Jefferson and Hamilton

by John Ferling

  32. Wiencek, Master of the Mountain, 113, 149; William Cohen, “Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Slavery,” Journal of American History 56 (1969): 503–26; Lucia Stanton, “ ‘Those Who Labor for My Happiness’: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves,” in Peter S. Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies (Charlottesville, Va., 1993), 158–60; Lucia Stanton, “Those Who Labor for My Happiness”: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello (Charlottesville, Va., 2012). To contrast TJ’s treatment of his slaves with practices elsewhere, including at GW’s Mount Vernon, see John Ferling, The First of Men: A Life of George Washington (reprint, New York, 2010), 476–78; and Henry Wiencek, The Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York, 2005), 46–48, 348–49.

  33. TJ to James Lyle, July 10, 1795, PTJ 28:405–6; TJ to Démeunier, April 29, 1795, ibid., 28:341. On TJ’s labor-management plans, see Stephen B. Hodin, “The Mechanisms of Monticello: Saving Labor in Jefferson’s America,” Journal of the Early Republic 26 (2006): 377–418.

  34. TJ to Constantin Volney, April 10, 1796, PTJ 29:61.

  35. TJ to Wythe, October 23, 1794, PTJ 28:181; TJ to Volney, April 10, 1796, ibid., 29:61. On the rebuilding of Monticello in these two paragraphs, see McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello, 239–338. The “general gloom” and “grand & awful” quotes are from the recollection left by Anna Thornton. See her account in Peterson, Visitors to Monticello, 34–35.

  36. TJ to Maria Cosway, June 23, 1790, PTJ 16:550–51; Maria Cosway to TJ, April 6, 1790, ibid., 16:312–13; TJ to Angelica Church, June 7, November 27, 1793, ibid., 26:215; 27:449; Church to TJ, August 19, 1793, ibid., 26:723.

  37. Maria Cosway to TJ, November 13, 24, 1794, PTJ 28:201, 209–11.

  38. TJ to Maria Cosway, September 8, 1795, PTJ 28:455–56.

  39. Maria Cosway to TJ, December 4, 1795, PTJ 28:543–44.

  40. “The Memoirs of Madison Hemings” (March 13, 1873), in Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville, Va., 1997), 245–48. All of the quotations from his account can be found on page 246.

  41. Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York, 2008), 269, 294, 304, 315, 382, 477. The quotations can be found on pages 269 and 304.

  42. The best secondary sources on Jefferson and Sally Hemings are the two books by Annette Gordon-Reed—Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings and The Hemingses of Monticello—and Fawn Brodie, TJ, 361–95. This study draws extensively on those three important works. On DNA testing to determine the possibility of TJ’s paternity of at least one of Hemings’ children, see Eugene Foster, “Jefferson Fathered Slave’s Last Child,” Nature 396 (November 5, 1998): 27–28; and Foster’s response to letters in ibid., 397 (January 7, 1999): 32. The DNA tests were conducted on male-line descendants of two sons of Field Jefferson, who was TJ’s paternal uncle, and a male-line descendant of Eston Hemings, who was Sally Hemings’s last child, and others. The tests divulged a link with the male descendants of Field Jefferson, meaning that one of the eight Jeffersons alive in 1808 could have been the father of Eston Hemings, and might have fathered Sally’s other children. The eight were TJ, his brother Randolph, the five sons of Randolph, and a cousin, George Jefferson. While the tests did not categorically establish TJ’s paternity, circumstantial evidence points toward him as the most plausible father of her children. He owned Sally Hemings, she lived at Monticello, he was home nine months before the birth of each of her children, and late in life he freed all of her children, a rarity for TJ. Although I believe that TJ was the father of the six children that Sally Hemings bore between 1795 and 1808, there are skeptics. For a collection of essays by doubters, see Eyler Robert Coates Jr., ed., The Jefferson-Hemings Myth: An American Travesty (Charlottesville, Va., 2001). On TJ having owned six hundred slaves in his lifetime, see Cassandra Pybus, “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery,” in Cogliano, A Companion to Thomas Jefferson, 272.

