Hillary Clinton’s office today released a report by the DNC Historical Society that outlined remarkable coincidences in personal recordkeeping and retention by America’s first Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson. According to the report, Secretary of State Jefferson kept almost all his records using his own pen and personal paper. Finding great difficulty in having to switch from government pens and paper for official use and his own pen and paper for personal matters, the report states that Jefferson found it more convenient to use his own pen, ink and paper in all correspondence, both public and private. As President, Jefferson was known to have used several pens, quills, pencils, type machines and other writing implements; abilities all apparently developed after being Secretary of State.
The report uncovered the fact that Jefferson then kept all of his records in cabinet designed for him by a friend at his home in Monticello. Jefferson supposedly felt comfortable in retaining records in that cabinet, as his friend had supposedly included a latch. Citing the intense rivalry, conflict and personal animosity seldom equaled in American politics, Jefferson apparently felt the need to retain his privacy and deny his political foes access to attack his private life.
In addition to the well know sexual innuendoes relating to Jefferson, recent archeological work at Monticello has uncovered indications of an 1800 period “studio,” giving further credence to rumors at that time of Jefferson’s reputed preoccupation with scheduling yoga lessons and workouts.
When questioned about the issue, Jefferson’s clerk Brock Carville-Davis clarified that “people are happy that that man fully complied with every controlling legal authority that defined what ‘is’ is, in an understandably confusing situation.”
In an even more remarkable coincidence noted in the report, Jefferson was reportedly asked for his federal records when he was running for president after he resigned as the first Secretary of State. In response to persistent inquiries, it turns out that Jefferson had turned over 11 documents which he said were all of the government papers and that the other private documents were burned, the ashes buried, the earth plowed and salted, the cabinet itself chopped into kindling, and the latch thrown into a river.
Jefferson reportedly stated that the records he did turn over had been reviewed by his trusted staff, which according to records at Monticello were at that time a cook, a groom and two farm hands, all of whom appear to have been illiterate. A note accompanying the government records reportedly stated that there had originally been more than 60,000 papers, but only the 11 documents were have found by the reviewing staff to have included the word “government.”
Federalists at the time were incensed by Jefferson’s conduct and lack of candor, but Jefferson’s well organized and funded presidential election supporters effectively suppressed all discussion as meaningless and the matter was ignored by history.