Thompson applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Heir through Hope: Thomas Jefferson's Lifelong Investment in William Short, and reported the following:
Page 99 of Heir through Hope falls at the end of a chapter. It addresses the dying moments of the Virginian William Short’s diplomatic career, an important subsidiary component of the first half of the book. Having laid much of the groundwork for the Treaty of San Lorenzo signed between the United States and Spain in October 1795, Short was at the last moment supplanted by Thomas Pinckney. Hence references in textbooks to Pinckney’s Treaty not “Short’s Treaty”. Short resigned from foreign service. Page 99 introduces an assessment, concluded over the page, of Short’s claim to be a reliable and unjustly overlooked public servant. Short’s sense of self-worth is an important sub-theme of the book as a whole. Finally, by happy coincidence, the page contains a sentence encapsulating a very much larger theme of the book. “[Jefferson’s] message to Short was, once more, come home.”Learn more about Heir through Hope at the Oxford University Press website.
Jefferson’s “investment” in his relationship with William Short emerges from the consideration of three questions implicit on page 99. Why did Jefferson want William Short to abandon Europe? Why hadn’t Short followed Jefferson’s previous entreaties? What did Jefferson and Short mean by “home”? Jefferson believed that residence abroad exposed an American to moral hazards that corroded decent republican values. From 1795 Short found himself in a tug of love between his “father and friend,” Thomas Jefferson, and his French mistress, the widowed Duchess Rosalie de la Rochefoucauld. In a covert use of Short’s money Jefferson purchased an estate close to Monticello for the younger man. Rosalie extended a substantial loan to Short that helped allow him to live a genteel life in Paris as her acknowledged partner. Short enjoyed French society, especially that of the liberal aristocratic world to which had been introduced by Jefferson as well as Rosalie in the last days of the ancien regime. Yet Short did not believe his life in France had alienated him from American values. Crucially he was reluctant to marry a French aristocrat. For both men “home” meant Virginia. When Short returned to the United States in 1802 he did not settle on the farm Jefferson had bought him. Short’s actions hurt both men. Jefferson’s affection for the man he dubbed, uniquely, his “adoptive son,” was genuine. The greater hurt caused Jefferson by Short’s disinclination to settle in Virginia lay in a fundamental political disagreement. Both men understood that slavery in their home state would not be abolished and could only be ameliorated. Jefferson believed that with amelioration through rational farming and artisanal training in place, Virginia could continue to lead the nation as small producer state, promoting and protecting popular democracy, in the face of threats to his vision of America posed by the commercial and manufacturing interests of the North. Short didn’t buy into this but Jefferson could not let the matter rest. To his dying days Jefferson, acting out of a quasi-parental sense of “tough love,” continued his efforts to set Short straight.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
