Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

  “MR. ADAMS WAS HONEST” Ibid.

  JEFFERSON WAS RUNNING LATE PTJ, XXIII, 184.

  “DOUBLING THE VELOCITY” Ibid.

  FOR “THE TREASURY POSSESSED ALREADY” Ibid. Jefferson continued “that even future Presidents (not supported by the weight of character which [he] himself possessed) would not be able to make head against this department.” It was a gentle, effective way to flatter Washington and to raise his concerns about Hamilton to Washington, who did not mind tributes to his own character. (Ibid.)

  NOT ONE OF “PERSONAL INTEREST” Ibid.

  THE PRESIDENT THEN BROUGHT THE TALK Ibid. During “that pause of conversation which follows a business closed,” Jefferson later wrote, Washington “said in an affectionate tone that he had felt much concern at an expression which dropt from me yesterday, and which marked my intention of retiring” when Washington did. (Ibid.)

  WASHINGTON SAID HE INTENDED Ibid., 184–85.

  “I TOLD HIM THAT NO MAN” Ibid., 185.

  “HAD SET OUT WITH” Ibid., 186.

  “ONLY A SINGLE SOURCE” Ibid.

  “DELUGING THE STATES WITH PAPER-MONEY” Ibid.

  “FEATHERED THEIR NESTS” Ibid. Jefferson had asked Madison to supply a list of the names of lawmakers who held public securities or stock in the Bank of the United States. He wanted it, he said, to show the president “that I have not been speaking merely at random.” Jefferson ultimately did not use any such list in arguments with Washington. (Ibid., XXIV, 26.)

  HIS FOES “HAD NOW” Ibid., 187. Washington asked what, specifically, Jefferson was talking about. “I answered … that in the Report on Manufactures which, under color of giving bounties for the encouragement of particular manufactures, meant to establish the doctrine that the power given by the Constitution to collect taxes to provide for the general welfare of the U.S. permitted Congress to take everything under their management which they should deem for the public welfare, and which is susceptible to the application of money.” (Ibid.)

  “DAILY PITTED IN THE CABINET LIKE TWO COCKS” PTJRS, II, 272.

  JEFFERSON NOTICED THAT PTJ, XXIII, 259.

  “HE SAID THAT HE DID NOT LIKE” Ibid., 263. “He stopped here,” Jefferson continued, “and I kept silence to see whether he would say anything more in the same line, or add any qualifying expression to soften what he had said. But he did neither.” (Ibid.)

  THE PUBLIC DEBT, PAPER MONEY Ibid., 535–41. On first hearing Washington raise the possibility of retiring after a single term, Jefferson had chosen to remain silent on the question. He knew, he said, “we were some day to try to walk alone, and if the essay should be made while you should be alive and looking on, we should derive confidence from that circumstance, and resource if it failed.” (Ibid., 536.) In May, Jefferson used a letter urging Washington to reconsider stepping down to marshal his case against Hamilton. Washington’s possible retirement after a single term, Jefferson said, was “a subject of inquietude to my mind.” (Ibid., 535.)

  THE “ULTIMATE OBJECT” Ibid., 537.

  “THAT THIS WAS CONTEMPLATED” Ibid.

  IT “WILL BE THE INSTRUMENT” Ibid.

  THE “MONARCHIAL FEDERALISTS” Ibid., 538. Jefferson was practical about what could be rescued. A new Congress, he said, “will not be able to undo all which the two preceding legislatures, and especially the first, have done.… But some parts of the system may be rightfully reformed; a liberation from the rest unremittingly pursued as fast as right will permit, and the door shut in future against similar commitments of the nation.” (Ibid.) Such a moderate approach, however, depended on a Republican Congress. If the majority of the next legislature “be still in the same principles with the present,” Jefferson said, “it is not easy to conjecture what would be the result, nor what means would be resorted to for correction of the evil.” (Ibid.)

  “I CAN SCARCELY CONTEMPLATE” Ibid.

  “THE CONFIDENCE OF THE WHOLE UNION” Ibid., 539. Jefferson continued: “If the first corrective of a numerous representation should fail in its effect, your presence will give time for trying others not inconsistent with the union and peace of the states.” (Ibid.)

  GIVE US A FEW YEARS Ibid.

  JEFFERSON DINED AT WASHINGTON’S Ibid., XXIV, 50. Two days later, at what Jefferson described as a “dinner of Jay-ites,” the financier Robert Morris raised the prospect of a challenge to John Adams in the 1792 election for vice president. “R.M. mentioned to the company that [George] Clinton was to be vice-president, that the Antis intended to set him up.” (Ibid.)

  “I WAS NOT DISPLEASED” Ibid.

  “TOO MANY OF THESE” Ibid., 85.

