Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

  “THE STRENGTH OF THE GENERAL PULSE” Randall, Jefferson, I, 199.

  A STRIKE AGAINST ENTAIL JHT, I, 247–60. “To annul this privilege, and instead of an aristocracy of wealth … to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent … was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic,” Jefferson said. “To effect it, no violence was necessary, no deprivation of natural right, but rather an enlargement of it by a repeal of the law. For this would authorize the present holder to divide the property among his children equally, as his affections were divided; and would place them, by natural generation, on the level of their fellow citizens.” (Jefferson, Writings, 32–33.)

  “A DISTINCT SET OF FAMILIES” Jefferson, Writings, 32.

  ALTERING CRIMINAL JUSTICE Ibid., 270.

  GENERAL PUBLIC EDUCATION Randall, Jefferson, I, 223–26.

  THE NATURALIZATION OF THE FOREIGN-BORN Ibid., 202.

  A NEWCOMER ON THE POLITICAL SCENE Ibid., 198.

  BORN IN 1751 For background on Madison, see Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (Charlottesville, Va., 1990). Richard Brookhiser, James Madison (New York, 2011), is an interesting recent work, as is Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Madison and Jefferson (New York, 2010).

  MADISON “ACQUIRED A HABIT” Randall, Jefferson, I, 198.

  “BUT A WITHERED LITTLE APPLE-JOHN” “James Madison,” White House, http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jamesmadison (accessed 2012).

  “NEVER WANDERING FROM” Randall, Jefferson, I, 198.

  FREEDOM OF RELIGION PTJ, I, 525–58.

  HAD BECOME A READER Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson’s Extracts from the Gospels: “The Philosophy of Jesus” and “The Life and Morals of Jesus,” ed. Dickinson W. Adams and Ruth W. Lester (Princeton, N.J., 1983). I have long found the introduction to this volume essential reading on the subject of Jefferson and religion. See also Eugene R. Sheridan, Jefferson and Religion (Charlottesville, Va., 1998); Paul K. Conkin, “The Religious Pilgrimage of Thomas Jefferson,” in Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville, Va., 1993), 19–49; Edwin S. Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1996); and Charles B. Sanford, The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville, Va., 1984). I also explored aspects of Jefferson’s views on religion in my American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (New York, 2006).

  HONEST ABOUT HIS STATE’S ABYSMAL RECORD Jefferson, Writings, 283–87.

  HEARD BAPTIST MINISTERS PREACHING William Lee Miller, The First Liberty: America’s Foundation in Religious Freedom (Washington, D.C., 2003), 6. For more on Madison’s work in Virginia on liberty of conscience, especially on the distinction between “liberty” and “toleration,” see ibid., 4–8; Robert A. Rutland, George Mason: Reluctant Statesman (Baton Rouge, La., 1980), 60; and Ketcham, James Madison, 71–73.

  IN 1767, JEFFERSON WAS INVOLVED MB, I, 22. In another matter, sincerely devoted to helping a friend who longed to be ordained an Anglican priest, Jefferson wrote several letters on the subject, including a plea for Peyton Randolph’s influence, yet marveled at what he believed to be the inherent limitations of minds defined by Christian factionalism. His friend’s father was a Presbyterian minister in Aberdeen, Scotland, who received his son on a visit with joy—until he discovered his son’s mission. “Yet, so wonderful is the dominion of bigotry over her votaries that on the first information of his purpose to receive episcopal ordination he shut him from his doors and abjured every parental duty,” Jefferson told Randolph. (PTJ, I, 49–51.)

  “SPIRITUAL TYRANNY” Jefferson, Writings, 34.

  “OUR SAVIOR CHOSE NOT TO PROPAGATE” PTJ, I, 544.

  JEFFERSON’S NOTES ON THE ISSUE Ibid., 537.

  PETITIONED THE ASSEMBLY FOR RELIEF JHT, I, 274–80.

  “BROUGHT ON THE SEVEREST CONTESTS” Jefferson, Writings, 34.

  “HONEST MEN, BUT ZEALOUS” Ibid.

  STATUTE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY Ibid., 40. See also John A. Ragosta, “The Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom,” in Cogliano, ed., A Companion to Thomas Jefferson, 75–90.

  “MEANT TO COMPREHEND” Jefferson, Writings, 34.

  AN AMENDMENT STIPULATING “THE FREEDOM” Ibid., 44. See also Randall, Jefferson, I, 227, and Miller, Wolf by the Ears, 19–22.

  “IT WAS FOUND THAT” Ibid.

