Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

  At dinner Madison agreed to ease his opposition to assumption and “leave it to its fate” in the Congress—a victory for Hamilton. In Jefferson’s account, either Madison or Hamilton then said that “as the pill would be a bitter one to the Southern states, something should be done to soothe them”: The capital ought be sited along the Potomac.

  The final result, Jefferson believed, was “the least bad of all the turns the thing can take.” It was true that he hated the financial speculation that would result from the Hamiltonian vision of commerce. “It is much to be wished that every discouragement should be thrown in the way of men who undertake to trade without capital,” Jefferson said. “The consumers pay for it in the end, and the debts contracted, and bankruptcies occasioned by such commercial adventurers, bring burden and disgrace on our country.”

  Yet Jefferson also believed in compromise. He advised his daughter Patsy to approach all people and all things with forbearance. “Every human being, my dear, must thus be viewed according to what it is good for, for none of us, no not one, is perfect; and were we to love none who had imperfections this world would be a desert for our love,” Jefferson wrote in July 1790. “All we can do is to make the best of our friends: love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way of what is bad: but no more think of rejecting them for it than of throwing away a piece of music for a flat passage or two.” It was sound counsel for life at Monticello—and at New York.

  In December 1790, a Virginian wrote Jefferson about the state General Assembly’s official protest over the debt assumption. “One party charges the Congress with an unconstitutional act; and both parties charge it with an act of injustice.”

  So be it. Jefferson had struck the deal he could strike, and, for the moment, America was the stronger for it.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  MR. JEFFERSON IS GREATLY TOO DEMOCRATIC

  I own it is my own opinion … that the present government is not that which will answer the ends of society … and that it will probably be found expedient to go into the British form.

  —ALEXANDER HAMILTON, according to an account of Jefferson’s

  JEFFERSON HAD BECOME SECRETARY of state in the third week of March 1790. His first opinion on the likelihood of an American war was written for President Washington 113 days later—hardly an epoch of peace. Little wonder his headache plagued him so much in these months.

  A world war seemed at hand. In July 1789, Spain, long the dominant power in the Pacific Northwest, had seized two English ships at Nootka Sound, a distant inlet on the western coast of Vancouver Island. With its lucrative fur trade and importance to any significant system of commerce with Asia, the region was of interest to Spain as well as to Russia and Great Britain.

  In 1778, Captain James Cook, the English explorer, had landed at Nootka and renamed it King George’s Sound. The Spanish, who dated their claims to the area to a decree of Pope Alexander VI in the fifteenth century, were determined to fend off the encroachments of other nations. A Spanish explorer, Esteban José Martínez, arrived in the spring of 1789 and took control of the British vessels Princess Royal and Argonaut and of their captains and crews.

  News of the Spanish attack stunned Britain, inciting talk of war with Spain. Writing from London after dining with members of Parliament late one night in early May 1790, the South Carolina lawyer and politician John Rutledge told Jefferson that he had never “been amongst such insolent bullies” as these British lawmakers. “They were all for war, talked much of Old England and the British Lion, laughed at the idea of drubbing the Dons, [and] began to calculate the millions of dollars [Spain] would be obliged to pay for having insulted the first power on Earth.”

  Merriment in England meant anxiety in America. Jefferson fretted about a sprawling war. Britain would be likely to dispatch its troops in Canada to seize Louisiana and the Floridas, both Spanish territories. France, an ally of Spain’s, would be pulled into the fight. There would be combat on oceans the world over. And the United States—with just over a year’s experience under its new Constitution—would be in the middle of it all. War, Jefferson said, was “very possible.”

  His worst fear, perhaps, was the prospect of encirclement by the British. Vice President Adams agreed with Jefferson, and Secretary of War Knox believed English control of the Floridas and of the Mississippi would lead to “great and permanent evils.”

  As a nation in the middle of an emerging conflict, America had to decide whether to allow foreign troops to march through U.S. territory. Jefferson favored what he called “a middle course,” which meant delaying any answer in the event of a request from Britain. If an answer had to be given, however, he supported allowing the British troops passage since a refusal was likely to start a U.S.-British war. While willing to fight, Jefferson also said “war is full of chances,” suggesting it was wisest to keep as many options open as possible. It was the practical position.

  The Nootka Sound episode coincided with a planned American campaign against the Shawnee and Miami Indians to be led by Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory. An important issue arose: Should the Americans tell the British about the operation at the risk of having the British pass along advance word to the Indians, their allies in harassing Americans along the frontier?

  Jefferson told Washington that the Americans should keep the Indian mission a secret. What neither the president nor the secretary of state knew was that Alexander Hamilton had already informed England through a British envoy named George Beckwith, who had played a role in turning Benedict Arnold away from the American cause.

  Hamilton’s relationship with Beckwith sheds light on the Treasury secretary’s basic sympathies and operating style. In 1789, Hamilton had privately asked Beckwith to tell the British authorities that Washington’s government was open for business with London. “I have always preferred a connection with you, to that of any other country,” Hamilton said to Beckwith, continuing: “we think in English, and have a similarity of prejudices and of predilections.” It was a clear effort to become part of Britain’s sphere rather than France’s—the opposite of the course Jefferson favored.

