The reference is to Sarah Gordon in The Mormon Question, which began  
this thread.

Gordon is incorrect in her claim that "from time to time" Jefferson  
asserted unorthodox opinions about divorce.  Neither Dewey's article  
in The William & Mary Quarterly -- cited below, as it was apparently  
Gordon's source -- nor the book by Dewey on Jefferson as a lawyer  
(which reproduces the WMQ article as a chapter) substantiate that claim.

Both works deal exclusively with the notes Jefferson prepared in the  
Blair case in 1772-73, in which, as this thread has established, he  
was adducing a range of arguments that he hoped might benefit his  
client.  The notes remained private, as Blair died before Jefferson  
could bring the bill of divorce before the legislature on his behalf,  
so they could not have influenced later opinion as Gordon suggests.

Apparently Sarah Gordon looked too hastily at her source -- something  
any scholar has surely done at some point, and a very minor matter in  
this case since the question of Jefferson's opinions on divorce is  
peripheral, to say the least, to the subject of her book.   In other  
words:  she is almost certainly guilty of carelessness, but not of  
lying, such distinctions perhaps having become regrettably necessary  
on this list.

-- Jurretta Heckscher


On Nov 1, 2008, at 2:41 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:

>
> Frank L. Dewey. "Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Divorce" William & Mary
> Quarterly 39 (1982) 212-23, is her basis for asserting that  
> Jefferson maintained
> unorthodox opinions of the permanence of marriage and from time to  
> time asserted
> that he was as committed to familial as to political separations when
> "continuance" undermined the purpose for which the union had been  
> originally
> created.
>
>
> J South
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