  43. AH to GW, June 21, 1793, PAH 15:13; AH to Frederick A. C. Muhlenberg, December 16, 1793, ibid., 15:461–62; TJ to GW, July 31, 1793, PTJ 26:593.

  44. AH to GW, April 7, 8, 1794, PAH 16:245, 249–53; GW to AH, April 8, 1794, ibid., 16:249.

  45. TJ to JM, April 3, 1794, PTJ 28:49. The JM quotation can be found in Elkins and Mc-Kitrick, Age of Federalism, 384.

  46. AH, “Americanus,” no. 1 and 2, January 31, February 7, 1794, PAH 15:669–78; 16:12–19; TJ to JM, April 3, 1794, PTJ 28:49; JM to TJ, March 2, 1794, ibid., 15:269–70. The quotations in AH’s essays can be found in PAH 15:671, 675; 16:13.

  47. AH to GW, March 8, 1794, PAH 16:134–36; editor’s note, ibid., 16:130–34; JM to TJ, March 12, 14, 26, 1794, PTJ 28:35, 38, 43–44; TJ to JM, April 3, 1794, ibid., 28:49–50.

  48. AH to GW, April 14, 1794, PAH 16:266–79; TJ to JM, April 3, 1794, PTJ 28:49; Wood, Empire of Liberty, 193.

  49. The comments on AH can be found in the editor’s note, PAH 16:263–64. TJ’s comment is in TJ to Monroe, April 24, 1794, PTJ 28:55.

  50. AH to GW, April 14, 1794, PAH 16:278; Resolution of the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania, May 8, 1794, Foner, Democratic-Republican Societies, 105; Resolution of the Democratic Society of the County of Washington, June 23, 1794, ibid., 134; JM to TJ, May 11, 1794, PTJ 28:73.

  51. Link, Democratic-Republican Societies, 54; Foner, Democratic-Republican Societies, 18, 36; Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York, 1986), 67, 88, 106–7; Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 471.

  52. William Hogeland, The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America’s Newfound Sovereignty (New York, 2006), 62–69; Terry Bouton, “William Findley, David Bradford, and the Pennsylvania Regulation of 1794,” in Young et. al., Revolutionary Founders, 233–51.

  53. TJ to GW, May 23, 1792, PTJ 23:536; TJ, “Notes of Agenda to Reduce the Government to True Principles,” [ca. July 11, 1792], ibid., 24:215; Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 95–105, 113–14; John Steele to GW, May 23, 1792, PGWP 7:181, 182n; GW to David Humphreys, July 20, 1791, ibid., 8:359. On taxation, see Robin L. Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago, 2006), 158–174, 187.

  54. AH to GW, September 1, 1792, PAH 12:311–12; GW to AH, July 29, August 5, September 7, 17, 1792, ibid., 12:129–30, 166–67, 331–33, 391–92. See also Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, 2005), 63–64. The “make us examples” quotation is in Bouton, “William Findley, David Bradford, and the Pennsylvania Regulation of 1794,” Young et. al., Revolutionary Founders, 243.

  55. Foner, Democratic-Republican Societies, 94, 127–28, 132, 133, 135, 136; Link, Democratic-Republican Societies, 131, 133. Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 63.

  56. Conference Concerning the Insurrection in Western Pennsylvania, August 2, 1794, PAH 17:9–13; AH to GW, August 2, 5, 1794, ibid., 17:15–19, 24–58; GW, Proclamation, August 7, 1794, WW 33:475–76. AH’s “Tully” essays can be found in PAH 17:132–35, 148–50, 159–61, and 178–80.

  57. Knox to AH, November 24, 1794, PAH 17:392. Knox told AH of Betsey’s miscarriage, adding that “she is extremely desirous of your presence in order to tranquilize her.”