  WASHINGTON GENTLY TRIED TO CALM Ibid., 210–12. Washington added: “That there might be a few who wished [a monarchy] in the higher walks of life, particularly in the great cities. But that the main body of the people in the Eastern states were as steadily for republicanism as in the Southern.” (Ibid., 210.) Washington also claimed to have been always ambivalent about the ceremonial pomp of the presidency.

  According to an account of the administration’s first days in New York that passed from Washington’s personal secretary Tobias Lear to Attorney General Edmund Randolph to Jefferson, Washington “resisted for 3 weeks the efforts to introduce levees” before agreeing to them, and he left the details to his aide David Humphreys and others. After “an Antichamber and Presence room were provided, and those who were to pay their court were assembled, the President set out, preceded by Humphreys.” They walked through the outer room, entered the second, and Humphreys preceded Washington, “first calling out with a loud voice ‘the President of the US.’ The President was so much disconcerted with it that he did not recover it the whole time of the levee, and when the company was gone he said to Humphreys, ‘Well, you have taken me in once, but by God you shall never take me in a second time.’ ” (Ibid., XXV, 208.)

  “HOW UNFORTUNATE” Ibid., 317.

  JEFFERSON REPLIED WITH PASSION Ibid., 351–60.

  “THAT I HAVE UTTERLY” Ibid., 353.

  “FLOWED FROM PRINCIPLES ADVERSE TO LIBERTY” Ibid.

  “HE UNDERTOOK” Ibid., 354. Jefferson added: “These views thus made to prevail, their execution fell of course to me; and I can safely appeal to you, who have seen all my letters and proceedings, whether I have not carried them into execution as sincerely as if they had been my own, though I ever considered them as inconsistent with the honor and interest of our country.” (Ibid.)

  “NEWSPAPER CONTESTS” Randall, Jefferson, II, 82.

  “I WILL NOT SUFFER” PTJ, XXIV, 358.

  “THOUGHT IT IMPORTANT” Ibid., 434.

  “DID NOT BELIEVE” Ibid., 435.

  “THERE WERE MANY MORE” Ibid.

  “FOR I WILL FRANKLY” Ibid., 499. Washington also found the congressional corruption charge overwrought. “He said that as to that interested spirit in the legislature, it was what could not be avoided in any government, unless we were to exclude particular descriptions of men, such as the holders of the funds, from all office. I told him there was a great difference between the little accidental schemes of self interest which would take place in every body of men and influence their votes, and a regular system for forming a corps of interested persons who should be steadily at the orders of the Treasury.” (Ibid., 435.)

  “WHY, THEN,” Ibid.

  WORRIED ABOUT REBELLION Ibid., 383–85.

  THE SECRETARY OF STATE’S SIGNATURE Ibid., 385.

  “SHOULD CONGRESS ADOPT” Dunbar, Study of “Monarchical” Tendencies, 105.

  “THERE WAS NO STABILITY” PTJ, XXIV, 607.

  REVELATIONS OF AN AFFAIR Ibid., 751. See also notes to PTJ, XVIII, 611–88.

  GILES OF VIRGINIA INTRODUCED RESOLUTIONS Ibid., XXV, 311–12. As the editors of the PTJ write: “Nevertheless, Jefferson’s covert support of the House Repub
lican drive against Hamilton in 1793 remains a highly significant benchmark in his public career, marking a crucial stage in his gradual shift from the role of a statesman standing above the clash of conflicting political parties to the more partisan role that eventually propelled him to the presidency, that of chief leader of the Republican party.” (Ibid., 292.) See also Todd Estes, “Jefferson as Party Leader,” in Cogliano, ed., A Companion to Thomas Jefferson, 128–44.

  GILES “AND ONE OR TWO OTHERS” PTJ, XXV, 311.

  “1. OF BANK DIRECTORS” Ibid.

  “THE PUBLIC WILL SEE” Ibid., 314.

  UNTIL “THOSE WHO TROUBLED” Ibid., 137.

  “WHEN THEY SUFFER” Ibid.

  REPORTS OF RISING VIOLENCE IN FRANCE Neely, Concise History of the French Revolution, 189–220.

  THE SEPTEMBER 1793 DECLARATION OF THE REIGN OF TERROR Ibid., 191–97; 254–55.

  “WE WERE ALL STRONGLY ATTACHED TO FRANCE” EOL, 174–75.

