by Jon Meacham
A FEVER STRUCK PATSY Ibid.
“THROUGH A COUNTRY” Ibid.
“THE MOST AGREEABLE COUNTRY” Roy and Alma Moore, Thomas Jefferson’s Journey to the South of France, (New York, 1999) 16.
JEFFERSON NEGOTIATED TREATIES ON WHALE OIL Kaplan, Jefferson and France, 30. See also JHT, II, 196–97, and Merrill D. Peterson, “Thomas Jefferson and Commercial Policy, 1783–1793,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 22, no. 4 (October 1965): 599–600.
HE KEPT A WARY EYE Ibid., 33. I am indebted to Kaplan for these points. See also PTJ, VIII, 339 and 373–74.
THE PURCHASE OF AMERICAN EXPORTS Ibid. See also PTJ, XIV, 304–5; Ibid., XV, 502.
TO THE OPENING OF ST. DOMINGUE Ibid. See also PTJ, XV, 502.
“I BEG YOU’D PUT” PTJ, VII, 376.
A CHATTY, DETAILED MEMORANDUM Ibid., 386–91.
THE MARQUIS DE CONDORCET William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 7.
JEFFERSON TOOK UP RESIDENCE Ibid., 47–48.
“FOR THE ARTICLES OF HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE” PTJ, VIII, 230.
“A MOST AGREEABLE MAN” McCullough, John Adams, 312.
“AS MUCH YOUR BOY” Ibid., 311.
“EVERY DAY ENLARGING” William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 41.
HOUSES, THEATERS, THE WALL OF THE FARMERS-GENERAL Ibid., 43–45.
THE PALAIS ROYAL Ibid., 59.
THIS “GREAT AND GOOD” COUNTRY Jefferson, Writings, 98.
“SO ASK THE TRAVELLED INHABITANT” Ibid.
THE BARBARY STATES EOL, 633–39. See also Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson, 294–99; Frank Lambert, The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World (New York, 2005); and Joseph Wheelan, Jefferson’s War: America’s First War on Terror, 1801–1805 (New York, 2003).
“THESE STATES ARE NOTED” David Adams, Geography; Or, A Description of the World (Boston, 1820), 306.
“TO PURCHASE THEIR PEACE” PTJ, VII, 511.
“YET FROM SOME GLIMMERINGS” Ibid.
“SURELY OUR PEOPLE” Ibid., 511–12.
CAPTURE OF A VIRGINIA SHIP Ibid., 639–40.
PRESSED AGAIN FOR A WARLIKE RESPONSE Ibid. John Jay had other, more conventional ideas, transmitting instructions from the Congress directing Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams to treat with the Barbary States, and even raising the possibility that American funds might be used to bribe the right people in order to make peace. A deal was necessary, Jay wrote, “because the continuance of … hostilities must constantly expose our free citizens to captivity and slavery.” (Ibid., VIII, 20.) If the diplomats found it wise to buy influence, then so be it. “At courts where favoritism as well as corruption prevails, it is necessary that attention be paid even to men who may have no other recommendation than their influence with their superiors.” (Ibid., 21.)
“THESE ARE FRAMED” Ibid., 644. He was soon confronted with a conflict with Spain over the American West. On Thursday, July 22, 1784, at New Orleans, Spain closed the Mississippi to navigation. Madrid’s offer to Americans—to allow some maritime traffic down the river, but to prohibit American exportation from New Orleans—was a poor one, and Jefferson needed to know how hard he should push the matter. “I would wish you to sound your acquaintances on the subject and to let me know what they think of it; and whether if nothing more can be obtained, this or no treaty, that is to say, this or war would be preferred.” (Ibid., 510.)
From home Charles Thomson had disagreeable news about the Committee of the States, the quasi-executive body Jefferson had helped bring into being. The committee had adjourned without “the harmony and good humor that could have been wished,” Thomson reported on October 1, 1784. (Ibid., 432.) The price to be paid was not limited to the domestic scene. “I am apprehensive it will have an ill aspect in the eyes of European nations and give them unfavorable impressions, which will require all your address and abilities to remove,” he wrote Jefferson. (Ibid.) The Congress had a difficult time even choosing a home. “If Congress should not be able to make a majority … to determine on any one place of fixed residence (a case very likely to happen),” Francis Hopkinson wrote Jefferson, “will they not be in a situation like that of Mahomet’s Tomb—suspended between Heaven and Earth and belonging to neither!” (Ibid., 535.)
By November Jefferson’s fears about America’s loss of face because of the weak Confederacy were confirmed. “All respect for our government is annihilated on this side [of] the water, from an idea of its want of tone and energy,” Jefferson wrote Elbridge Gerry. “It is a dangerous opinion to us, and possibly will bring on insults which will force us into war.” (Ibid., 502.)
