RODDEY E. MIMS

LESSONS FROM THE PAST: Carter thought of Jefferson during the Iran hostage crisis in 1980

Jefferson and Me
	Jimmy Carter on the connection he feels to the third President
	By JIMMY CARTER and CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Posted Sunday, June 27, 2004
Because Jefferson was a humble person, I feel a kinship with him. Also he was southern, as I was. George Washington was almost worshiped as a deity when he left the White House. Jefferson tried to downplay the exaltation of the president above and beyond the average citizen. Under President Nixon there was a resurrection of an ostentatious style of addressing the arrival of the president ? frequent playing of "Hail to the Chief;" courtiers of the White House dressed up in fancy uniforms and played long trumpets similar to what they did in Europe in ancient times. I was ridiculed to some degree because I carried my own bag, always, even when I was president. And at one time I prohibited the use of "Hail to the Chief" to be played when I walked into a room. I could relate to Jefferson for trying to be a president with a small p.

When Jefferson was in commercial life, he was a farmer, as I was. Jefferson retained that love for the land and agricultural cultivation to the end of his life. He left the White House and never went back to Washington during the remaining 18 years of his life, although he lived nearby. He was committed to a fairly rural life in Charlottesville, where he established the University of Virginia. I still am a farmer. In a couple of hours, I'll be in my fields, where we have cotton and peanuts and soybeans already coming up.

Recently I wrote a book about the revolutionary war, and now I'm writing a sequel to it, about the burgeoning of slavery after the new nation was founded and the absence of any practical influence that Jefferson had on terminating slavery. Although he sometimes condemned it verbally, he kept slaves throughout his life. If you look back on Jefferson's legacy, not speaking and acting on slavery is by far his greatest failure.

He thought that his drafting of the Declaration of Independence and his founding of the University of Virginia were his two greatest accomplishments. But I think the Louisiana Purchase and his sponsorship of the exploration of the West by the Lewis and Clark expedition were probably of more importance. When you ask most people about Jefferson, they primarily know he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He had the ability to encapsulate what people were saying around him and extract from that the highest ideals of our nation's aspirations and character and to express it in flowing and inspirational words. That is Jefferson's most famous legacy.

I wish I could have talked to Thomas Jefferson. One of the main times was in the last year of my term, when the hostages were being held and I was being encouraged by people around me to take military action against Iran. In their opinion, and perhaps in the opinion of some historians since, that would have exalted me to the status of commander in chief during a time of crisis, just before I came up for re-election. And I think the loyalty of Americans to a commander in chief with troops in battle is almost inevitable in our country. But I prayed a lot about it and I tried to remember what Jefferson did in times of crisis. Toward the end of my term, and when the hostages were finally freed, I quoted him by saying that during my administration, not a drop of blood of a single citizen was shed by the sword of war.

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