WEBVTT - The Count, the Moose, and Thomas Jefferson 0:00:00.800 --> 0:00:04.400 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:11.680 and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey listener discretion advised. Hey, 0:00:11.680 --> 0:00:14.480 this is Danish Swartz, the host of Noble Blood. If 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:17.360 you want to support the show, we are on Patreon 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:22.440 at patreon dot com slash Noble Blood Tales. I'm also 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:25.120 on Instagram with a Noble Blood account, where I sometimes 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:28.520 post random memes and things that I make or find. 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:32.599 That's also Noble Blood Tales. But as always, the best 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.800 support for the show is just that you keep listening, unless, 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:38.800 of course, you want to pre order my book Immortality, 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:41.800 a Love Story, in which case that is the best 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:45.120 support you could possibly be doing. So thank you so 0:00:45.200 --> 0:01:03.400 much for listening, and let's dive in. The year was 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:09.120 seventeen eighty four and Thomas Jefferson had a problem. He 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:12.560 was a Francophile. He was just about to set out 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:16.119 for France as an ambassador from the new country of America. 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:20.880 But at this particular moment in time, the French were 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:25.880 making him a little annoyed. Well, one Frenchman in particular, 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:31.880 George Louis Leclerc, the Comte de Baifont, arguably the most 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:36.600 famous natural historian in the world. At this time, Buffon 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:41.440 was the author of an internationally best selling thirty six 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:46.720 volume book called the hispan Necral, or Natural History, in 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:53.240 which he gave meticulous evidence for the theory of quote degeneracy. 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:57.400 This was a popular European theory at the time, which 0:01:57.440 --> 0:02:01.600 claimed that all flora and fauna were weaker and smaller 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:05.360 in the New World as compared to the Old World, 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:10.480 i e. Europe. The plants and animals of America were 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:14.440 shriveled little things compared to the plants and animals in Europe. 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.400 So the theory went, the birds of America could not 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:21.440 croak out a note compared to the marvelous European songbirds, 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:25.200 the dogs of America could only whimper compared to the 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:30.200 great barking hounds of the continent. And the people well, 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:34.720 According to this theory, the native Americans fared no better 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:40.880 than the native fauna and flora. Jefferson ruminated on Buffon's 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:46.240 work with increasing outrage. The chapter on quadrupeds for legged 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:51.120 beasts was especially egregious. How could befall claim that the 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:55.639 American land mammal was inferior, that man had never even 0:02:55.760 --> 0:03:01.320 left Europe? Jefferson envisioned his beloved home state, Virginia, which 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:05.040 was no longer a colony, finally part of a new 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:09.079 independent nation. When he looked out at the grounds of 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:14.000 his estate at Monticello, he saw rolling, fertile fields tended 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:18.079 to buy people he enslaved, but lands that were capable 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:22.240 of growing tobacco, wheat, and a whole host of crops. 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:25.720 He saw the mountain on whose peak he had built 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:30.760 his plantation. He remembered the lush, verdant Piedmont forests of 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:34.640 his youth, the smell of autumn crisp through the trees, 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:39.000 the hoofprints of deer just visible on the forest floor. 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:45.120 He recalled the spry doze and magnificent stags leaping away 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:49.600 in the thicket. If anything, Jefferson thought the plants and 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:55.120 animals and people were bigger in America, better in America. 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:59.840 He had written as much painstakingly in his just published 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:04.160 book Notes on the State of Virginia. He believed the 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:09.640 giant mastodon was still roaming the country somewhere, the most sublime, 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:15.360 the most colossal quadruped of all. Besides, hadn't Benjamin Franklin 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:19.120 already shown the French that Americans were taller on his 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:24.240 trip to the continent. Hadn't Alexander Hamilton refuted the degeneracy 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:29.279 concept in his Federalist papers. Hadn't Jefferson and James Madison 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:33.960 corresponded on the matter sufficient to finally set it to rest. 