Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
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“LONG AND DOUBTFUL” IBId.
UNITY AMONG THE COLONIES PTJ, I, 173. In closing, Jefferson asked: “What then remains to be done?” Virginia deferred the matter to the Congress in Philadelphia, praying for “the even-handed justice of that being who doth no wrong, earnestly beseeching him to illuminate the councils and prosper the endeavors of those to whom America hath confided her hopes.” (IBID.)
EIGHT · THE FAMOUS MR. JEFFERSON
“AS OUR ENEMIES HAVE FOUND” PTJ, I, 186.
“THE PRESENT CRISIS” Ibid., 224.
LODGING ON CHESTNUT MB, I, 399.
SENT ACCOUNTS OF THE MILITARY SITUATION PTJ, I, 246–47.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S PROPOSAL Ibid., 177–82.
RECORDED THE “FINANCIAL AND MILITARY” Ibid., 182–84.
NEW IDEAS, NEW PEOPLE, NEW FORCES For portraits of Philadelphia as it was in these years, see McCullough, John Adams, 78–85; and Paul H. Smith, ed., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789, IV, May 16–August 15, 1776 (Washington, D.C., 1976), 123–24; 194–95; 307–8; 311–12.
WERE “A PEOPLE, THROWN TOGETHER” United States National Park Service, Independence: A Guide to Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Washington, D.C., 1982), 20.
“THE POOREST LABORER” Ibid. America’s connection to larger forces was also self-evident. “French vessels frequently arrive here,” wrote Josiah Bartlett, a delegate from New Hampshire. “Two came up to this city yesterday, their loading chiefly cotton, molasses, sugar, coffee, canvass etc. Last Saturday an American vessel arrived from the French West Indies with 7400 lb. of powder, 149 stand of arms.” (Paul H. Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, IV, 124.)
JOHN ADAMS OF MASSACHUSETTS PTJ, I, 175. Jefferson reported Washington’s selection as what he called “Generalissimo of all the Provincial troops in North-America,” adding: “The Congress have directed 20,000 men to be raised and hope by a vigorous campaign to dispose our enemies to treaty.” (Ibid.) See also Scheer and Rankin, Redcoats and Rebels, 68–73. As Adams described the nomination, “Mr. Washington, who happened to sit near the door, as soon as he heard me allude to him, from his usual modesty, darted into the library-room.” (Ibid., 70–71.)
THE BATTLE AT BUNKER HILL Scheer and Rankin, Redcoats and Rebels, 52–64.
RECORDED SEEING “THE FAMOUS MR. JEFFERSON” Hayes, Road to Monticello, 167.
“JEFFERSON IS THE GREATEST” Kaminski, Founders on the Founders, 286.
ADAMS AND JEFFERSON See, for instance, McCullough, John Adams, 110–17; Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson; and Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1987), for accounts of the relationship between the two men, and between Jefferson and Abigail Adams and their larger famILIeS.
BORN IN BRAINTREE, MASSACHUSETTS, IN 1735 McCullough, John Adams, 30.
“I CONSIDER YOU AND HIM” Ibid., 604.
AN INTENSE ADMIRATION He had already personally contributed toward the support of Boston during the Port Act siege (MB, I, 396), but now his appreciation rose to a new level. “The adventurous genius and intrepidity of those people is amazing,” Jefferson said of the New Englanders in early July 1775. (PTJ, I, 185.)
CONGRESS AUTHORIZED AN INVASION OF CANADA Middlekauff, Glorious Cause, 309–14. From the Declaration of Causes: “We have received certain intelligence that General Carleton, the Governor of Canada, is instigating the people of that province and the Indians to fall upon us; and we have but too much reason to apprehend that schemes have been formed to excite domestic enemies against us.” (PTJ, I, 217.)
MONTREAL SURRENDERED BUT QUEBEC HELD OUT Paul S. Boyer and Melvyn Dubofsky, eds., The Oxford Companion to United States History (New York, 2001) 285.
“NOBODY NOW ENTERTAINS” PTJ, I, 186.
JEFFERSON AND JOHN DICKINSON MB, I, 400. See also PTJ, I, 187–219.
