Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

  HE WAS MORE THAN READY McCullough, John Adams, 564–66. McCullough makes the case that, contrary to the conventional view, there is “no evidence” that Adams was “downcast, [and] bitter.” Sharp agrees, writing that “there is little evidence that an enraged and ill-tempered Adams [was] skulking out of Washington at the last moment to avoid public humiliation.” (Sharp, Deadlocked Election of 1800, 165–66.)

  CANNON FIRE National Intelligencer, March 6, 1801.

  THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA’S ARTILLERY CORPS Ibid.

  SAMUEL HARRISON SMITH CALLED ON JEFFERSON Margaret Bayard Smith, First Forty Years, 26. “Mr. Jefferson had given [S. H. Smith] a copy [of the inaugural address] early in the morning, so that on coming out of the house, the paper was distributed immediately,” Margaret Bayard Smith wrote Miss Susan B. Smith on March 4, 1801. “Since then there has been a constant succession of persons coming for the papers.” (Ibid.)

  WRITTEN IN JEFFERSON’S SMALL, NEAT HAND Ibid. “The original in Jefferson’s handwriting is among the papers of Mr. J. Henley Smith; also his second inaugural address in his handwriting and signed.” (Ibid.)

  AT TEN O’CLOCK National Intelligencer, March 6, 1801.

  SHORTLY BEFORE NOON Alexandria Times, March 6, 1801.

  A DELEGATION OF CONGRESSMEN National Intelligencer, March 6, 1801.

  FOLLOWED A GROUP OF OFFICERS Alexandria Times, March 6, 1801.

  THEIR SWORDS DRAWN Ibid.

  PARTED TO ALLOW JEFFERSON THROUGH Ibid.

  STOOD, SALUTING Ibid.

  AFTER ANOTHER BLAST OF CANNON National Intelligencer, March 6, 1801.

  ABOUT A THOUSAND PEOPLE Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, 3.

  “MAGNIFICENT IN HEIGHT” Byrd, The Senate, 1789–1989: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate, 406.

  THE ROOM WAS 86 BY 48 FEET Ibid.

  EACH SENATOR HAD Ibid.

  “SO CROWDED THAT” Margaret Bayard Smith, First Forty Years, 26. It was, the National Intelligencer reported, “the largest concourse of citizens ever assembled here.” (National Intelligencer, March 6, 1801.)

  ROSE IN DEFERENCE TO JEFFERSON National Intelligencer, March 6, 1801.

  AFTER MARSHALL ADMINISTERED THE OATH Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 99, offers this memorable image: “The first thing that Thomas Jefferson saw as president was the dark face of John Marshall, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who had just sworn him into office. The two were second cousins, related through the august Randolph family of Virginia—and they intensely disliked each other’s politics.” (Ibid.) See also Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation (New York, 1996). For more on the rivalry between the two Virginians, see R. Kent Newmyer, John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court (Baton Rouge, La., 2001), 146–209, which focuses on Jefferson’s presidential years, and James F. Simon, What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States (New York, 2002).

  IN HIS WEAK VOICE Margaret Bayard Smith, First Forty Years, 26.

  “ALL … WILL BEAR IN MIND” PTJ, XXXIII, 149–51.

  “TODAY THE NEW POLITICAL YEAR” Papers of John Marshall, VI, 89.

  “THE DEMOCRATS ARE DIVIDED” Ibid.

  “IF HE ARRANGES HIMSELF” Ibid.

  RETURNING TO HIS LETTER WRITING AT FOUR P.M. Ibid.

  “YOU WILL BEFORE THIS” Ibid.

  “IN POLITICAL SUBSTANCE” Ibid., 137.

  “VIRTUALLY A CANDID RETRACTION” Dunn, Jefferson’s Second Revolution, 225.

  “OLD FRIENDS WHO HAD BEEN” PTJ, XXXIII, 261.

  “IT IS NOT POSSIBLE” Ibid., 426.

