The Great Divide

by Thomas Fleming

  Instead of writing a polite refutation, as he had done when Jefferson sent him his earlier political aberration, “The Earth Belongs to the Living,” James Madison leaped on his horse and rode the thirty-five miles from Montpelier to Monticello at a reckless gallop. Jefferson saw the anxiety on his face when his friend came in the door and reassured him that he had changed his mind. He did not think a threat of secession was the right solution for their current crisis. But he did not repudiate the idea.10

  The Vice President was now convinced that he could not safely write a letter to Madison or anyone else without the danger of some Federalist spy opening it. When James Monroe warned him not to see Madison again for a further political discussion, lest they be accused of conspiring against the government, Jefferson cancelled their planned meeting at Monticello. Simultaneously, Jefferson exhibited a new ability to change his opinion of the French Revolution as France slid from the bribe-greased hands of the Directory into the bayonet-backed grip of Napoleon Bonaparte. The Vice President told Elbridge Gerry that the “atrocious depredations” the French had been committing on American ships in the West Indies had shocked him. “The first object” of his heart had become “my own country.” He solemnly assured Gerry that he had “not one farthing of interest, nor one fiber of attachment out of it, nor a single motive of preference for any one nation to another but in proportion as they are more or less friendly to us.”

  Did Jefferson realize that he was all but reciting one of the central messages of George Washington’s Farewell Address, which he had previously called an insult to France? Perhaps he thought it was time to change his mind about that political stance, too. More and more, he was acting like a presidential candidate.11

  Prevented from meeting with James Madison by Monroe’s conspiratorial dictum, Jefferson sent a new Democratic-Republican strategy to Montpelier by private messenger. He thought they should now call for peace “even with Great Britain.” They should repeatedly declare their veneration of the federal union. Simultaneously, they should agitate for the disbandment of the federal army, citing its cost and the fear of a military dictatorship. They could and should protest prosecutions under the Sedition Act as “violations of the true principles of our constitution.” But nothing should be said or done that “shall look or lead to force and give any pretext for keeping up the army.”

  The goal was to avoid giving the splintered Federalists a reason to unite. Jefferson saw them as divided into “Adamsites,” who backed the peace mission to France, and “Hamiltonians,” who were mesmerized by the army led by the ex-secretary of the treasury under General Washington’s supervision. Jefferson urged Madison to send his own ideas about these matters as soon as possible.

  Meanwhile, Madison headed for Richmond for the winter session of the Virginia legislature. There, he used the prestige he had acquired as a leader in Congress to nominate James Monroe as the next governor. The candidate won by an overwhelming majority. It was a move that clearly established Jefferson’s power in the Old Dominion. It was also Madison’s way of telling Virginians that George Washington was no longer a political force. To nominate as governor a man who had recently published a book loaded with insults to the first president was a virtual declaration of Washington’s political irrelevance.

  It was also a very risky move. The ex-president was sure to be infuriated. He would undoubtedly vow to retaliate in every possible way, summoning Alexander Hamilton and other eloquent Federalists to his aid. The presidential campaign of 1800 began to look like it would be a no-holds-barred struggle.

  On December 14, 1799, totally unexpected news from Mount Vernon shook politicians and policies everywhere. George Washington was dead. His cold and sore throat had led to an infection of the epiglottis, a small flap of tissue in the throat, that controls the entrance to the windpipe. Little understood in 1799, the condition had slowly destroyed his ability to breathe. In Richmond, James Madison rose in the House of Delegates to report that “Death has robbed our country of its most distinguished ornament and the world of one of its greatest benefactors.”

