Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
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“BY THE BYE, YOU HAVE BEEN OFTEN” Ibid., 324.
THE SPIRIT OF FACTION Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (Berkeley, Calif., 1969), viii. (The first 121 pages of Hofstadter are on point.) The Founders, Hofstadter wrote, “did not believe in political parties as such, scorned those that they were conscious of as historical models, had a keen terror of party spirit and its evil consequences, and yet, almost as soon as their national government was in operation, found it necessary to establish parties.” (Ibid., viii.) See also Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution, 298–301.
“I AM NOT” PTJ, XIV, 650.
“MY GREAT WISH” Ibid., 651.
“J. ADAMS ESPOUSED THE CAUSE” Ibid., XV, 147–48.
JEFFERSON CALLED ADAMS’S PROPOSAL Ibid., 315. In May 1789, Madison tucked an intriguing point in the middle of a letter. “I have been asked whether any appointment at home would be agreeable to you. Being unacquainted with your mind I have not ventured on an answer.” (Ibid., 153.)
A BRUTALLY COLD WINTER IN FRANCE JHT, II, 205.
“OUR NEW CONSTITUTION” PTJ, XIV, 420. Kaplan, Jefferson and France, makes an interesting point, arguing that Jefferson’s reactions to events both in France and in America were colored by his consistent belief in the centrality of the French alliance. “Fear of alienating the support of French liberals rising to power with the Revolution made him look upon the suppression of Shays’ Rebellion and the creation of the Constitution as threats to America’s republicanism and hence to America’s continued friendship with France.” (Ibid., 35.) Jefferson hoped that France would peaceably find its way to a kind of English constitution with defined individual rights. He hoped, too, that reform would come with relative ease and that France might “within two or three years, be in enjoyment of a tolerably free constitution, and that without its having cost them a drop of blood.” It was, of course, not to be. (William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 252; JHT, II, 193.)
RIOTS IN PARIS KILLED ABOUT ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE PTJ, XV, 104.
INTERPRETED THE VIOLENCE IN THE MOST BENIGN LIGHT Ibid., 111. By way of explanation, Kaplan wrote: “With the future of his own country in mind, Jefferson gave wholehearted support to the revolutionists in their struggle against the internal hostility of the privileged classes and the external enmity of the rest of Europe.” (Kaplan, Jefferson and France, 36.)
JEFFERSON HAD SKETCHED A CHARTER OF RIGHTS PTJ, XV, 167–68.
THE FRUSTRATED THIRD ESTATE Doyle, Oxford History of the French Revolution, 104–7.
HIS HOUSE WAS ROBBED Ibid., 260. “My hotel having lately been robbed, for the third time, I take the liberty of uniting my wish with that of the inhabitants of this quarter” in hoping for “the protection of a guard,” he wrote Comte de Montmorin on July 8, 1789. (Ibid.)
HE MONITORED A STREET BATTLE Ibid., 273.
HE WAS AT HIS FRIEND MADAME DE CORNY’S William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 287.
“THE TUMULTS IN PARIS” PTJ, XV, 276–77.
“THE HEAT OF THIS CITY” Ibid., 277.
“A MORE DANGEROUS SCENE OF WAR” Ibid., 279.
“HERE IN THE MIDST OF TUMULT” Ibid., 305.
“BREAK EVERY ENGAGEMENT” Ibid., 354.
ADOPTED THE DECLARATION Larry E. Tise, The American Counterrevolution: A Retreat from Liberty, 1783–1800 (Mechanicsburg, Pa., 1998), 440–41. In addition, the Comte de Mirabeau, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, and Jean-Joseph Mounier each played a part in determining its final form. (David P. Forsythe, Encyclopedia of Human Rights, I, [Oxford, 2009], 406.)
INFLUENCED BY THE DECLARATION Peter Hanns Reill and Ellen Judy Wilson, Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (New York, 1996), 143. Other influences included the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights (Ibid.) and the U.S. state constitutions, especially those of Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts. (Forsythe, Encyclopedia of Human Rights, I, 406.)
GIVEN COUNSEL Forsythe, Encyclopedia of Human Rights, I, 406. Before writing the Declaration, Lafayette consulted with Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson sent Madison a copy of the draft, which Gouvernour Morris also reviewed while in Paris. (Ibid.)
BEGAN AT FOUR PTJ, XV, 355.