“HE HAS A PRINCIPLE” William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 184–85. English policy on trade was so stringent, Jefferson believed it “a nation so totally absorbed in self interest that nothing will force them to be just but rigorous retaliation.” (PTJ, VII, 516; also see ibid., 509–10.)
Jefferson always maintained a tough line with Britain. “Nothing will bring them to reason but physical obstruction applied to their bodily senses,” he told Madison on March 18, 1785. “We must show that we are capable of foregoing commerce with them before they will be capable of consenting to an equal commerce.” Tobacco was America’s ally in this case: “Our tobacco they must have from whatever place we make its deposit, because they can get no other whose quality so well suits the habits of their people.” (PTJ, VIII, 40.)
INVENTED A FICTITIOUS FRENCH OFFICER PTJ, VII, 540–45. The “officer lately returned” allowed that there had been a few incidents: the Philadelphia Mutiny (“Yet in this mutiny there neither was blood shed nor a blow struck”); a riot in Charleston; the passage of some resolutions in town meetings protesting various articles of the Treaty of Paris; and, in Virginia, the call to halt payment of the British debts until there was restitution for the confiscated slaves.
Yet the disturbances in America, Jefferson’s officer wrote, were nothing compared to the recent violence in London under Lord Gordon. “Where is there any country of equal extent with the U.S. in which fewer disturbances have happened in the same space of time? … With respect to the people their confidence in their rulers in general is what common sense will tell us it must be, where they are of their own choice annually, unbribed by money, undebauched by feasting, and drunkenness. It would be difficult to find one man among them who would not consider a return under the dominion of Great Britain as the greatest of all possible miseries.” (Ibid., 540–42.)
The difficulty facing Jefferson in answering widely distributed attacks was formidable. “The views and designs, the intrigues and projects, of courts are let out by insensible degrees and with infinite art and delicacy in the gazettes,” said John Adams. “The English papers are an engine by which everything is scattered all over the world.… Of these papers, the French emissaries in London, even in time of war—but especially in time of peace, make a very great use; they insert in them things which they wish to have circulated far and wide.” (Ibid., 544.)
“NOTHING IS KNOWN” Ibid., 540.
HE WAS DISPATCHING BARRELS OF BRANDY Ibid., 500–501.
LUCY, AGE TWO, WAS DEAD Ibid., 441.
DESCRIBED AS A “CONVULSIVE STRANGULATING” Robert Hooper, Quincy’s Lexicon-Medicum: A New Medical Dictionary (Philadelphia, 1817), 611. See also Nicholas Bakalar, “First Mention; Pertussis, 1913,” The New York Times, April 13, 2010.
“IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO PAINT” PTJ, VII, 441.
“BOTH SUFFERED AS MUCH PAIN” Ibid., 441–42.
“PRESENT ME AFFECTIONATELY” Ibid., 636.
“MR. J. IS A MAN OF GREAT SENSIBILITY” William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 181.
“BEHOLD ME AT LENGTH” PTJ, VIII, 568.
“MY GOD! HOW LITTLE DO” Ibid., 233.
WALKING UP TO SIX OR EIGHT MILES A DAY Ibid., 90.
“I MUST HAVE POLLY” Ibid., 141.
“I THINK I HAVE SOMEWHERE” Kaminski, Founders on the Founders, 292–93.
“OUR COUNTRY IS GETTING” PTJ, VIII, 357.
“WE HAVE INTELLIGENCE” Ibid., 293.
“IT IS SAID THAT GREAT BRITAIN” Ibid., 196.
“OUR GOVERNMENTS” Ibid.
NINETEEN · THE PHILOSOPHICAL WORLD
“WILL YOU TAKE THE TROUBLE” PTJ, IX, 158.
SHOPPING IN FRANCE MB, I, 565 and ff.
ATTENDED MASQUERADE BALLS Ibid., 600.
A FORWARD BARONESS Ibid., 611.
MADE HIS WAY TO VERSAILLES Ibid., 562.
HE ALSO VISITED PATSY Cynthia Kierner, Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello: Her Life and Times (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2002), 51–59.
“A HOUSE OF EDUCATION” PTJ, XI, 612. See also Kierner, Martha Jefferson Randolph, 54.
HE TRIED TO PLAY CHESS MB, I, 610.
“I HAVE HEARD HIM SAY” Ibid.
CALLED ON THE COMTESSE D’HOUDETOT AT SANNOIS PTJ, VIII, 241. See also William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 75.
“IN ALL ITS PERFECTION” Ibid.
THE COMMISSIONING OF A STATUE Ibid., VII, 378. “The intention of the assembly is that the statue should be the work of the most masterly hand,” Harrison told Jefferson. “I shall therefore leave it to you to find out the best in any of the European states.” (Ibid.)
