Heir through Hope: Thomas Jefferson's Lifelong Investment in William Short

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Peter Thompson (Associate Professor of History, Associate Professor of History, University of Oxford)

Heir through Hope

Thomas Jefferson's Lifelong Investment in William Short

Peter Thompson (Associate Professor of History, Associate Professor of History, University of Oxford)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
15 March 2024

European history; History of the Americas; Revolutions, uprisings, rebellions; American War of Independence

The relationship between Thomas Jefferson and William Short, the eldest son of an established Virginia family and relative of Martha Jefferson, began as a patron-protégé arrangement conventional for the era.

Jefferson encouraged Short's legal career and gave him his first legal work. Thus began a bond of forty years that that both men characterized in paternal and filial terms and that sheds considerable light on the enigmatic Founding Father.

In the aftermath of Jefferson's precipitous ""flight from Monticello,"" Short underwrote substantial short-term loans to him.

Jefferson took the younger man to France as his private secretary in 1784 but, quickly concluding that his moral well-being and political judgment were at risk, he urged Short to return to America and settle down. Short, however, wished to pursue a foreign service career and a long affair with a French aristocrat. Jefferson wanted Short to embrace a Virginia way of looking at the world, even buying him a farm near Monticello. Short resisted--and rejected Jefferson's ideas about slavery, economics, marriage, the practice of democratic government, and republican morality, but without rejecting his ""friend and father."" He showed little respect for Jefferson's political achievements, viewing him as a well-meaning ""visionary,"" yet he was conscious of living in the statesman's shadow. William Short was not Thomas Jefferson's intellectual equal, was not a political collaborator, and never became a neighbor, yet the elder man invested considerable emotional energy and time in his ""adoptive son,"" even during his vice-presidency and presidency. By efficiently managing the younger man's financial affairs Jefferson enabled his extended stay in France, but also diverted Short's money for his own use. Although he believed Short's political judgment had been clouded by his enjoyment of French society and savagely criticized his reaction to the French Revolution, he never gave up on Short the private individual.

Heir through Hope reveals a figure who served as a unique sounding board to a Founder, while underscoring the distinct ways Jefferson envisioned the United States' destiny vis à vis Europe. Fascinating in its own right, their complex relationship highlights the tensions between the founding generation and its successors while illuminating the operation of political power in early national America and Revolutionary Europe.

By: Peter Thompson (Associate Professor of History Associate Professor of History University of Oxford)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 279mm, Width: 229mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 726g
ISBN: 9780197546833
ISBN 10: 0197546838
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 15 March 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Peter Thompson is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Rum Punch and Revolution: Taverngoing and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia.

Reviews for Heir through Hope: Thomas Jefferson's Lifelong Investment in William Short

"""Peter Thompson's brilliant, beautifully rendered account of the fraught relationship between Thomas Jefferson and William Short, his 'adoptive son, ' illuminates the generational dynamic in the new nation's formative decades. Heir through Hope is a major contribution to American historical scholarship."" -- Peter Onuf, coauthor of Most Blessed of the Patriarchs': Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination""This is a masterful look at the relationship between a 'father' and a 'son, ' which is revealed in over forty years of their correspondence. Jefferson, the man who thought and wrote about the French Revolution, slavery, and the value of marriage, shared some of his deepest and most personal beliefs with Short."" -- Barbara Oberg, General Editor of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Emeritus), Princeton University""Peter Thompson brings to life the extraordinary character William Short. Just as importantly, he offers a novel interpretation of the mind of Thomas Jefferson. At its heart, Heir though Hope is a biographically framed and original study of the nature of American post-revolutionary society and the status of the newly-independent United States in a world still reeling from revolution."" -- Patrick Griffin, author of The Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Fall and Rise of a Connected World"