Presidential Relics

They might be dead, but that doesn't keep dead presidents from making money -- for purveyors of their relics, that is. On December 1, Dallas-based Heritage Auctions will be selling five architectural drawing tools once belonging to Thomas Jefferson, which the company says are expected to fetch $45,000 or more.

The pieces have been consigned by descendants of James Monroe. “The Monroe and Jefferson families were closely intertwined in Virginia society and politics, and the Monroes became the custodians of various items originally owned by Thomas Jefferson,” notes Tom Slater, director of historical auctions at Heritage, in a statement. “A number went to Monticello and other Virginia museums, but this choice grouping remained in private hands, which has afforded us this amazing opportunity to bring it to auction.”

Besides the Jefferson items, also for sale at the same time are the last rocking chair John F. Kennedy was known to have sat in; a pair of glass decanters owned by George Washington; a portrait cameo brooch of Zachary Taylor, owned by Taylor and consigned by a direct descendant; James Monroe's own ceramic meat platter in the "Landing of Lafayette" pattern, commemorating Lafayette's triumphal visit to America in 1824, while Monroe was president; and several china pieces belonging to Mary Todd Lincoln, which she sold to pay off debt after her husband's death.

Separately, the Raab Collection, a historic documents dealer in Philadelphia, is selling a reel-to-reel tape made aboard Air Force One the day John Kennedy was assassinated, which it says is more than 30 minutes longer than a version at the National Archives. The Raab Collection bought the tape from the estate of Army Gen. Chester "Ted" Clifton Jr., who served as the senior military aide to Kennedy, and now wants to sell it for $500,000.

August 18, 1774:Meriwether Lewis' Birthday

But for his association with Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis might have ended his days as an obscure scion of a Virginia planter family in the early days of the Republic. As it happened, though, President Jefferson selected Lewis, his personal secretary since early in his presidency in 1801, to lead the exploration that has ensured him more posthumous fame than some presidents have.

According to the companion web site for the PBS series The West, "The official leader of the epic Lewis and Clark Expedition, Meriwether Lewis has been called 'undoubtedly the greatest pathfinder this country has ever known.' Lewis was born to a Virginia planter family in 1774. His father, who had been an officer in the American Revolution, died when Lewis was five years old...

"After briefly assuming the management of his family's Virginia plantation, Lewis joined the state militia in 1794 to help put down the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. He continued his military career as an officer in the regular army, serving on the frontier in Ohio and Tennessee, and rising to the rank of captain by 1801, when he accepted an invitation from President Thomas Jefferson, an old family friend, to serve as his private secretary.

"Jefferson seems to have selected Lewis for this post with a view to placing him in charge of an already-contemplated transcontinental expedition. When Jefferson had proposed such an expedition in 1792, Lewis had been among the first volunteers, although his youth and inexperience disqualified him at the time. Now, with his frontier experience, Lewis made a perfect candidate in Jefferson's eyes, and the President soon set out a course of study that would equip him with the scientific skills needed for his journey. Between 1801 and the appropriation of funds for the expedition in 1803, Lewis studied with members of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and gathered information about his proposed route..."

The expedition, even in these days of dodgy education when it comes to history, is well known to American schoolchildren. Lewis' uncertain end is not so well known. PBS continues: "In September 1809 [Madison was president by then], Lewis set out for the nation's capital to answer complaints about his actions as governor [of the Missouri Territory], and on this trip died a violent but mysterious death in a tavern about 70 miles southwest of Nashville, Tennessee. Whether he committed suicide, as Jefferson believed, or was murdered, as his family maintained, remains uncertain even today."

July 4, 1826:A Most Remarkable Coincidence

It's one of the first facts that presidential enthusiasts learn: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day of the same year, and not just any day of any year, but July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years to the day that the United States declared independence. Seldom do lifespans dovetail so neatly with historical anniversaries.

Adams and Jefferson weren't the only presidents to die on Independence Day, however. James Monroe did as well, but five years later in 1831, and thus July 4 is the only day in all of the calendar to claim three chief executives. Only two dates have claimed two: March 8 (Fillmore and Taft) and December 26 (Truman and Ford).

