Madison and Jefferson
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9. Oracle of Dauphin and Harrisburgh Advertiser [Harrisburg, Pa.], July 21, 1800, attributed to an unnamed New York paper.
10. Courier of New-Hampshire, May 15, 1800, from the New-York Spectator.
11. [James Thomson Callender], The Prospect Before Us, vol. 2 (Richmond, 1800), quotes at 74, 111. On Virginia, Callender chortled: “It would almost be worth while to collect into one body the sum total of scurrilous appellations which the stock-jobbing faction has bestowed on this state.” The phrase “hoary headed incendiary” appears on p. 143 of volume 1 of the same work. In October–November 1800, when volume 2 was published, Jefferson paid for fifty copies and forwarded nine to Madison that Madison had requested. See TJ to JM, November 9, 1800, RL, 2:1152; JMB, 2:1028; Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 170–72.
12. Newport Mercury, September 30, 1800. A series of articles under the headline “The Jeffersoniad” had appeared over the summer in Boston’s Columbian Centinel and such Federalist newspapers as the Gazette of the United States. “The Jeffersoniad No. V,” for example, appearing on August 1 in the Gazette, dissected Notes on Virginia in such a way as to show Jefferson to be a hater of American commercial enterprise, a dangerous deist, and a selfish “southern philosopher, who secure in his cool grotto at Monticello, and sunned by his slaves, who are the cultivators of HIS EARTH, looks down with tranquil indifference” on the industrious merchants he would suppress as president.
13. JM to TJ, October 21, 1800, RL, 2:1151; JM to Monroe, ca. October 21, 1800, PJM, 17:426.
14. Brant, 4:13; Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Forty Years of Washington Society, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York, 1906), 6–8. Popular democracy seemed to demand that favored statesmen be given traits of sociability, which was generally accomplished through descriptions of their refined and charming conversation. Federalists, opposing popular democracy, preferred to tar Republicans as crazed, lawless ideologues and cold, calculating atheists—the reverse image.
15. Beckley also took on the “fanatics, bigots, and religious hypocrites” who seized upon Jefferson’s efforts to secure religious freedom and exaggerated his words in order to raise the specter of enforced atheism. “Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions,” he explained, citing the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the entire text of which he included in his pamphlet. He then reminded readers of the enduring meaning of 1776 and the Declaration of that year, which must “preserve in the American mind, forever and inseparable, the names of Independence and Jefferson.” [John Beckley], Address to the People of the United States with an Epitome and Vindication of the Public Life and Character of Thomas Jefferson (Richmond, 1800), 3–7, 22.
16. Abraham Bishop, Connecticut Republicanism. An Oration on the Extent and Power of Political Delusion (Albany, N.Y., 1801), Preface, 8, 41, 46, 60.
17. JM to TJ, December 5, 1796, RL, 2:948; Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 186; John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (New York, 2004), 140–44; James H. Broussard, The Southern Federalists, 1800–1816 (Baton Rouge, La., 1978), 17–19. It was Adrienne Koch who referred to Hamilton as a “boss” (according to its later meaning) when he went after Adams. See her Jefferson and Madison: Great Collaboration, 217.
18. Malone, 3:491–92.
19. Marty D. Matthews, Forgotten Founder: The Life and Times of Charles Pinckney (Columbia, S.C., 2004), 36–37, 140.
20. Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson, 162–66.
21. TJ to JM, December 26, 1800, RL, 2:1156; Rev. James Madison to JM, December 28, 1800, PJM, 17:450–51; Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 188–89, 231–40; Matthews, Forgotten Founder, 96–105.
22. Bruce Ackerman, The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy (Cambridge, Mass., 2005); JM to TJ, January 10 and February 28, 1801, RL, 2:1156–57, 1162. Exhibiting personal animus in his political analysis, Madison considered Adams by this time to have “sunk in the estimation of all parties.”
23. Washington Federalist, February 2, 1801.
24. Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 202–20.
25. Page to TJ, March 5, 1801, PTJ, 33:185–86.
26. John Davis, Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America; during 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, and 1802 (London, 1803), 208, 222.
27. Leonard D. White, The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1801–1829 (New York, 1961), 140–47.
28. National Intelligencer, March 6, 1801.
29. Malone, 4:37–49; “Wine provided at Washington,” JMB, 2:1115–17.
30. Marshall to Pinckney, March 4, 1801, The Papers of John Marshall, ed. Charles F. Hobson (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1990), 6:89.
