Saving Monticello: The Newsletter
The latest about the book, author events, and more
Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson
Volume XVIII, Number 11 November 1, 2021
“The study of the past is a constantly evolving,
never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner
THE STATUE: On Monday, October 19, Thomas Jefferson and Uriah Levy made national headlines when New York City decided to remove a larger-than-life statue of Thomas Jefferson from its City Council chambers in Manhattan. Said statue was donated to the city in 1833 by then U.S. Navy Lt. Uriah Phillips Levy, a NYC resident who commissioned it from the noted French sculptor Pierre-Jean David d’Angers in Paris.
The unanimous vote to remove the imposing statue by the eleven-member New York City Public Design Commission came after the City Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus formally requested it mainly because Thomas Jefferson enslaved more than 600 people during his lifetime. The imposing, larger-than-life statue, the caucus said, is a “constant reminder of the injustices that have plagued communities of color since the inception of our country.”
As I have written in this newsletter and in Saving Monticello, Uriah Levy greatly admired Thomas Jefferson for his dedication to religious freedom. That admiration moved Levy to commission the bronze statue, which depicts Jefferson holding a quill pen in his right hand and an etched copy of the Declaration of Independence in his left. And it was the impetus behind the 42-year-old Navy lieutenant’s decision to buy Monticello in 1834.
Uriah Levy presented the black-painted plaster model of the Jefferson statue to the City of New York on February 6, 1833. The city gave him a gold snuff box in appreciation. That statue was placed on the second floor of the Rotunda at City Hall in Manhattan, and moved into the ornate City Council Chamber in the 1950s.
A month after he gave the model to New York City, Uriah Levy presented the original bronze to the United States government. It stands today in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. A small plaque at the statue’s bases contains these words: “Presented by Uriah Phillips Levy of the United States Navy to his fellow citizens, 1833.”
New York City’s statue-removal action on October 19 drew negative reactions, with political conservatives leading the way. Republican NYC Councilman Joe Borelli of Staten Island, for example, called it part of “the progressive war on history.” Seventeen historians signed a petition recommending that the Design Commission keep the statue in City Hall, but not in the City Council Chambers.
After the resolution passed, a debate continued about where the statue should go. It appeared to be destined for the New-York Historical Society’s headquarters building uptown on Central Park West. The Historical Society announced that if it received the statue, it would be prominently displayed with signage that explained Jefferson’s many accomplishments, including serving as Ambassador to France, the nation’s first Secretary of State, the Governor of Virginia, and as Vice President and President of the United States, as well as being the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (below) and a strong proponent of the Bill of Rights—along with the fact that he enslaved 607 people during his lifetime.
Louise Mirrer, the Historical Society president and CEO, told The New York Times that if the David d’Angers Jefferson statue wound up in its building, it would be displayed on the first floor. And it would contain interpretation explaining the “principal contradiction of our founding ideals,” as well as the “lived experience of many founding Americans, including Jefferson.” The Society doesn’t “bury history,” she said, “We tell history, and history is tough and it’s filled with contradictions.”
In Jefferson’s case that tough history centers on the fact that he was—at the same time—a passionate advocate for freedom of religion (and freedom of the press and speech) and an enslaver of human beings. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello, ascribes to the philosophy of telling the complex and difficult story of Jefferson’s sometimes contradictory work and life. As Monticello’s website puts it, visitors “learn about Jefferson and his vision for America, the realities of slavery on the Monticello plantation, and the mountaintop’s iconic architecture.”
A visitor to Monticello will learn of Jefferson’s many and varied accomplishments as well as the fact that he was a slaveholder. The Foundation tells the story of how President Jefferson oversaw the purchase of the 530-million-acre Louisiana Territory in 1803 from France, more than doubling the size of the young nation, on the one hand, and also offers a trail-blazing permanent multimedia exhibit on the slavery situation at Monticello.
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I received several emails before and after the City Council’s action from people who told me they thought the statue’s removal was a slap in Uriah Levy’s face. I do not see it that way. For one thing, Uriah Levy’s name did not come up during the Design Commission debate (or if did, it was not mentioned in the extensive media coverage). The debate centered on Thomas Jefferson’s enslavement of hundreds of human beings, although nearly every media account mentioned that Uriah Levy commissioned the statue and generously donated the plaster model to the city.
On October 24 The New York Times published an excellent opinion piece by Jonathan Sarna, headlined “What Jefferson’s Statue Meant to the Jewish Naval Hero Who Donated It.” Dr. Sarna, one of the nation’s top American Jewish history scholars (and a subscriber to this newsletter), did not base his well-reasoned, fact-filled essay on whether or not the statue should have been removed. Rather, he focused on—as he put it—the fact that “amid the debate over race, history, and the statue,” it is of vital importance to understand “the reason Jefferson was placed there in the first place.”
That reason, in essence, was Uriah Phillip Levy’s profound admiration for Thomas Jefferson’s dedication to religious freedom, including the fact that he “championed the rights of Jews.”
I mention that fact in Saving Monticello, and also point out that one sterling example of Jefferson’s enlightened attitude about Judaism involved Uriah Levy’s second cousin, Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785-1851), a well-known American diplomat and journalist. In 1818, Noah (below) received what would become a famous letter from Thomas Jefferson expressing his views on freedom of religion and Judaism.
Mordecai Noah had given a speech at Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in New York earlier that year, a copy of which made its way to Monticello. Jefferson wrote to Noah on May 28, 1818, saying he had read the speech “with pleasure and instruction, having learnt from it some valuable facts about Jewish history which I did not know before. Your sect by its sufferings has furnished a remarkable proof of the universal spirit of religious intolerance, inherent in every sect, disclaimed by all while feeble, and practised by all when in power.
“Our laws have applied the only antidote to this vice, protecting our religious as they do our civil rights by putting all on an equal footing, but more remains to be done.” (Emphasis added.)
I agree completely with Dr. Sarna’s conclusion. Noting that “for all of his noble intentions, Mr. Levy also kept enslaved persons at Monticello,” he wrote that statues “can convey multiple messages, as can historical memory. Rather than choosing between the memory of racial injustice and the embrace of religious liberty, let the d’Angers statue serve as a reminder that Jefferson embodied both at once."
One last thought. I was happy to see that Saving Monticello was mentioned in one of the NYT articles on the statue’s removal. Take a look at https://bit.ly/SavingM
EVENTS: I’ll be doing my first in-person talk on Saving Monticello since before the pandemic started on Saturday, November 13, at the monthly meeting of the Providence DAR Chapter in Fairfax Station, Virginia.
If other events get scheduled, they’ll be listed, along with all future talks, on the Author Events page on my website, https://marcleepson.com
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