The only vice president to die on July 4 -- not counting Adams and Jefferson, who held that post before the presidency -- was Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, Lincoln's first vice president. He held on until the summer of 1891.

Only one president celebrated his birthday on the Fourth of July, Calvin Coolidge, who was born in 1872. Coolidge also happens to be the only vice president ever born on that patriotic day.

June 11, 1776:Jefferson Tasked to Write a Declaration of Independence

On June 11, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, appointed to a committee to draft a declaration of independence. Two future presidents were on the committee, which then tasked one of them -- Thomas Jefferson, with his gift for rhetoric -- with actually writing the thing. The end result was edited by others on the committee and in Congress, but on the whole the document was Jefferson's.

Later Jefferson wrote about the making of the Declaration of Independence:"On the 15th of May, 1776, the convention of Virginia instructed their delegates in Congress to propose to that body to declare the colonies independent of G. Britain, and appointed a committee to prepare a declaration of rights and plan of government.

"In Congress, Friday, June 7, 1776. The delegates from Virginia moved in obedience to instructions from their constituents that the Congress should declare that these United colonies are & of right ought to be free & independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them & the state of Great Britain is & ought to be, totally dissolved; that measures should be immediately taken for procuring the assistance of foreign powers, and a Confederation be formed to bind the colonies more closely together.

"It appearing in the course of these debates that the colonies of N. York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina were not yet matured for falling from the parent stem, but that they were fast advancing to that state, it was thought most prudent to wait a while for them, and to postpone the final decision to July 1, but that this might occasion as little delay as possible a committee was appointed to prepare a declaration of independence. The committee were J. Adams, Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston & myself. Committees were also appointed at the same time to prepare a plan of confederation for the colonies, and to state the terms proper to be proposed for foreign alliance.

"The committee for drawing the declaration of Independence desired me to do it. It was accordingly done, and being approved by them, I reported it to the house on Friday the 28th of June when it was read and ordered to lie on the table."

April 13, 1743:Thomas Jefferson's Birthday

What more to say about the Third President of the United States? Maybe he isn't the sine qua non of the United States like George Washington, but Thomas Jefferson is very nearly of the same stature.

He has his detractors, of course, and always has, but interest in him has never flagged, one way or the other. Even something as obscure (or it would be obscure, if he were not Jefferson) as his tastes in wine support a cottage industry of scholars and documentarians and even an active vineyard.

So on this occasion of Jefferson's 264th birthday, Alexis de Tocqueville has the last word on Jefferson: "The greatest democrat... America has as yet produced."

March 10, 1804:The Stars and Stripes Fly Over St. Louis

How many opportunities does a president get to nearly double the size of his country without bloodshed? The Louisiana Purchase is one of the great real estate deals in history and, as with many such deals, it was a matter of lucking into a willing seller: Napoleon.

In 1803, President Jefferson and a future president, Secretary of State James Madison, sent another future president, James Monroe, to join the US Minister to France, Robert Livingston, to facilitate real estate negotiations with France, but not quite the deal that ultimately happened. "Monroe's charge was to obtain land east of the Mississippi," wrote Gaye Wilson in "Jefferson's Big Deal: the Louisiana Purchase" in the Spring 2003 issue of the Monticello Newsletter. "Monroe's instructions, drawn up by Madison and approved by Jefferson, allocated up to $10 million for the purchase of New Orleans and all or part of the Floridas. If this bid failed, Monroe was instructed to try to purchase just New Orleans, or, at the very least, secure U.S. access to the Mississippi and the port.

"France's minister of finance, Francois de Barbé-Marbois, who had always doubted Louisiana's worth, counseled Napoleon that Louisiana would be less valuable without Saint Domingue [Haiti] and, in the event of war, the territory would likely be taken by the British from Canada. France could not afford to send forces to occupy the entire Mississippi Valley, so why not abandon the idea of empire in America and sell the territory to the United States?

"Napoleon agreed. On April 11, Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand told Livingston that France was willing to sell all of Louisiana. Livingston informed Monroe upon his arrival the next day."