  “WE REFLECT” Ibid., 290.

  “PURSUING STEADILY MY OBJECT” Ibid., XXXVII, 296–97. “Nero wished all the necks of Rome united in one, that he might sever them at a blow,” Jefferson had written in his second year in office. So it was, he said, with his foes, who, “wishing to have a single representative of all the objects of their hatred, honor me with that post, and exhibit against me such atrocities as no nation has ever before heard or endured. I shall protect them in the right of lying and calumniating, and shall go on to merit the continuance of it.” (Ibid.)

  “I FEEL A GREAT LOAD” Ibid., XXXIII, 181.

  REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL MAJORITIES http://artandhistory.house.gov/house_history/partyDiv.aspx (accessed 2012).

  THE SENATE MARGIN http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/partydiv.htm (accessed 2012).

  THE AUTHORITY OF THE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE Robert M. Johnstone, Jr., Jefferson and the Presidency: Leadership in the Young Republic (New York, 1978), stated the case well. “It is a central thesis of this book that Jefferson’s presidency marked the pioneering effort in erecting a working model of presidential leadership characterized by persuasion and the cultivation of influence. Jefferson was the first president willing to implement the bargaining relationships that could enhance presidential influence, and he did so with great natural skill and patience.” (Ibid., 14.) McDonald, in Cogliano, ed., A Companion to Thomas Jefferson, 164–83, explores issues of Jefferson and executive power. “A commonsense understanding of Jefferson’s presidency as a referendum on the issues and ideas that secured his election in 1800 and 1801 holds that, although he sometimes broke rules that he advocated as opposition leader, he never abandoned the goal of a strictly limited and thoroughly republican government,” McDonald writes, and I agree: Such was always his goal, even if his means to the end of securing republicanism were not always strictly republican. Sorting through the scholarship of Leonard White, Jeremy D. Bailey, and Johnstone, McDonald also notes: “Leonard White may be correct to observe that ‘Jefferson fully maintained in practice the Federalist conception of executive power’… , but Johnstone believes that his similar actions were governed by different justifications. So does Jeremy Bailey … , who argues that Jefferson, who had long supported executive vigor, strengthened the presidency by envisioning it as the one branch representative of—and subject to—all of the nation’s voters. The fact that Jefferson, as Johnstone writes, ‘combined the constitutional power of the presidency with a ‘political’ power grounded on popular support’ made this mode of leadership republican… . The fact that it was Jefferson who accomplished the feat made it Republican.” (Ibid., 178.)

  SENT A REASSURING SIGNAL PTJ, XXXIII, 14.

  “ONE IMPUTATION” Ibid.

  CUT THE NATIONAL DEBT FROM $83 MILLION TO $57 MILLION Robert M. S. McDonald, “The (Federalist?) Presidency of Thomas Jefferson,” in Cogliano, ed., A Companion to Thomas Jefferson, 170.

  REDUCING MILITARY EXPENDITURES Ibid.

  DECLINED TO WEAR A CEREMONIAL SWORD Ibid., 134.

  DINNER AS USUAL Margaret Bayard Smith, First Forty Years, 12–13.

  COACHES AND SILVER HARNESSES Seale, President’s House, I, 90.

  ABIGAIL ADAMS HUNG LAUNDRY IN THE EAST ROOM Stein, Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, 54.

  “GREAT UNFINISHED AUDIENCE-ROOM” Ibid.

  JEFFERSON INSTALLED HIS SECRETARY Ibid., 56.

  IN THE SOUTHWEST CORNER OF THE FIRST FLOOR Ibid.

  HE KEPT GERANIUMS IN THE WINDOW AND MOCKINGBIRDS AT HAND Margaret Bayard Smith, First Forty Years, 384–85.

  DRAWERS FOR JEFFERSON’S TOOLS AND KNICKKNACKS Ibid.

  HE WAS USUALLY HUMMING Stein, Jefferson at Monticello, 13.