  58. AH to Angelica Church, October 23, 1794, PAH 17:340; AH to Rufus King, October 30, 1794, ibid., 17:348. AH’s bombast about skewering and hanging insurgents is quoted in Chernow, AH, 475.

  59. AH to Samuel Hodgdon, October 7, 1794, PAH 17:309, 310; AH to Knox, October 8, 1794, ibid., 17:312–13; AH to Mifflin, October 17, 1794, ibid., 17:327.

  60. Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 217.

  61. AH to GW, October 29, November 8, 15, 1794, PAH 17:347, 361, 372; Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 217–20.

  62. TJ to JM, October 30, December 28, 1794, PTJ 28:182, 229; TJ to Monroe, May 26, 1795, ibid., 28:359.

  63. GW, Sixth State of the Union Address, November 19, 1794, WW 34:29–35. The quotations can be found on pages 28–29.

  64. TJ to JM, December 28,
1794, PTJ 28:228–30; TJ to Giles, December 17, 1794, ibid., 28:219; JM to TJ, November 30, 1794, ibid., 28:212.

  CHAPTER 12: “A COLOSSUS TO THE ANTIREPUBLICAN PARTY”: THE ELECTION OF 1796

  Malone, TJ 3:261–94; Peterson, TJ, 542–60; Cunningham, TJ, 199–205; Chernow, AH, 482–516; Cooke, AH, 158–83; Miller, AH, 415–50.

  1. AH to GW, December 1, 1794, PAH 17:413; GW to AH, February 2, 1795, ibid., 18:247–48.

  2. JM to TJ, January 11, February 15, 1795, PTJ 28:245, 265.

  3. AH to Angelica Church, March 6, 1795, PAH 18:288.

  4. JM to TJ, January 26, 1795, PTJ 28:251.

  5. AH to Rufus King, February 21, 1795, PAH 18:278–79; AH to Angelica Church, December 8, 1794, March 6, 1795, ibid., 17:429; 18:288.

  6. GW to AH, July 3, 1795, PAH 18:398–400.

  7. AH, Remarks on the Treaty of Amity Commerce and Navigation lately made between the United States and Great Britain, [July 9–11, 1795], PAH 18:404–54. The quotations can be found on pages 407, 411, 418, 432, and 451. See also AH conversation with George Beckwith, [October 1789], ibid., 5:484.

  8. TJ to Thomas M. Randolph, August 11, 1795, PTJ 28:435; TJ to JM, September 21, 1795, ibid., 28:476; TJ to Edward Rutledge, November 30, 1795, ibid., 28:542.

  9. GW to AH, July 13, 29, August 31, 1795, PAH 18:461–63, 524; 19:205.

  10. Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven, 2001), xiii–xv, 171. The “hissings” quote is on page xiii.

  11. AH’s “Defence” series can be found in PAH, vols. 18, 19, and 20. The publication date for each essay can be found in the editor’s note in ibid., 18:476. The quotations can be found in ibid., 18:481 and 499.

  12. GW to AH, July 19, August 31, 1795, PAH 18:524; 19:205.

  13. TJ to JM, September 21, 1795, PTJ 28:475.

  14. Ibid.

  15. GW to AH, March 31, 1796, PAH 20:103; AH, “To the Citizens Who Shall be Convened this Day in the Fields in the City of New York,” ibid., 20:131–34.

  16. Rudolph M. Bell, Party and Faction in American Politics: The House of Representatives, 1789–1801 (Westport, Conn., 1973), 191.

  17. PAH 20:169n; GW to AH, June 26, 1796, ibid., 20:239.

  18. GW, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796, WW 35:214–38; AH to GW, May 10, June 1, July 5, 30, August 10, September 4, 5, 8, 1796, PAH 20:173–74, 214–15, 246–47, 264–65, 293–94, 316, 317–18, 320–211; GW to AH, May 15, June 26, August 10, 25, September 1, 6, 1796, ibid., 20:174–78, 237–40, 292–93, 307–9, 311–14, 318–19; AH, Abstract Points to Form an Address [May 16–July 5, 1796], ibid., 20:178–83; AH, Draft of Washington’s Farewell Address [July 30, 1796], ibid., 20:265–88; AH, Draft on the Plan of Incorporating, [August 10, 1796], ibid., 20:294–303.

