40. Annals of Congress, 7th Cong., 1st sess., 628, 662; also see Ackerman, Failure of Founding Fathers, 152, 154; and James M. O’Fallon, “Marbury,” Stanford Law Review 44 (January 1992): 238.
41. Ackerman, Failure of Founding Fathers, 156; Charles Hobson, “John Marshall, the Mandamus Case, and the Judiciary System, 1801–1803,” George Washington Law Review 72 (December 2003): 295; Annals of Congress, 7th Cong., 1st sess., 38, 82.
42. Marbury v. Madison, 5 (1 Cranch) (1803); also see Hobson, “John Marshall,” 299.
43. Marshall personally felt that forcing Supreme Court judges to share the duties of district judges (which would eliminate the need for more district court judges) was unconstitutional, and he had discussed the possibility of a boycott with his colleagues on the bench. But the justices decided not to make it a political issue and resumed the duties of riding the circuit. See R. Kent Newmeyer, “Symposium: Marbury v. Madison and the Revolution of 1800,” George Washington University Law Review 72 (2003): 312; Van Alstyne and Marshall, “Critical Guide to Marbury v. Madison,” 35–37; Larry Kramer, “Understanding Marbury v. Madison,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 148 (March 2004): 25–26; and for the importance of Stuart v. Laird, whose opinion was written by Justice William Paterson and not Marshall, see Ackerman, Failure of Founding Fathers, 185–89, 193–94.
44. While entirely speculative, this explanation is meant to provide additional insight into Jefferson’s mind. That he might have handed over the commission with a statement designed to limit judicial interference with executive authority is inferred from Jefferson’s action in 1807, when Marshall issued a subpoena duces tecum ordering him to hand over documents during Aaron Burr’s treason trial. At that time the president gave the court the required documents, while reserving the right to withhold any document containing confidential information. See Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York, 2007), 345.
45. Port Folio, January 22, 1803 (on Monroe), and December 8, 1804 (on Madison).
46. Davis, Travels of Four Years and a Half, 366.
47. Republican Star, September 21, 1802; Trenton Federalist, October 4, 1804. One of the “abandoned libelers” named was William Coleman, who had been set up in 1800 as editor of the New-York Evening Post by Alexander Hamilton.
48. Port Folio, July 10, July 17, October 2, and October 30, 1802. On the use of slave speech in satire during this period, see Robert Secor, “Ethnic Humor in Early American Jest Books,” in A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America, ed. Frank Shuffelton (New York, 1993), 172–76. For more on Dennie’s mockery of Jefferson and Hemings, and a larger discussion of Dennie’s treatment of race and gender, see Catherine O’Donnell Kaplan, Men of Letters in the Early Republic: Cultivating Forums of Citizenship (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2008).
49. United States Chronicle, September 16, 1802.
50. Port Folio, February 19, 1803.
51. American Citizen, June 29 and July 5, 1803. Manhattanites knew Richard Croucher from a lurid trial of 1800, when Burr and Hamilton served as cocounsel for an accused young man who very likely killed his fiancée; in that instance one of the defense attorneys interrogated Croucher, a prosecution witness, and suggested that he was likelier than their well-groomed client to have done the deed. Croucher was subsequently convicted in the murder of a different woman.
52. Hornet [Fredericktown, Md.], August 2, 1803, taken directly from the Virginia Gazette; National Aegis [Worcester, Mass.], August 3, 1803; Newburyport Herald, July 29, 1803. The Rhode Island Republican had referred to Callender as a “notorious drunkard” in its July 16 issue, prior to Callender’s drowning.
53. Trenton Federalist, January 2, 1804.
54. Republican Star, September 7, 1804; Robert Richardson to TJ, March 31, 1824, in Thomas Jefferson Papers, Tucker-Coleman Collection, College of William and Mary.
55. C. Peter Magrath, Yazoo: Law and Politics in the New Republic (New York, 1966); Daniel P. Jordan, Political Leadership in Jefferson’s Virginia (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), 158–65; Robert Dawidoff, The Education of John Randolph (New York, 1979), 173–82 ; Moultrie v. Georgia, in The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789–1800, ed. Maeva Marcus and James R. Perry (New York, 1985), 5:496–511; Malone, 4:448–57; Brant, 3:230–40.
56. TJ to JM, April 13, 1803, RL, 2:1307; Andrew Burstein, The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist (Charlottesville, Va., 1995), 141–43, 191–92.
57. Abigail Adams to TJ, May 20, 1804; TJ to Abigail Adams, June 13, 1804, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, ed. Lester J. Cappon (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 268–71.
