our anglo-saxon ancestors

289 Pages·2007·2.06 MB·English

by  Jessica Walker

‘OUR ANGLO-SAXON ANCESTORS’

THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE ROLE OF ENGLISH HISTORY
IN THE BUILDING OF THE AMERICAN NATION

By Jessica Lorraine Walker, BA (Hons)

This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of
Western Australia

School of Humanities

2007
ABSTRACT

This thesis contends that Anglo-Saxon studies made a powerful contribution to
Thomas Jefferson’s development of public concepts of American identity and
nationalism in ways that have been elided by scholars preoccupied with Jefferson’s
classicism. Jefferson’s comprehensive survey of Anglo-Saxon grammar, language,
law and emigration provided him with a precedent for revolution and helped him
develop a model of American nationhood. Jefferson’s detailed study of the Anglo-
Saxon era set him apart from writers on both sides of the Atlantic in the period
1750-1860, and this thesis will argue that to generalize his interest as ‘whig history’
or a subscription to a theory of Teutonic superiority is unjustified.
Chapter One considers Jefferson’s educational background, his exposure to Anglo-
Saxon history and the degree to which he might have been encouraged to pursue it.
Previous studies of Jefferson’s Anglo-Saxonism have presumed that there was a
‘Gothic font’ from which American Founding Fathers could drink; the detailed
study of Anglo-Saxon historiography in this chapter will show otherwise. Chapter
Two is concerned with a detailed examination of the collections of books relating to
Anglo-Saxon history and language that Jefferson collected throughout his lifetime.
If Jefferson was concerned with whig dialogues, or interested in the Saxons as a
product of a passion for Tacitus we should find evidence of it here. In fact, the
study of Jefferson’s library in Chapter Two demonstrates that Jefferson was
genuinely an expert Anglo-Saxon scholar and regarded that knowledge base as a
political tool. Chapters Three and Four constitute detailed examinations of the
nationalist use to which Jefferson put his understanding of early English history.
Chapter Three considers the problem of shared heritage with Britain confronting
the American statesman in the 1760s and 1770s and his employment of pre-Norman
history in resolving this conflict. Chapter Four enlarges upon the study of American
national identity, with specific reference to the linguistic debates following on the
Revolution. This chapter revolves around a reconsideration of Jefferson’s Anglo-
Saxon Essay and his attempts to introduce this language into the education of future
American statesmen. Jefferson’s examination of Anglo-Saxon history, when
considered in this light, seems oddly discordant with the simplistic notion of
Jefferson as a founder of Teutonic superiority. Chapter Five is interested in
Jefferson’s impact on historical rhetoric in the nineteenth century.
Thomas Jefferson used English history as an aid to separating an American nation
from the British Empire and he believed that Americans could look to their Anglo-
Saxon ancestors for a precedent that would justify their independence from Britain.
He saw in Anglo-Saxon studies a means for appropriating those parts of English
history that could underpin a national identity defined by freedom, initiative, and
perhaps a racial predilection for democracy, while simultaneously rejecting
Britain’s authority in his present.
For Geoff, Erica, Andrew, Vanessa and Sonya, with my love and
gratitude.
iv
It is very difficult to persuade the great body of mankind to give up
what they have once learned, and are now masters of, for something to
be learnt anew. Time alone insensibly wears down old habits, and
produces small changes at long intervals, and to this process we must
all accommodate ourselves, and be content to follow those who will
not follow us.1

1 Thomas Jefferson to John Wilson, August 17, 1813
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my thanks to both of my supervisors not only for their
tireless support and the quality of their contributions, but for their willingness to
accommodate the unusual pacing of my work, and the unusual emotional demands.
Also to the history department at the University of Western Australia for the strong
support they provide to their postgraduate students, especially Rob Stuart, Muriel
Mahony, those senior academics who regularly give up their time to attend the
work-in-progress seminars, and those fun-loving larrikins with whom I
occasionally share an office.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to the American scholarly community,
particularly at the University of California San Diego, for their generosity and
support while I was so far away from my own institution. Without having any
formal ties to any university in the States, I nevertheless found an endless supply of
advice and sympathy there. Thank you especially to Cameron Addis for the many
useful references on subjects that were unfamiliar to me at the start of this project.

There have been certain complications attached to studying American and
English history from Australia, and I could not have accomplished as much
research as I have in the last four years without the assistance of the librarians at the
Huntington and British Libraries. A particular mention must be made of James
Stimpert at John’s Hopkins University and of Donna P Barbour, Kathy Harlow, and
the rest of the staff of the Alderman Library Lending Section, University of
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Virginia, who made available to me the unpublished theses at their institutions at
very short notice. Thanks also to the University of Western Australia history
department for supporting the necessary research expeditions.

I would not have successfully completed this project without the loving
assistance of my immediate family. Thank you especially to all those I live with
who have been so undemanding of me while I was trying to meet deadlines, and so
generous with their time and energy. My parents and siblings are certainly entitled
to more credit than I can give them here, especially Vanessa and Sonya (whose
weddings coincided with my busiest periods of study). Thanks also to my new
brothers in law Nic Rando and Greg Bennett, both of whom met me while I was in
the throes of writing up my thesis and immediately threw their support behind me.

