Eccentric Founding Fathers: Thomas Jefferson

 

The Founding Fathers are often portrayed as stoic, wig-wearing statesmen, but many were deeply unconventional characters whose quirks, obsessions, and larger-than-life personalities added color to the Revolutionary era.

Thomas Jefferson was a brilliant but peculiar inventor and tinkerer. At Monticello, he installed innovations like a wine dumbwaiter, automatic double doors, a calendar clock with weights dropping into the cellar, and a revolving serving door (lazy Susan). He bathed his feet in cold water daily, kept a pet mockingbird that perched on his shoulder and ate from his lips, and shocked contemporaries by eating tomatoes (then viewed with suspicion).

A shabby dresser who preferred riding horseback over carriages, Jefferson had a reported fear of public speaking and an obsessive love of cataloging and order. His multifaceted genius came with many eccentric edges.

Murder in Colonial Virginia

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Benjamin Franklin and Slavery

At the age of 81, Benjamin Franklin became the president of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. The society, founded by Philadelphia Quakers was one of the first abolitionist organizations in America.

Franklin had not always been such an ardent abolitionist, and is known to have owned two slaves, George and King, who worked as personal servants.

Benjamin Franklin began life as an apprentice, legally bound to a master for a set term. He did not care for the restrictions and ran away from the master, settling in Philadelphia. As an up and coming businessman, however, Franklin had no problem with the institution of slavery. His newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette regularly ran notices regarding the purchase and sale of slaves.

Franklin’s views gradually changed as he grew older. After about 1770 his writings became progressively more anti-slavery, and in a letter to the London Chronicle he called slavery "a constant butchery of the human species by the pestilential detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men."

By 1789 Franklin had freed his slaves and become a fervent abolitionist.



Link to: Who Were the Slaves of the Founding Fathers?

Who were the slaves of the Founding Fathers? What do their individual stories tell us about the Founding Fathers as men?