V. Robertson (R-WY) inserted the radio address given by Senator Edward Moore of Oklahoma into the Cong. Rec.

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(VA)241 and Hatton Sumners (TX)242 denounced FDR’s third term at Jefferson’s bicentennial in 1943, thereby arguing against a fourth term. Their denunciations were also based on Jefferson’s defense of ‘representative government […] which produces the greatest sum of happiness to mankind’ expressed to the Vermont legislature and referenced by Hawks. Like Daniel Reed through Green’s editorial, they attacked Roosevelt’s character but by using Jefferson’s opinion, “ ‘should a President consent to be a candidate for a third election, I trust he would be rejected on this demonstration of ambitious views.’ ”243 They refuted that a fourth term would bring stability to America at a time of crisis by saying that “Jefferson, too, was told that he alone could successfully guide our ship of state” but nonetheless declined (Cong. Rec. 9 Apr. 1943:  3231). And last but not least, they accused FDR, the New Dealers, and the brain trust—more particularly the former brain trustee, now Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter244—of willfully ignoring Jefferson’s position on this issue and its broader implications on the American form of government. The harshest criticism of the New Dealers’ abandonment of states’ rights and local government for bureaucratic control and the executive’s control over the other three branches appeared in Edward Moore’s bicentennial speech. It was broadcast by the National Broadcasting Co. and later inserted into the Cong. Rec. by his first-time Senate colleague Edward Robertson (WY).245 He differentiated between the New Dealers and “the real Jeffersonians” within the Democratic Party246 highlighting the distinction in his polemical opinion that “[t]‌he New 241 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 1806. Smith, a member of the TJMC, declared that Jefferson followed Washington’s “noble example” (A1806). He denounced the administration for paying “lip-service” to Jeffersonian ideals and freedoms (A1807) and agreed with Republicans that the “long arm of autocratic, Federal bureaucracy” was un-Jeffersonian and “local self-government” virtually non-existent (A1807). 242 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1816. Hatton W. Sumners (D-TX). 243 Moore (R-OK)/Robertson (R-WY) Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: A1820; Dondero (R-MI) (Cong. Rec. 9 Apr. 1943: 3231). See previous footnotes for quotes. 244 Dondero (R-MI) (Cong. Rec. 9 Apr. 1943:3231); Moore (R-OK)/Robertson (R-WY) 245 Cf. Rich (R-PA): As Jefferson “was a constitutional Democrat. [….]. He certainly was not a new dealer. He believed in the Constitution and what it stood for” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8528). 246 John M.  Vorys (R-OH) discussed the labels of ‘Jeffersonian Democrats’ and ‘Jeffersonian Republicans,’ maintaining that Jefferson called himself a Republican and urging them to “come back to the fold and join the modern day Republicans in preserving the great principles for which Jefferson lived, in a Republic where there is no longer any other party which can claim their allegiance as Jeffersonians” (Cong. Rec. 31 Mar. 1943: 2776).

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Deal bureaucracy of today is about as like the real Democratic Party as Hitler is like Jefferson. Voracious bureaucrats, arrogant and petty, meddle in every activity of the American citizen” (A1820). He exaggerated the Republican rhetoric by likening the New Deal bureaucrats to the Gestapo of the totalitarian Nazi state. He continued by claiming that America thus had merely a shadow of “free government” and that “the substance,” the checks and balances, “is going” (A1820). If the administration perpetuated its policies, America would meet “the same end” as fascist Germany whose Reichstag and courts had become minions doing Hitler’s bidding (A1820). This correlated with his earlier denunciation of Justice Frankfurter, the FDR appointee, who allegedly had forgotten that “Jefferson insisted that the judges should be independent” so that they “might protect the citizen’s right by holding both Congress and the President in check” (A1820). In particular in this time of war, Moore accused the brain trustee Tugwell of “build[ing] up the power of the Executive, to extend, in the name of war, bureaucratic controls over man” (A1821). Jefferson who “hated bureaucracy” criticizing the “swarms of officers” in the Declaration of Independence, thus would urge “eternal vigilance” (A1821) which Moore exercised by criticizing the administration even, as some interested in blind unity would say, in a time of war. On the other side of the argument regarding the third and fourth term, stood those loyal supporters of FDR like Senator Clyde Herring of Iowa who introduced “Quotations from a Booklet by Secretary Ickes” into the Cong. Rec. He revealed that “anti-third-term traditionalists” who “lean on Jefferson so heavily” can be countered with several Jeffersonian quotations247 (Cong. Rec. 24 Sept. 1940: 5850). They enunciated that “laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind” (5850). Ickes defended Jefferson’s decision to step down as he “had good reason to believe that, owing to the unpopularity of his foreign policy, he could not be reelected. [….] [and] was just as weary of office as was Washington” (5850). Ickes, by referring to the “Virginia Trinity,” argued that Jefferson “himself selected his successors, Madison and Monroe […]. From the point of view of continuing influence, therefore, it might be said that Jefferson exercised power for 24 years” (5850). Thus, the “Era of Good Feelings” 247 “Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the Ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. * * * I am certainly no advocate for frequent and untried changes in the laws and the Constitution * * * but I also know that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. * * * as new discoveries are made […]” (Cong. Rec. 24 Sept. 1940: 5850).

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deserved its name and another Rooseveltian term could be equally positive for America.248

Checks and Balances: The Supreme Court and the Democratic Party For a strict constructionist, the checks and balances which Charles Plumley and Edward Moore identified in their appropriation of Jefferson were indispensable. The term balances suggested a certain fluidity with which the three branches worked together and controlled each other which ultimately derived from different interpretations of the constitutional grants of power bestowed upon each branch. Besides addressing the Judicial Reorganization Act, and thus the relation of the Supreme Court to the New Deal, the democratic speeches questioned the power of district or circuit courts. The topic of checks and balances was intertwined with states’ rights and other Constitutional provisions, as showcased by the speech Claude Pepper’s predecessor in the Senate, Duncan U.  Fletcher inserted into the Cong. Rec. in 1934. Fletcher, as Dixie’s Reluctant Progressive, is a prime example of the changing definitions of governmental power in the crisis of the Great Depression and Florida Justice Glenn Terrell’s speech expressed Fletcher’s own repositioning. While the speech identified Jefferson as a “strict interpreter of constitutional doctrines [who] was much exercised about local autonomy” (Cong. Rec. 4 Jan. 1934:  106), this was true in time of “pioneering” in an agricultural economy. “The democracy of Jefferson was a product of this order and his theory was that it could best accomplish its purpose by a federation of compact States; that the powers of Congress should be limited to those enumerated in section 8 of article I; and that nothing could be added by the doctrine of implied powers” (106). Terrell suggested that the changed economic system might justify the enlargement of “[t]‌he welfare clause and the doctrine of implied powers […] to an extent never dreamed of by Jefferson” (106). The “Necessary and Proper Clause” gave Congress the power to enact any law, as long as it was based on one of the expressed powers and ‘was consistent with the letter and the spirit of the Constitution.’249 Chief Justice Marshall delivered this majority opinion, which 248 Defining the title of his Jefferson biography, Meacham similarly defines power by the “raw standard of winning and keeping” it. Thus, the Virginia Dynasty proves the very standard by which he measures Jefferson’s power (Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. New York: Random House, 2012. Print. xix). 249 “implied powers.” Kermit L. Hall, James W. Ely, and Joel B. Grossman. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.

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Hamilton favored and Jefferson opposed, as he believed that “the clause gave Congress authority only to enact measures absolutely necessary to implementation of the enumerated power.”250 Through these qualifications on the scope of these clauses, Terrell began to raise questions which might eventually have led the listener to the question “whether or not the acts of Congress and the Executive […] are in harmony with the fundamental principles of our democracy […]” (106–7). Through various amendments the Constitution had been lawfully changed at different times. Some Democrats portrayed this latter sentiment as paying tribute to Jefferson’s idea that, after careful consideration, laws had to change with the progress of the human mind as evidenced in the section on Jefferson’s humanitarianism. George Meffan and Compton White employed it when the first New Deal Supreme Court decisions were handed down or in the process of being deliberated.251 Claiming that the New Deal fought special privilege that had been ruling the supply of electricity, Meffan lamented that TVA’s constitutionality was questioned (Cong. Rec. 9 May 1935: 7273). While the courts and justices had to “stay within the word and letter of the present law as regards property rights,” Meffan argued that “if the law can be so construed, then it should be changed where human rights are in jeopardy” (7273). As one-and-a-half centuries had passed since the enactment of the Constitution, a time of many social and economic changes, “another amendment should be passed […] whereby when Congress passes a law by a two-thirds majority in both Houses—they, the representatives of the people and sensing their needs—this should be final and outside the jurisdiction of any court of the land” (7273). In comparison with Roosevelt’s court-packing, Meffan’s proposal was more radical because it would have limited the Court’s judicial review. For Meffan, the amendment would have been true to Jefferson’s humanitarianism by catering to the will of the majority and their needs as against the special privilege of the few. Meffan’s suggestion of amending the Constitution was welcomed by Henry F.  Ashurst, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who discussed whether a district court had the power to issue an injunction and thus to nullify a law passed by Congress. During this discussion the larger question about

2 50 “implied powers.” 251 Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 US 388 (1935); Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railway Co., 295 US 330 (1935); Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 US 495 (1935); Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford, 295 US 555 (1935); United States v. Butler, 297 US 1 (1936).

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the Supreme Court’s review power was taken up (Cong. Rec. 29 Jan. 1937: 561). Kenneth McKellar (D-T) had raised and negated the first question in defense of the TVA (cf. 558, 560–1) by arguing that “the makers of our Constitution” never intended this kind of power for district judges and it never gave the judiciary the power “to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional” (554). The legislative had broad powers as the Constitution only forbade it to “reduce the salaries of judges” or to “remove them except by impeachment,” which meant that his proposition was legal. Ashurst said, “in all tyrannical governments […] whether an oligarchy, or as Thomas Jefferson said, 148 men—no monarch, no tyrant, makes any progress […] until he seizes in his hands the legislative, executive, and the judicial powers” (561). Thus, “there must be some magistracy to determine when Congress exceeds its power” (561). Despite these warnings of a developing tyranny, Ashurst proposed an amendment “to give Congress the power […] to regulate commerce, agriculture, industry, and labor […] and when I  have used those four words I have used about all the words that could describe an activity in our country” (562). This amendment would not abridge the individual rights or interfere with the due process of law but give Congress the power to “legally enact […] the 12 laws or provisions of laws which were lately declared by the Supreme Court to be beyond our power to enact” (562). Ashurst justified his amendment by praising Jefferson’s enthusiasm for the “rights of the people” (563) and by claiming that “we [the people] are of such mold and cast that we will tolerate no tyrant” (564). He viewed his amendment as an extension of Jefferson’s faith in the people and in the idea that the larger the association of a self-governing people,252 the less likely was the degeneration of republicanism into tyranny. The applicability and bendability of the Jefferson icon was further evidenced in a discussion of the same day on the 16th Amendment: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” Senator Homer Bone, the Democrat from Washington who was active as a liberal in the public power movement,253 argued that the 252 Cf. Democrats Thomas/Hill: the “key to [the] stability of modern democracy” was expressed in the Jeffersonian sayings: “ ‘Who can limit the extent to which the federative principle may operate effectively?’ and ‘The larger our association, the less it will be shaken by local passions’ ” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1943: A1877). 253 “Bone, Homer Truett.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774– Present. Web. 17 July 2018  .

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Supreme Court “took the simple phrase ‘from whatever source derived,’ and warped and twisted it by reasoning which I think cannot be sustained in logic” (Cong. Rec. 29 Jan. 1937: 568). Josiah W. Bailey (D-SC), his Southern conservative colleague who on the matter of personal liberties and states’ rights would be quoted by the Republican Plumley, chastised Bone for this pronouncement. Bone, however, believed himself to be “in most happy company with Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln” (568). He inferred that in their times, discussions already excited the people and that they had been equally justified to criticize the Supreme Court. The right interpretation of 16th amendment remained a prominent topic for some Democrats throughout the 1930s. A  year later, for example, Senator Thomas of Utah challenged the Court’s interpretation, stipulating that the “current attempt to place the sixteenth amendment back in the Constitution” was a “lesson in constitutional government” (Cong. Rec. 25 Apr. 1938: 1637). Even though the attempt seemed like an “anomaly,” it was “what the great Jefferson would have done” (1637). Thomas thus preceded Robert Minor, his fellow contributor to the New Masses Jefferson issue, by five years in suggesting the fullest application of the 16th Amendment. Thomas situated Jefferson on the side of the will of the people, as opposed to the Supreme Court, which seemed to uphold special privilege. As Jefferson considered consent of the governed as the basis for the republic254 he objected to giving a small number of men, the judges appointed for life, the power to declare void the will of the people as expressed in congressional laws; such power would, in fact, border on despotism.255 At the same time when Senator Bone discussed the 16th amendment and during the court packing, Roosevelt’s supporters, Postmaster General Farley and Senator Barkley, defended the Judicial Reorganization Bill by giving a

254 Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1934: 10890. May (D-KT); Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1935: 5607. Boylan (D-NY); Cf. Cong. Rec. 20 May 1936: 5742. Faddis (D-PA); Cf. Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8355. Greenwood (D-IN); Cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1504. Adams (D-CO)/O’Mahoney (D-WY); Cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1527. Rayburn (D-TX)/ Farley (D-NY); Cf. Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1938: 1606. R. E. Sherman/Thomason (D-TX); Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 3332. Moser (D-PA); Cf. Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1938: 3099. Shannon (D-MO); Cf. Cong. Rec. 9 May 1939: 1881. Johnson (D-CO)/Barkley (D-KT); Cf. Cong. Rec. 7 Jul. 1943: A3575. Byrd (D-VA)/Barkley (D-KT). 255 Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5441. Shannon (D-M); Cf. Cong. Rec. 18 May 1936: 7446. Maverick (D-TX); Cf. Cong. Rec. 15 Apr. 1937: 850. Barkley/Farley; Cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1814. Coffee (D-WA); Cf. Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1938: 3062. Pettengill (D-IN); Cf. Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8358. Marcantonio (R-NY).

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Jeffersonian precedent. Barkley narrated that President Adams had stacked the Supreme Court with judges of his own persuasion to fortify it before transferring the office to Jefferson (Cong. Rec. 15 Apr. 1937: 849). Barkley called Jefferson “the founder of democratic principles in America” and “an intensely alert, practical, resourceful human being,” who was “definite and practical in meeting the situation” (849).256 By appealing to pragmatism he portrayed change and initiative as positive qualities, in the same way that radical was framed. After explaining Jefferson’s practical method, he compared it to Roosevelt’s plan, claiming that the president sought to accomplish what Jefferson did in a similar situation. “John Adams,” according to Barkley, “left Jefferson a Court committed to invalidate the very things the people had elected Jefferson to do, and Jefferson found a constitutional method of giving the people what they demanded” (850).257 While the supporters of FDR thus argued that it was constitutional, they also employed another strategy in arguing for Jefferson’s support of it. Joseph Shannon used Jefferson’s role in the Louisiana Purchase as evidence of constitutional adjustments, even if they violated the Constitution: “The Louisiana Purchase became a precedent. It leaped over the strict interpretation of the constitutional powers, and in so doing it created a new power, a new authority […]” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5438). Shannon defended Jefferson’s “great territorial deal,” as he found the people’s “reserved rights […] sufficiently shielded” because “the Constitution was enacted ‘to promote the general welfare’ ” (5438). Jefferson’s unconstitutional action saved the Union from continued wars with European powers, which guaranteed its stability and the peace and security of those living in the territory purchased without their consent. His actions revealed that he held the “destinies” of the “young Republic paramount” as it was “the greatest opportunity for expansion, the greatest national emergency, if you will, that ever confronted the nation” (5438). Shannon linked Jefferson and Roosevelt through the term emergency as FDR reacted “with a broadness of vision, a courage, and a spirit of true statesmanship” to the emergency of his times (5439).258 Shannon 256 In contrast to Jefferson, Adams was a “plaster image, or marble statue with a rigid stock muffling his throat and keeping his head in the clouds” (Cong. Rec. 15 Apr. 1937: 849). 257 Compare Sen. Ashurst who argued, “the way to reach the desired objective is by bold frankness, by asking the people of the States to ratify the necessary amendments. If we think the Supreme Court should not exercise the power of passing upon laws, let us say so by amendment” (Cong. Rec. 29 Jan. 1937: 561). Or, phrased the other way around, “The way to obtan it [more legislative power] is by consulting the States” (562). 258 Shannon “shock[ed]” “the present advocates of constitutionalism” by telling them that Jefferson, “strict constructionist […] though he was, […] was the first President to challenge its limitations […] upon the ground of public welfare, the welfare of the

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identified Jefferson, “strict constructionist […] though he was,” as the first to “stretch[…]” the doctrine of implied powers for the national welfare. Yet, he also distanced him from Chief Justice Marshall and like-minded Hamiltonians who enunciated the doctrine to secure their interests by making the Constitution the “shield of trusts, monopolies” (5439). This idea was also expressed in Elbert D. Thomas’s speech delivered at the Jefferson Dinner in Rhode Island, whose “stalwart New Deal Senator”259 Theodore Green had the speech inserted into the Cong. Rec., which revealed the close association between the two. They presented Jefferson as a courageous statesman because the Louisiana Purchase, “in its day[,]‌was more daring than a $4,000,000,000 spending program for improvements” (Cong. Rec. 25 Apr. 1938: 1637). Thus, they assumed, “it would be like Jefferson to propose […] some amount to safeguard a democratic America from misery and eternal pauperhood” (1637). Jefferson, the humanitarian, did everything to foster the welfare of the people and thus would have done exactly what Roosevelt did.260 Through the word ‘daring,’ they portrayed Jefferson as taking risks instead of following strict doctrines. Within the same speech Thomas continued the idea that deficit spending was Jeffersonian as it safeguarded the Union through the general welfare, thus he negated the federal assumption of states’ rights when he claimed: men did not understand that there is no difference between States cooperating with the Federal Government and States colliding with the Federal Government, the first to produce creative effects, the second to produce inefficiency […]. Their working together is mistaken for an abandonment of rights. [….] Now comes the administration and proposes a plan of rescue for the underprivileged in education revolving entirely around the States. Jefferson would literally stand up and cheer. (Cong. Rec. 25 Apr. 1938: 1637)

Thomas’s reference to an efficient government reiterated Jefferson’s adage of a “wise and frugal government” which the administration followed in building

Nation, and […] rushed the passage of a resolution ratifying that great treaty through Congress in spite of the lack of constitutional power” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5438). 259 Kennedy 1999, 348. 260 Compare the end of Shannon’s speech and the heading “Jefferson’s Logic Applicable Today:” “Is there not a parallel between the supreme necessity which induced Jefferson to ignore the lack of express power in the Constitution when he acquired the Louisiana Territory and the supreme necessity which impelled our President of today to ignore possible constitutional limitations when he set about to alleviate human sufferings?”

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its bill around the States with help from the federal government.261 Jefferson’s methods and the proposals of the current administration were in fact constitutional and humanitarian and reflected the interconnection Jefferson saw between the security of the republic and an enlightened people. Alben Barkley similarly defined the federal-state relation as cooperation by suggesting that “the mother government” acted in accordance with Jefferson as it “responded in unity to protect her citizens […] when threatened with economic collapse” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 5384). Asserting that “the sovereignty of the 48 States is not questioned,” he quoted Jefferson’s first inaugural: ‘The support of the State government in all their rights, as the most competent administration for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies’ (5384). “Jefferson further said:  ‘The preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad’ ” (5385), thus Barkley argued while even Jefferson valued the Union higher than the states it did not threaten the states’ existence or responsibilities. Others similarly appealed to the idea of Jefferson’s insistence on national unity, explaining that he had been vital in making Virginia relinquish its possessions to make the new territory belong to the Union in the Northwest Ordinance262 or later on through the Louisiana Purchase. Elbert Thomas, who had mentioned the Northwest Proviso in his 1938 speech, expanded upon this idea by arguing that the “key to [the] stability of modern democracy” was expressed in the Jeffersonian sayings: “ ‘Who can limit the extent to which the federative principle may operate effectively?’ and ‘The larger our association, the less it will be shaken by local passions’ ” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1943: A1877). One might argue that these sayings were all the more relevant for the twentieth century as the different regions were brought closer through the advances in mass communication and the WPA Federal Writers guide books.

261 John Murdock (D-AZ) highlighted that his suggestions derived directly from Jefferson and is the culmination of all he stood for: the states, general education, and the Union (Cong. Rec. 13 Feb. 1939: 517). 262 Cf. Cong. Rec. 25 Apr. 1938: 1636. Green (D-RI)/Thomas (UT); Cf. Moser (D-PA) said:  “[Jefferson] had the pleasure of tendering Virginia’s deed to the Northwest Territory to be held as the common property of all the States” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 3333). To save the Union, Jefferson secured Washington, D.C. for the South as Federal capital in exchange for “Hamilton[’s] funded debt and the bank” (3333), even though he had advocated for paying debt expediently and in full to be free of foreign obligations.

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Among the liberal, pro-New Deal congressmen, John Coffee bluntly admitted under the heading “He was an Apostle of Simplicity” that “[w]‌e have drifted far from the old Jeffersonian doctrines of State rights” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938:  1814). But he countered this admittance by continuing “Jefferson himself would be the first to insist upon adaptation and interpretation of ancient documents to a changing world” (1814). Like Shannon, he used Jefferson’s violation of the Constitution through the Louisiana Purchase as justification of the policies of the present administration (cf. 1814) and contrasted him with John Marshall who tried “to lead the Court into holding legislation unconstitutional, for Jefferson bitterly opposed judicial assumption of power” (1814). Therefore, Jefferson “insisted that the acts of Congress should be the supreme law; […]” (1814). Coffee even asserted that Jefferson advocated that “Federal judges should be elected by direct vote of the people and their removal be by mere vote of the Congress” (1814). By highlighting this Jeffersonian stance and arguing for a radical Jeffersonian adjustment, he revealed that he stood to the left of Roosevelt’s court packing of adding justices with Senate approval.263 Coffee’s argument while admitting that Democrats had drifted from Jeffersonian states’ rights, however argued with Jefferson for the legislative as the more dominant government branch as compared to the Supreme Court. While another liberal New Dealer, Claude Pepper, supported the latter idea when it came to most New Deal legislation, he displayed his opposition to the legislative power and the breach of state’ rights regarding one particular bill in 1938.

Anti-Lynching Bill 1938 – States’ Rights and the Aftermath of Slavery Claude D. Pepper of Florida was an “ardent New Deal Senator,”264 and “the most dedicated [one] from the South.”265 He came from a destitute area and ran for office in 1936 to fill the vacancy of Duncan Fletcher with the conviction that people could live better than they did. He championed the rights and welfare of 2 63 Cf. Jeffreys-Jones 2013, 45. 264 John R. Moore, “Senator Josiah W. Bailey and the ‘Conservative Manifesto’ of 1937.” The Journal of Southern History 31.1 (Feb. 1965): 21–39. JSTOR. Web. 5 June 2015. 33. 37. 265 Thomas P. Wolf, “The 1938 Purge: A Re-Examination.” Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress: The New Deal and Its Aftermath. Ed. Thomas P. Wolf. Vol. 2. Armonk: Sharpe, 2001. 108–21. Print. 113; “I was a New Dealer before there was a New Deal. I remained one when the ideology behind it came under bitter attack” (xii). Claude Denson Pepper, Pepper:  Eyewitness to a Century. San Diego:  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987. Print.

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the elderly and underprivileged, and Francis Locke described Pepper’s political philosophy as having evolved from a respect of Wilson’s ideas, supplemented by “an enlarging study of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian principles.”266 In a speech entitled “Prevention of Punishment for Lynching,” Pepper interpreted Jefferson’s advocacy of states’ rights as one of these principles. His appropriation bespoke the conundrum of a Southern liberal in political office, who advocated “federal activism on a broad range of interests,” but side-stepped matters of racial justice through the “region’s insistence on state’s rights.”267 Kabat therefore concludes that Pepper’s record on race issues was “inconsistent at best, duplicitous at worst,”268 and quite different from his humanitarian concerns.269 Pepper opposed the anti-lynching bill, which had repeatedly been proposed by his party’s liberals, as it “violate[d]‌the dual system of government” (Cong. Rec. 25 Jan 1938: 1042). He argued that Congress could only intervene in the states when a state affirmatively hindered its citizens from the enjoyment of their civil rights, as the Constitution did not guarantee them but only forbade their abridgement. Unlike labor or agriculture which were Federal issues, Pepper claimed, lynchings were local issues of “domestic violence” falling into the 266 Francis P. Locke, “Claude D. Pepper: ‘Champion of the Belligerent Democracy’.” Public Men in and out of Office. Ed. John T. Salter. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1946. 257–76. Print. 265. 267 Ric A. Kabat, “From Camp Hill to Harvard Yard: The Early Years of Claude D. Pepper.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 72.2 (Oct., 1993):  153–79. JSTOR. Web. 8 May 2015. 153. 268 Kabat 1993, 153. 269 Greenhaw related, “He was called ‘Red Pepper’ by his opponent, whose rhetoric in at least one speech is quoted with strong references toward Pepper’s activities with Russians, blacks, and ‘Northern labor bosses.’ ” Suggesting that Pepper, on many matters, was considered even a left-liberal. (Wayne Greenhaw, “Pepper: Eyewitness to a Century by Claude Denson Pepper; Hays Gory.” Rev. of Pepper: Eyewitness to a Century. Claude Denson Pepper, and Hays Gory. Georgia Historical Quarterly 72.2 (Summer 1988): 398–400. JSTOR. Web. 17 June 2013. 399). Noah concludes: “[…] as a senator from 1937 to 1950, Pepper showed what was noblest in the New Deal: passionate commitment to the down-and-out. Pepper sponsored the first minimumwage, maximum-hours bill; he sponsored bills to expand government research to fight disease through the National Institutes of Health; and he helped Franklin D. Roosevelt kill tax breaks for the ‘economic royalists.’ Such positions were risky for a Southerner, but Pepper was committed to helping the afflicted and opposing privilege” (Timothy Noah, “Political Booknotes.” Rev. of Pepper: Eyewitness to a Century. Claude Denson Pepper and Hays Gory. The Washington Monthly 19.12 (1988): 57. ProQuest. Web. 17 June 2013. 57).

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jurisdiction of the states (1034). This distinction served Pepper in justifying his votes on other administration measures.270 Federal Government intervention in domestic matters would “break down the last vestige of demarcation between the States and the Federal government” (1034). Pepper suggested that “the enemies of democracy will say to us” that “you have out-Hamiltoned Hamilton,” because in “your foolish, misplaced zeal you have destroyed the essential qualities of local self-government” (1045).271 This indictment of Hamilton equaled praising Jefferson which Pepper affirmed when he quoted from his letter to Joseph C. Cabell.272 Pepper considered Jefferson’s authority on the matter of states’ rights as unassailable and intertwined with Jefferson’s “democratic principles” (1046). With quotes from Jefferson, but also Madison and Hamilton, Pepper, the New Dealer only in this instance, showed that he shared his Republican colleagues’ concern for the adherence to states’ rights and about the centralization of the federal government and its meddling in people’s lives. This subject took on another form with respect to the collection of taxes to sustain the bureaucracy and the war.

Debt – Centralization, Bureaucracy, and War Republican John Taber (NY) opposed the Jefferson Memorial because he believed that it would not be in Jefferson’s interest to incur national debt (cf. Cong. Rec. 7 Jun. 1938: 8401). Because Taber, according to Patterson, “regarded

270 Pepper voted for most New Deal measures, the continuance of the CCC, the Farm Bill, wages-and-hours legislation, and preventing tax breaks for ‘the economic royalists,’ a term quoted in (Noah 1988, 57). 271 Cf. Peterson 1985, 369. 272 “Let the National government be entrusted with the defense of the Nation, and its foreign and Federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally.” The idea of self-government was founded in the idea that the distribution of powers “ends in the administration of every man’s farm by himself.” The letter contained the idea of checks and balances: “The elementary republics of wards, the county republics, the State republics, and the republic of the Union would form a gradation of authorities […] holding everyone its delegated share of powers, and constituting truly a system of fundamental balances and checks for the Government. Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward republic or of some higher ones, and feels that he is a participator on the government affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year but every day [….]” (Cong. Rec. 25 Jan. 1938: 1046).

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spending programs with unsurpassed hatred,”273 he applied the Jeffersonian sentiment against debt to all aspects of the Democratic administration. This sentiment was shared with other Republicans and conservative Democrats who similarly drew on Jefferson’s opposition to debt. Even before lend-lease, with an appropriation of nearly $20 billion, increased the already astronomical debt, Rush D. Holt, the West Virginia Democrat who became a Republican in 1949, compared the massive debt of the Revolutionary War to the Great Depression.274 Holt “generally supported the New Deal program during his first few months in office” taking his seat only in July 1935 due to the age restriction.275 However, he became aggravated about the WPA operation in his state and felt slighted in respect to patronage. Thus, he criticized that it was being misused for political purposes276 and was generally concerned about how tax money was being spent. Like many other moderate or conservative Democrats, Holt additionally became alienated by FDR’s court packing. Holt prefaced his comments on the national debt in 1939 by suggesting that Democrats for years had been telling Jefferson’s story at the annual Jefferson Day dinners, calling him ‘the father of the Democratic Party’ (Cong. Rec. 25 May 1939: 3345). However, his statements on national debt had been excluded from the panegyrics277 which is why he inserted them into the Congressional Record.

273 James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933–1939. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1967. Print. 235. 274 Thomas H. Coode and Agnes M. Riggs, “The Private Papers of West Virginia’s ‘Boy Senator,’ Rush Dew Holt.” West Virginia History 35 (July 1974): 296–318. Print. 275 Coode and Riggs 1974, 298. Holt approved of the strengthening of the Securities Exchange Commission and the Public Utilities Bill. Coode and Riggs note that Holt shared with Roosevelt “an extreme dislike of electric power and other companies which bled the consumer, and which, by their elusive operations, evaded state regulations” (310). 276 Cf. Coode and Riggs 1974, 299. 277 “For the use of the speakers,” Holt “desire[d]‌to cite the statements of this great American,” with which they could comment on “the debt which has already passed $40,000,000,000” (3345). Among the quotes was Jefferson’s phrase, ‘to preserve our independence we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt; we must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude,’ which the Republican Moore would quote in his bicentennial speech (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: A1820).

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Holt detailed that Jefferson considered it the first duty to pay the debt in full and as quickly as possible,278 while he accused Hamilton of not wanting to pay it to “corrupt and manage the legislative” with it (3345).279 Throughout the debate on Jefferson’s denunciation of debt the question was raised on how much the reason for having incurred it should influence one’s interpretation.280 If deficit spending kept millions from starvation,281 secured the people against searching for radical measures to satisfy their existential needs, and thus promoted the general welfare, would Jefferson have accepted it as meeting the national emergency? Even Holt’s argument suggested that the emergency situation of the 278 Cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 5385. Sen. Barkley asserted that Jefferson favored “ ‘[t]‌he honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith.’ The [US] joins hands with Finland as examples to the world in a sense of honor in the payments of their debts and the sacred preservation of public faith.” 279 Rep. Ulysses Guyer (R-KS) in this respect quoted from a Jefferson Letter: “I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing. [….] a standing army in time of peace, which may overawe the public sentiment; nor a Navy, which, by its own expenses and the eternal wars in which it will implicate us, will grind us with public burdens, and sink us under them. [….]” The first objective of my heart is my own country.” (Letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1799) (Cong. Rec. 23 Dec. 1940: 6975). 280 In 1935, George Meffan and Compton I.  White’s speech appropriated Jefferson, the humanitarian, in connection with the idea of general welfare and the interrelation of currency, debt, and war. They compared the World War I debt incurred for safeguarding American businessmen’s investments abroad with “the humane impulse which creates debt to perpetuate life and security for millions of destitute American citizens” (Cong. Rec. 9 May 1935: 7273). Jefferson, who stood for “men over money” would have favored the accumulation of debt for alleviating the suffering of the “little man” which otherwise gave antidemocratic organizations ground to feed on endangering the American system of government and the republic. See more proof for these arguments: Cong. Rec. 9 May 1939: 1880. Barkley (D-KT)/Johnson (D-CO); Cf. Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1938: 1607. Sherman/Thomason (D-TX): “The defense against communism and fascism is a contented populace.”; Cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1504. Adams (D-CO)/O’Mahoney (D-WY); Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1939: 4198. Barkley; Cf. Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1939: 1683–4. Woodrum (D-VA)/Farley (D-NY). 281 Cf. Cong. Rec. 4 Jan. 1934: 107. Justice Terrell/Fletcher (D-TX); Cf. Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1934: 6869. Marion Zioncheck (D-WA); Cf. Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1934: 10885. Cochran (D-MO); Cf. Cong. Rec. 20 Apr. 1936: 5742. Faddis (D-PA); Cf. Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8360. Bankhead; Cf. Cong. Rec. 15 Jun. 1936: 3279. Barkley (D-KT)/Pepper (D-FL); Cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1516. Overton (D-LA)/Ellender (D-LA).

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revolution made the young Republic go into debt to be able to fight the war of independence. The revolutionary war was used in another way to discuss the relationship between public debt and the imposition of taxes to pay for government expenditures. Pat Harrison of Mississippi, who had, in 1935, been essential in procuring FDR’s tax bill282 included an address in the Cong. Rec. delivered by Alfred H.  Stone, the President of the National Tax Association283 in 1940 (Cong. Rec. 4  Jan  1940:  38). Harrison had trusted Stone’s ‘sensible’ judgment when Congress debated the agricultural relief bill with its production control program.284 Stone, a “balanced budget advocate,”285 employed the Declaration of Independence’s grievances to make his point about the tax burdens which ensued from the national debt, the large payroll of government appointees, and the enormous spending measures of the New Deal. He clarified that the grievances proved that the “forefathers fought the Revolutionary War” not because of the taxes but due to “the form and circumstances of their imposition and collection” (38).286 Hence Jefferson would condemn the creation of “swarms of officers” and would chastise Americans for levying taxes upon themselves, both to an extent never dreamt of by George III (cf. 39). Stone further emphasized the incredible breach with Jeffersonian doctrines through the irony that Americans created ‘our own wonderful system of political patronage’ which was antithetical to Jefferson’s ‘natural aristocracy.’ The bipartisan nature of these criticisms becomes apparent, as Stone and Harrison employed what Republicans had called un-Jeffersonian 282 Swain 1978, 113. FDR called the bill a “wealth tax,” though somewhat misguidedly, as the tax reform bill should be seen as a campaign document rather than a revenuecreating measure (cf. Kennedy 1999, 275–276). 283 Cong. Rec. 4 Jan. 1939: 38. Harrison served as chairperson of the Finance Committee, supporting the New Deal until FDR’s judicial reform, or rather, until the contest between Alben Barkley and himself for majority leader. Harrison, who had been present when FDR informed the leading policy makers of the court packing without consulting them, turned away from many of the progressive proposals, increasingly fearing the federal government’s intervention in the economic and social conditions in the South. As long as he believed FDR to be committed to “fiscal responsibility,” their alliance was stable. The further FDR moved away from a balanced budget, Harrison became increasingly alienated from the New Deal (cf. Swain 1978, 37; 31; 35;162–164). 284 Cf. Swain 1978, 42. 285 Swain 1978, 253. 286 This can be seen in two indictments against George the III: “He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance” and “for imposing taxes on us without our consent” (38).

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ever since Roosevelt’s first one-hundred days. Stone’s reliance on the grievances against George III also preceded the Republican bicentennial speeches. In 1940, Plumley highlighted Jefferson “represented the thought of […] that great mass of everyday common folk” (Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1940: 2227). He tied this back to his 1937 claim that Jefferson “would not tolerate the incurring of unnecessary governmental expenses or the growth and establishment of a vast body of Government officials” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3408). On the contrary, “[h]‌e insisted on maintaining the credit of the Government, on balancing the Budget, and on sound currency” (3408).287 Asking what Jefferson would do in 1940, he answered first with the same grievance Stone had used and, secondly, he pointed out that the tax load for paying public officials fell most heavily on the “low-income earner” and could only be “lightened […] by reducing Government costs” (2227). Vice versa, a large bureaucratic apparatus could only be maintained if taxes were increased, otherwise the public debt would continue to grow. By showing that Jefferson denounced Federal bureaucrats’ meddling in people’s lives, Plumley gained his authority for denunciating the way in which the taxes were collected from those that the administration was claiming to support with its policies. He portrayed the administration as hypocritical and inefficient in alleviating the economic situation, while Jefferson’s ideas on government administration were honest, understandable, and efficient and thus congruent with the philosophy of the Republican Party. In 1940 and 1941, Charles Hawks (R-WI) and Leland Ford (R-CA) announced in the Cong. Rec. the founding of The Jeffersonians and the Democratic Jeffersonians of California, respectively. Hawks’s patriotic group enunciated the same principles in respect to taxation and debt, which Ford, “the labor hating

287 Republican Robert Rich pointed out that the Democratic Party platform of 1932 promised many truly Jeffersonian concerns, such as “economy of government, balancing the Budget, sound money, [and] elimination of Government in business,” as well as “special privileges to none” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5442). Like his other Republicans he inveighed against the later departure from these principles. Ralph Church employed the same contrast as Rich, in order to criticize the “profligate Government spending” (Cong. Rec. 18 May 1936: 7448). In discussing the cost of the foundation of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, John Taber simply stated that he did not “believe in adding to the national debt for that purpose” and that this “would be the last thing Mr. Jefferson would ask” of them (Cong. Rec. 7 Jun. 1938: 8401). Cf. Rep. Lambertson (R-KS) pointed out that two of Jefferson’s eighteen cardinal principles were “No national debt if possible” and “No taxation beyond public want” (Cong. Rec. 15 Jul. 1937: 1807).