  In the event of war between France and Britain, America’s “naval exertions,” Hamilton told Beckwith, “may in your scale be greatly important, and decisive.” Such views, Hamilton said, “may be depended upon as the sentiments of the most enlightened men in this country.”

  But they were not Jefferson’s sentiments, which the Hamiltonians knew. “Mr. Jefferson … is greatly too democratic for us at present,” William Samuel Johnson, a senator from Connecticut, told Beckwith.

  The pro-British interest in America embarked on a campaign to paint Jefferson as a dreamer, not a man of affairs. “Mr. Jefferson … is a man of some acquirements … but his opinions upon government are the result of fine spun theoretic systems, drawn from the ingenious writings of Locke, Sydney and others of their cast, which can never be realized,” Senator William Paterson of New Jersey told George Beckwith.

  In the end, Spain backed down. (The expedition against the Indians failed for reasons unrelated to Hamilton’s disclosure.) For Jefferson and his contemporaries, the Nootka episode’s possible enormousness, its suddenness, and its coming at such an early hour in the life of the government helped create a habit of mind that persisted through the years. The world was rife with danger, any particular event could produce universal calamity, and the Old World—especially Britain, France, and Spain—remained threats to American serenity and security.

  The national capital moved from New York to Philadelphia in 1790, its temporary home until the District of Columbia could be made ready at the beginning of the next decade. En route to Philadelphia in early November, Jefferson and Madison stopped at Mount Vernon to spend the night with Washington. Jefferson was impressed by the president’s skills as a planter and accepted the gift of some wheat to send to Patsy’s hus
band, Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., to plant at Monticello. Jefferson offered specific directions for his son-in-law: “The richest ground in the garden will be best,” he said, and the seed should be planted “in distinct holes at proper distances.”

  Leasing a four-story brick house from Thomas Leiper at 274 Market Street in Philadelphia, Jefferson ordered wine for himself and for Washington, and then immersed himself in the passion and action of the season.

  On three separate but related issues, Jefferson fought to create an America that could, so far as possible, become respected, prosperous, and peaceable without being overly dependent on any one ally. From decisions about commercial and diplomatic relations with Britain and France to the struggle over the British impressment of an American seaman named Hugh Purdie to the projection of force against pirates in the Mediterranean, Jefferson sought free trade, mutual regard, and justice.

  Yet on the establishment of a national bank and the imposition of an excise tax on what Jefferson called “ardent spirits,” Hamilton’s financial program took precedence.

  The tax passed without much drama. With the funding of the debt and assumption now settled, the government needed revenue to operate under its new obligations.

  The proposal for a national bank, however, precipitated a significant debate about the role of the federal government and the relative influence of Hamilton and Jefferson in Washington’s orbit. Hamilton wanted the bank to be funded by federal deposits but run, in part, for the benefit of private investors.

  Jefferson and Madison objected. They feared that the Hamiltonian program would enable financial speculators to benefit from commercial transactions made possible by government funds.

  Washington privately asked Jefferson for his view on the bank bill’s constitutionality. Jefferson replied with an argument for strict construction—that any power not specifically mentioned in the Constitution was reserved for the states, not the federal government. “To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition,” Jefferson wrote in February 1791.

  An improviser and a nationalist, Jefferson would not prove dogmatic on such issues. Only when viewed in the light of the moment (as the only means available to register a protest against the triumph of Hamilton’s vision) and when considered with an appreciation for Jefferson’s interpretation of that vision (that it tended to create a climate more congenial to absolutism than to republican democracy) does the opinion fit into the whole of Jeffersonian thinking. Even in 1791 Jefferson was not doctrinaire about his opinion, closing his letter to Washington with pragmatic counsel: “If the pro and con hang so even as to balance [the president’s] judgment, a just respect for the wisdom of the legislature would naturally decide the balance in favor of their opinion.”

  Hamilton replied brilliantly, arguing that “an adherence to the letter of [the Constitution’s] powers would at once arrest the motions of government.” Hamilton won, but only barely. Washington had Madison draft a veto message, which was never issued, and took the maximum time allowed by the Constitution to sign the bill. Yet, in a victory for Hamilton, the president did sign it.

  “Congress may go home,” wrote William Maclay. “Mr. Hamilton is all-powerful, and fails in nothing he attempts.”

  It was springtime in Philadelphia. Writing Polly, Jefferson recorded the burst of colors:

  April 5. Apricots in blossom.

  Cherry leafing.

  9: Peach in blossom.

  Apple leafing.

  April 11. Cherry in blossom.

  Still, Hamilton was not far from Jefferson’s mind. Jefferson wrote to James Monroe, “We are ruined, Sir, if we do not over-rule the principles that ‘the more we owe, the more prosperous we shall be,’ ‘that a public debt furnishes the means of enterprise,’ … etc. etc.” That same day he wrote Patsy about bonnets and a new style of hat in Philadelphia: “Mrs. Trist has observed that there is a kind of veil lately introduced here, and much approved. It fastens over the brim of the hat and then draws round the neck as close or open as you please.”

