Saving Monticello: The Newsletter
The latest about the book, author events, and more
Newsletter
Editor - Marc Leepson
Volume XXI, Number 8 August 2024
A VALIANT OFFICER; AN ACCOMPLISHED GENTLEMAN: I included a detailed account in Saving Monticello and in this newsletter over the years of how Uriah Levy, while on an extended leave in Paris in the early 1830s during his U.S. Navy career, sought out the famed French sculptor
and commissioned a larger-than-life statue of Thomas Jefferson.
And how Levy brought the statue home to the U.S. early in 1834, presented a plaster model to the City of New York, and donated the seven-and-a-half-foot bronze original to the people of the United States.
And how the House and Senate accepted the gift and displayed the statue in the Capitol, then later in front of the White House, and ultimately brought it back to the Capitol, where it stands today in the Rotunda, the only statue in the building donated by a private citizen.
In the book I also covered in detail how in the fall of 1833 or early in 1834 Uriah Levy spotted a newspaper advertisement by Monticello’s then owner, James Turner Barclay, saying that the “celebrated… former residence of Mr. Jefferson is offered for sale.”
And that Levy made his way to Charlottesville, sought out Barclay, and on April 1, 1834, signed a contract to purchase Monticello and its surrounding acreage.
I based the account of his time in Paris and the commissioning of the statue—from the fall of 1832 to early 1834—and what immediately came after on varied sources, including legal documents, newspaper articles, and congressional records. But I found some new information (to me) about the statue and about Uriah Levy recently after coming upon an article that I had not seen before in the April 4, 1834, Alexandria Gazette on the Library of Virginia’s online Virginia Chronicle state historical newspaper database.
Under the above headline, the article, written by the unidentified (as was the journalistic custom of the day) Boston Post Washington correspondent, came out just three days after Levy and Barclay signed the paperwork for the sale of Monticello. Although that historic fact was not mentioned, I was fascinated to read, for the first time, an article written during that important week in Monticello’s history—and in Uriah Levy’s life.
I’m happy to report that virtually all the facts in the article were accurate. The “new” information included the correspondent mentioning that the big bronze Jefferson statue came in at “52 cwt." That’s 52 hundredweight, or about 5,200 pounds. And that it probably cost Uriah Levy $14,000-$15,000.
Noting that bronze is a “costly material,” the correspondent wrote that he gleaned the likely price from “those who profess to be acquainted with the value of this kind of statuary, Checking several online inflation calculators, $15,000 in 1834 would be the equivalent of at least $500,000 today.
Levy, the article went on to say, “refuses to tell what it cost. He has the honor, whatever it may cost, of bestowing upon his fellow citizens the first statue of bronze that has ever been possessed in this country; and one too, of one of the first and greatest men of which this country can boast.”
The writer then described Levy’s heritage without mentioning the word “Jewish.” Saying Levy was a native of Philadelphia, which he was, and “a resident of Virginia,” which he wasn’t, the correspondent elaborated: “He is a descendant of the Maccabees, and a countryman of Isaiah.
"He belongs to a race to whom, in Europe, Napoleon first extended the rights of citizenship; and whose example England has lately attempted to follow; on whom the constitution of this country has bestowed all the privileges of its trusts and honors; whose example every State in the Union, except Maryland, has followed.”*
Then the writer lavished praise on Levy’s naval service, saying, “he is known as a valiant officer and an accomplished gentleman.” And he provided a physical description, that UPL was “about the middling height, say 5 feet 9, fine proportioned, dark complexion, with nothing very peculiar in his countenance, but a dark and piercing eye.” (Below: a photograph of UPL circa 1860 and a portrait of him circa 1815 as a young U.S. Navy Sailing Master)
Levy was “apparently from thirty-seven to forty years of age,” the correspondent wrote. He was close; UPL was in his 42nd year. “He has spent considerable time in France and Germany on leave of absence, and acquired so much of a foreign accent, that, together with his mustache, he would not be taken for an American.”
In more than 25 years of studying the Levys, I have not found a whit of evidence that the Philadelphia-born Uriah P., a fifth-generation American, had any kind of “foreign accent.” Except, that is, in a discredited 1897 newspaper article that later became a pamphlet written by a New York journalist, Amos Cummings. Said article was little more than a vile, thinly veiled anti-Semitic attack on Jefferson M. Levy, who then owned Monticello, and his uncle, and contains made-up dialogue with Uriah speaking in some sort of Yiddish-German accent.
As for the Boston Post correspondent, he ended his article with effusive praise for Uriah Phillips Levy. To wit: His “munificence, and patriotism and valor are plenary evidence of his undisputed claim to American birth and citizenship.”
* Maryland’s 1649 An Act Concerning Religion allowed
only people who “believe[d] in Jesus Christ” to practice their religion in the
colony. The state’s Constitution adopted in 1776 provided only that “persons
professing the Christian religion are equally entitled to protection in their
religious liberty.” That stricture remained
in effect until the Maryland House of Delegates passed a law in 1826 that
extended “the sect of people professing the Jewish religion the same rights and
privileges that are enjoyed by Christians.”
EVENTS: None scheduled for August or September, but I will be doing more book talks and other events in the fall and winter. If you’d like me to do a talk on Saving Monticello or any of my other books, feel free to email me at marcleepson@gmail.com For details on events starting in October, go to marcleepson.com/events
COMMERCE: To order a new, personally inscribed paperback of Saving Monticello, go to my website at https://bit.ly/BookOrdering or email me at marcleepson@gmail.com I also have a few lightly used Saving Monticello hardcovers, and a stack of six of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; Ballad of the Green Beret, and Huntland.