  JEFFERSON KEPT PET MOCKINGBIRDS TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/mockingbirds (accessed 2012).

  “LEARN ALL THE CHILDREN” PTJ, XXVI, 250.

  A BIRD HE NAMED DICK TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/mockingbirds (accessed 2012). As Lucia Stanton noted, “Dick” is a little disappointing given the standard set by Jefferson’s noble and often mythological names for his horses, but there
we are. (Ibid.)

  HANGING ITS CAGE IN THE WINDOW Margaret Bayard Smith, First Forty Years, 385.

  ORDERED THE DEMOLITION William Seale, The President’s House: A History, I (Washington, D.C., 1986), 88.

  “WATER CLOSETS … OF SUPERIOR CONSTRUCTION” Ibid.

  WHICH PIECES OF FURNITURE Ibid.

  HIS CHIEF DOMESTIC, RAPIN PTJ, XXXIII, 96–98.

  HENRY DEARBORN OF NEW HAMPSHIRE Ibid., 13.

  BORN IN GENEVA IN 1761 Henry Adams, Life of Albert Gallatin, is full of primary documents. See also “Albert Gallatin, (1761–1849),” Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress, 1774–Present, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=g000020 (accessed 2012).

  LOUIS-ANDRÉ PICHON TOLD PARIS Louis-André Pichon, Les Archives Diplomatiques.

  “ONE CANNOT HELP” Ibid.

  “HENCEFORTH, WE CAN PREDICT” Ibid.

  “INVARIABLY OPPOSED” Ibid.

  “THE STORM THROUGH WHICH” PTJ, XXXIII, 196.

  “WE CAN NO LONGER” Ibid., 394.

  “I AM SENSIBLE HOW FAR” Ibid., 506.

  REFERRED TO THE FEDERALISTS AS MADMEN Ibid., XXXIV, 262. See also ibid., XXXIII, 403.

  “THEIR LEADERS ARE A HOSPITAL” PTJ, XXXIV, 262.

  “Politics will not make you” Ibid., XXXIII, 568.

  “IN ESSENTIAL HARMONY” Ibid., 254. “It will be a great blessing to our country if we can once more restore harmony and social love among its citizens,” Jefferson told Gerry. Yet he understood the political realities. “I was not deluded by the eulogisms of the public papers in the first moments of change. If they could have continued to get all the loaves and fishes, that is if I would have gone over to them, they would continue to eulogize. But I well knew that the moment that such removals should take place, as the justice of the preceding administration ought to have executed, their hue and cry would be set up and they would take their old stand.” (Ibid., 491.)

  “MANY FRIENDS MAY GROW COOL” Ibid., XXXIII, 127.

  “THE DANGERS TO OUR FORM OF GOVERNMENT” Ibid., 636.

  “THE EJECTED PARTY” Ibid., 228.

  A RANGE OF ISSUES AND PROBLEMS See, for instance, Ibid., XXXIII, 585–94.

  LIKE “TWO MICE IN A CHURCH” The Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison, ed. David B. Mattern and Holly C. Shulman (Charlottesville, Va., 2003), 39. See also PTJ, XXXIV, 200.

  “I AM STILL AT A GREAT LOSS” PTJ, XXXIII, 260.

  BE “A REAL FAVOR” Ibid., XXXIV, 242.

  “THE CITY IS RATHER SICKLY” Ibid., XXXV, 109.

  “IT IS SUBSTITUTING” Ibid.

  “WE FIND THIS A VERY AGREEABLE” JHT, IV, 42.

  ISSUED PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 268.

  HIS OLD ALLY JAMES THOMSON CALLENDER PTJ, XXXIII, 309–10.

  CALLENDER HAD THREE CHILDREN Ibid., 216.

  “HURT” BY THE “DISAPPOINTMENT” Ibid., 573.

  “I NOW BEGIN” Ibid., 575.