  In imitation of a tradition he had launched in the Federal Congress when Benjamin Franklin died, Madison proposed that all the members of the state legislature should wear black armbands for the rest of their current session. In spite of his devotion to Thomas Jefferson, did Madison still cherish the memory of his lost friendship with George Washington? Perhaps. But it was also shrewd politics to claim a reverential admiration for the departed father of the country.12

  Madison’s cousin, Bishop James Madison, president of the College of William and Mary, prescribed similar armbands for his students—and was startled when not a few refused to wear them. It was a grim indication of how virulent party politics had become. Additional evidence was the reaction of the House of Delegates when someone proposed a statement honoring the late Patrick Henry’s “eloquence and superior talents.” It was voted down—punishment for Henry’s attacks on the Virginia Resolutions in his final campaign for election.13

  Thomas Jefferson heard the news of Washington’s death while he was at Monticello, preparing to return to Philadelphia for the second session of the Fifth Congress. He did not issue a statement, and made no effort to reach Philadelphia in time to participate in the day set aside for formal mourning—December 26, 1799. More than a few people have suspected this act of avoidance testified to the bitter dislike of Washington that Jefferson had exhibited more than once since their friendship collapsed.

  There is no doubt that the U.S. Senate’s memorial statement would have been difficult for the Vice President to read aloud, as he might have been asked to do as the body’s president. “Ancient and modern names are diminished before him. Greatness and guilt have too often been allied, but his fame is whiter than it is brilliant…” The Senate and the House of Representatives joined a huge procession to Philadelphia’s Lutheran Church, where Congressman Henry Lee spoke from the pulpit. His opening words achieved immortality—and summed up the national mood. George Washington was “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”14

  The next two months must have been an ordeal for the Vice President. One historian has counted three hundred ceremonies mourning George Washington throughout the nation. In Boston, Fisher Ames praised his political skills. “His presidency will form an epoch and be distinguished as the Age of Washington….He changed mankind’s idea of political greatness.” Many orators compared him to Moses. Others chose Alexander the Great. Dozens extolled the Farewell Address. In Boston, women wore black for weeks. Even the chair in which Vice President Jefferson sat in the Senate was draped in black.15

  It seems almost inevitable that one of the first dissenting voices was Philip Freneau. He emerged from the sand dunes of South Jersey with a poem that simultaneously mocked Washington’s eulogists and pseudo-praised the newsman’s favorite target.

  No tongue can tell, no pen describe

  The phrenzy of a numerous tribe

  Who by distemper’d fancy led

  Insult the memory of the dead

  He was no god, ye flattering knaves

  He owned no world, he ruled no waves

  But—exalt it if you can

  He was the upright, Honest man.16

  This was a good summary of what became the Democratic-Republican party line. President Washington had been a noble but aging soul, deceived by Hamilton and other corrupt Federalists into letting the country slide into the hands of Anglomen and monocrats. Jefferson led the way down this nasty path, more than once describing the departed hero as close to senile in his presidential days. Anyone who takes the trouble to read the vigorous letters Washington wrote up to the day of his last illness knows this is nonsense.17

  CHAPTER 25

  The Race to Make the Vice First

  HAVING SATISFIED HIS CONSCIENCE—AND protected his political back—by acknowledging Washington’s greatness, James Madison now turned all his energy to making Thomas Jefferson the next p
resident.

  On January 7, 1800, less than a month after Washington’s death, the Virginia assembly published Madison’s “Report on the Resolutions”—a brilliant defense of his objections to the Alien and Sedition Act. He began by affirming his devotion to the Union and muted to the point of extinction Jefferson’s threats of nullification and secession. He called the Virginia Resolutions “expressions of opinion” that only aimed at “exciting reflection” in their readers. But he insisted the Sedition Act was a menace, because it threatened free speech, which he asserted was the core of a republican government. This point was especially important because they would soon be involved in a presidential election. How could voters find out the truth about the candidates if newspapers were silenced?1

  Madison called a caucus of Democratic-Republican members of the House of Delegates to discuss how Virginia could play a leading role in electing Jefferson. They approved a plan to consolidate the state’s electoral vote. Previously, individual electors had been chosen by districts. Now there would be one electoral ticket for the whole state. This guaranteed their candidate a handsome bloc of votes from the nation’s most populous state. Next, Madison’s old Congressional friend, William Branch Giles, proposed a set of resolutions calling on Virginia’s congressmen and senators to push for repeal of the Alien and Sedition laws and the disbandment of the army.