“A SILENT WITNESS” Ibid., 355. He knew that he was in a dangerous position—an American diplomat appearing to meddle in the internal politics of his host nation. The next morning, Jefferson went to Montmorin to confess and perform the “duties of exculpation.” The count, though, was ahead of Jefferson—or chose to pretend that he was. “He told me he already knew everything which had passed, that, so far from taking umbrage at the use made of my house on that occasion, he earnestly wished I would habitually assist at such conferences, being sure I should be useful in moderating the warmer spirits, and promoting a wholesome and practicable reformation only.” (Ibid.)
AGREED TO A STRUCTURE Ibid. “The result was an agreement that the king should have a suspensive veto on the laws, that the legislature should be composed of a single body only, and that to be chosen by the people.” The decisions made by the Assembly that evening “reduced the Aristocracy to insignificance and impotence.” (Ibid.)
“DECIDED THE FATE OF THE [FRENCH] CONSTITUTION” Ibid.
WHO HAD SENT GEORGE WASHINGTON THE KEY TO THE BASTILLE TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/marquis-de-lafayette (accessed 2012).
PATSY JEFFERSON RECALLED STANDING AT THE WINDOW Mrs. O. J. Wister and Miss Agnes Irwin, eds. Worthy Women of Our First Century (Philadelphia, 1877), 22. See also TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/marquis-de-lafayette (accessed 2012).
FIRST CAME THE ROYAL COACH, AND A CHAMBERLAIN BOWED Ibid.
RESEMBLED “THE BELLOWINGS OF THOUSAND OF BULLS” Ibid.
“LAFAYETTE! LAFAYETTE!” Ibid.
NOTICING PATSY WATCHING FROM THE WINDOW, BOWED TO HER Ibid.
A MARK OF RESPECT SHE NEVER FORGOT Ibid.
ALL HER LIFE SHE KEPT A TRICOLORED COCKADE Ibid.
“SO FAR IT SEEMED” PTJ, XVI, 293. The letter was written in 1790.
A LONG LETTER TO JAMES MADISON Ibid., XV, 384–99.
HE DID NOT SERIOUSLY PRESS Consider, for instance, a letter Jefferson wrote later, in 1816.
I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. (TJ to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816, Thomas Jefferson Papers, LOC.)
CLAY WAS SEEKING A CONGRESSIONAL SEAT PTJ, XVI, 129.
“YOU ARE TOO WELL INFORMED” Ibid.
THE ISSUE OF RIFLE MANUFACTURING Ibid., XV, 422.
“THE SPIRIT OF PHILOSOPHICAL” Ibid., XVI, 150.
JEFFERSON LEFT PARIS Ibid., XV, 487.
HOW TO MEASURE THE WIDTH Ibid., 493.
TUTORED POLLY IN SPANISH Ibid., 497.
HE ALSO SET OUT “ROVING THROUGH” Ibid., 509.
“ON OUR RETURN” Ibid.
PURCHASING “A CHIENNE BERGERE” TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/house-and-gardens/dogs (accessed 2012).
“THE MOST CAREFUL INTELLIGENT DOGS” Ibid.
TWENTY-THREE · A NEW POST IN NEW YORK
“WE HAVE BEEN FELLOW-LABORERS” PTJ, XVI, 179.
; “IN GENERAL, I THINK IT NECESSARY” Ibid., 493.
“FINE AUTUMN WEATHER” Ibid., XV, 552.
AT A QUARTER TO ONE Ibid., 560.
AN OFFER FROM THE PRESIDENT Ibid., 519. “In the selection of characters to fill the important offices of government in the United States,” George Washington wrote Jefferson, “I was naturally led to contemplate the talents and disposition which I knew you to possess and entertain for the service of your country.” (Ibid.)
Madison underscored Washington’s message. “I take for granted that you will … have known the ultimate determination of the President on your appointment,” he wrote Jefferson on January 24, 1790. “All that I am able to say on the subject is that a universal anxiety is expressed for your acceptance; and to repeat my declarations that such an event will be more conducive to the general good, and perhaps to the very objects you have in view in Europe, than your return to your former station.” (Ibid., XVI, 126.) Madison had been consistent. “It is of infinite importance that you should not disappoint the public wish on this subject,” he had written when the nomination was approved. (Ibid., 169.)
“CRITICISMS AND CENSURES” Ibid., XVI, 34.
WASHINGTON LEFT THE TACTICAL WORK Ibid., 118. All in all, Jefferson said, he preferred to return to France. “But it is not for an individual to choose his post,” Jefferson wrote Washington. “You are to marshal us as may best be for the public good.… [B]e so good only as to signify to me by another line your ultimate wish, and I shall conform to it cordially.” (Ibid., 34–35.)
