by Conrad Black
Jefferson continued a nationalist tradition in the defense of the nation’s interests in the world and its continued western expansion. Following the example of the British, the United States under its first two presidents had fallen into the habit of paying tribute to the Barbary pirates along the North African coast from Morocco east to what is now Libya. The Pasha of Tripoli (forerunner to Colonel Qaddaffi) increased his extortions for each ship and purported to declare war on the United States on May 14, 1801. Jefferson was less hostile to the navy than to the army, as it was less adaptable for use in domestic repression, and he dispatched a “Mediterranean squadron” that, led in the principal action by Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, destroyed the Pasha’s principal vessel, the former USS Philadelphia. A blockade was imposed on the main pirate harbors, and the Pasha eventually thought better of it and signed a peace in June 1805. (Tribute, in reduced amounts, continued to be paid until 1816.)64
8. THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE
Louisiana was the name for a vast territory bounded by the Gulf of Mexico and to the east by the Mississippi, and extending to the Canadian border in what would become Montana while broadening east to Lake Huron and west almost to Oregon. It was 828,000 square miles, including most of what has ever since Jeffersonian times been considered the heartland of America. The territory, as part of the settlement of the Seven Years’ War, was ceded by France to Spain in 1762, and as part of Napoleon’s imperial ambitions was taken back from Spain in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso in October 1800, which was confirmed with the signing of the Treaty of Madrid in March 1801. Jefferson, despite his incandescent Francophilia, was alarmed by this and feared such a powerful and contiguous French presence. He was also worried that the westward growth of the country could be stunted by restrictive French administration of the port of New Orleans and meddling with Mississippi traffic. The Spanish government in New Orleans, continuing in the name of France, revoked the right of Americans to unload cargo in New Orleans in 1802. Even Jefferson had been appalled at the conduct of the French in the Genet and XYZ affairs, which were the two chief diplomatic encounters to date between the United States and France. Jefferson wrote the American minister in Paris, Robert Livingston, in April 1802, that “The day that France takes New Orleans . . . we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.” This was an astonishing turn for the president, but demonstrated his clear-headed pursuit of the national and his own political interests when not permitted the luxury of his dilettantish biases. He told Livingston to negotiate an acquisition of a Gulf port and as much as he could of the lower Mississippi, or at least permanent and adequate rights in New Orleans.
On January 12, 1803, Jefferson named James Monroe—the former minister to France whom Washington had recalled, as Adams said, “in disgrace” for his fraternization with the Robespierrists and the Directory—as minister plenipotentiary to France to join Livingston in the negotiations and buy New Orleans and West Florida. The Congress had authorized $2 million, but Jefferson told Monroe to go to $10 million if he had to. By the time Monroe arrived in France in April, Napoleon had abandoned his ideas of a revived American empire, shocked at the unsuccessful decade-long effort to suppress a slave revolt in Haiti and wary of revived war with Britain, which continued to be invincible at sea. He did not wish to be starved out of North America as Louis XVI had been. Just before Monroe’s arrival, Talleyrand asked Livingston what the U.S. would pay for the whole Louisiana Territory. Monroe took this up on his arrival a couple of days later and boldly seized the opportunity. Agreement was reached and signed on May 2, antedated to April 30, buying the whole territory for $15 million, including U.S. government assumption of $3.75 million of French debts to private American interests. Monroe and Livingston exceeded their authority but Jefferson was delighted, and the acquisition was easily approved by the Senate in October. It slightly tested the president’s strict constructionist ideas, but, as always, he was able to adjust legal dogmas to suit a rational discharge of his office.
This was a brilliant, if entirely fortuitous, transaction that doubled the size of the country. Neither liberal historian Sean Willentz’s commendation of Jefferson for increasing the nation’s territory while shrinking its defense budget nor Theodore Roosevelt’s outrageous lampoon of Jefferson and Madison (the secretary of state) was justified. Roosevelt called them “timid, well-meaning statesmen . . . pitted against the greatest warrior and law-giver, and one of the greatest diplomats of modern times, ... who were unable to so much as appreciate that there was shame in the practice of venality, dishonesty, mendacity, cruelty and treachery.” Napoleon and Talleyrand were as described,65 but Napoleon knew he couldn’t hold the territory against the British and Americans and correctly saw that the United States would rise up to rival and surpass the British. What he could not foresee was that the British would have the sagacity to tuck themselves in under the wing of the Americans as an indispensable ally when they could no longer lead the English-speaking world themselves. Jefferson’s and Madison’s and Monroe’s conduct in the matter was astute, opportunistic, and entirely successful. In less than 50 years since the start of the Seven Years’ War, the Americans had helped remove the French from their borders, achieved their independence, launched and established a stable republic with solid institutions and a strong currency, and more than doubled their original territory, peacefully. It had been a steadily more remarkable series of strategic successes, accomplished by a continuously remarkable group of men.