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:40.119 How dare the French not? We can't No, The degeneracy 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:45.719 libel could not stand. Jefferson needed to do something. He 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:49.800 picked up his quill to write John Sullivan, Governor of 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:53.919 New Hampshire, another part of America dnse with forest and 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:58.080 the Great White Mountains. Jefferson needed to bring something to 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:02.200 the continent that would change the Frenchman's mind for good. 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:05.919 He wasn't just acting for his own sake. He was 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:09.640 acting on behalf of the reputation of the new world, 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:14.560 of the brand new United States of America, so young 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:19.680 that its articles of Confederation were still being tested in practice. 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:24.279 For the good of the Union, Thomas Jefferson, founding father, 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:29.520 former governor of Virginia, future president, needed to ship something 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:34.039 enormous across the Atlantic Ocean. As the decade of the 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:39.440 seventeen eighties neared its close. A dog wouldn't do, nor 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:43.760 a squirrel, nor a deer. He needed to show Comte 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:48.040 de Baifant the biggest four legged American animal that he 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:51.960 could readily find. He dipped his quill into a pot 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:56.520 of ink and leaned over his parchment. What he needed, 0:05:56.880 --> 0:06:02.479 he wrote to New Hampshire, was a mood. I'm Dani 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:17.360 Schwartz and this is noble blood. Adult men comparing bodies, 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:21.440 fighting over whose is bigger, and getting worked up over 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:25.680 contests of size. If the fight over the theory of 0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:30.200 degeneracy sounds a bit like an eighteenth century men's locker 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:34.719 room to you, well it basically was. But who were 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:39.320 the men doing the measurements in the metaphorical locker room? 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:41.920 The comb tip of fone was born George Louis le 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:45.920 Cleric in seventeen o seven. He came of age in 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.800 France after the death of Louis as the Age of 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:55.120 Enlightenment was beginning to flourish after an evidently miserable childhood, 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:58.360 before made a name for himself at the Royal Academy 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:02.920 of Sciences by writing papers on the mathematics of probability, 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:06.719 especially as it applied to gambling. For most of his 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:11.040 early life, there's little evidence of any actual interest in 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:15.560 nature or cataloging of natural history. The closest thing to 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:19.600 anthropology we might see was this sweet little note from 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:24.480 his travels as a young man. Quote women are quite beautiful, 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:28.080 and except for the old ones, I don't remember having 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:33.760 seen any that were ugly unquote A little anthropologist in training. 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:37.560 But all that changed when the French Navy needed a 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:41.240 place to research would for their ships, they chose the 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:45.160 forests around Beffon's estate, and it was then that Buffon 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:50.000 turned his attention to the natural world. For the next decade, 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:55.040 he devoted himself with singular zeal, to cataloging, recording, and 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:59.520 measuring the exact features of every species he could find. 