by John Ferling
Notes
PREFACE
1. William Jefferson Clinton, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1993, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, Book 1, 1993 (Washington, D.C., 1994–2002), 1:1–2.
2. President Bill Clinton, Between Hope and History: Meeting America’s Challenges for the 21st Century (New York, 1996), 127.
3. George W. Bush, “Remarks Announcing the Nomination of Henry M. Paulson, Jr., to Be Secretary of the Treasury,” May 30, 2006, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush, 2006, Book 1, 2006 (Washington, D.C., 2010), 1:1043–45.
4. Andrew Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson (New York, 2003), 223–28. The quotation is on page 223.
5. Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (New York, 2006), 121–22.
6. Ibid., 122.
7. Merrill D. Peterson, The Jeffersonian Image in the American Mind (New York, 1960), 457.
8. Francis D. Cogliano, Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy (Charlottesville, Va., 2006), 199; Paul Finkelman, “The Monster of Monticello,” New York Times, November 30, 2012.
9. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston, 1965), 1, 733.
10. Unless otherwise noted, the foregoing survey of Jefferson and Hamilton in popular thought draws on Peterson, Jeffersonian Image in the American Mind; Stephen F. Knott, Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth (Lawrence, Kan., 2002); and William Hogeland, “Inventing Alexander Hamilton: The Troubling Embrace of the Founder of American Finance,” Boston Review, November/December 2007,
http://bostonreview.net/BR32.6/hogeland.php.
Quotations from Peterson can be found on pages 72, 74, 253, 260, 261, 263, 352, 356, 360, 377–78, and 385. Quotations from Knott can be found on pages 6, 49, 72, 74, 87, 88, 102, 139, 161, 190, and 203.
PROLOGUE
1. WW 27:287–88; GW to Marquis de Lafayette, February 1, 1784, PGWCfed 1:87–88.
2. GW to Lafayette, February 1, 1784, PGWCfed 1:88; GW to Philip Schuyler, January 21, 1784, ibid., 1:68.
3. GW to Jonathan Trumbull Jr., January 5, 1784, PGWCfed 1:12.
4. GW to Henry Knox, January 5, 1785, PGWCfed 2:253; Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York, 2010), 465; Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York, 2007), 59.
5. GW, “Circular to the States,” June 8, 1783, WW 26:483–96.
6. GW to John Jay, May 18, 1786, PGWCfed 4:56.
7. The foregoing draws on Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), 11–243; and Terry Bouton, Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (New York, 2007), 61–104.
8. Jay to GW, June 27, 1786, PGWCfed 4:131; GW to Jay, August 15, 1786, ibid., 4:212.
9. AH, New York Assembly. Remarks on an Act Granting to Congress Certain Imposts and Duties, February 15, 1787, PAH 4:71–93. The quotes are on pages 77, 83, 91, and 92.
10. JMB 1:653.
11. TJ to George Wythe, August 13, 1786, PTJ 10:244–454; TJ to Edward Carrington, January 16, August 4, 1787, ibid., 11:48–49, 678; TJ to JM, January 30, 1787, ibid., 11:92–93; TJ to GW, November 14, 1786, ibid., 10:533; TJ to Benjamin Hawkins, August 4, 1787, ibid., 11:684; TJ to Joseph Jones, August 14, 1787, ibid., 12:34.
12. TJ to GW, August 14, 1787, PTJ 12:36–37.
13. GW to Lafayette, May 10, 1786, PGWCfed 4:42; GW to Henry Lee Jr., October 31, 1786, ibid., 4:318; GW to Jay, August 15, 1786, ibid., 4:212.
CHAPTER 1: “TO MAKE A MORE UNIVERSAL ACQUAINTANCE”: UNHAPPY YOUTHS
Malone, TJ, 1:3–165; Peterson, TJ, 3–31; Brodie, TJ, 86–94; Chernow, AH, 7–53, 147–48, 203, 209, 226–27; Cooke, AH, 1–8; Flexner, Young H, 9–63; Mitchell, AH, 1:1–60; Brookhiser, AH, 13–28; Miller, AH, 3–8.
1. John Ferling, Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution (New York, 2000), 7.
2. AH to Edward Stevens, November 11, 1769, PAH 1:4.
3. Susan Kern, The Jeffersons at Shadwell (New Haven, Conn., 2010), 1–40. An inventory of Peter Jefferson’s library as of 1757 can be found in ibid., 261–62.
