Jefferson and Hamilton

by John Ferling

  21. Banning, Sacred Fire of Liberty, 21–39. JM’s quotes can be found on pages 29 and 30.

  22. Superintendent Morris’s quote can be found in Miller, AH, 87.

  23. Worthington C. Ford et al., eds., The Journals of the Continental Congress (Washington, 1904–1937), 24:291–93; Richard H. Kohn, “The Inside History of the Newburgh Conspiracy: America and the Coup d’Etat,” William and Mary Quarterly 27 (1970): 187–220; Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York, 2007), 67; Thomas Fleming, The Perils of Peace: America’s Struggle for Survival After Yorktown (New York, 2007), 264.

  24. Arthur Lee to Samuel Adams, January 29, 1783, LDC 19:639.

  25. Quoted in Richard B. Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781–1789 (New York, 1987), 46.

  26. The preceding paragraphs draw on Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802 (New York, 1975), 20–24.

  27. AH to GW, February 13, 1783, PAH 3:253–55.

  28. Ford, Journals of the Continental Congress, 24:295–97.

  29. GW, To the Officers of the Army, March 15, 1783, WW 26:222–27.

  30. Josiah Quincy, ed., The Journal of Major Samuel Shaw (Boston, 1843), 101–5.

  31. John Ferling, A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic (New York, 2003), 252.

  32. GW to AH, April 4, 1783, PAH 3:315–16.

  33. GW to AH, March 31, April 4, 16, 22, 1783, PAH 3:309–11, 315–16, 329–31, 334–37; AH to GW, April 8, 1783, ibid., 3:317.

  34. AH to John Jay, July 25, 1783, PAH 3:417.

  35. AH to Clinton, January 12, 1783, PAH 3:240; Kohn, Eagle and Sword, 49.

  36. GW, “Sentiments on a Peace Establishment” (1783), WW 26:374–98; GW to AH, May 2, 1781, PAH 3:346–47.

  37. Continental Congress Report on a Military Peace Establishment, June 18, 1783, PAH 3:378–97. These paragraphs draw on Kohn, Eagle and Sword, 40–48.

  38. GW to Duane, September 7, 1783, WW 27:133–40; GW, Observations on an Intended Report of a Committee of Congress on a Peace Establishment, September 8, 1783, ibid., 27:140–44; Kohn, Eagle and Sword, 50–62.

  39. AH to ESH, July 22, 1783, PAH 3:413.

  40. AH to Jay, July 25, 1783, PAH 3:416; AH, Unsubmitted Resolution Calling for a Convention to Amend the Articles of Confederation” (July 1783), ibid., 3:420–26.

  41. TJ to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816, in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., The Portable Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1975), 553–54; AH to Clinton, February 24[–27], 1783, PAH 3:268–74.

  42. AH to Robert R. Livingston, July 23, 1783, PAH 3:414; AH, Unsubmitted Resolution Calling for a Convention, (July 1783), ibid., 3:425.

  43. AH to Jay, July 25, 1783, PAH 3:416–17.

  44. TJ to JM, November 26, 1782, PTJ 6:207; TJ to G. K. van Hogendorp, May 4, 1784, ibid., 7:208; TJ, Autobiography, in Padover, CTJ 1151.

  45. JMB 1:525.

  46. Resolution of Congress Releasing Jefferson from His Commission to Negotiate Peace, April 1, 1783, PTJ 6:259; Ferling, A Leap in the Dark, 247–48. TJ was in Philadelphia from late December until late January, when he journeyed to Baltimore, where he planned to sail for Paris on a French vessel. When Congress put him on hold, he returned to Philadelphia on February 26 and remained in the city until April 12. It was during that period of approximately seventy-five days that AH and TJ might have met. See JMB 1:525–30.

  47. TJ to Isaac Zane, June 17, 1783, PTJ 6:317.

  48. GW, Address to Congress on Resigning His Commission, December 23, 1783, WW 27:284–85.

  49. TJ to Harrison, December 24, 1783, PTJ 6:419; TJ to JM, January 1, February 20, 1784, ibid., 6:436, 546.

  50. Jefferson’s Notes on Coinage, PTJ 7:175–85, 150–60n.

  51. TJ to Marbois, December 5, 1783, PTJ 6:374; TJ to Martha (Patsy) Jefferson, November 28, December 11, 22, 1783, January 15, February 18, March 19, 1784, ibid., 6:360, 380, 465, 543–44; 7:43–44.