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:03.320 He wanted to write no less than quote the exact 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:07.920 description and the true history of each thing end quote 0:08:07.920 --> 0:08:12.640 on the planet, and in seventeen forty nine, the first 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:18.640 volume of his natural history was published. It was a sensation, 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:23.440 a genuine eighteenth century best seller, one of the first 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:27.480 ever popular science books. It's sold out in six weeks 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:31.720 and was translated into English and reviewed by newspapers all 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:36.720 over the American colonies. Smart trendy readers throughout Europe and 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:41.520 America were devouring it and its details about the theory 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:47.120 of degeneracy in the New World, essentially, wrote Buffon, nature 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:53.679 in America is functioning quote upon a smaller scale. Buffone 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:56.960 was not the first European thinker to propose the idea 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:00.760 of degeneracy in America, but he was the most respected, 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:04.840 the most widely read. He provided the most evidence and 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:09.439 the clearest reason. Because the climate in America is colder 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:15.520 and wetter, life grows weaker and diminished. His arguments extended 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:18.840 to the people of the New World to His statements 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:25.160 about Native American populations were especially intensely callous. He called 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:30.720 indigenous Americans quote a kind of weak automaton. Nature treated 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:34.520 them rather like a stepmother than a parent, by refusing 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:38.480 them the invigorating sentiment of love and the strong desire 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:44.400 of multiplying their species unquote. For the record, Befall's own 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:48.000 relationship with parental love was that he had not attended 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:51.880 his own father's second wedding after his mother's death. He 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:55.960 had sued his father for his inheritance and described his 0:09:56.040 --> 0:10:00.160 feelings as that of quote the discontent of a l 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:05.080 born son caused by a father who was heartless unquote. 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:08.840 So if a lack of parental love renders a person 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:13.760 in firm. Well, that doesn't speak very well of him. 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:17.920 In all his comparison of species, Buffon never left Europe 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:22.400 and rarely went out into nature to collect any information himself. 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.720 That was actually common practice for natural historians of the time. 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:31.600 Instead of actually collecting data themselves, they relied on the 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:37.360 relay testimonies of others and on cabinets of curiosities collections 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:41.800 of natural and interesting objects. One of the collections Befone 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:46.559 relied on was actually the King's Buffon was like the geographer, 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:50.880 invented two centuries later in fiction by another French author 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:55.160 and Twine de Saint Experi in The Little Prince. In 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:59.280 that book, the geographer character says he quote doesn't go 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:03.800 out to scribe cities, rivers, mountains, seas, oceans and deserts. 0:11:04.040 --> 0:11:07.679 A geographer is too important to go wandering about. He 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:11.080 never leaves his study, but he received the explorers there. 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:14.360 He questions them, and he writes down what they remember 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:19.400 end quote. Thomas Jefferson, for his part, had spent his 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:24.480 childhood in the woods of Virginia. Born in seventeen forty three, 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:28.400 he was thirty six years Buffons Jr. Like Buffon, he 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:34.120 studied law Unlike Buffon, he had an evident interest in nature, botany, 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:37.960 and scientific observation from the time he was very young. 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:44.559 Jefferson is obviously known to American history as a complicated figure. 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:48.560 He's the author of the Declaration of Independence, an eloquent 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:52.800 plea for man's fundamental freedom and equality, and yet he 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:57.160 owned a slave plantation, And as he was contemplating helping 0:11:57.200 --> 0:12:01.320 to build a new independent American nation, he was deeply 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:06.160 affronted by Buffon's claims of American degeneracy. He wasn't the 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:12.079 only one. Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton's basically half 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:16.000 the guys in the musical Hamilton's We're defending America against 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:20.559 degeneracy theory at one time or another. Lee Allen de Gatkin, 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:24.200 whose research I am indebted to for this episode, rightly 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:27.040 note that these guys were bothering to think about some 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:31.080 Frenchman's theory quote in the midst of issues such as 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:35.640 the proposition to hold a constitutional convention, whether paper money 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:40.080 should be adopted, and what to do about an empty treasury. 