  In Philadelphia, Vice President Jefferson worked on changing the Democratic-Republican stance toward France. The “dictatorial Consulate” established by Napoleon had convinced him it was time to divorce the party from the expired French Revolution. He told his Kentucky friend, John Breckinridge, that Americans should realize that “their…character and situation was materially different from the French…Whatever the fate of republicanism there,” America still had the ability “to preserve it inviolate here.”2 Madison added a thought that would provide ammunition in the coming campaign. The French transfer of the destiny of the Revolution from “the Civil to the military authority” was a good argument for disbanding the American army as soon as possible. “A stronger lesson has seldom been given to the world, nor has there ever been a country “more in a situation to profit from it.” Jefferson promptly agreed. He claimed to be worried that Alexander Hamilton, “our Buonaparte” might try to “give us political salvation in his own way.”3

  With France eliminated as a bone of contention, the focus of the Democratic-Republican campaign shifted to saying positive things about Thomas Jefferson. Madison and his fellow campaign managers decided to present him as the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Throughout the 1790s, more and more Democratic-Republicans had chosen this achievement as the reason for their admiration of their leader.

  With the Declaration came a widely circulated pamphlet portraying the candidate as “mild, amiable, and philanthropic, refined in manners and enlightened in mind, the philosopher of the world, whose name adds luster to our national character, and as a legislator and statesman, stands second to no man’s…On him concentrate your present views and future hopes.” The pamphlet was written under a pseudonym by one of Jefferson’s most fanatic supporters, John Beckley, the former clerk of the House of Representatives, who had ruined Alexander Hamilton’s reputation in 1797 by leaking the story of his adultery.4

  Federalist newspapers and orators struck back with savage accusations. Jefferson was an atheist; like his Jacobin friends in Paris, he would attempt to shut, and if necessary, burn America’s churches. Timothy Dwight, the President of Yale, saw Jefferson as one of the French “Illuminati”—the haters of religion. He foresaw the prospect of Americans burning bibles in public, the chalices used in Holy Communion displayed on the back of an ass (as they were in France), “our children, either wheedled or terrified, chanting mockeries of God…our wives and daughters lured into legal prostitution.” All these Jacobin horrors would flow from a Jeffersonian presidency.5

  In many states, the Mazzei letter was reprinted with charges of Jefferson’s disrespect to the revered Washington. In Virginia, the anti-Jefferson party referred to themselves as “Washingtonians”—an indication that they were well aware of the late President’s dislike of the Democratic-Republican candidate. It is telling evidence of what might have happened on a far larger scale if Washington had been alive to tell people what he thought of the race.6

  The possible presence and the tragic absence of Washington is the great “What If?” of the 1800 election. The Federalists desperately needed him to hold their party together. President Adams was totally inadequate to this challenge. He added insults to his hatred and jealousy of the party’s leader, Alexander Hamilton, calling him “the bastard brat of a Scotch peddler”—a cruel description of his West Indian mother’s relationship to his Scottish-born father, whose common-law marriage had never been legalized.

  An infuriated Hamilton wrote a scathing fifty-page attack on Adams, which he tried to circulate secretly to Federalist leaders in key states. Hamilton hoped to persuade them to switch their electoral votes to Adams’s running mate, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, making him president and Adams a three-term vice president. Thomas Jefferson’s running mate, former Senator Aaron Burr of New York, got his hands on a copy and soon Democratic-Republican newspapers were printing excerpts from it to a chorus of hoots and jeers.

