“Their Eulogy will be Uttered in other Languages”

This chapter details events that occurred in 1826. For John Quincy Adams, the summer of 1826 was not a time of presence, but absence. On the very same day, at opposite ends of the country, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826. Monticello’s “sublime” peak became sacred ground, attracting earnest pilgrims to Jefferson’s “sort of Mecca.” 1826 also saw the beginning of a different pilgrimage, which would soon end with the death of an actual “Mahometan”—a Muslim with sufficient reason to wish no longer to “live in this miserable, undone country.” Striving to return home to “utter” his thoughts once more in “other languages,” this African’s death would again inspire America’s orator into elegiac speech.

“Slave of the Most Merciful”

This chapter details events that occurred in 1819. In the opening days of the year, Jefferson witnessed his life’s last major achievement. After years of preparation, the University of Virginia was approved, its charter passed by the state’s General Assembly on January 25. Officially instituted, Jefferson’s university yet still seemed somewhat aspirational in 1819. Much remained to do down below in Charlottesville. It would take time to attract sufficient students, and the construction of adequate buildings would extend through 1826, the same year that Jefferson died. Overseeing the school’s staggered start, Jefferson ensured that the end of his life also helped to advertise his fledgling university. His memorial, planted on Monticello’s own grounds, would proudly commemorate the college.

“Humanity certainly Pleads Loud”

This chapter describes Jefferson’s encounter with a strange new writing device for copying called the “Stylograph.” Cutting into “Carbonated paper” with “glass brought to a point like a pencil,” this instrument “provided an exact copy of an author’s original.” Jefferson experimented with his new toy, making literary duplicates by cutting across layers with his stylograph on October 5, 1807—the same day he also started to search for a translator to decipher the layered Arabic documents which had cut their way across the country, carried by Ira P. Nash. Canvassing the capital, Jefferson eventually sent his plea for help to Philadelphia on October 18th, even as he experimented with his new stylograph, ensuring that copies of his own letters were preserved. By the time October came to an end, however, Jefferson would discover that he was not alone in reproducing pivotal texts.

“Seven of the Arab Dialects”

This chapter focuses on the task President Jefferson assigned Robert Patterson, i.e., to find a translator for two Arabic manuscripts written by Muslim slaves. Over a few days in late October 1807, Patterson consulted with three of the most remarkable figures he could find in Philadelphia, a triad that represented diplomacy, trade, and academia. The three men each had their own reaction, reflecting their professional interests and personal experiences, as well as individual prejudices. In October 1807, the two manuscripts constituted a type of “Rorschach test” for surprised American reviewers. Although visiting these three various men, first in Patterson’s mind was the single man whom Jefferson himself had named. In the race against time to translate Arabic writings, Philadelphia was home to an American whose years of experience in Arabic-speaking regions exceeded all others, Richard O’Brien.

“A Word of any Language”

This chapter details events following President Jefferson’s decision to grant a mysterious traveler’s request for an “interview” in October 1807. It was not wholly out of character for Jefferson to agree to meet a man entirely unknown to him; a President of populist ideals, Jefferson was remarkably accessible to the American people. However, principles were surely not the only reason to meet Ira P. Nash. Jefferson’s motivations were likely much more mixed. Self-preservation, not merely public regard, may have seemed at stake. By the beginning of October, Aaron Burr’s treason trial in Richmond had concluded with an acquittal—a judgement that left Jefferson feeling far from settled. The urgency of Nash’s note, and his origins in the “Teritory of Louisanna,” undoubtedly dovetailed with anxieties that plagued the President at the opening of October 1807.

“Written in fair Arabic Characters”

This chapter details Thomas Jefferson’s dealings with Ezra Stiles, President of Yale and New England’s leading intellectual. Stiles became Jefferson’s confidant in 1786. Meeting only a month before Jefferson embarked overseas from Boston on July 5, 1784, the two men enjoyed an immediate connection, despite their divergent roles and regions. A master of many disciplines, Stiles was most distinguished by a single interest in particular: his facility with Middle Eastern languages. Jefferson shared anxieties with Stiles concerning Muslim captivity—captivity not of a single person, however, but of an entire nation, sharply criticizing Ottoman occupation of Greece. Anticipating future experiences of his new friend and a later U.S. President, Stiles also gained access to manuscripts arising from Muslim captivity and Arabic documents written by African slaves.

“His name is ‘Usman”

This chapter focuses on a slave named ‘Usman. Born in 18th-century Futa Jallon—“in the interior part of Guinea”—‘Usman was raised in a Muslim region famed for scholarship, but also soldiery, regularly waging war against neighboring states. Educated in Islamic traditions, ‘Usman was trained not merely to recite Qur’anic text orally, but to write in elegant lines. Such literary skills would comprise a rare continuity in a life of jarring interruption, linking ‘Usman’s studies in Africa with his slavery in America. Surviving the Middle Passage horrors crossing the Atlantic, ‘Usman was settled near Midway, a West African exile enslaved near an itinerant church, itself a refugee in Georgia. Transitioning between cultures, ‘Usman was surrounded by contending lines of succession, lines which seem to bleed into his own ink, receiving expression from ‘Usman’s pen.

“A Matter of Momentous Importance”

This chapter details events leading up to and after the evening of October 3, 1807, when Thomas Jefferson received a cryptic note written by a traveler from the “Territory of Louisiana.” This note was a single page petition, pleading with the President for “an interview.” I have “a matter of momentous importance to communicate,” the author insisted, but added no details. The note was signed with a name unknown to the President: “I. Nash.” By the evening of October 4, 1807, Jefferson held in his hands strange writings carried to him from the country’s edges. Nash’s “matter of momentous importance to communicate” turned out to be two manuscripts authored by two enslaved Africans, resisting their captivity in rural Kentucky.

“A Sect by Myself”

This chapter describes the effort to replenish Monticello’s library. In October 1816, Richard Rush climbed Jefferson’s mountain and found its occupant “lamenting” the loss of his library. Bereft of its books, Monticello seemed a little airy. Although pilgrims kept coming to provide company for Jefferson, without his volumes to read, a vacancy reigned on Jefferson’s peak. Miles of shelving needed restocking to make up for the “6,487” books that had migrated north to Washington. Edward Everett and George Ticknor had travelled to Europe with a pledge to help replicate Monticello’s library. Instead, the American youths would replicate Jefferson’s experiences. Back in 1785, during Jefferson’s European residence, he was forced to contend with Muslim lands, negotiating war and peace with Arabic-speaking Africans. In 1815, three decades later, arriving to Europe with Jefferson in mind, Ticknor and Everett would find Arabic and Africa once more intertwined.

“His Mountain is made a sort of Mecca”

This chapter details events that occurred in 1808. As 1808 opened, news arrived in Washington that the Muslim fugitives had escaped; and as 1808 unfolded, these fugitives seemed to escape Jefferson’s notice as well. In the final months of 1807, Jefferson had failed to find a translator for their Arabic writings; in the first days of 1808, the Arabic authors themselves seemed impossible to find. Their words were too difficult to decipher. Their whereabouts were now uncertain. Perhaps it was just time to let this all go? But Jefferson did not let it go—at least not entirely. The trail of the Muslim authors grew cold during the busy winter of 1808. Yet, the trails of Arabic ink that had arrived to Jefferson in the autumn of 1807 remained entirely tangible, if inexplicable. Through all the upheavals of his later life, these Muslim writings were kept safe, surviving along with countless papers accrued during Jefferson’s presidency.