COME TO AMERICA “FOR THE PURPOSE” Ibid., 567. “I trust that having given to your country so much of your time heretofore, you will add the short space which this operation will require to enable them to transmit to posterity the form of the person whose actions will be delivered to them by History. Monsieur Houdon is at present engaged in making a statue of the king of France. A bust of Voltaire executed by him is said to be one of the first in the world.” (Ibid.)
“AN IMPROVEMENT IS MADE HERE” Ibid., VIII, 455.
“TO COMMUNICATE TO ME” Ibid., 301.
DOCUMENTS ABOUT FRENCH MARINES Ibid., XI, 31.
TO CONVINCE THE COMTE DE BUFFON Ibid., IX, 158.
TRAVELED TO A SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND MB, I, 595.
EXCHANGED AMERICAN NUTS AND BERRIES Ibid., 599.
THE AMERICAN EXPLORER JOHN LEDYARD Ibid., 586.
LEDYARD WAS PLANNING A JOURNEY JHT, II, 67–68.
“IT IS CERTAINLY OF GREAT IMPORTANCE” PTJ, VIII, 73.
“HAS THE ABBE ROCHON” Ibid., 75.
HE PURCHASED A PORCELAIN MARS Ibid., 548.
THE FIGURINES WERE ACCIDENTALLY DESTROYED Ibid., IX, 126.
HE ONCE SENT CORSETS Ibid., XI, 45–46.
“HE WISHES THEY MAY” Ibid.
ENGLISH TAILORING AND SHOEMAKING NEEDS Ibid., XII, 484–85. Jefferson’s direct contact was William Stephens Smith, the Adamses’ son-in-law.
“I HAVE AT LENGTH” Ibid., VIII, 473.
HôTEL DE LANGEAC MB, I, 594.
“I CULTIVATE IN MY OWN GARDEN” PTJ, XII, 135.
“I AM NOW OF AN AGE” Ibid., VIII, 500.
“I OBSERVED THAT” William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 185–86.
“HE IS EVERYTHING” Kaminksi, Founders on the Founders, 293.
“MR. JEFFERSON IS A MAN” Ibid., 294.
A PORTRAIT OF THE DAILY ROUTINE PTJ, XI, 122–23.
“THE POLITICS OF EUROPE” Ibid., IX, 264.
FOR “A HUNDRED OR TWO” Ibid., 267.
A CONVENTION TO DEAL Ibid., 335.
“I ALMOST DESPAIR” Ibid.
PAINE VISITED JEFFERSON IN PARIS JHT, II, 142–43.
THE SON OF A CORSET MAKER Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man: A Biography (New York, 2006), 20–21.
WAS BORN IN THETFORD Craig Nelson, Thomas Paine, 14.
YOUNG PAINE WAS BAPTIZED Ibid., 16–17. “Having been raised in two religions simultaneously during a period when competing doctrines waged armed warfare against one another could have triggered Paine’s adult tendency to question all received wisdom,” wrote Nelson. (Ibid., 17.)
MORE THAN HALF A MILLION COPIES Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (New York, 2004), 35.
THE RIGHTS OF MAN Ibid., 38–39.
THE AGE OF REASON Ibid., 41–43.
PAINE AND JEFFERSON BECAME FRIENDS Wood, Idea of America, 213–28, examines Paine and Jefferson in detail. Referring to historical indictments of Jefferson on questions of slavery and of the racial inferiority passages in the Notes on the State of Virginia, Wood writes: “Paine may be able to help redeem Jefferson. Since it is clear that Jefferson and Paine thought alike on virtually every issue, Paine’s radical and democratic credentials may allow historians, especially those of the left, to see Jefferson in a somewhat more favorable light, or at least see him in light of the eighteenth century, and not in today’s light.” (Ibid., 227.) See also Seth Cotlar, Tom Paine’s America: The Rise and Fall of Transatlantic Radicalism in the Early Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2011).
In 1801, Jefferson offered Paine passage from France to the United States on a U.S. Navy vessel after Paine had spent time in prison for opposing the execution of Louis XVI. By now president, Jefferson argued to Madison that the author of Common Sense deserved special attention. “There is a clear enough line between Thomas Paine and citizens in general,” he told Madison. (PTJ, XXXV, 125.) Paine declined Jefferson’s offer and ultimately arrived in the United States in November 1802.
A SERIES OF MEETINGS PTJ, IX, 285–88.
LARGE PIPES OF TOBACCO Ibid. See also Abigail Adams 2d to John Quincy Adams, Adams Family Correspondence, VII, 41–42.