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and racist congressman” whose “crude anti-Semitism” resembled that of the Mississippi Democrat John Rankin,288 listed one year later in his declaration: “In view of present critical world conditions, we believe the Nation’s resources and credit should cease being used for unnecessary and wasteful enterprises; […] [but] must be used to hasten and complete national defense” (Cong. Rec. 2 Dec. 1940: 6767; Cong. Rec. 30 Jan. 1941: 1941: A349–50). Hawks, who only served from 1939 to 1940 failing to be reelected, had voted against the Selective Service Act, which would contribute to the national defense and thereby contradicted his own position.289 His vote might be explained by the next statement: “We oppose further unlimited spending of borrowed money, because an ever-increasing national debt constitutes an invisible, but nonetheless unbearable mortgage upon every person, home, and farm” (6767).290 He thereby suggested what Max Schwabe (R-MO) would decry in 1943, namely, that debt binds future generations, which was wrong “in the light of true Jeffersonian philosophy” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3321). Schwabe proved this statement with a quotation from Jefferson291 and insisted that “the average school boy can see at a glance quite clearly how we have digressed from Jefferson’s belief in states’ rights, rotation in office, and freedom of agriculture” (3322). He praised Jefferson’s principles for their timeless applicability and understandability by claiming that even children understood his true philosophy and recognized a departure from it. The liberal Californian Jeremy Voorhis commented on the tax bill of 1941, addressing the concern raised by Hawks’s and Ford’s Jeffersonians that the national defense program was important and could only be sustained by increased taxes. Thus, the proposed bill was the largest, with the highest rates ever applied in America (Cong. Rec. 23 Jul. 1941: 6285). Voorhis believed it was “necessary in view of the present situation” (6285), while he agreed with Hawks

2 88 Bullock 1978, 166–167. 289 Cf. Jenner 2010, 197. Voted in September 1940. 290 Cong. Rec. 30 Jan. 1941: A349–50. Cf. Leland Ford, “Warning Sign on the Road to Prosperity.” Cong. Rec. 14 Mar. 1941: A1178. In this second speech Ford enumerated some beliefs, containing the following two sentences: “You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income,” and, “You cannot establish sound social security on borrowed money.” 291 ‘This principle of spending money to be paid by posterity is but swindling futurity on a large scale. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of Nature one generation is to another as one independent nation to another. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they lease, during their usufruct.’

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that the “debt constitutes an invisible, but nonetheless unbearable mortgage” (Cong. Rec. 2 Dec 1940: 6767). Voorhis explained this aspect of invisibility in detailing the two ways in which a country could borrow money in order to fill the gap between income and expenditures. The first was to borrow from a private institution, namely a bank. Voorhis condemned this because it was merely a “process of subsidizing private financiers,” not benefitting the people and the general welfare (Cong. Rec. 23 Jul. 1941:  6286). The process “create[s]‌money out of thin air” because the bank “credits the Government on its books with a demand deposit,” which was “based wholly on the credit of the Government and secured only by the bond itself ” (6286). In short, it worked with invisible, non-existent money and yet the government became dependent on this private institution, which followed its self-serving interest (cf. 6287). Thus, Voorhis argued for the establishment of a Federal Reserve Bank, of a public institution, which served the interest and welfare of the people (6286). Voorhis “buttress[ed] [his] own argument with a number of quotations from some of the very greatest of the world’s thinkers,” beginning with Jefferson’s letter to John W. Epps of November 6, 1813,292 which Voorhis prefaced:

292 “At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about ‘a public debt being a public blessing;’ that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams, and the gulls of that size entered bonâ fide into it. But the art and mystery of banks is a wonderful improvement on that. It is established on the principle that ‘private debts are a public blessing.’ That the evidences of those private debts, called bank notes, become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our debt about $200,000,000, without our knowing who they are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from the repayment of these debts beyond a given proportion, (generally estimated at one-third). And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead of paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we see in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is levied again on us through the medium of commerce. And they are so ready still to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to let themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them the same premium of 6 or 8 percent interest, and on the same legal exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the debt, when it shall be called for.”

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Here is Thomas Jefferson’s […] devastating description of the strange process of permitting banks to levy against the public credit either by the issuance of bank notes, as in his time, or by creation of demand deposits by expansion on fractional reserves, as in ours. The grim humor of Jefferson’s description hardly detracts from the evident folly of the system he describes, and which we […] are still permitting to exist in all its essential aspects: (6288)

After a quote from John Adams, Voorhis returned to Jefferson’s “forthright statement on his part of precisely the principle for which I am contending here today” and quoted: ‘I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be […] restored to the Government to whom it properly belongs’ (6288).293 Voorhis thereby argued that the people would again be in control of their money and taxes and promote their general welfare. Under consideration of financing the defense program, this change in the policy of creating money would be all the more important. For the Republican Edward Moore (OK), the idea of bringing the public debt under control of the people took on a very different form. After his invectives against the bureaucracy of the New Deal which he compared to the Nazi state, he urged Americans cry out in protest against the further “desecration of our liberties under the Constitution” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1820). Because as Jefferson had said:  ‘to preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt; we must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude’ and ‘If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them they must become happy’ (A1820). Jefferson, if he returned at this bicentennial like Banquo’s ghost, thus would “note that the [bureaucratic] controls, under the pleasing name of ‘national planning’ are not the plans created by war” but hark all the way back to the New Deal (A1821). Moore, then like other critics of the bureaucracy, the debt, and war spending cited the grievance against the ‘swarm of officers’ and paraphrased Jefferson’s denunciation of those believing ‘public debt […] a public blessing’ (which was contained in the Jefferson letter Voorhis had quoted two years earlier). For Moore the reasons for or circumstances of debt in Jefferson’s time and in his own time did not matter, that is, it did not matter that debt in Jefferson’s time, which he wanted to repay in full and as soon

293 Jefferson’s letter to John Taylor. From p. 208, vol. 6, of the Ford edition of the writings of Thomas Jefferson, New York, London, 1892. The bibliographical reference is provided in the Congressional Record.

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as possible as opposed to Hamilton, was necessary to fight the revolutionary war for greater individual freedom and republican government thereafter. Yet this was the root of the Democrat’s Jeffersonian counter argument previously discussed with respect to Jefferson’s seeing the necessity for debt with respect to the Louisiana Purchase which was to safeguard the Union. The debt, incurred through deficit spending of publicly funded relief and work programs, was considered a mechanism to protect citizens against totalitarian forces within and thereby protecting the republican form of government. This general argument, already seen in Meffan and White’s speech in 1935,294 continued with differing emphases relating to the moral entrepreneur’s viewpoint. Two examples shall suffice at this point: the first being Joseph O’Mahoney, the senator of Wyoming who called the number of fifths columnists and other opponents of democratic-republican government “inconsiderable,” and suggested they “have adopted their particular creeds because of the belief that the democratic form of government is no longer competent to protect men in the pursuit of happiness” (1504). O’Mahoney abstained from portraying those adherents of other “isms” as un-American, as the HUAC did by “defining national identity in political terms.”295 Therefore, O’Mahoney advanced a position of tolerance advocated by Jefferson showing that democracy “does work” which had been jeopardized by Republicans and nationalist groups that vilified anyone with communist leanings. He therefore foreshadowed the position of James M. Mead (D-NY) and William Barbour (R-NJ) and the Council against Intolerance in America (cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: 3343) and sided with Emanuel Celler and the American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom (Cong. Rec. 9 Apr. 1940: 4228). For Alben Barkley, the “revolution of Fascist and communistic forces, united in their determination to exterminate democracy […]” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1939: 4198) meant a “challenge to the governmental system for which Jefferson fought and wrought […] based upon the charge that our institutions

294 They contrasted the debt incurred to safeguard businessmen’s investments abroad during World War I with the “humane impulse which creates debt to perpetuate life and security for millions of destitute American citizens” (Cong Rec. 9 May 1935). Jefferson, who stood for ‘men over money’ would have favored the accumulation of debt to alleviate the suffering of the “little man” which otherwise gave antidemocratic organizations ground to feed on and thus endanger the American system of republican government. 295 Alex Goodall, “Diverging Paths:  Nazism, the National Civic Federation, and American Anticommunism, 1933–1939.” Journal of Contemporary History 44.1 (Jan. 2009): 49–69. JSTOR. Web. 2 Apr. 2015. 61.

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are incapable of serving and promoting the welfare of mankind.296 That line of attack […] can be answered by proving here the capacity of our institutions to meet the civic and economic needs of a free people” (4198). Barkley, who had become Senate majority leader with FDR’s and Guffey’s help,297 demonstrated that he shared their viewpoint of the foreign situation by stressing that the charge of “incapable of serving” the welfare applied not only to Americans, but to “mankind” (4198). Barkley’s position tied into Margret C. Rung’s analysis that “efficient civil service was seen as bulwark against Fascism because Fascism attacked the democratic system for its inefficiency in meeting the problems of the time […].”298 To meet this challenge, the Civil Service Commission “tried to be devoted to greater diversity and egalitarianism while at the same time encouraging participation of employees” in the managing process.299 To argue that the New Deal addressed the crisis and proved that democracy did work, they tapped into the rhetoric of fighting for the rights of the common people against wealthy industrialists. Republicans, on the other hand, saw these efforts as evidence of “national planning”300 restricting the very rights Democrats claimed to defend. For the uninformed observer, they seemed to employ the rhetoric of communist class struggle while appropriating Jefferson, which Republicans censured and even Democrats tried to negate. The next chapter analyzes how interpretations of Jeffersonianism could be construed as socialist or communist.

3.2.3 Jefferson as Communist or Socialist? While the communist New Masses Jefferson Bicentennial issue, as well as the three following issues, advocated that Jeffersonian philosophy’s intent was congruent with communism, the question of whether Jefferson would have advocated for communist or socialist ideas had been and remained a hotly debated subject in Congress, regardless of party affiliation. As a case in point, the representative Fred Hildebrandt (SD) purported in “Thomas Jefferson, America’s Outstanding

296 Cf. Landy’s “Marxism is Democracy” argued that democracy should ensure the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Only communism, and the USSR, meet the civic and economic needs of the people. 297 Swain 1978, 155. 298 Rung 2002, 83. 299 Rung 2002, 83. See also her discussion on the Hatch Act (1939; 1940 extended) in this chapter. 300 Cf. Moore (R-OK) Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1821.

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Radical” that the Jefferson of the 1930s would have supported socialism.301 Hildebrandt shared some talking points with his Democratic colleagues, albeit he arrived at this different conclusion. The analysis of his speech, which takes into consideration the cultural context and the Communist’s appropriation of Jefferson as witnessed in the New Masses Jefferson issue, becomes the entry point into the debate. Secondly, Republicans and conservative Democrats accused the New Deal of being socialist, Marxist or communist,302 while Democrats, and in particular left-wingers, took up the defense against these allegations. The examination of the rhetoric of the accusers and defenders seeks to explain how policies, by some considered Jeffersonian, could be read as socialist, communist, or Marxist by others. A few remarks on the public opinion and terminology have to be made to understand the positions taken by the individual congressmen. Congressmen did not discriminate between the terms Socialism, Marxism, or Communism. While the term Marxism was only used by the Republican William Elmer, the terms socialism and communism, together with Nazism, were often jumbled together under the umbrella term totalitarianism.303 Republicans conflated communism and socialism in their attacks on the self-proclaimed Jeffersonian New Dealers. They ignored that socialism designated one stage toward the fundamental transformation of capitalism304 through unionization and political means, initiated not only by the workers but also with the help of the middle class, intellectuals, and other sympathetic sponsors. Communism, however, meant the revolutionary overthrow of government and the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, and even among Communists, opinions differed on how this revolution, which would destroy the capitalist state, would happen. Yet, there was no doubt that all state power would vanish and that the workers’ councils would govern and regulate the economy; they believed this and felt backed by scientific certainty.305 From 1933 to 1943, fluctuations in public opinion toward radicalism from the right and from the left, emanating from domestic and foreign groups, were quite 3 01 Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1935: 5766. 302 Cf. Peterson 1985, 368. Cf. Jeffreys-Jones 2013, 38. 303 Goodall 2009, 49. 304 Michael Harrington, “Foreword.” Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? 1906. Ed. Werner Sombart and C. T. Husbands. White Plains: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1976. ix–xxxvii. Print. xi. 305 Communists predicated their ideas on Marx’s ‘scientific analysis’ of capital. Marx himself used the word ‘utopia’ in relation to his “socialist predecessors” (Overton 1960, 37; Vials 2014, 58).

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severe. European events had repercussions for various socio-political groups organized within America.306 As seen in the New Masses chapter, the Popular Front led to the convergence of toned-down communist rhetoric and liberal or social democratic ideas. A similar indistinctiveness pervaded the terminology within the American Left itself, as many who shared the general objectives of the Left hid behind the “liberal” or “progressive” label, instead of claiming the term socialist or social democrat. Issues thus might have taken precedence over names, as the Left strove for practical and more immediate goals,307 and the defamations brought against Socialists and Communists after World War I by the Fish Committee might explain their renaming strategy. Representative Hildebrandt was born in Wisconsin in 1874 and was employed as a railroad worker from 1903 to 1932. Besides this labor background, Hildebrandt gained political experience while serving in the South Dakota State House.308 Given his name and birthplace, it is likely that he came from a family of German immigrants who carried their socio-political theories and experiences to their new homeland. Scholars of the American Left have long established the immigrant influence within the Socialist and Communist Party in the United States. Thus, Mid-western states, populated with German and Eastern European immigrants, came out strongly in favor of Socialist candidates in state and municipal elections.309 The prominence of socialism on the state level is evidenced by the fact that even the “progressive Republican”310 Peter Norbeck, Hildebrandt’s South Dakota colleague and supporter of FDR in 1936,311 advocated for their 306 In terms of the Union of Soviet Socialist States (USSR), one has to consider the recognition of the Soviet State by the US in 1933; the Third Period (1928–1935/6) and change to the Popular Front (1935/6–1939); Stalin’s Purge/the Great Terror (1937– 1938), and propaganda trials (1936–1938); the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact (August 23, 1939); and the consequences of Germany’s Operation Barbarossa (June 22, 1941). 307 Cf. Jeffreys-Jones 2013, 4. 308 “Hildebrandt, Fred Herman.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present. Web. 20 July 2016 . 309 See, for example, Jim Bissett, Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904–1920. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1999. Print. 310 Cf. Gilbert C. Fite, “Peter Norbeck and the Defeat of the Nonpartisan League in South Dakota.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 33.2 (Sep. 1946): 217–36. Print. 219. 311 George Mowry, “Review.” Rev. of Peter Norbeck: Prairie Statesman, Gilbert Courtland Fite. The Journal of Economic History 9.2 (Nov. 1949): 243–244. Print. 244. Norbeck’s terms as Senator (1921–1936) overlapped with Hildebrandt’s service in the House of Representatives (March 1933–January 1939).

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state to own and operate plants for creating water power.312 Hildebrandt’s socialist inclinations therefore lose their stigma, albeit his views still seemed radical as compared to the whole nation. True to his ideological position, then, Hildebrandt attacked the New Deal for being too timid in applying social market theories to the American system. He delivered “Jefferson, America’s Outstanding Radical” in Congress. Employing the key terms in this title in historical perspective, he portrayed Jefferson as a radical who had been defamed by his enemies for “getting his ideas from alien quarters” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1935:  5766), which was a common trope for Communist Jefferson appropriators. Hildebrandt tailored the speech to accuse the Democratic Party of being not radical enough, chastising his party colleagues for paying “lip service” to Jefferson’s memory. This accusation was usually employed by Republicans and conservative Democrats. Yet, Hildebrandt believed that “in numerous instances the modern Democratic Party has been a fearful caricature of a party devoted to the noble humanitarianism of the sage of Monticello” (5766). In fact, “too few present-day ‘Democrats’ are committed to the idealism of the great Jefferson” (5766), he charged. Hildebrandt painted a worrisome picture of a party straying from its service to the common people. Before elucidating on the Democratic neglects or policies that had moved him to these statements, Hildebrandt explained the historical context of Jefferson’s radicalism, drawing a trajectory between then and the 1930s. If Jefferson were alive today, he would be the target for the same abuse from reactionaries that is now hurled at those usually denominated as “radicals.” In comparison with the standards of 1796, 1800, and 1804, Thomas Jefferson was as much of an extreme leftist as any Socialist or Communist of 1935. Like the Progressives of the present, he was accused of getting his ideas from alien to do soquarters. (5766)

Hildebrandt turned the accusations of radicalism into positive attributes that singled out Jefferson among his contemporaries and the progressives of his own time. He made clear that the conservatives used the term “Bolshevik” like the word Democrat, which “had been used by the Jeffersonian opposition […] as a term of ‘opprobrium’ ” (5766). Hildebrandt almost reveled in this fact and described that the Republican Party of Jefferson came to the name “Democratic Party” by the time of Jackson, when it “was accepted without further objection” (5766). Alluding to Jefferson’s aphorism that laws and institutions have to follow the expansion of the human mind, Hildebrandt seemed to defend the Russian revolutionaries of 1918, as he commented on the term Bolshevik. Hildebrandt’s 312 Fite 1946, 223.

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defense of Bolshevism became more comprehensible as he continued his speech. Howe writes that “Lenin […] advanced ‘worker’s control’ over industry; but […] did not propose large-scale nationalizations,” and that the “Bolsheviks favored […] a mixed economy”313 up to the summer of 1918. Thus, Hildebrandt who favored government ownership of public utilities, reflected the Bolshevik position in a moderate American form. In addition to this correlation, Hildebrandt’s defense of the term Bolshevist in relation to the term Democrat in historical perspective revealed that he questioned the validity of outside labeling, in particular in the context of misleading and exaggerated rhetoric during presidential elections. His explications demonstrated his awareness of the changed times, an aspect which he further pursued in regard to the economic development. Jefferson, Hildebrandt stressed, believed in the idea of laissez-faire of “the small industries, small shops, and small farms” as the best guarantee of democracy. The operative word in this passage was “small,” suggesting ownership and local, or personal, control. Furthermore, his enumeration indicated that Jefferson’s vision acknowledged the diversity of economic operations in the nation. However, the advance and expansion of monopolies, accompanied by the disappearance of these small, self-sufficient economic ventures, raised the conundrum, “either the trust will own the government or the government must own the trust,” and “the conception of extending democracy from the field of politics into that of industry began to gain ground” (5766). Hildebrandt advocated for the full application of this principle. The Jeffersonian adage ‘the government is best which governs least,’ which Republicans and Liberty Leaguers used, was pertinent “when governmental interference with private matters was likely to be exercised in the interest of the wealthy. At that time the doctrine of minimum interference, laissez faire, was most conducive to the preservation of human rights. Nowadays the reverse is true,” Hildebrandt insisted (5766). In order to follow Jefferson’s intent and spirit, his followers needed to adapt to the changed conditions. Hildebrandt affirmed that “[t]‌oday it is recognized to a considerable degree that the public utilities should be publicly owned […]” (5766). He further de-radicalized his proposition by stressing its logicality and appropriateness: “We are simply applying the democratic principle on a large scale” (5766). In the debates about the Public Utilities Holding Company Bill, Hildebrandt took the position that the people in a democracy had a right to water, electricity, and other necessities of life and that these had to be affordable and should not be used for private profit. Arguing

313 Howe 1985, 183.

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that private control of public utilities led to monopoly and overprizing and represented a misuse of public resources for the benefit of the few, Hildebrandt was a keen supporter of the Public Utilities Holding Company Legislation.314 To observe the “noble humanitarianism” and idealism of Jefferson, Hildebrandt, after indicting the huge monopolies for being “absolute dictators of the living conditions of millions,” proposed, “We can come to no other conclusion, then, that these vast industries should be nationally owned and administered for the benefit of all. The Government cannot control that which it does not own” (5766). The Democrat Hildebrandt advocated for public ownership of public utilities by construing Jefferson’s authority in favor of socialist ideas. He did not promote the overthrow of the government or the abolition of capitalism and was therefore not a communist. However, it might well be argued that he was one of those public officials whose ideology was socialism, while his label said liberal.315 He deepened the relation between Jefferson and public ownership when he explained, like Jefferson’s “burning words so scorchingly lashed slavery and injustice,” he “would deliver fiery excoriations of capitalism itself ” were he “[c]‌onfronted by the existing crisis” (5766). The apodosis lent emphasis to the communist idea of determining one’s tactics by evaluating the concrete situation. His evaluation of the evils of modern-day capitalism led him to propose public ownership of the public utilities. These statements help to explain the great fear of communism that the Democrat Rankin and the Republicans voiced in 1943. In a more drastic form, his arguments echoed those of Shannon, Farley, and Rayburn, who also appropriated Jefferson for an attack on laissez-faire of monopolies and wealth. Criticism of the New Deal reverberated with charges of socialism, even before Roosevelt, in response to the pressures from the far Left and other radical organizations like Father Coughlin’s Union for Social Justice and Huey Long’s Share our Wealth program, inaugurated the Second New Deal. In 1935, it brought the “Soak-the-rich” tax reform, the National Labor Relations, the Social Security, and

314 Hildebrandt voted “yay” on an amendment to give the commission greater executive power. “To Pass a Privileged Resolution Regarding S. 2796, Public-Utility HoldingCompany Bill, Instructing the Managers on the Part of the House at the Conference on Disagreeing Votes to Agree to the Amendments Stating that It Shall Be the Duty of the Commission as soon as Practicable after January 1, 1938, to Order Holding Companies to Comply with such Action as the Commission Deems Necessary.” Govtrack.us Web. 7 Aug. 2015 . 315 On the ideological nomenclature in the 1930s, Jeffreys-Jones says: “While every democratic socialist is on the left, not all left-wingers and very few liberals or progressives would call themselves socialists” (2013, 6).

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the Public Utility Holding Acts. In 1934, Justice Glenn Terrell had explained that the constitutional law was based on judicial precedents anchored in “the dueprocess clause, the commerce clause, and the obligations-of-contracts clause” (Cong. Rec. 4 Jan 1934: 106). These constituted the basis for the “democracy and political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson” and “on it is now being constructed the new deal or the democracy of Roosevelt” (106). Affirming the consistency and permanence of Jefferson’s political philosophy, Terrell also commented on the differences in Jeffersonian interpretations: “It is charged of the [democracy of Roosevelt] on the one hand that it is unconstitutional, socialistic, paternalistic, and communistic, while on the other hand those equally as able and sincere justify and uphold it on humanitarian grounds, under the doctrine of implied powers and under the general-welfare clause […]” (106, emphasis added). A counter-argument to charges of New Deal paternalism that its defenders used in connection to the general-welfare clause had already been proposed by the economist Richard Ely. He insisted that the government is the people in a democratic state and “when the people, therefore, use the democratic state to promote their own interests, they are not subjecting themselves to paternalism but merely helping themselves.”316 The people were actively practicing something akin to “fraternalism”317 which in turn explains the Democrats’ insistence on acting according to the majority will, an idea they connected to Jeffersonian democracy as embodied in Roosevelt’s democracy. Democrats, as we have seen in the chapter on Jefferson’s humanitarianism and in Terrell’s quote, turned to their icon Thomas Jefferson to justify their policies and to discuss the labor problems of their own day. Democrat Joseph Shannon, who depicted Jefferson as “humanitarian,” also regarded him as a prophet and as the “first American statesman who gave thought and study to the labor question, which, though simplified in those days of slavery, he foresaw would one day become a vital problem” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6582). The immensity of the industrial labor problem, which Jefferson vaguely perceived in his day, came to the fore when the unemployment rate peaked at 25 percent in 1933, which saw 13 million Americans out of work.318 This became such a central issue that the Communist Party of America became more visible and vocal in the public discourse.319 Joseph Shannon attested to its regained relevancy when he attacked 316 Sidney Fine, Laissez Faire and the General-Welfare State:  A Study of Conflict in American Thought, 1865–1901. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1956. Print. 209. 317 Fine 1956, 209. 318 Kennedy 1999, 149. 319 Cf. Kazin 2011, 109.

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the inadequate primary education in America by claiming, “[W]‌e would be hearing less today of communistic principles, or partisan hatreds, or of changing standards of government, and more of pure patriotism, ideal Americanism, and self-reliant citizenship” if Jefferson’s principles and ideas for primary education were brought to the attention of the “rising generation” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6581). Shannon clearly differentiated between Jeffersonian principles of education and democracy and communist philosophy. American primary education was to enable the individual to acquire the knowledge necessary for transacting daily business and for taking part in the political life (cf. 6581). It was to further American democracy based on informed and self-sufficient citizens. Shannon positioned these Jeffersonian objectives against communism which obliterated the individual in its economic independence. Shannon seemed to argue that communism substituted self-reliant citizenship with a governmentally controlled economy, embedded in a social system in which the citizens depended on the state for their everyday needs. Shannon opposed this socio-economic system and suggested that the accusations hurled against the New Deal by the conservatives were born out of “partisan hatred” rather than any valid claim. Similarly, Hildebrandt had suggested that the tempers in election years increased the harshness of polemical language and labels. Although Shannon rejected the Republican accusations and rejected communism, he felt the need to address the accusations, and countered them by placing them into historical perspective, much like Hildebrandt did; however, without embracing Jefferson’s radicalism as socialism. Shannon asserted the ludicrousness of associating Thomas Jefferson with Marxist ideology and thereby sought to reveal the absurdity of accusing the New Deal of being socialistic or even communistic. Shannon refuted the charge of atheism made against Jefferson by his opposition. The incompatibility of religion and Marxism was captured in Marx’s denunciation of religion as “the opium of the people” as it alleviated their pain of and masked the true cause of suffering, and held out a promise of a better life.320 320 Furthermore, the exploiting classes availed themselves of religion as a means to ensure the God-given hierarchy. Jeffreys-Jones argues that “Marx’s denunciation of religion as ‘opium of the people’ alienated those many Christians who had in the past seen and potentially still saw equivalences between aspects of socialism and the teachings of Jesus” (2013, 58). Jim Bissett, however, details that Oklahoma Socialists “succeeded in presenting their views in a way that carried the power of the republican ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the moral teachings of Jesus Christ, and the political theories of Karl Marx” (1999, 8).

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To counter the reading of Jefferson as atheist321 and possible Marxist, Shannon lauded Jefferson’s “humanitarianism and practical Christianity” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934:  6581), implying that Christianity was incommensurate with communism. Neither the derogative term Communist, nor the tamer term Socialist applied to Jefferson or to his follower Franklin D.  Roosevelt, Shannon thus stipulated.322 In 1938, Joseph Shannon expanded his strategy for countering the accusations. Again, he countered the claim that Jefferson was an atheist and echoed the idea of “partisan hatred:” “In his own life [Jefferson] was denounced in certain quarters as an atheist, a radical—which meant in those days a communist—an enemy of property rights, a revolutionary and a disturber of the public peace” (Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1938: 3099). Shannon seemed to plagiarize James Farley’s Jefferson Day Address of 1936, entitled “Issues of the Impending Campaign,”323 in which Farley discussed the “absurdity and wildness” during the presidential campaign “when Jefferson was blackguarded as Communist” (Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1936: 5765). In 1936, Farley compared these false accusations against Jefferson with the “high Republican authority, by the spokesmen of the Du Pont Liberty League,” who now charged that “the President […] is bent on changing this democratic form of government to a Russian Soviet system,” and that he is “bent on abolishing the Supreme Court, throwing the Constitution out […], regimenting every form of industry and agriculture […]” (5765). From a historical perspective, Farley argued, the charges against Jefferson did not hold up. The high tempers in the election year 1800, distorted, exaggerated, and totally misrepresented facts, playing on the fears and emotions of the people. Given that Jefferson’s election did not bring about the abolition of private property and collectivization, and that Jefferson was working within the parameters of an agrarian economy, the absurdity of the charge of Jefferson’s communism became all the more apparent to the informed and knowledgeable observer, Farley suggested.

321 Jefferson had, in fact, in his day criticized the power of the church leaders and their control over the people’s minds. His pride in advocating religious freedom can be garnered from his self-designed tombstone inscription, in which he wanted to be remembered for the writing the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. 322 Even the Republican Beck stressed Jefferson’s Christianity (Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1934: 6867) but claimed that the Democratic Party was no longer Jeffersonian, as “we are today, in the matter of trade and industry, not a federation of States, but a unitary socialist State” (6868). 323 Marcus A. Coolidge (MA) inserted the speech into the Cong. Rec. on Apr. 21, 1936.

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Shannon, who used Farley’s language ascribed all these accusations Jefferson had to bear to his “fearless championship of the rights of man as against the few wealthy overlords” or against “the old order of rugged and selfish individualists,” and they “percolated down through the long decades of development that followed him to the present day” (3099). He argued that the idea of equality of opportunity, embodied in Jeffersonian democracy, so antagonized the “rugged and greedy individualists,” that Jefferson’s “name became anathema” (3099). Bringing the historical discussion back to the present, Shannon claimed, they considered Jefferson an “enemy of their class,” and their fear of his ideas was so great that they erased him from the schools and were seeking to abort the erection of the memorial (3099). Even though Jefferson’s enemies had pulled all registers of character assassination and had tampered with historiography to diminish him and to eradicate his principles, Shannon asserted that history had proven Jefferson right. He had finally been given his appropriate iconic position in the national cult because he was truly American. That Jefferson had to endure and overcome these accusations and false allegations, even after his death, proved him worthy of the position he now had attained. By equating Jefferson with Roosevelt, Shannon prophesied that the public reception of the president and of those denouncing him would undergo similar changes as time passed (cf. 3099).324 John Coffee (D-WA), who belonged to the liberal-leftist Mavericks, made a similar statement. Jeffreys-Jones lists him as socialist or advocate of democratic socialism if one applies a broad definition of the term, disregarding the strict constructionist paradigm that one had to call himself a Socialist to be so considered.325 Coffee had charged that “Hamiltonians and conservative Republicans have written most of the American histories and have dominated our school boards,” which was why Jefferson remained “so little appreciated as yet in comparison with Lincoln and Washington” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938:  1814). “So little appreciated” was a rather euphemistic description, considering how long it took to restore Jefferson’s reputation. Coffee described that Jefferson had been denounced as a “demagogue” in his own time, and that this word was only used because “[t]‌he word ‘communist’ had not then been invented” (1814). Unlike his

324 Cf. Rep. Chet Holifield (D-CA) called the Republican appropriation of Jefferson a “remarkable precedent,” one he foresees will be repeated “for the present occupant of the White House. [….] The tragedy of greatness too often lies in the blindness of present contemporaries” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1814). 325 Jeffreys-Jones 2013, 45.

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colleagues Shannon and Farley, who had glossed over it for rhetorical simplicity, Coffee pointed out that the term Communist was nonexistent in Jefferson’s time. He, therefore, established a correlation between a demagogue and a communist, arguing that both terms were undeservingly applied to Jefferson and “his brilliant disciple” Roosevelt. He used this correlation to refute the very allegation. The distortions, he argued, could no longer hide the fact that FDR was “a courageous liberal” and “idol of the people” like Jefferson had been (1814). After having deconstructed the derogative term demagogue, he designated Jefferson and Roosevelt as a greatly loved and admired statesmen with the positive connotation of the term idol. While Shannon, Hildebrandt, and Farley drove home Jefferson’s fight for the people against the reactionaries of big capital, suggesting America was divided by class, Farley denied Republicans’ accusations that Democrats were inciting class conflict by using the language of populism or communism to covet votes. This accusation seemed to contradict Jonathan Bell’s observation of “the decline of a class-based discourse since the 1930s.”326 Farley defended the Democratic Party’s rhetoric and purposes, as it sought to “include every class in the national patrimony” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1527). Thereby, “[FDR] is the first statesman in generations to summon all men of good will, the manufacturer, the merchant, the banker, the broker, the farmer and planter, the worker in factory and mine, to an honest cooperative effort—for none of them can be truly served except through the service of the common good” (1527). Farley considered this rhetoric and policy of cooperation and mutual responsibility truly Jeffersonian. He corroborated this by suggesting that the people have repeatedly but successfully battled “against special privilege [and] for the common good” (1527). Following the example of Jefferson and invoking unity, Farley asserted, “the people will fight communism and fascism in America” (1527). He thereby diminished the distinction between communism and fascism, regarding both as socio-political systems that catered to special interests rather than to the common good of the people.327 Farley suggested that the accusations of socialism and communism against the New Deal held no ground, when the entire nation was willing to fight totalitarianism in their own country.

326 Jonathan Bell, Making Sense of American Liberalism. Baltimore: U of Illinois P, 2012. Print. 327 The Democratic Party, through its Postmaster General, distanced itself and Thomas Jefferson from accusations of communism (cf. Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1938: 1607; cf. Cong. Rec. 9 May 1939: 1880.)

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E. R. Sherman’s Jefferson Day Address at the dinner of the Arizona Democratic Association was inserted into the Cong. Rec. by Robert E. Thomason (D-TX). Sherman had been major of El Paso, Texas. The two Texans argued that the New Deal and the administration were Jeffersonian and that the different social and economic conditions had to be considered to arrive at a balanced judgment. Jefferson’s philosophy emphasized the importance of the common man; therefore, it is mistaken and dangerous to call anyone a “demagogue” who advocated for their social betterment. Opposed to those fighting for their uplift and against special privilege in the name of Jefferson was “a class of people who seek to distort and misinterpret this program. They raise the cry of communism now, as they have raised that of socialism in the past” (Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1938: 1607). Drawing on the language of class that FDR had already used when he spoke of the “economic royalists,” the Texans stressed that “the real danger of communism lies in that group’s own greed and economic tyranny” (1607). The Texans identified the excesses of American capitalists as the feeding ground for the proletarian revolution and regarded the New Deal as working against it, rather than seeing it as the cause. Demanding a just wage for “working men and working women” and thereby abolishing child labor, the Texans argued, was not “stirring up class strife,” or indicated that one was “a hater of capital” (1607). Rather “social advance,” which “the Nation is insistently calling for—and that it must have if it is to survive—cannot take place without such measures as these” (1607). Jefferson’s spirit, his fight against special privilege, therefore, was the bulwark against communism. Clifton A.  Woodrum, the Democratic representative from Virginia who “became an outspoken advocate of much New Deal and wartime legislation”328 inserted into the Cong. Rec. Farley’s Jefferson Day speech in 1939. “Ideals and Principles of Thomas Jefferson” continued the tactic of disassociation: “We pay tribute to Jefferson tonight because his philosophy enters into everything that goes to make up the great American tradition. And so Jeffersonian democracy has no truck with communism, nor with fascism, but stands four-square for that Americanism, which is the full development of American democracy” (Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1939: 1683). The latter phrase harked back to Hildebrandt’s assertion that public ownership would simply mean the extension of the Jeffersonian democracy on a broader level. Similarly, it reverberated with the Communists’ insistence that its doctrines led to a higher stage of the development of democracy. However, Farley did not advocate outright public ownership of the public

328 Sargent 1981, 341.

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utilities but argued for mild alterations in the capitalist system which he compared to a clogged machine, urging his audience with conditional sentences and references to the Declaration of Independence: If you still stand for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, you stand for the kind of democracy that Jefferson foresaw; and if you would preserve democratic institutions, you must stand for the elimination of the social, economic, and political evils that have clogged the machinery that was designed to make those institutions work (1684).

Farley tied the economic system to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and the political system. Jefferson believed that an agricultural society best supported these three blessings and the democratic institutions which sought to develop them. While Republicans believed that this could still be obtained through less government regulation and interference, most Democrats actively employed Jefferson to counter this idea. Alben Barkley, the Democrats’ majority leader, asserted in the same vein that “We find ourselves today in the midst of a revolution of Fascist and communistic forces, united in their determination to exterminate democracy and to wipe out liberal governments everywhere” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1939: 4198). Yet, the main attack against the “system for which Jefferson fought and wrought” (4198) came from within when its “institutions are incapable of serving and promoting the welfare of mankind” (4198). The New Deal met this “line of attack” head on, as it proved its “capacity […] to meet the civic and economic needs of a free people” (4198). While Barkley served the administration, if not with courage and skill, at least faithfully and to the best of his ability by trying to defend FDR and the New Deal, many fellow Democratic senators increasingly opposed their president and thus tended to omit Roosevelt from their Jefferson Days speeches while thematizing Jefferson and communism. Alva Adams (D-CO) inserted Joseph O’Mahoney’s (D-WY) 1938 Jefferson Day speech into the Congressional Record. The speech titled “Jefferson and the Function of Government” was also broadcast via the Columbia Broadcasting System. Adams,329 a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, favored a balanced budget. He belonged to the so-called “economy clique,” which cut another $1.25  million from the appropriations bill for WPA in 1939.330 These reductions of FDR’s budget request indicated that many congressmen reasserted 329 Alva Adams was also on FDR’s purge list. However, advisers recommended not to go against him as he enjoyed wide support among local Democrats and from his Senate colleague Edwin Johnson (Patterson 1967, 271). 330 Mulder 1979, 281.

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their power by implementing policy changes.331 Even though Adam’s opposition to FDR’s budget, occurred a year after he inserted O’Mahoney’s speech, his move away from FDR had been in the making since the Public Utility Holding Company Act, during which Adams voiced criticism but remained loyal in the final vote.332 Similar tendencies appeared with Joseph O’Mahoney who, like many of his rural Mid-western colleagues, was well known for being an outright opponent of monopolies.333 This stance was often combined with a denunciation of the Eastern capitalists and bankers. Given that O’Mahoney opposed FDR’s court packing plan, his increasing uneasiness about the centralization of power in Washington, D.C.  became evident.334 Furthermore, FDR’s deliberate act of ignoring O’Mahoney on his travels through the Midwest after the court fight335 indicated the breach between them. His Jefferson Day speech, though never attacking the New Deal or the president outright, therefore has to be read in light of the general conservative backlash against the president and in the context of the so-called Roosevelt recession. O’Mahoney opened his speech by quoting Gilbert Chinard, who had called Jefferson the ‘apostle of Americanism.’ Given this title, Americans in this world crisis “yearn[…] for the complete establishment of American principles in government and economics” (1504) and turn to contemplate Jefferson’s ideals. Jefferson knew that “the test of democratic institutions would come” when all land had vanished (1504). While O’Mahoney lamented that “old-fashioned local self-government becomes steadily less and less effective,” he also criticized the development of “big business and big government” (1505). He saw these as direct factors for the rise of communism and fascism in Europe and believed that even in the United States, though in small and limited numbers, one finds “Communists and Fascists and Nazis” (1504). While their numbers were “inconsiderable,” O’Mahoney implied that their motivation pointed toward the deeper problem stressed by his colleagues that they “have adopted their particular creeds because of the belief that the democratic form of government is no longer competent to 3 31 Cf. Mulder 1979, 281. 332 Cf. Patterson 1967, 39–40. 333 Patterson 1967, 120, 247. O’Mahoney headed the joint congressional-executive investigation of monopoly which Congress established in the summer of 1938 (cf. 1967, 247). Patterson calls O’Mahoney a “political friend of Farley and renowned foe of monopoly” (1967, 120). 334 Alfred H. Cope, and Fred Krinsky, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Supreme Court. Boston: Heath, 1952. Print. Problems in American Civilization. vii. 335 Patterson 1967, 262.