Finally, there are a number of friends (some of them also relatives) that I need
to thank for sounding ideas, proof reading early drafts, moral support though the
emotional trials, and the sometimes unwanted and unpalatable advice which in
retrospect I am so very glad I took on board. I pay special tribute to all those whose
regular messages of love and sympathy have been unaccompanied by reproofs for
being so long buried in my research.
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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................1
‘EDUCATED IN ROYALISM’: HISTORY FOR THE GOVERNING CLASSES OF
ENGLAND AND AMERICA, C1620 – 1770.....................................................................30
READING JEFFERSON’S LIBRARY..............................................................................85
PRECEDENCE AND INDEPENDENCE: THE RIGHTS OF BRITISH AMERICANS
.............................................................................................................................................128
‘AN AMERICAN DIALECT’: JEFFERSON’S ANGLO-SAXON ESSAY.................153
SAXONS, NORMANS AND CELTS: ENGLISH ANCESTORS IN NINETEENTH
CENTURY AMERICA.....................................................................................................186
CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................225
APPENDIX: WATTERSTON’S CATALOGUE............................................................231
BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................................................233
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Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet
sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of
not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being
right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But
the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. 2

INTRODUCTION

On July 4 1776, the same day that the Declaration of Independence was signed,
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams were assigned to consider
an appropriate design for a Great Seal to represent the new nation.3 Adams
proposed the figure of Hercules resting on his club, shunning sloth and pleasure,
and beckoned by Virtue to ascend her rugged mountain, clearly a classical image.
Franklin preferred a Biblical icon: Moses in priestly robes causing the sea to
overwhelm mighty Pharaoh, while a pillar of fire in the clouds evoked divine
presence. Jefferson liked this, and proposed for the reverse side:

Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon chiefs from whom we claim the honor
of being descended, and whose political principles and form of
government we have assumed.4

This extraordinary statement of American descent from Anglo-Saxon
ancestry has provoked surprisingly little analysis from historians, as indeed has

2 Common Sense, printed in Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Common Sense and
Other Political Writings, Edited with an Introduction by Mark Philp (Oxford, 1995)
introduction
3 For an excellent discussion of this event see Allen J Frantzen, Desire for Origins:
New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition (New Brunswick and
London, 1947) p15-17
4 Quoted by John Adams to Abigail Adams, August 14, 1776 cited in Charles
Francis Adams, ed., Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife, Abigail Adams,
During the Revolution (New York, 1876) p210
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Jefferson’s prolonged and detailed study of the Anglo-Saxon language and laws.
Jefferson’s devotion to early English history transcended an interest in the origins
of the common law or a subscription to a myth of Saxon democracy; it was a vital
part of his nation building rhetoric.

This thesis uses Jefferson’s studies of the Anglo-Saxon period to fill two
historical lacunae. Firstly, it fills a gap in Jeffersonian historiography in its
contention that Anglo-Saxon studies made a powerful contribution to his
development of public concepts of American identity and nationalism in ways that
have been elided by scholars preoccupied by Jefferson’s classicism. Caught up in
debate over the relative influence of Lokean liberalism and classical republicanism
over Jefferson and his writings, scholars have simply overlooked the evidence that
Anglo-Saxon studies provided Jefferson with a seperate source of inspiration.
Jefferson’s comprehensive survey of Anglo-Saxon grammar, language, law and
emigration provided him with a precedent for revolution and helped him develop a
model of American nationhood. Secondly this thesis argues that Jefferson has been
neglected in the British literature on Anglo-Saxonism itself, in which his Anglo-
Saxon scholarship has earned him a place.

The problems with existing research into Jefferson’s Anglo-Saxon
studies

Jefferson has long been recognized as a student of history, but the details of what
he studied and why are far from being fully explored. None of Jefferson’s
biographers appears to have appreciated the actual significance of Anglo-Saxon
studies to him. Malone briefly noted Jefferson’s ‘enduring interest in Anglo-Saxon,
which began when he was struggling with legal terms as a law student’ in this
single sentence set amidst a paragraph commenting on Jefferson’s broad linguistic
interests.5 As Kennedy observes, ‘[t]he problem for historians assessing the

5 Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian, ed. Brown and Company Little, VI vols.,
vol. I, Jefferson and His Times (Boston, 1948) p105
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character of Thomas Jefferson is that they have too much accessible information.’6
Few have chosen to specialize in what has been perceived as the relatively obscure
field of his Anglo-Saxon studies.

A number of historians have considered Jefferson’s Anglo-Saxon interest as a
subscription to a popular idealization of England’s pre-feudal history. Freedman
and Spiegel noted:

Thomas Jefferson and other early American revolutionaries were immersed in
myths of Anglo-Saxon democracy, whose laws and chronicles, they believed,
foreshadowed their ambitions for democracy.7

Nathan Schachner singled Jefferson out at greater length, describing details of his
belief in the Saxon democracy.8 Without pausing to examine the origins of Anglo-
Saxon studies, or the depth of Jefferson’s academia on the subject Schachner
concluded:

To his Anglo-Saxon forebears, indeed, he came to attribute all the
virtues and believed that the current corruption of England was due
solely to the Norman invasion and the consequent introduction of the
feudal system.9

In this formulation, Jefferson’s specialised study of Anglo-Saxon history is
confused by those who examine his beliefs only as a cursory adjunct to a theory of
the development of Teutonic racism with a subscription to a popular glamorisation
of Saxon democracy. Schachner suggested that:
Jefferson might be considered one of the first to support in America
the Teutonic hypothesis that became so fashionable in the second half

6 Roger G Kennedy, Burr, Hamilton and Jefferson; A Study in Character (Oxford,
2000) p7
7 Paul Freedman and Gabrielle Speigel, "Medievalisms Old and New: The
Rediscovery of Alterity in North American Medieval Studies," The American
Historical Review 103 (1998): p680
8 Nathan Schachner, Thomas Jefferson: A Biography (New York, 1957) p47
9 Ibid p48
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