9. HAMILTON AND BURR
Jefferson’s next foray into westward expansionism was the dispatch of the expedition of Merriweather Lewis and William Clark to the Pacific and back. Lewis was a military officer and had been assigned as an aide to Jefferson when he became president. Jefferson had never been west of the Appalachians, but his father had been a surveyor who had glimpsed the Ohio country and Jefferson had long cherished a powerful and romantic notion of the potential for the westward expansion of the country. Jefferson proposed to Lewis a full scientific and exploratory expedition to the Pacific coast, which had never been reached overland from America, only by the Scot Alexander Mackenzie in Canada. Lewis agreed and selected William Clark, a fellow army officer, as co-leader. The expedition was expanded to 26 people, including scientists, experts in Indian languages, and a contingent of soldiers trained in frontier life. They set off from St. Louis in the spring of 1804, and after 1,600 miles went into winter quarters in November near what became Bismarck, North Dakota. They resumed their westward progress in April 1805, and reached the Pacific Ocean on November 15. The return journey to St. Louis, Missouri, from March to September 1806, was more direct. The maps, wildlife and botanical drawings, and diaries were of scientific value and captured the imagination of the country by focusing on the immense and abundant territory that beckoned to settlers (however disgruntled the indigenous population might be about it).
Jefferson’s war with the Federalists, and settling of scores generally, ramified quite widely. His supporters successfully impeached and removed from office federal district judge John Pickering, and impeached but failed to remove Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, who had condemned the malcontent John Fries and the scurrilous blackmailer James T. Callender.
After Aaron Burr had abruptly metamorphosed from a vice presidential into a presidential candidate in early 1801, there was a widespread feeling not only that he was a scoundrel but that the system was a disaster of intrigue and chaos waiting to happen. The response was the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution, providing for separate balloting for president and vice president, which was ratified in September 1804, in time for the presidential election.
As the 1804 election approached, both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr vanished from the political front lines, where they had long been prominent. Hamilton was one of the leaders of the Federalists in denying Burr the governorship of New York, which he sought when long-serving Governor George Clinton was tapped by Jefferson to take Burr’s place as vice pres
ident. (John Jay only held the office for one term.) Hamilton joined the Republicans in crusading for Burr’s opponent, Morgan Lewis. In one of his frequent effusions, Hamilton, twiddling his thumbs impatiently in New York while Jefferson lolled in the newly completed White House, denounced Burr—who was infuriated at the imputations to him of unscrupulousness and even treachery, and at being frozen entirely out of government by Jefferson—as “a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government.” In the manner of the times, this led to a duel, in which, at Weehawken, New Jersey, on July 11, 1804, Burr killed Hamilton. Thus, aged only 49, there perished the third of the six principal founders of the country. Hamilton was almost a demiurge, a financial and administrative genius and a very capable military officer in both staff and combat roles. He was a relentless political schemer and operator, and when not grounded by Washington, tended to fly off unguided, combustible, and with unpredictable results. He was a monarchist and an authoritarian at heart, but he had rendered immense services to the country and glimpsed more clearly than anyone else the true and necessary development of the American economy.
Of the other principal figures at the birth of the republic apart from Washington, Franklin, and Hamilton, Adams had retired, but Jefferson and Madison remained in great offices with work to do. Aaron Burr, who had been a brilliant politician and was a gifted lawyer and inveterate schemer, was finished politically. Having been judged guilty of trying to snitch away from Jefferson his election victory in 1800, and now having killed Hamilton, he was not presentable for high office, and wandered off to the West with great but, some thought, sinister ambitions. A helplessly controversial person, Burr would be back before the country soon again, in an exotic and unflattering light.
The disillusioned editor Callender, imprisoned under the Sedition Act, became annoyed that the administration would not repay him his fine and attacked Jefferson for fathering three children with his comely slave, Sally Hemings. Jefferson ignored the allegation, which was not reprinted in respectable publications and was dismissed as the malicious scandal-mongering of a convicted felon, who in any case died in July 1803 when he blundered into a river in Richmond, Virginia, in a drunken stupor. (Callender’s allegations were correct, but not strictly relevant to Jefferson’s competence to hold his office, legally or otherwise.)
General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was nominated by the Federalists for president, and the Hamiltonian disciple and anti-slavery advocate Rufus King, minister to Great Britain and former senator from New York, was nominated for vice president. There was not really too much to run against, as Jefferson offered peace, prosperity, and a distinguished, unpretentious government, and he and Clinton won easily, 162 electoral votes to 14, and with about 72 percent of the votes.
After the death of Hamilton, Burr was indicted for murder but continued for eight months to be the vice president, in which capacity he presided in very statesmanlike and learned fashion over the impeachment trial of Justice Chase, which, to Jefferson’s acute irritation, ended in acquittal. Burr devised his next and perhaps most grandiose plan. He spoke with the British and Spanish ministers to Washington about subsidizing the creation of a new jurisdiction that Burr would set up in the Southwest. Neither the subsequent judicial proceedings nor the efforts of historians have clarified whether Burr had any treasonable intent. The American military commander in the southern Mississippi region, General James Wilkinson (who commissioned Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike’s expedition to the sources of the Mississippi and to Colorado, where Pike’s Peak is named after him, and New Mexico, in 1806–1807), was illicitly taking competing emoluments from the French, British, and Spanish, to keep an eye out for their interests in the Southwest. Burr, a great national celebrity, much admired in some circles for clearing his honor by killing an illustrious opponent in a duel, padded around the area and supplied arms from his own resources to the Louisiana militia, and added his own tangible favors to those Wilkinson was receiving from foreign powers. Burr and Wilkinson had been friendly when both had been in the Continental Army.