  FROM THE AUTUMN OF 1792 FORWARD Ibid., 176–77. As Wood wrote:

  Now some Federalists began to see in France the terrifying possibilities of what might happen in America if popular power were allowed to run free. The rioting in Paris and elsewhere, the horrific massacres in September 1792 of over fourteen hundred prisoners charged with being enemies of the Revolution, the news that Lafayette had been deserted by his troops and his allies in the Assembly and had fled France—all these events convinced the Federalists that the French Revolution was sliding into popular anarchy.… When Americans learned that the thirty-eight-year-old king Louis XVI, the ruler who had helped them win their independence from the British a decade earlier, had been executed for treason on January 21, 1793, and that the French Republic had declared war on England on February 1, 1793, their division into Federalists and Republicans intensified. The meaning of the French Revolution now became entwined in the quarrel that Americans were having among themselves over the direction of their own revolution. (Ibid.)

  HE LOST FRIENDS TO THE GUILLOTINE William Howard Adams, Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, 295–97. See also O’Brien, Long Affair.

  LAFAYETTE SPENT FIVE YEARS Paul S. Spalding, Lafayette: Prisoner of State (Columbia, S.C., 2012).

  “IN THE STRUGGLE WHICH WAS NECESSARY” PTJ, XXV, 14.

  PRO-FRENCH ORGANIZERS IN BOSTON Charles Warren, Jacobin and Junto; or, Early American Politics as Viewed in the Diary of Dr. Nathaniel Ames, 1758–1822 (New York, 1968), 46.

  “A NUMBER OF CITIZENS” Ibid.

  CONSIDER RETURNING TO PARIS Ibid., 243–45. Washington, who characteristically took a moderate position, tended to be warmer toward the French in his conversations with Jefferson. The president, Jefferson wrote on January 3, 1793, said “he considered France as the sheet anchor of this country and its friendship as a first object. There are in the U.S. some characters of opposite principles; some of them are high in office, others possessing great wealth, and all of them hostile to France and looking fondly to England as the staff of their hope.… The little party above mentioned have espoused it only as a stepping stone to monarchy, and have endeavored to approximate it to that in its administration, in order to render its final transition more easy.” (Ibid., 14–15.)

  WASHINGTON’S REPLY WAS POINTED Ibid., 244.

  JEFFERSON STRUCK BACK Ibid.

  ASKED JEFFERSON “TO CONSIDER MATURELY” Ibid.

  TWENTY-SIX · THE END OF A STORMY TOUR

  “I FEEL FOR YOUR SITUATION” PTJ, XXVI, 133.

  THE PLANTATION WAS CALLED BIZARRE See Cynthia A. Kierner, Scandal at Bizarre: Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson’s America (New York, 2004), for details and analysis of the episode.

  “NEVER THROW OFF THE BEST AFFECTIONS” PTJ, XXV, 621.

  “IN THE COURSE OF OUR CONVERSATION” Ibid., 301–2.

  SHOULD NOT “SUFFER YOURSELF” Ibid., 304.

  “MR. JEFFERSON [IS] … DISTINGUISHED AS” The Words of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville, Va., 2008), 200. On the public debt, Jefferson said he believed “the only difference which I can see between the two parties is that the republican one wish it could be paid tomorrow, the fiscal party wish it to be perpetual, because they find in it an engine for corrupting the legislature.” (PTJ, XXV, 318.) For a list of stockholders in the Congress, see ibid., 432–35.

  Civility was strained. “I understood on Saturday from the Attorney General,” Hamilton wrote Jefferson, “that it was your wish a meeting should be had—to which I replied, in substance, that I considered it in your power to convene one; and should attend if called upon; but that I did not perceive the utility of one at this time.” (Ibid., 440.)

  A HOUSE ON THE SCHUYLKILL RIVER Ibid., 353.

  “FROM MONTICELLO YOU” Ibid., 444.

  “OUR REPUBLIC” PTJ, XXVI, 101.

  “YOUR MIN. PLEN.” Ibid.

  “CERTAINLY OURS WAS A REPUBLICAN” Ibid., 101–2.

  “KNOX TOLD SOME” Ibid., 554–55.

  “MAKE HIM BELIEVE” Ibid., 522.

  “HE WAS EVIDENTLY SORE” Ibid., 102.

  THE FRENCH REPUBLIC DECLARED WAR ON BRITAIN EOL, 177.

  “IT HAS BEEN ASKED” PTJ, XXVI, 272–73.

  “UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND IMPROPER” Ibid., 382. “I am extremely afraid that the P. may not be sufficiently aware of the snares that may be laid out for his good intentions by men whose politics at bottom are very different from his own,” Madison wrote in June 1793. “An assumption of prerogatives not clearly found in the Constitution and having the appearance of being copied from a monarchial model will beget animadversion equally mortifying to him, and disadvantageous to the government.” (Ibid., 273.)

  “WE HAD NOT OBJECTED” Ibid., XXVII, 400.

  “OTHER QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS” Ibid., 401.

  “THOUGH IT WOULD BE A GOOD THING” Ibid., 428.