  19. JM to James Monroe, September 29, 1796, PJM 17:403; TJ to JM, December 17, 1796, PTJ 29:223.

  20. GW to John Jay, May 8, 1796, WW 35:37; JA to Abigail Adams, January 5, 1796, Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1954–1959), microfilm ed., reel 381.

  21. TJ to JA, July 17, August 30, 1791, PTJ 20:302–3, 310–11; JA to TJ, July 29, 1791, ibid., 20:305–7; “The Rights of Man,” editor’s note, ibid., 20:268–90; TJ to JM, May 9, 1791, ibid., 20:293.

  22. JA to TJ, January 31, April 6, 1796, PTJ 28:600; 29:58–59; TJ to JA, February 28, 1796, ibid., 28:618–19.

  23. TJ to JM, December 28, 1794, April 27, 1795, PTJ 28:230, 338–39; JM to TJ, March 23, 1795, February 7, 1796, ibid., 28:315, 607.

  24. TJ to Constantin Volney, December 9, 1795, PTJ 28:551; TJ to JA, February 28, 1796, ibid., 28: 619; TJ to Monroe, July 10, 1796, ibid., 29:147.

  25. Quoted in Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York, 2007), 116.

  26. On the opposition of JM and James Monroe to Burr in 1792, see Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 115–18; Noble Cunningham, The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization, 1789–1801 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1957), 45–49.

  27. AH to [?] September 21, 26, 1792, PAH 12:408, 480.

  28. On the life of Burr, see Isenberg, Fallen Founder. For her excellent appraisal of Hamilton’s savage attacks on Burr in 1792, see pages 118–20.

  29. On Burr’s campaigning in 1796, see Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 145–48.

  30. Chilton Williamson, American Suffrage: From Property to Democracy, 1760–1860 (Princeton, N.J., 1960), 84–86, 89, 100, 107, 117, 122–24; Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York, 2000), 6–10, 21, 29; Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 144–54.

  31. Edmond Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley, John Beckley: Zealous Partisan in a Nation Divided (Philadelphia, 1973), 146; Theodore Sedgwick to Rufus King, March 12, 1797, Sedgwick Letterbook, Massachusetts Historical Society; Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 97–103; David Sisson, The American Revolution of 1800 (New York, 1974), 243–46; Robert M. S. McDonald, “Was There a Religious Revolution of 1800?” in James Horn, Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf, eds., The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2002), 175–80; “Documents Relating to the 1796 Campaign for Electors in Virginia,” PTJ 29:193–99. The quotation on TJ as weak and wavering can be found in Bernstein, TJ, 115. The quotation on the government abandoning TJ is the editor’s wording and can be found in PTJ 29:194.

  32. AH to [?], November 8, 1796, PAH 20:376.

  33. AH’s twenty-five “Phocion” essays appeared in the Gazette of the United States between October 14 and November 24. The quotations in this paragraph can be found in the essays appearing on October 14, 19, 25, November 1, 4, 10, and 19, 1796. These essays do not appear in PAH, but his biographer, Ron Chernow, convincingly demonstrates AH’s authorship. See Chernow, AH, 511–12.

  34. [AH], “Phocion,” Gazette of the United States, October 14, 15, 1796.

  35. Quoted in James Roger Sharp, American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis (New Haven, Conn., 1993), 149.

  36. AH to [?], November 8, 1796, PAH 20:376–77.

  37. JM to TJ, December 5, 1796, PTJ 29:214; TJ to William Cocke, October 21, 1796, ibid., 29:199; TJ to JM, December 17, 1796, ibid., 29:223; TJ to JA, December 28, 1796, ibid., 29:235.