DECLARATION OF THE CAUSES PTJ, I, 187–219. The audience was a trans-atlantic one. Jefferson argued that America was not the aggressor and that all was not yet lost. Americans, he said, “mean not in any wise to affect that union with [Great Britain] in which we have so long and so happily lived, and which we wish so much to see again restored.” (Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence [New York, 1997], 19–20.) They did not wish to “disquiet the minds of our Friends and fellow subjects in any part of the empire.” He offered a triptych of declarative assertions to support his case: “We did not embody a soldiery to commit aggression on them; we did not raise armies for glory or for conquest. We did not invade their island carrying death or slavery to its inhabitants.” Americans took up arms in defense only, Jefferson said, and longed for a reconciliation to “deliver us from the evils of a civil war.” (PTJ, I, 203.)
RODE THE FERRY TO THE WOODLANDS MB, I, 401.
MADE A TRIP TO THE FALLS Ibid., 403.
EXTENDED ITS HAND TO THE KING PTJ, I, 219–23.
“ELOQUENCE IN PUBLIC ASSEMBLIES” Kaminski, Founders on the Founders, 287.
“A PUBLIC SPEAKER” IBiD.
“FEW PERSONS CAN BEAR” IBiD.
“THE CONTINUANCE AND THE EXTENT” PTJ, I, 223–24.
FACED A “DEFICIENCY” Ibid., 224.
AFTER A VISIT TO ROBERT BELL’S SHOP MB, I, 402.
LEFT PHILADELPHIA FOR VIRGINIA Ibid., 403–4.
STOPPED ALONG THE ROAD IBid.
“FOR GOD’S SAKE” Morgan, Virginians at HoME, 50.
NEVER STOPPED HUMMING Bear, Jefferson at MonticelLO, 13.
AN AEOLIAN HARP MB, I, 28.
“MRS. JEFFERSON WAS SMALL” Bear, Jefferson at MonticeLLO, 5.
SUPERVISING THE SLAUGHTER OF DUCKS Stein, Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, 15–16.
MANAGED THE SLAVES IN THE HOUSE Ibid., 16.
“THE HOUSE WAS BUILT” Ibid., 14.
HE ACQUIRED A CHESSBOARD Jefferson bought books, he bought clothes, he bought tickets to plays—then he bought punch at the playhouse. He spent money to make himself handsome, comfortable, entertained, and engaged. MB, I, 28, records the examples here, and the Memorandum Books and PTJ—as well as the extant collections at Monticello—record a life of acquisition and consumPtION.
“A COPIOUS AND WELL-CHOSEN” Stein, Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at MonticellO, 14.
HIS ARCHITECTURAL SENSE MB, I, 24.
THE PAINTING SCHEME IbiD., 27.
ORDERED A COPY IbiD., 35.
SENT FOR A CLOTHESPRESS IbiD., 29.
JOINED THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY Ibid., 338–39. See also Ibid., 525.
PUBLISHED A BOOK Ibid., 341.
HIS KINSMAN JOHN RANDOLPH PTJ, I, 240–43. For details on John Randolph’s violin, see Hayes, Road to Monticello, 104, and MB, I, 77.
WAS FASCINATED BY GARDENING TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/houses-and-gardens/Jefferson-scientist-and-gaRDENER.
EXPRESSING REGRET Ibid., 241. Jefferson cast the issue in personal terms. “There may be people to whose tempers and dispositions contention may be pleasing.… But to me it is of all states but one the most horrid.” He added: “My first wish is a restoration of our just rights; my second a return of the happy period when, consistently with duty, I may withdraw myself totally from the public stage and pass the rest of my days in domestic ease and tranquility, banishing every desire of afterwards even hearing what passes in the world.” (Ibid.) The longing for withdrawal was something of a conventional trope for public men in the eighteenth century, men whose idealized model of service was that of Cincinnatus, the Roman general who was summoned, reluctantly, to power from hiS PLOW.
CONCENTRATED WITHIN “A SMALL FACTION” IBId.
“THEY HAVE TAKEN IT” Ibid. “Even those in Parliament who are called friends to America seem to know n
othing of our real determinations,” he told Randolph. The British seemed to think that Americans “did not mean to insist rigorously on the terms they held out,” said Jefferson, but “continuance in this error may perhaps have very ill consequences.” In fact, the offer of the Congress of 1774 amounted to “the lowest terms they thought possible to be accepted in order to convince the world they were not unreasonable.” Those conditions, however, had been set out “before blood was spilt.” Now Jefferson could make no promises. “I cannot affirm, but have reason to think, these terms would not now be accepted,” he told Randolph. (Ibid.) Jefferson also made bold to suggest that Britain’s imperial destiny might be in the balance. “If indeed Great Britain, disjoined from her colonies, be a match for the most potent nations of Europe with the colonies thrown into their scale, they may go on securely,” he told Randolph. “But if they are not assured of this, it would be certainly unwise, by trying the event of another campaign, to risk our accepting a foreign aid which perhaps may not be obtainable but on a condition of everlasting avulsion from Great Britain.” (Ibid., 242.)