4. TJ to Thomas Jefferson Randolph, November 29, 1808, FLTJ, 362–63.
5. This and all previous quotations above in the saga of AH’s life are from AH to William Jackson, August 26, 1800, PAH 25:89–90.
6. AH to James Hamilton Jr., June 22, 1785, PAH 3:617.
7. Quoted in Brodie, TJ, 71.
8. TJ to Joseph Priestley, January 27, 1800, PTJ 31:340. See also Kevin J. Hayes, The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 2008), 31–42.
9. TJ to John Harvie, January 14, 1760, PTJ 1:3. This paragraph draws in part on Gordon S. Wood, “The Trials and Tribulations of Thomas Jefferson,” in Peter S. Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies (Charlottesville, Va., 1993), 402–3.
10. Hayes, Road to Monticello, 50–56; Silvio A. Bedini, Thomas Jefferson: Statesman of Science (New York, 1990), 23–29. The “liberality of sentiment” quotation can be found in Hayes, Road to Monticello, 54.
11. TJ, Autobiography, in Padover, CTJ, 1120.
12. TJ to Vine Utley, March 21, 1819, Ford, WTJ 9:126; TJ to William Duane, October 1, 1812, Lipscomb and Berg, WTJ 2:420; Malone, TJ, 1:56–57; Harry S. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1858), 1:37, 41–42.
13. Quoted in Trevor Colbourn, ed., Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair (New York, 1974), 7.
14. TJ to John Page, December 25, 1762, PTJ 1:5; TJ, Autobiography, in Padover, CTJ, 1120.
15. Quoted in Robert Hendrickson, Hamilton (New York, 1976), 1:26.
16. AH to Stevens, November 11, 1769, PAH 1:4.
17. Ibid.
18. AH to the Royal Danish American Gazette, April 6, 1771, September 6, October 17, 1772, PAH 1:6–7, 34–38, 38–39.
19. Quoted in Andrew Burstein, The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist (Charlottesville, Va., 1995), 14.
20. TJ to Page, December 25, 1762, July 15, 1763, PTJ 1:5, 10.
21. TJ to Page, December 25, 1762, July 15, October 7, 1763, January 19, 1764, PTJ 1:11, 13–14.
22. TJ to William Fleming, March 20, 1764, PTJ 1:16.
23. Jon Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women (New York, 2007), 34–36. Consult Kukla’s extensive endnotes for the literature on tension headaches in general and TJ’s problems in particular.
24. TJ to Ralph Izard, July 17, 1788, PTJ 13:372; TJ to Thomas Jefferson Randolph, June 14, 1806, Lipscomb and Bergh, WTJ 12:197–98; TJ, Autobiography, in Padover, CTJ, 1120; Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson, 47; Brodie, TJ, 61; Page Smith, Jefferson: A Revealing Biography (New York, 1976), 23.
25. Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson, 58–65; Edward Dumbauld, Thomas Jefferson and the Law (Norman, Okla., 1978), xi.
26. The “monastic” quote and many of the ideas in this paragraph draw on Peter S. Onuf, “Making Sense of Jefferson,” in Peter S. Onuf, ed., The Mind of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville, Va., 2007). The “reestablish himself” quotation is from Burstein, Inner Jefferson, 12. The “canine appetite” quotation is from William Howard Adams, The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson (New Haven, Conn., 1997), 125. See also Edmund Randolph, “Essay on the Revolutionary History of Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 43 (1953): 123.
27. This paragraph draws on Michal J. Rozbicki, The Complete Colonial Gentleman: Cultural Legitimacy in Plantation America (Charlottesville, Va., 1998), 7–126.
28. Kenneth A. Lockridge, On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage: The Commonplace Books of William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson and the Gendering of Power in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1992), 47–102; Douglas L. Wilson, ed., Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 2nd set (Princeton, N.J., 1989), 19, 70–71, 72, 76–77, 82, 98–99, 117–18, 126–27. See also, Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women, 37–40.
29. TJ to Page
, February 21, 1770, PTJ 1:34–35.
30. The text of Walker’s 1802 allegation and TJ’s confession can be found in Malone, TJ 1:448–50. See also Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women, 41–63.
31. Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women, 55–56.
32. Dumbauld, Thomas Jefferson and the Law, 66–83; Frank L. Dewey, Thomas Jefferson, Lawyer (Charlottesville, Va., 1986), 9–14; Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson, 85–86.
33. John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (reprint, New York, 2010), 26–28.
34. Quoted in Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 78.
35. JMB 1:212; TJ to James Ogilvie, February 20, 1771, PTJ 1:63.
36. Charles Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders: Political Practices in Washington’s Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1952), 100.