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protect men in the pursuit of happiness” (1504). Whatever their number was, “The best way to combat them,” he argued, “is to demonstrate that democracy does work” (1504). To understand what O’Mahoney saw as a “working” democracy, both the beginning and the end of his speech are necessary. After having conceded the inefficiency of local self-government, O’Mahoney suggested with an eye on the national and international context that The contribution that America is called upon to make now to humanity is to demonstrate to the world that the far-flung modern urban civilization, depending as it does upon the collective utilization of the collective resources of whole peoples and continents, may be maintained without loss of essential human rights. It is a task for men of understanding and good will, for men who can rise above emotionalism. It is above all partisan and factional alliances. It cannot be achieved in a spirit of hatred or violence, but only by cooperation and mutual reliance. (1505)

O’Mahoney seemed to suggest that a “complete establishment of American principles in government and economics” (1504, emphasis added) entailed the collectivization of resources that belonged to all people. Despite his critique of big government, and thus indirectly a critique of the New Deal, his contemporary vision of political and economic organization involved some measure of collective control exercised through increased centralization. He emphasized the pursuit of happiness as “essential human right[…]” (1505). Through America’s promotion of Jefferson’s idea of “universal education,” he believed that his vision could be achieved (1505). Another Democrat from the Midwest, Edwin C. Johnson (D-CO) was a moderate who stood for “balancing the budget and encouraging business.”336 He advocated the fair treatment of business337 after FDR’s opening speech to Congress in January 1938 and voted against the executive reorganization bill.338 Even though Johnson seemed to oppose some of FDR’s cherished policies, he shared his language of attacking the “economic royalists” and his opposition to communism. Johnson criticized “big businesses’ […] strangle hold in Wisconsin” and its “unholy alliance” with Republicans (Cong. Rec. 9 May 1939: 1879). Liberals, Farmer-Laborites, and Progressives were divided in the state, which abetted the alliance between progressive and conservative Republicans and big business in Wisconsin. From this local and historical point of view, Johnson zoomed out,

3 36 Patterson 1967, 212. 337 Qtd. in Patterson 1967, 212. New York Times 4 Jan. 1938, p. 17. 338 Patterson 1967, 220. Voting Record. Executive Reorganization. “To Pass S. 3331.” Govtrack.us Web. 17 July 2016 .

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admitting that business rather than the people had been running the nation, especially right after the Civil War. Because of the transport and communication revolutions “National issues and national economics know no State lines” and “there should be an end to local political parties, for they belong to the ‘horse and buggy’ days” (1879). In fact, retaining too much of the old ways would inflict injury upon the states and the nation. After his invocation of unity, Johnson named the two worst enemies, both called “communism” and both “equally bad” (1880); however, he differentiated: “One is radicalism, the other conservatism. One would regiment industry and mankind under a Stalin, the other would foster an industrial control under the collectivism of capital and wealth” (1880). Johnson argued that it was the job of “forward looking people” (1879) to sidestep these communisms, following Jefferson, who “knew well” that political freedom was the basis for economic and religious freedom. Jefferson foresaw that “[a]‌s our country becomes more cultured and advances, it becomes more complex and involved, and the exercise of political rights more technical and intricate, and the accomplishment of economic objectives likewise more difficult to attain” (1880). This intricacy was exponentially worse today as compared to Jefferson’s time, but even then, Johnson argued, Jefferson never advocated equally dividing the wealth, because he knew that a new division would need to be made over and over almost day by day until finally there would be no wealth to divide. Nor did he propose community operation and direction of industrial activities. Jefferson, to the contrary, advocated free enterprise and the equalization of industrial opportunity, which is quite a different thing. (1880)

By attacking the idea of Jefferson, the anti-property rights advocate, and by defending Jefferson from favoring cooperatives, Johnson stressed that Jefferson’s idea of free enterprise was to create “equalization of industrial opportunity” (1880). Only through these means could the nation “give every man in and out of industry the fullest opportunity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (1880), which Johnson considered the ultimate goal of Jeffersonian democracy. Johnson praised that FDR “had the vision and the good sense to apply the idealistic philosophy of Jefferson to practical usages,” arriving at a “happy medium between the Republican ideals of rugged individualism of industry and unlimited free enterprise […] and the radical ideal of communistic regimentation” (1880). Johnson, as a moderate Democrat despite his fiscal conservatism, favored FDR’s policies of “natural and human” conservation, arguing that his greatest deeds marked him as a “warm-hearted humanitarian” (1881). Thus, with the “mantle of devotion to the people’s cause of Jefferson draped around its shoulders [the Democratic Party] will attract honest liberals and patriots wherever they may be

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to its standards of progress and righteousness” (1881). Having extensively dealt with the Democrats’ defense against being affiliated with communism or controlled by Stalin, by arming themselves with Jeffersonian democracy, it is time to turn to the Republican accusations of the Democrats as being Communists at heart. The Republican and first term Congressman Edwin Church from Illinois argued in his impassioned, almost hysterical speech entitled “Save America Now” that the election year, which he considered a vote on the New Deal, confronted America “with basic questions of economics and government,” or, in short, with the question of whether “you believe in the principles of American democracy or the Rooseveltian utopia built on regimentation […]” (Cong. Rec. 18 May 1936: 7448). Whereas the principles of American democracy were embodied by Jefferson, Edwin Church claimed that the Rooseveltian utopia, on the other hand, was “a hybrid of fascism and communism” and therefore un-Jeffersonian (7448).339 Reflecting what Richard Hofstadter would later term the “paranoid style in American politics,”340 Church painted a dramatic picture of a nation on the verge of collapse through the title of his speech, “Save America Now.” He combined this sense of urgency with such murky and clouded threats contained in the phrase the “hybrid of fascism and communism” (7448). Never specifying which components of these two socio-economic systems led to the production of this undefined “hybrid,” Church employed the basic instinct of the fear of the unknown as a tool against the New Deal. He advocated for laissez-faire which he considered had been replaced with the Democratic administration’s law of regimentation and control. These laws curtailed the freedom of the individual and led to a government that was virtually planning every part of American life. These claims were exaggerated by the high tempers of the time and partisan disagreement. In retrospective, historians of the New Deal agree that “corporate power remained nearly as free from government regulation or control in 1945 as it had been in 1933.”341 Church’s exaggeration and confusion became visible 339 Blackney (R-MI) said in “Jefferson and the Constitution”: “In these days when we hear so much of radicalism and of freely expressed communistic thought, would it not be wise for us to briefly review the fundamental concepts of the American Constitution, which has so successfully swayed the destiny of this Nations since its origin?” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1804). 340 Hofstadter 1996. 341 Alan Brinkley, “The New Deal Experiment.” The Achievement of American Liberalism: The New Deal and Its Legacies. Ed. William H. Chafe. New York: Columbia UP, 2003. Print. 1–20. 16.

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when he accused the New Dealers of advocating for an “economy of scarcity with a system of State capitalism whereby all of us are regulated, regimented, and controlled by the bureaucrats in Washington,” while at the same time claiming that “this smacks of the Russian political-economy theory of controlled production and consumption” which showed their allegiance to “a principle so entirely foreign to America” (7448). Again, Church’s words carried the “paranoid style,” as they evoked “the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.”342 In particular, the insistence of the foreignness of the measures procured feelings of suspicion, together with Russia’s conspiring with the Democrats to bring the country under their control. Besides these exaggerations, Church did not differentiate between the terms reformed capitalism and state capitalism, choosing the latter term, which meant the total or near total ownership and control of major industries by the government. The former term would have been a milder and more accurate description of the government’s measures. Even though the federal government entered into the power business through the TVA, it operated next to a multitude of private utility companies, and even though it regulated these companies beginning in the summer of 1935, Church’s use of State capitalism did not apply to the United States. In fact, Theodore Saloutos emphasizes that the “[s]‌ervicing of rural areas by the private utilities increased after the Rural Electrification Administration began its operations […] recognizing belatedly the value of the rural market.”343 The Republican representative Charles Plumley from Vermont emphasized a year later in answering to the Democrats’ Jefferson Day speeches that “Jefferson stood […] for freedom and for toleration of the individual” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3410). Furthermore, seeking the approval of Jefferson, he wondered aloud “what [Jefferson] would say with respect to the plan and the program to erect and to establish here in these United States a centralized, authoritarian, economic, totalitarian, collectivist state, and all at the sacrifice of that liberalism, individualism, and Americanism for which he valiantly fought?” (3410). Years after Beck’s outright claim “[…] we are today, in the matter of trade and industry, not a federation of States, but a unitary socialist State, and no one can successfully challenge the statement” (Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1934: 6868), Plumley’s word choices “plan” and “program,” suggested that Beck’s comments had been exaggerated and that,

3 42 Hofstadter 1996, 3. 343 Theodore Saloutos, The American Farmer and the New Deal. 1st ed. Ames: Iowa State UP, 1982. Print. The Henry A. Wallace Series on Agricultural History and Rural Studies. 219.

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in fact, America was nowhere near being considered a Socialist state. However, Plumley was appealing to the same instincts. The mere enumeration of all terms and concepts he regarded as evil, including the term economic, which got caught in between authoritarian and totalitarian, attested to the almost hysterical, muddled, and exaggerated relation construed between the federal government and the economy. This tendency was not only moving the utterances of Republicans but also increasingly influencing conservative Democrats. Leland M.  Ford and Charles Hawks who had founded “The Jeffersonians,” “a group of patriotic Americans devoted to the teachings of Thomas Jefferson,” like Plumley, worked to prevent “those policies which must inevitably lead to State socialism” (Cong. Rec. 2 Dec. 1940:  6766, emphasis added) and thereby negated that America was already a ‘unitary socialist State,’ as Beck had declared six years ear1ier.344 In some ways the Republican discourse was similar to earlier discussions in the Communist party; every Communist was sure that capitalism would collapse, but no one knew whether the current depression was just a normal dip in the regular cycle of ups-and-downs and therefore just a natural development in a capitalist economy, or if it was the cataclysmic end to capitalism. Unless the proletarian revolution actually occurred, no proof could be given that the ultimate destruction of capitalism had come. Besides these Republicans, the conservative Texas Democrat Hatton Sumners, one of the House’s experts on constitutional law,345 raised the same issues in his bicentennial speech. He advised to “consider whether this monument […] unless we preserve those democratic institutions sponsored by this champion of democracy […] will stand as a monument to Jefferson, or as a sort of mausoleum, in a cemetery of buried hopes for the peoples who aspire to maintain free government” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1817). The reference to death entailed in the word mausoleum suggested that “we,” that is Congress and the administration, were killing democracy by “shifting [the people’s] reserved power to a Federal bureaucracy,” eliminating local governments (A1817). He appealed to Americans to revive their watchfulness in order to recognize that “we have been mixing a sort of degenerate Democratic-Republican philosophy and policy of government with that of the communistic-socialistic-bureaucratic hybrid that is very potent in this country these days” (A1818). Sumners, employing Church’s nebulous word hybrid, thereby attacked his own party for misrepresenting its

344 Cf. Cong. Rec. 30 Jan. 1941: A349. “The Jeffersonians.” Charles Hawks, Jr. (R-WI) used the same words. 345 Cf. Bullock 1978, 38.

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policies as Jeffersonian. Sumners’s phrase “communistic-socialistic-bureaucratic hybrid” attested to the confusion with which congressmen approached the issue. He conflated communism and socialism by marking both as “bureaucratic” when the democratically organized workers’ councils were considered the opposite of a bureaucracy, and the state and its structures were considered tools of the ruling classes that continued the oppression of the proletariat.346 Furthermore, Warren Susman stressed that “Marxist radicals” and “middle-class liberals” dreaded the “ ‘technological and bureaucratic organization of life,’ ”347 which even the Southern Agrarians feared. Sumners’s criticism can be traced back to his breach with the president over the court-packing plan. From that point on, Sumners, together with other Southern Congressmen, had worked to reassert the legislative power in relation to the executive power. Sumners’s criticism was not completely unfounded, if one considers Jeffreys-Jones’s insistence that “New Deal legislation was substantively socialist in character” as evidences in its “approach to planning, public ownership, the welfare state and ‘Big Government.’ ”348 Jeffreys-Jones proves his claim through tracing the origin and enactment of social security legislation. While the “basis” of US social security stemmed from “socialist researchers engaged by the US Commission of Industrial Relations in 1913,”349 Roosevelt’s planning commission supplemented and transformed this base by designing a contributory system after private insurance models to comply with rules of capitalism. Furthermore, FDR’s advisers at first limited the coverage, excluding farmers and service personnel. Both changes revealed that Roosevelt was wary that too close associations with socialist ideas would thwart the enactment of basic measures of security for a majority of Americans.350 Therefore, he coopted points of the

346 Ellis W. Hawley, “The New Deal State and the Anti-Bureaucratic Tradition.” The New Deal and Its Legacy: Critique and Reappraisal. Ed. Robert Eden. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989. 77–92. Print. Contributions in American History 132. 77. 347 Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Print. xxviii. Even though Susman commented primarily on the “culture of abundance,” Marxists did not understand themselves as “bureaucrats.” 348 Jeffreys-Jones 2013, 80. 349 Jeffreys-Jones 2013, 11. Cf. Jeffreys-Jones 2013, 15, 17, 19, 24. 350 Kennedy 1999, 269–70. Mihelich writes that Ernest Lundeen, a member of the Mavericks, was working on his own, more radical, social security legislation. Roosevelt had him withdraw his proposal (cf. Mihelich 2001, 18–19).

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socialists’ program, hoping to tap into their pool of voters while not alienating the party regulars and while staving off more extreme groups.351 The New Deal did not turn America into a socialist state nor into a lasting social welfare state as it barely met the percentage mark of spending “8 to 10 percent of its income on aid to poorer citizens” to be classified as such. By the end of the 1940s America spent “8.2 of its GNP on such programs […].”352 Ellis Hawley claims, furthermore, that even though the Brain Trust was schooled in public administration and institutional economics, it adhered to America’s anti-bureaucratic tendencies in 1933. In fact, he argues that the New Deal never developed a centralized, national planning agency and remained a state with a “hollow core.”353 Besides the uneasiness about the New Deal bureaucracy as camouflaging socialism or communism, conservative congressmen stressed that these ideas were un-American, as they derived from European philosophical roots or constituted reactions to the social and political developments in Europe.354 This ‘foreign taint,’ which the New Dealers had refuted by saying that even Jefferson had been accused of getting his ideas from foreign quarters, was heightened in the conservatives’ mind, as the foreign-born355 made up the majority of CPUSA members to the second half of 1936. As corollary, Republicans depicted foreign influences, namely communist influences, as a threat to American institutions. The Republican representative William P. Elmer (MO), who only served during

3 51 Cf. Kennedy 1999, 222–225. 352 Jeffreys-Jones 2013, 96. 353 Hawley 1989, 80–81. Hawley emphasizes that the brain trust and FDR first tried the “notion of ‘business commonwealth,’ as meeting the needs of planning and welfare through business-led cooperative (as opposed to government-run bureaucratic) institutions.” Secondly, they drew on the “ ‘populist commonwealth’ which could make planning and welfare unnecessary by returning power to the ‘people’ and their ‘communities’ and conclaves.” Many New Deal programs were temporally limited, and not designed for institutionalization. 354 New Masses special edition remarked upon the irony that reactionaries of any country routinely accused the progressives of receiving their ideas from abroad. Exploiting the trope of the fear of the unknown and the other, the reactionaries availed themselves of the traditions of the home country to oppose those new ideas. 355 Kazin 2011, 162; Harvey Klehr, The Communist Experience in America: A Political and Social History. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2010. Print. 65, 67, 69. As the overall membership numbers increased, the CPUSA experienced the greatest spurt in native-born membership during the Popular Front period, which led to the tipping of the scale in the middle of 1936 (cf. Klehr, Experience 2010, 69).

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the Seventy-eighth Congress,356 elucidated these fears in his speech against the Fulbright Resolution delivered on June 30, 1943. Elmer proclaimed that isolationism, as enunciated by Jefferson and the Monroe Doctrine, had served the country well and led to prosperity. (Cong. Rec. 30 Jun. 1943: A3341). International cooperation as expressed in the resolution’s phrase “international machinery” frightened Elmer, who announced that the resolution and its general idea […] is not native-born. It doesn’t have the birthmarks of Americanism. It is not inspired by our system of national life. It is born across the sea, but not in a manger. It is a foreigner, steeped in a mixture of marxism, fascism, naziism, and world-wide commerce. Its application would render us a subservient and subaltern nation. [….] it is vastly destructive of American ideals. (A3342)

Missing the irony of his own statement, Elmer suggested that except for Christianity, which derived from a manger abroad, other doctrines from abroad should not be considered American. He depicted the “international machinery” as a centralized agency instead of a compact of different states sharing a mutual passion for peace. Elmer could not believe that Fulbright’s idea could be of a democratic nature and that the language used was too elusive. In contrast, Elmer argued, stood Jefferson’s aphorism, “ ‘Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all; entangling alliances with none,’ as it was a definite foreign policy” (A3341). Elmer portrayed this Jeffersonian doctrine as Americanism worthy of the support of the federal government, urging it to not allow that “[t]‌he government of Washington and Jefferson will be merged in a super government of the world” (A3341). Thus, Elmer demanded that “[i]t is the United States of America or One World” (A3341); there was nothing in between. Either America remained strong or it succumbed to being a “subservient and subaltern nation” reigned by Fascist, Marxist, and Nazi ideologies. He ignored that America was engaged in a war against totalitarianism and to eradicate these influences through an international organization for peace. William Elmer advocated American nationalism over international cooperation and negated that the changing times required a change of methods or principles. Rather, he defended American tradition and Jeffersonian tradition when he used the metaphor of America as a ship and the “founding fathers” as “North Star” (A3342).357 His metaphor served as a stark contrast to Elmer’s first 356 “Elmer, William Price.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present. Web. 18 July 2016 . Elmer sought re-election but failed. 357 Elmer’s allegory resonates with the last stanza of Henry W. Longfellow’s “The Building of the Ship.” Longfellow uses the allegory of a ship of state for the Union of States. The

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quotation. Whereas, the first was wholly un-American and addressed Marxism, fascism, and Naziism, the latter reaffirmed the relevancy and validity of the old values and denied that these new “isms” offered anything but poverty, death, and destruction. Those “isms” only lured Americans away from their true course. In emphasizing that “well-known and tried routes are the safest,” Elmer alluded to what the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission omitted from Jefferson’s letter on panel number four; to wit, that he was opposed to “the untried changes” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943:  A1801, emphasis added). Furthermore, by insisting that the ship of state needed a “loyal crew,” Elmer was accusing the present administration, which was an integral part of the crew, of mutiny. Elmer’s allegory with its suggestion of mutiny and disloyalty carried overtones of illegality, violence, and the usurpation of power and authority. He reminded his fellow congressmen and Americans of what ‘material’ the ship of state was built, referring back to his idea of Jefferson’s foreign policy which disassociated Jefferson from Communism, Fascism, or Naziism. Interestingly enough William Fulbright’s House Resolution was much tamer in language and perspective than the so-called B2H2 resolution, which originated with Elmer’s fellow Republicans, the Senators Joseph Ball (MN) and Harold Burton (OH), as well as the Democratic Senators Carl Hatch (NM) and Lister Hill (AL).358 The language of the Fulbright resolution reflected the compromise position, as the terms international machinery and adequate remained open to interpretation. The bipartisan Senate resolution included the recommendation for an “international peace keeping force,” that is, a specific international poem was published in 1849 when the looming sectional conflict moved the nation to the brink of rupture. He alludes to the founding fathers in the lines, “We know what Master laid thy keel,/What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,/[…]/In what a forge […]/Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!” (381–386). Henry W. Longfellow, “The Building of the Ship.” 1849. English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman. Vol. XLII. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com, 2001. . 20 July 2016. As Margit Peterfy has pointed out, the poem is striking as Longfellow never mentions the captain of the ship; rather the ship, like Jefferson’s “Freedom Plow” in Louis Lerman’s poem in the New Masses, moves forward on its own. Albeit, the freedom plow needed a good push from the people to get it going. The absence of a captain then becomes the epitome of democracy. (cf. Margit Peterfy, “Abraham Lincoln, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the “Ship of State”: A Case Study in Presidential Rhetoric.” Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the German Society of American Studies. Ed. Wilfried Mausbach, Dietmar Schloss, Martin Thunert. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 2013. 211–218. Print.) 358 Cf. Hamilton 1987, 100.

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military body.359 Roosevelt had approached the B2H2 resolution with caution, asking the senators to wait and tone down their proposal, as he was afraid the public would oppose such an international military body. Only the results of a Gallup Poll, which reported that “78 percent of the American people favored the Fulbright Resolution,” propelled FDR to come out in favor for a compromise bill, which evaded the question of enforcement of international decisions.360 Only two months prior to William Elmer’s opposition to seeing Jefferson and America as favoring international cooperation, the New Masses Jefferson issue printed the article “World Citizen” by Senator Thomas (D-UT), who had served on the TJMC since its inception in 1934. The New Masses introduced his article, which was inserted into the Cong. Rec. by his Alabama colleague Lister Hill, with the following caption: “Sen. Elbert D. Thomas sees Jefferson’s ideas as a guide to international cooperation. His ‘was a philosophy of progress,’ designed for ‘a world of free, cooperative men’ ” (New Masses 13 Apr. 1943: 19; Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1943: A1876). Like, the other New Masses contributors, Thomas regarded Jefferson’s ideas on the rights of the common man as the basis for all nations, including Russia, China, and India. His influence was still felt as Jefferson, among all the world’s great revolutionaries was “the key to the new world,” which would evolve out of the war. While not claiming that Jefferson was a Communist, Elbert Thomas did not disparage the Communists’ appropriation of Jefferson, but agreed with their idea of revitalizing the Declaration of Independence’s ideals to bring them to their most progressive, fullest, and broadest application in the world. Thomas’s rhetoric synthesized the idealistic philosophy of Jefferson with the practical or pragmatic application of his ideals, as evidenced in the description of Jefferson as “most constructive statesman” who gave “meaning” to the American Revolution, which had a lasting, global significance. How this trope of Jefferson, the practical idealist which occurred in preceding chapters, came to be employed in relation to such topics as agriculture, science, and education is the topic of the following chapter.

3.2.4 Jefferson as Practical Idealist The term practical can be considered contradistinctive to the term idealism, insofar as idealism denotes that “a subject is treated more imaginatively than realistically.”361 However, the paradoxical nature of “practical idealism” is challenged 3 59 Hamilton 1987, 101. 360 Hamilton 1987, 101. 361 “idealism, n.” OED Online. Oxford UP, September 2015. Web. 20 November 2015.

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when “practical” denotes that “area of a particular subject or discipline in which ideas or theories are tested or applied in practice.”362 The latter definition, by implying that deliberate measures often revert back to ideas, offers access to tangential points between the two terms. Their abstract nature, taken singly or in the phrase “practical idealism,” lends itself to creating productive ambiguity—a key method in constructing an icon whose success is measured by offering the broadest applicability. While the moral entrepreneurs of Jefferson relied on the very openness, they also had to fill the phrase with meaning to communicate their message. Even though the exact phrase appeared only three times363 in the political discourse, moral entrepreneurs repeatedly employed related terms or the concept between 1934 and 1943. Results from a Google book search and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) reveal that “practical idealism” appeared in articles and magazines on education, conservation, religion,364 sociology, in union and Christian publications. The latter field opens connections between practical idealism and Jefferson’s (Christian) humanitarianism. Moral entrepreneurs employed these associations, revealing that they were in-sync with the historical and contemporary professional discourse in the 1930s.365 The strong affinity between practical idealism and the topic of education and public service366 is evidenced 362 “practical, adj. and n.” OED Online. Oxford UP, September 2015. Web. 20 November 2015. 363 Henry A. Wallace, “Thomas Jefferson Practical Idealist: Address by Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture, Before the Jeffersonian Union, Atlanta, Georgia, April 13, 1935, at 8:45 P.M.” Print. University of Iowa Special Collections. Henry A. Wallace Papers, The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa. Secondly, the term appeared in Representative Samuel Hobbs’s affirmative speech on the Jefferson Memorial design in which he advocated for adding a practical, utilitarian purpose (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8531). The third application occurred in John Boylan’s Jefferson Day speech (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5435). 364 Alfred Hart, Higher Ideals: Thoughts Concerning Practical Idealism in Life and Work. Private Print, 1933. Print; David Colcort, Star-Dust Preferred and other Explorations into the Realm of Practical Idealism. Chicago: Haskell-Oberlin Company, 1938; Paul Raymond Mellon, Practical Idealism. Boston: Bruce Humphries, Inc., 1946. Print. William D. Hyde, Practical Idealism. New York: The Macmillian Company, 1897. Print. The Christian Leader 36.2. Universalist Publishing House, 1933. 1039–1040. 365 The phrase “practical idealism” had greater currency in the literature of the 1920s than in the decade of the 1930s which follows in second place, according to a Google book search and (COHA). 366 Alexander Grant Ruthven, [President U of Michigan]. “The Michigan Creed.” Michiganensian.Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Libraries, 1933. Print.

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by Franklin D. Roosevelt who praised the School of Public Affairs at American University (D.C.) and the importance of well-trained personnel. He said: “ […] you have […] a great opportunity for initiative, for constructive thinking, for practical idealism and for national service.”367 FDR had insisted that solutions to the causes of the economic crisis required “thinking […] in terms that apply to the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children.”368 Thus, “practical idealism” was linked to rational planning of government and society, which looked beyond immediate needs.369 The congressional moral entrepreneurs drew on the concepts detailed in FDR’s remarks and in Henry A.  Wallace’s speech “Thomas Jefferson Practical Idealist.” Wallace spoke in front of the Jeffersonian Union of Atlanta shortly after Congress had passed the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, appropriating funds for “permanently useful and self-liquidating projects” and paying the workers a “security wage.”370 Furthermore, Congress was in the final phase of establishing the Resettlement Administration (RA), designed to address the needs of the farmers, whom many liberals considered underrepresented in the “urbanindustrial[ly]” oriented Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA).371 As an independent agency in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the RA, which later became incorporated into the Farm Security Administration

367 “We Need a Trained Personnel in Government”—Extemporaneous Address before American University, Washington, D.C., on Receiving an Honorary Degree. March 3, 1934. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F. D. Roosevelt. Vol. 3. Print. 123. 368 “Trained Personnel” 122. 369 Manly P. Hall, at the International Congress of the World Fellowship of Faith of 1935, used similar rhetoric: “all remedies advanced to solve the present world emergency must fail” without “honest, practical idealism,” claiming that the “NRA” was a “practical example of the spiritual factor in material action […].” He advocated developing “civilization” with its “true purpose” of insuring “the security of man, individual and collective.” Progress must be measured in “terms of human security” (352). Wallace gave a speech (focused on a moral renaissance) at the Congress which reveals the rhetorical interconnections and similarities between the perspectives on practical idealism (Schapsmeier, Edward L., and Frederick H. Schapsmeier. Henry A. Wallace of Iowa: The Agrarian Years, 1910–1949. Ames: Iowa State UP, 1968. Print. 187). 370 Kennedy 1999, 251. 371 Saloutos 1982, 157. These liberals within the AAA were Jerome Frank, Jackson Gardner, and Paul Appleby.

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(FSA), sought to help “the rural poor and the landless”372 and collided with the AAA’s orientation toward the commercial farmers.373 Henry Wallace, who “had come to Washington as a representative of the commercial farmer in 1933,”374 became increasingly concerned with “the plight of the tenant farmer and sharecroppers” as “complaints against the landlords and managers […] increased” and more leases were terminated.375 Wallace came under the influence of liberal voices376 within the AAA and the emerging RA who advocated for their protection.377 Within the USDA tensions existed between the latter group and the AAA administrator, Chester C. Davis, who referred to them as “idealists and dreamers.”378 During the controversy over section 7 of the cotton contracts, Davis accused them of being “unfamiliar with the practical problems confronting the AAA, hence making Davis’s job as administrator more difficult […].”379 Davis used the dichotomy between idealistic dreamers versus practical achievers to bestow positive values on the practical, institutionalized processes within the AAA to assist the commercial farmers. Davis achieved a partial victory when one of the “idealistic dreamers,” was let go—a decision that Wallace grudgingly accepted. Those attacked as “dreamers and idealists,” however, 372 Adam D. Sheingate, The Rise of the Agricultural Welfare State: Institutions and Interest Group Power in the United States, France, and Japan. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001. Print. Princeton Studies in American Politics. 114. 373 H. C. Nixon, the Southern Agrarian, worked for the Resettlement Administration. Cf. Virginia Van der Veer Hamilton, Lister Hill: Statesman from the South. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1987. Print. Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies. 73. The Division of Rural Habilitation and of Subsistence Homesteads and the land policy section of AAA, formerly administered by FERA, came under jurisdiction of the RA. 374 Richard S. Kirkendall, “In the Shadow of FDR: Henry A. Wallace as Vice President.” At the President’s Side: The Vice Presidency in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Timothy Walch. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1997. 54–62. Print. 54. 375 Saloutos 1982, 110. Cf. Patrick H. Mooney and Theo J. Majka, Farmers’ and Farm Workers’ Movements:  Social Protest in American Agriculture. New  York:  Twayne Publishers, 1995. Print. Social Movements Past and Present. 80. 376 Saloutos 1982, 115. Jackson Gardner, Paul Appleby, and Jerome Frank. “Tugwell-Frank group,” 377 Saloutos 1982, 61. Gardner had reported on the injustice of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial for the Boston Globe, sympathized with the Bonus Army, and worked for interracial harmony. 378 Saloutos 1982, 115. 379 “The change of the interpretation […] would require the landlord to keep the same, not just the same number, of tenants” when agreeing to the acreage and crop reduction in exchange for the government subsidy (Saloutos 1982, 115).

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stressed that their efforts were “conducted within the capitalist framework;” therefore, refuting the claim that they were “radical” dreamers. Instead Frank Howe argued that they worked “[…] along old-fashioned Jeffersonian lines.”380 He admitted that only their consideration of “a plan that would have enabled the government to take over an independent packing plant and use it as a yardstick” could be considered as “something that was revolutionary or radical.”381 Though they were purged from the AAA in the spring of 1935,382 Wallace remained associated with them to the dislike of the advocates of the commercial farmers. Besides these internal struggles within the USDA, the drop of cotton prices in March 1935 and the increased opposition to the processing tax created a tense situation that Wallace felt the need to address.383 He used his Jefferson speech diffuse the dichotomy between idealism and practical, institutionalized processes and to reveal his shift to the Left, which would lead him to insist on farmer-labor cooperation in opposition to Wall Street.384

Wallace’s Speech – “Thomas Jefferson: Practical Idealist” Wallace introduced the term “practical idealism” by commenting on Woodrow Wilson’s remarks on the Declaration of Independence, who had argued that “liberty does not consist ‘in mere general declarations of the rights of man,’ but ‘in the translation of those declarations into definite action’ ” (1). This required each generation to apply the words and actions to the “particulars of the year[s]‌” (2). Wallace conflated these comments on the Declaration with its author and

380 “Their ‘book and records’ fight against the packers, their efforts to see that the growers were represented fairly in the tobacco marketing agreements, their crusade to prevent the processing tax from being passed on to the consumer, and their campaign to make sure the benefit payments were distributed fairly among the tenants and sharecroppers […]” (Saloutos 1982, 116). Saloutos 1982, 116. 381 Saloutos 1982, 116. Frank Howe, one of the “dreamers” quoted in Saloutos. 382 Saloutos 1982, 124. 383 Cf. Saloutos 1982, 124. In defending the tax against businessmen, he “could argue that [it] was actually an excise tax eventually passed along to the consumers” He avoided this argument when talking to the consumers. He suggested that the farmers would not need the tax and the subsidies derived from it if businessmen dispensed with the tariff—an argument Wallace made in “Jefferson Practical Idealist.” John C. Culver, and John Hyde, American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace. New York: Norton, 2000. Print. 158. 384 Cf. Saloutos 1982, 114. As a potential new voting block, they could bolster his bid for presidency, liberal advisers suggested (cf. Schapsmeier 1968, 140).

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introduced the two poles of Jefferson’s practical idealism—“the rights of man” and “definite action” (2) which Jefferson combined throughout his life under specific circumstances to address the issues of the times. Wallace stressed the importance of the temporal and circumstantial conditions arguing it was pointless to discuss which “side [Jefferson] took” if he were alive in 1935 because one had to consider that the changed “background” is marked by a greater complexity of problems (2). Wallace returned to this point in greater detail throughout the speech by contrasting the agricultural economy of Jefferson’s time with the industrial economy which increased with the Civil War. This difference was important to counter the pithiest and “extreme views” that were allocated to Jefferson: “remote, abstract thinker, a closet philosopher,” and “wild-eyed radical;” “dyed-in-the-wool agrarian,” and “most ardent champion of State Rights who ever lived and an equally ardent opponent of the Federal Government and all its works” (2). In light of Jefferson’s long career neither of these extremes was sustainable. A consideration of “[…] the reasons behind his attitude, the manner in which he reached his conclusions, and the quality of his mind” (2) would lead to understanding his position (2). Wallace set out to reveal the appropriateness of identifying Jefferson as a practical idealist by softening the extremes, and eventually claimed Jefferson for his own practical, idealistic middle ground. Wallace emphasized the interconnectedness of agriculture with governmental processes and democratic progress. Countering that Jefferson was a “closet philosopher and abstract thinker,” Wallace explained, “[Jefferson] assembled ideas on society and government not out of any academic interest in abstract principles, but in the hope of finding something useful here on earth” (2). His ideas on society’s organization derived from “Anglo-Saxon life before feudalism” when “[t]‌he individual was permitted to develop freely, normally, and happily” (2). Wallace’s praise of this life before the establishment of a hierarchical system of dependence, suggested a critique of the American crop lien385 and sharecropping system. Criticizing the current exploitative system entrenched in the South by 385 Farmers have to mortgage their future crops to merchants in order to receive seed and the necessities of life, “often at exorbitant markup rates for credit purchases” (204). Joseph Gerteis and Alyssa Goolsby, “Nationalism in America: The Case of the Populist Movement.” Theory and Society 34.2 (2005): 197–225. Print. 204. Saloutos similarly remarks that “[t]‌he outlook for assistance to the low-income farmers [was] bleak from the outset” “because of an explosive racial situation” and “because of a growing conviction on the part of many influential citizens, politicians, and scholars that there were too many farmers on the land” (xv).

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dint of a reference to an older similarly oppressive system, Wallace revealed the sensitive nature of the subject with respect to the Democrats’ Southern wing but implied his connection to the purged idealistic dreamers who advocated for those entrapped in the crop lien system as against those profiting from it. Wallace asserted that Jefferson adapted the natural rights theory to “American conditions” and these “modifications” became the basis for his philosophy (4), which revealed that the adaptation of ideas was a practical and positive aspect. In defining Jefferson’s modifications, Wallace echoed many New Dealers and Gilbert Chinard because Jefferson separated natural rights into human and property rights,386 bestowing a hierarchy upon them: “the first must never be abridged, the second must be subject to bargaining if a democratic society is to endure” (4). Thus, Jefferson “would be in the forefront fighting the battle against such organizations as the present day Liberty League” (4).387 Wallace emphasized Jefferson’s practical activism by moving him to the “forefront” of a battle for human rights. Like Chinard, Wallace lauded Jefferson’s brilliance as this hierarchy was the “key […] to the whole democratic system of government” (5). Jefferson’s idea of limiting property rights or “economic liberty” to “provide security […] both for the individual and society” nor his “deliberate[…]” substitution of “the pursuit of happiness” instead of property did not make Jefferson a “rabble-rouser,” Wallace argued (5). Harking back to the socio-economic changes, in particular the amount of ‘available’ land, Wallace stipulated that Jefferson had considered the abridgement of property rights as hardly necessary; however, this situation had changed. Similarly, Wallace discounted the proposition that Jefferson was an extreme “State Rights” (2) advocate388 or fiscal 386 Wallace gives Jefferson’s definition of the terms: the former he defined as “those rights they [strangers in a sovereign country] could individually exercise fully and perfectly,” including the “rights of thinking, speaking, forming and giving opinions, and perhaps all those which can be fully exercised by the individual without the aid of exterior assistance” (4). The latter he defined as “those [rights] of personal protection of acquiring and possessing property, in the exercise of which the individual natural power is less than the natural right” (4). 387 Cf. The Liberty League as opposed to Jefferson’s humanitarianism. The interconnectedness between the Jeffersonian categories crystalizes in Wallace’s speech. Despite his claim that it was fruitless to argue over the side Jefferson would choose were he alive in the 1930s, Wallace claims Jefferson as against the League. Cf. Schwellenbach (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1935); Cf. Meffan and White (Cong. Rec. 15 Apr. 1935). 388 Having based his philosophy on “the individual in society, [he] carried his idea to the relationship of state and federal government” (5). Wallace details the motivations, circumstances, and considerations that moved Jefferson to support the proposed

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conservative.389 Rather, Jefferson searched for “a practical middle ground” (7). Wallace praised the attitude as “much need[ed] simple bit of commonsense” in government and used it to shame “scores of minority groups, hundreds of individuals, who would use the centralizing power of the government for monopoly purposes without any return to the people who loaned them the power” (7).390 He censured those interests of acquiring their “share of the national income” and “forget[ting] responsibility” toward their fellow citizens. In contrast, he advocated a “Share-the-Responsibility movement” (8)  which in name conjured up references to Huey Long’s “Share-the-Wealth” program, though Wallace markedly replaced the term “wealth.” Leaders of the Democratic party feared that Long, if running for the presidency as third-party candidate, would steal votes from its voter base and from FDR.391 Wallace addressed Long’s unworkable program392 and these fears by proposing an alternative movement Constitution, suggesting Jefferson’s penchant to find practical solutions born out of the circumstances at hand as he strived to align these with his vision and theories, and vice versa. For example, Jefferson’s stay abroad changed his ideas on the topic of State Rights (6). Wallace discounts the theory of “nullification” as evidence of Jefferson’s position, stressing that his “career and most mature writings” suggest that he would never have pressed the issue as a wise man recognizes a “theoretical right” but practically evaluates whether adherence to theory is ultimately beneficial (7). 389 Jefferson had a “tenacious resolve to find some practicable middle ground” (8) on state debts, but strategy and diplomacy kept him from publicly advocating the restriction of property rights. Yet, Jefferson’s “most revealing letters and private papers” manifested this point, proving him “a relentlessly practical idealist” (8). 390 Cf. Meffan/White defending TVA (Cong. Rec. 9 May 1935: 7273). On May 11, 1935, the Rural Electrification Administration was founded. Wallace’s comments are suggestive of the TVA debates. Private power companies were trying to use the publicly financed facilities to make profit under the service motive. Lister Hill defended the TVA by a successful floor fight against attacks by Republicans fueled by private utility, coal and railroad interests “[…] he countered with pro-TVA amendments that sheltered the Authority within the accepted commerce power of the federal government” (Hamilton 1987, 72). 391 Donald R.  McCoy, Angry Voices:  Left-of-Center Politics in the New Deal Era. Lawrence: U of Kansas P, 1958. Print. 123. “The Roosevelt administration was irritated by the establishment of the Share-Our-Wealth movement and other Long challenges” (123). This irritation was exacerbated when Long, in March 1935, “threatened to bolt the Democratic party if Roosevelt should run for re-election” (126). By the summer of 1935, the existed 27,000 Share the Wealth clubs with an estimated 7.5 million members. 392 Glen Jeansonne, Messiah of the Masses:  Huey P.  Long and the Great Depression. New York: HarperCollins College, 1993. Print. The Library of American Biography. 123.