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:44.040 You know, just those little things. But that's to say 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:49.040 this project of defending American bigness and heartiness had the 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:54.160 valance of nationalism during a time when nationalism really mattered. 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:58.280 The Republic was newly one from the British and it 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:02.599 needed to define its national character on the world stage 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:06.880 as one of strength. Of all of the founders, it 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:12.400 was Jefferson who worked most passionately to refute buffonse theory. 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.840 In his book Notes on the State of Virginia, published 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:20.560 in seventeen eighty five, Jefferson name check Buffon and his theory, 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:24.920 and then spent page after page defending America against it. 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:30.040 Jefferson included tables on quote a comparative view of the 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:34.480 quadrupeds of Europe and of America, which compare by weight 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:38.200 everything from the mammoth to the wolf, to the links, 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:42.040 to the otter to the shrew mouse. Jefferson catalogs the 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:45.240 number of species found only in Europe versus the number 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:50.000 of species found only in America. Rather hilariously, he includes 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:52.560 a whole page in which the American side of the 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:56.200 table is filled in and the European side is just blank. 0:13:56.840 --> 0:14:00.600 He obsesses for a while about his belief that the mammoth, which, 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:04.800 remember Jefferson is positive, is still around somewhere. Should quote 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:08.360 have stifled in its birth, the opinion of a writer 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:11.600 most learned too of all others in the science of 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:16.080 animal history unquote, that is, it should have stifled the 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:21.640 opinion of Bouffon. Jefferson was also passionate to the point 0:14:21.680 --> 0:14:24.880 of being over the top in his defense of Native 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:28.840 Americans against the claim of degeneracy. At one point, he 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.200 says that no orator in all of Europe, not even 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:35.760 Cicero ever gave a speech better than a Mingo chief 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:39.920 named Logan. But as you might expect when it comes 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:45.280 to Jefferson and race, his views were complicated. In the 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:48.640 same book, he makes sure to note that different races 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:53.280 have different physical and mental abilities. It's just not in 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:57.560 Jefferson's opinion, because of where they were born. In the end, 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:01.800 Jefferson wasn't satisfied with his buttle to Befall in his book. 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:06.760 He needed something physical, something bigger than words on a page. 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:10.760 He needed to get through to Befall. What he needed 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:14.760 was the biggest animal that could be procured, the beast 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:18.440 that would so impress Befall that the Frenchman would be 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:23.760 forced to publicly change his mind. That is why Jefferson 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:29.800 needed a moose if you were a correspondent of the 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:33.720 eminent Thomas Jefferson in the mid seventeen eighties, you were 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:38.680 almost certainly someone important George Washington or John Adams. Perhaps 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:42.080 in the seventeen eighties you might have been worried about 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:46.680 economic disputes with neighboring states. You probably would have worn 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:51.320 a double breasted waistcoat and skin tight riding breeches, and 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:54.680 a tall hat, maybe with a buckle for flair. And 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:59.800 you might have one day received from your eminent correspondent 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:05.120 a sixteen questioned survey on the habits and measurements of 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:09.280 the American moose. Do they make a loud rattling sound 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:13.720 when they run? Jefferson asked, what is their food? What 