DRAFTED BUT DELETED Ibid., 243. Yet he remained defiant, telling Randolph that he would “lend my hand to sink the whole island in the ocean” if Britain did not satisfy American demands. (Ibid., 242.) The conflict felt inescapably personal, for the North Atlantic world was a comparatively small one. After a trip to London in 1772, Alexander McCaul, a merchant friend, wrote Jefferson: “I saw several of our old Virginia friends and on the Change of London you would meet with many faces you had seen before.” There was an assumption of enduring common ties. “It is happy for the natives of Britain [that] they have such a resource as North America, for there, if they happen to be reduced, they may always have bread with industry,” McCaul wrote Jefferson. “The Virginia planters may thank their stars they have so good a country to cultivate, though many of them are not sensible of the happiness they enjoy.” (PTJ, I, 93.)
TO USE HIS DEPARTING KINSMAN IBID.
PARTED ON A WARM NOTE Ibid., 242–43.
“THOUGH WE MAY POLITICALLY DIFFER” Ibid., 244.
2ND EARL OF DARTMOUTH Ibid., 243.
HIS DAUGHTER JANE Randall, Jefferson, I, 383.
ONLY A YEAR AND A HALF OLD Ibid. According to Jefferson’s notes in his Book of Common Prayer, Jane was born on April 3, 1774, and died in September 1775. (IbiD.)
ON CHESTNUT STREET MB, I, 407.
“I HAVE SET APART” PTJ, I, 251.
“I HAVE NEVER RECEIVED” Ibid., 252.
CANNONS EN ROUTE Ibid., 247.
COMING “AT THE EXPRESS” Ibid. The British, Jefferson reported to Francis Eppes, had a continental strategy ready. Ten thousand more troops—raised from the garrison at Gibraltar and from Ireland—were due in the spring. While in control of New York, Albany, St. John’s, and Quebec they would use their naval vessels as communication channels to keep these cities and Boston in contact. The feared effect, according to Jefferson: The British would “distress us on every side acting in concert with one another.” (IbiD.)
AT ROXBOROUGH, THE COUNTRY HOUSE MB, I, 407.
RANDOLPH SUFFERED A STROKE IBiD.
“OUR MOST WORTHY SPEAKER” PTJ, I, 268.
AT HAMPTON, NEAR NORFOLK Ibid., 249.
THE BRITISH TRIED TO LAND IBID.
UNDERTAKING EXPEDITIONS AGAINST CANADA Ibid. See also Middlekauff, Glorious Cause, 309–14. “We are all impatience to hear from Canada,” said Robert Carter Nicholas on November 10, 1775. (PTJ, I, 256.)
CREATED A COMMITTEE OF SAFETY McDonnell, Politics of War, 92–97. The committee’s duties, McDonnell noted, included the “sole power to direct the movement of the army and to call out the minutemen and militia into service, to call for assistance from other colonies, and to purchase any arms outside the colony. All officers in every branch of the armed forces were specifically ordered to obey the Committee of Safety; no military officers whatsoever could sit on it.” (Ibid., 97.) See also Middlekauff, Glorious Cause, 565–66.
THE ELEVEN MONTHS PRECEDING THE DECLARATION In August, Jefferson had written John Randolph that he “would rather be in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon earth, or than on no nation.” (PTJ, I, 242.) The flummoxing phrase, though, was “properly limited”: What did that mean? As 1775 fell away, month by month, to stand alone as a nation was not yet the chief desire of Jefferson’s heart, or of the broad American public’s. (See Maier, American Scripture, 21.) So what happened? George III and Lord Dunmore, two men cloaked in the ancient authority of the Old World, chose this season to assert themselves in ways that proved inflammatory and decisive. On Thursday, October 26, 1775, George III told Parliament that the American course was “manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent Empire.” It was a “desperate conspiracy” whose “authors and supporters … meant only to amuse, by vague expressions of attachment to the parent State, and the strongest protestations of loyalty to me, whilst they were preparing for a general revolt.” (Ibid.) London now intended “to put a speedy end to these disorders by the most decisive exertions.” The words gave the king’s unhappy subjects no apparent opening for negotiation, and little reason to think that they might avert total war. (Ibid.) And then Dunmore struck in ViRGINIA.