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which, like America, “[m]‌ay […] need a modern Jefferson […] to put into immortal words a Declaration of Interdependence” (8); in an astute word play Wallace thereby foreshadowed the Library of Congress Jefferson Symposium’s statement. Wallace suggested that events at home and abroad—like the “misrule and despotism” in Europe—and Jefferson’s immediate environment “shaped his philosophy” (8) and the solutions he proposed. Commenting on the self-sufficiency of Monticello, Wallace believed it was not “surprising that Jefferson’s vision of America […] was a sort of Arcadia of self-sufficient homesteads” (9).393 Yet, he indicated the corruption of Jefferson’s vision because “Monticello was selfsufficing chiefly by virtue of slave labor [which] is of course hard to reconcile with any ideas of democracy” (9). Wallace tainted this admission by reverting to the common defense of Jefferson as a trailblazer against slavery in a climate largely averse to such a position and let the criticism of the institution of slavery become overshadowed by what moral and political value Jefferson inscribed to its opposite, a self-sufficient yeomanry (cf. 9).394 Thus, Jefferson’s philosophy of government was informed by “an agricultural pattern of civilization,” which influenced his economic attitudes (9). Jefferson contrasted this idealized, rural citizenry with city mobs easily swayed by “a clever orator” and stressed the need for newspapers (9).395 Wallace used this contrast to discuss the relation Jefferson saw between agriculture, manufacture, and the commercial and diplomatic relation to Great Britain which was undergoing changes, and “[a]‌lways the practical idealist, never the dogmatist, […] he permitted circumstances to modify this logical system” (10).396 Wallace continued this topic by explaining that practical idealism also explained the 393 The Division of Subsistence Homesteads, incorporated into the RA, suggested Jefferson’s ideal. 394 “Jefferson did what he could […]. No man of his time did more […] to prevent the fastening of slavery on the South” (Wallace 9). “On a man’s own land could be found peace and contentment, independence to think and express oneself calmly and rationally, isolation from transitory popular passions, the ideal condition under which self-government might thrive” (Wallace 9). 395 Wallace applied the idea of practical idealism to freedom of speech: Jefferson “practiced as well as preached what he called ‘the dictates of reason and pure Americanism’ ” (9) suggesting that his philosophy “might be worth reviving in certain quarters today” (9). Wallace took a stab at “certain” publishers’ biased reporting. 396 Though he spoke of “entangling alliances with none,” Jefferson later came to the “more practical conclusion that political aloofness could not be combined with successful commercial and economic relationships” (10).

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difference between Jefferson as private citizen and public figure, which Chinard had stressed in 1930. For Jefferson, as private person, the “dream of rural Arcadia appeared […] more as a pleasant, desirable objective than as a specific goal to be fought for at all cost,” because he, as a public servant, “acknowledged that America had commercial aspirations” (11). Jefferson’s “practicality and lack of dogmatism” in adapting to the nation’s changing needs counter the image of “simon-pure agrarian” (11), which Wallace supported by alluding to Jefferson’s aphorism397 that “he preferred life and change to the unyielding attitude of those whose minds stop growing when their bodies do” (11). He quoted from two Jeffersonian letters398 on the subject (cf. 12) and surmised that Jefferson’s “mature judgments” reflected his “abiding faith in balance” between the different economic sectors (13). This was the very idea that had to be applied to “modern circumstances” (13). In particular because “individual enterprise and free competition” of the 1800s now found itself “overshadowed by the largest, the most intricate corporate structure […], with free competitive prices, in consequence, giving way in large segments of industry to the rigidities of administered prices” (14). Hence Wallace asked rhetorically, “Would Jefferson […] rigorously apply the theories of 1800 to the circumstances of 1935?” (13) and suggested “no” as an answer by giving statistics of the ratio of those employed in agriculture to those in commerce and industry, the size of cities, and the cotton production in 1800 and in 1935. Wallace absolved Jefferson from being seen as a doctrinaire, emphasizing the practicality and malleability of his idealism. Wallace, however, asserted that Jefferson would meet the current problems progressively (14) and would have worried about seeing the equilibrium disturbed by corporations’ or labor unions’ attempts “to use, governmental powers for monopolistic purposes” (14). Whatever Jefferson’s solution to the power of corporations would have been, Wallace asserted, that he would have seen to it that agriculture was “kept in some sort of balance” (14), which “[s]‌imple justice requires […], and the future of democracy might make […] imperative” (14). He 397 Thomas Jefferson, “Samuel Kercheval: July 12, 1816.” Writings. Ed. Merrill D. Peterson. 1984. 1395–403. 398 Wallace mistakenly names John Jay as the addressee of Jefferson’s letter. However, the letter was written to James Jay. Cf. Thomas, Jefferson, “To James Jay, Monticello, April 7, 1809.” In J. J. Looney (ed.). The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Retirement Series. Vol. I. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. Print. 110. Jefferson advocated “ ‘an equilibrium of agriculture, manufacture, and commerce’ ”. In the second, Jefferson refuted accusations of “inconsistency” by saying that time and experience over 30 years have changed his attitude.

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appealed to the people’s common sense and touched upon the processing tax as the farmers’ tariff.399 Wallace’s criticism but eventual amelioration of his criticism of labor revealed that his move toward a more leftist position was in the making in the spring of 1935; Wallace claimed that both laborers and farmers were not “nearly so successful as business in gaining the ear of government” “up until 1933” (15). “So practical and idealist as Jefferson” was, he would have been influenced by this disparity though he would not have liked “farmers to ask for governmental powers to place them on an equality with industry” (15).400 Yet, an equilibrium could only be restored through government as it was impossible to “turn[…] back the pages of industrial history” (15). Jefferson would have sought to procure such a “new balance” by promoting an “informed, trained leadership capable of seeing the relation of the part to the whole […]” as the exploitation of one group by another “was abhorrent to everything Jefferson ever said or did” (15).401 Jefferson thus had to “construct a political democracy without giving up certain individual rights,” and America to safeguard these was now “construct[ing] an economic democracy without giving up certain individual economic rights,” to guarantee to its citizens “security” and “an opportunity to do useful work” (16). To secure those rights and to cope with “the great forces of modern capitalism Jeffersonian democracy must take on modern equipment,” and “agrarian liberalism […] must offer more than […] ‘an amiable go-as-you-please individualism’ ” (16). It “must provide both the political and the economic machinery […] and the spirit for making the machinery go” (16). Wallace declared that the AAA was the “first crude attempt” of such machinery. Its “spirit” became epitomized when “fair-minded people” improved the act (17), which suggested that the administration was already working on legislative changes to be prepared if the Supreme Court ruled unfavorably on the NRA codes. Yet, in comparison to

399 Saloutos claims that Wallace had a “broader grasp of the social and economic problems of agriculture than did any of his predecessors, and he understood the relationship of these problems to the broader issues of American society” (51–2). 400 The same argument was made by Andrew J. May, a Kentucky representative, who spoke on behalf of the tobacco growers and against the tobacco trust (Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1934: 6870–6872). He also considered Jefferson a “matchless humanitarian” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1935:10890) and argued with him against special privilege. 401 The irony of the passage has to be noted, as Jefferson’s, the South’s, and the North’s profit came from the exploitation of slave labor. Wallace glosses over this fact and emphasizes instead “Jefferson’s passion for unity [which] was joined with his passion for representative government and the natural rights of man” (16).

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the “centralized NRA,” “the AAA’s county-by-county system of decision making and enforcement was widely viewed as fair and democratic,”402 thus it was supposed to stand a better chance. Wallace stressed this “fair and democratic” nature as the “[…] production control machinery is an example of economic democracy because it guarantees to every farmer who takes part some voice in making key economic decisions […] which affect the income he will get” (17). Wallace portrayed the farmers’ enforcing and administering individual allotments as “local self-government” “more real, more significant, than it has been” since the burgeoning industrial development. Wallace defined “self-government” as a “spirit of democracy,” which made individuals realize they were “part of a whole” in which “government has sufficient interest in him to let him have an interest in government” (17). By saying that farmers experienced this “concretely and specifically” “under the adjustment programs” (17), he refuted that rugged individualism best contributed to the general welfare and that the AAA curtailed free enterprise (cf. 18). Rugged individualism, he argued, had often involved morally questionable actions aided by “virtues” like shrewdness and manipulation. It served people in reaping profit from their neighbors, which had “entitled [them] to vast wealth and respect” (18). But Wallace criticized these “frontier” practices and values as “[in]decent” and “not even practicable,” because success was based on “profiting at the expense of society” (18). Wallace identified the attempt of a “multitude of minority groups” to co-opt governmental powers as “the most acute political and economic problem” (18). He urged balance and suggested that one can only work to contain the strivings of lobbies, which were made to stay as the “die has been cast in Hamilton’s day, not ours” (18). Wallace contrasted Hamilton with Jefferson, as the latter’s foresight made him warn about the dangers of these organizations coming between “the people and their representatives” (19). Jefferson had encountered “the devilishness with which certain interests deliberately misrepresent public opinion” (19). Yet, the “modern Aesops” in politics and in business “are uncommonly efficient and well equipped” in “hav[ing] newspapers do their work for them” (19). The worst-case occurred when “the extreme Right and extreme Left”—in Jefferson’s time, the “aristocrats, the monarchists, [and] the plutocrats” and the “unruly, undisciplined mobs”—acted in concert to “destroy the Middle” (20). So, Jefferson placed his “faith” “in the middle,” considering an “enlightened people” as the only safeguard against false leaders (20).

402 Culver and Hyde 2000, 158.

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Wallace identified “certain cotton interests” as these deceptive leaders who engaged in an “extraordinary drive to shake the ‘prudence and self-possession’ of the people [… and to] wreck the cotton production control program” (20) and “the cotton processing tax” (21), which Wallace would call “the farmers’ tariff.”403 “[T]‌he extreme Right and Left” attacked it to “swing labor into line against the farmer, and, […], to arouse the farmer against himself ” (20). But Wallace shared Jefferson’s faith in the middle as “neither labor nor agriculture will permit itself to be duped” (20) and vouched to act if he had evidence that the “processing tax was unfair to labor, to industry, or to the consumer” (21). After quoting Jefferson on his confidence in the people which exceeded his faith in the written Constitution, Wallace reassured the audience of Jefferson’s own progressive middle ground were he alive today, because you would not find him on the side of those who wish to preserve, at any cost, the political and economic pattern of the past; nor would you find him in the camp of those fiery radicals who would overnight remold America along the lines of some cast-iron dogma. You would find him […] in the front ranks of those who would make whatever political or economic changes the circumstances of the day demand, provided that certain human rights be not thereby sacrificed. (21)

In attacking the extreme left, Wallace reverted to the accusation that American communists followed the Russian party line and, thus, a cast-iron dogma, which American radicals did not adjust to fit their circumstances as Jefferson would have done. In the same vein, Wallace portrayed the conservatives as un-Jeffersonian for ignoring the changed socio-economic conditions. As Jefferson had been trying to solve problems with a look toward the future and insistence on preserving human rights, Wallace’s closing paragraph called upon his audience to “summon up […] [Jefferson’s] practical idealism [which] we need most of all if our struggle for economic democracy is to succeed” (21). It was a struggle that could not be won if one disregarded the needs of the agricultural sector and one that depended on an informed citizenry.

Practical Idealism in the Congressional Discourse As Henry A. Wallace’s speech revealed, the concept of “practical idealism” was applicable to the interrelated areas of politics, education, agriculture, and economics. Within the Cong. Rec., moral entrepreneurs employed the concept along similarly broad, but intricate, lines. One of the earliest examples is Joseph

403 Qtd. in Culver and Hyde 2000, 158. From the Des Moines Register, April 28, 1935.

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Shannon who stated: “Jefferson’s dreams were always practical ones” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6580). Though he applied it to beauty and utility in architecture, he moved from a mere rhetorical appropriation to a closer thematic parallelism when detailing how Jefferson’s ideas on education proved that Jefferson followed his practical dreams (cf. 6581). Shannon intertwined this vision with the political organization praising Jefferson for being an “educator, idealist, and champion of equal rights to all men” and for his greatest achievements—the Declaration of Independence, the Statute for Religious Freedom in Virginia, and the founding of the University of Virginia (UVA). This extensive list revealed that he was “not a dreamer, but always a doer” and spurred on by his ideals he “helped build an ideal form of government—a ‘new nation’ ” (6582).404 Shannon encapsulated “practical idealism” in calling UVA “an imperishable reminder of Thomas Jefferson as the protagonist of free education and academical training for the youth of America” (6581). He stressed Jefferson’s “pioneer” role, as he “was the first conspicuous and persistent advocate of State aid to institutions of higher learning, as he was of local taxation to support the common schools of his State, as the nurseries of culture, prosperity, and good government” (6581). Shannon thereby advocated both “State aid” and the importance of local and parental control over school matters.405 Jefferson as “advocate of practical learning,” beginning with “primary education,” the three “r’s” (6581) defined its purpose: to give “every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business,” “ ‘improve, by reading, his morals and faculties,’ ” “ ‘to understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with confidence the functions confided to him,’ ” and to “ ‘exercise with order and justice those [rights] he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgment’ ” (6581). These objectives of education would promote “pure patriotism, ideal Americanism, and self-reliant citizenship” (6581).406 The practical and the

404 Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6580; Cong. Rec. 13 April 1937: 3406; Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8531; Cong. Rec. 6 May 1940: 2689–90; Cong. Rec. 7 Jul. 1943: A3574–5. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5436. 405 John Boylan, too, conjectured “if [Jefferson] were sitting in this chamber today, or holding the office of governor of any of our sovereign states,” he would be “the leader in the struggle against […] proposals to lodge control over our wide-spread educational system in the Federal Government” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 5607). 406 Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1935: 5922. Burke/Schwellenbach would also quote what Jefferson considered the objectives of education or even “a higher grade of education” as, for example, stated, in its entirety, in the “Report of the Board of Commissioners for the

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ideal were intertwined and further pursued by the children with ability in higher education to build a natural aristocracy of merit and talent. Similar themes were raised in the Nebraskan Senator Edward Burke’s Jefferson Day Speech of 1935. Lewis Schwellenbach, a staunch New Dealer and friend of labor, considered it worthy of Congress’s attention. Burke had been the president of the board of education of Omaha from 1927 to 1930 and as junior senator in 1934 supported the New Deal. His speech reflects this support and, at the same time, mirrors the ideas purported by Hoover’s National Advisory Committee on Education of 1931, which stressed the “traditional roots of American localism in education and its fundamental contribution to democracy and citizenship.”407 At this point Burke did not criticize the administration, even though his exegesis would, in 1938, serve as an attack on Pat Harrison’s education bill, even though it was based on state control. By then Burke felt antagonism toward the New Deal due to his state associates’ growing opposition to FDR408 and his dissatisfaction with the unresponsiveness of executive officials “to [his] political demands.”409 Thus he became “an irretractable conservative, [who] warned that federal control would follow federal aid to education.”410 Similar to Shannon, Burke explained Jefferson’s vision of a tripartite system of education,411 emphasizing that he sought to organize free public education University of Virginia to the Virginia General Assembly, [4 August 1818].” Shannon abbreviated these objectives. 407 Paula S. Fass, The New Deal: Anticipating a Federal Education Policy. Stanford: 1981. Print. Institute for Research on Educational Finance and Governance. 4. Supported by the National Education Association. 408 Patterson 1967, 48. 409 Patterson 1967, 79. “Personal feeling helped influence […] Burke” to come out against the public utilities holding-company bill (1967, 47; 49). He opposed the Wagner Act, was the “leading Democratic critic of the new Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) and of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)” (1967, 49) and author of the conservative manifesto in 1937 (1967, 204). 410 Swain 1978, 215. Sen. Harrison‘s bill called for federal assistance to education without federal control. He introduced it in 1936 and 1937, knowing that FDR would veto it because it did not allow him freedom in the distribution of funds (cf. Swain 1978, 213). FDR’s opposition might be attributed to the curtailed budget and his waiting for his advisory committee on education’s report, due February 1938 (cf. Swain 1978, 213–4). 411 Every free child, boy or girl, would receive “three years education in the three ‘R’s,’ ” the most talented could move on to “grammar schools or classical academies,” and lastly to “State-supported universities.” He stressed that “The inclusion of girls was in advance of any similar movement anywhere” (5922).

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through the distribution of schoolhouses simultaneously serving as “the seat of the local governmental assembly” (Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1935: 5922). This interconnectedness between governmental responsibilities and education highlighted that government only worked if it was based on the consent of the well-informed citizenry, a point that Wallace stressed. While Burke’s praise prepared his argument against a federal education bill of 1938, Wallace’s suggested the shift in perspective on education expressed by FDR’s Advisory Committee. In contrast to Hoover’s 1931 committee “dominated by professional educators,”412 FDR’s consisted of representatives from “labor, government, agriculture and industry” reflecting the “new, more comprehensive conception of education,”413 akin to Wallace’s “economic democracy” through an informed citizenry. Burke as a more conservative Democrat, as compared to Wallace or Senator Schwellenbach, did not espouse this broader vision of the purpose of education. Schwellenbach414 praised Jefferson for “creating the system of State-supported universities,” which were to secure an “understanding of the intricacies of governmental problems,” because “[h]‌e knew that while training does not itself insure honesty […] incompetency does breed dishonesty” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1935: 5922). Education in government was at the same time one in moral values which Jefferson desired for leaders and the common people, who were to learn from the natural aristocracy.415 Such leadership was also entailed in the term trail blazer, which some orators ascribed to Jefferson’s vision, foresight, and wisdom in relation to the national development.416 Beyond the territorial expansion that in particular Midwesterners 4 12 Fass 1981, 3. 413 Fass 1981, 28. The 1938 report “articulated a new vision of federal responsibility for education and a new ideology of equal educational opportunity which incorporated the New Deal’s ad hoc experiences” (28). 414 James E. Murray (D-MT) inserted Schwellenbach’s speech in the Cong. Rec. Murray, whose uncle had made him work in his mine for several months in his teens, took from this experience a sympathy for organized labor and support for public health insurance (cf. 8). He shared with FDR “the belief that those well off were responsible for the welfare of the people less fortunate” (2). Donald E. Spritzer, Senator James E. Murray and the Limits of Post-War Liberalism. New York: Garland, 1985. Print. Modern American History. 415 Cf. Samuel Hobbs, Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8531. 416 Cf. Cong. Rec. 4 Mar. 1936: 3295; Boylan Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3406. “Thomas Jefferson blazoned a path in American history […].” Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5455. Beck (R-MA)/Christianson (R-MN): “The problem of acquiring new territory was a new one, and in solving the problem […] Jefferson was treading an unbeaten path.” Cf.

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connected with Jefferson’s vision, it also meant the agrarian, cultural, and political development. This became evident in John Cochran’s (D-MO) speech; the Jefferson National Expansion Monument advocate considered “Jefferson […] one of the dreamer-doers of our Nation’s onward march […]” and “a patternmaker of civilization” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1935: 5718). Furthermore, he praised Jefferson for his “service to America,” stressing his altruism and echoing the Democrats’ idea of Jefferson’s political and cultural leadership qualities, which the Southern Agrarians had employed to defend the unique Southern culture. John Boylan identified Jefferson as a political ‘patternmaker,’ as he established the philosophy that ‘all men are created equal’ as “a new idea in practical politics” in the form of the sovereignty of the people and local self-government (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5435). Boylan thus depicted Jefferson, the “humanitarian,” also as “a great theorist […] who kept his feet on the ground. He was the most practical of idealists” (5436).417 This judgement applied to Jefferson’s fight for the tripartite system of education and its relation to self-government418 as “No one knew better Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938, 1526. Farley/Rayburn: “Jefferson had the courage to find new trails. He knew that a constantly expanding nation cannot be put into a cement cast by one generation and long survive into another.” Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1939: 4198. Boylan: “He had the courage to break new trails. He had the vision to dream new dreams and the genius to translate them into reality” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1943: A1880– 1). Bowers/Guffey in the Nation’s official tribute to Jefferson: “He was the first and foremost of the statesmen whose vision penetrated the thousand miles of intervening wilderness […] and foresaw […] the pioneers who would redeem that empire to the purpose of man. […], he launched the historic expedition of Lewis and Clark on his own initiative. He assisted in the formation of the plans; he […] corresponded with Lewis in the preparation; he followed […] that blazing of a trail with a keener interest than the maneuvering of his political enemies; and he had prescience enough to know that this was an outstanding achievement of his administration” (emphasis added). 417 Cf. Rep. Faddis (D-PA): Jefferson introduced the equality of man into government, resulting in a “new philosophy of government founded upon the theory that government to be practical should be conducted in the interest of all the people and be participated in by all the people” (Cong. Rec. 20 Apr. 1936: 5741). 418 Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1938:  1663. Logan (D-KT)/Byrd (D-VA); Cong. Rec. 16 Jun. 1938: 3099. Shannon (D-MO); Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1504. Adams/O’Mahoney; Cong. Rec. 3 Aug. 1939: 3815. Garrett (D-TX)/Lon Smith: “As a member of the Virginia Legislature he destroyed primogeniture and entail, heritages or relics of the feudal ages, and […] the passage of one of the best laws the world has ever seen for public education–an ideal system from primary department to university.”; Cong. Rec. 23 Apr. 1941: A1859. Rorke, Attorney at Law/Edelstein (D-NY); Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5435–6, Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3406. Boylan (D-NY); Cong. Rec. 16 Apr.

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than he that education is the best weapon against tyranny and bigotry, and that an enlightened people cannot be enslaved” (5435). Boylan asserted Jefferson’s leading role in comprehending the nature and mechanism of democracy. A year later, Boylan suggested that Jefferson created the “five-point program in Virginia” to make democracy “a practical system to live by” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937:  3406). As Jefferson “was no dreamer or vague experimenter,” he focused on things he believed to be reasonably accomplishable (3406), such as extending “the free-school system in Virginia to the poor as well as the rich along the broadest democratic principles” (3407). More concretely than in his previous speeches, Boylan stressed the relation between education and political leadership as Jefferson abolished “the aristocracy of wealth and birth […] ‘to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent which Nature has […] scattered with equal hand, through all its conditions’ ”419 (3406). Thus, Jefferson’s system would promote the talents of every individual for the advancement of society.420 On the Republican side, James Beck drew on political practical idealism when he called Jefferson a “great leader of the American people, who in his very rare combination of practical statecraft as a leader of masses and noble idealism, was one of the most remarkable statesmen […]” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936:  5455).

1943: A1877. Thomas (D-UT)/Hill (D-AL): “[…]the genius of Jefferson […] united the idea of trained citizenry to the practical idea of the ballot box and thus kept reason and order in the world by the united wills of the majority of the well-trained persons. This is the key to the stability of modern democracy”; “[…] the establishment of a free system of public education, which had contributed and is now contributing, so effectively to the continued growth of and advancement of our Nation” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1943: A1873). 419 Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1935: 5922. Burke (D-NE)/Schwellenbach (D-WA); Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1935: 5730. Schwellenbach/Murray (D-MT); Rep. Greenwood (D-IN) lauded Jefferson for being the “father of the University of Virginia” and for his founding “a democracy of education upon which any representative democracy […] must be based” (Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936), tapping into Jefferson’s idea of natural aristocracy. 420 Cf. Houston (D-KS): Jefferson’s program of higher education of “natural aristocracy of talent and achievement” (Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1939: 1519). Shannon (cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6581). Boylan said that Jefferson’s administration proved that under a natural aristocracy, “democracy could function successfully; and that freedom of speech and the press does not endanger the existence of government” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5436). Maverick (D-TX): The first lesson learned from Jefferson was that “liberty of speech, religion, education, and knowledge are necessary in any civilized government” (Cong. Rec. 18 May 1936: 7445). “Civilized government” implied the interrelations between education, moral virtue, and political organization.

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Beck emphasized Jefferson’s exceptionalism as the two concepts could only be brought into harmony by a person of character, which also explained why his belief in the self-evidence of the idealistic phrase ‘all men are created equal’ was not shared by his contemporaries, except in a “purely political sense” (5455).421 As Beck explicitly related Jefferson’s ‘practical statecraft’ to his capability of leading the unruly masses, he established that Jefferson was a Republican rather than a Democrat. Beck also emphasized the relation between practical idealism and Jefferson’s versatile mind422 embodied in the curriculum he designed for the UVA with its broad range of study (5455). While many subjects had practical applications, one subject, namely, agriculture was particularly Jeffersonian as it combined theory with application and responsible citizenry (cf. 5455). Other congressmen uttered similar themes in later speeches423 and continued to praise Jefferson’s University of Virginia.

421 Contrast to Shannon, who considered this “not a new idea in philosophy but a new idea in practical politics.” Beck emphasized again that Jefferson was an “inspired idealist” who was also “one of the most practical statesmen of his or any time,” a “great human paradox” (5455). 422 Cong. Rec. 18 Jun. 1934: 12569. Cochran (D-MO); Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6580; Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1935: 5718. Randolph (D-WV)/Cochran (D-MO); Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5435–6. John Boylan said: “He had an unquenchable curiosity about all things that concerned human beings.”; Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3406. John Boylan; Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1938: 1662. Logan (D-KT)/Byrd (D-VA): “His love for the common people of the Nation was as ardent as that of Jackson and Lincoln, but the universality of his knowledge far exceeded that of those two great men.”; Cf. Cong. Rec. 7 Jul. 1943: A3574–6. Barkley (D-KT)/Byrd (D-VA); Cong. Rec. 3 Mar. 1941: A936–7. Culkin (R-NY); Cong. Rec. 28 Apr. 1941: A1936–8. Ellis (D-AR)/George W. Johnson (D-WV); Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3318–9. Lanham (D-TX) said: “very few people in all the history of the world have had the gift of a variety of genius. The most conspicuous example in this regard in the Old World was Leonardo da Vinci. In my judgment, the outstanding example in the New World was Thomas Jefferson.”; Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3321–2. Schwabe (R-MO), “Review of Current Problems, Controversial Problems in the Light of True Jeffersonian Philosophy.”; Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3322. Voorhis (D-CA). 423 Rep. May (D-KY): Jefferson was “the greatest genius of all time,” referring to the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the Declaration of Independence, “and the founding of the University of Virginia for the fashioning of culture and character in the youth of this country” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8533). May employed the trinity of Jefferson’s achievements to prove that his leadership was pivotal in government and culture.

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The liberal Florida senator Claude Pepper applied the Emersonian aphorism to the contemporary situation and insisted that the “teaching and learning institution providing this forum for the exchange of ideas in the best tradition of the intellectual freedom is but the lengthened shadow of the spirit and the hand of Thomas Jefferson” (Cong. Rec. 15 Jun. 1938:  3294). His mind and practicality established the material conditions that aided the “exchange of ideas” which he valued so highly. For the same reasons, Samuel Hobbs depicted Jefferson and Lincoln as “architects and builders of temples of thought” who had their “heart[s]‌attuned to the mute cry of the down-trodden” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938:  8531). Hobbs called Jefferson a “dreamer[…] of marvelous dreams” who “labored practically and successfully” to make them a “reality” (8531). Thus, he urged the TJMC to “expand their vision and broaden the scope of the memorial to make it harmonise [sic] with the mind and heart and life of Jefferson—the practical idealist” (8531). Hobbs suggested that “the creation of an academy to prepare choice youth for service in our Government at home and abroad—to supply the greatest need of our Nation, adequate leadership for a better government”—would effectuate this harmonization (8531). He strove to “revitalize” Jefferson’s “three greatest passions […] freedom, representative democratic government, and education” (8531). In the discussion that ensued, other “bona fide Mavericks” supported his advocacy of education and thus the use of the memorial funds for public, higher education.424 A speech delivered a year later raised the issue of the states’ allocating insufficient funds for education to highlight the toll that the Depression took on children’s education.

“A Century of Progress in Applying Jefferson’s Philosophy of Education” John Murdock (D-AZ) had been a teacher, then a high school principal, and later the dean of the Arizona State Teachers College before becoming a representative in 1937.425 Murdock worked with other progressives for financial support 424 Wolf, ed. 2001, 162. Cf. Discussions on the Jefferson Memorial’s Design and Purpose in Chapter 2.1.3. 425 “Murdock, John Robert.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774– Present. Web. 15 March 2017  . John R.  Murdock, Constitutional Development in Arizona. Phoenix: Arizona Republican Pub. Co., 1930. Print. An Outline of Arizona Constitutional Government. Phoenix: Pryor-Tyler Co., 1927. Print. History Outline: Arizona and Southwestern History. Tempe: Arizona State Teachers College, 1931. Print. Bulletin. General Series 2.

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of education and international peace,426 and pursued the first objective when he praised the Geyer Act (1839) as the first effective school legislation establishing the public school system and the first state university in the Louisiana Purchase Territory (Cong. Rec. 13 Feb. 1939: 515). The original act stipulated that funds collected through land sales were to finance the “promotion of literature and the arts and sciences”427 which Murdock considered the “practical outgrowth of the views and philosophy of Thomas Jefferson put into practice […]” (515).428 Jefferson, the “great liberator,” was the first to understand and preach that “education is a public function and should not be left to the church or charity” (516)429 but should be under the control of the state. Thus, Murdock claimed, “It is the fundamental philosophy of our democratic society that equal and extensive education […], as individual capabilities will permit,” “shall be available to all” (516). Jefferson would lament the great educational inequality resulting from the “inadequacy of financial support and inequality of educational opportunity” (516), Murdock argued. The geographical mobility of Americans required the states to recognize that they could not ignore inadequate education in other states.430 It had to be in the general interest to promote education with federal financial aid while retaining

426 Bullock 1978, 144. Murdock and Voorhis (CA-D) favored education and advocated for international peace while maintaining America’s neutrality. 427 Geyer Act. . 428 Claude Anderson Phillips, A History of Education in Missouri: The Essential Facts Concerning the History and Organization of Missouri’s Schools. Jefferson City, Mo: Hugh Stephens printing company, 1911. Print. 2; 171–172. Phillips confirms that Missouri drew on “Jefferson’s system” (2): “[…] this act transplanted to Missouri the educational system of Virginia which Thomas Jefferson had advocated as early as 1779. The scheme provided for academies and colleges in different parts of the State which should be closely articulated with the university at the head. It also provided for district or elementary schools below the academies” (171–2). He laments, “Unfortunately […] there were no adequate funds to carry out this plan” (172). 429 On the topic of education as public function Cf. Cong. Rec. 25 Jun. 1943. Byrd. Cf. Cong. Rec. 7 Jul. 1943. Barkley/Byrd; Cf. Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1943. Davis (R-PA) gave a radio address entitled “Jefferson and Education”; Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3324. Scott (R-PA); Cf. Cong. Rec. 28 Apr. 1941: A1937. Johnson (D-WV)/Ellis (D-AR): “[…] the same moment he was forcing the separation of his church and state he was installing public education as a function of government and the greatest weapon of a free people” (A1937). 430 Cf. Fass 1981, 4–5.

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local control. To achieve this, “wise legislation” which was “properly and justly enacted” and “the most liberal, constructive statesmanship” (517) were needed. Murdock defined Jefferson as the great sponsor for this bill, who embodied these qualities.431 He, too, reflected the ideas of Hoover’s advisory committee and additionally revealed that the New Deal did not revolutionize, but rather tinkered with, the educational structures. It merely “encouraged an awareness of how poverty often underlay inequalities in educational attainment” which facilitated the shift from considering “educational opportunity” as a stand-in for “providing people with only as much education as they could use” to a “platform for eliminating inequalities in access to education.”432 John Murdock continued his advocacy for education in a speech delivered in Congress on the dedication of the Jefferson Memorial, which he considered beautiful. He introduced the HR 2533 for an Educational Trust Fund for higher education of leadership (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1898). This memorial “of the spirit,” which was more fitting and lasting than the marble memorial, “would promote learning and make it available to the most capable youth of America, of both sexes, of all races, creeds, and color” (A1898). Murdock’s inclusive list presented Jefferson as a liberal supporter of the rights of women and African Americans. Murdock sided with the underprivileged and peripheral minorities so that society could be advanced by their talents. Harking back to Jefferson’s aphorism of the memorial frieze, he justified his proposal as a “means of

431 Thomas (D-UT) equated “freedom of educational opportunity” to the freedom from want (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1943: A1876). 432 Fass 1981, 16. Rep. Ludlow (D-IN) drew attention to educational opportunity as paramount in developing a natural aristocracy for political leadership and proclaimed: “[…] however hard or drab may be the surroundings of boys and girls, in whose breast righteous ambition burns, they shall have their chance to grow into the larger life; that their God-given right to reach the full stature of useful manhood and womanhood and to enjoy the fruits of honest toil shall not be barred or abridged by privileged statutes and practices” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1939:4271). Jefferson’s advocacy of education was connected to his faith in the perfectibility of human beings. Extrinsic conditions, therefore, had an enormous influence on the education, behavior, and moral standards. Ludlow’s idea of “growing into the larger life” and reaching “the full stature of useful” personhood through education suggested that “equal education opportunity” could lead to the full economic participation of all citizens. He thereby proposed to battle privilege in society, echoing Henry Wallace’s idea of establishing an economic democracy through education and reflecting the results of FDR’s advisory committee.

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liberating the human mind from the bondage of ignorance” (A1898).433 To reflect “Jefferson’s philosophy,” the fund had to be “administered by impartial authority in the interest of truth” (A1898). Murdock thereby suggested non-partisanship as the hallmark of this bill. While the appropriation of money at a time of war was objectionable to some, Murdock claimed that “such a fund will be needed after hostilities cease, and […] will aid the war effort by being invested in Victory bonds” “[…] and be immediately available for maximum usefulness after the war” (A1898). He intertwined Jefferson with the war through his concern about education and the national debt (A1898). Jefferson, according to Murdock, would approve an educational plan that was “scientific, broad, and fair enough to seek out and encourage human intelligence and worth wherever found” (A1899), all the more so if it did not increase the debt. This practical, yet idealistic scheme, mirrored his great example Jefferson. Murdock appropriated Jefferson’s practical idealism more obviously after the Senate voted on the Jefferson National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee which highlighted his practicality in relation to agriculture. Yet Murdock believed while Jefferson was “great” “in the matter of doing [he] was greater in the matter of thinking” (9531), advocating to free “the mind from the thralldom of ignorance” (9531). Agriculture was thus just “one of the several fields […] in which he predominated” but “[h]‌is basic political philosophy led inevitably to his stress on the education of each individual citizen” (9531). Thus, Jefferson considered his education bill “the most important bill in our whole code” in a letter to George Wythe of August 13, 1786 (9531). Jefferson referred to “A Bill for the more general diffusion of knowledge, 1779,” which also figured in Barkley’s speech in the Bicentennial Commission’s tribute under the subheading

433 Beck (R-MA): “Thomas Jefferson worshipped above everything else the liberty of the human soul. It was Jefferson who said: ‘I will wage eternal warfare against any form of tyranny over the mind of man’ ” (Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1934: 6869). Cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1814. Coffee (D-WA) quoted the same phrase together with: Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 516. Murdock; Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3336. Kennedy (D-NY); Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3346. Thomas (D-UT)/Hill (D-AL); Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5455. Beck (R-MA)/Christianson (R-MN); Cf. Cong. Rec. 25 Jun. 1943: 6458. Byrd “Tribute of the Thomas Jefferson Bicentennial Commission”; Cf. Cong. Rec. 7 Jul. 1943: A3567. Barkley (D-KT)/Byrd; Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3323–4. Scott (R-PA). Or, Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1898. Murdock: “have recognized […] his outstanding leadership in the threefold efforts to free human society in body, mind, and spirit.”

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“On Education” (cf. Cong. Rec. 25 Jun. 1943: 6459). In the letter, Jefferson furthermore wrote: ‘[…] the tax that will be paid for the purpose is not more than one thousandth part of what will be paid to kings and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance’ (A3576). They stressed the public and political function of education and portrayed the payment of taxes as liberating rather than burdening. Ernest Lundeen capitalized on the same idea, albeit more radically, when he advocated tax increases to finance education. To all those opposed to increasing the public debt for education, Lundeen said: “[…] if you tax the wealth […] and the great fortunes of this country, you will have plenty of funds, to carry on. We should at least apply the British rates” (Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8358). While Lundeen’s fellow Mavericks—Scott, Maverick, and Hobbs—did not explicitly call for higher taxes to fund education, they too sought better funding.

