Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

“I CONGRATULATE YOU” Ibid., 50.

  “INSTEAD OF WRITING” Ibid., 57.

  “MY COUNTRYMEN ARE GROANING” Ibid.

  MIGHT SOON “GET OUT” Ibid., 72.

  DISPATCHED JOHN JAY Ibid., 69–71.

  “MAY EXTRICATE US FROM” Ibid., 75.

  “THE SPIRIT OF WAR” Ibid., 55.

  HE DECIDED TO PULL DOWN JHT, III, 221–22, details the story of the two Monticellos.

  “WE ARE NOW LIVING” PTJ, XXVIII, 181.

  “HE IS A VERY LONG TIME” JHT, III, 221.

  “ARCHITECTURE IS MY DELIGHT” Ibid., 222.

  THE TERRACES AND DEPENDENCIES TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/overview-mulberry-row (accessed 2012).

  NEW SLAVE QUARTERS, A SMOKEHOUSE, AND A DAIRY Ibid.

  A NAILERY FB, 426–53.

  “AS HE CANNOT” Ibid., xiv.

  “IN INCESSANT TORMENT” PTJ, XXVIII, 155.

  “JEFFERSON IS VERY ROBUST” Ibid., 249.

  HIS MOUNTS TENDED TO HAVE NOBLE NAMES TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/horses (accessed 2012). See also FB, 87–109.

  “BELOW THE OLD DAM” TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/fishing (accessed 2012).

  OUTINGS ON THE SCHUYLKILL RIVER Ibid.

  A DAY AT LAKE GEORGE Ibid. See also PTJ, XX, 463–64.

  “A FAR LESS PLEASANT WATER” PTJ, XX, 464.

  HE KEPT GUNS TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/firearms#_note-4 (accessed 2012).

  TRAVELED ARMED Ibid.

  HE ONCE LEFT BEHIND Ibid.

  BEST FORM OF EXERCISE Ibid.

  OFTEN RECOMMENDED IT Ibid.

  RIDING WAS THE GREAT SOLACE AND ACTIVITY Ibid.

  JEFFERSON HUNTED “SQUIRRELS AND PARTRIDGES” Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, 17–18. See also TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/hunting (accessed 2012).

  “OLD MASTER WOULDN’T SHOOT” Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, 18.

  WOULD “SCARE … UP” PARTRIDGES Ibid.

  DRIVE HUNTERS AWAY FROM MONTICELLO’S DEER PARK Ibid., 21.

  A “TWO SHOT-DOUBLE BARREL” TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/firearms#_note-4 (accessed 2012).

  A SET OF TURKISH PISTOLS Ibid.

  “20 INCH BARRELS” Ibid.

  “EVERY AMERICAN WHO WISHES” Ibid.

  A “GUN-MAN” Ibid.

  “I AM A GREAT FRIEND” Ibid.

  “PERSONALITIES, WHICH LESSEN THE PLEASURES” PTJ, XXVIII, 24.

  THE NEXT WEEK JAMES MONROE Ibid., 29–31. Jefferson made no secret of his own opinions. In an April 1794 letter, he weighed in on the Treasury, rumors of war with Britain, an issue about the French islands, naval and land armaments, and marine fortifications. Then came the obligatory denial of his own interest in the questions in which he had just expressed his interest: “I find my mind totally absorbed in my rural occupations,” he told Madison. (Ibid., 49–50.) A telling reaction to Federalism came in late March, when the House of Representatives created a Ways and Means Committee as a check on Hamilton. In the debate over whether to establish the panel, “the fiscal party,” Madison said, “perceiving their danger, offered a sort of compromise,” but the measure failed, and the committee was created. The House now had the institutional means to manage money matters more carefully. (Ibid., 46.)

  LEGISLATION TO CREATE A NEW ARMY Ibid., 38.

  WAS “FOUNDED UPON THE IDEA” Ibid., 41.

  “A CHANGE SO EXTRAORDINARY” Ibid.

  TO RENOUNCE ANY HEREDITARY TITLES Ibid., 245.

  “YOU WANT TO HOLD US UP” Ibid.

  GILES’S AMENDMENT PASSED; DEXTER’S FAILED Ibid.

  HIS ANNUAL MESSAGE Ibid., 213.

  THE WHISKEY REBELLION IN THE WEST See Hogeland, Whiskey Rebellion.

  ATTACKS ON BOWER HILL Ibid., 147–50, 152–83.

  GENERAL JOHN NEVILLE Ibid., 97–105.

  JAMES MCFARLANE, WAS SHOT AND KILLED Ibid., 154–56.

