Thomas Jefferson Modeled The Declaration Of Independence On A Scandalous Divorce Case

Dr. James Blair worked as a well-known and respected physician in the Williamsburg area of Virginia. Catherine "Kitty" Eustace came to town on a visit with her mother, Margaret Eustace, and immediately hit it off with the doctor, who was rumored to be on the verge of inheriting a fortune from his politically and financially powerful father. Within just a few months, Eustace and Blair got engaged, despite the 10-year age gap between them. They married in 1771, only to separate almost immediately. Eustace filed three different claims against Blair, including one asking for alimony. She moved in with her mother, who lived just a short distance away.

The marriage between Kitty Eustace and Dr. James Blair likely wasn't based on love. In a letter to Anne Blair, her sister-in-law, Eustace wrote she only married Blair because of how much the Blair family loved her. While that might have been true, Blair's reputation as a successful physician with a rich and dying father probably also motivated Eustace. The moment she moved out, Eustace sued for alimony and lost. She was ordered to move back in with her husband and did for four months, but nothing about their relationship improved.

Despite their unhappy relationship, Dr. James Blair and Kitty Eustace remained more or less trapped in their marriage. Divorce was illegal in Virginia, which fell under British rule at the time. To file for divorce, residents needed to appeal to Parliament, which rarely granted divorce. Back in the day, marriage didn't typically happen for love, but rather for financial security and creating families, especially in the flourishing colonies in America. In 155 years of its existence as a British colony, not a single divorce was granted. A lawyer on a case like that of Eustace and Blair would not only have to prove their specific case warranted divorce, but also that divorce should be legal at all.

Though Kitty Eustace and Dr. James Blair separated almost immediately, their distance was far from the only nail in the coffin of their relationship. According to an anonymous letter received by a St. George Tucker, Blair was "incompetent," or unable to perform his husbandly duties. True, Blair had previously experienced seizures due to a mysterious health condition; it's unclear whether those episodes had a lasting impact on his health. Regardless, the rumor spread, adding fuel to the fire of the doomed marriage. Another portion of the letter also came to the public's attention, that the "old lady persists her daughter is still a maid," implying that Blair and Eustace were unable or unwilling to consummate their relationship.

In September 1771, around four months after Kitty Eustace and Dr. James Blair married, the Fourth Earl of Dunmore, John Murray, came to Williamsburg. The Eustaces knew Murray, the new royal governor of Virginia, and had been friendly with him when he'd been governor of New York. Eustace began spending time with him and bringing him gifts while still married to – and clearly feuding with – Dr. Blair. Rumors spread that Eustace was having an affair with the governor, which Blair even took to Murray himself. Murray threatened to remove Blair's brother from his position on the Governor's Council, and the doctor dropped the accusations.

In November 1772, Thomas Jefferson wasn't yet a Founding Father of America. He initially made his name practicing law, and Dr. James Blair hired Jefferson to represent him in court. Because no precedent for divorce existed in the colonies, the case was not just about advocating for the ending of a single marriage, but for the cause of divorce as a whole.

In the 18th century, a law called partus sequitur ventrum stated that whatever a person's mother was classified as, the child was also. In the 1770 case of Samuel Howell, that law meant he was an indentured servant. Howell's grandmother, a white woman, was punished for having a Black child out of wedlock by being ordered into indentured servitude. Her child, Howell's mother, remained a servant until she turned 31, but gave birth to Howell before then. Because of partus sequitur ventrum, Howell, too, had to be a servant. Thomas Jefferson represented Howell in his 1770 case, saying, "All men are born free," years before the Declaration of Independence was written. Still, the judge ruled against Howell, who later escaped servitude thanks to a gift of money from Jefferson himself. For these "radical" views, Jefferson appeared to be the right man to advocate for the radical act of divorce.

Thomas Jefferson made no secret of his more out-there views. His choices to represent Samuel Howell and Dr. James Blair represented a desire for revolutionary change, especially because a success for Blair would offer a big challenge to British rule. Divorce laws in Virginia stemmed from the ongoing British rule of the colonies, so fighting the archaic rules was also a fight for America's independence. This case laid the groundwork for Jefferson's later work on the Declaration of Independence.

In the midst of preparing for the court case, a shocking twist occurred: Dr. James Blair died in December 1772. As a result, Thomas Jefferson was forced to retire his plan to appeal to the Virginia legislature for a special divorce for his client. But the case was far from over; contrary to Virginia law, Blair left nothing to his estranged wife. His property stayed in limbo and his wife was left with none of his resources. Kitty Eustace sued, but was denied access to the doctor's assets anyway.

Kitty Eustace, undaunted by the court's ruling against her, turned to the General Court of Virginia for her appeal. Notably, John Murray, the Governor of Virginia and Eustace's alleged fling, was a co-judge on the case. Eustace hired Thomas Jefferson's cousin John Randolph and Patrick Henry, of "Give me liberty, or give me death" fame, to represent her. Meanwhile, John Blair Jr., Dr. James Blair's brother, hired Edmund Pendelton and James Mercer to represent his brother's estate. Jefferson served as a consultant on the case, compiling vast amounts of notes that later served to aid his work on the Declaration of Independence.

With Dr. James Blair dead, the focus of the case shifted from divorce to inheritance, and whether Kitty Eustace's spousal claim to Blair's properties was legitimate. Legitimacy, in this case, meant a debate over whether the relationship had been consummated and whether infidelity occurred on Eustace's end. That meant the court grew intensely interested in Eustace's sex life – particularly awkward, given that the man she was rumored to have had an affair with was co-judge on the case. If the marriage had been consummated, Eustace was entitled to the estate in accordance with Virginia law. The court case, then, became about whether or not the couple had had sex. Eustace's side argued that she had, and that even if they hadn't, that it was Blair's fault because of his impotence; the estate defense argued consummation hadn't occurred. The argument wasn't made public – for "decency" reasons, according to Thomas Jefferson's notes – but the court ruled in Eustace's favor.

If Kitty Eustace truly did marry Dr. James Blair for his money and not his love, she got her wish. Eustace won the case against Blair's estate, and she and her mother gained control of all his properties and assets, which they promptly auctioned them off. Eustace remarried in 1777, but turned up alone in Williamsburg in 1787. She died just one year later – the same year as her second husband's second wife.

The cases of both Samuel Howell and Dr. James Blair concerned personal liberty in a world governed by old laws, laws Thomas Jefferson attempted to overturn using the concept of natural right. If he could argue the dissolution of indentured servitude using Enlightenment concepts of self-determination, Jefferson felt he could use the same argument to support the dissolution of an unhappy marriage. Basically, Jefferson posited that a relationship, be it a romantic or governmental one, could be ended if one side felt, and then successfully argued, said relationship was no longer beneficial to them. Defending Blair was as much about the case itself as it was about the future of America. Giving the British authority over divorce in the colonies meant that they were not free to govern themselves; they were reliant on the laws of others. The Declaration of Independence claimed freedom from the British, casting off that system – including the British prohibition of divorce, though the newly formed states had their own rules.