Practical Idealism and Education as Bulwark against Intolerance Emanuel Cellar commented on intellectual freedom in America, which he saw under attack by the Dies Committee and its practice to investigate the “political and social affiliation of textbook authors and professors and teachers” (Cong. Rec. 9 Apr. 1940: 4228). He feared that this “would frighten educators into conformity with educational doctrines and opinions that the Dies committee or some other entity demands” (4228). Celler opposed fascism, communism, or Nazism and their respective propaganda; however, he “proclaim[ed] the doctrine of Jefferson on freedom of thought and democracy” (4228). He saw Jefferson’s phrase, “If I were given a choice of government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I  would choose the latter” (4228), diametrically opposed to the committees’ practice of “unwarranted search and seizure” (4228). By trying to suppress communistic thought and by thus making Communists “victims of oppression” (4297), they were only strengthened, Celler argued. Thus, it was important to guarantee the basic freedoms and to educate Americans in the way of Jeffersonian democracy. While other Democrats had employed and would employ this line of argumentation,434 the dealings of the Dies Committee gave 434 Cf. Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 6581. Shannon. Cong. Rec. 9 May 1939: 1880. Barkley/ Edwin Johnson; Cf. Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1938:1607. Sherman/Thomason; Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1504. Adams/O’Mahoney; Cf. Cong Rec. 13 Apr. 1939: 4198. Barkley; Cf. Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1935: 5923. Burke/Schwellenbach. After having explained Jefferson’s plan for public education and the natural aristocracy, Burke proclaimed: “Liberty is at stake today as ever. We must […] shape our actions that we will not endanger that civil liberty for which Jefferson so valiantly struggled. [….] That we perpetuate and

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Celler’s admonitions heightened significance who voiced the concerns of such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union. The Dies Committee, on the other hand, had roots in the McCormack-Dickstein committee to investigate Nazi activities “and other” propaganda in the US.435 Dickstein, known for his anticommunist stance, found an ally in the “Democratic Congressman Martin Dies, a Texan Red-baiter and committed foe of the New Deal”436 during the labor sit-down strikes in 1937. When Southern Democrats and Republicans came out for the committee, they made Dies chairman, determining its investigations into communist rather than fascist activities.437 The Democrat John McCormack who had come from Boston’s Irish workingclass district438 inserted James Morgan’s article “The Biggest Union of Them All”439 into the Cong. Rec. A few days before the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, Morgan gave his reader “A Lesson for Today from Yesterday” regarding the different groups within the nation (Cong. Rec. 2 Dec. 1941: A5397). Punning on the term union, Morgan said that “the biggest” and most important union was in fact the United States. He addressed the strike problem in the defense industry and the respective legislation under debate by employing Jefferson’s practical idealism when he said: “Above the scales in which claims of all groups are weighed is inscribed the Jeffersonian ideal, ‘Equal rights to all, special privileges for none’ ” (A5397). While Morgan used the word ideal and proceeded that this “idealistic balance has not always, if ever, been attained,” history revealed that “the American people have rallied against [special privilege] and suppressed it” (A5397, emphasis added). This active fight was portrayed as the practical outgrowth of the Jeffersonian ideal when Morgan named “George III, the Federalist aristocracy, the United States Bank, slavery, the railroad magnates in the public-be-damned era, [and] the financial oligarchies in the money-mad 1920s” as organizations or persons

safeguard that system for the diffusion of learning through free public education, without which, as Jefferson knew, there can be no liberty at all.” Cf. Cong. Rec. 23 Apr. 1941: A1859. Rorke, Attorney at Law/Michael Edelstein (D-NY). 435 Samuel Dickstein (D-NY) served on the committee of immigration and had labored to procure this committee because he perceived the German propaganda, circulating freely within the US, as a major threat to the national security in 1933. A chairmanship would also contribute to his political recognition (Goodall 2009, 63). 436 Goodall 2009, 63, 66. 437 Goodall 2009, 67. Cf. Goodman 1968, 19. 438 Cf. Bullock 1978, 337. McCormack voted 89.4 percent of the time with the CIO-PAC between 1943–46. 439 James Morgan’s article was first published in the Boston Globe on November 30, 1941.

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of special privilege (A5397). Still a certain imbalance existed in and between different organizations and groups to the detriment of the nation. Like Secretary Wallace, Morgan mentioned the agricultural lobby, labor unions, and business interests suggesting that “[w]‌e cannot afford to seek triumph over any part of our fellow citizens” (A5397) as this would constitute what Jefferson fought against; to wit, oppression of any kind.440 James M. Mead (D-NY) and William Barbour (R-NJ) similarly emphasized the relation between freedom of the press and practical idealism when he introduced the Bill of Rights of the Sesquicentennial Committee of the Council against Intolerance in America into the Cong. Rec. They listed as one “little known saying by Jefferson,” that “Freedom [is] the first-born daughter of science” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: 3343), suggesting that the free discussion marked by tolerance of scientific knowledge advanced the liberty of the people. Like Celler, the council emphasized the importance of the freedom of research from political influence, such as the opinions of the Dies Committee.

440 In “Jefferson Gave Us Our War Aims,” Thomas listed the fight “for human freedom on a world-wide scale” as practical aim (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1943: A1876). “Jefferson laid particular stress on the freedom of speech and freedom of the press. He realized that any form of government that could tolerate these freedoms, could never become otherwise oppressive; […] only where free discussion is permitted can the people expect to reach sound conclusions on issues […]. ‘Where the press is free, and every man able to read,’ said Jefferson, ‘all is safe’ ” (A1876). This mirrored Rep. William Blackney (MI) who had been a member of the Flint School Board from 1924–1934. He appropriated Jefferson’s advocacy of a free press in relation to the freedom of expression of communist thought, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. For Blackney, Jefferson was, in fact, “the author of the first 10 amendments, properly called America’s Bill of Rights” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1804). As history had proven that these fundamental concepts have “successfully swayed the destiny of this Nation” he considered it “wise” to review them, “when we hear so much of radicalism and of freely expressed communistic thought” (A1804). Therefore, Blackney listed six “basic principles,” including that the Constitution “guarantees to its citizens individual liberty, freedom of speech, liberty of the press, right to own property, the right to worship God according to the dictates of our conscience” (A1804). If every citizen knew these basic principles, one need not fear the free expression of communistic thought. He asserted that “[…] the fundamental law of this land […] should be a part of a necessary and liberal education. […] when more than 8,000,000 fine American boys are in military service fighting for, among other things, the preservation of their constitutional form of government” (A1804). Blackney thus refrained from demonizing Socialists and Communists.

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Education in American History Survey 1943 – Lessons of History Many commentators on Jefferson’s educational ideas stressed the importance of educating the people in history. Edward Burke narrated that Jefferson advocated for schools to study “Grecian, Roman, English, and American history” because only an appraisal of the actions of the people of the past “will enable them to judge for the future” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1935: 5922). Similarly, the conservative Republican Daniel A. Reed quoted Jefferson’s reasons against a third term: “history shows how easily that [office] degenerates into an inheritance” (Cong. Rec. 6 Jul. 1939: 3091).441 Joseph Guffey who had helped FDR win the nomination in 1932 and remained faithful asked broadly:  “How can we judge the acts of our present Chief Executive, Congress, and the Supreme Court if we have no yardsticks with which to measure them?” (Cong. Rec. 6 Apr. 1943: 2947).442 Guffey thereby drew attention to a history survey taken by 7,000 students in 36 colleges, which had been co-designed by Allan Nevins, the professor of history who debated in the Library of Congress’ Symposium. Despite the Jefferson Bicentennial “a large percentage of the freshmen […] have little idea of the great contribution which Jefferson has made to our Nation and the war” (2946–7) and more broadly of “founders and builders of our country, whose aims and ideals we are now attempting to safeguard forever” (2946). As America was allied with the Soviets, some congressmen attributed the bad results to the Communists’ or Socialists’ infiltration of the education system through the social studies courses which had replaced the subject of history. Guffey suggested this correlation when he criticized the textbook quality and the rise of social science studies and proposed to counter this dangerous trend through SR 129, establishing a committee “to study the ways and means by which the Federal Government may most effectively promote a more thorough study of the history of the United States” (2947). To support his resolution, Guffey read out Benjamin Fine’s article (New York Sunday Times of April 4, 1943) explaining that the survey had asked the students to “identify at least two contributions of the following famous Americans to the political, economic or social development of the United States” (Cong. Rec. 6

441 Cf. Peter B.  Bulkley, “Daniel A.  Reed:  A Study in Conservatism.” Ph. D.  Clark University, 1972. Print. Reed’s observations were seconded by Sen. Brooks (R-IL) (Cong. Rec. 12 Apr. 1943: 3267). 442 Cf. Charles E. Halt, “Joseph F. Guffey: New Deal Politician from Pennsylvania.” Ph. D. Syracuse University, 1965. Print. He inserted the editorial “It’s Time for Americans to Know Their Country” of the Philadelphia Record of the same date in the Cong. Rec. (Cong. Rec. 6 Apr. 1943: 2947)

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Apr. 1943: 2950). The correct answers for Thomas Jefferson came in second place with 16 percent, six percent behind Abraham Lincoln. Some students thought Jefferson was “president of the Confederacy, founder of the Saturday Evening Post, a Salvation Army worker,” or “the originator of the Monroe Doctrine” (2949). Fine’s proclamation of the fallacy of the last appropriation is ironic in light of the bipartisan use of the very idea. To find reasons for these bad results, Fine drew on Hugh R. Fraser from the Office of Education and chairman of the Committee on American History. Fraser complained that the “dramatic story of Jefferson […], the drama of America unfolding in logical and chronological form […], the ‘greatest experiment in democratic government in […] the world’ ” was substituted by the analysis “of social phenomena” as professors of education “invade[d]‌the field […] with a technique that was wholly unadapted for it” (2954).443 Fraser explained that “[i]t is this kind of approach […] which the committee and millions of Americans would like to know how to combat” (2954). He positioned a certain type of intellectual against Jefferson’s moral entrepreneurs and “millions of Americans,” relegating the “social studies advocates” into a minority position and questioning their power over the teaching of history. He cautioned not to attack “social studies extremists” as “Communists or Socialists” as this could generally be disproved and would strengthen them (2954).444

Republican Appropriation: James Davis and the American History Survey Senator James Davis (PA) delivered the address, “Jefferson and Education,” in Cincinnati from where it was broadcast. He resigned as Labor Secretary after having been elected Senator in 1930. His speech paid “homage to the name, the deeds, and the instruments of Thomas Jefferson” (Cong. Rec. 16 Apr. 1943: A1873), which suggested Jefferson’s practical idealism with respect to his “staunch” advocacy of free public education. “[…] the forces of free and unrestricted education have rendered a most progressive and worthwhile contribution to the growth and development of civilized communities and civilized man” (A1873). Davis highlighted the contributions of culture and education to the

443 Fraser was appalled when a “social studies advocate […,] when asked if […] children of America should have some knowledge of Thomas Jefferson, replied: ‘Well, if there is anything about Jefferson that may be said to have a particular bearing on events today, I would say “Yes.” Otherwise not’ ” (2954). 444 The same problem had been disclosed in Emanuel Celler’s speech of 1940 on the unconstitutional activities of the Dies Committee in dealing with textbook editors of a different political persuasion.

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welfare of society. He accentuated his praise by claiming that “[t]‌he thirst for knowledge and advancement, […] have made us the beacon of light of the world. […] all other lands look to us as the zenith of material and scientific attainment” (A1873). Yet despite this grand evaluation, Davis, like Guffey, lamented the bad performance of college freshmen on the American history test. Jefferson knew “better than any other man, the true significance and import of education” and would “be moved to sadness and distress at the pitiful conditions […]” (A1873). To corroborate his points, Davis cited from the same Jeffersonian passages as Edward Burke had quoted (cf. A1873):  A little knowledge of history would prevent tyranny and oppression. Davis called for a “rebirth in the teaching of American history and Americanism,” because then “[a]‌n informed and aroused public opinion will strike a resounding blow against such threatening trends as the overcentralization of authority, the grand schemes of regimentation, and the vile growth of bureaucracy” (A1873). Under the mantle of supporting education, which was linked to civic freedom, Davis employed Jefferson in an attack on the New Deal. His dislike of bureaucracy was, in some ways, shared by Guffey who believed in political patronage because “Civil Service promoted complacency and inefficiency in government service.”445 His party and presidential loyalties as well as his political “service machine” revealed his penchant for patronage.

Practical Idealism’s Relation to Agriculture and Conservation George Meffan through Compton White, the Democratic representative from Idaho, commented on Jefferson’s advocacy of the self-dependent yeoman citizen in 1935: Labor and agriculture represent the bulwark of our Nation. Happy is the country where those who toil and cultivate the land, own their homes and the land they till. And this must be made possible. Patriotism is born in the woods and fields, by lake and streams, by crags and plains. In homes, be they where they are, large and small, farming ought to be reasonably profitable. (Cong. Rec. 15 Apr. 1935: 7273)

White’s word choice “reasonably profitable” harked back to the Southern Agrarians’ appropriation of Jefferson. He implied that practical idealism with respect to farming should not be driven by greed. The description of the feeling of patriotism suggested that Jefferson believed the agricultural pursuit was not

445 Halt 1965, 246. Guffey’s Coal Act provided a very limited number of civil service positions in order to “eliminate this evil as much as possible” (246).

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only a means of making a living but of forming a love for the country because the farmer had a stake in the land itself. Isiah Faddis similarly called Jefferson “a practical farmer” who even in his time “clearly saw what floods and dust storms are teaching us bitter lessons today— that poorly and ignorantly handled soil becomes a great national disaster” (Cong. Rec. 20 Apr. 1936: 5742). Faddis evoked Jefferson’s practical idealism by exposing that the greed for money or ignorance could result in soil exploitation, which was not profitable for the farmer or the environment in the long run. Similarly, Maury Maverick called Jefferson’s “social philosophy […] far ahead of his day” due to his recognition that soil “conservation and cooperative effort[s]‌” in agriculture were indispensable for the nation (Cong. Rec. 18 May 1936: 7445–6). He contrasted the “cooperative effort”—“plowing the contours in order to save the soil” and the “conservation of natural resources”—with “monopolies owned by small groups,” concluding that there was still so much to teach and learn on this subject to ensure national prosperity (7445). Lon Smith’s Jefferson Day speech appeared in the Cong. Rec. because of Representative Garrett (D-TX). He inferred that Jefferson’s agricultural pursuits embodied practical idealism as his “lands were tilled under the most improved methods of agriculture” (Cong. Rec. 3 Aug 1939: 3814). He highlighted the intellectual and scientific knowledge and its application which made Jefferson a “successful” planter. Apologetically Smith claimed, “[Jefferson] did not believe in the system of slavery, refusing to buy slaves in the market, never adding to the number he inherited from his father’s estate and those added to the number by his marriage” (3814). To present Jefferson’s management in an even better light, Smith praised him for “establish[ing] a manual training school among the Negroes on the plantation” (3815), imparting his thirst for knowledge and practical training to them. Smith did not call them slaves and thereby falsified and romanticized the historical record. Edwin C.  Johnson’s (CO), like Pepper, linked the Democratic Party to Jefferson, the general welfare, conservation, and future prosperity. Johnson had experience as a homestead farmer, as operator of the Farmers’ Cooperative Milling Elevator, and in the produce business. These employments shaped his ideas on the beneficiality of conservation and influenced him in his political career.446 Jefferson fought for the “people’s cause” by upholding the “standards of

446 “Johnson, Edwin Carl.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present. Web. 3 June 2015  .

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progress and righteousness” (Cong. Rec. 9 May 1939: 1881), which were entailed in FDR’s measures to conserve “human and natural resources” which “are the key to the future” “and will be appreciated by the man of tomorrow and enjoyed by his children’s children” (1881). Johnson depicted this struggle as one against the “cunning and resourcefulness which special privilege forever employs” (1881). Even though these measures increased the national debt, which the children’s children would have to pay, “they will have something substantial that their money could not buy, out of which to pay these debts if the Nation’s natural resources be developed and preserved and not exploited and destroyed” (1881). He claimed that these weren’t the measures of a “cold-blooded, hard headed, scientific conservationist” but those of “a warm-hearted humanitarian” (1881). “Roosevelt had the vision and the good sense to apply the idealistic philosophy of Jefferson to practical usages […]” by creating equal opportunity and combining “the profit motive with the service motive […],” Johnson stated (1880). He suggested that virtuous citizens can profit from cultivation, not exploitation, of the land which expressed Jefferson’s practical idealism but also that this would guarantee a balance between agriculture and other economic sectors. The senators from Louisiana, Allen Ellender and John Overton,447 who had labored for flood control in the Mississippi Valley since 1936 similarly promulgated in the radio address, “Jefferson and the New Deal” that both “believed in the encouragement of agriculture on an equal basis with industry” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1516). The Federal government recognized its responsibility to “the one-third of our population who feed and clothe the Nation” (1516).448 They also stressed the accomplishments of the National Youth Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps in the moral education of the youth of America who Jefferson valued. Clyde Ellis, an outspoken public power and flood control Democrat,449 whose speech appeared in the Cong. Rec. through 447 Cf. Mary Linn Wernet, “The United States Senator Overton Collection and the History It Holds Relating to the Controls of Floods in the Alluvial Valley of the Mississippi, 1936–1948.” Louisiana History 46.4 (Fall 2005):  449–64. Print; He served on the Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation. Thomas Becnel, Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana: A Biography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1995. Print. Southern Biography Series. 448 Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1526. Farley/Rayburn: “He stood for the recognition of the economic rights of agriculture–and this runs like a golden thread through all his entire correspondence.” 449 Roy Reed, Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal. Fayetteville: U of Arkansas P, 1997. Print. 86, 141–142; Frances Shiras, “Norfolk Dam.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 4.1 (1945): 150–158. Print. 151. E. F. Chesnutt, (ed.), “Rural

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George W.  Johnson, the former counsel for the West Virginia Public Service Commission, confirmed their colleagues’ ideas three years later.450 Ellis and Johnson were both concerned with the public usefulness of resources which they saw breached if mortgage firms, banks, or insurance agencies foreclosed farms but left the land barren. Pointing out the “resemblance to our own time” (Cong. Rec. 28 Apr. 1941: A1937), Ellis quoted from a Jefferson letter in which he wondered about the situation in France where ‘[…] so many should be permitted to beg who are willing to work in a country where there is a very considerable proportion of uncultivated lands’; […] ‘whenever there is in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended to violate natural rights. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.’

The natural or human right of working for one’s own subsistence or living was paramount to property rights but had been corrupted by mortgage companies and banks. Jefferson had considered this misuse of “common stock” a great sin with respect to the people’s morals and because he had advocated for “ ‘protection from casual embarrassment’ ” (A1937), which Senator Pepper had also quoted.451 The New Deal programs by saving farms, providing work, instruction

Electrification in Arkansas, 1935–1940: The Formative Years.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 46.3 (1987): 215–81. Print. 237. 239. Ellis served on the state congressional investigative committee into Communist activity at the Commonwealth College. While finding such activity, the committee’s report denied that the College or its members were working to overthrow the US government. Ellis, upon visiting there, had inspected its library for communist literature. William H.  Cobb, “The State Legislature and the “Reds”: Arkansas’s General Assembly v. Commonwealth College, 1935–1937.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 45.1 (1986): 3–18. Print. 450 “Johnson, George W.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774– Present. Web. 27 August 2018  . 451 Sen. Pepper (D-FL) insisted on the economic security of those employed in agriculture, reframing Jefferson’s alleged opposition to governmental interference (Cong. Rec. 15 Jun. 1938: 3295). As proof Pepper quoted: “ ‘Protection from casual embarrassment […] may sometimes be seasonably interposed. If […] they should appear to need any aid within the limits of our constitutional powers […]’ ” (3295). Cf. Farley (D-NY)/ Harrison (D-MS) defined the term prosperity: “[…] our people employed at more than a mere living, our industry humming with more than the cost of production, legitimate business making a reasonable profit, our manifold services ministering to human needs with a margin of economic security and with a sense of equal and exact justice to all” (Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1938: 1661).

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and education, thus recognized the interrelations of (moral) education, citizenship, and agriculture or useful work which Jefferson had considered the basis of his political ideas.

Practical Idealism and the National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee (NAJBC) The relation of Jefferson’s practical idealism toward agriculture culminates in the analysis of the Joint Resolution 47, which established the National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee (NAJBC). The committee was a bipartisan effort. Republican congressmen continually emphasized that Jefferson believed “to be really and truly independent is to support one’s self by one’s own exertions,” as Charles Plumley had phrased it in 1937 (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3410). Therefore, Jefferson “visioned a free rural society, strong and independent of governmental interference,” the Republican Max Schwabe argued, and corroborated by a direct quote from Jefferson: ‘Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread’ (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3322).452 This statement was reiterated and employed repeatedly in opposition to “our present bureaucratic control of agriculture” (3322). In this respect, they, and the Liberty League, cited Jefferson’s instruction in the first inaugural address: ‘You shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.’453 However, Dondero argued, “Regimentation of the farmer was one of the first goals of the present administration. We all remember when crops were plowed under, little pigs were slaughtered, and when bureaucracy moved in on the farms and still refuses to relax its grip” (Cong. Rec. 9 Apr. 1943: 3232). If only the administration had heard Jefferson’s “most prophetic” warning, America would not experience scarcity, rationing, and soaring prices at a time of

452 Cf. Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: A1820–1. Republicans Moore (OK)/Robertson (WY) in a radio address. 453 Cf. Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1934: 6869; Beck. Cf. Cong. Rec. 9 Apr. 1943: 3232; Dondero. In contrast, Democrats argued: Cf. Cong. Rec. 26 Apr. 1938: 1673. Coffee employed it to argue that the administration’s measures were insuring that the industrial barons did not cheat the laboring men out of fair wages; Cf. Cong. Rec. 3 Aug. 1939: 3815. Smith/ Garrett (TX): The industrial revolution has changed the lot of the common man and to ensure the greatest good to the greatest number of people and not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned government has to interfere; Cf. Cong. Rec. 16 June 1938: 3100. Shannon (D-MO).

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war (3231). Hugh Scott (R-PA)454 and Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI)455 agreed with these statements. After the NAJBC was proposed, Vandenberg thus asked: “Has the proposal anything to do with Jefferson’s statement that when Washington tells us when to plant and when to sow and when to reap we shall go hungry?” (Cong. Rec. 22 Apr. 1943: 3701). He insinuated that the proponents of the NAJBC were protesting the bureaucratic development by trying to remind the nation of the value of independent and self-controlled farming. The discussion that followed revealed that the Democratic Party comprised different ideologies. Harry F. Byrd, the Virginia senator who had introduced the resolution, answered: “[…] I hope the adoption of this measure will induce the Department of Agriculture to follow the teachings and principles of Thomas Jefferson” (Cong. Rec. 22 Apr. 1943:  3701). Joseph Guffey (PA), on the other hand, informed Vandenberg that he would, in due time, include some excerpts of Jefferson’s correspondence “for the benefit of the Senator,” implying that his criticism was not valid (3701). Vandenberg, however, replied: “I rather suspect that I  need to read those documents less than does the Senator from Pennsylvania” (3701). This verbal exchange also demonstrated the close relation between Southern conservatives and Republicans, while Guffey as New Dealer defended the administration’s measures as Jeffersonian. All agreed, however, that Jefferson’s contribution to and advocacy of agriculture was essential for the national development and perpetuation in light of the war. The sixteen points of the preamble to the bill for the establishment of the NAJBC expounded this aspect as well (Cong. Rec. 12 Apr. 1943: 3264). The lengthy preamble stated that Jefferson “throughout his entire career, remained preeminently and above all a farmer, devoted to the cultivation of his farms and the improvement of agriculture,” who was “profoundly interested in the sciences related to agriculture and more than any other one person can be regarded as the father and patron of the scientific agricultural developments since his time” (Cong. Rec. 12 Apr. 1943: 3700). It also addressed “the conservation of 454 Scott stressed Jefferson’s belief in “the four pillars of our prosperity,” “agriculture, manufacture, commerce, and, navigation” “are the most striving when left free to individual enterprise” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3324). He, too, called Jefferson’s “famous warning,” “prophetic” and insisting that a nation should be independent in all the “four pillars” in time of war. 455 David C.  Tompkins, Senator Arthur H.  Vandenberg:  The Evolution of a Modern Republican, 1884–1945. Lansing:  Michigan State UP, 1970. Print. Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr., and Joe Alex Morris, eds., The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg. 1952. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1974. Print.

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agricultural resources” that Johnson, Ellis, Overton, and Ellender had employed. However, it did not appropriate these Jeffersonian concerns for FDR but stressed the importance of agriculture for the survival of the nation as Jefferson’s acquisition of the Louisiana Territory456 added “a great farming area […] [which] gave us a leading position in the agriculture of the world and enables us to serve as a source of food for our fighting allies” (3700–1). It emphasized the economic aspect of agriculture, which Jefferson had acknowledged when he proposed to place it on equal footing with other pursuits. Additionally, the preamble focused on the importance Jefferson placed on the moral and political aspects of agriculture by expressing an appreciation of the “dignity of the agricultural way of life and deep satisfaction which accrue, through science, education, and faith, to the farm family and the rural community” (3701). Jefferson, its authors stated, “recognized the importance of the perpetuation of a sound agriculture as a paramount factor in the development of the economy and the permanence of our national institutions” (3701). The interconnectedness of the agricultural economy and national institutions in Jefferson’s time was still valid today, as Henry Wallace and John Boylan had suggested in 1935.457 To honor all these contributions to the national life, the NAJBC was to work out appropriate ways to acquaint the nation with these Jeffersonian ideas. The creation of this committee was noteworthy as it was the only special subcommittee that operated under the auspices of the Commission for the Celebration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Thomas Jefferson. Even though its preamble connected agriculture, education, and science to a certain degree, no other single interest of Jefferson was so explicitly praised. Therefore, it can be argued that the agricultural pursuit was the one that connected all others—an aspect that became clear in the Democratic appropriations.458 Jefferson’s services 456 Shannon had called it the “bread basket of the expanded Nation” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 5438). 457 Boylan employed farming imagery to express this relationship: “It was Jefferson who made Virginia’s soil fertile for the reception of democratic ideas in that grand old State […]” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1935: 5607). In making the soil fertile, through the encouragement of agriculture, Jefferson also furthered democratic ideas. 458 James Farley, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, praised the administration for bringing agriculture up to the same level of industry, commerce, and finance, assuming: “[…] that would have thrilled Jefferson who believed that the farmers and planters are the backbone of any civilization. The tiller of the earth has a dignity today that was denied him for half a century […]” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1938: 1527). Like Edward Burke and the preamble of the NAJBC, Farley asserted that

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on behalf of science and technological progress also found expression in debates about the patent system.

Practical Idealism of Scientific Advancement and the Patent System Numerous Democratic congressmen remarked upon Jefferson’s love of science, which they considered to be driven merely by curiosity of exploration, not for any remunerative reasons. Yet, like Wallace who had stressed that Jefferson was not an abstract political thinker but a practical implementer of ideas, they also insisted that Jefferson valued scientific knowledge for the use it could be put to, that is, for the betterment of mankind.459 This could be seen in Jefferson’s own inventions and in his later work in establishing an American patent system. R. E. Sherman, the former mayor of El Paso, whose speech Robert Thomason introduced in the Cong. Rec. revealed how Jefferson’s inventive genius was interlinked with his many interests—“government, history, science, economics, philosophy, and all the applied arts and sciences”—which made him the “bestequipped man for governmental service upon the earth” (Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1938:  1605). He praised Jefferson’s agricultural improvements and inventions

agriculture and those employed in it were connected to the idea of politics and civilization and therefore to Jefferson’s system of public education. 459 Shannon (D-MO) praised Jefferson, the “father of our patent system,” for the fact that he “never applied for a patent himself, believing that inventive genius was the property of mankind” and not of “a monopoly to wrest exorbitant profits from the people” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934: 6583). Burke quoted Jefferson who believed that the “physical and mathematical science […] advance the arts and administer to the health, the subsistence, and the comforts of human life” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1935: 5922). He suggested scientific advancement could benefit agriculture and was capable of bettering human life. Boylan (D-NY) said: “Knowledge for [Jefferson] was something to be treasured […] for the use that human beings could make of it. For he was a great humanitarian” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1936: 5436). Maury Maverick proclaimed: “Jefferson was […] a lover of humanity and a believer in science. He wanted science to be developed—for humanity” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8525). John Cochran cited Roosevelt’s Winning of the West, in which Jefferson saw the Lewis and Clark expedition “purely as voyage of exploration” (Cong. Rec. 18 Jun. 1934: 12570); thus Jefferson “stood honorably distinguished […]” “in appreciation of the desirability of non-remunerative scientific observation and investigation” (12570–12571). Jefferson’s “services to science” alone earned him the respect of “all Americans” because he revealed “his appreciation of [the great West’s] magnificent future” (12571) as land in which millions would live self-sufficiently. Cochran employed these non-remunerative attributions for his campaign to establish a Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Commission.

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because “Jefferson never sought a patent or monopoly, never made a dollar of personal profit, but he gave them gratuitously to public use. Always his thoughts went out to the people, their needs, their rights, their privileges. His was the altruistic, never the selfish mind” (1605). These quotations reveal that orators portrayed Jefferson’s practical beliefs to be motivated by certain moral principles which allowed profit from one’s labor, but censured excessive amassment of wealth. Guy Moser of Pennsylvania during his defense of the Jefferson Memorial made the same argument.460 As example Moser mentioned Jefferson’s invention of the “molding board of the plow” which he “refused to patent, that others might derive their full benefit” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 3333).461 But what is more, Moser quoted Jefferson’s aphorism which connected science with the establishment of peoples’ sovereignty: “ ‘All eyes are opened or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the masses of mankind have not been born with saddles on their backs nor favored few booted and spurred ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God’ ” (3334). This connection between science and political freedom had merely been suggested by Sherman but it would become pivotal in Fritz Lanham’s bicentennial speech as well as in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s last undelivered Jefferson Day speech. Fritz Lanham (D-TX), serving in the House and on the TJMC, highlighted Jefferson’s “service” as “the first administrator” of the patent office (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3318). This was important as “American inventions are aiding so vitally in the preservation of our American institutions” in his time of warfare (3318). “Jefferson’s high esteem of the American patent system has been vindicated” by history, and Jefferson, “himself an inventor,”462 “was competent to foresee and appraise [its] benefits” (3318) as discoveries—“some of great consequence” (3318)—had been made since its establishment. If Jefferson, who possessed the “gift of a variety of genius” like Leonardo da Vinci, appreciated it,

460 Moser regarded Jefferson’s inventive genius as another example of “[t]‌he high character of [Jefferson’s] service to others, without spending energy on himself ” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 3333). 461 Louis Lerman, the New Masses Jefferson special issue contributor, had also chosen to combine Jefferson’s practical invention of the plow with an allegory on plowing the old soil and turning up new soil, which stood for overcoming monarchical rule and establishing self-government in America. 462 Regarding the Jefferson Statue, Lanham criticized that “there is a little too much the expression of a dreamer rather than of a practical, experienced statesman. […] he was an inventor and many things” (Official Minutes of the TJMC, 21 Feb. 1941: 18).

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FDR “has ample warrant, […] in the statements of Jefferson, […], to envision the patent system as an economic and social advantage to us […]” relevant also in the “precarious conditions that will come with the new era of peace” (3318). Lanham thus praised FDR’s Executive Order of December 12, 1941, which had established the National Patent Planning Commission to investigate whether the present system “provides the maximum service in stimulating the inventive genius […] in evolving inventions and in furthering their prompt utilization for the public good” (3319). Hence, the “twenty-eighth successor of Jefferson” realized that “patents are at once rewards to inventors and recompenses to the whole public” (3319). An invention as part of the fullest achievement of the self in a natural aristocracy should benefit the inventor “for some certain time,” Jefferson stipulated, but thereafter, society should also benefit from it.463 This also suggested the difference between Jeffersonian and rugged individualism for Democrats. They easily appropriated the patent topic with the twist of the general welfare added to it the qualities of altruism, genius, vision, and foresight were positive attributions. In particular the virtue of altruism referred back to the connection between Jefferson and Jesus which Lanham stressed by saying that the creator bestowed “the gift of a variety of genius” (3318) onto Jefferson who therefore, had no right or wish to retain the fruits of this gift for himself.464

Science and its Relation to Liberty and Freedom of the Press Joseph Shannon pointed out that Jefferson believed that the organs of a free press would become “impotent” if they only report falsehoods; but “ ‘Within [the pale of truth], it is a noble institution equally the friend of science and of civil liberty’ ” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1934:  6583). The free press was thereby the propagator of progress and civil liberty which Moser’s Jefferson quote had already suggested.465 Shannon considered these ideas still as valid (6583) and thus would, in 1936, like Henry Wallace and Joseph Guffey criticize Hearst publications. Senator Guffey and Governor Earle (PA) suggested that the followers of Hamilton still influenced 463 Cf. Boylan quoted Jefferson’s phrase: “ ‘to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent which Nature has wisely provided for the direction and interest of society, and scattered with equal hand, through all its conditions’ ” (qtd. in Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1937: 3406). 464 Lanham insisted that the memorial dedication should be opened with an invocation as Jefferson and America as Christians fought the godless totalitarian systems (Official Minutes of the TJMC, 27 Jan. 1943: 6). 465 Cf. Moser (D-PA): “All eyes are opened or opening to the right of man” through “the general spread of the light of science” (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 3334).

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and even were a “menace” to politics and society466 as they controlled “80 percent of the American press” (Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1936:  5764). This special-interestdriven distribution of news was diametrically opposed to Jefferson’s philosophy and especially shameful because the press had become a “money-making institution [which] would sell its constitutional birthright for financial support and a few dollars’ worth of advertising” (5764). Even with his “broad vision” and experience with press corruption by the “money bags,” Jefferson “did not foresee […] such wholesale betrayal of public trust for private gain” (5764) which the 1930s Hamiltonians committed. Thus, it would be beneficial to hear what Jefferson said in his second inaugural on the falsehoods reported by the press (cf. 5764).467 Despite their abuses, Jefferson saw the press as “important to freedom and science” and trusted that the people’s “public indignation” about their aberrations would suffice to punish and correct its mistakes. This trust in the people, Earle argued, was still the source of the Democratic Party (5764–5). Whereas Earle thus accused the Republicans of corrupting the free press and the operation of democratic government, Charles Plumley (R-VT) considered the situation the other way around. Plumley admonished that the Democratic Party had, in many ways, forgotten “the things for which [Jefferson] stood” and thus “[w]‌e,” meaning the people and the Republican Party, “never can be unmindful of the fact of his constant and never-changing devotion to liberal ideas, to freedom of speech, thought, action, press, and religion” (3408).468 Republicans employed Jefferson’s ideal of a free press in relation to its importance for the protection of civil liberties also seen in Charles Gifford’s speech. He spoke up against the patronage system by referring to Jefferson’s letter which stated that independent state governments,

466 Hamiltonians posed a threat to the “principles of human rights laid down by Thomas Jefferson” and the “future of the American system of representative government” (Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1936: 5764). 467 “ ‘These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness, and to sap its safety; they might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome punishments reserved and provided by the laws of the several states against falsehood and defamation; but public duties more urgent press on the time of public servants, and the offenders have, therefore, been left to find their punishment in the public indignation’ ” (Cong. Rec. 21 Apr. 1936: 5764). 468 Cf. Cong. Rec. 18 Apr. 1940: 2227–8. In this radio address, which William Ditter (R-PA) inserted into the Cong. Rec., Plumley praised Jefferson for his support of the “freedom of utterance.”

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“enlightened by a free press,” guaranteed the liberty of the people in the best possible way (Cong. Rec. 13 Feb. 1934: 3320). Furthermore, Frederick Van Ness Bradley (R-MI) used this relation between a free press and the people’s sovereignty when he demanded that Congress establish a committee to be present at the International Food Conference, and that “each and every session […] shall be covered in normal fashion subject to reasonable censorship—and I stress that word ‘reasonable’—by the three major wire press services of this Nation […]” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: 3317). This would ensure that “we will continue to have open covenants, openly arrived at” between Congress and the people (3317). Bradley’s use of Jefferson highlighted that the freedom of speech and press guaranteed an informed citizenry that would not allow oppressive agreements or laws to be enacted. At the core of the discussion of Jefferson’s practical idealism remained the hope of all orators that the American nation, in this time of crisis, was on its way back to the realization of its high-sounding ideals. In all fields discussed, congressmen ascertained that Jefferson’s practical idealism remained the guiding light and even the act of making a speech reflected his practical idealism by performing a critical political and cultural role. Therefore, they were the greatest tribute to Jefferson’s life and work. Toward the end of the national and international crisis, in April 1945, Roosevelt chose Jefferson’s birthday for a comment on the near end of the war, the reasons it was fought, and the consequences to be drawn from this dramatic event in human history all the while drawing on Jefferson’s practical idealism and humanitarianism. By employing associations congressmen had created and used all through the 1930s and early 1940s, Roosevelt tried to arouse the nation in Jefferson’s name to support the United Nations (UN).

3.3 FDR’s Undelivered Jefferson Day Speech of 1945 Almost two years after his dedicatory Jefferson Day speech delivered at the newly erected monument in Washington D.C., Franklin D. Roosevelt, on April 11, 1945, prepared a speech to be broadcast to nationwide Jefferson Day events on April 13. After his return from Yalta in February, FDR concentrated his efforts on guiding and supporting public opinion in favor of a future international peace organization, and the Jefferson Day Speech became a part of this effort.469 The Big Three had agreed that delegates from the participating countries 469 Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945. 1979. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981. Print. 506.

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were to create the United Nations during a conference in San Francisco starting on April 25. A week before FDR sat down to dictate his Jefferson Address, he also instructed Archibald MacLeish to prepare a draft for opening words at the UN conference. Moreover, FDR shared his wisdom on diplomacy with Claude Pepper “We cannot jump to what we consider perfection if the other fellow does not go the whole way,”470 suggesting that international cooperation was based on compromises. FDR’s correspondence and actions, therefore, confirm Robert Dallek’s judgment on FDR “The Idealist as Realist, 1942–1945.” Dallek’s description of FDR comprises both 1945 and 1943 when FDR had delivered the Jefferson Memorial dedication speech. While the war was ongoing, much had changed. In the 1943 dedication speech, FDR had urged on the fight “against the tyranny over the mind of man,” and used references to freedom and self-government. Focusing on these abstract values, he merely praised Jefferson as the leader of his state and nation. However, in 1945, FDR combined his idealistic comments on the future world peace with references to Jefferson’s public offices to underline the institutional necessity of the UN and that international organizations could only work through public functionaries. MacGregor Burns, who printed FDR’s undelivered Jefferson Day Speech at the end of his book Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom, however, omitted those direct Jeffersonian references from FDR’s speech. Burns indicated the elisions and summarized and conflated the deleted parts by saying:  “The President paid a traditional tribute to Jefferson as Secretary of State, President, and scientist. Then he continued:”471 Except for his evaluation of the “traditional tribute,” Burns let the speech stand uncommented and neglected to mention that it was read at the United Nations Conference and printed in the San Francisco newspapers. FDR’s last Jefferson Day Speech deserves a more critical evaluation to rectify Burns’s oversights, but also because the short, 761-word long speech can be read as a summary of a decade-long negotiation of Jefferson’s iconicity. Dr. New Deal and Dr. Win the War used to speech not as a blood infusion but as a small injection of hope on the benefits of international cooperation. FDR’s drawing on the New Deal Jefferson rhetoric to encourage people’s hope and faith in a new attempt to create an international peacekeeping body, is comprehensible as he wanted to extend the four freedoms in the post-war

470 Robert S. Divine, A Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America during World War II. (1967). New York: Athaneum, 1971. Print. 277. 471 James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: Soldier for Freedom. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970. Print. 596.