  THE DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN SOCIETIES Eugene P. Link, Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790–1800 (New York, 1973), is a full account. See also Philip S. Foner, ed. The Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790–1800: A Documentary Sourcebook of Constitutions, Declarations, Addresses, Resolutions, and Toasts (Westport, Conn., 1976); and PTJ, XXVIII, 220–22.

  “THE ATTEMPT WHICH HAS BEEN” PTJ, XXVIII, 219.

  “THE DENUNCIATION OF” Ibid., 228.

  “THERE WAS INDEED” Ibid., 229.

  HE WOULD USE A WHITE CAMBRIC HANDKERCHIEF TDLTJ, 48–49.

  “THE ONLY IMPATIENCE OF TEMPER” Randall, Jefferson, III, 675.

  WHEN JEFFERSON ORDERED TDLTJ, 321.

  “TELL JUPITER TO COME” Ibid.

  “IN TONES AND WITH A LOOK” Ibid.

  TWO FERRYMEN HAD BEEN FIGHTING Ibid.

  “HIS EYES FLASHING” Ibid., 322.

  “AND THEY DID ROW” Ibid.

  “IF YOU VISIT ME” PTJ, XXVIII, 337.

  “COME THEN … AND LET US” Ibid., 368.

  “YOU OUGHT TO BE” Ibid., 315. Jefferson had suggested Madison should consider his own possible candidacy, a scenario Madison dismissed: “Perhaps it will be best, at least for the present to say in brief, that reasons of every kind, and some of them of the most insuperable as well as obvious kind, shut my mind against the admission of any idea such as you seem to glance at.” In fact, Madison implied, the time was coming when he and Jefferson would have to speak privately and in person about Jefferson’s political future. (Ibid.)

  JEFFERSON ADMITTED THAT THE SUBJECT Ibid., 338–40. This letter of April 27, 1795, has been the subject of intriguing scholarly attention. James Roger Sharp, “Unraveling the Mystery of Jefferson’s Letter of April 27, 1795,” Journal of the Early Republic 6, no. 4 (Winter 1986): 411–18, explores an important textual change in the copy of the letter that Jefferson kept. Jefferson wrote that as he would not seek the office, “my sole object is to avail myself of the first opening ever given me from a friendly quarter (and I could not with decency do it before), of preventing any division or loss of votes, which might be fatal to the Southern interest.” Yet someone—Jefferson himself, perhaps, or Thomas Jefferson Randolph (who edited his grandfather’s papers in the 1820s) or Nicholas P. Trist, who worked with Randolph—changed the word “Southern” in the letter to read “Republican.”

  Anxious to present the Jeffersonian political movement as a national, not a sectional, undertaking, whoever changed the phrase was evidently attempting to protect Jefferson from appearing to be anything less than a firm nationalist. States’-rights and national tensions existed from the start, and the prolific Jefferson proved a useful source of quotations and inspiration for sectionalist (and even secessionist) elements in America in his lifetime and long afterward. The preponderance of his life and work, though, put Jefferson on the side of the American union.

  It seems likely that his use of the word “Southern” in 1795 was more of a reference to the choice of candidate to lead the Republican interest than it was a wholesale characterization of Republicanism as a regional phenomenon. Consider the sentences following the use of the phrase “Southern interest”: “If that [the Southern interest] has any chance of prevailing, it must be by avoiding the loss of a single vote, and by concentrating all its strength on one object. Who [emphasis mine] this should be is a question I can more freely discuss with anybody than yourself. In this I painfully feel the loss of Monroe. Had he been here I should have been at no loss for a channel through which to make myself understood.” (PTJ, XXVIII, 339.)

  My reading of this is that Jefferson is still trying to encourage Madison to seek the presidency, in part because Jefferson loved Madison and believed in him, but also becau
se Jefferson would prefer a Republican president from the South to a Republican president from the middle states or New England.

  “CONTINUAL INSINUATIONS” Ibid., 338.

  “THE LITTLE SPICE OF AMBITION” Ibid., 339.

  GAVE BIRTH TO THEIR DAUGHTER HARRIET Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 516–17.

  THE CHILD DIED Ibid., 530.

  “I AM CONVINCED” PTJ, XXXVI, 676.

  “MAKE ME UP A SET” Ibid., XXVIII, 377.

  “A FUGITIVE PUBLICATION” Ibid., 387.

  WILLIAM BRANCH GILES ANNOUNCED Noble E. Cunningham, The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization, 1789–1801 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1957), 86.

  IN THE FALL, AARON BURR OF NEW YORK Ibid., 86–87.

  FEDERALIST CHARGES THAT THE TWO MEN Ibid.