  If Washington had been alive, he would never have allowed Hamilton to inflict such suicidal political wounds on the Federalist party. A distraught Noah Webster said the ex-treasury secretary’s “ambition, pride, and overbearing temper” were in danger of making him “the evil genius of his country.” One of Hamilton’s closest friends, fellow attorney Robert Troup, said his character was “radically lacking in discretion.”7

  A politically active Washington would also have disapproved of the Federalist use of the Sedition Act to harass and punish Democratic-Republican editors throughout the year 1800. During his presidency, Washington had never tried to silence any of his newspaper critics, no matter how much they exasperated him. He would have urged the same policy in 1800, when all threat of a French invasion had vanished, and Congress, with the cooperation of many moderate Federalists, disbanded most of General Hamilton’s army. No longer could a government attempt to control the press be justified as a war measure.

  Also in the drama in a murky way was President Adams’s peace initiative. Like everything else this unpolitical politician did, his envoys ignored the very real possibility that a successful negotiation with France might have given Adams’s run for reelection a badly needed boost. Instead, the negotiators did not reach an agreement with the French until September 30, 1800—much too late for the news to get to America and influence the election. The treaty was far from a triumph. Sensing Adams wanted peace at almost any price, the negotiators abandoned the $12 million in claims for the seizures of hundreds of American ships during the year of hostilities that historians now call the Quasi War. In return, France grandly released the United States from the 1778 Treaty of Alliance, which the Federalist Fifth Congress had already declared defunct. Still, the agreement was a proclamation of peace that might have changed many voters’ minds. But a copy of the treaty did not arrive in Washington, D.C. until December 11, 1800. By that time, John Adams had lost the election.

  The contest between the two formerly close friends came down to a struggle for two key states, New York and South Carolina. In both, the Federalists seemed to have an advantage—John Jay was governor of New York and South Carolina was naturally inclined to favor the Federalist candidate for vice president, native son Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. But cool, canny Aaron Burr proved himself a far better politician than the Adams-hating Hamilton. Burr put together a ticket of famous names for New York’s state legislature, led by Washington’s old and still active enemy, ex-General Horatio Gates. In April, the Democratic-Republicans carried every electoral district in New York City, guaranteeing them control of the legislature and the Empire State’s electoral votes.

  In South Carolina,
another member of the talented Pinckney clan, also named Charles, concentrated on winning Democratic-Republican votes among the small farmers in the backcountry. They were traditionally jealous of the dominance of the state’s politics by the Federalist “grandees” of Charleston.

  At Monticello, Thomas Jefferson kept in close touch with the political contests in the various states. His hopes had risen with Burr’s victory in New York, but a seesaw motion soon prevailed, as New England voted in a bloc for Adams. In a letter to Madison, Jefferson reported a hairbreadth victory in North Carolina and a landslide win in Georgia, counterbalanced by news that New Jersey and South Carolina were too close to call. Madison replied with his own assessments. South Carolina looked “ominous” but they had not yet heard from the backcountry. Maryland was “neither flattering nor altogether hopeless” and Pennsylvania was “uncertain.”8

  By November, the candidate and his campaign manager waited with growing tension for news from South Carolina. The Palmetto State’s vote would decide the election. Pennsylvania had divided its electoral votes, New Jersey had gone Federalist, and Maryland had swung to Jefferson. To make sure no Federalist snoopers interfered, all the letters from and to Charles Pinckney came and went to Madison, who was not on any ballot.

  On November 24, another letter reached Montpelier. Almost simultaneously, Vice President Jefferson cantered up the drive to Madison’s home, planning to stay overnight. He was on his way to Washington, D.C., which had become the nation’s capital in accordance with the compromise he had negotiated with Alexander Hamilton ten years ago.

  Madison opened the letter and read an exultant message from Charles Pinckney. The Democratic-Republicans had carried South Carolina. Charles Cotesworthy Pinckney had repudiated Alexander Hamilton and announced he would not accept any electoral vote that was not also pledged to President Adams. The Federalists had won a majority of the state’s voters, but many of their electors had been convinced by Hamilton’s attack on the President and declared they would vote for Pinckney, but not Adams. After ten days of wrangling, a majority of the electors gave their votes to Jefferson and Burr.