37. JMB 1:xlv– xlvi.
38. Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson, 1:62–64; Brodie, TJ, 88.
39. TJ to Ogilvie, February 20, 1771, PTJ 1:63; TJ to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771, ibid., 1:78.
40. Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson, 1:64, 160. For a good summary of the family legends concerning the newlyweds’ adventures, see Virginia Scharff, The Women Jefferson Loved (New York, 2010), 89–90.
41. TJ, Autobiography, in Padover, CTJ, 1121, 1151.
42. Ibid., 1120–22.
43. “Narrative of Hercules Mulligan of the City of New York,” [n.d.], William and Mary Quarterly 4 (1947): 209.
44. Flexner, Young Hamilton, 60.
45. On AH’s habit of praying daily, see “Narrative of Colonel Robert Troup,” March 22, 1810, in William and Mary Quarterly 4 (1947): 213.
CHAPTER 2: “THE GALLING YOKE OF DEPENDENCE”: BECOMING REBELS
Malone, TJ, 1:91–97, 128–42; Peterson, TJ, 32–79; Cunningham, TJ, 23–51; Chernow, AH, 54–74; Miller, AH, 3–16.
1. TJ to Page, December 25, 1762, PTJ 1:5.
2. Frank L. Dewey, Thomas Jefferson, Lawyer (Charlottesville, Va., 1986), 83–93.
3. Lawrence Henry Gibson, “The American Revolution as an Aftermath of the Great War for Empire,” Political Science Quarterly 55 (1950): 86–104; Jack P. Greene, “An Uneasy Connection: An Analysis of the Preconditions of the American Revolution,” in Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson, eds., Essays on the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1973), 32–80; Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History (New York, 2003), 17–18.
4. TJ to William Wirt, April 12, 1812, in Padover, CTJ, 898; Kevin J. Hayes, The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 2008), 75.
5. Resolutions for an Answer to Governor Botetourt’s Speech, May 8, 1769, PTJ 1:26–27; Virginia Nonimportation Resolutions, May 1769, ibid., 1:27–30.
6. JA, Diary, December 18, 1765, DAJA 1:263.
7. On the evolution of JA’s thinking, see JA to Hezekiah Niles, February 13, 1818, in Charles F. Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author (Boston, 1850–1859), 10:285–86; JA to William Tudor, June 1, 1817, July 9, 1818, ibid., 10:259, 327; JA to Tudor, November 16, 25, December 7, 1816, Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 1954–1959, microfilm edition, reel 123; JA to Sheldon Jones, March 11, 1809, ibid., reel 118; JA to TJ, July 15, 1813, July 9, 1818, AJL 2:237, 594; JA, Diary, March 22, 1773, DAJA 2:80; JA to Benjamin Rush, February 27, 1805, May 1, 21, 1807, in John A. Schutz and Douglass Adair, eds., The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805–1813 (San Marino, Cal., 1966), 35–36, 80, 88.
8. TJ, Autobiography, in Padover, CTJ, 1122.
9. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 22–54. See also the excellent summaries in Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca, N.Y., 1978), 21–90; and David N. Mayer, The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville, Va., 1994), 19–24.
10. [TJ], A Summary View of the Rights of British America (Williamsburg, Va., 1775), PTJ 1:122.
11. Quoted in Peterson, TJ, 40.
12. H. Trevor Colbourn, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1965), 3–56, 158–60; Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 55–143; Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969), 10–45; Gordon S. Wood, “Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century,” William and Mary Quarterly 39 (1982): 401–2; TJ, Autobiography, in Padover, CTJ, 1122; [TJ], A Summary View, PTJ 1:135.
13. Darren Staloff, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding (New York, 2005), 244–56.
14. JA to TJ, August 24, 1815, in AJL 2:455.
15. Quoted in Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999), 72.
16. Draft of Declaration of Rights, July 26, 1774, PTJ 1:119; TJ, Draft of Instructions to the Virginia Delegates to the Continental Congress, [July 1774], ibid., 1:121.
17. Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx, 29.
18. John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768), in Merrill Jensen, ed., Tracts of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (Indianapolis, Ind., 1967), 128–63. The quotation can be found on page 140.