WAS NOT TO BE IN CHARGE OF ALL DOMESTIC AFFAIRS Ibid. “I was sorry to find him so little biased in favor of the domestic service allotted to him,” Madison wrote Washington on Monday, January 4, 1790, “but was glad that his difficulties seemed to result chiefly from what I take to be an erroneous view of the kind and quantity of business annexed to that which constituted the foreign department.” There was a domestic component to the job, but Madison expected it to be minimal. (Ibid.)
A STRONG CASE FOR THE CABINET Ibid., 116.
WASHINGTON WANTED AN ANSWER Ibid., 118. As Jefferson considered his course, he replied to an “Address” the people of Albemarle County had presented to him expressing their thanks and respect on his return from abroad. (Ibid., 167–80.) “At an early period of your life and a very critical era of public affairs we elected you our representative in the general Assembly.… In that station your virtues and talents became known to your country, by whom they were afterwards made more extensively beneficial to the community at large.” (Ibid., 177.)
As noted above, his reply encapsulated the creed he had forged through experience and contemplation in the quarter century since his first session of the House of Burgesses:
We have been fellow-laborers and fellow-sufferers, and heaven has rewarded us with a happy issue from our struggles. It rests now with ourselves alone to enjoy in peace and concord the blessings of self-government, so long denied to mankind: to show by example the sufficiency of human reason for the care of human affairs and that the will of the majority, the natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man. Perhaps even this may sometimes err. But its errors are honest, solitary and short-lived.—Let us then, my dear friends, forever bow down to the general reason of the society. We are safe with that, even in its deviations, for it soon returns again to the right way. These are lessons we have learnt together. (Ibid., 178.)
HE ACCEPTED WASHINGTON’S OFFER Ibid., 184.
SPOKE IN PRACTICAL POLITICAL TERMS Ibid., 228–29.
DECIDED TO MARRY HER THIRD COUSIN Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. JHT, II, 250–52. See also Kierner, Martha Jefferson Randolph, 76–82.
THEY HAD MET WHEN PATSY WAS A CHILD Kierner, Martha Jefferson Randolph, 76–77.
AMBITIOUS, WELL EDUCATED, AND BLACK-HAIRED Ibid., 77. “My daughter, on her arrival in Virginia, received the addresses of a young Mr. Randolph, the son of a bosom friend of mine,” Jefferson wrote Madame de Corny. (PTJ, XVI, 290.)
“THOUGH HIS TALENTS” PTJ, XVI, 290.
TO ARRANGE PATSY’S MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT Ibid., 182.
THE WEDDING TOOK PLACE Ibid., 189–91.
WAS PERHAPS REACTING TO HER FATHER’S LIAISON Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 422. For Gordon-Reed’s complete discussion of Patsy’s courtship and marriage—including the fact that Jefferson did not follow custom and give Sally Hemings, a familiar figure, to either of his daughters on the occasions of their marriages—see ibid., 414–27.
RANDOLPH WAS INTERESTED IN FARMING PTJ, XVI, 370. “The necessity I am under of turning my attention to the cultivation of my little farm has inclined my thoughts of late towards agriculture,” Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., wrote Jefferson. “To one as fond as I am of physical research, and so much accustomed to exercise, such an inclination might be dangerous: but however enticing the subject, however pleasing the employment, I am resolved it shall never seduce me from the study of the law, and the attempt to acquire political knowledge.” (Ibid.)
Jefferson was intimately engaged with the lives of his daughters. Patsy’s marriage did not change that. Randolph’s father gave the couple an estate southeast of Richmond, called Varina. Both of the newlyweds came to prefer Edgehill, a place near Monticello, but they could not yet afford it. Jefferson offered his counsel, but his own financial affairs were such that he could not offer much more. (Ibid., 386–87. See also JHT, II, 252–53.) “No circumstance ever made me feel so strongly the thralldom of Mr. Wayles’s debt,” he told his eldest daughter. “Were I liberated from that, I should not fear but that Col. Randolph and myself … could effect fixing you there.” (PTJ, XVI, 387.) The Randolphs ultimately bought Edgehill.
THE CARE AND TENDING Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 247–48.
THE PRECISE LOCATION OF HER LIVING QUARTERS IS UNKNOWN I am indebted to Monticello’s Lucia Stanton and Susan Stein for this information.