58. A. Adams to TJ, July 1, August 16, and October 25, 1804; TJ to A. Adams, July 22 and September 11, 1804, ibid., 271–82.
59. Edith B. Gelles, Portia: The World of Abigail Adams (Bloomington, Ind., 1992), 103.
60. Plumer to D. Lawrence, December 27, 1802, in William Plumer, Jr., Life of William Plumer (Boston, 1857), 247.
61. Port Folio, October 29, 1803, July 28, August 4, and October 13, 1804. The sexual satire was written by Josiah Quincy, as “Climenole.” A Connecticut Republican earlier explained the proper understanding of the word democrat: “The terms republican and democrat, are used synonimously [sic] thro’out, because the men who maintain the principles of 1776, are characterized by one or the other of these names, in different parts of the country.” See Abraham Bishop, Connecticut Republicanism (Albany, N.Y., 1801), 9.
62. Hamilton to Morris, February 22 and February 29, 1802, “The Examination, Nos. XII & XIII,” and “To the New-York Evening Post,” in the New-York Evening Post, February 23, 24, and 27, 1802, PAH, 25:527–45. A year and a half later Hamilton was still trying to prove that Madison had had strong monarchical tendencies in 1787–88. See exchanges with Timothy Pickering, in which Hamilton concluded, “if I sinned against Republicanism, Mr. Madison was not less guilty.” Hamilton to Pickering, September 16, 1803; Pickering to Hamilton, October 18, 1803, PAH, 26:147–49, 160–61; National Intelligencer, October 22, 1804; Port Folio, April 23, 1803.
63. Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 256–69 and passim. Hamilton’s actual date of birth is uncertain. Many historians have accepted it as 1755; some take it as 1757.
64. William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803–1807, ed. Everett Somerville Brown (New York, 1923), 193, 203–4; Brant, 4:246–47.
65. Port Folio, August 18 and September 1, 1804; National Intelligencer, March 2, 1804.
66. Republican Farmer [Bridgeport, Conn.], October 24, 1804.
67. William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings, 186–93. On the subject of Madison’s aggressive foreign policy in 1803–04, see Ketcham, 421–25; also JM to Monroe, December 26, 1803, PJM-SS, 6:213. Envoys Monroe and Livingston also believed that West Florida was included in the Louisiana Purchase; see Charles Pinckney to JM, January 24, 1804, PJM-SS, 6:384; Tucker and Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty, 137–56.
68. Burstein, Sentimental Democracy, 224–25.
69. “Curtius” [John Taylor of Caroline], A Defence of the Measures of the Administration of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, 1804), 10–11, 16–17, 123–36. In arguing that the Jefferson administration had consistently acted in the national and not a partisan interest, Taylor reasoned that the emergent West would be the South’s competitor and the North’s partner in commerce.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Years of Schism, Days of Dread, 1805–1808
1. Republican Farmer, January 2, 1805.
2. Daniel P. Jordan, Political Leadership in Jefferson’s Virginia (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), 99.
3. Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello (New York, 2008), 589–90; Malone, 5:65, 127–32.
4. “Notes on a Draught for a second inaugural Address” and extant drafts of the second inaugural address, March 4, 1805, TJP-LC.
5. Morning Chronicle (New York), March 12, 1805.
6. “Mr. Elliot to His Constituents,” in Vermont Journal, as reprinted in Albany Gazette, June 6, 1805.
7. Henry Adams, John Randolph (1882; rpt. Armonk, N.Y., 1996), 94–106, quotes at 95, 99; Lynn Hudson Parsons, John Quincy Adams (Madison, Wisc., 1998), 77; Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York, 2007), 273–79.
8. Republican Advocate [Fredericktown, Md.], March 5, 1805. The case against Justice Chase had been spelled out in the newspaper over the preceding weeks, in a series titled “Truth Stark Naked.”
9. Ketcham, 436–38; Adams, John Randolph, 111–13, 123; Randolph speech citing Monroe commented on in Charleston Courier, February 9, 1803; Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (New York, 1971), 244–45. Federalists, too, were highly skeptical about the funds being used to bribe France to convince Spain to sell Florida. See James H. Broussard, The Southern Federalists, 1800–1816 (Baton Rouge, La., 1978), 116; David A. Carson, “That Ground Called Quiddism: John Randolph’s War with the Jefferson Administration,” American Studies 20 (April 1986): 75, 84.