  38. The quotations can be found in Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 148, 152, and 154.

  39. AH to King, December 16, 1796, PAH 20:445.

  40. TJ to Volney, January 8, 1797, PTJ 29:258; TJ to James Sullivan, February 9, 1797, ibid., 29:289.

  CHAPTER 13: “THE MAN IS STARK MAD”: PARTISAN FRENZY

  Malone, TJ, 3:295–458; Peterson, TJ, 543–625; Cunningham, TJ, 206–20; Chernow, AH, 517–602; Miller, AH, 451–508; Cooke, AH, 184–208.

  1. TJ to JM, January 22, 1797, PTJ 29:270.

  2. TJ to JA, December 28, 1796, PTJ 29:235; TJ to JM, January 1, 1797, ibid., 29:247–48; JM to TJ, January 15, 1797, ibid., 29:263–64.

  3. TJ to Elbridge Gerry, May 13, 1797, PTJ 29:362.

  4. TJ, Anas, March 2, 1797, in Padover, CTJ, 1271. On JM’s fear of the sea, see JM to TJ, April 27, 1785, PTJ 8:115. JM mysteriously said that a long voyage would “be unfriendly to a singular disease of my constitution.”

  5. TJ to King, February 15, 1797, PAH 20: 515–16.

  6. Timothy Pickering to AH, March 26, 1797, PAH 20:549; Oliver Wolcott to AH, March 31, 1797, ibid., 20:573; McHenry to AH, April 14, 1797, ibid., 21:48.

  7. AH to Pickering, March 26, 29, 1797, PAH 20:549, 557.

  8. AH to Smith, April 10, 1797, PAH 21:29–41. See also AH’s much shorter version in his letter of March 30 to Wolcott. It can be found in ibid., 20:567. His “receive the law” remark is in that missive.

  9. TJ to Gerry, May 13, 1797, PTJ 29:363–64.

  10. Quoted in Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (New York, 1993), 566.

  11. AH to Pickering, May 11, 1797, PAH 21:82; John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (Knoxville, Tenn., 1992), 345.

  12. TJ to Benjamin Rush, January 22, 1797, PTJ 29:2
75.

  13. TJ to Henry Knox, April 8, 1800, PTJ 31:488; TJ to William Hamilton, April 22, 1800, ibid., 31:534.

  14. TJ to Edward Rutledge, June 24, 1797, PTJ 29:456; TJ to William Hamilton, April 22, 1800, ibid., 31:534; TJ to Angelica Church, January 11, 1798, ibid., 30:23.

  15. TJ to Philip Mazzei, April 24, 1796, PTJ 29:82.

  16. See the lengthy editor’s note on the “Mazzei Letter” in PTJ 29:73–81. The “treasonable” quote is in editor’s note, ibid., 29:76.

  17. TJ to GW, June 19, 1796, PTJ 29:127–28.

  18. TJ to Walter Jones, January 2, 1814, in Padover, CTJ, 924–25.

  19. AH to John Fenno, [July 17–22, 1797], PAH 21:167.

  20. Wolcott to AH, July 3, 1797, PAH 21:144–45; AH to Jeremiah Wadsworth, July 28, 1797, ibid., 21:187.

  21. AH, Observations on Certain Documents Contained … In Which the Charge of Speculation Against Alexander Hamilton … is Fully Refuted, Written by Himself (Philadelphia, 1797), in PAH 21:238–85. The quotations can be found on pages 243 and 252.

  22. John Barnes to TJ, October 3, 1797, PTJ 29:542.

  23. Callender to TJ, September 28, 1797, PTJ 29:536–37; TJ to John Taylor, October 8, 1797, ibid., 29:546. The “creep under Mrs. R’s petticoats” quote is in Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York, 2007), 167.

  24. Quoted in Chernow, AH, 533.

  25. Henry Lee to AH, May 6, 1793, PAH 14:416.