Jefferson's 200th

On the south bank of Washington's broad Tidal Basin, the new Jefferson Monument shimmered in the thin April sunlight. A stiff spring breeze cut through the tall, white marble pillars, swept over the austere white marble dome, bent the yew and dogwood trees clustered near by. Now & again the wind shook a film of spray over the broad steps; against the marble columns it tossed puffs of cherry blossoms and coal smoke from the railroad tracks.

In the big rotunda, 96 ft. below the dome, workmen unpacked the statue of Thomas Jefferson, raised it section by section to its black marble pedestal. The sun, streaming between the pillars, cast moving patterns of light and shadow over the workers. Their voices echoed somberly in the great room. A few visitors peered in.

The workmen finished. The statue of Thomas Jefferson--in plaster until the end of World War II makes bronze available again--stood 19 ft. tall in the great room, looking across the basin toward the White House. After seven years of planning, after four years of work, the Jefferson Memorial was finished, built as the southern and last wing of the famed kite-shaped "L'Enfant plan," of which the White House is the northern wing, and the Capitol, the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial are the east-west line, connected by the Mall. Next week, on the 200th annivesary of Thomas Jefferson's birth, the celebrities will gather, the speeches will be read.

Lines and the Line. The Memorial's neoclassic lines, drawn by the late John Russell Pope, are out of tune with the times. From afar, it appears compact, forbidding, lonely as a mausoleum. From hard by, it is too huge, too white, too coldly monotonous. Yet it will stand as a great national monument, for inside is the spirit of a great man.

In sculpture as in life, the figure of Thomas Jefferson contains no repose. He was a tall and restless man, redheaded, lean, gangling, with a frontiersman's hard body and a philosopher's brooding brow. The statue by Sculptor Rudulph Evans has caught that quality: Jefferson stands erect, rebellious, staring toward the White House with strained and unyielding eyes. Around the walls above his head, his carved words stand out like a shout in the Memorial's massive silence: I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Three Proudest. Thomas Jefferson, man of many accomplishments, was proudest of three: writing the Declaration of Independence, drawing up Virginia's statute of religious freedom, founding the University of Virginia. His words, cut into three walls of the Memorial, recall those deeds in his own clear and exalted prose.

On one wall are the lines from the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. . . ." Disorder and Glory. The path down which Thomas Jefferson wanted to lead his nation -- and to which his words still point-- was no easy one. He wanted no paternalistic government to arrange its citizens' lives, no hidebound society to order their thoughts and actions. To him, the perfect state had "a wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another . . . [and] leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement" --to live their lives in as tumultuous, glorious, ambitious a disorder as they please.

Of all America's great men of the Revolution, Jefferson was the one who was attuned most perfectly to its meaning: that men, for the first time in history, should be set free from the outworn restraints of feudalism and primogeniture, allowed to work out their own destiny without exploitation by government. He did not believe, as his words in the Declaration of Independence seemed to say, that all men were equally good; he did believe that all men were born worthy of an equal chance. Then the U.S. would move forward, to vistas beyond the imagination, under the leadership of "a natural aristocracy . . . the grounds for [which] are not wealth and birth, but talents and virtue." In his old age, infirm and debt-ridden from the years he had given his country, he had the abiding faith to write: "I have observed this march of civilization advancing from the seacoast, passing over us like a cloud of light, increasing our knowledge and improving our condition. . . . And where this progress will stop, on one can say. . . ." The Path Down. Not every American generation would have raised a monu ment to Thomas Jefferson. He was too complex (and too daring) to be easily loved by all men in all times. He was interested, beyond dilettantism, in agriculture, architecture, languages, literature, music, religion, astronomy, zoology, chemistry, mathematics. He designed Monticello, filled it with inventions like the first dumbwaiter, first swivel chair, a weather vane which could be read by a dial indoors. He introduced the first upland rice and cork oak to U.S. soil.

He was no soldier-hero. He served as Governor of Virginia during the Revolution. Unlike Hamilton, he performed no glittering feats which could be measured in dollars & cents. His broader, deeper role was that of intellectual and spiritual leader of the Revolution.

His ideas have sometimes been considered hopelessly outmoded. He grew up in an agricultural economy, never saw a village as big as 20 houses until he was 18. As the American Revolution was followed by the industrial revolution, Jefferson lost his hold on the minds of men. In the '20s, while the U.S. was on its final materialistic jag and the only popular biographies of heroes were written by debunkers, he was a tarnished idol.

In the '30s, when many men lost faith in themselves and turned to place their faith in paternalistic government, Jefferson's fierce belief in states' rights and fear of the leviathan state seemed finally dead. But the Jefferson legend was just about to be rekindled.

Justification. No hero has risen so steadily in recent years to such heights of public esteem as the Sage of Monticello. Almost annually Franklin Roosevelt has cited Jefferson's faith in the common man as justification for the New Deal. Republicans and anti-New Deal Democrats have hailed his belief in states' rights.

Now, on the 200th anniversary of his birth, Jefferson once more occupies the place he deserves in American history. Sidney Kingsley's biographical play about Jefferson (The Patriots) is in its third month on Broadway. By April 13, when the monument is dedicated, there will be three new books about Jefferson on the stands. The Congressional Library is displaying some of the 6,500 volumes it bought from Jefferson in 1815; the National Gallery is showing some of his architectural drawings. Since the Memorial grounds were opened last November, more than 30,000 visitors have gone to look. The thousands who go to look, in the years ahead, will find a message in the rotunda as the light and shadow shift over his graven words. The message is not carved there, but it is nonetheless a part of Thomas Jefferson which will have a meaning for all time. He once put the message into eight simple words : The earth belongs always to the living generation.

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