  A BRIEF VISIT ON JEFFERSON’S MOUNTAINTOP Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York, 2008), 145–46. As Isenberg noted, “There is no record of what Jefferson and Burr discussed during this brief visit.… The two men had little time to plan, and it is highly unlikely that they accomplished anything so momentous as cementing the Republican ticket. Still, Burr was actively campaigning. He had made the long trip not just to consult with Jefferson but to show in the flesh his commitment to the Virginia Republicans.” (Ibid., 146.)

  THE TREATY, WHICH PRESIDENT WASHINGTON RECEIVED PTJ, XXVIII, 400.

  ANGRY CROWDS BURNED JAY IN EFFIGY EOL, 198. For more on reaction to the Jay Treaty, see Warren, Jacobin and Junto.

  TALK OF IMPEACHING WASHINGTON Ibid. See also Michael Beschloss, Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789–1989 (New York, 2007), 1.

  JEFFERSON DESPISED THE TREATY PTJ, XXVIII, 55. By August, Jefferson was writing Madison about Hamilton’s maneuvers in New York. “You will perceive by the enclosed that Hamilton has taken up his pen in support of the treaty.… He spoke on its behalf in the meeting in New York, and his party carried a decision in favor of it by a small majority. But the Livingstonians appealed to stones and clubs and beat him and his party off the ground. This from a gentleman just from Philadelphia.” (Ibid., 430.) Madison later corrected Jefferson on the details of the anecdote, almost none of which was accurate. (Ibid., 432.)

  “FROM NORTH TO SOUTH” Ibid., 435.

  MID-AUGUST FLOODS Ibid., 439.

  “SO GENERAL A BURST OF” Ibid., 449.

  “REALLY A COLOSSUS TO THE ANTIREPUBLICAN PARTY” Ibid., 475.

  FRETTING ABOUT “THE QUIETISM” Ibid., 476. The storm stirred Jefferson’s allies. Rutledge, telling him the obligation to serve outweighed his concern about his reputation: “The experience of every day evinces that the service of our country, like the practice of virtue, must bring with it its own reward: whoever expects that gratitude to be the fruit of patriotism expects a vain thing, and disappointment, or mortification will be his portion.” (Ibid., 502.)

  Rutledge’s son delivered the letter personally and stayed at Monticello for a time. “He found me in a retirement I dote on, living like an Antediluvian patriarch among my children and grandchildren, and tilling my soil,” Jefferson wrote the senior Rutledge afterward. On the question of public life, Jefferson was apparently unwavering. “You hope I have not abandoned entirely the service of our country: after a five and twenty years continual employment in it, I trust it will be thought I have fulfilled my tour, like a punctual soldier, and may claim my discharge.” Yet he could not avoid politics, adding: “I join with you in thinking the treaty an execrable thing.” It was, Jefferson said, an “infamous act, which is really nothing more than a treaty of alliance between England and the Anglomen of this country against the legislature and people of the United States.” (Ibid., 541–42.)

  “A BOLDER PARTY-STROKE WAS NEVER STRUCK” JHT, IV, 247.

  THE HOUSE NEEDED TO APPROVE FUNDING John C. Miller, The Federalist Era, 1789–1801 (Prospect Heights, Ill., 1998), 172–76. James Madison mounted a bid to bring the treaty before the House of Representatives. Madison’s argument, one with which Jefferson had much sympathy, was that the House should have a voice in a treaty that touched on so many matters that also fell under House jurisdiction. The treaty did require House approval of an appropriations measure to fund parts of the treaty, and the measure passed over Madison’s objection. (Ibid.)

  “A SUPERCILIOUS TYRANT” Warren, Jacobin and Junto, 63.

  “RULER WHO TRAMPLES” Ibid.

  “NEVER, TILL A FEW MONTHS” Ibid., 64.

  “THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME” Ibid.

  “THE N. ENGLAND STATES” PTJ, XXIX, 95.

  “TWO PARTIES THEN DO EXIST” Ibid., XXVIII, 508–9.

  JEFFERSON WROTE BACHE Ibid., 560–61.

  THOUGH HE HAD HARDLY LEFT THE ARENA Ellis, American Sphinx, 184, fixes the Aurora moment as the one that marks Jefferson’s reentry into politics. As noted, I do not believe Jefferson ever left, but Ellis makes an interesting point: Asking the editors for the papers put Jefferson back on the stage in the eyes of those most politically engaged of men—the newspaper editors of the eighteenth century.

  “YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF” PTJ, XXVIII, 607.

  “YOU WILL HAVE SEEN” Ibid., XXIX, 124.