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:17.320 is the height? Its length from ear to ear, its 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:22.360 circumference were largest. You can almost imagine the Facebook post, 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:28.680 Hey friends, anybody know anything about a moose? One friend did, 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:34.160 John Sullivan, Governor of New Hampshire. The two men continued 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:38.600 to correspond on and off about the possibility of procuring 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:43.640 a moose, a correspondence that continued when Jefferson shipped off 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:48.960 to Paris as Ambassador to France. In Paris, Jefferson left 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:52.560 a dinner with Baffon, with the distinct impression that showing 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:56.240 Befall a giant moose would change the Frenchman's mind about 0:16:56.280 --> 0:17:01.000 American degeneracy once and for all. He wrote more urgently 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:06.159 to Sullivan in New Hampshire, saying that the quote skin, skeletons, 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:11.720 and horse unquote of moose would be quote more precious 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:16.119 than you can imagine unquote. In fact, by this time, 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:20.160 Buffon had already issued a fifth supplement of his natural 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:25.840 History that was a gentle walking back. While American degeneracy 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:31.040 had originally extended to the entire American continent, the fifth 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:36.439 edition subtly dropped the references to North America. It's not 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:40.720 clear whether Jefferson saw or registered this change. If he did, 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:44.119 he surely didn't think it was enough. In the meantime, 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:49.199 back in New Hampshire, John Sullivan decided to deliver. In 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:53.960 mid March, very much still winter in New England, he 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:58.680 dispatched a twenty man team to kill a seven foot 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:04.640 tall moose Vermont as a favor to Thomas Jefferson. It's 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:07.159 at this point in the story that it might be 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:11.320 time to introduce the third player in our metaphorical locker 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:15.960 room an unwitting player to be sure the moose himself. 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:21.680 The word moose comes from the Algonquin language. The Algonquin 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:26.560 root word refers to stripping off, probably of bark, the 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:31.040 way a moose's antlers might. Elizabeth Bishop's famous poem The 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:37.200 Moose describes an animal quote that stands there looms rather 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:43.159 towering high as a church. Unquote. The adult male moose 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:48.359 averages six ft tall each year in the testosterone surge 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:51.919 before breeding season. It's antlers grow in a coat of 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:56.639 velvet and then harden before shedding. And yes, to continue 0:18:56.720 --> 0:19:02.840 our prevailing anatomical metaphor, one wild life biologist for National 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:07.520 Geographic says, quote, the guy who has the biggest set 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:10.920 of antlers and can show them off to potential girl 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:16.040 friends will be the fortunate individual who does the breeding. Unquote. 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:20.679 Those antlers alone can weigh sixty pounds, and the moose 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:25.040 can weigh fourteen hundred pounds. That's the sheer size of 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:28.840 the thing that Sullivan's men spent the next two weeks 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:33.400 hauling twenty miles through the snow back to New Hampshire. 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:38.399 Sullivan stepped outside nose reddening in the cold, to find 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:42.840 not the noble creature that Thomas Jefferson had asked for, 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:49.800 but a putrefying carcass in very rough shape. Nevertheless, he 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:55.160 was committed to his task, so the men, wanting arrest 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:58.919 and a warm hearth at this point, instead set to 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:04.040 the hard work separating flesh from bone, preserving as much 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:07.520 of the moose as they could against further degradation, and 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:12.320 attempting to keep the hoofs and antlers attached. The smell 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:16.320 of dead moose filled their nostrils as they worked, but 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:21.919 as they continued, they reached an uneasy conclusion. This moose 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:25.840 and its antlers would not be making it together across 