As rumors became more intense and far-fetched that Burr was planning to set up his own country, carved out of American and Mexican territory, Jefferson had him charged with treason on November 26, 1806. Jefferson reported to the Congress in February 1807 that the former vice president’s “guilt is placed beyond question,” oblivious of the fact that Burr had already been released by a grand jury in Mississippi for lack of evidence, but rearrested in Alabama. He was taken to Richmond for trial, while Jefferson personally worked with the U.S. attorney in Richmond, George Hay, on the prosecution’s case. Burr was a brilliant barrister and participated in the preparation of his own case, which, to Jefferson’s dismay, was judged by Chief Justice John Marshall, self-assigned for the purpose to the Fourth Circuit. In April 1807, Marshall pitched out the treason charge and reduced it to conspiracy. Burr had many supporters, including Jefferson’s cousin and successor as secretary of state and former U.S. attorney general, Edmund Randolph. Burr subpoenaed Jefferson, and the documentation between his officials and himself in respect of the case, and Marshall ruled that the president enjoyed no exemption, and that he would determine confidentially the relevance and degree of privilege and national security concerns of the material.
Burr excused Jefferson as a witness, and Jefferson helped establish an important precedent, which would be used in the Watergate affair in 1974, and handed over the material to Marshall. The trial, in August 1807, consisted of the evidence and cross-examination of the sole government witness, General Wilkinson, who was torn limb from limb by Burr and his counsel and appeared a good deal more guilty of reprehensible acts than the defendant. The jury found Burr not guilty, but in wording that implied it was not convinced that he was wholly innocent of wrongdoing. Burr departed for Europe until the murder charges against him over the Hamilton duel had been dropped, then returned to New York, where he lived quietly and successfully as a lawyer and figure of society until he died in 1836, aged 80. He was a great but unfocused talent, and was in superficial respects a forerunner to Richard Nixon, as an able politician who could not shake the suspicion of lack of probity. But Burr never got close to the presidency or great deeds.
10. RESPONDING TO WAR IN EUROPE
As war had resumed in Europe in 1803, it was not long before the high-handed conduct of the European powers, especially Britain, made America’s maritime rights again become a scorching issue. Both Britain and France claimed the right to prevent neutral countries from trading with the other, which in practice, since Britain held the scepter of the sea, meant that America was soon back to the exasperating practice of having the British seize and search her ships, confiscate cargo, and remove alleged deserters and impress American seamen into British service. It was a straight oppression by the stronger naval power of the weaker, and international law walked the plank as soon as hostilities commenced. The British invoked the Rule of 1756, successfully imposed in the Seven Years’ War, whereby European powers that had forbidden trade with its West Indian colonies in time of peace should not open trade up to neutrals in wartime. Thus phrased, it seemed to put the onus for simply squashing trade by imposition of naval force on the exporting country, though the victim would be the neutral carrier, trying to pick up from one combatant and use his neutrality to assure delivery that the combatant power with inferior naval strength (France) could not assure himself. The legalities were a little more complicated than they at first seemed. But it was all made excessively difficult by the British practice of not just inspecting American ships and seizing cargos but also dragooning American sailors, along with alleged defectors from the Royal Navy, into that navy.
The turning point came when a British court determined that the practice of the French delivering to American ports cargo that American ships then conveyed to French ports would be considered as direct commerce from the French West Indies unless the Americans could satisfy the intercepting British that they had intended
originally for the voyage to terminate in an American port. This was not going to be easy to establish, but it was at least a variation on outright seizure, and the product of a British court decision and not just an executive naval command order. Madison reported the decision in a trenchantly worded report in January 1806, and the Senate condemned “unprovoked aggression” and the “violation of neutral rights.” When Britain ignored American threats and protests, the Congress voted an embargo on an extensive list of items that the U.S. imported from Britain that it could produce itself or buy from other countries. The statute was only in effect from October to November 1806, when Jefferson asked for its suspension until after the election of his successor, in December 1808. European affairs vastly surpassed the efforts of America to make itself felt. In May 1806, Charles James Fox, again British foreign secretary, had declared an absolute naval blockade of the European Atlantic coast from Brest in northwest France to the mouth of the Elbe in Prussia.
At the end of 1806, Jefferson sent William Pinckney (a member of a temporarily ubiquitous family) to London to join the minister there, the already ubiquitous James Monroe, in trying to sort out an agreement with Britain, with the imposition of the trade embargo against British goods as a bargaining chip. The British weren’t interested: a treaty was negotiated that produced only slight concessions on West Indian trade and none at all on British impressment of American sailors or the American ambition for payment of indemnities for British ship seizures. It was a painful lesson in the comparative importance of and correlation of forces between states, and Jefferson declined to send such a feeble arrangement to the Senate for ratification.