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world. Scholars stress that the Four Freedoms (1940), which evolved out of New Deal concerns, found expression in the Atlantic Charter (August 1941) and in the UN Declaration (January 1942).472 The conferences during the war led to the formulation of plans creating the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; Food and Agricultural Organization and International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Thus, “[t]‌he postwar plans, like those of the New Deal, were driven by the general assumption that coping with the social problems and maintaining a fair society required the attention of government.”473 While FDR was motivated by this practical idealism, American public attitude in mid-1944 suggested that it favored the creation of an international organization “to make the world safe for the United States” and not “to reform the world […,] to carry out an international New Deal.”474 However, one could argue that the former objective could only be achieved by means of the latter ideas. By April 1945, the public opinion in support of a world organization had increased “even if the peace settlement did not completely satisfy American aims.”475 Implied in the pollsters’ question were the controversies to be addressed by the UN conference, such as the veto and the voting issue in the General Assembly, which were tied to the issues of British imperialism and the Soviet’s extension of influence.476 Americans loathed European power politics which was

472 Divine 1971, 156. The United Nations Declaration was followed by the establishment of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which evoked the New Deal’s relief measures and agencies. 473 Leon Gordenker, “American Post-War Planning: Policy Elites and the New Deal.” The Roosevelt Years: New Perspectives on American History, 1933–1945. Ed. Robert A. Garson and Stuart S. Kidd. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1999. 173–89. Print. 182. 474 Divine 1971, 183. 475 Dallek 1981, 506. 60 percent of the American public were in favor of participation in the United Nations, even before the San Francisco Conference was promoted during the Dumbarton Oaks Week (April 16–22, 1945). 476 Berinsky, Adam J., In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2009. Print. 140–143. Berinsky reviews data from the Gallup, Roper, and OPOR (Office of Public Opinion Research) polls on such questions as “Should the United States trust Russia after the war”, “Should the United States trust England after the war”? Which of these two statements do you think is closer to the truth? (1) England is now fighting mainly to keep her power and wealth. (2) England is now fighting mainly to preserve democracy against the spread of dictatorship” (Berinsky 2009, 140). From March 1942 to April 1945, public opinion became more suspicious about England’s intentions.

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largely played to the detriment of smaller, less powerful countries.477 It dampened their enthusiasm about the UN, together with “several disillusioning events”478 during the spring, such as Russia’s disregard for agreements about Poland and its announcement “that Gromyko […] would head the Soviet delegation, a sure sign that Stalin did not attach much importance to the creation of a new world organization.”479 Despite these issues, Roosevelt still thought that more was to be gained through unity than by aggressively opposing Stalin’s or even Churchill’s demands. With the American public being cautious about any sign of division among the Allies, Roosevelt most certainly had intended his Jefferson Day speech as medicine to quell these doubts and suspicions about the post-war aims and international cooperation, written with an eye to the UN conference. A bipartisan delegation which consisted of the Committee of Eight, which had been working together since April 1944,480 would represent the United States at the conference, and, in the spirit of bipartisanship or non-partisanship, Roosevelt opened the draft to his Jefferson Day speech with the word “Americans.” Starting with an affirmation of citizenship and nationhood, FDR positioned Jefferson as a role model, free of partisanship and regional affiliation: “Americans are gathered together this evening in communities all over the country to pay tribute to the living memory of Thomas Jefferson—one of the greatest democrats; and I want to make it clear that I am spelling that word ‘democrats’ with a small d.”481 He stressed American unity by doubling “gathered together” and asserting that Jefferson was a living force, which was why many Americans were gathered to commemorate him at the traditional Jefferson Day Dinners. Jefferson and his ideals brought them together and welded them as a nation.

477 Dallek 1981, 506. Dallek quotes from a New York Times article that the administration provided to the newspaper in order to sway Churchill. The article stated: “the British have been told by force and authority that the [public] mood can change as mercurially as the English weather if the American people once get the idea that this war … [is] just another power struggle between rival imperialisms.” 478 Divine 1971, 276. 479 Divine 1971, 276. 480 Divine 1971, 195. Secretary of State Hull proposed the Committee of Eight, a bipartisan Senate group, which was to serve as an advisory body to the State Department. Besides Tom Connally, the chairman, the Democrats Alben Barkley, Walter F. George, and Guy Gillette and the Republicans Warren Austin, Wallace White, and Arthur Vandenberg, and the Progressive Robert LaFollette served on the committee. 481 Roosevelt “Undelivered” n.p.

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FDR stressed this sense of oneness when he emphasized the small “d” in the word democrat, echoing what orators had stressed all through the Depression; namely, that Jefferson was not a party man but one who respected the opinion of others. Furthermore, the use of “living memory” evoked the “living memorial” suggestions which embodied the idea of the continued influence of Jeffersonian ideals. While the term implied the controversy of what “living” meant, the many bipartisan references to the concept482 testifies to the importance of this rhetorical trope. The “living memory” of Jefferson brought Americans together in “communities all over the country” and thus the gatherings themselves became an extension of Jefferson’s ideas. FDR said: “I wish I had the power, just for this evening, to be present at all of these gatherings.” He suggested that America still followed the dual structure of government on this Jeffersonian celebration as the communities stood for the ideal of local self-government, while Jefferson’s imagined presence at all these meetings and FDR’s wish to be with all of them suggested the federal government, which was protectively looming over the whole nation. Despite this division of power, FDR, through the repetition of the word gather in the form of gatherings, once again stressed the national unity.483 FDR additionally presided over the nation as the commander-in-chief who had guided it through this war which was about to be won. The implied relationship between the federal and the state governments and local communities and their coming together through Jefferson, also reflected discussions about Jefferson’s states’ rights stand and enlargement of executive power in the Louisiana Purchase for the benefit of the nation and its future development. Jefferson, it was argued, was both a Virginian and an American. He knew that the United States could only survive if there existed a give-and-take attitude between the states and the federal government—if the power relations

482 Dirksen (R-IL) advocated a “verile [sic] and living memorial” (Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8356) and one could argue that there is nothing more virile than fighting a war for the preservation of Jeffersonian democracy. Green (D-RI) discussed the “living spirit” of Jefferson in relation to the memorial (Cong. Rec. 15 Jun. 1938: 12368). Sec. Roper wanted to give “vitality” to it by making the interior a “living memorial” showcasing “our development in science and industry,” because Jefferson “delighted in inventiveness and had deep interest in education and the welfare of humanity.” Hobbs (Cong. Rec. 8 Jun. 1938: 8531). Murdock (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1943: A1898). 483 “gather,” etymologically derived from Middle English and Old English and meant “joining, union, or assembly” or from gadrian, gaderian “to join, unite”.

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according to changing circumstances oscillated around a happy medium or maintained a balance, as Wallace had said. Roosevelt then broadened the importance of Thomas Jefferson from the state and federal level to an international one, when he said: “In this historic year, more than ever before, we do well to consider the character of Thomas Jefferson as an American citizen of the world.” Roosevelt here employed a trope which Ludlow, Woodrum, Thomas, Sabath, Voorhis, Barkley, and even the Republicans Plumley and Hugh Scott (R-PA) had used. The word character was an expression of Jefferson’s moral and mental qualities, and their applicability to the entire world emphasized that Jefferson stood for universal moral truths for which the United States was fighting. With the UN conference only two weeks away, FDR seemed to stress that now “more than ever before” Jefferson could teach the nation how to preserve American interest, while at the same time entering into an international cooperation hitherto unknown to the United States. Jefferson was not just a “citizen of the world” but retained his American character. By explicating Jefferson’s positions in the field of foreign relations, “Minister to France, then as our first Secretary of State and as our third President,” Roosevelt revealed that Jefferson was “instrumental in the establishment of the United States as a vital factor in international affairs.” While Jefferson “established” America’s role, FDR as president, guided by his predecessor’s example, continued this effort on behalf of the American people. FDR’s reference to Jefferson’s previous offices suggested that public functionaries were essential for international cooperation in on organization like the UN. Jefferson held the first two positions because his contemporaries recognized his keen interested in foreign relations and his vision for free trade and peace, which orators had discussed and used throughout the 1930s. FDR’s use of the word “instrumental” tapped into the rhetoric of Jefferson’s practical idealism through the term’s insinuation of the tool that makes an idea come to fruition. This latter idea of Jefferson’s success also reverberated in the phrase vital factor. Roosevelt elucidated how Jefferson established the US as vital factor by stressing his pioneer role in employing the navy to “defend our rights” against the Barbary pirates. Like Gillette, Lon Smith, Gillie, Bloom, Celler, Tinkham, G.  W. Johnson, Ludlow, and Green, FDR closely associated Jefferson with the Monroe Doctrine when he said: “the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine was the logical development of Jefferson’s far-seeing foreign policy.” Furthermore, FDR rehashed moral entrepreneurs’ praises of Jefferson’s vision for the future to suggest that the end of the war and the creation of the UN were equally important and lasting as the Monroe Doctrine. Yet, FDR seemed to emphasize only half of

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it; namely that part which warned other nations that the U.S. would not tolerate interference in the Western hemisphere by any foreign power. That America would not interfere in matters on the European continent was no longer valid, as “[t]‌oday this Nation which Jefferson helped so greatly to build is playing a tremendous part in the battle for the rights of man all over the world. Today we are part of the vast Allied force—a force composed of flesh and blood and steel and spirit—which is today destroying the makers of war, the breeders of hatred, in Europe and Asia.” Through these sentences Roosevelt asserted that America was engaged in a defensive war for the rights of the people, which was fought with manpower but also with equipment provided to the allies through lendlease. Additionally, FDR portrayed the allies as being united in spirit suggesting that they were motivated by Jefferson’s idealism and pragmatism revealed in his fight against the Barbary pirates. While he referred to the physical war being fought all over the world, he also metaphorically suggested that “the battle for the rights of man all over the world” can be waged by building a lasting international institution for peace. FDR’s reference to Jefferson as a builder of the Nation and its democratic institutions, thus made him a role model for “building” the UN, which itself was to embody the “spirit” of peace and the moral obligation to safeguard the basic rights of man. The allies, who were trying to “destroy[…] the makers of war,” possessed moral righteousness. FDR stressed this point by a historical analogy which employed the David-against-Goliath theme: In Jefferson’s time, our Navy consisted of only a handful of frigates headed by the gallant U.S.S. Constitution—Old Ironsides—but that tiny Navy taught Nations across the Atlantic that piracy in the Mediterranean—acts of aggression against peaceful commerce and the enslavement of their crews—was one of those things which, among neighbors, simply was not done.

America, no longer a fledgling nation, was defending its rights, and the formulation “acts of aggression against peaceful commerce […] among neighbors” highlighted that America was interested in peace and good relations with all. The term neighbors harked back to the good neighbor policy and suggested the common humanity of all nations. Furthermore, the affirmation that the “tiny Navy taught Nations across the Atlantic” they did a thing that “simply was not done” emphasized the moral rectitude and thus the simple truth of Jeffersonian ideas of right and wrong in international affairs. FDR’s Jefferson appropriation mirrored the debates on the American Neutrality Law in which Jefferson’s attitudes toward neutrality, free trade, and international relations were used on both sides of the aisle.

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In order to make the analogy clearer, Roosevelt proceeded with another “today” and a lesson to be learned not only from Jefferson, but also from Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt. FDR attested that “Today we have learned in the agony of war that great power involves great responsibility. Today we can no more escape the consequences of German and Japanese aggression than could we avoid the consequences of attacks by the Barbary Corsairs a century and a half before.” His formulations suggested destiny and the unforeseeable actions of other nations that forced the United States to abandon peace. FDR thus reiterated that Jefferson’s policies and ideas evolved and changed with changing circumstances. As in the speech on the dedication of the memorial, Roosevelt connected the war of “150  years” ago with the present situation484 and emphasized that Jefferson’s concern for the people had gone beyond the immediate future. Similarly, FDR claimed, “We, as Americans, do not choose to deny our responsibility. Nor do we intend to abandon our determination, within the lives of our children and our children’s children, there will not be a third world war.” Roosevelt expanded Henry Wallace’s proposal of a Jeffersonian “Share-theResponsibility” movement to an international scale. As much as Wallace employed Jefferson, the practical idealist, for the purpose of substituting rugged individualism within the nation with cooperation, so did FDR use his Jefferson speech to advocate on behalf of the UN and its agencies which were designed to create greater equality of opportunity and cooperation and to preserve the natural resources, which the Senators Ellis, Johnson, Overton, Ellender, Maverick, Barkley, and Pepper had connected with Jefferson’s own far-seeing vision on environmental and preservation efforts. The war itself represented the destruction of resources on an unprecedented scale in terms of resources used to feed the war machinery as well as the general devastation and destruction. Thus, FDR asserted, “We seek peace—enduring peace,” and as heirs of Jefferson’s practical idealism it was natural that “we want an end to the beginnings of all wars—yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman, and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.” Especially the word “inhuman” as opposed to the idea of Jefferson’s humanitarianism, and the term “impractical” as opposed to his practical idealism both stand out in this context. FDR echoed Jefferson’s own statements on the impractical nature of war which congressmen and American communists had used to argue for American neutrality.

484 Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: 3346.

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Despite previous appraisals of Jefferson’s pacifism, his preference for adopting to changing circumstances sanctioned the current war effort. FDR described that “[t]‌he once powerful, malignant Nazi state is crumbling. The Japanese war lords are receiving, in their own homeland, the retribution for which they asked when they attacked Pearl Harbor.” He addressed not only the reason for its entry into the war but also the signs of imminent victory, not over the German people but over the “malignant, Nazi state”. This distinction was important for the post-war treatment as a debate raged over the level of culpability of the German people. FDR further hinted at this debate when he stressed that “the mere conquest of our enemies is not enough.” He suggested that a military victory needed to go hand-in-hand with an ideological victory over the ignorance, intolerance, and hate. Only then could new world with lasting peace be build. Conquest did not mean that the allies would hold perpetual dominion over Germany; rather it was debated how to make Germany an eventual partner in international peace. Here FDR, while using the word conquest, nonetheless echoed the Council Against Intolerance in America, which had published a pamphlet with “little known sayings by Jefferson,” including “Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our Government” (Cong. Rec. 14 Apr. 1943: 3343). With Germany and with UN trusteeship over certain colonial possession, FDR’s ideal Jeffersonian goal was the development of self-government in all nations, not a permanent occupation by a foreign power. Jeffersonian humanitarianism sought to achieve more than a defense of one’s own rights through the “conquest” of the enemies of oppression and aggression; it demanded that “w[e]‌must go on to do all in our power to conquer doubts and the fears, the ignorance and the greed, which made this horror possible.” Here, Roosevelt shifted his emphasis to Jefferson’s main concern, the education of the people’s minds and connected it to his own Four Freedoms—freedom of speech and worship as well as the freedom from want and fear. Many congressmen had suggested that the socio-economic insecurity after World War I stoked the allconsuming fire of Nazism and Fascism and even Communism. The New Dealers portrayed their reforms as “Jeffersonian” adjustments of the political and social system of the United States that hindered the spread of these tyrannical forms in the US. In his 1945 speech, Roosevelt highlighted the importance that Jefferson saw in the role of science for mankind and thereby emphasized Jefferson’s character as an American citizen of the world once again. “Thomas Jefferson, himself a distinguished scientist,” FDR praised him with a euphemism, “once spoke of ‘the brotherly spirit of Science, which united into one family all its votaries of whatever grade, and however widely dispersed throughout the different quarters of

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the globe.’ ” Correlating Jefferson’s views on the possibilities of science, stressed by many congressmen in relation to his practical idealism, to the present time, Roosevelt stated:  “Today, science has brought all the different quarters of the globe so close together that it is impossible to isolate them one from another.” Though Roosevelt did not go into details about allied scientific cooperation,485 he purposefully negated the word isolate in order to quell any revised isolationist feeling that might arise in light of the aforementioned troubles leading up to the UN conference. Roosevelt did not only refer to the pure or natural sciences with these statements but gave the term science a moral background: “Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace.” This passage reverberated Jefferson’s ideas of cultivation and suggested through the idea of growth Jefferson’s role as institution builder which FDR at the beginning of his speech, and Jefferson’s moral entrepreneurs all through the last decade, pointed out. Furthermore, the development of the “science of human relationships” through such organizations as the UN for the benefit of “civilization” also evoked Jennings Randolph’s evaluation that Jefferson “was a patternmaker of civilization and we shall not forget his service to America” (Cong. Rec. 13 Apr. 1935: 5718). The same service, but to the international community, America should take up through its participation in the UN. Even the Republican congressman Dirksen appropriated Jefferson for “the science of human relationships” as he held him up as the example of “the spirit of democracy, trying to bring human hearts together” (Cong. Rec. 29 May 1936: 8356). Cultivation, civilization, culture, and tolerance were described as essential human needs which Jefferson cherished and advocated for and which even to this day remained important for the world. Roosevelt’s Jeffersonian rhetoric suggested the opportunity to create understanding among peoples and thus the opportunity to create peace. FDR portrayed himself as inspired by this Jeffersonian idea and suggested that the people in this Jeffersonian democracy supported his internationalism: “Let me assure you that my hand is the steadier for the work that is to be done, that 485 Guy Hartcup, The Effect of Science on the Second World War. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000. Print; Abraham S.  Friedman, “International Cooperation in Science and Technology: The Role and Functions of Embassy Science Attaches.” Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 77.3 (1987): 103–07. Print; Roy MacLeod, “ ‘All for Each and Each for All’: Reflections on Anglo-American and Commonwealth Scientific Cooperation, 1940–1945.” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 26.1 (1994): 79–112. Print.

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I move more firmly into the task, knowing that you—millions and millions of you—are joined with me in the resolve to make this work endure. The work, my friends, is peace.” In his final sentences Roosevelt resounded once more the Jeffersonian aphorism that war was not lucrative, only peace was profitable, which had been stressed by bipartisan orators. He once more demanded that America work for “an end to the beginnings of all wars […] and end, forever, to this impractical, unrealistic settlement of the differences between governments by the mass killing of peoples.” And once again, Roosevelt played off Jefferson’s pragmatism through the words “impractical” and “unrealistic.” Once more did he address the topic of idealism by asking Americans “to keep up [their] faith” while making “the greatest contribution that any generation of human beings can make in this world—the contribution of lasting peace.” Even though this seemed like an unachievable task, FDR believed in its practical success. At the end, Roosevelt assured the people: “I measure the sound, solid achievement that can be made at this time by the straight edge of your own confidence and your resolve. And to you, and to all Americans who dedicate themselves with us to the making of an abiding peace, I  say:  The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.” In a play on his New Deal aphorism from his first inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” FDR by referencing the “millions and millions” emphasized the living Jeffersonian democracy. The speech embodied Jefferson’s practical idealism which was still pervading America in times of national and international crisis, as the discourse analysis of congressmen’s speeches and FDR’s distillation of their ideas revealed. Additionally, FDR echoed Jefferson’s last letter, or public address, written for Independence Day 1826,486 in which Jefferson called himself “one of the surviving signers of the instrument pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world […].” For FDR, Jefferson was “instrumental” in establishing the young United States as a force in the world. Jefferson also asserted that they made the choice between fighting for self-government or giving in to submission, expressing his happiness about the fact that “our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity continue to approve the choice we made.” Jefferson wanted the Declaration of Independence to be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance

486 Thomas Jefferson, “To Roger Weightman, Monticello, 24 June 1826.” Web. 6 October 2018 .

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and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self-government. [It] […] restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

FDR’s advocacy of the United Nations, his hopes for self-government and cooperation among all nations, and his view of science as the instrument to bring about a lasting peace, thus reverberated Thomas Jefferson’s evaluation of the importance of the Declaration of Independence for the world 179 years after it was written and submitted to a “candid world.”

Conclusion The analysis of the identity of those comprising the pronoun in “We are all Jeffersonians now,” revealed how individual moral entrepreneurs’ search for meaning through their ancestor Thomas Jefferson resurrected him from the dormancy he had been in since the Gilded Age. The socio-cultural prerequisites for Jefferson’s new bloom were World War I; the excesses of the Jazz age; the changing economic, cultural, and socio-political landscape; and the resultant stock market crash. The effects on the American people and political and public figures laid the breeding ground for the renewed growth of Jeffersonianism in many different variations and colors. To address the “we” who grafted these varieties of Jeffersonianism, this conclusion will dissolve the partition established between the memorial discourses and the Jefferson Day speeches and bills contained in the Congressional Record and will group those creators and promoters of the many-colored Jefferson icon in its broader varieties. The first group of grafters considered in the foregoing analysis can roughly be defined by an agrarian viewpoint. Often hailing from rural Southern or Midwestern origins, these moral entrepreneurs, whether public figures, such as the Agrarians, or political figures, such as George Meffan/Compton White, Henry A. Wallace, Isiah Faddis, and Harry Byrd, established their relationship with Jefferson on that basis, sharing the belief that agriculture was not only an economic form but also a way of life to be saved from industrial encroachment. The Southern Agrarians’ appropriation of Jefferson, which was influenced by the conditions of the 1920s and the affirmation of their complaints by the onset of the Great Depression, brought about what I described in agricultural terms as the “First Blossoms of a New Bloom of Jefferson.” The Agrarians grafted their own preconceptions about a predominantly agricultural and regional culture and the dangers of industrialism, standardization, equalitarianism, and communism onto Jefferson. The result was a new variety of values grounded in what the Agrarians believed to be the original Jefferson to have been, which, however, was affected by their addition of ideas. This new variety grew into I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (1930), and as its seeds became distributed it led to the dissemination of a curious hybrid, which was used by some to uphold white supremacy. The hybrid also championed Jefferson as a pure agrarian, who disregarded manufacturing and commerce. Only Herman Nixon was firmly grounded in the economic realities of the times in which agriculture

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and industry had become interlinked reflecting Jefferson’s own later adjustment of his vision. Herman Nixon thus was the only Agrarian who would work for the New Deal. He like congressmen appropriating Jefferson for their agricultural constituents appealed to ethical principles to make a case for the virtuous farmers, which was intertwined with the idea that Jefferson wanted them to enjoy the fruits of their own labor. In order to achieve this, many congressmen advocated federal intervention, even though such interference opposed Jeffersonian methods. Yet, only intervention could assure the farmers a reasonable return for their work and thereby fulfill Jeffersonian principles. Though these congressmen claimed Jefferson for the farmers, the cultivators of land—whose virtue Jefferson had praised—they suggested a different approach than the Agrarians, one that was supported by the liberal Florida Senator Pepper, the Secretary of Agriculture, Henry A. Wallace of Iowa, and even the Agrarian Herman C. Nixon. All these actors defined the freedom of the individual in economic terms by demanding that farming, whether done on a small or large scale, to echo the words of the Democrats from Idaho George Meffan and Compton White, had to be “reasonably profitable.” Idahoans advocated on behalf of the common laborer through Jefferson’s humanitarianism. Secretary Wallace similarly broadened the focus of his speech “Jefferson, Practical Idealist” to include farmers and laborers because Jefferson was not a “dyed-in-the wool agrarian.” The practical side of a practical idealist had to acknowledge the interconnections between agricultural and industrial labor. As Secretary of Agriculture, and through the framework of the AAA, he sought to raise agricultural profits to a more equal level with industrial employment. In so doing, the policies, however, privileged large scale industrial agriculture rather than the family farmers or sharecroppers. Upon realizing that the burden on the latter groups had increased, Wallace and members of the AAA attempted to assist them, to some degree following the vision of the Agrarian Andrew Lytle. Wallace, who lauded Jefferson’s ability to follow his principles while at the same time practically reacting to changing circumstances, saw this intellectual flexibility espoused by Franklin D. Roosevelt whose underlying principle was the alleviation of suffering of the ordinary people. This mirrored the broadest definition of a humanitarian which underpinned the New Deal’s penchant toward humane reforms. In its early years, these qualities became easily grafted upon Thomas Jefferson. Many representatives and senators participated as moral entrepreneurs in this discourse, “selling” this variety of Jefferson and FDR to America. In their own diversity with equally diverse constituents, their plurality and the consensus on the Jefferson discourse aided their ability to make the sale.

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To understand Wallace’s speech, the tension between the ‘idealist dreamers’ within the USDA and those who assisted big landholders were considered. The Democratic Senator Byrd (VA) counted among the latter who regarded the landholding class as the successor of the planter aristocracy. Like other Southern conservatives, Senator Byrd increasingly sought proximity to Republicans, turning against the leadership of his party’s president. By 1943, Byrd became the sponsor, if not the instigator, of creating the National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee (NAJBC). In the preamble of the bill creating the committee, Jefferson was praised as the promoter of the agricultural sciences. Commemorating Jefferson’s services to agriculture should encourage the nation to promote it as pillar of America’s development. If the first draft of the preamble delineated Jefferson’s agrarian vision and ignored the nation’s development from an agricultural to an industrial society, the second draft stressed the agricultural sciences and their influence on the large-scale farming techniques and machinery. Not only did this reflect Byrd’s penchant toward the new planter “aristocracy,” but also that in times of war with the need of increased food production and manpower shortage, the agricultural-industry lobby possibly became more powerful than the small-scale farmer. Hence, the preamble gives testimony to agriculture which to some measure had lost all connection to the moral, politically independent freeholder of Jefferson’s vision and time. Yet by means of grafting, Senator Byrd promoted and celebrated his variety of Jefferson on the bicentennial. Republicans, among them George Dondero, joined Byrd when lamenting the rationing and price increases since the war, as well as the notion that farmers were dependent on the government, alleging it was against Jefferson’s notion of independent freeholders. Similar debates had been raised in the early days of the establishment of the AAA, and Republicans saw the root of the problem almost a decade earlier. Back then, however, Henry Wallace stressed that the agricultural reforms featured the greatest participation of the farmers in the nation as compared to other New Deal legislation. Wallace also approached economic freedom differently from his critics as he saw the oppression arising from the crop lien system and malpractices of farming as inhibiting the Anglo-Saxon “natural rights of man” before feudalism, which Jefferson had praised, and which the ordinary tenant farmers or sharecroppers lacked. In discussing Jefferson’s admiration of those roots, Wallace became more political and economic in comparison to the Agrarian Davidson who had stressed their cultural aspects rather than political freedom. Owsley was the only Agrarian who advocated that Jefferson and the American Revolution brought the declaration of “personal liberty” contained in the Magna Carta to fruition. While most Agrarians saw those rights as the

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bulwark against the Northern economic encroachment but ignored the rights of the tenant farmers and sharecroppers, Wallace tied these roots not to rugged individualism, but to individualism that meant sharing responsibilities within a society. Thus, he suggested the need for unions and an alliance between agricultural and industrial laborers to bring about economic and political stability. American Communists, who created yet another variety of Jefferson, already employed Jefferson’s admiration of the Anglo-Saxon roots when they claimed that fighting against oppression was in the Anglo-Saxons’ blood. They concluded that calling Jefferson and Washington “rebels” was not a word of reproach but of praise. While they embraced Jefferson as a rebel fighting against oppressive and exploitative industrialists, the Agrarians used Jefferson’s fight for liberty to ward off the very industrialism Communists wanted to bring under the control of the people. When the Agrarians grafted Jefferson as agriculturalist and anticapitalist, the American Communists experimented with a red-blossomed variety which was much broader in its concept, primarily because they grafted their world revolution and progress of mankind onto Jefferson. In contrast, the Agrarians remained limited as their symposium was merely read as a defense of their native soil and culture, and in some cases as neo-confederate. Similar to the Agrarians, though, the Communists attempted to revert the currently accepted variety, which they considered a bastardized version of the “pursuit of happiness,” to its original meaning. Though started in 1926 by leading American Communists, a different set of them still attempted to produce this mutation, adding their own ideas reflective of the cultural and political climate of 1943. The newer communist variety of Jefferson found expression in the New Masses special issue, which was marked by previous Popular Front coalitions and ideologies. The bicentenary issue was influenced by America’s and the Soviet Union’s alliance against the axis powers, so American Communists needed to graft Jefferson as international interventionist, not as pacifist as they had done before. They attempted to plant this variety of Jefferson by digging up the fertile soil that the Popular Front had created in America. Louis Lerman’s contribution to the special issue drew on the same planting imagery that the Agrarians used; yet he focused on the “freedom plough,” the machinery needed to plant the tree of liberty. He stressed Jefferson’s innovative, experimental tool, his penchant for action, and his trial and error mentality, which Robert Minor affirmed when he called Jefferson, the “great creative figure of thought and action.” These depictions correlated with Avrom Landy’s insistence that communism was a more advanced form of democracy and thus deserved to be tried by the people. Americans were encouraged to learn from the Soviets and to appreciate Jefferson’s receptiveness to new ideas irrespective of their origin. Landy stressed that Jefferson, similar to

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Marx, thought about the economic foundation of society and its political organization, as he regarded the landholder the central political actor. By claiming communism as an improved variety of the Jeffersonian relation between economic foundations and political organization, Landy and Earl Browder labored to depict Jefferson as a modern-day Communist. As American Communists supported the alliance between Soviet Russia and America, they used Jefferson to stress the rights and dignity of every human being, in particular African Americans citing a study that made Jefferson proclaim that free blacks and whites were “on par” in intellectual ability. At a time when Southern senators like Charles O. Andrews still followed the white supremacist idea of “all men are created equal,” arguing that Jefferson could only have meant all white, male Anglo-Saxons, the American Communists’ variant of Jeffersonian ideas of equality and dignity was revolutionary. Senators Andrew’s and Smith’s shared opposition to inscribing the phrase on the Jefferson Memorial, fearing it would incite race riots and give blacks a false idea of their status, confirmed the revolutionary nature of the Communists’ appropriation. Communists, however, seemed less revolutionary when they depicted Jefferson as an anticapitalist as this attribution merely took what others had discussed a step further. Even the Agrarians had used Jefferson, who had condemned the centralization of wealth and power and its oppression of the farmer, as anticapitalist. Similarly, various New Dealers repeatedly emphasized that Jefferson stipulated the “pursuit of happiness,” not of property, as an inalienable right. Hence, Robert Minor’s praise of Jefferson’s attack on property was a far way off from the communist ideal of the people’s control of the means of production. Minor joined New Dealers in claiming a much more active Jeffersonian role in the creation of the Bill of Rights, which Minor also depicted as an attack on excessive property. Therefore Jefferson, who “forced it into the constitution,” protected some property rights which were relevant for historical materialism. This retrospective viewpoint of finding similarities between Jefferson and Marx, though considered at times “skillful,” at times “absurd” by Irving Howe, ultimately was not more or less a “twisting” of the historical figure than other parties’ appropriations. While the conclusions to certain depictions might be regarded as more extreme, even that radicalism could be traced back to Jefferson’s statements. While New Dealers rejected Minor’s historical materialist Jefferson, they used Jefferson as anticapitalist by ascribing to him such slogans as “man must be master and money the servant.” The historian Allan Nevins similarly created this variety of Jefferson during the Library of Congress Symposium as Jefferson believed in the “relation of fellowship as distinguished from the relationship of use or exploitation.” Nevins identified the increase of the exploitative

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relationship through the industrial revolution, mirroring the Agrarians and the Communists. While Malcolm Cowley and others on the left explicitly said so, Nevins only implied that Jefferson’s vision had not yet been achieved because the “pursuit of happiness” was not yet based on an equal footing for all. Nevins was not a Communist or Socialist, yet the New Masses special issue contained a book review of his former student’s book whose selections of Jefferson’s writings championed a Marxist interpretation of the American Revolution. The review of Philip Foner’s book highlighted Nevins’s allusion that the principles contained in the Declaration had not yet come to full fruition. Malcolm Cowley, who had been a fellow traveler of the CPUSA, claimed the same during the 1943 symposium, insisting that Jefferson’s ideas thus remained revolutionary. By promoting a revolutionary variety of Jefferson, which evaluated the world not by the measures of acquisition, wealth, and property but by the measures of human worth and fellowship, all these moral entrepreneurs—from the Agrarians to the Communists—sought to bring about this vision. Part of this ideal was also valuing the human mind and its discoveries which the elitist Agrarians shared with the Communist writers as well as the academics and writers, and the Republican Wendell Willkie participating in the Jefferson symposium. Yet, Communists placed greater emphasis on Jefferson’s promotion of scientific planning, an idea which the Agrarians abhorred. Communists, the Socialist Fred Hildebrandt, and New Dealers alike, therefore celebrated Jefferson’s intellectual curiosity and accomplishments by defending his having received “ideas from alien quarters.” Instead of depicting his breadth of sources as unpatriotic and dangerous, as his opponents had done, they praised him as courageous and innovative. Hildebrandt, as moral entrepreneur of Jefferson and member of the Democratic Party, was closest to the American Communists, as his own policy proposals were socialist. He came out most forcefully for public ownership of utilities and his German ancestry might account for his embrace of socialism as compared to his fellow liberal Democrats and fellow members of the Young Turks, a progressive open discussion forum of largely freshman and bipartisan congressmen. He championed the term democrat rather than the word republican, which the Agrarians and Republicans advocated. Hildebrandt even correlated the former term with the positively connotated word Bolshevik, stressing long before the New Masses Jefferson issue that socialism was the fullest development of a political and economic democracy. In comparison, Senator Schwellenbach defended Jefferson and FDR’s “radicalness” by giving it a Christian rather than Communist tinge, when he argued that even Jesus was considered a radical. Schwellenbach, though a friend to

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labor, was not a socialist and lacked Hildebrandt’s personal labor experience. The networks created between members of Congress from both houses through shared concerns for certain issues, became evident when considering that Schwellenbach’s Senate colleague John Coffee (WA), together with Hildebrandt, belonged to the Young Turks which were further to the left than FDR; yet, to call the Young Turks a group obfuscates the diversity of political characters found among their ranks, ranging from Democrats from various states, to Republicans and Farmer-Laborites. The members, besides coming predominantly from Western or Midwestern states, shared a concern for labor and the underprivileged, and yet they revealed their diversity on the Jefferson Memorial and other bills. Byron Scott, together with Maury Maverick, for example, favored “endowing a course in government” as a memorial rather than a marble one. The members of the Young Turks who opposed the marble memorial in fact tended to suggest alternative proposals in line with their own humanitarian conception of Jefferson, such as hospitals, cancer research centers, or measures that would promote educational opportunity, in particular by training Americans for competent government service. While Maverick first sought out his ancestor Jefferson by reading his works with his father and actively continued writing about Jefferson for public uses in later life, other group members were drawn into appropriating Jefferson for certain causes by the memorial proposal and the discourse it instigated. Their contributions were equally important and shaped by other cultural, political, social but also personal events. Each moral entrepreneur who created a new or variegated variety of Jefferson, thus operated within the boundaries of the event/code fit, which had personal and national dimensions. Vito Marcantonio, the Republican member of the Young Turks, whom Maverick had praised as “off color Republican,” for example, seized the discussions on Jefferson to attack the American Liberty League. He borrowed Jefferson’s stance on the Alien and Sedition legislation to refute the League. Maverick, who shared Marcantonio’s disdain for the League, used another cultural event—the publication of James Truslow Adams’s The Living Jefferson—as a stepping stone to attack the group and the “so-called” liberals that Adams mentioned in the book. Maverick disliked the liberals’ timidity in respect to diluting wealth and property and their intellectual and cultural aloofness. He modeled Jefferson into a progressive revolutionist to contrast him to the League’s Jefferson as “model reactionary,” “misrepresenting Jefferson’s views,” paying Adams to do so, and indorsing rugged individualism as opposed to Jeffersonian individualism. While Maverick’s variety of Jefferson suggested similarities to other Democrats, his appropriation bespoke the impact cultural products and events can have on a moral entrepreneur’s investment.