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:31.639 the Atlantic. Jefferson's moose could only come in pieces. The 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:37.359 magnificent specimen that Jefferson requested was not to be Like 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:41.320 a kid. Desperate not to fail the assignment, Sullivan also 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:44.520 decided to send along a few other antlers he had 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:48.280 lying around. This was New Hampshire, after all, and he 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:51.800 instructed Jefferson that he could attach them to the carcass 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:58.080 at will. By this time, fulfilling Jefferson's obsessive requests for 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:02.000 a moose had become more trouble than Sullivan had signed 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:05.280 up for this was a guy who had once charged 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:09.360 at Hessian's soldiers during the Revolutionary War with a pistol 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:12.760 in each hand, and now he was stuck borrowing forty 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:16.359 five pounds sterling from his brother to deal with Thomas 0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:21.119 Jefferson's moose carcass. He must have been very happy to 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:24.200 put the moose and the assorted antlers on a ship 0:21:24.280 --> 0:21:27.840 that sets sail from Portsmouth, New Hampshire in early May, 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:30.920 but the poor moose got left behind on that ship 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:35.879 for reasons unknown, possibly that chip's captain got a whiff 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:39.480 of the giant, smelly moose skin and decided he could 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:43.800 do a transatlantic voyage without it. For five months, the 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:47.560 carcass sat until finally it caught her ride and arrived 0:21:47.600 --> 0:21:51.240 in Half the Grace France in the final days of September. 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:56.320 We can only imagine Jefferson's ecstasy at the arrival of 0:21:56.359 --> 0:22:00.399 the ship, and then his disappointment at the sorry state 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:05.480 of its cargo. Nonetheless, he immediately wrote Buffon on October 0:22:05.600 --> 0:22:09.520 one seven. He told the Frenchman that he had the 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:14.480 bones and skin of a moose. He did make some apologies. 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:17.719 He had envisioned that the skin would come stuffed and 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:21.480 sewn back together like a giant bild the bear. He'd 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:27.959 imagined something immediately impressive. Instead, Jefferson acknowledged this moose had 0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:31.840 been sent quote with the hair on, but a great 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:34.359 deal of it has come off, and the rest is 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:40.159 ready to drop off unquote, more than anything. Jefferson implored 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:44.840 Buffon's understanding when it came to matters of size. The 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:48.040 antlers that finally made it across the Atlantic with the 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:52.200 moose skin and bones were those assorted antlers of other 0:22:52.320 --> 0:22:56.600 species that the governor had included, and Jefferson tried his 0:22:56.760 --> 0:23:01.399 best to justify them, insisting, quote, the horns of the 0:23:01.440 --> 0:23:05.360 elk are remarkably small. I have certainly seen of them 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:08.320 which would have weighed five or six times as much. 0:23:08.880 --> 0:23:12.280 The horns of the deer which accompany these spoils are 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:15.040 not of the fifth or sixth part of the weight 0:23:15.280 --> 0:23:18.399 of some that I have seen. I therefore beg of 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:22.000 you not to consider those now sent as furnishing a 0:23:22.040 --> 0:23:27.800 specimen of their ordinary size unquote shrinkage. You can almost 0:23:27.800 --> 0:23:31.640 hear him saying he signed the letter to Buffon, your 0:23:31.680 --> 0:23:35.600 most obedient and most humble servant, and I will say 0:23:35.640 --> 0:23:38.520 it is hard reading these letters not to see how 0:23:38.640 --> 0:23:43.520 Lin Manuel Miranda made Jefferson the buffoonish frenchman oft in Paris. 0:23:43.520 --> 0:23:48.040 In Hamilton's, of course, it was Buffon who Jefferson was 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:51.520 hoping to make the buffoon, at least when it came 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:56.560 to the degeneracy theory. Jefferson viewed Buffon as a true scientist, 0:23:56.960 --> 0:24:00.160 an intelligent man who had made a mistake and would 0:24:00.160 --> 0:24:03.959 surely be swayed by the evidence set before him. Jefferson 0:24:04.080 --> 0:24:08.920 sent the letter off with giddy anticipation. Thomas Jefferson had 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:13.320 gotten his moose, and soon he would get Baffall. To 0:24:13.480 --> 0:24:21.040 recount when the moose carcass landed in France, Jefferson was 0:24:21.080 --> 0:24:24.960 a relatively young man of forty four, but Befall, at 0:24:24.960 --> 0:24:28.280 this point was eighty years old and sick. It was 0:24:28.440 --> 0:24:33.320 his assistant who received the moose. In Jefferson's imagination, the 0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:37.080 assistant would have been dumb struck. Sir. The assistant would 0:24:37.080 --> 0:24:40.040 say to Baffall, you've been all wrong, all wrong. The 0:24:40.119 --> 0:24:43.359 animals in this new world are larger than the old world. 