31. The first draft and final text are reprinted in PTJ, 33:134–52.
32. See Andrew Burstein, Sentimental Democracy: The Evolution of America’s Romantic Self-Image (New York, 1999), 112.
33. For a complete analysis of how Madison, Jefferson, and their fellow Republicans had come to this formulation, in which popular sovereignty would prevent a nonrepresentative political party from holding on to power, see Peter S. Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Charlottesville, Va., 2000), chap. 3.
34. Nancy Shoemaker, A Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth-Century North America (New York, 2004), 125–26.
35. Rush to TJ, March 12, 1801; Knox to TJ, March 16, 1801, PTJ, 33:260–62, 313.
36. TJ to Monroe, March 7, 1801; to Page, March 23, 1801, PTJ, 33:208, 422–23.
37. Gazette of the United States, March 11, 1801, reprinted in Spectator [New York].
38. When Marshall wrote to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney on March 4, he was thinking in these terms; so was the quintessential Boston Federalist Harrison Gray Otis when he wrote, resignedly, in anticipation of Jefferson’s election, that “the love of change … is stronger and more natural than the love of system.” Robert Goodloe Harper, a South Carolina Federalist, qualified: “Names may change; the denominations of parties may be altered or forgotten; but the principles on which the federalists have acted must be adopted, their plans must be substantially pursued, or the government must fall to pieces.” (In 1800, Harper moved from South Carolina to Baltimore, where he became a successful attorney.) As he watched the new president’s dismissals of Federalist officeholders, another South Carolina Federalist, John Rutledge, assumed that popular reaction would be felt at the polls, and Federalists returned to power. See Samuel Eliot Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, 1765–1828: The Urbane Federalist (Boston, 1969), 173, 185; Broussard, Southern Federalists, 1800–1816, 44.
39. Jay C. Heinlein, “Albert Gallatin: A Pioneer in Public Administration,” William and Mary Quarterly 7 (January 1950): 64–94.
40. Monroe to TJ, March 12, 1801, PTJ, 33:257–59. William Branch Giles expressed sentiments akin to those of Monroe but with even less nuance. He told Jefferson outright that the “principle of moderation” should not be taken very far, and that if he were to show “too much indulgence” to the Federalists, his best political friends would be deeply resentful. “It can never be unpopular,” Giles coached, “to turn out a vicious man & put a virtuous one in his room.” It was one thing to allow the minority to retain its voice, and quite another to deny justice to those who had been waiting in agony for change to come. Whereas Monroe saw particular problems with State Department appointments, Giles urged a clean sweep; the president should use all means at his disposal to rid the judiciary of its Federalists and punish the late administration for its many outstanding abuses. The enemy faction was not dead, Giles declared. “They only sleep.” Giles to TJ, March 16, 1801, PTJ, 33:310–11.
41. “Vermont Republican” to TJ, April 3, 1801; Oliver Pollock to TJ, April 4, 1801; Lyon to TJ, April 4, 1801, PTJ, 33:532–38.
42. TJ to Gallatin, August 14, 1801, PTJ, 35:85; Pinckney to TJ, March 12, 1801; “Pardon for James Thomson Callender” (signed by TJ and Acting Secretary of State Levi Lincoln); Callender to TJ, April 12, 18
01, PTJ, 33:259, 309–10, 573–74.
43. TJ to Lafayette, March 13, 1801; to Short, March 17, 1801; to Paine, March 18, 1801; J. Adams to TJ, March 24, 1801; S. Adams to TJ, April 24, 1801; “List of Candidates,” “Lists of Appointments and Removals,” PTJ, 33:270, 337–38, 358–59, 426, 638–39, 665–67, 674–75. In letters to Short, Jefferson was the least self-censoring, glibly alluding to the Federalists’ slow self-destruction in having abandoned themselves to “a perfect frenzy,” a loss of caution, “madness,” and “paroxysm.”
44. JMB, 2:1036–41; Brant, 4:41–43; Malone, 4:64.
45. Robert Allen Rutland, James Madison: The Founding Father (New York, 1987), 176–77; Brant, 4:48–51; TJ to Monroe, May 26 and May 29, 1801, PTJ, 34:185–86, 205.
