Looking for Liberty: Thomas Jefferson and the British Lions

Abstract

IN NOVEMBER 1803 A TWENTY-FOUR-YEAR-OLD IRISHMAN LANDED in Norfolk, Virginia. The town struck him as really a most comical place, where nothing dogs and negroes were to be seen in streets. Thomas Moore had launched his voyage to wilds of America from salons of London, in which he had been welcomed as translator of Odes ofAnacreon and a memorable entertainer at evening parties. He sang his own songs at pianoforte in an inexpressibly sweet voice, making men weep and women faint. In his first exposure to American culture, Anacreon Moore was cheered to find one friendly drawing room, complete with harpsichord. This looked like civilisation, but, as he declared to his mother, music here is like whistling to a wilderness. 1 Six months later Moore followed Virginia's break-neck roads to Washington, passing the Potomac, Rappahannock, Occoquan, . . . and many other rivers, with names as barbarous as inhabitants. He wrote home that every step I take not only reconciles, but endears to me, not only excellencies but even errors of Old England. After accepting hospitality of expatriate Tories and Virginia Federalists, he arrived in capital well educated in errors of Jeffersonianism. Further instruction came from