The Saxon Perspective: Ancient Inspiration for Jefferson’s Radical Reforms

   

In my initial essay, I argued that understanding Jefferson is made more difficult by lack of context—specifically, lack of awareness regarding the ways Jefferson and his contemporaries thought about the world. Hans Eicholz’s essay offers an outstanding road into Jefferson’s perspective by offering insight into Jefferson’s early years. As he studied the law, Jefferson found in the distant, pre-Norman conquest era of English history an inspirational society: democratic, self-governing, and free. Those who have read Jefferson’s 1774 Summary View will recall Jefferson’s appeals to the example of the Saxon ancestors in order to establish American dominion over their lands and to challenge examples of feudalism in King George’s actions. Eicholz argues that we must look earlier than 1774 to see the genesis of Jefferson’s admiration for the Saxon past: in notes Jefferson wrote in his Legal Commonplace Book as a young lawyer, he came to emphasize an interpretation of history which privileged Saxon freedoms over the corruptions of Norman feudalism, particularly when it came to opposing holding property in humans. Jefferson, and many other revolutionary-era Americans, truly believed that they were reaching back to an ancient legacy of freedom by appealing to the Saxons.[1]

Jefferson’s appreciation for the Saxon legacy endured throughout his life, offering a common thread linking many of his seemingly odd or radical positions. In 1777, while serving in the Virginia legislature, Jefferson was asked to chair a committee assigned with revising the legal code. He had argued against feudal (Norman) land practices in the Summary View; now he argued for a return, as far as possible, to Saxon land policies and the purity of the pre-Norman common law in Virginia. Among other things, Jefferson proposed abolishing the practice of entailing lands, which kept property within the aristocratic families; this bill, along with measures to abolish quitrents, end primogeniture, and to dispose of unappropriated lands, ensured that “the individualistic system of freehold tenure” would prevail over the remnants of a feudal land system.[2]

When Edmund Pendleton raised doubts regarding the wisdom of abolishing the feudal system in Virginia, Jefferson replied:

Time did not alter Jefferson’s opinion of his proposed changes; when in 1809 he remembered being assigned to simplify and re-codify criminal law, he remarked:

Like the British reformers whose histories Jefferson studied, this reformer of Virginian law had conservative intentions, but achieved radical results which transformed many elements of his society.

For the rest of his life, Jefferson was disappointed that the Virginia legislature did not go as far as he would have liked to restore the ancient Saxon system in Virginia. In 1824 he wrote to another Saxon aficionado, Major John Cartwright, that he hoped the legislature would “adopt the subdivision of our counties into wards,” which would “answer to the hundreds of … Saxon [King] Alfred.”[5] He then listed all the elements that each ward would contain:

In Jefferson’s model Saxon society, “[e]ach ward would thus be a small republic within itself, and every man in the State would thus become an acting member of the common government,” just as he believed had existed in ancient times. Jefferson concluded that the “wit of man cannot devise a more solid basis for a free, durable and well administered republic.”[6]

As Eicholz notes, Jefferson’s rejection of slavery can clearly be traced to his studies in Williamsburg, where he came to reject any legal arguments in favor of retaining persons as property. Jefferson’s interpretation of ancient Saxon laws, as he believed they existed before the corruption of Norman feudal doctrines post-1066, served as a strong motivation for his legal attacks on slavery in colonial Virginia. In addition, Jefferson’s draft for the Ordinance of 1784 demonstrates even more clearly his vision for what new, self-governing American states could be like: lands divided into the Saxon unit of “hundreds,” government established by all “free males of full age,” and no slavery.[7] Although many of his views—especially regarding slavery—were perceived as radical at the time, Jefferson perceived himself as re-instituting ancient principles, in line with natural law.

[1] It is important to note that Jefferson’s understanding of the Saxon past rested on somewhat idealized histories, or what is now referred to as the “Saxon myth.” For a detailed study of this topic, see H. Trevor Colbourn, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965).

[2] Merrill Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), 113, 114.

[3] “From Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Pendleton, 13 August 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0205.

[4] Jefferson to Skelton Jones, July 28, 1801, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-01-02-0311. All errors in original.

[5] This was actually the second time Jefferson proposed dividing Virginia in the Saxon fashion; the first was in 1778, when he devised a public education system for children that began with the division of counties into “hundreds.” See Peterson, Thomas Jefferson, 147.

[6] Jefferson to Major John Cartwright, June 5, 1824, Founders Online, National Archives,  https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-4313.

[7] See III. Report of the Committee, 1 March 1784,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-06-02-0420-0004; for “Hundreds” see “Report of a Committee to Establish a Land Office, [30 April 1784],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-07-02-0148.