46. Philadelphia Gazette, June 29, 1801; Salem Gazette, June 26, 1801, printed in other New England newspapers as well. These reports expressed a concern not part of the Philadelphia piece: that the relative equality of the states under the federal Constitution was all that restrained Virginia from pressing its ambition to govern the country south of New England.
47. Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 227–31; Ketcham, 413–14; TJ to Burr, September 4, 1801, PTJ, 35:204; Aurora General Advertiser, February 3, 1804.
48. Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 227, 231, 243–45, 255–56, 299.
49. William W. Clapp, Joseph Dennie (Cambridge, 1880); “A Layman” [Dennie], The Claims of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency, Examined at the Bar of Christianity (Philadelphia, 1800), 10, 17–18, 27, 44–45; letters from Dennie to his mother, April 26, 1797, and May 20, 1800; and to Roger Vose, February 7, 1800, The Letters of Joseph Dennie, ed. Laura Green Pedder (Orono, Me., 1936), 159, 179–81.
50. Port Folio, January 3, January 31, April 11, May 2, May 9, and May 16, 1801.
51. White, Jeffersonians: Study in Administrative History, chap. 14; Daniel Preston on Thornton, in American National Biography Online.
52. See TJ to JM, February 12, 1799, RL, 2:1095; and TJ to Burr, February 11, 1799, PTJ, 31:22. Northern Republicans opposed establishing close ties to Louverture’s government. Even Gallatin claimed that to recognize the black republic would “excite dangerous insurrections” in the southern states. New York mayor Edward Livingston also demanded guards to prevent French sailors from escaping into the country. Philippe Girard has argued that the open-door policy of the Adams administration worked because of Louverture’s diplomatic balancing act. He secured aid from Britain and the United States in anticipation of the island’s declaring independence; but he never broke from France. Philippe Girard claims that the U.S. Navy’s support of Louverture “must rank as the first U.S. intervention in a foreign conflict.” See Girard, “Black Talleyrand: Toussaint Louverture’s Diplomacy, 1798–1802,” William and Mary Quarterly 66 (January 2009): 93–94, 99, 109–10, 115–16; Douglas R. Egerton, “The Empire of Liberty Reconsidered,” in Horn, Lewis, and Onuf, eds., The Revolution of 1800, 314–15; and TJ to JM, September 13, 1802, RL, 2:1248.
53. Jefferson’s remarks were reported by Edward Thornton to Lord Grenville, March 28, 1801. See Editorial Note: “Avoiding the Maelstrom of Saint-Domingue 1 May–1 June 1801,” and JM to Tobias Lear, June 1, 1801, in PJM-SS, 1:128–29, 243–44.
54. For a partial account of Pichon’s report of his conversation with Madison, see PJM-SS, 1:403–4n1; for accounts of his conversations with Madison and Jefferson, see Carl Ludwig Lokke, “Jefferson and the Leclerc Expedition,” American Historical Review 33 (January 1928): 323–24; and Tim Matthewson, A Proslavery Foreign Policy: Haitian-American Relations during the Early Republic (Westport, Conn., 2003): 99–100.
55. Rumors concerning the size of the army were circulated in London newspapers as early as October 7, 1801. General Leclerc was appointed only a week after the peace treaty was concluded between France and England on October 1. Rufus King sent Madison a private letter, informing him that a “considerable expedition of land and Sea forces will proceed to St. Domingo, and perhaps to Mississippi.” When Robert Livingston confirmed the reports of the size of the expedition on November 22, he claimed that the “armament … will consist of 40,000 men.” Philippe Girard calculates the initial force at around 19,500 men. See Matthewson, Proslavery Foreign Policy, 107; Lokke, “Jefferson and the Leclerc Expedition,” 326; Philippe R. Girard, “The Ugly Ducking: The French Navy and the Saint-Domingue Expedition, 1801–1803,” International Journal of Navy History 7 (December 2008): 1–25; Rufus King to JM, October 31, 1801; Robert Livingston to JM, November 22, 1801, PJM-SS, 2:214, 265–66; for newspaper reports on the French expedition, taken from London newspapers of October 7, see Philadelphia Gazette, November 27, 1801, and Gazette of the United States, November 27, 1801; for the report that the expedition will go from St. Domingue to Louisiana, see Newburyport Herald, December 29, 1801.