10. Annals of Congress, vol. 3, March 5, 1806, 424–33. In his nostalgia for 1798, Randolph invoked the name of the ill-fated young Petersburg lawyer John Thomson, author that year of the “Letters of Curtius,” who had promoted Virginia republicanism while criticizing John Marshall upon his tumultuous welcome home as the hero of the XYZ Affair. Thomson was “the greatest man whom I ever knew,” Randolph declared to his congressional colleagues. He now used Thomson’s example to lambaste Madison and Jefferson for going behind the people’s backs, which he characterized as “the proneness of cunning people to wrap up and disguise in well-selected phrases, doctrines too deformed and detestable to bear exposure in naked words.”
11. Joseph T. Hatfield, William Claiborne: Jeffersonian Centurion in the American Southwest (Lafayette, La., 1976), 154–62.
12. New-York Spectator, March 12, 1806; United States Gazette, March 12, 1806; Alexandria Gazette, reprinted ibid.; similarly, see Newport Mercury, March 22, 1806, reporting that Randolph treated Madison with “the greatest contempt.” The Federalist paper argued: “His whole speech was in total opposition to everything democratical.”
13. Adam L. Tate, Conservatism and Southern Intellectuals, 1789–1861 (Columbia, Mo., 2005), 15–16; Norman K. Risjord, The Old Republicans: Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson (New York, 1965), 24–31; Ketcham, 436; Robert Allen Rutland, James Madison: The Founding Father (New York, 1987), 178; Ammon, James Monroe, 255.
14. William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803–1807, ed. Everett Somerville Brown (New York, 1923), 219; Brant, 4:244–46.
15. Ketcham, 442–44; Jefferson’s Fifth Annual Message, December 3, 1805, TJP-LC; Julia H. Macleod, “Jefferson and the Navy: A Defense,” Huntington Library Quarterly 8 (February 1945): 173–77.
16. Broussard, Southern Federalists, 86.
17. Republican Spy, September 3, 1805; Morning Chronicle, March 10, 1806.
18. Republican Watch-Tower, January 6, 1806; Tickler, September 16, 1806.
19. Andrew Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy: The Struggle to Fuse Egalitarianism and Capitalism in Jeffersonian Pennsylvania (Lawrence, Kan., 2004), 1–2, 84–85, 96–102, 141–43, 154–60, 174.
20. Rush to Adams, August 14, 1805, April 22, 1807, and January 13, 1809, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Princeton, N.J., 1951), 2:900–901, 941, 993. Note that the plural form of government referenced the united states while expressing the meaning of federal union. The reason for the trip to Philadelphia was Mrs. Madison’s health. The renowned Dr. Philip Syngh Physick was consulted to evaluate whether she would need surgery for a growth on her leg.
21. South Carolina State Gazette, May 20, 1802; New-York Spectator, March 14, 1804, announcing: “Democrat against Democrat—‘a consummation devoutly to be wished.’ ” Referring to the Burr-Clinton rivalry, the Newburyport [Mass.] Herald, on July 26, 1803, stated that “the schism is great, and the dissention sharp and severe.” According to the Connecticut Centinel of June 22, 1802, that “schism in the democratic party has been maturing ever since the Presidential election.” On Duane’s impressions, see Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power: Party Operations, 1801–1809 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1963), 224.
22. TJ to JM, November 8, 1806, RL, 3:1455–56; JM to General Williams, November 9, 1806, JMP-LC.
23. TJ to JM, August 16, 1807, RL, 3:1485–86.
24. Madison’s bold actions in 1810, as president, in the seizure of West Florida, provide ample proof of this. See Chapter 13.
25. Isenberg, Fallen Founder, chap. 8, esp. 283–85.
26. Ibid., 286–311; Andrew Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson (New York, 2003), chap. 3.
27. National Intelligencer, November 9, 17, 19, and 24 and December 5, 1806. The Scioto Gazette story is in the November 24 issue; the piece under the headline “BURR’s CONSPIRACY” was originally printed in National Aegis [Worcester, Mass.].
28. Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 312–15; Charles Henry Ambler, Thomas Ritchie: A Study in Virginia Politics (Richmond, 1913), 38–39.
29. In Eaton’s case, the title of “General” was an honorary one, a testimonial to his ambitious march through the Libyan desert during the Barbary campaign, when he recruited a motley group of Europeans in an action best defined as a filibuster.
30. Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 307, 323–65, Randolph quote at 349, Wirt quote at 362.
