Thomas Jefferson and
Andrew Johnson
Erin Kerr, Shaney Soderquist and Alex
Weisner
“The Circle of Our Felicities”:
Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural
Address and the Rhetoric of
Nationhood
Stephen Howard Browne
Rhetorical Contexts
• Democracy and Persuasion are interlocked
• Unprecedented expansion of the spaces of
political action
• Jefferson’s inaugural (like his politics) = both
forward-looking and indebted to certain
rhetorical traditions
• Used rhetoric to rededicate common values
and mutual commitment to each other’s
fortunes
Three Conventions of Public Discourse
1.) Religious
2.) Civic
3.) Political
Shaped the 1st Inaugural Address, its reception,
and its legacy.
Religious Contexts
• Adamant not to have religious convictions
impose or intrude into the affairs of state
• Defined Americans: Religious (often,
definitively) without uniformity of faith;
Singular;
• The “American Mind”
• America as a chosen people
– John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill”
Civic Commemoration
• Bring history to the national present
• Jefferson faced an audience well-positioned to
recognize the Inaugural for what it was and
what it hoped to accomplish.
• Precedents of “Political Theater”:
– Local in delivery and source
– Reaching out to the nation as a whole
– About political life, but not overly partisan
• Disseminate the experience of citizenship
Political Debate
• Paradoxical performance
• Appeal to “American” principles, rather than
party principles
• Jefferson was the one to realize the potential
inherent to the inaugural form
Jeffersonian Style
• Transcribed his consummate optimism into the
American spirit
• Form + Content = Singular, lasting image of the
man
• Compared to “well-drawn portraits, which regard
and follow us with their eyes in whatever
direction we move.”
• First-person pronoun usage – Strategic
• Symmetry in politics and rhetoric
• Propriety and Simplicity
The First Inaugural’s Achievements
• Presented a partisan tract and a political
treatise, without announcing itself as either
• Precedent: Encourage, reduce uncertainty,
urge to continue on the path towards a
prosperous future
• Summon fellow republicans to a better version
of themselves
Jefferson vs. Napoleon:
The Limits of Rhetoric
Lawrence S. Kaplan
Beginnings
• 1808 William Cullen Bryant identified
Jefferson as “Napoleon’s slave”
• Napoleon had an enormous impact on
Jefferson’s presidency
• Jefferson’s main goal was to turn the
superpowers of France and Britain against
each other
• Triangular relationship
Territory Strategy
• Spain – Louisiana
• Britain—found a rough path across America
• France—conspiring with the Spanish for
control of the Mississippi
Foreign Affairs
• War was not the answer in dealing with
France
• Jefferson faced the Federalist motto of
“Political connections with none” as he
entered office
• “Just a difference of opinion, not of principal”
• Was this a genuine promotion of partisanship?
• Was he trying to pursue his Republican
objectives?
Treaty of Entaglement
• Louisiana cession
• Jefferson tried to avoid talking about Louisiana
• “Another year has come around, and finds us
still blessed with peace and friendship
abroad”
French-American Agreement
• Persuasion/intimidation of Napoleon
• British ships blocked key ports, nullifying trade
acts
• Napoleon succeeds
• Jefferson succeeds
Jefferson’s Other
Bradford Vivian
Background
•Rumors of an affair between Thomas Jefferson
and Sally Hemings
•Widespread interest in the possibility of an affair
between Jefferson and his slave in the 20th
century
•Winthrop Jordan’s White over black: American
Attitudes toward the Negro 1550-1812 was the
first story to discuss the affair
•Public memory of Jefferson became foreign with
the growing story of Hemings
Two Attempts to Prove Affair
• Annette Gordon-Reed’s Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings:
An American Controversy
– Social, political, and institutional biases had prevented getting to the
truth
– Argued historians had failed to apply standards consistently and fairly
to the affair examination
• Eugene A. Foster did a study comparing DNA samples from
Jefferson and Hemings
– They used a haplotype containing 19 polymorphic markers taken from
decendents of Field Jefferson (uncle), The haplotype matched Eston
Heming to the male-line of descendants
– Less than 1% chance for this match, most compelling evidence
presented in debate
Jaques Derrida and the “pathos of
indecision”
• Actively provokes a response because it
stimulates crisis over standards and procedures
• Gordon-Reed’s application of forensic standards
was a “political intervention: and an “ethical
judgment” that weighed all evidence equitable
• Ethos of Foster and his colleagues’ genetic tests
were very persuasive in the “undecidability” of