  “YET THE DAY IS NOT DISTANT” Ibid. Two acts did succeed in 1778 and in 1782 in Virginia: an abolition of the slave trade and a liberalization of manumission laws—what Miller called “the only concrete legislative achievements of the war years with a direct bearing upon slavery. For Jefferson, it was a disappointing performance: He had hoped that Virginia would take the lead among the states in providing for the eventual abolition of slavery and in arranging for the resettlement of the freed blacks outside the United States after peace had been restored.” (Miller, Wolf by the Ears, 22.)

  “THE ENEMY” PTJ, I, 659.

  “NO MAN … EVER HAD” Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 167.

  REPORTS THAT GERMANY PTJ, II, 13–14.

  “10,000 MEN CHIEFLY GERMANS” Ibid., 14.

  “THE SOUTHERN AND MIDDLE COLONIES” Ibid.

  GAVE BIRTH TO A SON MB, I, 447.

  LIVED ONLY SEVENTEEN DAYS Ibid.

  IF THE JEFFERSONS GAVE HIM A NAME Ibid.

  AT HOME ON THE FIRST OF AUGUST Ibid., 468.

  RECORDING THE DOMESTIC DETAILS Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson Account Book.

  HANDWRITING WAS STRONG AND CLEAR Author observation.

  THERE ARE DOODLES, TOO Ibid.

  “FREE FROM BLOT” TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/martha-wayles-skelton-jefferson (accessed 2012).

  “TOLD OF NEATNESS” Ibid.

  TO SEW CLOTHES AND SUPPLY THE ARMY PTJ, III, 532. See also Scharff, Women Jefferson Loved, 134–35. Scharff reported that at least one additional letter from Mrs. Jefferson on the subject has been located in recent years, which changes the historical consensus that the communication to Eleanor Conway Madison was the only surviving letter of Patty Jefferson’s. (Ibid., 419.)

  “MRS. WASHINGTON HAS” Ibid.

  “COULD WE BUT GET” Ibid., II, 3.

  “THEY PLAY THE VERY DEVIL” Ibid.

  “WE HAVE PRETTY CERTAIN” Ibid., 264. See also Randall, Jefferson, I, 245. A different kind of war was at hand. “I am of opinion the enemy have pretty well lost sight of conquering America by arms; for instead of drawing their force to a point, and making an effort against our grand army, it seems to be their plan to carry on a kind of piratical war in detached parties, by burning our towns, plundering our sea coasts, and distressing individuals,” William Fleming wrote Jefferson on May 22, 1779. (PTJ, II, 268.)

  ELECTED GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA Ibid., 277–78.

  “IN A VIRTUOUS AND FREE STATE” Ibid.

  THE BALLOTING HAD PITTED Ibid.

  JEFFERSON AND JOHN PAGE WERE COMPELLED Ibid., 278–79.

  “AS THIS IS THE FIRST” Ibid., 279.

  ISAAC JEFFERSON RECALLED Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, 4.

  TWELVE · A TROUBLESOME OFFICE

  “THEY CERTAINLY MEAN” PTJ, II, 236.

  “I AM THOROUGHLY” Ibid., III, 405.

  “THEY FORMED IN LINE” Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, 8.

  THE THREAT AND THEN THE REALITY Overall, optimism about America’s military prospects grew in 1779–80. France and Spain were now with the United States; these allies were able to pressure Britain in the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean. The British faced wars as far away as southern India. (Jeremy Black, Crisis of Empire: Britain and America in the Eighteenth Century [London, 2008], 159.) The difficulties Britain confronted globally, though, did not immediately translate into fatal weakness in America. By turning more attention and force to
the South—to Georgia, to the Carolinas, and to Governor Jefferson’s Virginia—the British were able to bring terror to the American interior.

  For a revisionist view of Jefferson’s performance as governor, see Emory G. Evans, “Executive Leadership in Virginia, 1776–1781: Henry, Jefferson, and Nelson,” in Sovereign States in an Age of Uncertainty, ed. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville, Va., 1981), 185–225.

  GEORGIA HAD COLLAPSED Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 384–85.

  SOUTH CAROLINA WAS NEXT Ibid.

  A TWO-FRONT WAR PTJ, III, 29–30. As Richard Henry Lee told Jefferson: “In Virginia we have properly two frontiers, one bordered by a wilderness, the other by a sea. Into both of these issue savages, and into the latter the most savage.” (Ibid.)

  YEARS OF “INTENSE LABOR” PTJ, II, 298.

  “I WILL NOT CONGRATULATE YOU” Ibid., III, 11.