  Just over a week later, Jefferson set off a new storm with a brief letter. The note he wrote was not long—only four sentences, two of which were formulaic—but few communications of Jefferson’s life produced equal effects. Madison had passed on to Jefferson a borrowed copy of the first part of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, just published in England. The pamphlet’s owner (John Beckley, Clerk of the House of Representatives) asked Jefferson to send it on to Jonathan B. Smith, a Philadelphia merchant whose brother, Samuel Harrison Smith, planned to publish it in America. In his accompanying note of April 26, 1791, he then mused, briefly, in the third person.

  Jefferson said that he was “extremely pleased to find [Paine’s work] will be re-printed here, and that something is at length to be publicly said against the political heresies which have sprung up among us. He has no doubt our citizens will rally a second time round the standard of Common sense”—by which, of course, he meant Paine’s Common Sense of 1776.

  In a matter of days Jefferson opened a copy of the newly republished text to find that his words in the covering note to Smith had been reprinted as well. The implication was clear: Jefferson not only appeared to be Paine’s sponsor but also believed there were “heresies” in circulation “among us.” So it was that the secretary of state appeared to be declaring war on the vice president of the United States and the secretary of the Treasury.

  “That I had in my view the Discourses on Davila, which have filled Fenno’s papers for a twelve-month, without contradiction, is certain,” Jefferson told the president in the wake of the publication. “But nothing was ever further from my thoughts than to become myself the contradictor before the public.” He had written it, he told Madison, “to take off a little of the dryness of the note.”

  Hamilton, Jefferson believed, was seizing on the Rights of Man note to Jonathan Smith as evidence of Jefferson’s “opposition to the government.” Jefferson disagreed strongly, telling Madison that his remarks had been “meant for the enemies of the government, to wit those who want to change it into a monarchy.” He added that he believed Hamilton was attacking him with vigor: “I have reason to think [Hamilton] has been unreserved in uttering these sentiments.” And there was little Jefferson hated more than the thought that people were disparaging him in the shadows.

  There is much truth in the tendency to encapsulate the competing traditions of the early American republic as a contest between Jefferson and Hamilton. For partisans of each man, it was then—and has been ever since—convenient to caricature the other, with Hamilton as the scheming proto-Brit bent on monarchy and Jefferson as the naïve proto-Frenchman intoxicated by visions of excessive democracy. Inevitably, though, such shorthand is incomplete.

  In the first hours of the decade and sporadically throughout, Jefferson sometimes found himself in agreement with Hamilton (and with Washington and Adams as well), for Jefferson was a working politician and diplomat who believed in an effective central government—his experience in the Virginia governorship and during the Confederation years had convinced him of that—and often asserted the need to project power.

  There was, however, a foundational point on which Jefferson never compromised, a conviction that drove much of his political life from 1790 until his death. He feared monarchy or dictatorship, which is different from fearing a strong national government, though Jefferson is often thought to have believed them the same thing. One of the terms he used to describe his opponents—“Monocrats”—is telling, for the word means government by the one.

  Jefferson fretted over the prospect of the return of a king in some form, either as an immensely powerful president unchecked by the Constitution of 1787 or in a more explicitly monarchical or dictatorial role. He did not oppose the wielding of power.
He was a good-hearted, fair-minded student of how best to accumulate it and use it. In romantic moments, he dreamed of a future of virtuous yeomen living in harmony. In realistic ones, he suspected the America of which he was an architect could be yet another short-lived chapter in the story of the tyranny of the few over the many. “We were educated in royalism: no wonder if some of us retain that idolatry still,” Jefferson had once written to Madison.

  Eternal vigilance was critical. “Courts love the people always, as wolves do the sheep,” Jefferson once remarked. Even John Adams was susceptible to such worries. He wrote Jefferson in October 1787:

  If the Duke of Angouleme, or Burgundy, or especially the Dauphin should demand one of your beautiful and most amiable daughters in marriage, all America from Georgia to New Hampshire would find their vanity and pride so agreeably flattered by it that all their sage maxims would give way; and even our sober New England Republicans would keep a day of thanksgiving for it, in their hearts. If General Washington had a daughter, I firmly believe, she would be demanded in marriage by one of the royal families of France or England, perhaps by both, or if he had a son he would be invited to come a courting to Europe.

  Intermarriage with noble families in America and Europe, Adams believed, would lead to trouble, and to the United States repeating the mistakes and miming the bad habits of the Old World. “In short, my dear friend, you and I have been indefatigable laborers through our whole lives for a cause which be thrown away in the next generation, upon the vanity and foppery of persons of whom we do not now know the names perhaps.”

  Talk of threats came from the American West (“The politics of the western country are verging fast to a crisis, and must speedily eventuate in an appeal to the patronage of Spain or Britain,” wrote “a Gentleman of Kentucky”—James Wilkinson—in 1789) and the palaces of London (“There is such a rooted aversion to us grown up in the court that if we could be smitten without the hazard of a general war, or a risk of shaking the present ministry from their places, hostilities would be recommenced against the United States, if it were only to gratify the irascible feelings of the monarch,” the American lawyer John Brown Cutting had written Jefferson from London in August 1788).