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Investment also became the key term in tracing the Jefferson appropriation of the League, which invested millions to promote their own type of Jefferson as social Darwinist. They based their argument on his respect for and appreciation of the value of property, self-sufficiency and opposition to debt, and published propaganda to lobby assiduously against the New Deal which sought to regulate businesses and industry. While the League obliquely, in their theories of social Darwinism, acknowledged changing times and conditions, they neglected to account for the repercussions of industrialism on society. Similar to the conservative Agrarians, who also in part neglected these—hoping to regain an integrated, agrarian life, or at least hindering industrialism from destroying their brand of individualism and minority rights—the League also advocated for individualism and minority rights. The main contrast between them thus lay in which group of citizens was considered the minority. For the Agrarians, it was the farmers or landholders of the nation, and at times even the tenants and sharecroppers; for the League, the American business elite and those with large properties. Both groups saw Jefferson as an advocate for a hierarchical structure of society, rather than as a champion of democracy. While some members of the League employed social Darwinism to make their case, the Agrarians in their defense of the farmer only applied this ideology when it came to identify those worthy of higher education. The League attempted to couch the defense of its own class with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights which guaranteed equal rights to all Americans. For their opponents, however, their invocations were, in fact, invoking special privilege to the rich rather than justice to all. The League’s variety of Jefferson, the property defender, rugged individualist, and opponent of public debt, was a hard sell in times of the Depression. Despite its attempt to use the weakened Republican Party to promote its own conservative Jeffersonianism, the event/code fit was stacked against it with millions out of work and lacking financial security, with property being lost in the great dust storms and to mortgage foreclosures. This became obvious when even the Republican candidate for the presidency asked the League to stay away from his campaign in 1936. Other events had to transpire—the Roosevelt recession, the Supreme Court bill, the neutrality debates—to bring about an event/code fit suiting the conservative, business side of the Jefferson discourse. As the memorial proposals revealed, connecting Jefferson to business interests proved equally vain even though their argument for Jefferson’s favoring of modern architecture because they regarded him as progressive, creative thinker carried weight. None of the citizens’ groups succeeded in winning support for their utilitarian memorial nor did they prevent the erection of the marble memorial in the Tidal Basin. The inspirational, non-utilitarian Jefferson Memorial, whose

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inscriptions can be considered prospective as much as its architectural style can be read as retrospective (except for the modernizatized pediment), won the competition. In adapting a competitive selection process for the statue, the TJMC at least in part reacted to congressional and public pressures only to reverse its own selection process toward the end. The debates about the statue revealed that the TJMC wanted to represent a virile, practically oriented thinker and doer. They sought to replicate a likeness of the young, radical Jefferson rather than the older, more subdued philosopher, thereby reflecting the Communists’ vision of him. Yet, they shied away from the inscription “or abolish,” opting for the tamer pledge of “sacred honor” of the Declaration of Independence. The TJMC believed that the memorial and its relatively classical Jefferson statue exuded the permanence and stability of democratic government based on the people and communicated Jefferson’s love of simplicity, while expressing his leadership through the structure’s dignity. Capturing the myriad qualities different moral entrepreneurs saw in Jefferson proved difficult but not impossible, and the result has to be read as an expression of the political and social beliefs of the members of the TJMC, rather than as a record of Jefferson. The attempt of the TJMC to find the right event/code fit was evidenced when they situated the Jefferson Memorial within the context of its prospective environment—the Mall. Negotiating what values to express, Jefferson’s moral entrepreneurs brought the memorials into conversation with each other to tell a coherent story of the national development through its triumvirate. From celebrating liberty from Britain, or the liberty of the slaves, to the ultimate achievement of a more perfect union of the states, the TJMC reflected and shaped the discourse contained in the Cong. Rec. by depicting Jefferson’s influence on presidents Washington, Lincoln, and Monroe. However, while mostly Northern and Northeastern Democrats and Republicans praised Jefferson’s advocacy for the freedom of the slaves, others, mostly Southern Congressmen, used Jefferson’s words in their true context and thereby pointed to the fragility of the national ideal, while the nation’s segregated army fought abroad for Jeffersonian liberty. Another variety of Jefferson was shown through the controversy over the excerpts of the Declaration of Independence to be used for the memorial inscription. Instead of including the lines on the right of the people to alter or abolish any kind of oppressive government, which the Communists would in fact appropriate in the Jefferson issue, the war and the national unity required produced an inscription which omitted these revolutionary lines. The last lines of the preamble, containing the mutual pledge of “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,” were used instead. This variety of Jefferson also found expression in the war bond drive. The dominant event/code fit at the time was embodied in the

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memorial’s message of the worthiness of fighting against human oppression of any kind. Already in 1939, several moral entrepreneurs suggested Jefferson’s pledge, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of men,” as frieze inscription. Depending on the background and position of those who proposed it, they connected it to FDR or to the developments abroad. When America began selling the war to the people, the inspirational memorial was also made subservient to financial interests as it was used to promote the government’s war loan drive. The abstract language of liberty, sacrifice, service, and courage was made meaningful when intertwined with the story of Jefferson and of contemporary Americans as in Kemmerer’s description of the American family, who followed Jefferson in their own significant ways, insuring national survival under God’s blessing. References to Jefferson’s Christianity and his contribution to the founding of the nation with God’s guidance pervaded the discourse. Democrats and Republicans alike favored this variety. Some constructed Jefferson’s humanitarianism in light of Christianity and others depicted his radicalism as directly derived from Jesus’s radical philosophy. Jefferson, “the greatest humanitarian since Jesus of Nazareth,” was further drawn into the civil religious realm with the approaching war and removed from the Communist appropriation. Tinged by Christian symbolism and rhetoric it spread into the memorial discussions and the war bond drive. Claiming Jefferson’s religiosity in times of the Soviet-US alliance, however, was not used to alienate Russia, but to stress that the axis powers “do not believe in religion,” as the Democrat Lanham asserted in discussing whether an invocation should open the memorial dedication. As the Commission members drew on Jefferson’s Christianity, they also affirmed his concept of religious freedom, which their actions, however, only partially supported, as they did not include a rabbi or imam, in the dedication ceremony. Rather, FDR, too, spiked his speech with Christian references as the memorial was a “shrine” to and Jefferson the “apostle of freedom.” Before America fought in the Atlantic and Pacific theater, the memorial discussion on the relationship between Japan and the United States, and the situation in Germany revealed the interconnectedness between a national cultural and political discussion and the international situation. Jefferson’s fight against any form of oppression was connected to the persecution of the Jews in 1938. The poem “We Have Cherry Tress to Save” revealed the transatlantic significance of the memorial’s message. It shifted the conversation to far more serious issues than whether one would destroy Japanese-American friendship by cutting down the trees for the memorial. Ultimately, both issues, or rather both the transpacific and transatlantic connections made America enter the war, which changed the

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public perception of the memorial and its message. Even though the poem was not made public but delivered to FDR by Katherine C. Blackburn of the Division of Press Intelligence, it illustrates the centrality of the event/code fit for FDR’s decision-making process. The poem, tied to the Night of the Broken Glass, gave him another reason to disregard the memorial opponents and to back the TJMC, while the atrocity itself strengthened FDR’s interventionism. These tendencies also found expression through some congressmen who turned Jefferson from a passive role model of the neutrality debates into a crusader who would fight abroad against any form of tyranny over the mind, and body, of man. The isolationist variety of Thomas Jefferson who promoted American exceptionalism even when the nation was a fragile sapling, was emphasized during the neutrality debates. Most Democrats considered Jefferson, the pacifist, as a proponent of neutrality who nonetheless stood up for free trade of neutrals. They often used his warning against entangling alliances to strengthen their position and congressmen from both parties framed Jefferson as the instigator of the Monroe Doctrine. Republicans most often used this appropriation to insist on the full application of the doctrine, particularly on the first part which rejected America’s meddling in European affairs. Even this debate about foreign policy and national security, became infiltrated by economic concerns as some argued that free trade of neutrals in war was important for continuing peace and neutrality while others warned that any trade would pull America into the conflict. The latter scenario brought about debates on profiteering in war as expressed in Ludlow’s War Referendum which many Democrats and Midwestern isolationist Republicans favored, and FDR opposed. With the referendum, Ludlow, a Democrat, attempted to broaden Jeffersonian democracy into a direct democracy and to make war unprofitable. While the Republicans—Plumley (VT), Gillie (IN), Tinkham (MA), and Guyer (KS)—supported the war referendum, they primarily linked neutrality and war with the third and fourth-term scare. Guyer, for example, entangled the passage of the first peacetime draft with debates on the possibility of FDR’s third term and his committing America to fight. Guyer warned with Jefferson’s authority that war increased the possibility of a dictatorship at home which was intensified by the possible third term and the Republican discourse that had depicted the New Deal as verging on a totalitarian regime—an idea that suggested the paranoid style in American politics. Yet even this exaggerated use of Jefferson was ultimately an attempt on part of the moral entrepreneur to cope with the changing responsibilities and values of the time. The rhetorical construction of Jefferson’s iconicity through this discourse therefore became an expression of the renegotiation of the American national

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character during the Great Depression and World War II, which led to a reconfiguration of values. The vague concepts employed in these speech acts, such as Jeffersonian humanitarianism and practical idealism, resonated with the people more than the slogans of individualism, minority rights, and laissez-faire, or the warnings against an American bureaucratic, socialist, and totalitarian state. The discourse analysis revealed the historical development and contemporary usage of these terms. As vague and pliable as some of them were, they correlated with the story of Jefferson each moral entrepreneur chose to narrate. Through the use of long-established rhetorical strategies of panegyrics, the historical Jefferson was ineluctably intertwined with the people and problems of the 1930s and 1940s. This transfer into modern times, the attributions moral entrepreneurs grafted on to Jefferson, the double appropriations, and the interpretative flexibility of any act of communication expanded and altered the historical figure, turning him into an icon that was as pliable as its attributed qualities and terms themselves. The study investigated the linguistic relations and structures that moral entrepreneurs created in various situations regarding such terms as shrine, temple, democrat, republican, radical, humanitarian, Communist, Bolshevik, practical idealism, and statesman. Yet, no matter the rhetorical situation, the audience, the context, or the occasion, they organized their knowledge, ideas, and experiences around their understanding of Thomas Jefferson. In his attempt to lead the nation through the national and international crisis, Roosevelt participated in, influenced, and borrowed from the Jeffersonian discourse. Besides the speeches given at the groundbreaking, cornerstone laying, and dedication of the Jefferson Memorial, his final undelivered Jefferson Day speech of 1945 gave ample evidence to the argument that Jefferson served as a filter through which FDR crystalized the problems faced by the nation and how the nation’s representatives, intellectuals, and public figures reacted to them. He put Jefferson and the attributed terms into the service of creating hope, faith, and courage in the domestic realm and with respect to international cooperation for peace. By stressing the appropriateness of including Jefferson in the cross on the Mall, he attested to the continued relevance of the three branches of government and its opposition to autocratic governments abroad. Thus, he spoke of defending the republican form of government, using the term republican intentionally, as Republicans, like George Dondero, regarded it the rightful and Jeffersonian term. FDR also insisted on the importance of regularly returning elections, and thus the consent of the will of the governed. As patrician statesman, he insinuated his willingness to run for an unprecedented third term, seeking to enlist Jefferson’s blessings. However, Republicans and the Democrats

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Smith and Sumners used Jefferson’s historical precedent of stepping down after two terms to counter FDR’s third term ambition. FDR’s cornerstone speech encapsulated the multifaceted nature of Thomas Jefferson, which had been discussed by various representatives and the Communists, who regarded Jefferson equal to da Vinci. Congressmen expanded Jefferson’s humanitarianism to include religious, scientific, and educational connotations which FDR suggested in the cornerstone speech, and again during the dedication through the terms sacrifice and faith and by calling Jefferson a teacher for contemporary America. Furthermore, like the American Communists, FDR explained and justified how the pacifist Jefferson sanctioned and even sanctified the current war and alliance with Soviet Russia. By stressing Jefferson’s foresight, FDR enlisted him for his own nascent plans for Europe’s post-war future. While he did not use the term practical idealism—unlike Samuel Hobbs, John Boylan, and Henry A. Wallace—he defined it by praising Jefferson’s leadership in the philosophy of politics, the arts, education, “in efforts to lighten the toil of mankind,” and ability to apply “those deeper values” to the concrete issues of his lifetime. FDR broadened the application of Jefferson’s humanitarianism and practical idealism to the “great war for freedom” and managed to make them specific when he claimed that contemporary Americans understood Jefferson better and more intimately than previous generations as they, like he had done, now fought for freedom. FDR composed the speech from Archibald MacLeish’s and an anonymous draft. This amalgamation of ideas additionally suggested that FDR reflected and condensed the Jefferson discourse of the Great Depression and early war years. The same sentiments carried over into the undelivered Jefferson Day speech in which he again attested to the living memory of Jefferson for all democrats with a small “d.” This all-inclusive small “d” extended to peoples of other nations because Jefferson was “an American citizen of the world.” Echoing Senator Thomas’s and the American Communists’ appropriation contained in the New Masses special issue, FDR borrowed from the Jefferson discourse, which even two years after the bicentennial pervaded the nation. Another concept he invoked from the discourse was that Jefferson was pivotal in designing and promoting the foreign diplomatic relationships, including the commercial development. FDR borrowed Jefferson’s authority to advocate for educating “the people’s minds” as scientific progress united all nations and contributed to a lasting peace. Wendell Willkie, who had run against FDR in the 1940 elections, made similar comments during the Library of Congress Symposium. That these oppositional characters with differing political backgrounds and party affiliations agreed on the ubiquitous

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and overarching intellectual heritage of Jefferson demonstrated the great flexibility of the Jefferson icon. While Jefferson’s universal ideas underpinned all appropriations, it was the specific position and experience of each moral entrepreneur that gave these larger ideas concreteness that brought them within reach of the audience. This ability of the moral entrepreneur to make whichever Jeffersonian variety or iconic augmentation palpable to other people led to making the sale. This salesmanship could be found in various areas of the national life—in Congress, at public functions, in the nation’s newspapers, other publications, and even in such artifacts as the unpublished poem “We Have Cherry Trees to Save” or poems written for the New Masses poetry contest. Given the broad range of issues moral entrepreneurs discussed by drawing on the Jefferson icon, this Jeffersonian presence is not surprising. Jefferson’s own many-sidedness and breadth of interest facilitated these appropriations as much as the individuality of each of his moral entrepreneurs contributed, shaped, added to, or even transformed the historical Jefferson into an icon, which was made to embody or contain the answer to their most urgent and elemental questions.

Appendix Inscriptions as proposed the Committee of Three at the Commission Meeting, 21 February 1941Senator Elbert Thomas’s Inscription Proposals Panel I man was destined for society. his morality is part of his nature. society reserves to each individual freedom consistent with peace and order. all men are created equal, they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.

Panel II when we find our constitution insufficient to secure the happiness of our people, we assume and set it right. one nation as to foreign concerns, distinct in domestic one, gives the proper division of powers between the several and particular governments. the powers should be organized into legislative, executive and judiciary and the people are the guardians of their liberty. god created the mind free. no man shall be compelled to support any religious ministry nor suffer on account of his beliefs; all men have liberty of religious opinion. civil rights have no dependence on religious opinions. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively.

Panel III God who gave us life gave us liberty. can the liberties of a nation be secured when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of god? that they are not to be violated but with his wrath? indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that god is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. commerce between master and slaves

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is despotism. these people are to be free. that people will be happiest whose laws are the best. those worthy by education without regard to wealth or birth should administer them. to insure honest administration introduce the people into every department of government.

Panel IV Equal application of law to every man is fundamental. Females have equal rights with males. to preserve freedom crusade against ignorance; diffuse knowledge; follow truth wherever it may lead; truth will prevail; improve the law for educating the people at the common expense. health and morality must not be sacrificed to learning. prevent the accumulation of wealth in select families. make our hemisphere that of freedom. an attack on one is an attack on the whole. never was so much false arithmetic employed as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is to their best interest to go to war. our wisest policy is peace and friendship with all mankind.

Brigadier General Jefferson Randolph Kean’s Inscription Proposals Panel I Freedom of Men we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal: that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights: that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.

Panel II Freedom of Religion almighty god hath created the mind free. all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens … are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion … no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion.

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Panel III Freedom of the Slaves. Slavery is despotism… and can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis of a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of god. . that they are not to be violated but with his wrath? indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that god is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever. nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these peoples are to be free.

Panel IV Universal Education by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of Knowledge among the people. no other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness. preach a crusade against ignorance:  establish and improve the law for educating the common people. this is the business of the state to effect and on a general plan.

Stuart Gibboney’s Inscription Proposal “The Chairman. Now, in that connection [freedom of the slaves] I have a panel to propose. […] I think that we ought to have a discussion here on it. This is taken from the letter Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, in 1826, a letter which you know is a very famous one. These are the words that I suggest for the panel: (reading)” I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. but I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Final Wording of the Memorial Panels Panel I Southwest Portico “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among

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these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men. We…solemnly publish and declare, that these colonies are and of a right ought to be free and independent states… and for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.” – Excerpted from the Declaration of Independence, 1776.

Panel II Northwest Portico “Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens…are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion…No man shall be compelled to frequent or support religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively.” – Excerpted from A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, drafted in 1777. First introduced in the Virginia General Assembly in 1779. Passed by the Virginia Assembly in 1786, while Jefferson was serving as Minister to France. The last sentence is excerpted from a letter to James Madison, August 28, 1789, as he was returning to America to assume his position as Secretary of State.

Panel III Southwest Portico “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Establish the law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the state to effect and on a general plan.” – Excerpted from multiple sources: “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” “Notes on the State of Virginia,” “The Autobiography,” Letter to George Wythe (1790), Letter to George Washington (1786).

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Panel IV Southeast Portico “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” – “Letter to Samuel Kercheval” (1816)

List of Figures Fig. 1:

Fig. 2:

Fig. 3: Fig. 4:

Fig. 5:

Fig. 6:

Possible memorial locations in Washington, D.C. from left to right (6) Site on the Cross Axis of the Central Composition in Tidal Basin Area, (3) South side of Mall between 7th and 9th streets, opposite the Archives Building, (4) Apex Block, (5) the Mall opposite to and symmetrical with the George Washington Memorial Building, (1) Lincoln Park (Square), (2) East end of East Capitol Street on Anacostia River. Locations were added by the author to the Works Progress Administration Guide Map to Washington, D.C. (1937). ...............  66 “President Roosevelt lays Block 208 at Thomas Jefferson Memorial. Washington, D.C. November 15. President Roosevelt today laid the cornerstone at the unfinished $3,000,000 Thomas Jefferson Memorial. To the stonecutter who made the stone, it was better identified as simply ‘Number 208.’ Photo shows the president as he weilded trowel handed down through generations since George Washington”. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing, LC-DIG-hec-47514. ......................  108 “Jefferson Memorial under construction.” 1940. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing, LC-DIG-hec-28499. ................................................  113 Photographic enlargement of one of the Jefferson statues in the memorial room. Entry 399, Box 6, Records of the Jefferson Memorial Commission, Records Group 79, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. In all likelihood, this is the statue made by the sculptor Weinman. .........................................................  147 Photographic enlargement of one of the Jefferson statues in the memorial room. Entry 399, Box 6, Records of the Jefferson Memorial Commission, Records Group 79, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. .................................................................  148 Photographic enlargement of one of the Jefferson statues in the memorial room. Entry 399, Box 6, Records of the Jefferson Memorial Commission, Records Group 79, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. .................................................................  149

400 Fig. 7:

List of Figures

Photographic enlargement of one of the Jefferson statues in the memorial room. Entry 399, Box 6, Records of the Jefferson Memorial Commission, Records Group 79, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. .................................................................  150 Fig. 8: Rudulph Evans’s Jefferson statue in the memorial room. Historic Photograph File, Box 15, 79-G, Records Group 79, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. ................................  151 Fig. 9: Jefferson Memorial pediment. Image taken and edited by the author. .....................................................................................................  157 Fig. 10: Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C. aerial view. Image taken and edited by the author. ...........................................................  165

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Index A AAA  330n371, 331–2, 338–9, 380–1 –– Dirksen (R-IL) voted for  86n156 abstraction  48, 206 Adams, Alva B. –– Senator (D-CO)  263n174, 290n254, 298n280, 317, 318, 344n418, 351n434 Adams, John  48–9, 171, 221, 256, 291 –– as rebel  195 –– quoted by Jerry Voorhis  303 Adams, James Truslow  23, 252–4, 385 Agrarians. See Southern Agrarians Alien and Sedition Acts  200, 258, 274, 385 –– Jefferson and. See Southern Agrarians 39 –– Marcantonio, Vito (R-NY)  89 Altar of Freedom –– alternative proposal for statue  152 alternative memorial proposals  17, 385 –– “living memorial”  18, 85–99, 104, 178, 371 –– “National Training School for Girls in this city”  87 –– “Thomas Jefferson School of American Government”  91 –– auditorium  63, 72, 83, 87, 93–5, 98, 102, 175 –– cancer research center. See Maverick, Maury F.  92, 95, 385 –– educational trust fund  n86, 91, 178, 349 –– erection of a university. See Georgetwon Progressive Citizens Association 91

–– hospital  93, 95 –– library 97 –– memorial bridge  95 –– planetarium  92, 95 –– rechristening the Library of Congress. See Treadway, Allen Towner 97 –– stadium  76, 79, 91, 95–6 American Architectural Association  64, 98 American civil religion  25, 53, 55, 58–60, 68, 101, 154, 160–1, 171, 234 American Civil War  22, 35–6, 42–3, 46, 125, 201, 320, 333 American Communists, See Communist Party of America  15, 21, 29, 45, 90, 133, 136, 181n548, 187–8, 190–1, 193n592, 196n608, 199n612, 208, 217, 307, 311, 323, 325, 340, 374, 382–4, 391 American Institute of Architects  64, 99 –– Architectural Competition for memorial design  99, 106 American Institute of Architecture  64, 98 American Liberty League  15, 21, 23, 29n1, 52, 89–90, 182, 237, 239, 242, 244–5, 245n116, 249n123, 250–53, 281n227, 309, 313, 334, 360, 385 American Sculptors Society  98 Anderson, Charles Arthur –– Representative (D-MO)  248n122 Andrews, Charles O. (TJMC) –– Senator (D-FL)  63n39, 132, 135n384, 146, 159, 204, 383

440 –– opposition to words in panel #1  128, 130–2, 135, 204, 383 Annual Report of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission of 1939 –– in cornerstone  109 Anschluss of Austria  263 Architectural Competition for memorial design. See Wearin, Otha Donner Representative (D-IA)  99, 106 Arnold, Thurman –– quoted by Merrill D. Peterson  23 Articles of Confederation  203 Ashurst, Henry Fountain –– Senator (D-AZ)  274n210, 281n226, 282n230, 288–9, 291n257 asylum  89, 234. See. Jefferson, Thomas Autobiography, of Jefferson  121–2, 283, 396 B B2H2 resolution  327–8 Bankhead, William Brockman –– Representative (D-AL)  90, 270, 281n226, 298n281 Barbary pirates –– Jefferson and  264, 372–4 Barbour, William Warren –– Senator (R-NJ)  248n122, 259, 263n175, 268, 304, 353 Barkley, Alben William –– Jefferson Bicentennial Exercises at UVA  178, 350–1 –– Senator (D-KT)  168n505, 175, 234n83, 248n122, 255, 263n174, 264n176, 272, 281n229, 290–1, 293, 298n278, 298n280–1, 299n283, 304–5, 317, 346n422, 348n429, 350, 351n434, 370n480, 372, 374

Index

Barton, Bruce  87, 148 Beck, James M. –– Representative (R-MA)  23, 87n157, 231, 237–9, 252, 276–7, 313n322, 322–3, 343n416, 345–6, 350n433, 360n453 Becker, Howard  14n3, 55n3 –– moral entrepreneur  14, 55 Bell, Jonathan  201n615, 315 Bellah, Robert N.  55n1, 58–9, 68, 234n83 –– “Civil Religion in America”  68 Bernstein, Irving  97n213 Bessemer, Louis  94, 100 Bill of Rights  39, 112, 172, 174, 199–200, 204, 236, 248, 259, 353, 383, 386 Blackney, William Wallace –– Representative (R-MI)  321n339, 353n440 Blanton, Thomas L. –– maternity hospital  93 See also alternative memorial proposals. –– Representative (R-TX)  275 Bloom, Sol –– Representative (D-NY)  93–4, 98, 175, 266n189, 372 –– See also alternative memorial proposals, auditorium.  93–4, 98, 175 Bone, Homer T. –– Senator (D-WA)  198n610, 289–90 bolshevik  190n571, 207, 308, 309, 384, 390 Borah, William E. –– Senator (R-ID)  98n218, 245, 251–2 Bowers, Claude  64, 344n416 Boyd, Julian  121, 179 Boylan, John J. (TJMC) –– Representative (D-NY)  61–5, 67, 70, 72, 74n84, 78n87, 79n110, 83n140, 88n164, 91n180, 94,

Index

103n251, 104n256, 153–4, 168, 173, 232n74, 241n98, 243n103, 244n107, 253n141, 255n149, 256n150–3, 259–60, 263, 290n254, 329n363, 341n405, 343n416, 344– 5, 346n422, 362–4, 365n463, 391 Britten, Rederick Albert –– Represenative (R-IL)  67–8 Brooks, Charles Wayland –– Senator (R-IL)  354n441 Brooks, van Wyck –– Library of Congress Symposium  179, 183 Browder, Earl  29, 189–90, 194–7, 199, 204–5, 217, 383 –– on Communism as  20th century Americanism 29n1 Brown, Heywood –– on Communists’s appropriation of Jefferson 20 Bryan Owen Rohde, Ruth –– letter to FDR commenting on statue for memorial  149–50 Bryan, William Jennings  44, 150 Bullock, Paul  89n167, 174, 231n71, 264n178, 275n212, 301n288, 323n345, 348n426, 352n438 bureaucracy  153, 276–81, 285–6, 292, 303, 323–5, 356, 360 Burk, Edward Raymond –– Senator (D-NE)  341n406, 342–3, 345n419, 351n434, 354, 356, 362n458, 363n459 Burns, James MacGregor  133–4, 368 Burrows, Edwin G.  188, 211–5, 221 Burstein, Andrew  13, 16–9n15, 21, 23, 24, 118n294 Byrd, Harry F. –– Senator (D-VA)  175, 177, 234n81, 247n120, 272n205, 290n254, 344n418, 346n422, 348n429, 350n433, 361, 379, 381

441 C Cabell, James Branch  34–5 Caemmerer, Hans Paul –– Secretary of FAC  137 Calhoun, John C.  33–4, 44–6, 52, 274 Canby, Henry Seidel –– Library of Congress Symposium  179, 184–6 Cancer Clinic/Hunter, John Feeney  92, 95 See also alternative memorial proposals. cash-and-carry  260–1, 267, 269 Celler, Emanuel –– Representative (D-NY)  258, 265–6, 266n186, 268, 270, 279, 304, 351–3, 355n444, 372 centralization  30, 36–8, 42, 170, 197, 199, 274, 276, 278, 280–3, 296, 318–9, 356, 383 cherry trees  18, 72, 74, 76–9, 91, 96, 107, 392 –– Save the Cherry Trees Movement 102 Childs, Marquis W.  99, 101 Chinard, Gilbert  20, 179–81, 185, 186, 318, 334, 337 Christianson, Theodore Representative (R-MN)  244n107, 343n416, 350n433 Christian symbolism –– in Thomas Jefferson Memorial on Mall 388 Church, Ralph Edwin –– Representative (R-IL)  277n216, 300n287, 321–3 civil religious  15, 25, 60, 112, 171, 173, 218–20, 388 civil rights  120, 244, 246, 295–6, 393 Civil War (U.S.)  22, 35, 36, 42, 43, 46, 125, 201, 320, 333 Clarke, Gilmore David

442 –– Fine Arts Commission  64, 67–8, 75, 105, 115 classicist memorial design  80–2, 85–6, 103, 158 See also Jefferson Memorial, D.C. Cochran, John J. –– Representative (D-MO)  19, 25, 166–8, 243n104, 247n121, 262n170, 298n281, 344, 346n422, 363n459 Coffee, John –– Representative (D-WA)  234n81, 241n99, 246n117, 248n122, 249n123, 250n126, 256n150, 262n170, 263–4, 268n192, 290n255, 294, 314–5, 350n433, 360n453, 385 Cogliano, Francis D.  13, 16–9, 21, 176n534 collective memory  13–4, 70, 218, 250 committee of three of TJMC  116–7, 119, 129, 306, 393 See also panel inscriptions; Jefferson Memorial, D.C. Committee on Architecture and Industrial Art of the Museum of Modern Art  98, 100 Communist Party of America (CPUSA)  188–91, 193n592, 195–6, 199n612, 202, 204, 217, 325n355, 384 –– and African Americans  133 Congressional Record  15, 22, 26, 64, 67, 71, 160, 168, 218–9, 226, 232, 270, 297, 303, 317, 379 Conkin, Paul  31n9, 41n32, 43n38–9, 44n40, 46 Connerton, Paul  56 conservative  249–50n124, 277, 282, 319, 340, 342, 343, 354 –– Adams, James Truslow  253

Index

–– attack against New Deal  312, 318 –– congressmen  290, n294, 297, 306, 308, 314, 323, 325, 361, 381 –– Randolph, John of Roanoke  50 –– See American Liberty League –– Southern Agrarians as  32, 39, 47, 50, 52, 386 constitutional government  n198, 267n190, 276n213, 277n216, 281, 290 Constitution, Soviet  204 Constitution, U.S.  68, 82, 109, 132, 170, 181n548, 194n596, 198n610, 199, 200, 203, 204, 236, 238, 243, 248, 267, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279, 282n232, 287, 292, 295, 303, 313, 386 –– Jefferson quoted on  118, 204, 276, 286n247, n321, 340 –– Jefferson and amendments  251, 281, 284n245, 288–9 –– and Louisiana Purchase  291, 294 –– new amendment  243, 262n170, 263n172 –– original intent  280, 289 –– See third term. Constitution of Virginia  50 Coolidge, Thomas Jefferson  63, 137, 141 Cormack, Robin  60n27, 65, 80n118–9, 138 cornerstone, Jefferson Memorial D.C. –– items placed in  108–9 –– laying of  108, 111–2, 136, 139, 158, 181, 390–1 –– Washington Post  109–10 –– See Jefferson Memorial, D.C. Corpus of Historical American English (COHA)  22, 232, 329 Council against Intolerance in America  259, 304, 353, 375

Index

court-packing  125, 244n107, 281, 288, 290, 294, 297, 299n283, 318, 324 –– loss of Southern support  125 –– See also Roosevelt, Franklin D., Judiciary Reorganization Bill (court-packing). Cowley, Malcolm –– Library of Congress Symposium  179, 181–2, 185, 384 Culkin, Francis Dugan –– Representative (R-NY) (TJMC)  63, 70–1, 116–7, 128, 130, 137, 141n408, 157, 175, 260n162, 268n192, 282, 346n422 D Dagognet, François  16n6, 60n29, 227 Daniels, Josephus (TJMC)  63, 249 Davidson, Donald  32–6, 40, 41n31, 41n33, 42, 43n39, 47, 183–4, 381 Debt Default Act  259 –– Hiram Johnson Act  242–3 decentralization –– Agrarian uses of  38 Declaration of Independence  n19, 20, 59, 62, 67, 82–3, 106, 112, 128n344, 154, 156, 158, 162, 164, 171–2, 174, 236, 248–9, 262, 286, 299, 317, 332, 341, 346n423, 377–8, 387, 396 –– Agrarian uses of  39, 45, 52 –– Communist uses of  29, 181n548, 194, 198, 203, 209, 212, 215, 312n320, 328 –– danger of “or abolish”  131–2 –– FDR’s panel suggestion  129, 132 –– in cornerstone  109 –– in Sen. Thomas’s panel inscription 120–1 –– inscription on panel  116–7, 124, 126

443 FDR’s dedication speech  18, 165–5, 179, 368, 374, 390 Democratic congressmen  39, 175, 258, 282, 363 Democratic Party  64, 110, 171, 257, 267, 270, 287, 300, 308, 313, 315, 320, 335, 357, 361, 366, 384 –– Agrarians’ appeal to  39 –– human rights/property rights debate 249 –– Jefferson Day Dinner  22, 219–20, 226, 231, 280, 297 –– real Jeffersonians in  285–6 Denning, Michael  n189, 192, 193n589, 201n615, 212n637 Designers of Shelter in America  98 development in science and industry –– commemorated in Jefferson Memorial. See Roper, Daniel (Sec. of Commerce) Dies, Martin (Dies Committee)  351–2, 353, 355n444, Dirksen, Everett McKinley –– Representative (R-IL)  85n153, 86–8, 90, 268n192, 270n202, 371n482, 376 Ditter, John William Representative (R-PA)  231, 268n192, 284n234, 366n468, Domhoff, G. W., and Michael J. Webber  104n252, 191n580 Dondero, George A. –– Representative (R-MI)  239n91, 267n190, 268n192, 284–5, 360, 381, 390 double-appropriation  26, 230 double-track intellect –– Jefferson’s 181 Dunn, Aubert C. –– Representative (D-MS)  245–7 Dunnings, William –– used by Southern Agrarians  35–6 Durkheim, Émile  17, 55, 57

444 E Earle, George –– Governor (D-PA)  244n107, 249n123, 251n127, 365–6 Edelstein, Michael Morris –– Representative (D-NY)  258–9, 268, 344n418, 352n434 educational trust fund See alternative memorial proposals. Eggers, Otto R.  113, 137–8, 142, 144, 155–6 elitist thinkers –– Agrarians accussed of  47, 384 Ellenbogen, Henry –– Representative (D-PA). See Architectural Competition  99 Ellender, Allen –– Senator (D-LA)  249n123, 250n125, 298n281, 358, 362, 374 Ellis, Clyde T. –– Represenative (D-AR)  248, 255n149, 346n422, 348n429, 358–9, 362, 374 Ellis, Joseph P.  13, 128n344 Elmer, William Price –– Representative (R-MO)  273, 306, 325–8 Eltse, Ralph Roscoe –– Representative (R-CA)  154, 239n91, 276n213 Ely, Richard  311 Emancipation Proclamation  124 Emperor Hadrian –– Jefferson compared to  100–1, 105 See Jefferson Memorial, D.C., imperial. Engels, Friedrich  197, 207–8, 216 epideictic  220–3, 225 Evans, Rudulph  n139, 145–52, 154–5 See Jefferson statue, Evan’s model event/code fit  58, 61–2, 173, 224, 385–7, 389

Index

F Faddis, Charles Isiah –– Represenative (D-PA)  244n107, 244n111, 246n122, 248n122, 249n123, 253n141, 256n153, 279, 290n254, 298n281, 344n417, 357, 379 Farley, James –– Postmaster General (1933–1940) (D-NY)  242n100, 244n107, 248n122, 261n167, 263n174–5, 264n177, 270n201, 274, 281n229, 290, 298n280, 310, 313–8, 344n416, 358n448, 359n451, 362n458 Farmer-Laborite(s) 83n140, 250n126, 266n188, 270n202, 319, 385 Federation of Christian Youth  55 Federation of Women’s Clubs  95 –– supporting auditorium  94–95 Fenn, Richard  59, 61, 101, n229 FERA  86n156, 330–331 –– Dirksen voted for. See Dirksen, Everett McKinley, Representative (R-IL) Fine Arts Commission (FAC)  23, 57, 64, 77, 137, 142 Fish, Hamilton –– Representative (R-NY)  270n202, 284, 307 Fletcher, Duncan U. –– Senator (D-FL)  151, 247n119, 249n124, 250n124, 287, 294, 298n281 Fletcher, John Gould  30, 32, 35n23, 40–2, 52, 89n166, 183, 184 Flynt, Wayne  151n457, 249n124 Foner, Philip S.  179, 188, 208–10, 215, 384 Ford, James W.  133 Ford, Leland M.

Index

–– Representative (R-CA)  300, 301n290, 323 France, Anatole  34–5 Frankfurter, Felix  n164, 285–6 Franklin, Francis  188, 208, 209–11, 215 Franklin, Benjamin  256, 261 Fraser, James Earl  137, 139, 146 Fraser, Hugh R.  355 freedom of religion  102–3, 120, 124, 159, 160, 164, 165, 375, 394 –– Jefferson stood for. See Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom  106, 115, 271, 313, 346 –– freedom of speech  39, 94, 98, 102–3, 254, 274, 336, 245, 353, 366, 367, 375 –– for Communists  91, 136, 199, 237, –– and Hatch Act  279 frieze in memorial room See Jefferson Memorial, D.C. Fulbright, James William –– Representative (D-AR) 273, 326–8 G Garrett, Clyde Leonard –– Representative (D-TX)  265n183, 266n186, 269n195, 344n418, 357, 360n453, 372 See also Smith, Lon (Chairman, Railroad Commission in Texas) George III  299, 352 –– grievances of Declaration of Independence  209, 262n169, 300 –– tyranny of  212, 248, 303, 352 Georgetown Progressive Citizens Association 91 Gibboney, Stuart (TJMC)  63, 81, 107, 114, 115, 116, 117, 140, 142n415, 144, 146, 148, 152, 158n479–80, 159, 160, 175, 176

445 –– member of committee of three  116, 119, 123–4, 127–30, 132 Gifford, Charles L. –– Representative (R-MA)  153–4, 268n192, 275–6, 366–7 Gillette, Guy M. –– Senator (D-IA)  264–5, 370n480, 372, Gillie, George W. –– Representative (R-IN)  266, 268, 372, 389 Glasgow, Ellen  34 Goethals, Gregor  67n53, 70, 80, 138, 220n2, 236n87 Goodall, Alex  304n295, 306n303, 352n435–7 Goodman, Walter  134, 352n437 Great Depression  13, 15, 25, 29, 53, 58, 61, 79, 89n164, 233n80, 287, 297, 379, 390, 391 Green, Theodore Francis –– Senator (D-RI)  71–3, 248n122, 292, 293n262, 371n482, 372 Green, Rawley T.  282n231, 283, 285 Greenwood, Arthur Herbert –– Representative (D-IN)  248n122, 290n254, 345n419 Griffin, Walter R.  262n170, 269n196–7, 270n199–200, 270n202 Guffey, Joseph F. –– Senator (D-PA)  244n107, 249n123, 251n127, 279, 305, 344n116, 354–5, 356, 361, 365 Guyer, Ulysses –– Representative (R-KS)  266–8, 298n279, 389 H Halt, Charles E.  354n442, 356n445 Hamilton, Alexander  145, 267n190

446 –– contrast with Jefferson  29n1, 35–6, 38, 39, 45, 52, 64, 197, 198, 200, 223, 236, 269, 276, 277, 283, 288, n293, 296, 298, 304, 339, 365 –– Hamiltonian(s)  250, 251n127, 292, 314, 365 Harrison, Pat –– Senator (D-MS)  97, 281n226, 299–300, 342, 359n451 Harriss, R. P.  141n408 Hatch, Carl Atwood –– Senator (D-NM)  278–80, 305n299, 327 Havig, Alan  62n37 Hawks, Charles –– Representative (R-WI)  267n190, 284, 285, 300–2, 323 Hawley, Ellis  324–5 Hedstrom, Matthew  87n158, 148n448 hegemonic interpretation –– Jefferson icon  14, 56, 218, 243 Hemings, Sally  37n25, 117, 118n294, 255 Henderson, Richard B.  91n177–9, 254n144, 254n146 Henry, Patrick  145 Herring, Clyde –– Senator (D-IA)  264, 286 Higgins, Daniel P.  137–8, 155 Hildebrandt, Fred H. –– Representative (D-WA)  247n119, 250n126, 257, 262n170, 268n192, 305–6, 307–12, 315, 316, 384–5 Hill, Lister –– Senator (D-AL)  249n122, 252n138, 256, 270, 289n252, 327, 328, 331n373, 335n390, 345n418, 350n433 Hiram Johnson Act. See Debt Default Act  242n102, 259 historical materialism  49, 383

Index

Hobbs, Samuel Francis –– Representative (D-AL)  86n153, 89–90, 343n415, 347, 351, 371n482, 391 Hofstadter, Richard  133, 321, 322 Hölbling, Walter  56, 226 Holt, Rush Dew –– Senator (D-WV)  297–9 Hoover, Herbert  39, 53, 239, 252 –– Advisory Committee on Education  342, 343, 349 Hopper, Ensell  137 Houdon, Jean Antoine –– Jefferson bust  143, 144, 155 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)  134, 304 Houston, John Mills –– Representative (KS)  248n121, 250n126, 262n170, 266n188, 345n420 Howard, Hugh  64, 72n74, 82n129, 99n228, 103 Howe, Irving  20, 189n526, 193, 250n126, 309, 383 Howe, Frank  332 Hulsey, Byron C.  86 humanitarian  23, 83, 93, 186, 218, 232, 232n76, 295, 385, 390 –– cancer research center/ hospital  92, 385 –– FDR as  320, 380 –– Jefferson as  26, 88, 90, 90n171, 91, 95, 98, 98n218, 102,102n145, 144, 201, 228, 231, 232–268, 269n195, 273, 292, 293, 298n280, 311, 338n400, 344, 358, 363n459, 385, 388 humanitarianism  102, 251n132 –– Jefferson’s  23, 24, 162, 163, 232–73, 310, 313, 334n387, 367, 374, 380, 388, 390–1 –– public rhetoric of New Deal 90n175

Index

Humes, Edward  133 Hunter, John Feeney –– Representative (D-OH)  85n153, 92, 95n203, 262n170 I I’ll Take My Stand, See Southern Agrarians  15, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 47, 379 Ickes, Harold (Secretary of the Interior) –– letter about frieze inscription  114, 115 –– said to endorse auditorium  93 –– third term debate  286 icon  13, 15, 16, 56, 65 iconic augmentation  15, 16, 21, 22, 26, 60, 227, 228, 231, 392 iconicity  19, 22, 25, 26, 53, 59, 61, 177, 220, 221, 224, 227, 228, 368, 389 inalienable rights  38, 154, 163, 209n632, 235, 260, 383, 394, 395 –– natural rights  38, 334, 338n401, 359 industrial capitalism  29, 34, 52 industrialization  15, 34, 38, 43, 184, 204 intellectual élite  40, 42, –– natural aristocracy  42, 184, 255n148, 299, 342, 343, 345n419– 20, 349n432, 351n434, 365 J Jackson, Andrew  33, 41, 46, 52, 89n166, 220, 221n6, 234, 279, 290, 285, 308, 346n422 Jefferson Day Dinner(s) –– of  1830 22 –– of  1945. See Undelivered Jefferson Day speech:FDR’s 24–5, 367–78 Jefferson Day Dinner Address in St. Paul, Minnesota  111n272