  CAPTURE OF HENRY HAMILTON PTJ, II, 287. See also ibid., 292–95, for the actual orders about the irons. Under attack from the British about the treatment of Hamilton, Jefferson, who detested such attacks, put the matter to George Washington. “The importance of this question in a public view, and my own anxiety under a charge of a violation of national faith, [as] the Executive of this Commonwealth, will I hope apologize for my adding this to the many, many troubles with which I know you to be burdened,” Jefferson wrote Washington on July 17, 1779. (Ibid., III, 41.) Washington’s reply was moderate in tone. “Whether it may be expedient to continue him in his present confinement from motives of policy and to satisfy our people, is a question I cannot determine; but if it should, I would take the liberty to suggest that it may be proper to publish all the cruelties he has committed or abetted … and the evidence in support of the charges.” (Ibid., 61.)

  “THE HAIR BUYER GENERAL” Ibid.

  IN MAY 1778 HE HAD DRAFTED A BILL OF ATTAINDER Ibid., 189–93. See also W. P. Trent, “The Case of Josiah Philips,” American Historical Review 1, no. 3 (April 1896): 444–54.

  FOR “COMMITTING MURDERS” Ibid., 190. As Jefferson recalled the episode, “Philips was a mere robber, who availing himself of the troubles of the times, collected a banditti, retired to the Dismal swamp, and from thence sallied forth, plundering and maltreating the neighboring inhabitants, and covering himself, without authority, under the name of a British subject.” (Ibid., 191.)

  AN EXTRAORDINARY EXPRESSION OF POWER Ibid., 191–93. In PTJ, Julian P. Boyd wrote:

  The Bill that TJ drew, though it was indeed an attainder limited by the condition that Philips surrender himself before a certain date to be tried according to regular judicial procedure, nevertheless was an assumption by the legislature that (1) Philips was a common criminal and was not acting under a British commission, and (2) that the legislature could of right make such a distinction affecting the life and liberty of an individual. Since this was assuming to the legislature a power over the rights of an individual usually regarded as belonging within the province of the judiciary and under protection of established legal procedures, the least that can be said about the Bill of Attainder of 1778 is that it was an extreme violation of TJ’s belief in the principle of the separation of powers of government. (Ibid., 192.)

  Leonard Levy uses the case in his argument against Jefferson’s record on civil liberties. (Leonard W. Levy, Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side [Chicago, 1989].)

  “COMMUTE A GOOD PART” PTJ, II, 194. The problem of recruitment was a recurring one. Jefferson’s tendency to cast reality in congenial ways at the price of strict accuracy was on display in a letter he wrote to Benjamin Franklin. At a time of disturbing rumors about the commitment of different American states to the cause of an independent nation, Jefferson wanted to impress Franklin with Virginia’s fealty. “With respect to the state of Virginia in particular, the people seem to have deposited the monarchial and taken up the republican government with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes,” Jefferson said on August 13, 1777. “Not a single throe has attended this important transformation.” (Ibid., 26.)

  “UNSUCCESSFUL BEYOND ALL” Ibid., III, 39.

  TOURING VIRGINIA’S GUNNERY MB, I, 437.

  PLANNED AN EXPEDITION Ibid., 321.

  CLARK WAS A TALL For major treatments of George Rogers Clark see Lowell H. Harrison, George Rogers Clark and the War in the West (Lexington, Ky., 1976); John Bakeless, Background to Glory: The Life of George Rogers Clark (Philadelphia, 1957); and Temple Bodley, George Rogers Clark: His Life and Public Services (Boston, 1926). See also Richard M. Ketchum, “Men of the Revolution: 11. George Rogers Clark,” American Heritage 25, no. 1 (December 1973): 32–33; 78; Gregory Fremont Barnes and others, eds., The Encyclopedia of the American Revolutionary War: A Political, Social, and Military History, I, A–D, 222–24.

  HE CAPTURED KASKASKIA Barnes and others, Encyclopedia of the American Revolutionary War, I, 223.

  AND VINCENNES Ibid.

  SECURED AMERICAN INFLUENCE Ketchum, “Men of the Revolution: 11. George Rogers Clark,” 78.

  AFTER SEVERELY BURNING HIS LEG Ibid.

  “WELL, IS IT OFF?” Ibid.

  “THE WANT OF MEN” PTJ, III, 321.

  “THERE IS REASON” Ibid., 317. Jefferson was unflinching. “I am sorry to hear that there are persons in your quarters so far discontented with the present government as to combine with its enemies to destroy it.… The measures they are now taking expose them to the pains of the law, to which it is our business to deliver them.” Try them for treason, he advised William Preston on March 21, 1780. Failing conviction on capital grounds, Jefferson also advised Preston not to give up, for “perhaps it may be sufficient to convict them of a misprision of treason which is punishable by fine and imprisonment at the pleasure of the court.” (Ibid., 325.)