  JEFFERSON HAD READ A REPORT Ibid., 127–30. “That to your particular friends and connections, you have described, and they have announced to me, as a person under a dangerous influence; and that, if I would listen more to some other opinions all would be well,” Washington said. He continued:

  My answer invariably has been that I had never discovered any thing in the conduct of Mr. Jefferson to raise suspicions, in my mind, of his insincerity; that if he would retrace my public conduct while he was in the Administration, abundant proofs would occur to him, that truth and right decisions, were the sole objects of my pursuit; that there were as many instances within his own knowledge of my having decided against, as in favor of the opinions of the person evidently alluded to; and moreover, that I was no believer in the infallibility of the politics or measures of any man living. In short, that I was no party man myself, and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to reconcile them. (Ibid., 142.)

  “EVERYTHING SACRED AND HONORABLE” Ibid., 127.

  MAY “TRY TO SOW TARES” Ibid.

  “AS YOU HAVE MENTIONED” Ibid., 142.

  PATRICK HENRY TO STAND APE, I, 36. See also Kidd, Patrick Henry, 234–35.

  “TO INFORM YOU THAT THE PEOPLE” Ibid., 169.

  “I HAVE NOT THE ARROGANCE” Ibid., 199.

  TWENTY-EIGHT · TO THE VICE PRESIDENCY

  “THERE IS A DEBT OF SERVICE” PTJ, XXIX, 233.

  “YOU AND I HAVE FORMERLY SEEN” Ibid., 456–57.

  WASHINGTON’S FAREWELL ADDRESS APE, I, 38–39.

  “A SIGNAL, LIKE DROPPING A HAT” Ibid., 70. See also Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson, 85. Word spread quickly. “I rejoice at the news” of Washington’s retirement, a correspondent wrote Jefferson, “because I consider him as a man dangerous to the liberties of this country. Misled himself, he lends his influence to others, and by his name gives a sanction to the most dangerous measures.” (PTJ, XXIX, 185.)

  PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN THE FIRST DECADES In the mysterious way these things became clear in presidential elections from 1796 until Andrew Jackson was nominated for reelection by a national party convention thirty-six years later, it was instantly understood that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the leading candidates to succeed Washington.

  UNTIL THE RATIFICATION OF THE TWELFTH AMENDMENT EOL, 285. See also Bruce Ackerman, The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), which is a fascinating study.

  THE COLUMBIAN MIRROR AND ALEXANDRIA GAZETTE PTJ, XXIX, 193.

  JOHN TAYLOR OF CAROLINE Ibid., 194.

  DESCRIBING A 1794 C
ONVERSATION Ibid. The Republicans immediately sensed the political possibilities of the Taylor report about Adams’s remarks. John Mason, son of George, asked for a certified copy of the account, saying Adams’s comments would “do more good than anything which has yet been spoken of.” (Ibid., 194–95.)

  CAMPAIGN LITERATURE READ APE, I, 40.

  “THOMAS JEFFERSON IS A FIRM REPUBLICAN” Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson, 90.

  THE RISING PROSPECT OF WAR WITH FRANCE Ibid., 93. Pierre Adet, a French diplomat, publicly suggested the Federalists were too favorably disposed toward the British and that Jefferson would be the wiser choice in terms of relations with France. The Federalists in turn used this quasi endorsement against Jefferson. (APE, I, 30.)

  A LATE-AUTUMN COLD SPELL PTJ, XXIX, 211.

  “FEW WILL BELIEVE” Ibid.

  HAMILTON, WHO OPPOSED BOTH APE, I, 40.

  A FASCINATING STRATEGY Ibid. As Page Smith wrote in APE, I:

  The plan called for the Federalist electors in New England to cast all their votes for Adam and Pinckney for President and Vice-President while the electors in South Carolina, Pinckney’s home state, would throw away a few Adams votes and thus give the Presidency to the man plainly intended to be Vice-President, leaving Adams in that office. Had it succeeded and the Federalist candidate for Vice-President become President by a ruse, the Federalist party would have been split beyond hope of repair. Adams would almost certainly have resigned as Vice-President, leaving that office presumably to Jefferson or Burr. Equally likely was the election of Jefferson as President. (Ibid.)

  ADAMS “TOO HEADSTRONG” PTJ, XXIX, 214. If Pinckney succeeded, Madison also said, “It is to be hoped that P[inckney] may equally disappoint those who expect to make … use of him.… and there is always the chance of a devolution of the business on the House of Reps. which will I believe decide it as it ought to be decided.” (Ibid.)

  And there was a chance Jefferson could even place third: “The prevailing idea is that Pinckney will have the greatest number of votes: and I think that Adams will be most likely to stand next.” (Ibid., 218.)

  “YOU MUST RECONCILE” Ibid., 218.

  “A DIFFICULTY FROM WHICH” Ibid, 223.