MULBERRY ROW I am indebted to Susan Stein for this description of Mulberry Row.
SLOW AND AT TIMES SNOWY PTJ, XVI, 277–78.
“THE CONGRESS UNDER THE NEW CONSTITUTION” Ibid., XV, 91.
JEFFERSON COULD NOT FIND QUARTERS Ibid., XVI, 278–79.
“AN INDIFFERENT ONE” Ibid., 300.
“MR. JEFFERSON IS HERE” Cappon, Adams-Jefferson Letters, xxxix.
THEN–RELATIVELY REMOTE NEIGHBORHOOD JHT, II, 259.
LEOPOLD II, THE HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR Jeremy Black, From Louis XIV to Napoleon (London, 1999), 159.
THE DECLARATION OF PILLNITZ Ibid.
DECLARED WAR ON AUSTRIA Ibid., 160.
A THIRTEEN-YEAR SERIES OF WARS EOL, 175.
DREW BRITAIN AND SPAIN INTO WAR For a very general overview, see U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “The United States and the French Revolution, 1789–1799,” http://history.state.gov/milestones/1784-1800/FrenchRev (accessed 2012).
ON SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 1790 PTJ, XVI, 288.
A “DAILY, CONFIDENTIAL AND CORDIAL” PTJRS, VII, 103.
AFTER WASHINGTON SAT FOR A PORTRAIT JHT, II, 259.
“NOTHING CAN EXCEL MR. JEFFERSON’S ABILITIES” PTJ, XIV, 223.
“I HAVE FOUND MR. JEFFERSON” Ibid., XV, 498.
“YOU CAN SCARCELY HAVE HEARD” Ibid., VII, 383.
“HE WAS INCAPABLE OF FEAR” PTJRS, VII, 101.
“HIS MIND WAS GREAT” Ibid.
“HIS TEMPER WAS NATURALLY” Ibid.
WAS STRUCK BY See PTJ, XVI, 416; 432; 435–36; 487.
“BE SO GOOD AS TO SAY” Ibid., 286.
“THE TRANSACTION OF BUSINESS” Ibid., 379.
“HE HAD A RAMBLING, VACANT LOOK” Journal of William Maclay: United States Senator from Pennsylvania, 1789–1791 (New York, 1965), 272.
HE WAS “LOFTY AND ERECT” TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/ph
ysical-descriptions-jefferson (accessed 2011).
“HIS INFORMATION WAS EQUALLY POLITE” TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/jefferson-conversation (accessed 2011).
“WHEN THE HOUR OF DINNER” PTJ, XX, 646–47.
“PERHAPS THEIR CONDUCT” Ibid., XVIII, 80.
“WONDER AND MORTIFICATION” Ibid., XVI, 237.
“FOR THE MOST PART” Ibid.
THE QUASI-REGAL AIR AROUND THE PRESIDENT JHT, II, 256–68.
ESSAYS ENTITLED DISCOURSES ON DAVILA PTJ, XVI, 238–39.
JEFFERSON ARRANGED FOR FENNO TO PUBLISH Ibid., 238–41.
FENNO BECAME ENTIRELY A CREATURE Ibid., 240–41.
“I HAVE BUT ONE SYSTEM OF ETHICS” Ibid., 291.
A LATE SNOW IN NEW YORK Ibid., 405.
WASHINGTON BECAME SO ILL Ibid., 429. “On Monday last the President was taken with a peripneumony of threatening appearance,” Jefferson wrote Patsy on May 16, 1790. “Yesterday (which was the 5th day) he was thought by the physicians to be dying. However about 4 o’clock in the evening a copious sweat came on, his expectoration, which had been thin and ichorous, began to assume a well digested form, his articulation became distinct, and in the course of two hours it was evident he had gone through a favorable crisis. He continues mending today, and from total despair we are now in good hopes of him. Indeed he is thought quite safe.” (Ibid.)
A FISHING TRIP OFF SANDY HOOK Ibid., 2.
WOULD “CARRY OFF THE REMAINS” Ibid., 475.
JEFFERSON RAN INTO ALEXANDER HAMILTON Ibid., XVII, 205–7.
BORN IN 1755 Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 17. See ibid., 7–40, for details of Hamilton’s early life.
ENROLLING AT KING’S COLLEGE Ibid., 41–61.
QUICK WITH HIS PEN Ibid., 58–61.
HE BECAME A TOP AIDE Ibid., 85–129.
MARRIED INTO A POWERFUL NEW YORK FAMILY Ibid., 128–32.