Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

  NOS. 6–8 RUE ST.-FLORENTIN Michael Gallet, Paris Domestic Architecture of the 18th Century (London, 1972), 21.

  VOLUPTUOUS LIPS Bullock, My Head and My Heart, 13–14, offers a vivid description of Mrs. Cosway; the effect of her lips are evident from portraits of her.

  DIPLOMATIC DISPATCHES HAD ARRIVED PTJ, X, 445. See also Bullock, My Head and My Heart, 21.

  “EVERY SOUL OF YOU” Ibid.

  HER ENGLISH WAS NOT PARTICULARLY FLUENT See, for instance, PTJ, X, 494–96.

  HAD DINNER TOGETHER Bullock, My Head and My Heart, 21. The details of the day come from this account of Bullock’s, who drew them from Jefferson’s “Head and Heart” letter. See also PTJ, X, 443–55.

  TREATED “MEN LIKE DOGS” Ibid., 20.

  “EVERY MOMENT WAS FILLED” PTJ, X, 446.

  A FONDNESS FOR GETAWAY SPOTS William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 244–47, describes the Jefferson-Cosway excursions in detail.

  “HOW GRAND THE IDEA” Ibid., 244.

  “THE WHEELS OF TIME” Ibid.

  JEFFERSON DISLOCATED HIS RIGHT WRIST Bullock, My Head and My Heart, 24. See also PTJ, X, 431–33.

  “IT WAS BY ONE OF THOSE FOLLIES” PTJ, X, 478.

  “I ONLY MENTION MY WISH” Ibid., 394.

  “I HAVE PASSED” Ibid., 431–32.

  “I AM VERY, VERY SORRY” Ibid., 433.

  “MR. AND MRS. COSWAY ARRIVED” Ibid., 438.

  HIS “LAST SAD OFFICE” Ibid., 443.

  “SEATED BY MY FIRESIDE” Ibid., 444.

  “YOUR LETTER COULD EMPLOY ME” Ibid., 494.

  TWENTY-ONE · DO YOU LIKE OUR NEW CONSTITUTION?

  “CHERISH THEREFORE THE SPIRIT” PTJ, XI, 49.

  DEBT-RIDDEN, FRANCE FACED A SUPREME TEST Sylvia Neely, A Concise History of the French Revolution (Lanham, Md., 2008), 1–54, is instructive. See also Bailey Stone, Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A Global-Historical Perspective (New York, 2002), 14–61, and William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (New York, 2002), 66–85.

  PARTLY BECAUSE OF ITS SPENDING ON THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Neely, Concise History of the French Revolution, 40–42.

  JEFFERSON WAS SHOCKED PTJ, XI, 415.

  TAXES WERE UNEQUAL Neely, Concise History of the French Revolution, 7–12.

  “IT IS IMPOSSIBLE” Ibid., 45.

  THE KING SUMMONED AN ASSEMBLY OF NOTABLES PTJ, XI, 31–32. “You will have seen in the public papers that the king has called an Assembly of the Notables of his country,” Jefferson told John Jay in January 1787. “This has not been done for 160 years past.” (Ibid., 31.)

  “OF COURSE” Ibid.

  “SHOULD THEY ATTEMPT” JHT, II, 182.

  THE ASSEMBLY OF NOTABLES FAILED Neely, Concise History of the French Revolution, 47.

  ONE FROM THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE Ibid.

  CREATED IN THE MIDDLE AGES Ibid., 6.

  ITS LAST MEETING HAD BEEN HELD IN 1614 Ibid.

  “WE TALKED ABOUT THE ESTABLISHMENT” Ibid., 57.

  “THE INEFFICACY OF OUR GOVERNMENT” PTJ, X, 488.

  A GROUP LED BY DANIEL SHAYS Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 30–32. See also EOL, 111; William Hogeland, The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America’s Newfound Sovereignty (New York, 2006), 52–53; and Don Higginbotham, “War and State Formation in Revolutionary America” in Gould and Onuf, Empire and Nation, 67. There were international sources for the discontent. Several of the eastern states, Jefferson wrote, “depended before the war chiefly on their whale oil and fish. The former was consumed in London, but being now loaded there with heavy duties, cannot go there. Much of their fish went up the Mediterranean, now shut to us by the piratical states. Their debts therefore press them, while the means of payment have lessened.” (PTJ, X, 631.)

  “A SPIRIT OF LICENTIOUSNESS” PTJ, X, 488. Ezra Stiles of Yale wrote Jefferson about the rebellion on September 14, 1786: “Our enemies are fomenting discord among us and have succeeded to excite some tumults and popular insurrections.” (Ibid., 386.) Liberty would be safe, Stiles said, so long as “property in the United States is so minutely partitioned and transfused among the inhabitants.” (Ibid.)