  EDMOND-CHARLES GENET Ibid., XXV, 469–70. Washington, who was to be away, told Jefferson that Genet “should unquestionably be received, but he thought not with too much warmth or cordiality.” Jefferson “wondered at first at this restriction; but.… became satisfied it was a small sacrifice to the opinion of Hamilton.” (Ibid.)

  “LENGTHY CONSIDERATIONS” Ibid., 469

  JEFFERSON HOPED AN ENTHUSIASTIC PUBLIC RECEPTION Ibid., 619. On April 28, 1793, he wrote Madison: “We expect Mr. Genet here within a few days. It seems as if his arrival would furnish an occasion for the people to testify their affections without respect to the cold caution of their government.” (Ibid.)

  THE ENVOY WAS ORGANIZING PRIVATEERS EOL, 185–89.

  “HOTHEADED, ALL IMAGINATION” PTJ, XXVI, 444.

  INDEED GENET DID EOL, 188.

  “NOT AS SECRETARY OF STATE” Ibid.

  TO RECALL GENET PTJ, XXVI, 598, 685–715. There was a second element to the decision: that Genet be informed of the requested recall. Jefferson disagreed with the last, thinking “it would render him extremely active in his plans, and endanger confusion. But I was overruled by the other three gentlemen and the President.” (Ibid., 598.)

  HAMILTON HAD WON THIS BATTLE Ibid., 502–3. “H., sensible of the advantage they have got, is urging a full appeal by the government to the people” to have Genet recalled to France, Jefferson said. “Such an explosion would manifestly endanger a dissolution of the friendship between the two nations.” (Ibid.)

  “HE WILL SINK” Ibid., 606.

  “TO MY FELLOW-CITIZENS” Ibid., 239.

  “THE MOTION OF MY BLOOD” Ibid., 240.

  “WORN DOWN” Ibid., 240–41.

  “TORN TO PIECES AS WE ARE” Ibid., 552.

  A RUMOR REACHED JEFFERSON Ibid., 219.

  WHAT WERE CALLED DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN SOCIETIES Ibid., 601–3.

  “THE PRESIDENT WAS MUCH INFLAMED” Ibid., 602–3.

  JEFFERSON WANTED OUT Ibid., 593–94, 660. For
a benign view of Jefferson’s motivations, see Philip M. Marsh, “Jefferson’s Retirement as Secretary of State,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 69, no. 3 (July 1945): 220–24.

  HE PAID A CALL PTJ, XXVI, 627–30. For Jefferson’s successor, Washington’s mind was on the politics of the moment. He liked Robert R. Livingston of New York, but “to appoint him while Hamilton was in and before it should be known he was going out, would excite a newspaper conflagration, as the ultimate arrangement would not be known.” (Ibid., 629.)

  THE “PARTICULAR UNEASINESS” Ibid., 628.

  “THE CONSTITUTION WE HAVE” Ibid.

  “MEN NEVER CHOSE TO DESCEND” Ibid., 630.

  YELLOW FEVER STRUCK Ibid., XXVII, 7.

  “IT HAS NOW GOT” Ibid.

  “VIEWING WITH SORROW” Ibid., 334.

  “HAMILTON IS ILL OF THE FEVER” Ibid., 62.

  “I WOULD REALLY GO AWAY” Ibid.

  “WITH SINCERE REGRET” Ibid., XXVIII, 3.

  “LET A CONVICTION” Ibid.

  “THAT RICHMOND IS MY NEAREST PORT” Ibid., XXVII, 661.

  “COVERED WITH GLORY” PTJ, XXVIII, 7.

  THE MARVEL OF HOW WELL Adams, ed., Letters of John Adams, II, 240.

  “JEFFERSON WENT OFF” Words of Thomas Jefferson, 201.

  “MY PRIVATE BUSINESS” PTJ, XXVIII, 14.

  TWENTY-SEVEN · IN WAIT AT MONTICELLO

  “TO PRESERVE THE FREEDOM” PTJ, XXXI, 128.

  “I LIVE ON MY HORSE” PTJ, XXVIII, 332.

  “I ENTREAT YOU” Ibid., 607.

  “I THINK IT IS MONTAIGNE” PTJ, XXVIII, 15. Despite his protestations, he remained in touch with the times. Acknowledging his obsession with the Hamilton-congressional axis, Jefferson said: “I indulge myself on one political topic only, that is, in disclosing to my countrymen the shameless corruption of a portion of the representatives in the 1st and 2nd Congresses and their implicit devotion to the treasury. I think I do good in this, because it may produce exertions to reform the evil on the success of which the form of the government is to depend.” (Ibid., 15–16.)

  “I COULD NOT HAVE SUPPOSED” Ibid., 21–22.