There is little record of the conversations that occurred at Monticello for the next eight days, November 6-13, 1824, either between Lafayette and Jefferson, or with the other temporary or permanent residents who included Madison, the Wright sisters (more about them below), Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Levasseur, George Washington Lafayette, Jane Smith, and more. Jefferson’s principal biographer, Dumas Malone, suggested that Lafayette and Jefferson “reminisced about the American and French revolutions, discussed the low state of political liberty in Europe and the problem of slavery in the United States.”[1] Well, of course.[2]

An enslaved boy, Israel Gillette Jefferson, reported that:

[A]lmost every day I took them out to a drive.

On the occasion I am now about to speak of, Gen. Lafayette and George were seated in the carriage with him. The conversation turned upon the condition of the colored people — the slaves. Lafayette spoke indifferently; sometimes I could scarcely understand him. But on this occasion my ears were eagerly taking in every sound that proceeded from the venerable patriot’s mouth.

Lafayette remarked that he thought that the slaves ought to be free; that no man could rightly hold ownership in his brother man; that he gave his best services to and spent his money in behalf of the Americans freely because he felt that they were fighting for a great and noble principle — the freedom of mankind; that instead of all being free a portion were held in bondage (which seemed to grieve his noble heart); that it would be mutually beneficial to masters and slaves if the latter were educated, and so on. Mr. Jefferson replied that he thought the time would come when the slaves would be free, but did not indicate when or in what manner they would get their freedom. He seemed to think that the time had not then arrived. To the latter proposition of Gen. Lafayette, Mr. Jefferson in part assented. He was in favor of teaching the slaves to learn to read print; that to teach them to write would enable them to forge papers, when they could no longer be kept in subjugation.

This conversation was very gratifying to me, and I treasured it up in my heart.[3]

Thomas Jefferson Randolph discounted Israel’s account:

He is made to record a conversation occurring half a century before, lying dormant on his mind during that period never before having been known to relate it, between Jefferson and La Fayette. La Fayette according to Israel[‘]s own admission speaking with an accent that rendered it difficult for him to understand him. This conversation so distinctly heard and remembered for fifty years occurred between these two feeble old men in a rapidly moving coach, Israel the postillion riding the near leader of a four horse team at the time that he is made to say he heard it.

On the other hand, Lafayette was a long-time abolitionist[4], and, given what Frances Wright relates (below), the language of the two men reported by Israel is credible.

Jane Smith provided the following description of these days at Monticello:

The President, Mr. Monroe, came frequently during La Fayette’s visit, to Monticello: his country place was a few miles distant, and he came on horseback, attended by a colored servant. The ladies of the President’s family must have been in Washington….

The days of the week passed in these scenes and in this distinguished company, are marked each with a white stone. All was bright. The sun shone every day — the Indian summer became every day softer: we walked on the roads that circled the mountain: in the mild delicious moonlit evenings we strolled on the terrace and watched the return of the General, who was for some days escorted by a company of horsemen.

Slavery was much on the mind of Levasseur. In his memoirs, he discusses the institution of slavery in the chapter before his visit to Monticello.[5] In the chapter on his visit to Monticello, he notes that, on the visit to the University of Virginia [unclear if this was the visit of Nov. 5 or 8] Jefferson “conveyed us thither in a very elegant calash, made by negroes on his own place; it appeared to be very well made, and in its construction I found a powerful argument against those who pretend that the intelligence of negroes can never be raised to the height of the mechanic arts.”[6] Levasseur noted that the plantation used 50 active enslaved persons which would equate to 30 free laborers[7] and he conversed with some of them, reflecting in his memoirs on their attitudes and condition.[8]

Frances Wright,[9] who with her sister had been invited by Lafayette to come to America with him but who traveled by separate boat across the ocean, arrived at Monticello after Lafayette[10] and stayed a few days after Lafayette had left. She was an abolitionist, as reflected in her book on her earlier visit to the United States.[11] Wright clearly discussed slavery with Jefferson. On November 12, she wrote from Monticello that “Mr. Jefferson is very anxious that some steps which he considers as preparatory to the abolition of slavery at least in this state should be adopted this winter. You will find his plan (that which he proposed, in the Virginia legislature at the time of the revolution) /sketched/ in the Notes.”[12] And she continued to discuss slavery in correspondence with Jefferson after she left Monticello and went to New Harmony, Indiana.[13]

Introduced to Jefferson by letter of introduction by his grandfather’s neighbor in Quincy, Massachusetts, a young man named Benjamin Richardson arrived in Charlottesville on Nov. 6. Although aware Lafayette was visiting Jefferson, Richardson walked to Monticello on Nov. 8. After offering his letter of introduction, “[W]e sat alone before a fire” and then Jefferson invited him to ride with “a large party” (including Miss Wright) going to dine at the University. He said he would offer Richardson a bed but his home was full of guests. Richardson declined the ride and the meal but walked to the University on his own to tour it. Before he left Monticello, Jefferson introduced him to Lafayette.[14]

On November 9 a delegation from Fredericksburg came to Monticello to invite Lafayette to visit the town and Lafayette accepted.[15]

Lafayette left Jefferson and Monticello at 9 a.m., on Monday, Nov. 15, with an extensive escort, for Madison’s Montpelier, arriving first at Gordonsville at 1 p.m.[16]

Part 7 will conclude with a second visit Lafayette paid to Jefferson at the tail end of his tour, a summary of Lafayette’s tour after his first visit to Jefferson, the aftermath of his tour, and final thoughts.

[A link to Part 5 is here.]

[1] Jefferson and His Time, vol. 6 (1981), p. 408, n. 40. Malone cites Levasseur’s memoirs and a Nov. 15, 1824, letter from Jefferson to Madison, but neither refer to these subjects or specific conversations.

[2] See generally the four decades of correspondence between them collected in Gilbert Chinard, The Letters of Lafayette and Jefferson (1929).

[3] Israel Jefferson (1800-ca. 1870), “Life Among the Lowly, No. III,” Pike County (Ohio) Republican, Dec. 25, 1873.

[4] See “Farewell Tour [1824-1825],” Lafayette and Slavery, Special Collections and College Archives, Lafayette College.

[5] Levasseur, vol. 1, pp. 203-210.

[6] Levasseur, vol. 1, p. 220.

[7] Levasseur, vol. 1, pp. 217-18.

[8] Levasseur, vol. 1, p. 219.

[9] In 1824, her portrait was painted by Henry Inman.

[10] As Jane Smith notes, “By and by, a day or two after the arrival [of Lafayette], came the bluestocking Miss Wright and her sister: the elder, Fanny, was in the zenith of her fame as the authoress of a ‘Few days in Athens.’”

[11] Views of Society and Manners in America (1821).

[12] Letter from Wright to Julia and Harriet Garnett, quoted in “Frances Wright,” Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia.

[13] “Frances Wright,” Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia.

[14] Benjamin Richardson, “The Travel Diary of Benjamin Richardson,” unpublished manuscript owned by a descendant of Richardson.

[15] Nolan, p. 258.

[16] Details supplied by the Citizen Gazette of Nov. 19, and republished in Brandon, p. 131.