  John Jay also sent Jefferson newspaper accounts of the unrest. “A reluctance to taxes, an impatience of government, a rage for property, and little regard to the means of acquiring it, together with a desire of equality in all things, seem to actuate the mass of those who are uneasy in their circumstances,” Jay wrote. (Ibid., 489.)

  To Stiles, Jefferson replied: “The commotions which have taken place in America, as far as they are yet known to me, offer nothing threatening. They are a proof that the people have liberty enough, and I would not wish them less than they have. If the happiness of the mass of the people can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood, it will be a precious purchase. Malo libertatum periculosam quam quietam servitutem. Let common sense and common honesty have fair play and they will soon set things to rights.” (Ibid., 629.)

  SOUGHT TO REASSURE JEFFERSON Ibid., 557. Contradicting her husband on the Shays violence, Abigail Adams had a different, darker view, writing Jefferson: “With regard to the tumults in my native state … Instead of that laudable spirit which you approve, which makes a people watchful over their liberties and alert in the defense of them, these mobbish insurgents are for sapping the foundation, and destroying the whole fabric at once.” (Ibid., XI, 86.)

  “I CAN NEVER FEAR” Ibid., 619.

  THERE MIGHT BE CANADIAN DESIGNS Ibid., 596.

  AN “IDEA THAT MAY DO” Ibid. William S. Smith was explicit about the connection between the British and Indians. “I hope there will not be any necessity for [the] spilling of blood, for there is no knowing where it will end,” Smith wrote Jefferson. “If there is an appearance of it, may we not shelter ourselves from the horror and inconvenience of internal commotion by turning the tide on these Britons by a formal declaration of war[?] They are at the bottom of it, and merit our highest indignation.” (Ibid., XI, 90.)

  “THE BASIS OF OUR GOVERNMENTS” Ibid., 49.

  A LETTER TO MADISON Ibid., 92–97.

  “I HOLD IT THAT A LITTLE REBELLION” Ibid., 93.

  JOURNEY THROUGH THE SOUTH Ibid., 415–64. See also TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/journey-through-france-and-italy-1787 (accessed 2011).

  “ARCHITECTURE, PAINTING, SCULPTURE PTJ, XI, 215.

  “I AM NOW IN THE LAND” Ibid., 247.

  THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION HAD BEGUN Middlekauff, Glorious Cause, 642–44.

  SKEPTICAL OF A PROPOSAL Ibid., 480–81.

  POLLY DID NOT WANT TO PART WITH THE MAN Ibid., 501–2.

  “THE OLD NURSE WHOM YOU” Ibid., 502.

  APPEARED NEARLY WHITE Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, 4. The source is Isaac Jefferson, who said: “Sally Hemings’s mother Betty was a bright mulatto woman, and Sally mighty near white.” (Ibid.)

  “VERY HANDSOME, [WITH] LONG HAIR STRAIGHT DOWN HER BACK” Ibid.

  WAS WELL DEVELOPED Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 194–95. I am indebted to Gordon-Reed for her insights on possibilities suggested by Abigail Adams’s account of receiving Sally Hemings.

  ABIGAIL ADAMS GUESSED SHE WAS OLDER Ibid.

  RAMSEY WAS HOPING Ibid., 197–208.

  “I TELL HER THAT I DID NOT” Ibid., 502.

  SHOULD COME FETCH HIS YOUNGER DAUGHTER Ibid.

  “AS CONTENTED … AS SHE WAS MISERABLE” Ibid., 503.

  “THE GIRL WHO IS WITH [POLLY]” Ibid.

  JEFFERSON THANKED ABIGAIL Ibid., 514–15.

  CRYING AND “THROWN INTO ALL” Ibid., 551.

  POLLY JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS ARRIVED MB, I, 674.
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  “SHE HAD TOTALLY FORGOTTEN” PTJ, XI, 592.

  “HER READING, HER WRITING” Ibid., 634.

  “IT IS REALLY” Ibid., XII, 69.

  “NOTHING CAN EXCEED” Ibid., 103.

  “THE REPORT OF AN INTENTION” Dunbar, Study of “Monarchical” Tendencies, 96.

  HAMILTON WAS SAID TO BELIEVE Ibid., 97.

  ALLEGED PLAN OF HAMILTON’S “THAT HAD IN VIEW” Ibid., 96–97.

  “AT THIS MOMENT THERE IS NOT” Brymner, Douglas, Report on Canadian Archives, 1890, 97–98. Lord Dorchester sent this report to Lord Sydney on April 10, 1787.

  “THEY ARE DIVIDED INTO THREE” Ibid., 99.

  A CRISIS IN THE UNITED NETHERLANDS JHT, II, 184–87.

  “IT CONVEYS TO US THE IMPORTANT LESSON” Ibid., 184.

  “WE ARE, THEREFORE, NEVER SAFE” Ibid., 187.