447 Jefferson Day (Dinner) speeches  15, 22, 26, 71n72, 78, 87n157, 102, 111n272, 144, 148, 164n493, 166, 172, 173, 180, 219–27, 230–2, 234, 235, 236, 242, 243n104, 244n107, 247 n120, 263, 274, 278, 280, 283n234, 297, 313, 316, 317, 318, 322, 329n363, 342, 357, 364, 367, 379, 390, 391 Jefferson Memorial Stadium  76, 79n113, 95–6 Jefferson Memorial, D.C. –– cornerstone laying  109 –– dedication of  15, 21, 53, 55, 111, 154–5, 158–61, 165, 179, 218, 349, 365n464, 388 –– design. See classicist memorial design. See also League for Progress in Architecture, attacks Pope’s memorial design –– eagle symbol debate  155–6 –– frieze in memorial room  16, 18, 112–7, 163, 164, 349, 388 –– groundbreaking  71, 76, 105, 106, 107, 108, 111, 158, 390 –– inscription. See panel inscriptions –– imperial  100n231, 101, 105 –– Memorial Library. See alternative memorial proposals –– memorial room  112, 113, 137, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 152 –– mausoleum  94n199–200, 98, 100n236, 100, 102, 106, 161, 323 –– opponents of the Tidal Basin  73, 76, 77, 85–6, 102–3, 389 –– permanence, communicates  73, 82, 84, 85, 387 –– proposed sites  65–66, 72–3, 78–80 Anacostia 68–9 Apex block  67 Lincoln Park  75 Potomac 72–3 on Mall  74–5

448 South side of Mall  75 Tidal Basin  69–72, 73, 75–8 –– prospective vs. retrospective  18, 98, 99, 101, 115, 387 See also Jefferson Memorial, D.C., utilitarian (living memorial), non-utilitarian –– purpose  17, 80 –– qualities represented by dignity  69, 73, 75, 84, 94, 105, 107, 109–110 permanence  82, 84, 85 simplicity  75, 77, 82, 84, 97, 100, 109–10 stability  82, 85 –– site/location  64, 65–77, 78n106– 107, 79–81, 82n130, 91n180, 93n188, 94n195, 95n202, 95n205–6, 98n218, 102n245, 104n255, 106 –– sculpture subcommittee  137–8, 145 –– statue. See Jefferson statue. See also Jefferson statue, Evans’s model –– utilitarian (living meorial), nonutilitarian  80–3, 85, 86–88, 89n168, 89–93, 94, 100n231, 102, 104, 329n363, 386 Jefferson National Expansion Memorial  15, 19, 25, 53, 55, 60, 166–67, 168n505, 169–171, 344 –– Commission  167, 169, 363n459 Jefferson nickel  153 Jefferson statue  16, 25, 26, 60, 64, 67n53, 87, 136–56 –– Evans’s model  145, 146, 147, 151, 154, 155, 164, 387 corn and tobacco symbols  152 –– Lawrie’s model  42, 143, 144, 145, 146, 149, 156, 202 –– qualities represented by dignity  137, 142, 144–5, 149, 155, 387

Index

simplicity  141, 142, 145, 146, 149, 387 originality  100, 140, 141, 142, 144 Jefferson, Thomas –– advocacy of education  40–1, 52, 87–8, 90–2, 97–8, n103, 104, 113, 118, 121, 134, 163, n166, 172, 174, 177–8, 183, 199, 209–10, 292–3, 312, 319, 341–2, 344–5, 347–8, 350–5, 375, 391 –– and common people concern for  98, 115 friend of  24, 99, 234 trust in  94, 163 –– and debt  170, 242, 267, 268n194, 293n262, 296–304, 335n389, 350–51, 354–5, 358, 386 –– and industrial revolution  36, 38, 45, 183, 184, 196, 236, 240, 311, 320, 338, 360n453, 384 –– and laissez faire  38, 246, 247, 309, 310, 321, 390 –– and Lincoln, connection  69, 71, 105, 111, 123, 124, 125, 126, 139, 140, 144, 201, 205, 223, 234n81, 256, 256n152–153, 272n205, 290, 314, 346n422, 347, 387 –– and natural aristocracy  42, 184, 255n148, 299, 342, 343, 345n419–20, 349n432, 351n434, 365 –– aristocratic character  24, 33–4, 41n31 –– as abolitionist  37–8, 123, 256, 128 –– as Anglo Saxon  130, 195, 333, 381, 382, 383 –– as anticapitalist  29, 45, 77, 78, 187, 382, 383 –– as conservationist  77, 320, 329, 356–8, 361 –– as equalitarian  23, 46, 134 –– as founder of Democratic Party  39, 112n273, 172, 308

Index

–– as founder of the University of Virginia  82, n85, 89, 91, 112, 341, 345–6 –– as heroic  45, 67n53, 84, 137, 139, 155, 162, 164, 241, 268 –– as lover of nature  77 –– as philosopher  90n171, 98n218, 102n245, 141, 142, 177, 333, 387 –– as pioneer  45, 166, 196, 197, 199, 210, 210n633, 235, against slavery  255 in foreign relations  259, 372 state aid to education  341 –– as plantation ‘aristocrat’  34 –– as populist or progressive. See Nixon, Herman Clarence –– as Lincoln’s predecessor  387 abolition  123, 124, 126, 256n153, 272 –– as states’ rights advocate  26, 37, 38, 39–40, 52, 171, 274–6, 277n216, 284n239, 285, 292–6, 301, 334, 371 –– as statesman  24, 72, 93, 109, 127, 133, 142, 143, 146, 166–7, 235, 236, 268, 278n217, 283, 292, 311, 315, 328, 344n416, 345, 346n421, 364n462, 390 –– as teacher  45, 87, 156, 162, 163, 252n138, 360, 391 –– as (young) radical  135, 143, 202, 239, 240, 242, 253, 254, 305–6, 308, 312, 320, 383, 387, 388 –– asylum 257–9 –– first inaugural address  13, 38, 39, 51n63, 52, 135, 170, 238, 252, 258, 293, 360, 377 –– interest in science  19, 24, 90, 92, 98, 100, 104, 112, 177, 178, 197, 209, 210, 328, 350, 353, 361, 362, 363n459, 364, 365, 366, 371n482, 375, 378

449 –– in the twentieth century.  119 See also Library of Congress Symposium –– many-sided  98, 110, 111, 112, 139, 146, 181, 197, 198, 215, 392 –– on morality  48–9, 120–2, 187, 271, 393, 394, 396 –– position on internal improvements  37, 38, 359 See Southern Agrarians –– pursuit of happiness  38–9, 45, n87, 120, 198, 213–4, 235, 247, 249, 304, 317, 319, 320, 334, 382, 383, 384, 393, 394, 396 –– second inaugural address  366 –– secured the abolition of slave trade  126, 127, n209, n256 –– Third President  62, 82, 93, 106, n139, 372 –– tombstone  112, 161, 252n138, 313n321 –– vision  19, 30, 36, 46, 50, 69, 166–7, 172, 183, 195–6, 198, 199, 203, 205, 213, 217, 232, 241, 248n122, 264, 273, 280, 291, 309, 319, 335n388, 336, 342–344, 360, 365, 366, 372, 374, 380, 381 384 Jefferson’s humanitarianism, See humanitarianism Jeffersonian tradition  21, 34–5, 44, 46, 52, 137, 183, 217, 326, 347 Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri  91n179, 133n374, 191n577, 202n619, 294n263, 306n302, 307n307, 310n315, 312n320, 314, 324, 325n352 Jesus  47, 61, 109, 148n448 Jesus-Jefferson correlation  87, 148n488, 159, 233, 234, 235, 237–8, 241, 245n115, 246, 252n138, 307n309, 312n320, 365, 384, 388 Johnson, Andrew  33

450 Johnson, Edwin C. –– Senator (D-CO)  290n254, 298n280, 317n329, 319–20, 351n434, 357–8, 362, 374 Johnson, George W. –– Representative (D-WV)  248n122, 255n149, 346n422, 348n429, 359, 372, 374 Johnson, Jed Joseph –– Representative (D-OK)  85n153, 90, 262n170 Jones, Howard Mumford –– Library of Congress Symposium  20, 179, 182 Junior Board of Commerce –– supporting auditorium  95 K Kammen, Michael  79, 125, 240n95 Kazin, Alfred  136n386, 188n559, 191n577, 193n592–3, 199n612, 201n614, 202n619–20, 207n626, 311n319, 325n355 Kean, Randolph, General (TJMC)  63, 109, 126, 127, 130, 156, 168n505, 394–5 –– Jefferson’s fight against slavery  123–6, 128, 256 –– member of committee of three  116, 117, 119, 132 –– on Declaration of Independence 132 Keller, Kent Ellsworth –– Representative (D-IL)  88n163, 168n505, 174, 250n126 Kennedy, David M.  88n164, 89n164, 96n213, 233n80, 240n94, 242n102, 245n115, 252n137, 253n140, 264n179, 265n184, 281n229, 292n259, 299n282, 311n318, 324n350, 325n351, 330n370

Index

Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions  39, 274 Kimball, Fiske (TJMC)  63, 64, 69–71, 72, 74–5, 81, 82, 103, n104, 109, 113, 114, 115n282, 116, 117, 127–8, 130, 137, 138, 139, 141n407, 142n413–4, 143–5, 147, 152, 155, 156, 159–60, 175, 202 –– member of committee of three 119 –– Library of Congress Symposium 179 King, William H. –– Senator (D-UT)  72, 93 Knutson, Harold –– Representative (R-MN)  154, 239n91, 268n192 Ku Klux Klan  133 L L’Enfant Plan  69, 70n67, 71, 105, 111, 164 laissez faire  38, 246, 247, 309, 310, 321, 390 Lambertson, William P. –– Represenative (R-KS).  19, 25, 169–71, 268n192, 300n287 See St. Louis NJEM 169–71 Landy, Avrom  188, 196, 205–8, 211, 305n296, 382–3 Lang, Andrew –– quoted by Gen. Kean  125 Langmead, Donald  80n116–7, 84n145, 85n150 Lanham, Fritz Garland  101n236, 124, 159 –– Jefferson and patent system  364–5, 388 –– opinion on Jefferson statue (Evans)  146, 147 –– opinion on Lawrie model  143–4, 146–7

Index

–– panel inscriptions  117, 130 –– replaces John J. Boylan on TJMC 63n39 –– Representative (D-TX)  346n422, 364–5, 388 Lanier, Lyle  42–3, 47n49, 51n63 League for Progress in Architecture –– attacks Pope’s memorial design  94, 98 –– supporting architectural competition proposal  99, 100 Lee, Robert E.  33, 34, 44, 52, 139, 152 Lend-Lease Program  81, 267 Lerman, Louis  188, 211, 215–7, 327n357, 364n461, 382 Liberty League. See American Liberty League. Librarian of Congress. See MacLeish, Archibald Library of Congress Symposium  20, 118, 179–87 Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth 235 –– in cornerstone  109 likeness, in Jefferson statue  60, 140, 141, 144, 145, 149, 387 Lincoln Memorial  17, 69, 104n255, 105, 124, 126, 139, 140 Lincoln, Abraham  69, 71, 105, 111, 112, 124, 126, 139, 144, 167, 205, 222n19, 223. See Jefferson, Thomas, and Lincoln connection Lippmann, Walter –– Library of Congress Symposium  20, 179, 181, 184, 185, 225 Locke, John  38, 210 Loewen, James W.  121, 132, 134n378 Logan, Marvel Mills –– Senator (D-KY)  247n119, 344n418, 346n422

451 Lonergan, Augustine –– Senator (D-CT)  63, 73 Long, Huey  310–11, 335–6, 335n391 Louisiana Purchase  348 –– Jefferson’s role in  19, 166, 204, 215, 271n204, 291, 292, 293, 294, 304, 371 Lovestone, Jay  194, 195n601, 200, 203n621 Luckey, Henry Carl –– Representative (D-NE)  73n80, 85n153, 87, 88n160, 90, 262n170, 268n192 Ludlow, Louis L. –– Representative (D-IN)  83n140, 234n81–2, 244n107, 248n122, 252n138, 255n148, 267n190, 268–70, 349n432, 372, 389 Ludlow war referendum  262, 263, 267n190, 268, 269, 389 Lundeen, Ernest –– Representative (FarmerLaborite-MN)  83n140, 250n126, 253n142, 256n152, 260n160, 324n350, 351 Lytle, Andrew N.  32, 33n18, 42–8, 52, 380 M MacLeish, Archibald  20, 26, 118, 119n300, 159, 160–4, 178, 179–81, 183, 186, 368, 391 –– connecting FDR to Jefferson quotes 118–9 –– draft of Jefferson Memorial Dedication Speech  160–4, 391 –– Library of Congress Symposium  20, 159, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 186 –– suggestion for panels  118

452 Madison, James  39, 121n309, 267n190, 286, 296, 396 Maier, Pauline  129 Main, Verner Wright –– Representative (R-MI)  85n153, 88, 90, 244n107, 260n162 Malone, Dumas  179, 180, 181, 211, 283 Manifest Destiny  61, 271 Manship, Paul (sculptor member, FAC)  137, 138, 139 Marcantonio, Vito Anthony –– Representative (R-NY)  85n153, 88–91, 94, 245, 250n126, 251, 258n155, 290n255, 385 Marceau, Henri  137, 139, 144, 146 Martin, Joseph –– Representative (R-MA)  62 Marx, Karl  182, 199n612, 203, 207, 208, 306, 312, 383 materialism  29, 77 –– Northern 44 Maverick, Maury F. –– Representative (D-TX),  23, 63n40, 86n153, 89, 90–1, 92, 94, 174, 250n126, 252–6, 268n192, 270n202, 281, 290n255, 314, 324n350, 345n420, 347, 351, 357, 363n459, 374, 385 Mavericks. See Young Turks May, Andrew J. –– Representative (D-KY)  88, 169, 338n400 McCormack-Dickstein Committee (prev. Fish Committee)  307, 352 McFadden, Louis Thomas –– Representative (R-PA)  168n506, 276n213 McMillian commission  64, 75, 102n245 McNary, Charles Linza –– Senator (R-OR)  63, 94, 95n206

Index

McReynolds Bill. See Neutrality legislation  260, 261 Mead, James Michael –– Senator (D-NY)  249n122, 259, 268, 304, 353 Meffan, George –– State Senator (D-ID)  241–4, 245, 247n121, 259, 264, 288, 298n280, 304, 334n387, 335n390, 356, 379, 380 Michener, Earl Cory –– Representative (R-MI)  88n162, 234n81, 248n122, 276n214 Minor, Robert  187, 188, 193–205, 207, 210, 290, 382, 383 Mires, Charlene  56n7, 57n10, 60, 74 Mitchell, W. J. T.  59 Minton, Sherman –– Senator (D- IN)  248n122, 279 modern architecture  100, 115, 386 Monroe Doctrine –– Jefferson and  122, 123, 231, 264–8, 326, 355, 372–3, 389 Monticello  24, 35, 50, 63, 85n150, 109, 118, 127, 152, 153, 171, 336 –– Jefferson called sage of  308 Moore, Charles (FAC)  64, 75, 77 Moore, Edward –– Senator (R-OK)  284, 285–7, 297n277, 303–4, 305n300, 360n452 Moore, Grace  160, 165 moral entrepreneur  14–5, 16–19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 55–7, 58, 60 –– Jefferson Memorial, D.C.  62–5, 70, 75, 93, 103, 116, 118, 120, 129, 159 –– Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis  166 –– Congress and Jefferson Day speeches  178, 180, 219–20, 221, 223, 224, 225, 228–32, 233, 241,

Index

243n104, 244, 244n107, 245, 247n120, 272n205, 276n213, 279, 281n229, 304, 329n363, 330, 340, 355, 372, 376, 379, 380, 384, 385, 387–392 Morris, Richard J.  56, 138 Moser, Guy L. –– Representative (D-PA)  79, 248n122, 256n152, 258n155, 262n170, 277n217, 278n217, 279, 290n254, 293n262, 364–6 Mundt, Karl Earl –– Representative (R-SD)  280 Murdock, John Robert –– Representative (D-AZ)  86n154, 262n170, 268n192, 293n261, 347–51, 371n482 Murphy, Paul  47–8, 49n54, 51 Murray, James Edward –– Senator (D-MT)  343n414, 345n419 N National Agricultural Jefferson Bicentenary Committee (NAJBC)  19, 26, 29, 55, 132, 177, 350, 360–3, 381 National Capital Park and Planning Commission 75 National Competitions Committee for Architecture and the Allied Arts 98 National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)  86n156, 238–9, 244, 250n126, 276n213, 277 National Labor Relations Act  239n92, 310, 342n409 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) 342n409 National Park and Planning Commission 57 National Park Service  25, 152

453 National Patent Planning Commission 365 natural aristocracy  42, 184, 255n148, 299, 342, 343, 345n419–20, 349n432, 351n434, 365 natural rights  38, 334, 338n401, 359 –– inalienable rights  38, 154, 163, 209n632, 235, 260, 383, 394, 395 Nelson, William N. –– Representative (D-MO)  79 neutrality  234, 259, 267, 268n102, 348n426, 373, 374, 386, 389 –– Fourth Neutrality Act  260, 268, 269 –– Laws  258, 259–64, 266, 268n102, 373 –– repeal of  268 Nevins, Allan  208, 354 –– Library of Congress Symposium  20, 179, 182–4, 208, 383–4 New Deal  88n160, 123, 239, 243, 244n107, 246, 254, 255, 257, 281, 287, 288, 285n269, 297, 305, 316–7, 318, 319, 325, 349, 358, 359, 361, 368, 369, 375, 377, 381 –– criticism of  19, 97n213, 329, 244, 245, 253, 254, 263, 267, 275–8, 280, 285–6, 299, 303, 306, 308, 310–312, 315, 321–2, 324, 342, 352, 356, 361, 386, 389 –– humanitarianism  23, 90, 232–3, 240, 329, 380 –– second New Deal  282, 310–11 –– Southern Agrarians  32, 42, 380 New Dealer(s), in Congress  79, 188, 198n610, 232, 233, 239, 240, 244n107, 249n123, 250n124, 285, 292, 294, 296, 306, 322, 325, 334, 342, 361, 375, 383, 384 New Masses  21, 189, 190–4, 211

454 –– Jefferson special issue  16, 20, 21, 26, 29n1, 55, 136, 179n544, 180, 181n548, 187–189, 192–4, 196, 205n264, 208, 209n631, 211–2, 215n639, 217, 218, 270, 290, 305–7, 325n354, 327n357, 328, 364n461, 382, 384, 391, 392 Nixon, Herman Clarence  32, 42–4, 331n373, 379, 380 Nora, Pierre –– “sites of memory”  60 Northwest Ordinance  83, 117, 256n152 –– Jefferson’s role in  117, 256n152, 293 Notes on the State of Virginia  121, 134, 395, 396 O O’Connor, John Joseph –– Representative (D-NY) 87n159, 88n163 O’Mahoney, Joseph C. –– Senator (D-WY)  263n174, 290n254, 298n280, 304, 317–9, 344n418, 351n434 Orr, David G.  85 Overton, John H. –– Senator (D-LA)  234n81, 249n123, 250n125, 298n281, 358, 362, 374 Overton, Taylor H.  188n558, 306n305 Owsley, Frank L.  29n1, 30, 32, 35–40, 42, 44, 45, 47, 52, 123, 184, 381 P Padover, Saul  132 panel inscription #1  116 –– FDR’s suggestion  129 –– Gen. Kean, “Freedom of Men” 394

Index

–– Sen. Thomas  120, panel inscription #2 –– Gen. Kean, “Freedom of Religion” 394 –– Sen. Thomas  120 panel inscription #3 –– Gen. Kean “Freedom of the Slaves”  124–7, 128, 395 –– Sen. Thomas  121–2, 123–4, panel inscription #4 –– Gen. Kean, “Freedom of Education” 395 –– Sen. Thomas  122–3 panel inscriptions, Jefferson Memorial  63, 112, 116, 118, 119, 124 –– debate on “all men are created equal” 130–1 –– debate on “or abolish”  131–2 –– FDR’s suggestion  129, –– Gibboney’s suggestion  127, 395 –– mixing of sentences/ phrases  129–30, 132–3 –– radicalism 135 panegryric  15–6, 106, 115, 188, 221–2, 225, 230, 233, 234, 237, 241, 251, 297, 390 Pantheon –– design discussed in respect to TJ memorial  82, 85n149, 100n235, 105 Partridge, William T. (FAC)  67–8, 75 pediment  16, 136, 138, 155–8 –– scene of deliberation  156 See Jefferson Memorial, D.C. Pepper, Claude D. –– Senator (D-FL)  248n121, 248n122, 256, 264n176, 287, 294–6, 298n281, 347, 357, 359–60, 368, 374, 380

Index

Peterson, Merrill D.  13, 16–8, 20–4, 32, 40n30, 62n38, 82n136, 117n294, 219n1, 248n121, 274, 277n215, 296n271, 306n302 Pettengill, Samuel B. –– Representative (D-IN)  23, 256n152, 290n255 Phillips, Alfred N. –– Representative (D-CT)  92, 262n170 –– planetarium. See alternative memorial proposals Pinckney, Thomas  261n168 Piney Branch and Kalorama Citizens’ Associations –– supporting auditorium  94–5 Pittman Bill. See Neutrality legislation Plumley, Charles Albert –– Representative (R-VT)  231, 239n91, 262–3, 268, 280–2, 283, 284n234, 287, 290, 300, 322–3, 360, 366–7, 372, 389 Poe, Edgar Allen  33 Pope, Arthur Upham –– defending classicist memorial  83–5, 100 Pope, John Russell  137 –– architect of classicist Jefferson Memorial  82–83, 84, 85, 86, 104, 155 –– as neo-classicist artist  103 –– death of  103, 155 –– memorial design  82–3, 94, 98, 99, 101, 105 See also Jefferson Memorial, D.C. Popular Front  20, 21, 29n1, 181n548, 188–90, 192–4, 195, 200, 201, 211, 212, 254, 307, 325n355, 382 populism  32, 42, 44 –– language of  251, 280

455 practical idealism  24, 167, 172, 177, 181, 328–30, 332–3, 336, 340, 341, 345, 346, 350, 352, 353, 355, 356, 357, 358, 360, 367, 269, 372, 374, 376, 377, 390, 391 practical idealist –– Jefferson as  26, 87, 106, 178, 182, 197, 199, 328, 333, 335n389, 336, 347, 374, 380 President Newcomb of the University of Virginia  92, 175 Prothero, Stephen R.  61n33, 87n158, 148n448, 241n96 public utilities  243, 309–11, 318 Public Utilities Holding Companies Act  239n92, 250n124, 297n275, 309–11, 318, 342n409 Q Quakers –– attitude toward word sworn 114 qualities represented by memorial/ statue. See Jefferson statue. R Randolph, Hollins (TJMC)  63, 69, 74, 81 Randolph, Jennings –– Representative (D-WV)  247n121, 346n422, 376 Rankin, John Elliott –– bicentennial of Jefferson’s birth 175–6 –– conglomeration of memorial inscriptions  132–6, 175 –– on checks and balances  96–7 –– Representative (D-MS)  249n122, 262n170, 266n188, 268n192, 301, 310 –– Supreme Court Building, as memorial 96–7

456 Ransom, John Crowe  32n13, 33n14, 33n17, 43n10, 35n22, 39, 42n36, 44n41, 46, 47, 53 Rayburn, Samuel –– Representative (D-TX)  241n99, 248n122, 261n167, 263n174, 264n177, 270, 281n226, 281n228, 290n254, 310, 344n416, 358n448 Reed, Daniel Alden –– Representative (R-NY)  282n231, 283, 285, 354 Rees, Edward Herbert –– Representative (R-KS)  88n162, 239n91 Rees, Roger  221n10, 222n11, 222n14–5, 222n15, 222n18–9, 222n22–3, 222n27–8, 225n44, 226 religion  24, 47, 48, 49, 51, 84, 159, 166, 172, 198, 213, 312, 329, 388 –– freedom of. See freedom of religion. Rich, Robert Fleming –– for utilitarian memorial proposal  85, 85n153, 93–4, 154n465, –– Representative (R-PA)  168–9, n169, n260, 277–8, 285n245, 300n287 Ricœur, Paul  16n6, 26, 60–1, 223–6, 227–30 Robertson, E. V. –– Senator (R-WY)  284–6, 360n452 Rock, Virginia  30–1, 34, 49 Roosevelt, Franklin D. (FDR)  17n8, 44, 53, 62, 125, 180, 233, 240, 244n111, 297n275, 305, 307, 343, 349n432, 354, 358, 362, 365, 367, 380 –– “economic royalists”  295n269, 296n270, 316, 319 –– “many-sided Jefferson”  110, 111, 112, 139, 181

Index

–– “practical idealism”  329–30 –– “Purge of  1938” 279, 294n265, 317n329 –– and brain trust  238, 278, 285, 286, 325, 164n493 –– and Hatch Act  279 –– and Jefferson  23, 105, 110, 115, 118, 138, 154, 163, 240, 242, 246, 258, 265, 283, 284n237, 285, 291, 292, 311, 313, 314, 315, 317, 320, 358, 365 –– and Jefferson Memorial, D.C.  18, 71–2, 93n194, 103, 104–6 cornerstone laying 109–112, 139 dedication of 154, 158–65 groundbreaking of 105–8 inscriptions and frieze 113, 118, 129, 130, 132 statue, opinion on 140–1, 148–52 –– and Jefferson Memorial, St. Louis  167, 168–9 –– and the radio  226 –– attacks against  239, 245, 256n153, 283–6, 284n237, 285, 299–300, 303, 310, 317–8, 319, 321, 342 –– called “un-Jeffersonian”  239, 275, 276n213, 278, 285n241, 299, 321 –– coalition 125 –– four freedoms  112, 119, 119n301, 138, 154, 155, 271, 368, 369, 375 –– Frank Lloyd Wright’s letter. See Wright, Frank Lloyd –– his character  105, 283, 285, 314 –– Jefferson Day Dinner Speech (1932) 227 –– Judiciary Reorganization Bill (court-packing)  125, 244n107, 281, 288, 290, 294, 297, 299n283, 318, 324 –– last undelivered Jefferson Day speech (1945)  24, 25, 26, 227, 364, 367–78

Index

–– Pan American Address  265 –– Presidential Proclamation  2267 25, 173 –– Roosevelt recession  318, 386 –– Social Security (planning commission). See Social Security Act. –– the Big Three  367 –– third term debate  280, 283–6 –– use of Jefferson discourse  390 Roosevelt, Theodore  283, 374 –– proposed monument to  62, 89n164 Roper, Daniel (Secretary of Commerce)  104, 371n482 –– letter to FDR about memorial site  71, 104 Rorker, Alexander (Attorney at Law) See Edelstein, Michael Morris. Rowan, Edward B. (FAC)  137–40 Rush, Benjamin  114 Ryan, George, Dr. (TJMC)  63, 123, 146 S Sabath, Adolph Joachim  266n188, 271–2, 372 –– Representative (D-IL), See alternative memorial proposals, planetarium Schafer, John Charles –– Representative (R-WI )  268 Schudson, Michael  58n12 Schwabe, Max –– Representative (R-MO)  284, 301, 346n422, 360 Schwartz, Barry  56, 70n63, 226 Schwellenbach, Lewis Baxter –– Senator (D-WA)  91, 239–41, 242, 252n134, 334n387, 341n406, 342–3, 345n419, 351n434, 384 Scott, Byron Nicholson

457 –– Representative (D-CA)  74n82, 78n102, 85n153, 89–90, 93–4, 100–1, 102, 250, 268, 351, 385 Scott, Hugh D. –– Representative (R-PA)  272–3, 348n429, 350n433, 361, 372 segregation  122, 131, 133, 134, 201, 387 self-government  34, 102, 157, 163, 186, 202–3, 241n98, 262, 272, 274, 276, 277, 285n241, 296, 318, 319, 336n394, 339, 344, 364n461, 368, 371, 375, 377, 378 self-sufficiency  34, 38, 40, 46, 183, 252, 309, 312, 336, 363n459, 386, Sennett, Richard  57 Sesquicentennial of the Declaration of Independence  259, 353 Shanley, James Andrew –– Representative (D-CT)  260–2, 263. See Neutrality legislation. Shannon, Joseph B. –– Representative (D-MO)  171–3, 234–8, 240, 244n107, 245n116, 248n122, 250–1, 255n149, 256n152, 257, 258n156, 262n170, 266n188, 268, 290n254–5, 291–2, 294, 310, 311–5, 341–2, 344n418, 345n420, 346n421, 351n434, 360n453, 362n456, 363n459, 365 Simms, William Gilmore  33 Sixteenth Amendment –– Minor, Robert on  198, 198n610 –– Thomas, Elbert on  290 –– Bone, Homer T.  289 slave rebellion  134n379 slave trade –– Jefferson on end of  126, 126n336, 127, 209n632, 256n150 slaveholder  217, 210 –– Jefferson as  134n379, 210, 217

458 slavery  35, 36–8, 56, 117, 121–301, 134n379, 200–1, 209, 216–17, 248n121, 255–7, 310, 311, 336, 352, 357 –– economic  248121, 310, 352 Smith, Howard W. (TJMC) –– Representative (D-VA)  63, 65, 72–3, 93, 98n220, 104n256, 128, 130, 132, 146, 175, 204, 284, 285n241, 383, 391 Smith, Lon (Chairman, Railroad Commission in Texas) See Garrett, Clyde Leonard. Social Gospel Movement  43 socialism  188, 192, 196, 207, 208n627, 252, 306, 307, 310, 312, 314–6, 323–5, 384 Social Security Act  239n92, 243n104, 248n121, 310, 324–5 social welfare  174, 233, 325 Southeast Businessmen Association 95 Southern Agrarians  15, 19, 25, 29, 39, 46, 47, 177, 195, 210, 324, 344, 356, 379 –– group diversity  15, 32 Southern Congressmen  125, 256, 290, 294n264, 297, 306, 308, 325, 361, 381, 387 –– withdrawing support from FDR  97, 317–8, 324 Soviet Union (USSR) n153,  174, 189n563, 189, 191–2, 202, 205, 305n296, 307n306, 382 –– connection to CPUSA  135–6, 136n387 state rights’ See Jefferson, Thomas, as states’ rights advocate. Statuary Hall, Jefferson statue in  150, 153 Steele, Brian  13, 64

Index

Stonewall Jackson (Jackson, Thomas Jonathan)  33, 127 Stratton, William Grant –– Representative (R-IL)  267–8 strict constructionist –– Jefferson as  22, 23, 26, 228, 231, 274, 280, 287, 291n258, 292, 314 Stuart, Gilbert –– Jefferson Portrait  20 Sullivan, Francis P. –– American Institute of Architecture 98n220 Sully, Thomas –– Jefferson Portrait  146 Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)  121, 396 Sumners, Hatton –– Representative (D-TX)  270, 281n226, 285, 323–4, 391 Supreme Court  74, 198n610, 243, 244, n248, 251, 274, 281, 287, 288–91, 294, 313, 318n334, 338, 354, 386 –– back into Capitol/as Jefferson Memorial 96 –– Sen. Thomas criticizes  116 –– See court-packing. Swain, Martha  97n215, 281n228, 299n282–5, 305n297, 342n410 T Taber, John –– Republican (R-NY)  168n506, 296–7, 300 Tammany Hall  64, 78n108, 125, 258 Tate, Allen  n29, 32, 47, 48–52, 183, 184 Terry, David Dickson –– Representative (D-AR) 86n153, 89 the Sacred  58, 59, 61, 65, 67, 80, 138

459

Index

third term  180–1, 231, 267, 280, 282–7, 389 –– arguments against/for  115, 282–7 –– FDR running for  110, 390–1 –– Jefferson opposed to  180–1, 282–6, 354 –– list of people and organizations supporting of  115 –– See also Roosevelt, Franklin D., third term debate. Thomas Jefferson Bicentennial Commission  19, 26, 159, 175, 176, 177, 350n433 –– new edition of Jefferson’s writings 176 Thomas Jefferson Bicentennial Exercises at the University of Virginia 178 Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission (TJMC)  17, 18, 25, 57, 59, 60, 62–3, 67, 68, 70, 72, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 88, 92, 93, 94, 108–9, 112, 114, 116, 117, 123, 125, 128, 129, 130, 132, 136, 137, 142, 145, 146, 152, 153, 155, 158, 164, 179, 211, 218, 282, 327, 328, 364, 387, 389 –– and FDR  64, 104, 105, 148, 153 –– Annual Report of (1939)  109 –– as moral entrepreneur  62–3, 65 –– criticized  99, 102, 105, 136, 347 –– plans dedication ceremony 158–60 Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation  63, 127, 153n463, –– Gibboney, Stuart  63, 127 Thomas, Elbert Duncan (TJMC) –– commission statement on sites  68–9, 73–4, 75, 83, 95, 96 –– member committee of three  119–23, 130 –– See panel inscriptions.

–– Senator (D-UT)  63, n71, n73, 74–5, 81, 83, 84, 87, 107, 114, 116, 117, 118, 120, 128, 130, 137, 138, 142, 145, 152, 155–8, 160, 187, 198n610, 218, 292–3, 328, 391, 393 –– Sixteenth Amendment  198, 290 –– “World Citizen” New Masses  205, 218, 270, 328 Thomason, Robert E. –– Representative (D-TX)  263n174, 290n254, 298n280, 316, 351n434, 363 Tinkham, George Holden –– Representative (R-MA)  266, 268, 372, 389 Treadway, Allen Towner –– Representative (R-MA) 86n153, 96–7 Treaty with Prussia  261 Trumbull, John  156 Tumulty, Joseph (TJMC)  63, 82, 124–5, 128, 137, 145, U Undelivered Jefferson Day speech  24–25, 26, 227, 364, 367–78 –– FDR’s, See Burns, James MacGregor University of Virginia (UVA)  82, 85n149, 89n166, 91, 92, 112, 164n493, 175, 178, 272n205, 341, 345n491, 346 –– attended by Francis Franklin  208 –– See also Jefferson, Thomas, as founder of. utilitarian memorial  18, 80–83, 85, 86–94, 102, 104, 386 See also alternative memorial proposals. V Vandenberg, Arthur

460 –– Senator (R-MI)  361, 370n480 Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions –– used by Agrarians  39, 52, 274 Virginia Constitutional Convention 49–50 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom  106, 115n282, 271, 313n321, 346n423 –– excerpts as panel inscriptions  120, 393, 394, 396 Voorhis, Jerry H. –– Representative (D-CA)  89n167, 174, 185n550, 249n122, 250n126, 262n170, 268n192, 275, 301–3, 346n422, 348n426, 372 Vorys, John Martin –– Representative (R-OH)  239n91, 284, 285n246 W Wade, John Donald  32, 42–4 Wagner Act  342n409. See also National Labor Relations Act Wagner-Pacifici, Robin  14, 55, 56, 58, 102, 158, 224 Wallace, Henry A.  39, 329n363, 331–2 –– mentioned in New Masses  205–6 –– speech, Jefferson, Practical Idealist  329n363, 330, 332–40, 343, 349n432, 374, 381 war bond drive –– uses of Jefferson in  154–5, 165, 350, 387, 388 Warneke, Heinz  137 Warren, Robert Penn  39n28, 47, 179 Washington Daily News  76, 109 Washington Evening Star  76, 79n113, 109, 154, 164n493–5 Washington, George

Index

–– L’Enfant Plan  69, 70n67, 71, 111, 161 –– linked with Jefferson  71, 108, 109, 111, 130, 223, 282, 285, 396 –– Farewell Address  260 Washington Mall  65–6, 74–5, 125, 387, 390, Washington Monument  17, 74, 105, 106, 126n333, 165 Washington Post, the –– articles related to Jefferson Memorial  63n39, 67n53, 72n75–7, 73n81, 76, 77n95–100, 78, 79n110, 79n113, 80n115, 82, 85n149, 85n152, 88, 91, 92, 93–5, 96, 97n216–7, 98n218, 99, 100, 102n245, 105, 106, 107, 136, 137n390, 139n399, 139n403, 141n409, 149, 227n54 –– report on memorial cornerstone laying 109–12 Washington Times, the  76, 79n113, 101n236, 109 Wearin, Otha Donner –– Representative (D-IA). See Architectural Competition for memorial design Weed, Ronald, and John Heyking  58, 59 Weinman, A. A.  139n403, 145, 147 –– draws pediment image  156–7 White, Compton I.  241 –– Representative (D-ID), See Meffan, George. Who Owns America?: A New Declaration of Independence  29, 31 Willkie, Wendell –– Library of Congress Symposium  20, 179, 183–7, 384, 391 Wilson, Charles R.  30

Index

Wilson, Edmund  208 Wilson, Woodrow  295, 332 Wolcott, Jesse Paine –– Representative (R-MI)  88 Wolfe, Bertram D.  194, 196n608, 197, 198n609, 199–200, 209n631 Woodrum, Clifton A. –– Representative (D-VA)  263n175, 298n280, 316, 372 Wright, Frank Lloyd  18, 98–102 –– “O Government!” Writings of Thomas Jefferson, the –– by Ford  109 Wythe, George  134n380, 350, 396

461 Y yeoman  30, 32, 34, 45, 46, 336, 356 Youngdahl, Oscar Ferdinand –– Representative (R-MN)  248n122 Young Turks  23, 89, 174n520, 250n126, 253, 257, 268n192, 384, 385 Z Zinn, Howard  90n175 Zioncheck, Marion Anthony –– Representative (D-WA)  250n136, 298n281 Zunz, Oliver  233

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Yasmin Djabarian: The Exercise of Soft Power – U.S. Self-Imaging in International Broadcasting to Iran. 2018.

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72

Markus Weik: American Patriotism and Corporate Identity in Automobile Advertising. “What’s Good for General Motors Is Good for the Country and Vice Versa?” 2019.

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73

Winfried Herget (ed.): Revisiting Walt Whitman. On the Occasion of his 200th Birthday. 2019.

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74

Caroline Heller: Appropriating Thomas Jefferson, 1929-1945. We Are All Jeffersonians Now. 2019.

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