  HE ASKED ALBERT GALLATIN TO REPLY Ibid., 372.

  HAD BEEN OUT OF FAVOR Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 322–23. “His first writings here had fallen far short … and the scurrilities of his subsequent ones began evidently to do mischief,” Jefferson wrote Monroe. Callender felt the distance and resented it. He knew, he said, that Jefferson “had on various occasions treated me with such ostentatious coolness and indifference that I could hardly say that I was able to love or trust him.” (Ibid., 323.)

  “MR. JEFFERSON HAS NOT RETURNED” Ibid., 345.

  “THE MONEY WAS REFUSED” Ibid.

  “DO YOU KNOW THAT” Claude G. Bowers, Jefferson in Power: The Death Struggle of the Federalists (Boston, 1936), 67.

  DISPATCHED MERIWETHER LEWIS TO GIVE CALLENDER Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 345–46.

  HE SENT A NOTE TO HIS CABINET PTJ, XXXV, 576–78.

  PAPERS “CONVEYING INFORMATION” Ibid., 606.

  THIRTY-THREE · A CONFIDENT PRESIDENT

  “THE MEASURES RECOMMENDED” Bowers, Jefferson in Power, 89.

  “HERE ARE SO MANY WANTS” PTJ, XXXVI, 176.

  “A STEADY AND UNIFORM COURSE” PTJ, XXXV, 677.

  “AN INTERVAL OF 4 HOURS” Ibid.

  A RIDE OR A WALK PTJ, XXXVI, 99.

  “ENGAGED WITH COMPANY” Ibid.

  “MECHANICS, MATHEMATICS, PHILOSOPHY” TJ to Thomas Paine, January 13, 1803, Thomas Jefferson Papers, LOC.

  “I HAD GOOD REASON” PTJ, XXXVII, 475.

  TENSION WITH A SUPPORTER TJ to Nathaniel Macon, March 22, 1806, Jefferson Papers, LOC.

  “THIS EVENING MY COMPANY” Ibid.

  WHOM HE KNEW HE WOULD NOT SEE AGAIN TJ to Ellen Wayles Randolph, October 19, 1807, Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Manuscripts, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  THE MADISONS STAYED BRIEFLY Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison, 39–40.

  ON PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE FOUR BLOCKS Ibid., 40.

  AT 1333 F STREET Ibid.

  ESTABLISHED A HOSPITABLE SALON See Catherine Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (New York, 2006).

  BRICK WALLS OF THEIR THREE-STORY HOUSE Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison, 40.

  “FASHIONABLE TALK” Ibid., 54.

  “AS GAY AS IN THE WINTER” Margaret Bayard Smith, First Forty Years, 27.

  MRS. SMITH SAT NEXT TO JEFFERSON Ibid., 29.

  THE TWO “WERE SO EASY” Ibid.

  LIVED ON M STREET NEAR THIRTY-SECOND Bowers, Jefferson in Power, 9.

  “HER PERSON IS FAR LESS ATTRACTIVE” Ibid., 9–10.

  “THE PRESIDENT’S DINNERS” Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, 96.

  “IF THE MEMBERS ARE TO KNOW NOTHING” Ibid., 90.

  “WHAT SORT OF GOVERNMENT” Margaret Bayard Smith, First Forty Years, 397.

  “ONE, SIRE” Ibid.

  VISITED JEFFERSON IN THE CABINET ROOM Ibid., 396.

  “WHY ARE THESE LIBELS ALLOWED?” Ibid., 397.

  “PUT THAT PAPER IN YOUR POCKET” Ibid.

  “MR. JEFFERSON HAS PUT ASIDE” Louis-André Pichon to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Les Archives Diplomatiques-P19506.

  JEFFERSON WORE DIFFERENT COMBINATIONS JHT, IV, 371.

  FOUND THAT THE PRESIDENT “BEHAVED VERY CIVILLY” Augustus Foster to Elizabeth Cavendish, December 30, 1804, Augustus Foster Papers, LOC.