  GEORGE WASHINGTON DISPATCHED PTJ, XII, 149–50.

  BENJAMIN FRANKLIN SENT ONE Ibid., 236–37.

  LETTERS ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION FLOWED “It has in my mind great faults, but … it is fairly to be concluded that this is a better scheme than can be looked for from another experiment,” wrote Edward Carrington. (Ibid., 255.) St. John de Crèvecoeur told Jefferson, “I trust that every man who [is] attached to the glory and happiness of his country, as well as to his property, will be for it.” (Ibid., 332.)

  IT “SEEMS TO BE” Ibid., 335.

  “HOW DO YOU LIKE” Ibid., 350–51.

  “HE MAY BE REELECTED FROM” Ibid., 351.

  “THE WORLD HAS AT LENGTH” Ibid., 356.

  “WE HAVE HAD 13 STATES” Ibid., 356–57.

  “THE WANT OF FACTS” Ibid., 357.

  HE REACTED TO THE CONSTITUTION Ibid., 438–43.

  “FREEDOM OF RELIGION” Ibid., 440.

  “AFTER ALL, IT IS MY PRINCIPLE” Ibid., 442.

  JEFFERSON SUGGESTED THAT Ibid., 569–70. “I sincerely wish that the 9 first conventions may receive, and the 4 last reject it,” he wrote Madison in February 1788. “The former will secure it finally, while the latter will oblige them to offer a declaration of rights in order to complete the union. We shall thus have all its good, and cure its principal defect.” (Ibid.) Madison disagreed. He believed full ratification was the essential first step.

  Some in Virginia wanted a conditional ratification like the one Jefferson had suggested earlier or a call for a new convention to take matters up again. “In either event, I think the Constitution and the Union will be both endangered,” Madison wrote Jefferson in April 1788. (PTJ, XIII, 98.)

  “THERE ARE INDEED SOME FAULTS” Ibid., XIII, 174. Jefferson was brought into the debate over the ratification of the Constitution by proxy on Monday, June 9, 1788, by Patrick Henry, who sought to turn Jefferson’s skepticism about parts of the Constitution into wholehearted opposition. (Ibid., 354–55.)

  “I might go farther,” Henry told the Virginia ratifying convention, “I might say, not from public authority, but good information, that his opinion is, that you reject this government. His character and abilities are in the highest estimation; he is well acquainted, in every respect, with this country.… This illustrious citizen advises you to reject this government till it be amended.… At a great distance from us, he remembers and studies our happiness. Living in splendor and dissipation, he thinks yet of bills of rights—thinks of those little, despised things called maxims. Let us follow the sage advice of this common friend of our happiness.” (Ibid., 354.)

  Madison had had enough of Henry. “I believe that, were that gentleman now on this floor, he would be for the adoption of this Constitution. I wish his name had never been mentioned. I … know that the delicacy of his feelings will be wounded when he will see in print what has and may be said concerning him on this occasion.” (Ibid., 355.)

  The problem was that Henry’s interpretation of Jefferson’s position was plausible—but Henry was interpreting Jefferson’s February position in June, after Jefferson had moved to an affirmative view of the Constitution. Jefferson was now largely in agreement with Francis Hopkinson, who observed: “Whether this is the best possible system of government, I will not pretend to say. Time must determine; but I am well persuaded that without an efficient federal government, the states must in a very short time sink into contempt and the most dangerous confusion.” (Ibid., 370.) Because of the distance, however, no one could know that Jefferson had reached this conclusion, which made Madison’s rescue mission all the more difficult. But the mission succeeded.

  JEFFERSON FOLLOWED THE POLITICS OF RATIFICATION Ibid., 159–61.

  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PRESIDENCY Ibid., 352.

  GLIMPSED MARIA COSWAY’S HANDWRITING Ibid., 103–4.

  “AT HEIDELBERG I WISHED” Ibid., 104.

  HE SHARED A JOKE WITH HER Ibid. See also Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 281–82.

  FASCINATED BY A 1699 PAINTING Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 281–83. Fawn Brodie was the first observer to point out the implications of Jefferson’s interest in an image of a patriarchal figure being given a young slave woman for sexual purposes while Sally Hemings was living with Jefferson in Paris. (Ibid.)

  THE PICTURE, HE SAID, WAS “DELICIOUS” PTJ, XIII, 103.

  “PARIS IS NOW BECOME” Ibid., 151.

  TWENTY-TWO · A TREATY IN PARIS

  “HE DESIRED TO BRING MY MOTHER” Lewis and Onuf, Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, 256.

  THERE WAS SALLY HEMINGS Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 326–28.

  HAD BEEN PAID SOME SMALL WAGES Ibid., 236.

  TWELVE LIVRES A MONTH FOR TEN MONTHS Ibid., 236–41.