19. TJ, Draft of Instructions to the Virginia Delegates in the Continental Congress, [July 1774], PTJ 1:121–35. The quotations are on pages 125 and 129. For Ellis’s characterization, see Ellis, American Sphinx, 41. The literature on TJ’s composition is extensive; see Stephen A. Conrad, “Putting Rights Talk in Its Place: The Summary View Revisited,” in Peter Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies (Charlottesville, Va., 1993), 254–80; David Mayer, The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville, Va., 1994), 28–37; Kristofer Ray, “Thomas Jefferson and A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” in Francis D. Cogliano, ed., A Companion to Thomas Jefferson (Chichester, England, 2011), 32–43.
20. TJ to John W. Campbell, September 3, 1809, Ford, WTJ 9:258; Instructions by the Virginia Convention to Their Delegates in Congress, 1774, August 1–6, 1774, PTJ 1:141–43; John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783 (Williamsburg, Va., 1988), 10.
21. JA, “Letters of Novanglus,” PJA 2:339–40; [TJ], A Summary View, PTJ 1:126.
22. [TJ], A Summary View, PTJ 1:125, 135.
23. Jack N. Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (Baltimore, 1979), 67.
24. [AH], A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Congress … (New York, 1774), in PAH 1:78; [AH], The Farmer Refuted … (New York, 1775), ibid., 1:81–165. The quotations from these two pamphlets can be found in ibid., 1:46, 52, 59, 77, 82, 90, 91, 151, 158, and 165.
25. [AH], “Remarks on the Quebec Bill,” June 15, 22, 1775, New York-Gazetteer, in PAH 1:165–76.
26. [AH], New-York Journal, “The Monitor,” Nos. I, IV, XI, XIV, November 9, 30, 1775, January 18, February 8, 1776; Worthington C. Ford, et al., eds., Journals of the Continental Congress (Washington, D.C., 1904–1937), 3:410.
27. Quoted in Hayes, Road to Monticello, 153.
28. Philip S. Foner, ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine (New York, 1945), 1:3–46.
29. [AH], New-York Journal, “The Monitor,” Nos. IV, VII, XII, XIV, November 30, December 28, 1775, January 25, February 8, 1776.
30. The “bombardier” quote can be found in John Hamilton, The Life of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1840), 1:52, and the “seal my blood” quotation is in Chernow, AH, 72.
31. Report of Committee to Prepare a Plan for a Militia, [March 25, 1775], PTJ 1:160–61.
32. Virginia Resolutions on Lord North’s Conciliatory Proposal, [June 10, 1775], PTJ 1:170–74. The quotation is on page 172.
33. TJ to William Small, May 7, 1775, PTJ 1:165.
34. JMB 1:396–99; Samuel Ward to Henry Ward, June 22, 1775, LDC 1:535; JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:335–36; JA to Timothy Pickering, August
6, 1822, Adams, Works of John Adams, 2:512.
35. Some quotations are from Malone, TJ, 1:203, 295, 392, and 420. Some are from John Ferling, Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution (New York, 2000), 49. See also James A. Bear, ed., Jefferson at Monticello (Charlottesville, Va., 1967), 11, 13, 18, 71–73; JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:335–36; JA to Pickering, August 6, 1822, Adams, Works of John Adams, 2:513–14.
36. TJ, Composition Draft, ND, PTJ 1:193–98; TJ, Fair Copy for the Committee, [n.d.], ibid., 1:199–203; John Dickinson’s Composition Draft, [n.d.], ibid., 1:204–12; The Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, Ford, Journals of the Continental Congress, 2:128–57.
37. JA to Abigail Adams, June 11, 1775, in Lyman H. Butterfield et al., eds., Adams Family Correspondence (Cambridge, Mass., 1963–), 1:216.
38. JA to Warren, May 15, 1776, PJA 4:186; JA to AA, May 17, 1776, Butterfield, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:410. For TJ’s itinerary, see JMB 1:xlvi– xlvii.
39. TJ to Thomas Nelson, May 16, 1776, PTJ 1:292.
40. Nothing is certain about how and why TJ was chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence. JA and TJ left conflicting accounts of what transpired in the committee. See JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:336–37; JA to Timothy Pickering, August 6, 1822, Adams, Writings of John Adams, 2:512–14n; TJ to James Madison, August 30, 1823, Ford, WTJ 10:267–69. See also Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1997), 99–105; and John Ferling, Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free (New York, 2011), 299–300.
41. On the time that TJ devoted to the draft, see Ferling, Independence, 309. JA’s recollection is in JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:336.
42. Nathan Schachner, Thomas Jefferson: A Biography (New York, 1951), 118; David Mc-Cullough, John Adams (New York, 2001), 120.