the debate
• Public view, still undecided
New Stories and Different Voices
• The concept of Romance
• 1995 Film- Jefferson in Paris, displays Jefferson and
Hemings’ relationship as a Parisian romance
– Portrays Sally as a teenager who develops into
womanhood
– The concept of Jefferson and a young, exotic beauty
very appealing to public
– These accounts invoke the pathos of romance, used to
portray the courtly love of an idealized president
• Barbara Chase-Riboud’s 1979 novel Sally Hemings –
portraying Sally as a multidimensional character
Romance Continued on CBS
• CBS (2000)—Sally Hemings: An American
Scandal
• The tale conjures a sympathetic version of
Jefferson struggling against the institution of
slavery for the sake of love
• Rhetorical functions of a romantic narrative
portraying Hemings as a heroic figure
sacrificing her freedom for that of her children
The Demon in Jefferson
• Steve Erickson’s 1993 novel Arc d’X
• Motivated by a desire to bring Jefferson’s unconscious into
the light of the 20th century, proving the demon people
imagine must have lived in him somewhere
• A Jefferson lusting after a teenager, both of whom was his
slave and his late wife’s half sister whom he would enslave
again by molesting her
• Produces an unadultered encounter with Jefferson’s other:
the private demon within the civic saint
• Represents a metaphor of America
• Suggesting that the pursuit of happiness for one political
body is conducted through the sacrifice of another’s selfdetermination
In Summary
• The rhetoric of public memory often comes into
being as the manifestation of a desire to enlarge
our frequently shallow and elliptical knowledge
of the past
• The appeal of Jefferson’s secret past becomes a
desire to us in the present
• Jefferson has acquired such a foreign quality that
the way we tend to remember him is by his
other: by the ghost of Sally Hemings or the ghosts
of his own passions
Politics of Character:
Andrew Johnson
Stephen Howard Browne
Background to Article
• 17th president
• First president to be impeached
• First president to succeed the presidency
upon assassination of predecessor (Lincoln)
Stephen Howard Browne
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Unlovable character
ill-suited in almost every possible way
Worst presidents to date
There are three attributes (mind, character,
and speech) which set a standard to mark and
evaluate presidential virtue, but all work
against Johnson
March 11, 1865
Johnson’s Vice-Presidential Inaugural Address
• All accounts claim Johnson was drunk for
speech
• Three main traits for his speech:
– The use of pronominal and possessive first person
– Speaker’s insistence that he is a legitimate
claimant to the office he now occupies
– The compulsive need to invoke “the people” as
the ultimate source of power the final check
against party pressures
Self-Regard and the Presidential Ethos
• Lincoln and Johnson
• Johnson was unable to rise to his position
Example of September 12th Speech
• The speech was not just policy arguments,
but strenuous protestations of innocence,
appeals to his personal past, and allusions to
his Christlike mission to save his country from
the satanic designs of his opponents-
Orator
• In earlier days very good at captivating large
audiences
• Able to identify with people in simple and
powerful language
• The willingness and honestly is what also
mortified northerners
• It was his way of engaging audiences and
disputing his character that prompted so much
criticism
February 22, 1866,
Speech on White House Balcony on Washington’s Birthday
• Demonstrating distance from Lincoln in popular
imagination
• Hadn’t prepared anything, very clear focused
on the profusion of self-references, the demands
for respect, the appeals to the people
• Traitors and treason in the South- those still
opposed to the restoration of the states, Publicly
identified and charge other senators, prominent
national reformer, with treason
Two main personality traits
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Obstinate
Inconsistent
Willful to the point of abject stubbornness
Weak in the face of flattery
Intransigent when he needed to compromise, but
unable to hold a promise
• Johnson never acknowledged this, but many
listeners heard it and that is what wrecked him
Summary
• Johnson went against his own professions and
melted into the arms of the South
• Once a plebian he had arrived in a place
where he was in charge and it was satisfying
to spend the bounty of power on those who
had forsaken him
• Everything melted away with his vision of
becoming a Southern Gentleman
Discussion
• What is the president’s job?
• How does Jefferson define his role as
President?
• How does he define the people’s role?
• What does his era teach us about our era?
• Why do we care?