  52. TJ to William Short, March 1, 1784, PTJ 6:569.

  53. TJ, Report of the Committee, March 1, 1784, PTJ 6:603–5. See also the editorial note in ibid., 6:581–600n.

  54. TJ, Observations on [Jean Nicolas] Démeunier’s Manuscript, June 26, 1786, PTJ 10:58.

  55. TJ to William Short, May 7, 1784, PTJ 7:229.

  56. Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York, 2008), 156–60.

  CHAPTER 7: “THEY WILL GO BACK GOOD REPUBLICANS”: JEFFERSON IN PARIS

  Malone, TJ, 2:3–255; Brodie, TJ, 233–318; Peterson, TJ, 297–389.

  1. JMB 1:554–57, 556–57n.

  2. Howard C. Rice Jr., Thomas Jefferson’s Paris (Princeton, N.J., 1976), 3.

  3. TJ to Mme de Corny, June 30, 1787, PTJ 11:509–10; TJ to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785, ibid., 8:407; Rice, Thomas Jefferson’s Paris, 52, 103; Edward Dumbauld, Thomas Jefferson, American Tourist: Being an Account of His Journeys (Norman, Okla., 1946), 14–15; Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York, 2008), 225–26, 231.

  4. JMB 1:560, 560n.

  5. Abigail Adams to John Thaxter, March 20, 1785, in L. H. Butterfield et al., eds., Adams Family Correspondence (Cambridge, Mass., 1963–), 6:80; Abigail Adams to TJ, June 6, 1785, AJL 1:28; TJ to JM, January 30, 1787, PTJ 11:94–95.

  6. Edith B. Gelles, Abigail and John: Portrait of a Marriage (New York, 2009), 165–66; David McCullough, John Adams (New York, 2001), 328; Abigail Adams to Cotton Tufts, March 8, 1785, in Butterfield, Adams Family Correspondence, 6:78; Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, May 8, 1785, ibid., 6:119. On Abigail Adams shopping for TJ, see ibid., 6:391, 414–16, 422–23, 463, 496, 497. For an excellent account of an American’s struggles to adjust to French culture and society—in this instance, Abigail Adams—see Gelles, Abigail and John, 168–74.

  7. See the entries, and often the editorial notes, in JMB 1:559, 566, 576, 577, 594, 607, 615, 630, 636, 646, 651, 652, 686, 710, 712, 714, 726, 728, 731, 736, 738, 740, 741, and 743. See also Rice, Thomas Jefferson’s Paris, 122. Jefferson’s remark about shopping in bookstores almost daily is quoted in Kevin J. Hayes, The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 2008), 283.

  8. See Malone, TJ, 2:118.

  9. JMB 1:561, 563, 567, 600, 604, 609, 611, 626, 630, 635, 638, 648, 651, 683, 684, 693, 729, 731, 732, 734; TJ to Angelica Schuyler Church, February 17, July 27, August 17, 1788, PTJ 12:60–1; 13:422–23, 520–21; Andrew Burstein, The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist (Charlottesville, Va., 1995), 107–9.

  10. TJ to James Monroe, November 11, 1784, June 17, 1785, PTJ 7:512, 8:229–31.

  11. Quoted in Peterson, TJ, 316.

  12. TJ to JM, January 30, 1787, PTJ 11:95–96.

  13. Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), in Philip S. Foner, ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine (New York, 1945), 1:20.

  14. Quoted in Max M. Mintz, Gouverneur Morris and the American Revolution (Norman, Okla., 1970), 207.

  15. TJ to John Jay, February 1, 1787, PTJ 11:101; TJ to JM, January 30, 1787, ibid., 11:96.

  16. Abigail Adams to Elizabeth Smith Shaw, April 24, 1786, Butterfield, Adams Family Correspondence, 7:149; Abigail Adams to TJ, June 6, 1785, AJL 1:28. Abigail Adams’s “in the dumps” quotation can be found in John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (New York, 2004), 28.