31. Jefferson probably did not know that, at the time he wrote the offending comments on democracy, Dennie was living with Thomas Boyleston Adams, son of John and Abigail, brother of Senator John Quincy Adams, and in Dennie’s words, “my constant friend.” The pair, Harvard classmates some years past, were sharing their home with a family of Philadelphia Quakers—pacifists in a den of politics. William W. Clapp, Joseph Dennie (Cambridge, Mass., 1880), 36–37; letter of June 15, 1803, from Dennie to his mother, in The Letters of Joseph Dennie, ed. Laura Green Pedder (Orono, Me., 1936), 191.
32. Carolina Gazette [Charleston], March 4, 1808.
33. Proclamation in Jefferson’s hand, July 2, 1807, and transcription of Madison’s draft, in TJP-LC; National Intelligencer, July, 1, 1807; Ketcham, 452–53; Malone, 5:415–35; Edwin M. Gaines, “The Chesapeake Affair: Virginians Mobilize to Defend National Honor,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 64 (April 1956): 134, 137.
34. Gerry to JM, July 5, 1807; J. G. Jackson to JM, July 5, 1807, in JMP-LC.
35. Bidwell to TJ, June 27, 1807; TJ to Bidwell, July 11, 1807; Page to TJ, July 12, 1807, TJP-LC; Andrew Burstein, The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist (Charlottesville, Va., 1995), 137–43; Ketcham, 453.
36. See esp. TJ to JM, August 9, 11, and 16, 1807, RL, 3:1483, 1486; JMB, 2:1212; Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 284–85, 296. Jefferson had briefly considered a filibuster in Florida two years before.
37. JM to TJ, September 20, 1807, RL, 3:1499.
38. Sullivan to TJ, December 7, 1807, TJP-LC; Ketcham, 455–56; for the toast mocking Jefferson, see Independent Chronicle, July 27, 1807, cited in Thorp Lanier Wolford, “Democratic-Republican Reaction in Massachusetts to the Embargo of 1807,” New England Quarterly 15 (March 1942): 42; Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1990), 208–10.
39. Bradford Perkins, Prologue to War: England and the United States, 1805–1812 (Berkeley, Calif., 1961), 152–56; Gallatin to TJ, December 31, 1807, TJP-LC.
40. Lewis to JM, January 9, 1808, JMP-LC.
41. Perkins, Prologue to War, 168; Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (New York, 1980), 138, 216–17.
42. No relation to the Pinckneys of South Carolina.
43. Monroe to John Taylor, September 10, 1810, in Writings of James Monroe, ed. Stanislaus M. Hamilton (New York, 1898–1903), 5:131–33.
44. Monroe to TJ, March 22, 1808, ibid., 5:2
7–35.
45. JM to Monroe, March 20, 1807, JMP-LC; Ammon, James Monroe, 254–70; Ammon, “James Monroe and the Election of 1808 in Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly 20 (January 1963): 40–42; Jack N. Rakove, James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic (New York, 1990), 142–44; Malone, 5:414.
46. TJ to JM, March 11, 1808, RL, 3:1514; TJ to Taylor, January 6, 1808, cited in Malone, 5:483.
47. National Intelligencer, January 18 and March 23, 1808.
48. Elsewhere, the opposition asked leading or rhetorical questions, or focused on the good and decent people who were being hurt. The merchant “sounds idle,” the Connecticut Courant mourned. The mechanic was “obliged to dismiss his journeymen—his customers desert him”; the farmer “finds no market for his produce.” Saddest yet was the “Poor Sailor, generous, honest, and unsuspecting.” Into what “dreadful abyss” were “our democratic rulers” about to “plunge the American people?” See North American and Mercantile Daily Advertiser, March 19, March 23, and July 29, 1808, including articles reprinted from the Courant and Evening Post; Public Advertiser [New York], January 7, 1808; Salem Gazette, February 16, 1808; Jerry W. Knudson, Jefferson and the Press: Crucible of Liberty (Columbia, S.C., 2006), 156.
49. Columbian Centinel, January 2, 1808; Albany Gazette, August 1 and October 3, 1808.
50. National Intelligencer, July 6, 1808; City Gazette [Charleston, S.C.], July 6, 1808.
51. JM to TJ, August 10, 1808, RL, 3:1532; New-Jersey Telescope, November 8, 1808.
52. Parsons, John Quincy Adams, 91–95; City Gazette [Charleston, S.C.], July 6, 1808; Leonard Baker, John Marshall: A Life in Law (New York, 1974), 525–26; Samuel Eliot Morison, Harrison Gray Otis (Boston, 1969), 300–308; Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana, Ill., 1989), 21.
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