  “HE IS DRESSED” Ibid.

  JOSEPH STORY OF MASSACHUSETTS JHT, IV, 373.

  THE “LEVELING SPIRIT” OF REPUBLICANISM Edward Thornton to Lord Hawkesbury, December 9, 1801, FO 5/32, National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew.

  JOHN QUINCY ADAMS BELIEVED Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, I, 403.

  “YOU WILL FIND [IT]” PTJ, XXXVI, 20.

  AT A CABINET MEETING Ibid., XXXIV, 114–15.

  TO “SEARCH FOR AND DESTROY” Abraham D. Sofaer, War, Foreign Affairs, and Constitutional Power: The Origins (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 209.

  TO “PLACE [HIS] SHIPS” Ibid., 210.

  “TOO LONG … HAVE THOSE BARBARIANS” PTJ, XXXVI, 3.

  JEFFERSON DESCRIBED THE AMERICAN VICTORY Sofaer, War, Foreign Affairs, and Constitutional Power, 212.

  ASKED CONGRESS TO AUTHORIZE Ibid. “I communicate all material information on this subject, that, in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively, their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight,” he told Congress. (Ibid.)

  CONGRESS FELL INTO JEFFERSON’S HANDS Ibid., 214–16.

  JEFFERSON ATTEMPTED AN ELABORATE OPERATION Ibid., 216–21.

  FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS PTJ, XXXVI, 52–68.

  SAVE FOR THE BARBA
RY STATES Ibid., 58.

  “A TESTIMONY TO THE WORLD” Ibid., 59.

  “NOTHING CAN EXCEED” John Taylor to John Breckinridge, December 22, 1801, Breckinridge Family Papers, LOC.

  “VIRGINIA LITERALLY DOMINATES” Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, IV, 103. Troup also said: “Congress are now engaged in repealing almost all the internal taxes, and the whiskey drinkers particularly will be in spirits.” (Ibid.)

  “UNDER THIS ADMINISTRATION” Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, 10.

  SHOULD “ALARM ALL WHO ARE” Bowers, Jefferson in Power, 90.

  “MINE IS AN ODD DESTINY” Ibid., 94–95.

  “EVERY DAY WE SEE VANISH” Louis-André Pichon, P19507 États-Unis 1802–1803 (an XI), Les Archives Diplomatiques. In political terms, President Jefferson’s personality projected a prevailing sense of calm except in the chambers or newspaper offices of unforgiving Federalists. “The two parties … at least are not here as they are in Europe, the haves and the have-nots; it’s rather the division into two great interests, maritime and agricultural; the first has dominated since independence, and the second dominates in turn. But Mr. Jefferson, although leader of the second, will do nothing which might displease the friends he has in the first group, or make his enemies there revolt,” wrote Pichon. “He will be able to indulge in some manias which offend conventions and shock the ideas of the most educated men of the East; but at bottom, his administration will certainly be prudent, economic, [and] conservative at home and abroad.” (Ibid.)

  A VAST CHEESE ARRIVED PTJ, XXXVI, 246–52. Jefferson understood from whence it came. “It is an ebullition of republicanism in a state where it has been under heavy oppression,” he wrote John Wayles Eppes on January 1, 1802. (Ibid., 261.)

  THE DANBURY BAPTIST ASSOCIATION HAD ASSEMBLED Ibid., 253–58.

  “BELIEVING WITH YOU” Ibid., 258.

  “I AGREE WITH YOU” Ibid., XXXII, 205.

  “THE TERRIBLE EVILS OF DEMOCRACY” Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, IV, 11.

  ABOLISH ALL INTERNAL TAXES Ibid., 388.

  DECLARE WAR ON TRIPOLI Ibid.

  EASE NATURALIZATION RULES Ibid.

  REPEAL THE JUDICIARY ACT OF 1801 Ibid., 168.