  17. DAJA 3:184–86, 187n.

  18. JA to Jay, June 26, July 19, 29, October 21, November 1, 1785, February 14, 1788, in Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams (Boston, 1850–56), 8:274–75, 282, 289, 331, 336, 476; TJ to Page, May 4, 1786, PTJ 9:446; TJ to William Stephens Smith, September 28, 1787, ibid., 12:193.

  19. TJ to Page, May 4, 1786, PTJ 9:445–46.

  20. A Fourth of July Tribute to Jefferson, July 4, 1789, PTJ 15:239; Beatrix Cary Davenport, ed., A Diary of the French Revolution by Gouverneur Morris (Boston, 1939), 1:8, 10, 14, 16, 18, 23, 29, 34, 37, 46, 48, 49, 50, 159n; Morris to GW Nove
mber 12, 1788, ibid., 1:xxxii; JMB 1:726.

  21. Davenport, A Diary of the French Revolution, 1:197, 488; Jon Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women (New York, 2007), 86–92.

  22. TJ to Maria Cosway, April 24, 1788, PTJ 13:104; Maria Cosway to TJ, September 20, October 5, 1786, ibid., 10:393–94, 433.

  23. TJ to Maria Cosway, October 5, 12, 1786, PTJ 10:431–32, 448.

  24. TJ to Maria Cosway, October 12, 1786, PTJ 10:443–53.

  25. TJ to Maria Cosway, November 29, December 24, 1786, PTJ 10:555, 627. On Trumbull as courier, see Burstein, The Inner Jefferson, 76–79.

  26. Maria Cosway to TJ, February 15, 1787, PTJ 11:148.

  27. TJ to Maria Cosway, July 1, 1787, PTJ 11:520.

  28. Maria Cosway to TJ, December 10, 25, 1787, PTJ 12:415, 459–60.

  29. Maria Cosway to TJ, November 13, 24, 1794, December 4, 1795, PTJ 28:201, 209–10, 543–44.

  30. TJ to Maria Cosway, January 31, April 24, 1788, May 21, 1789, PTJ 12:540; 13:103–4; 15:143.

  31. TJ to Maria Cosway, June 23, 1790, PTJ 16:551. The nature of TJ’s relationship with Maria Cosway has been variously interpreted. For good accounts, which do not always tally with my interpretation, see Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women, 92–114; Virginia Scharff, The Women Jefferson Loved (New York, 2010), 204–8; Burstein, The Inner Jefferson, 75–107; and William Howard Adams, The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson (New Haven, Conn., 1997), 222–35.

  32. On the delay in sending Polly, and the other decisions of the Eppeses, see the account in Scharff, The Women Jefferson Loved, 166–80.

  33. Abigail Adams to TJ, June 26, 27, July 6, 1787, AJL 1:178, 179, 180–82.

  34. For the background of Sally Hemings and the Hemings family, and for James Hemings’s life and training in Paris, see Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello, 153–209; and Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville, Va., 1997), 158–69. On TJ being afraid to be in Abigail Adams’s presence with one of his slaves, see Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785–1800 (Chicago, 1996), 23–24.

  35. TJ to Paul Bentalou, August 25, 1786, PTJ 10:296. The account of Sally Hemings’s background and residence in Paris, as well as on France’s slave laws, draws on Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello, 209–325. For the quotations describing Sally Hemings, see ibid., 271.

  36. TJ to Charles Bellini, September 20, 1785, PTJ 8:569; TJ to GW, December 4, 1788, ibid., 14:330.

  37. TJ to Bellini, September 30, 1785, PTJ 8:568; TJ to JM, October 28, 1785, ibid., 8:681–82; TJ to Lafayette, April 11, 1787, ibid., 11:285.

  38. TJ to Eliza House Trist, August 18, 1785, PTJ 8:440; TJ to Joseph Jones, August 14, 1787, ibid., 12:34; TJ to JM, January 30, 1787, ibid., 11:92–93.

  39. TJ to Wythe, August 13, 1786, PTJ 10:244.

  40. TJ to GW, May 2, 1788, PTJ 13:128; Jefferson’s Observations on Demeunier’s Manuscript, [February (?)–June 22, 1786], ibid., 10:52; TJ to David Ramsay, August 4, 1787, ibid., 11:687; TJ to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787, ibid., 11:49.

  41. TJ to Jay, October 8, 1787, PTJ 12:218; TJ to JM, August 2, 1787, ibid., 11:664; TJ to Benjamin Hawkins, August 4, 1787, ibid., 11:684.