56. Madison laid out his theory in detailed letters to Charles Pinckney, minister to Spain, and to his fellow Virginian Wilson Cary Nicholas. Madison’s view was shaped by James Monroe’s intelligence when he was minister to France under Washington. Madison also sent a strongly worded letter regarding Louisiana to Rufus King, warning off Britain. See JM to Pinckney, June 9, 1801; to Nicholas, July 10, 1801; to King, July 24, 1801; Monroe to JM, June 1, 1801, in PJM-SS, 1:315, 275–76, 394, 407; 2:309.
57. Rufus King to JM, October 9, 1801, November 20, 1801, in PJM-SS, 2:167, 254–55; Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1990), 112, 114, 127, 129. Tucker and Hendrickson state that Jefferson’s threats of an alliance with Great Britain were a diplomatic “feint” because London had no intention of disrupting the peace agreement with France over Louisiana. Jefferson’s threats did not stop the French—only weather and a renewed British blockade stopped Napoleon’s army from heading to Louisiana. In his correspondence with Tobias Lear, Madison confirmed that England was not opposed to the French expedition, and he expected a part of that force to head to Louisiana. See JM to Tobias Lear, January 8, 1802, February 26, 1802, PJM-SS, 2:373, 490.
58. JM to Robert Livingston, September 28, 1801, PJM-SS, 2:145; Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty, 208–9. Jefferson told Pichon on December 3, 1801, that the French would fail if they tried to reinstitute slavery; see Matthewson, Proslavery Foreign Policy, 107. Lear agreed with Jefferson that blacks would never submit to the yoke of slavery. See Lear to JM, January 17, 1802, PJM-SS, 2:404–5.
59. On the demand for an end to the trade, or embargo, see Robert Livingston to JM, March 27, 1802, and Louis André Pichon to JM, March 17, 1802; Pichon hoped the U.S. Treasury would buy French government bills for $400,000 to be used for purchasing supplies for the Leclerc expedition; for Madison’s rejection of this request, see Louis André Pichon to JM, March 22, 1802, and April 4, 1802; for Madison’s protests against the unjust treatment of the two captains, see JM to Livingston, May 7, 1802; for his condemnation of the French policy and his subtle rebuke of Leclerc’s high-handed measures, see JM to Livingston, July 6, 1802; for Leclerc’s public accusation that the United States was in the service of Toussaint, see Livingston to JM, July 3 and July 30, 1802, all in PJM-SS, 3:42–43, 62–63, 78, 98, 196–97, 365–68, 373–74, 443–45; Matthewson, Proslavery Foreign Policy, 109–10; Hendrickson and Tucker, Empire of Liberty, 127–28; Lokke notes that Napoleon in his secret instructions told Leclerc to expect supplies from American merchants—a conclusion based on Jefferson’s earlier statement to Pichon. See Lokke, “Jefferson and Leclerc Expedition,” 328.
60. See TJ to Livingston, April 18, 1802, TJP-LC. Madison did not discount the utility of threats, but he urged that they be used with “delicacy,” as he told Livingston in his official instructions before the start of the diplomatic mission. See JM to Livingston, September 28, 1801, PJM-SS, 2:144–45. For a compelling discussion of this moment in diplomacy, see James E. Lewis, Jr., “A Tornado on the Horizon: The Jefferson Administration, the Retrocession Crisis, and the Louisiana Purchase,” in Peter J. Kastor and François Weil, eds., Empire
s of the Imagination: Transatlantic Histories of the Louisiana Purchase (Charlottesville, Va., 2009), 117–40.
61. King to JM, June 1, 1801; JM to Livingston, September 28, 1801; JM to TJ, May 7, 1802, PJM-SS, 1:251; 2:144–45; 3:195.
62. Tench Coxe to JM, November 28, 1801, PJM-SS, 2:181–83; TJ to James Monroe, June 1, 1802, TJP-LC. Talleyrand had used the threat of recognizing Toussaint and the new “black Frenchman” in his effort to convince Great Britain to sanction the French expedition to St. Domingue. See Robin Blackburn, “Haiti, Slavery, and the Age of Democratic Revolutions,” William and Mary Quarterly 63 (October 2006): 659–60. When he appealed to Madison to impose an embargo on American merchants, Pichon used racial unity as a point of argument. See Louis André Pichon to JM, March 17, 1802, in PJM-SS, 3:41–43.
63. Rush to TJ, May 12, 1802, Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Princeton, N.J., 1951), 2:847–48.
64. Douglas R. Egerton, Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1993).
65. Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840 (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), esp. chap. 6.