March 2025

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XXII, Number 3                                                        March 2025

 

ALIEN ENEMIES: The bizarre, out-of-the-blue invoking of 1798 Alien Enemies Act during peacetime by the current U.S. president to deport undesirable Venezuelan “aliens” brought to mind something I discovered while doing the research for Saving Monticello twenty-five years ago: another North American Alien Enemies Act, this one a Civil War law enacted in the Confederate States of America’s Congress in August 1861, less than five months after the conflict began.

The “alien enemies” in question in this case were citizens of non-rebelling states who owned property in the eleven Confederate states. The law mandated the removal of said residents from those southern states. It also authorized the seizing of property in the South owned by the ousted non-southerners. 

That included Monticello since the property’s then-owner, U.S. Navy Captain Uriah P. Levy, lived most of the year in New York City when the War of 1812 veteran wasn’t sailing the seven seas. 

Proceedings began on October 10, 1861, to “sequestrate ‘Monticello’ as the property of an alien enemy,” the Richmond Examiner reported, since “the present owner, Levy, [was] abroad… in charge of a United States ship of war.” Actually, Levy was in Washington, D.C., at that time, preparing to take over the Navy’s Court-Martial Board.

The Examiner felt the need to out point out that the “people of Charlottesville” called “the late owner of Monticello ‘Commodore Levee.’ He is a first Captain in the United States Navy, and of Jewish parentage.”*

Monticello “has been confiscated,” Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper reported four months later, “with all its lands, negroes, cattle, farming utensils, furniture, paintings, wines, etc., together with two other farms belonging to the same owner, and valued at from $70,000 to $80,000.” That New York newspaper went on to expound on Uriah Levy’s patriotism and military service, and concluded: “Certainly no officer in the army or navy has been so victimized by the rebels.” 

Uriah Levy fought the confiscation in the Confederate courts. After he died on March 22, 1862, his estate’s lawyer, George Carr, continued pressing the case. The CSA finally prevailed legally on September 27, 1864, at a time when the South’s treasury was in dire need of cash.

On November 17, an auction took place on the mountaintop. Monticello, its grounds and its contents, and hundreds of acres of land Levy had purchased around Charlottesville were put on the block. So were Levy’s enslaved people.

What a New York Times correspondent on the scene termed “a large number of people” showed up for the sale. That included Uriah Levy’s brother Jonas, then living in Wilmington, North Carolina, who had his eye on buying the house.

The crowd also included Lieutenant Col. Benjamin Franklin Ficklin, Jr., of the 50th Virginia Regiment, who outbid Levy and everyone else and plunked down $80,500 in Confederate money for Monticello and its adjoining acreage. Levy’s estate, under terms of the act, was not compensated.

As I wrote in the book, Ficklin (below) also bought a bust of Jefferson for $50. Other Levy items sold that day included a pianoforte, a marble-topped sideboard, a washstand, cattle, oxen, a threshing machine, and 19 enslaved people. Jonas Levy paid $5,400 for an enslaved man named John, and took home a model of one of his brother’s ship’s, the Vandalia, for $100. The CSA’s total take was $350,000.'

Ficklin—a colorful and adventurous character, had been wounded in the Mexican War and later went on to be one of the founders of the legendary Pony Express. He returned to his regiment after the auction, and most likely never spent a night in the house that Jefferson built,  

Although the sale took place in November 1864, Ficklin did not receive title from the District Court until March 17, 1865, three weeks before Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox ending the war. According to Ficklin family lore, Benjamin Ficklin, a bachelor, brought his aging father, Rev. Ficklin, to live at Monticello, where he died.

Other reports indicate that several other members of the family moved into Monticello, including Capt. Ficklin's youngest sister Susan and her husband Joseph Hardesty, and a brother known as “Dissolute Willie.” A family story has it that Willie sold some of the Jefferson furniture left in the house to pay gambling debts, and that their father died in Jefferson’s bed.

For his part, B.F. Ficklin, Jr., who is buried in Maplewood Cemetery in Charlottesville, died at age 44 while dining at the Willard Hotel in Washington when a fishbone lodged in his throat and the doctor who tried to remove it severed an artery.

* Uriah Levy was given the command of the U.S. Navy’s entire American Mediterranean Squadron on January 7, 1860, a position that entitled him to the honorary rank of Commodore. Although he never was commissioned a commodore, the Navy officially recognized him as one and referred to him as a Commodore in all official communications.

 

THE AI STATUE: In the January issue I mentioned that I’d recently learned that in 1881, two years after he acquired Monticello from his uncle’s estate, Jefferson Monroe Levy (a son of Jonas Levy) had written an article in which he said he would donate $500 toward “the erection of a statue of Jefferson in Central park [sic]” in New York City.

I confirmed that no such statue ever was erected, but that new information got me thinking about what an 1880s statue in Central Park would look like. I decided, for the first time, to ask an AI website to create an image. I was singularly unsuccessful.

When I mentioned that to Hunt Lyman, an old friend who has studied and written about AI for several years, he said he’d take a look. In less than a New York minute—or so it seemed—Hunt came up with the image below.

I think it looks convincing, though I’m not sure why the statue would be in the middle of a walkway. Plus, I had to laugh at the “Central Park” sign on the lamppost.

 

EVENTS AND COMMERCE:  I have a growing number of events scheduled starting this spring and summer, most of them for my new book, The Unlikely War Hero, a slice-of-life biography of the extraordinary Vietnam War story of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest ranking American prisoner held in Hanoi during the war. Many are speaking engagements for historic preservation and other groups. Some are open to the public. For details, go to this page on my website: marcleepson.com/events

If you’d like to arrange a talk on The Unlikely War Hero, Saving Monticello, or any of my other books, please email me at marcleepson@gmail.com  The book is now in its fourth printing, with a fifth on the way. 

To order a signed copy, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering I also have new paperback copies of Saving Monticello, as well as paperback copies of Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; and Ballad of the Green Beret