  42. TJ to Ramsay, August 4, 1787, PTJ 11:687; TJ to Trist, August 18, 1785, ibid., 8:404; TJ to Bellini, September 30, 1785, ibid., 8:569; TJ to Monroe, June 17, 1785, ibid., 8:233.

  43. An excellent analysis of TJ’s outlook on the iniquities inherent in an urban manufacturing society can be found in Peter Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Charlottesville, Va., 2000), 69–79. For a good overview of his ideas, see Drew McCoy, “Political Economy,” in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography (New York, 1986), 106–12.

  44. TJ to JM, October 28, 1785, PTJ 8:682.

  45. See Daniel P. Szatmary, Shays’ Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection (Amherst, Mass., 1980).

  46. GW to Henry Knox, December 26, 1786, PGW:Cfed 4:481–83; Jay to TJ, October 27, 1786, PTJ 10:488; JM to TJ, March 18, 1787, ibid., 11:222–23; Abigail Adams to TJ, January 29, 1787, AJL 1:168.

  47. TJ to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787, PTJ 12:356.

  48. TJ to AA, February 22, 1787, AJL 1:173; TJ to JM, January 30, 1787, PTJ 11:93; TJ to Ezra Stiles, December 24, 1786, ibid., 10:629; TJ to Smith, November 13, 1787, ibid., 12:356.

  49. TJ to John de Crèvecoeur, August 6, 1787, PTJ 11:692; TJ to Jay, January 9, June 21, 1787, ibid., 11:31–32, 489; TJ to Monroe, August 9, 1788, ibid., 13:489.

  50. TJ to Jay, May 23, August 3, 1788, PTJ 13:190, 464; TJ to Anne Willing Bingham, May 11, 1788, ibid., 13:151; TJ to GW, December 4, 1788, ibid., 14:330; TJ, Autobiography, in Padover, CTJ, 1176.

  51. TJ to JM, January 30, 1787, PTJ 11:95; TJ to Lafayette, June 3, 1789, ibid., 15:165–66; TJ to Rabaut de St. Etienne, June 3, 1789, ibid., 15:166–67; TJ, Draft of a Charter of Rights, [June 3, 1789], ibid., 15:167–68; TJ, Autobiography, in Padover, CTJ, 1177, 1182. I am indebted to Conor Cruise O’Brien, who noted that JM had advised TJ in 1784 that as Lafayette’s “future friendship” might be helpful to the United States, “prudence requires us to cultivate” his affection. See O’Brien, The Long Affair, 333n. For good accounts of TJ’s activities, see Philipp Ziesche, “Exporting American Revolutions: Gouverneur Morris, Thomas Jefferson, and the National Struggle for Universal Rights in Revolutionary France,” Journal of the Early Republic 26 (2006): 437–40; and Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 251–95.

  52. TJ, Autobiography, in Padover CTJ, 1183, 1185, 1188.

  53. Ibid., 1190; TJ to JM, September 6, 1789, PTJ 15:392–97.

  54. TJ, Autobiography, in Padover, CTJ 1187.

  55. TJ, Answers to [François] Soulés’s Queries [September 13–18, 1786], PTJ 10:380; TJ, To the Editor of Journal de Paris, August 29, 1787, ibid., 12:61–65.

  56. A Fourth of July Tribute to Jefferson, July 4, 1789, PTJ 15:239–40. See also, Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1997), 169–70.

  CHAPTER 8: “TO CHECK THE IMPRUDENCE OF DEMOCRACY”: HAMILTON AND THE NEW CONSTITUTION

  Chernow, AH, 184–273; Brookhiser, AH, 55–74; Miller, AH, 120–215; McDonald, AH, 71–115; Cooke, AH, 31–72; Mitchell, AH, 329–465; Malone, TJ, 2:203–13.

  1. PAH 3:597.

  2. James Hamilton to AH, May 31, 1785, PAH 3:612; AH to James Hamilton, June 22, 1785, ibid., 3:617–18.

  3. Nathan Schachner, ed., “Alexander Hamilton Viewed by His Friends: The Narratives of Robert Troup and Hercules Mulligan,” William and Mary Quarterly 4 (April 1947): 209.

