Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

sentence:
The light which Iias been shed on thc mind of man through tlie civilized
world. has given it anew direction, from which no human powcr can divert
it.
Now more than ever we wonder whether the U S. or Europe is privy to the light.
Cet-talnly Jefferson thought of the U.S. as improving on, by breaking from, Europe.
And yet he does seem to address Europe with a special reverence, as a rebellious child
who can never fully leave his family behind.
In the next paragraph of the letter, however, Jefferson quite sudder~ly displaces
the alnbivalence figured with this wild tropic movement in general, and the 'disease of
liberty' in particular, by offering a historically absurd but I-hetorically confident
allegory of American unity. He begins with a remark that counters section one's 'your
country has been going on less well than 1 had hoped' (Jefferson 1899.1: 109: 'With us
things are going on well' (Jefferson 1899.1:49). The 'things' to which he refers are the
acquisition of Florida in 18 19 and the pending entrance of Mlssouri into tlie Union as a
slave state. Both events were fought over bitterly during the period, and ended up as
victories for pro-slavery forces-thanks in part to Jefferson's support-since under
Spanish control Florida had become a refuge for escaped slaves, and with Missouri on
their side the slave states would hold their own aga~nst the free states in Congress and in
Presidential elections". Yet Jefferson offers a different p~cture:
The boisterous sea of liberty indeed is never \vitliout a wavc. and tliat from
Missouri is now rolling towards us, hut \vc shall ride over it as we have over
all otlie~rs. It is not a moral question. but one merely of power. Its object is to
raise a geographical principle for tlie choice of a President, and the noise
will be kept up till that is effected. All know that perniitting the slaves of thc
South to spread into the West will not add one being to tliat unfortunate
condition, that it will increase the happiness of those existing, and by
spreading them over a larger surface, will dilute the evil eve~ywhel-e, and
facilitate tlie means of getting finally rid of it, an event more anxiously
wisllcd by those on wlioni it presses than by the noisy pretenders to
exclusive I~urnanity. In thc meantime, it is a ladder for rivals climbing to
power (Jefferson 1899.I:49-65)
The confident unity represented repeatedly by 'we' and 'All' make it possible to figure
tile U,S, as a powerful and sturdy ship riding the 'boisterous sea of liberty', and as an
scientist knowledgeably formulating the elements of a 'finally' free solution:
1 increase the happiness of those existing, and by spreading thein over a larger
e, will dilute the evil everywhere'. These figures displace the difficulty of 'a
estion' with the calculable clarity ofquestions 'merely ofpower'.
If this representative of the U.S. must thus represent his country to a
entative of Europe in the most coherent, confident, and powerful-if
enuous-terms, then Europe must be something of a judge in Jefferson's
agn~ation. That is, if Jefferson's enlightened countly receives the light of the
lighte~lment as refracted through its ineducible ties to Europe, then any development
the Enlightenment in the U.S. must be carried out under the watchful eye of Europe.
e 'eyes' he and Dr. Richard Price focused on 'justice' are now trained on Jefferson
self. Subjected to this field of visibility, then, Jefferson figures a ~~nified and
national identity as a coherent and felicitous response to the infelicities of
n and surveillance he nonettleless rhetorically proliferates.
This inoment in the letter to the Marquis represents a crucial transformation in
's work. This transformation is locatable not so much cliachronically--say, in
ear of this letter, 1820-as it is rhetorically at nodal poi:its, reiterated ritually
ut Jefferson's correspondence froin the 1750s through to 1820s--particillarly
spondence on colonisation, as we will see below--when the a~nbivalerlt
illation oflight, surveillance, andjudgeinent gives way to a governmental problem,
problem of power and of knowledge:
It is not a moral question, but one n~crely of power .... All know Illat
permitting the slaves of tlie South to spread into tlie Wcst will not add one
being to that unfortunate condition, that it will increase the happiness of
those existing ....
t is, the ambivalence of 'mutilation however in it's freest parts' and of the 'disease
berty' gives way not to an ambiguous 'moral question', but rather to a confident and
ulable figuration of national power and unity. Mobilising what J.L. Heilbron and
esearch group have called 'I'esprit geometrique' or 'the quantifying spirit' of the
eighteenth century'" Jefferson's text here turns the 'moral problem' of slavery into
ctical problem of discrete, ~nanipulable populations, the solution to which is
These historians of science have argued that 'the later 18th century saw a rapid increase in
range and intensity of application of mathematical methods', a tliesis that 'amounts to
cifying the time and surveying the routes by which what may be the quintessential form of
modern thought first spread widely through society ' (Friingsmyr it al. 1990: If). For an overvicw
" Rot11 Miller (1975:23lf) and Peterson (1960:191-193) represent Jefferson's support of f their researc]l, see Meilbron's introduction to tile volume; fclr essays relevent to tlIc
Miss0uri.s entrance into t11~ union as a slave state as. in Miller's (I97sy232) words, 'lnal-k[ingl ff‘crsonian colltext cclnsidered set essays by Ridcr, k[eilbl.on. and ~ ~ (in l
strange death of Jeff'ersollian liberalism'. As 1 have becn arguing. a close reading of rangsmyr el a/. 1990). For a kindred study of the U.S. in particular, which places importa~~t
Jefferson's correspondence suggests that we place such a molnent
the life of "lch
phasis on Jefferson, see CoIlen (197 1). On Jefferson's faith in statistics aild Inatlrematics in
ltbeldllsm gene~al, we also Appleby (1993 71'). Stanton (1 993 1520
58 59