Political Song in Thomas Jefferson’s Scrapbooks: A Multifaceted Commemoration of His Presidency

Abstract

The political songs in a scrapbook volume attributed to Thomas Jefferson record a multi-faceted commemoration of a presidency that spans both personal and public commemoration practices at the local and national levels. To analyze the significance of political song at this nexus of personal and public commemoration, this article considers the scrapbook as both a physical artifact and as a commemorative work in progress. Creating the scrapbook during a transitional period in American collecting that was bound up with practices of reading, writing, and commemoration, Jefferson organized the political songs to bracket off a major period in his life while emphasizing public commemorative practices. Jefferson used the collection to track domestic political developments among a larger republican constituency and record Americans’ responses to international struggles, including those that developed into the greatest challenges of his second term. Reading the political songs in conjunction with Jefferson’s correspondence deepens our understanding of how music and politics relate in practices of commemoration, while considering the collection’s temporality nuances our understanding of its intersections with Jefferson’s concern with self-assessment, public assessment, and reputation.