DEPREDATIONS OF A SUPERIOR MILITARY FORCE PTJ, I, 260. “Former labors in various public employments now appear as recreations compared with the present,” Edmund Pendleton wrote. (IBiD.)
“WE CARE NOT FOR OUR TOWNS” Ibid., 259. Page continued: “I have not moved many of my things away—indeed nothing but my papers, a few books, and some necessaries for housekeeping. I can declare without boasting that I feel such indignation against the authors of our grievances and the scoundrel pirates in our rivers and such concern for the public at large that I have not and cannot think of my own puny person and insignificant affairs.” (IBId.)
FROM HIS QUARTERS Quarles, “Lord Dunmore as Liberator,” WMQ, 494.
ISSUED A PROCLAMATION Ibid. See also McDonnell, The Politics of War, 133–34.
DECLARED MARTIAL LAW McDonnell, The Politics of WaR, 134.
ANY SLAVE OR INDENTURED SERVANT Ibid. Dunmore proclaimed: “And I do hereby further declare all indented servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to the Rebels,) free that are able and willing to bear arms [and join] His Majesty’s Troops, as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper sense of their duty, to His Majesty’s crown and dignity.” (IBiD.)
SAW THEIR MOST FEVERED PTJ, I, 266–67. In a letter to the Virginia delegates in Philadelphia, Robert Carter Nicholas wrote of “the unhappy situation of our country.” It was worse than ever, Nicholas said: “A few days since was handed to us from Norfolk Ld. D’s infamous proclamation, declaring the law martial in force throughout this colony and offering freedom to such of our slaves, as would join him.” Dunmore allies were “plying up the rivers, plundering plantations and using every art to seduce the negroes. The person of no man in the colony is safe, when marked out as an object of their vengeance; unless he is immediately under the protection of our little army.” (IbID.)
“I HAVE WRITTEN TO PATTY” Ibid., 264.
SWEPT UP AND DOWN Quarles, “Lord Dunmore as Liberator,” 494–97. On December 8, 1775, Edward Rutledge wrote that Dunmore’s proclamation had done “more effectually to work an eternal separation between Great Britain and the Colonies, than any other expedient, which could possibly have been thought of.” (Ibid., 495.)
“FOR GOD’S SAKE” PTJ, I, 265–66.
“SOME RASCALS, ALL FOREIGNERS” Ibid., 271.
“NO COUNTRY EVER REQUIRED” Ibid., 268. Jefferson was committed to doing all he could to prepare for the worst. For him, the period between the end of August, when he wrote John Randolph his calculated letter about American determination, and late November was one of unremitting strife. Sitting down to write Randolph agai
n on November 29, 1775, three months after his first charming message, Jefferson held out less hope that there was anything London might do to reach reconciliation.
He opened with a rosy account of American success in Canada, noting “in a short time we have reason to hope the delegates of Canada will join us in Congress and complete the American Union as far as we wish to have it completed.” He then turned to Dunmore, blaming him for the violence in Virginia. “You will have heard before this reaches you that Lord Dunmore has commenced hostilities in Virginia,” Jefferson wrote. “That people bore with everything till he attempted to burn the town of Hampton. They opposed and repelled him with considerable loss on his side and none on ours. It has raised our country into [a] perfect frenzy.” He spoke of George III. “It is an immense misfortune to the whole empire to have a king of such a disposition at such a time. We are told and everything proves it true that he is the bitterest enemy we have. His minister is able, and that satisfies me that ignorance or wickedness somewhere controls him.” Unlike August, this time Jefferson’s message was more militant. “Believe me, Dear Sir, there is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a Union with Great Britain than I do,” he said. “But by the God that made me I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose and in this I think I speak the sentiments of America. We want neither inducement nor power to declare and assert a separation. It is will alone which is wanting and that is growing apace under the fostering hand of our king.” (PTJ, I, 269.)
NAMED TO A COMMITTEE Ibid., 272–75.
“THE CONTINENTAL FORCES BY SEA AND LAND” Ibid., 272.
ETHAN ALLEN HAD BEEN CAPTURED Ibid., 276–77.
“WE DEPLORE THE EVENT” Ibid., 276.