It wasn't until the spring of 1804 that a ceremony (pictured above) marking the changes of sovereignty occurred upriver from New Orleans, where such ceremonies had been held in late 1803. Spain had agreed to turn Louisiana over to France in 1800, but it wasn't generally known, so the Spanish flag still flew over St. Louis until 1804. In a ceremony on March 9, that flag was lowered and the French flag was raised and allowed to fly until the morning of the 10th, when the US flag was raised. The Three Flags ceremony has been re-created in St. Louis a number of times since then, most recently for the bicentennial of the event in 2004.

February 17, 1801:The US House Elects Thomas Jefferson President

On February 17, 1801, the US House of Representatives, after a week of fruitless balloting, finally elected Thomas Jefferson as the third president of the United States. The 1800 electoral vote had, unexpectedly, tied at 73 for Jefferson, 73 for Aaron Burr (the Democratic-Republican vote), 65 for John Adams, 64 for Charles Pinckney, and one for John Jay (the Federalist vote). Under the rules originally established by the US Constitution, each elector cast two votes, but without distinction as to which was for president or vice president. Whomever received a majority of votes was elected president; the second largest number won the vice presidency.

With that in mind, the Federalists had one of their number cast a ballot for John Jay, to allow John Adams the higher number. The Democratic-Republicans had planned to follow the same strategy, but unaccountably did not.

"I thought you were supposed to refrain from voting for Burr."

"Me, Sir? Didn't you receive my message?"

So the election fell to the House of Representatives -- a lame-duck body controlled by Federalists who had to select among two members of the opposition. Alexander Hamilton, though a Federalist among Federalists, was instrumental in the eventual election of Jefferson because he considered him the lesser of two evils when compared to Burr. No doubt this added fuel to Burr's hatred of Hamilton, with well-known deadly consequences a few years later.

The country has had few other presidential elections as deeply contentious as that of 1800, though it would be topped in that regard in 1860, much to the nation's sorrow. "The presidential election of 1800 was an angry, dirty, crisis-ridden contest that seemed to threaten the nation's very survival," wrote Joanne B. Freeman, a professor of history at Yale, in the September 2004 issue of History Now. "A bitter partisan battle between Federalist John Adams and Republican Thomas Jefferson, it produced a tie between Jefferson and his Republican running mate, Aaron Burr; a deadlock in the House where the tie had to be broken; an outburst of intrigue and suspicion as Federalists struggled to determine a course of action; Jefferson's election; and Burr's eventual downfall... It also pushed partisan rivalry to an extreme, inspiring a host of creative and far-reaching electoral ploys. As a sense of crisis built, there was even talk of disunion and civil war, and indeed, two states began to organize their militias to seize the government if Jefferson did not prevail."

January 1, 1772: The Marriage of Thomas & Martha Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson had a wife. She’s part of the historical record, of course, but Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson is a shadowy figure in the historic imagination of the United States. For one thing, she didn’t live long enough to be a First Lady. In fact, she didn’t quite live to be 34, with her husband surviving her by nearly 44 years. Also, no portraits of her survive, beyond a silhouette (pictured) – making her literally a shadowy figure.



Then there’s the matter of Sally Hemings. A founding father (and Enlightenment thinker) and his slave mistress: now that’s a story with sex appeal, far eclipsing the Jefferson marriage in popular renown. But whatever happened between Thomas and Sally, it was still in the future when Thomas and Martha were married on January 1, 1772, at her father’s plantation, The Forest, near Williamsburg, Va.

It was a match within their class, he a landowner and member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and she the daughter of a landowner and prominent attorney. Yet it’s astonishing how precarious life was, even for the upper class, in the days before public health or germ theory or any of the other medical advances we know well.

Martha was a young widow – her husband, Bathurst Skelton, had died in an accident (that’s a seriously deep bit of trivia, the name of Martha Jefferson’s first husband). Her son by Skelton died before he turned four years old. Thomas and Martha had five children, three of whom died in infancy, and one of whom died at 22 when Jefferson was president. And the stress of all those babies apparently helped push Martha herself into the grave on September 6, 1782.

A well-written short biographical sketch of Martha Jefferson appears at firstladies.org, even though technically she wasn’t a First Lady. It also contains a discussion of the complicated relationship between her father’s family, the Wayles, and the Hemings family, since it was Martha who brought Thomas into contact with them.