“WHAT HAS BEEN ALREADY” Ibid., 295. “I am so impressed and distressed with this affair that I will go to New York or to Algiers or first to one and then to the other … rather than it should not be brought to a conclusion.” (Ibid.) For Adams’s correspondence with John Jay on these matters, see The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustrations, by His Grandson Charles Francis Adams, VIII (Boston, 1853), 372–79.
IN A LETTER DATED TUESDAY Ibid.
HE WOULD BE BACK BEFORE Ibid., 318.
AT A LONDON DINNER Ibid., 398–99.
“HE WAS SERIOUS IN THIS” Ibid., 399.
“I KNOW OF NO GENTLEMAN” Ibid., 555.
“IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANYTHING” Jefferson, Writings, 57.
“THEY TEEM WITH EVERY HORROR” PTJ, VIII, 548.
“IT WOULD HAVE ILLY SUITED ME” Ibid.
SURVEYING ENGLISH GARDENS Ibid., IX, 369–75; McCullough, John Adams, 356–62.
“MY ANXIETIES ON THIS SUBJECT” PTJ, VIII, 451. “I must now repeat my wish to have Polly sent to me next summer,” Jefferson wrote Francis Eppes on August 30, 1785. “With respect to the person to whose care she should be trusted, I must leave it to yourself and Mrs. Eppes altogether,” Jefferson said. “Some good lady passing from America to France, or even England, would be most eligible; but a careful gentleman who would be so kind as to superintend her would do.” (Ibid.)
A SIMPLE LETTER ARRIVED Ibid., 517.
“I WISH SO MUCH TO SEE YOU” Ibid., 532–33.
“I WILL VENTURE TO ASSERT” Ibid., IX, 380.
TWENTY · HIS HEAD AND HIS HEART
“WE ARE NOT IMMORTAL OURSELVES” PTJ, X, 451.
“A GOLDEN-HAIRED, LANGUISHING” Helen Duprey Bullock, My Head and My Heart: A Little History of Thomas Jefferson and Maria Cosway (New York, 1945), 14.
BORN NEAR FLORENCE Ibid., 15. My portrait of Cosway relies on ibid.; William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson; and Stephen Lloyd, “The Accomplished Maria Cosway: Anglo-Italian Artist, Musician, Salon
Hostess and Educationalist (1759–1838),” Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies 2 (1992): 108–39. Adams’s book is especially thorough and engaging.
MARIA WAS BARELY RESCUED Ibid., 14.
TO THE GLAMOROUS ARTISTIC AND LITERARY CIRCLES Ibid., 15–16.
THE WRITER JAMES BOSWELL Gordon Trumbull, “Boswell, James (1740–1795),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 729–40.
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS Jane Turner, ed., The Dictionary of Art, XXVI (New York, 1996), 270–81.
ANGELICA KAUFFMANN Wendy Wassyng Roworth, “Kauffman, (Anna Maria) Angelica Catharina (1741–1807),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, XXX, 914–17.
THE COLLECTOR CHARLES TOWNLEY B. F. Cook, “Townley, Charles (1737–1805),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, LV, 115–17.
“A WELL-MADE LITTLE MAN” Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women, 89.
WON THE PATRONAGE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 101, 225.
SET UP HOUSEKEEPING AT SCHOMBERG HOUSE Ibid., 225.
THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SEX THERAPIST DR. JAMES GRAHAM Ibid.
“HIS NEW HOUSE” Bullock, My Head and My Heart, 18.
FURNITURE WAS ORNATELY CARVED Ibid. I am indebted to Bullock for the details of the Cosways’ interior design. She quoted a long passage from John Thomas Smith, the antiquarian.
WILLIAM HAZLITT WROTE William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 225.
HORACE WALPOLE, THE WRITER Ibid., 225–26.
MADEMOISELLE LA CHEVALIèRE D’EON, KNOWN IN HER DAY Ibid., 226.
ONE COSWAY FRIEND Ibid., 224–25.
HUGUES AND THE COSWAYS Ibid., 103.
THE ARTIST JOHN TRUMBULL Turner, Dictionary of Art, XXXI, 391–92.
THE MEN WHO HAD DESIGNED THE DOME William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 62–63.
ALLOWING LIGHT TO POUR THROUGH Ibid., 62. Adams wrote: “To [Jefferson’s] eye, the light-filled room seemed to manifest the idealism of the age. It was a recurring image that he could not shake. The marriage of practical engineering and aesthetic beauty was a relationship that would often inspire his architectural fantasies.” (Ibid., 62–63.)
“THE MOST SUPERB THING” Ibid. Adams added: “The halle’s sparkling glass and thin wooden ribs somehow captured for Jefferson the spirit of an ‘enlightened space’ that was both symbolic and utilitarian.” (Ibid., 63.)