0:24:43.800 --> 0:24:47.520 Baffall would gaze upon the moose bones with shock and awe. 0:24:47.880 --> 0:24:52.200 He would immediately sit up and change course, frantically, writing 0:24:52.680 --> 0:24:56.240 it would be a defining moment in his scientific career. 0:24:57.200 --> 0:25:00.800 But that's not what happened. Buffon may eight indeed have 0:25:00.920 --> 0:25:05.360 seen the moose. Maybe he really did plan, as Jefferson believed, 0:25:05.400 --> 0:25:09.560 he would to officially renounce the theory of degeneracy once 0:25:09.600 --> 0:25:12.920 and for all in his next volume of the Natural History, 0:25:13.720 --> 0:25:18.520 But Buffon died six months later before publishing another word 0:25:18.640 --> 0:25:22.719 on the subject. In Jacques Rogers four hundred plus page 0:25:22.720 --> 0:25:27.920 biography of BeFAN, the incident with Jefferson's moose is mentioned 0:25:28.000 --> 0:25:32.480 in exactly one paragraph, where it gets half a sentence. 0:25:33.280 --> 0:25:37.760 The Natural History remained as it was, with no moose 0:25:37.800 --> 0:25:44.440 related corrections. Jefferson went on to become the third President 0:25:44.520 --> 0:25:48.280 of the United States fourteen years later. He would send 0:25:48.440 --> 0:25:51.439 Lewis and Clark to the West with a long list 0:25:51.520 --> 0:25:55.280 of natural measurements for them to obtain. He would collect 0:25:55.320 --> 0:25:59.159 a grand cabinet of curiosities at Mounticello and have a 0:25:59.240 --> 0:26:02.639 hall hung with the head and antlers of a moose, 0:26:02.960 --> 0:26:09.000 a deer, a buffalo, and supposedly a mammoth. He never 0:26:09.080 --> 0:26:13.080 gave up on his quest to prove the massiveness of 0:26:13.200 --> 0:26:18.439 animals in the New World. In se he presented to 0:26:18.560 --> 0:26:23.320 the American Philosophical Society a collection of giant bones from 0:26:23.320 --> 0:26:27.720 a new species he called the Megalonyx, which turned out 0:26:27.720 --> 0:26:31.840 to be the bones of the extinct giant sloth. And 0:26:32.000 --> 0:26:35.919 as to the whole debate over which animal from which 0:26:36.200 --> 0:26:41.000 quote world is bigger and therefore better, I've made allusions 0:26:41.040 --> 0:26:44.439 here to the men's locker room measuring contest character of 0:26:44.440 --> 0:26:48.080 it all. But it was a debate with real consequences, 0:26:48.720 --> 0:26:51.840 not so much the answer to the question of size, 0:26:52.080 --> 0:26:56.399 but the framing of the question itself. The very concept 0:26:56.520 --> 0:27:01.800 that bigger is better Undergird's manifest destiny, the sense of 0:27:02.200 --> 0:27:07.399 largeness that America offered to conquerors, the possibility of more 0:27:07.960 --> 0:27:13.240 when Europe had already been claimed bigger as better undergirds 0:27:13.280 --> 0:27:17.080 the subjugation of women to men over centuries applied to 0:27:17.240 --> 0:27:23.480 Native American populations. It is dehumanization in either direction, the strong, 0:27:23.680 --> 0:27:29.040 noble savage or the weak, degraded man. It's presented today 0:27:29.160 --> 0:27:32.399 in political wars between large and small states in the 0:27:32.480 --> 0:27:36.480 United States, between large and small states of the world. 0:27:37.440 --> 0:27:42.600 But what if, of course, bigger is not necessarily better, 0:27:43.520 --> 0:27:47.240 even if we could prove that life grew bigger in 0:27:47.359 --> 0:27:51.600 some places than others, does a value judgment need to 0:27:51.640 --> 0:27:56.760 be attached? Might Darwin himself, born a decade after the 0:27:56.800 --> 0:28:02.240 Comte de Baifant, argue that smallness can be adaptive, useful 0:28:02.840 --> 0:28:08.080 good at base? The reason why the fight over degenerously 0:28:08.240 --> 0:28:12.640 mattered to these eighteenth century men was there intrinsic feeling 0:28:12.800 --> 0:28:16.840 that bigger is better. So I want to leave you 0:28:17.040 --> 0:28:21.879 and this episode with a thought, what if it's simply not. 0:28:31.600 --> 0:28:35.040 That's the story of Thomas Jefferson and America in a 0:28:35.160 --> 0:28:38.400 battle of size against the Comte de Bifont and Europe. 0:28:38.760 --> 0:28:41.880 But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear 0:28:42.000 --> 0:28:51.400 what happened to Befon's corps. The funeral of the Comte 0:28:51.440 --> 0:28:55.080 de Beifont was a grand affair. This was the author 0:28:55.200 --> 0:28:59.920 of the best selling natural history, The Visionary and Poetic 0:29:00.240 --> 0:29:04.120 Epics of Nature and the First Geological History of the World, 0:29:04.560 --> 0:29:06.760 a book that was read by the likes of Catherine 0:29:06.760 --> 0:29:12.480 the Great. On April eighteenth, seventeen eighty eight, twenty thousand 0:29:12.680 --> 0:29:18.480 mourners watched as fourteen horses carried Buffon's funeral processions down 0:29:18.560 --> 0:29:22.440 the street of San Menard, France, and they listened to 0:29:22.640 --> 0:29:27.560 three dozen choir boys singing songs of mourning. They may 0:29:27.640 --> 0:29:31.200 not have known that the body they were mourning had 0:29:31.240 --> 0:29:37.040 been opened one day earlier after Buffon's death. Buffon himself 0:29:37.120 --> 0:29:41.240 had given the instructions before he died. His chest cavity 0:29:41.400 --> 0:29:45.560 was cut and his heart removed from his body, and 0:29:45.600 --> 0:29:48.440 then given to his friend, Fouget de Saint Fon, a 0:29:48.760 --> 0:29:54.000 geologist and volcanist. Buffon's skull was opened with a saw. 0:29:54.760 --> 0:29:58.720 The instinct for comparative measurement did not abandon those who 0:29:58.760 --> 0:30:03.200 dealt with Buffon's corpse. The brain was recorded as a 0:30:03.320 --> 0:30:09.320 quote slightly larger size than that of ordinary brains unquote. 0:30:09.880 --> 0:30:13.959 So the heartless body of the naturalist was mourned with 0:30:14.040 --> 0:30:17.880 fanfare on the way to its interment in Monbar. It 0:30:17.960 --> 0:30:22.960 did not stay interred during the French Revolution, which began 0:30:23.240 --> 0:30:26.640