  HAD BOUGHT CLOTHING Ibid., 259–60.

  HAD HER INOCULATED Ibid., 213–23.

  JAMES WAS TRAINED AS A CHEF Ibid., 169–90.

  MAY HAVE SERVED THE JEFFERSON DAUGHTERS Ibid., 211–13.

  “THE STRONGEST OF HUMAN PASSIONS” Burstein, Jefferson’s Secrets, 171.

  “LIGHT COLORED AND DECIDEDLY GOOD LOOKING” http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/appendix-h-sally-hemings-and-her-children (accessed 2012).

  AT THE TIMES SHE WAS LIKELY TO HAVE CONCEIVED Ibid.

  ENSLAVED PERSONS COULD APPLY FOR THEIR LIBERTY Ibid., 172–82.

  HE HAD ONCE ADVISED A FELLOW SLAVE OWNER Ibid., 182–83.

  “MR. JEFFERSON’S CONCUBINE” Lewis and Onuf, Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, 256.

  WAS PREGNANT WHEN JEFFERSON WAS PREPARING Ibid.

  “SHE WAS JUST BEGINNING” Ibid.

  SHE, NOT HE, WAS IN CONTROL Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 339. “Whether she had had time in her young life to learn this fact about him or not, the truth is that few things could have disturbed the very thin-skinned, possessive, and controlling Jefferson more deeply than having persons in his inner circle take the initiative and express their willingness to remove themselves from it,” wrote Gordon-Reed. (Ibid.)

  “TO INDUCE HER TO DO SO” Lewis and Onuf, Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, 256.

  “IN CONSEQUENCE OF HIS PROMISE” Ibid.

  THEIR FATHER KEPT THE PROMISE Ibid.

  “WE ALL BECAME FREE” Ibid., 256. Here is a summary of the Jefferson-Hemings children and their fates, from Lucia C. Stanton, Shannon Senior Research Historian at Monticello:

  Sally Hemings had at least six children, who are now believed to have been fathered by Thomas Jefferson years after his wife’s death. According to Jefferson’s records, four survived to adulthood. Beverly (b. 1798), a carpenter and fiddler, was allowed to leave the plantation in late 1821 or early 1822 and, according to his brother, passed into white society in Washington, D.C. Harriet (b. 1801), a spinner in Jefferson’s textile shop, also left Monticello in 1821 or 1822, probably with her brother, and passed for white. Madison Hemings (1805–1878), a carpenter and joiner, was given his
freedom in Jefferson’s will; he resettled in southern Ohio in 1836, where he worked at his trade and had a farm. Eston Hemings (1808–ca. 1856), also a carpenter, moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, in the 1830s. There he was a well-known professional musician before moving about 1852 to Wisconsin, where he changed his surname to Jefferson along with his racial identity. Both Madison and Eston Hemings made known their belief that they were sons of Thomas Jefferson. (TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/sally-hemings [accessed 2012].)

  THE CALLING OF THE ESTATES-GENERAL JHT, II, 193.

  “I IMAGINE YOU HAVE HEARD” PTJ, XIII, 358.

  THE TWO MEN MET IN AMSTERDAM JHT, II, 187–92, and Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, 367–68, are useful on these issues.

  THE FIRST TREATY TO BE RATIFIED JHT, II, 199–202; PTJ, XIV, 66–180.

  WASHINGTON WAS TO BE PRESIDENT PTJ, XIV, 3–4. To Jefferson, William S. Smith reported on a (failed) anti-Federalist scheme to roil the new government. The purported plan: Have Virginia refuse to vote for Washington for president, which would then, in this scenario, make Adams president. It was a result, Smith told Jefferson, “which would not be consistent with the wish of the country and could only arise from the finesse of antifederal electors with a view to produce confusion and embarrass the operations of the Constitution, against which many have set their faces.” (Ibid., 559–60.)

  “IT IS … DOUBTFUL” Ibid., XIII, 502.

  “HANCOCK IS WEAK” Ibid., XIV, 17.

  AN “ILL UNDERSTANDING” Ibid., 275.

  “WHO HAD BEEN UTTERLY AVERSE” Ibid., 301. Humphreys concluded: “Still, all the more reasonable men saw that the remedy would be infinitely worse than the disease.” (Ibid.)

  JEFFERSON WANTED TO COME HOME Ibid., 189. “I consider as no small advantage the resuming the tone of mind of my constituents, which is lost by long absence, and can only be recovered by mixing with them.” (Ibid.)

  ESPECIALLY INTERESTED IN ESTABLISHING Ibid., 332. “I shall hope … for the pleasure of personal conferences with your Excellency on the subjects of this letter and others interesting to our country, of getting my own ideas set to rights by a communication of yours, and of taking again the tone of sentiment of my own country which we lose in some degree after a certain absence.” (Ibid.)