Since his death,
Founding Father and third U.S. president
Thomas Jefferson has been an iconic American figure depicted in many forms. Jefferson has often been portrayed by Hollywood, and has been depicted in a wide range of forms including alternative timelines, animation, documentary, small cameos, and fictionalized interpretations.
Jefferson's likeness over the years has been finely depicted on the face of the various postage issues that honored him. The
first issue to depict Jefferson was issued in 1856, nine years after the Post Office issued its first two stamps of
Washington and Franklin in 1847. Almost as popular and famous as
George Washington, Jefferson appears comparatively less often on U.S. postage issues, and unlike Washington and
Franklin, appears on just two commemorative issues, one in 1904, the other on the
AMERIPEX presidential issue of 1986. His remaining depictions are confined to
regular issues.[4]
On August 19, 1861, while the American Civil War was wreaking havoc across Virginia and elsewhere, the Post Office issued a 5-cent buff (yellow-brown) colored stamp that honored Thomas Jefferson. The engraving used to produce the image was modeled after a portrait by
Gilbert Stuart. The engraver for this issue was William Marshall, who also engraved Washington's image for several issues of this period.[5] This Jefferson issue occurs in several distinct shades of brown. This image was again
reprinted on February 3, 1863, in a dark brown color.[6] Also in 1861, Jefferson became the first U.S. president to appear on a Confederate stamp: a 10¢ value in blue, reissued in 1862 with its color changed to rose-pink.
Statues
Statues of Thomas Jefferson can be found in the United States and in other countries.
Jefferson is one of the four presidential portrait sculptures carved into
Mount Rushmore in South Dakota from 1927 to 1941. It was designed and supervised by sculptor
Gutzon Borglum, who called his work the Shrine of Democracy.
Film, drama, and fiction
Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States is an
1853novel by United States author and playwright
William Wells Brown about Clotel and her sister, fictional slave daughters of
Thomas Jefferson. Brown, who escaped from slavery in 1834 at the age of 20, published the book in
London. He was staying after a lecture tour to evade possible recapture due to the
1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Set in the early nineteenth century, it is considered the first novel published by an
African American,[7][8] and is set in the United States. Three additional versions were published through 1867.
The novel explores slavery's destructive effects on African-American families, the difficult lives of American
mulattoes or
mixed-race people, and the "degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave in the United States of America".[9] Featuring an enslaved mixed-race woman named Currer and her daughters Althesa and Clotel, fathered by
Thomas Jefferson, it is considered a
tragic mulatto story. The women's relatively comfortable lives end after Jefferson's death. They confront many hardships, with the women taking heroic action to preserve their families.
1776 was a 1969
musical with music and lyrics by
Sherman Edwards and a book by
Peter Stone. Based on the events leading up to the signing of the
Declaration of Independence, Jefferson is a major character. The show premiered on
Broadway, earning warm reviews, and ran for 1,217 performances. The production won three Tony Awards, including
Best Musical. In 1972, it was made into
a film adaptation. Actor
Ken Howard played Jefferson in both the stage debut and the screen adaptation.
Day of the Tentacle, a 1993 LacasArt adventure videogame, features time travel as major plot point and Jefferson as a side character.
Jefferson in Paris, the 1995 film, set in the period 1784–1789, portrays Jefferson when he was US minister to France at Versailles before the French Revolution. The film focuses largely on Jefferson's relationship with
Sally Hemings.[11]
Thomas Jefferson (1997 film). This 1997 two-part American documentary film, directed and produced by
Ken Burns, covers the Jefferson's life and times, portraying him as a renaissance man. Not only was he a dedicated public servant, but was also a writer, an inventor, and a noted architect. Burns captures both the public and private person.[12]
Liberty! (1997 documentary series). Focused on the American Revolutionary War and its instigating factors, this series of six hour-long episodes included stage and screen actors in appropriate period costume reading as figures of the time, including
Campbell Scott as Jefferson.
Wine bottles controversy, in which bottles of wine claimed to have once belonged to Jefferson were sold at auction in 1985, leading to decades of litigation.
^Jones, William A. (2010). Kloetzel, James E. (ed.). Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers. Scott Publishing Company.
ISBN978-0-89487-446-8.
^Gabler-Hover, Janet. "'Clotel'," American History Through Literature, 1820–1870. New York: Charles Scribners & Sons, 2005. 248–253.
^Brown, William Wells. Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. 1853. Ed. Robert Levine. Boston: Bedford, 2000. P. 82.