  4. Quoted in Cooke, AH, 38.

  5. [AH], “A Letter from Phocion to the Considerate Citizens of New York” (January 1784), PAH 3:483–97; [AH], Second Letter from Phocion (April 1784), ibid., 530–58; AH to Gouvernor Morris, February 21, 1784, ibid., 3:512. The quotations on prejudice and discrimination can be found in AH’s first Phocion letter, ibid., 3:484.

  6. AH, “A Letter from Phocion,” PAH 3:485, 486.

  7. Ibid., 3:486, 488; AH, “Second Letter from Phocion,” ibid., 3:550. See also, Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 26–54, 175–81; H. Trevor Colbourn, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1965), 6–9.

  8. AH to Gouverneur Morris, February 21, 1784, PAH 3:513.

  9. Quoted in Lawrence S. Kaplan, Alexander Hamilton: Ambivalent Anglophile (Wilmington, Del., 2002), 63.

  10. John P. Kaminski, George Clinton: Yeoman Politician of the New Republic (Madison, Wisc., 1993), 96–105.

  11. AH to ESH, March 17, 1785, PAH 3:599.

  12. Merrill Jensen, The New Nation: A History of the United States During the Confederation, 1783–1789 (New York, 1950), 114–15, 125, 133–34, 145–48, 192, 196, 200–202, 211, 215; Abigail Adams to JA, May 2, 1784, L. H. Butterfield, et al., eds., Adams Family Correspondence
(Cambridge, Mass., 1963–), 5:330; Benjamin Franklin to Ferdinand Grand, January 29, March 6, 1786, in A. H. Smyth, ed., Writings of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1905–7), 9:482–93; Franklin to David Hartley, October 27, 1785, ibid., 9:472; Franklin to Jonathan Shipley, February 24, 1786, ibid., 9:489; GW to la Luzerne, August 1, 1786, PGWCfed 4:186; Jefferson’s Reply to the Representations of Affairs in America by British Newspapers, [November 20, 1784], PTJ 7:540.

  13. Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York, 2007), 26–45, 65–66, 136.

  14. GW, “Circular to the States,” June 8, 1783, WW 26:486.

  15. GW to Benjamin Harrison, October 10, 1784, PGWCfed 2:92.

  16. On postwar western issues, see John Ferling, A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic (New York, 2003); and Richard B. Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781–1789 (New York, 1987), 232–44.

  17. Charles Thomson to TJ, May 19, 1785, PTJ 7:273; David Ramsay to Benjamin Rush, February 11, 1786, LDC 23:148.

  18. GW to Henry Lee, October 31, 1786, PGWCfed 4:318; GW to William Grayson, July 26, 1786, ibid., 4:169; GW to JM, November 5, 1786, ibid., 4:331; GW, Circular to the States, June 8, 1783, WW 26:486.

  19. [Joseph Galloway], A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great Britain, and the Colonies: With a Plan of Accommodation on Constitutional Principles (New York, 1775), 32–33.

  20. Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History (New York, 2003), 140; Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, 2005), 13–31.

  21. Merrill Jensen, The American Revolution Within America (New York, 1974), 50–166. The quotations are on pages 101 and 104–5.

  22. AH to Robert Livingston, April 15, 1785, PAH 3:609.

  23. AH to Robert Morris, August 13, 1783, PAH 3:139; AH to Livingston, April 15, 1785, ibid., 3:608–9; Alfred F. Young, The Democratic Republicans of New York: The Origins, 1763–1797 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1967), 9, 21, 29–30, 44, 62, 572; E. Wilder Spaulding, New York in the Critical Period, 1783–1789 (reprint, Port Washington, N.Y., 1963), 185; Roger Champagne, Alexander McDougall and the American Revolution (Schenectady, N.Y., 1975, 211–12; Thomas Cochran, New York in the Confederation: An Economic Study (reprint, Clifton, N.J., 1972), 136–37, 149, 170; Wood, American Revolution, 139–42; Kaminski, George Clinton, 104; Jensen, American Revolution Within America, 102; E. Wilder Spaulding, “Abraham Yates,” in Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1929–1937), 20:597–98; Abraham Yates to Robert Yates, June 9, 1787, LDC 24:320; Yates to Henry Oothoudt and Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, August 29, 1787, ibid., 24:411; William Blount to Richard Caswell, January 28, 1787, LDC 24:76.