  THE COLDEST WINTER Ibid., 343. “We have had all over N. America a winter so severe as to exceed everything conceivable in our respective climates,” Jefferson told Mazzei. “In this state our rivers were blocked up to their mouths with ice for six weeks. People walked over York river at the town of York, which was never before done, since the discovery of this country. Regiments of horse with their attendant wagons marched in order over Patowmack at Howe’s ferry, and James river at Warwick.” (Ibid.)

  SHIFTING THE CAPITAL OF VIRGINIA Ibid., 333–34.

  A HOUSE ON RICHMOND’S SHOCKOE HILL MB, I, 495.

  CLIMATE OF EXTREME EMERGENCY PTJ, III, 335. “Among the various conjectures of alarm and distress which have arisen in the course of the revolution, it is with pain I affirm to you, Sir, that no one can be singled out more truly critical than the present,” James Madison wrote Jefferson from Philadelphia on March 27, 1780. (Ibid.) While the Congress begged Virginia for men and matériel, Madison also complained to Jefferson about the feeble national government. “They can neither enlist, pay, nor feed a single soldier,” Madison wrote Jefferson on May 6, 1780. (Ibid., 370.)

  CHARLESTON FELL TO THE BRITISH Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 426–28. From Paris, Mazzei commiserated about Charleston. “Bad news have long legs,” he wrote Jefferson on June 22, 1780, reporting the glee over the South Carolina victory in British circles. “It is amazing the impression such an event makes in Europe,” Mazzei said. “The greater the distance, the more it will be magnified in men’s own imagination.” There was much talk of the significance of Charleston, and the talk fed upon itself. “Men of liberal sentiments consider all other causes as secondary, and of little moment, in comparison to the establishment of a free asylum for mankind,” he said. “Want of information makes them apprehensive of consequences too bad, and very distant from probability.” John Adams was “almost worn out” from reassuring allies and friends. (PTJ, III, 458–60.) Yet Jefferson’s belief in the cause, however troubled the cause might be, was abiding.

  “WHILE WE ARE” PTJ, III, 447.

  A
NOTHER TORY UPRISING Ibid., 479. On August 8, 1780, William Preston wrote: “A most horrid conspiracy amongst the Tories in this Country being providentially discovered about ten days ago.” (Ibid., 533.) Jefferson had specific thoughts about how to fight such rebellions: “It will probably be better to seek the insurgents and suppress them in their own settlements than to await their coming, as time and space to move in will perhaps increase their numbers,” he told Preston on July 3. (Ibid., 481.)

  MORE INDIAN VIOLENCE Ibid., 544.

  ELECTED TO A SECOND Ibid., 410. Jefferson was pleased and gratified. “I receive with great satisfaction this testimony of the public approbation,” he said on June 4, 1780. (Ibid., 417.)

  CORNWALLIS ROUTED THE AMERICAN GENERAL Middlekauff, Glorious Cause, 460–63. See also PTJ, III, 558–59. Edward Stevens told Jefferson to “picture it as bad as you possible can and it will not be as bad as it really is.” The militia had performed miserably. “Their cowardly behavior has indeed given a mortal wound to my feelings,” Stevens said. (Ibid.) While John Page thought Gates was to blame (“Did not the General venture on too boldly, relying too much on a continuance of his former good fortune?” [Ibid., 576]), Jefferson felt a personal responsibility for the loss and was humiliated by the reports of the Virginia militia’s performance. “I am extremely mortified at the misfortune incurred in the South and the more so as the militia of our state concurred so eminently in producing it,” Jefferson wrote to Gates on September 3, 1780. (Ibid., 588.) To Edward Stevens, Jefferson tried to make the best of things. “I sincerely condole with you on our late misfortune which sits the heavier on my mind as being produced by my own countrymen,” he wrote. “Instead of considering what is past, however, we are to look forward and prepare for the future.” (Ibid., 593.) It was a mature point of view, but he could not hide his embarrassment.

  He wanted out—or thought he did. “The application requisite to the duties of the office I hold is so excessive, and the execution of them after all so imperfect, that I have determined to retire from it at the close of the present campaign,” Jefferson wrote to Richard Henry Lee on September 13, 1780. “I wish a successor to be thought of in time who to sound whiggism can join perseverance in business, and an extensive knowledge of the various subjects he must superintend. Such a one may keep up above water even in our present moneyless situation.” (Ibid., 643.) He repeated his thoughts about standing down early to John Page, suggesting that perhaps Page should take his place. Page was having none of it, telling Jefferson that “should you resign, you will give me great uneasiness, and will greatly distress your country.” (Ibid., 655.)