Recently, the New York City Council decided to remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson from the City Council Chamber.
Very little attention was paid to this latest act of political overkill so I decided to do some research on the statue itself and how different historians have viewed Jefferson.
The traditional excuse for removing any trace of Mr. Jefferson was due to the fact that he was a slave owner and that automatically makes him disqualified to be hung anywhere, unless it’s from a scaffold.
The statue that graced the Council Chambers for over 50 years was created at the expense of Uriah Paley, a Jewish naval hero. It was created by Pierre-Jean David d’ Angers in 1834 and was intended to serve as a symbol of religious liberty.
It is fair to ask why would a Jewish soldier spend his personal wealth to honor Thomas Jefferson? I got my answers from Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University.
Sarna wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times in which he described Jefferson as a strong advocate of religious liberty as well as “inalienable rights” which he included in the Declaration of Independence.
Mr. Levy suffered bitterly during his tenure in the navy where he was badly treated by his fellow soldiers. It was only after he had been imprisoned by the British and released that he was awarded an independent naval command.
Levy was much impressed with Jefferson’s championing the rights of Jews. Jefferson expressed pride that the University of Virginia accepted Jews and “set the example of ceasing to violate the rights of conscience by any injunctions on the different sects respecting their religion.” Just commissioning two statues in honor of Jefferson was apparently not enough for Levy.
After earning major sums of money in the real estate business, Levy turned his efforts to two projects. One was to end the practice of flogging of soldiers and the other was to elevate the memory of Jefferson.
He convinced the navy to stop the practice of corporal punishment and dedicated the balance of his life to elevate the memory of Thomas Jefferson. Upon learning that Jefferson’s one time Monticello property had fallen into disrepair, Levy bought the land and buildings and had it refurbished.
He argued, “the homes of great men should be protected and preserved as monuments to their glory. “According to Professor Sarna, the property stayed in the hands of the Levy family until the 20th century.
It is ironic that Levy kept slaves on the property as well, but he felt that the good that Jefferson did outweighed the evil of slavery.
As a final gesture, he paid for the two statues, one which hangs in the halls of Congress and the other, which was unceremoniously removed from the council chamber.
I read a recent college thesis contrasting Jefferson and Martin Luther King. The two had similar thoughts on education, taxation and the death penalty. Both favored free education and felt that taxation was a burden that fell mainly on the poor. They railed against capital punishment.
Dr. King had great respect for many of the speeches made by Jefferson and quoted them frequently in public remarks.
While the two men were completely different on the issue of people’s rights, Dr. King saw much wisdom in Jefferson’s writings and was not afraid to repeat those words in his quest for freedom and better treatment of minorities. There is no way that the mantle of Thomas Jefferson can be fully cleansed based on his devotion to slavery, but maybe he is entitled to be judged on his whole record.
In recent months, the American landscape has been shaken by criminal trial after trial, most of which dealt with violence against minorities.
In all of those cases, jurors were asked if they could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? Maybe Jefferson’s life should be judged by that same standard. That will be a decision for historians and not a public that pre-judges almost everything these days.
