Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

  “WOULD TO GOD” Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, IV, 109.

  BURR’S “DIFFIDENCE” IN FAILING TO COMBAT Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 230. “Burr was not immediately abandoned by the Jefferson administration,” wrote Isenberg. “It happened gradually over the first year of the president’s term.” (Ibid., 229.)

  THE COMPLICATIONS OF NEW YORK STATE POLITICS Ibid., 226–31.

  JEFFERSON CHOSE TO THWART BURR’S AMBITIONS Ibid., 231.

  ONE BURRITE, MATTHEW L. DAVIS, CALLED ON THE PRESIDENT Gustavus Myers, The History of Tammany Hall (Ann Arbor, Mich., 2005), 15. In Myers’s version of the story, Davis had been talking about the “immense influence” of New York in the moments before Jefferson caught the fly. The president then asked Davis if he had ever noticed the difference in size between “one portion of the insect and its body.” As Myers has it, “The hint was not lost on Davis, who, though not knowing whether Jefferson referred to New York or to him, ceased to talk on the subject.” (Ibid.) My own view is that snatching a fly out of the air would leave a distinct enough impression even without additional commentary.

  “THERE IS HARDLY A MAN” Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 231.

  “THERE IS CERTAINLY” Ibid., 133.

  “MR. BURR WILL SURELY ARRIVE” Louis-André Pichon to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Les Archives Diplomatiques-P19506. “He is a man against whom you know all there is to say, but what is certain is that he would take the reins of business; if the Federalists consent, you can rely that this nation takes on an appearance that it has not had before,” Pichon added. (Ibid.)

  A CELEBRATORY FEDERALIST DINNER Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, IV, 103.

  ON THE FOURTH PTJ, XXXVIII, 121.

  “THE SPECIAL FEASTS” Ibid., 89.

  “THE PRINCIPLES WHICH DIRECT IT” Louis-André Pichon to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Les Archives Diplomatiques-P19506.

  “THAT WOULD SCARCELY HAPPEN” Ibid.

  “JEFFERSON IS THE IDOL” Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, IV, 103–4.

  A DECADE LATER PTJ, XXV, 75–84.

  A THREAT FROM THE BRITISH James P. Ronda, Jefferson’s West: A Journey with Lewis and Clark (Charlottesville, Va., 2000), 26–27. For a standard account of Jefferson and the Lewis and Clark expedition, see Donald Jackson, Thomas Jefferson and the Stony Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello (Norman, Okla., 1993).

  “IT REQUIRES ONLY THE COUNTENANCE” Alexander Mackenzie, Voyages from Montreal, on the River St. Laurence: Through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans; in the Years 1789 and 1793 (New York, 1814), 388.

  “MANY POLITICAL REASONS” Ibid., 392.

  “I AM AFRAID” Ronda, Jefferson’s West, 21.

  A THEATER OF CONTENTION Ibid., 33–37, describes some of the political and diplomatic factors at work, including counsel from Gallatin and Attorney General Levi Lincoln.

  MERIWETHER LEWIS, HIS PRIVATE SECRETARY TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/meriwether-lewis (accessed 2012).

  BORN IN 1774 AT LOCUST HILL Ibid.

  TEN MILES FROM MONTICELLO Ibid.

  HIS OWN “NEIGHBORHOOD” Ibid.

  BLUE-EYED Marshall Smelser, The Democratic Republic, 1801–1815 (New York, 1968), 125.

  A LIEUTENANT IN THE U.S. ARMY TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/meriwether-lewis (accessed 2012).

  “KNOWLEDGE OF THE WESTERN COUNTRY” Ibid.

  APPARENTLY DREW ON LEWIS’S SENSE Ibid.

  CONGRESS SECRETLY AGREED PTJ, XXXIX, 588. “You know we have been many years wishing to have the Missouri explored and whatever river, heading with that, runs into the Western ocean,” Jefferson wrote Benjamin S. Barton from Washington in February 1803. “Congress, in some secret proceedings, have yielded to a proposition I made them for permitting me to have it done. It is to be undertaken immediately with a party of about ten, and I have appointed Capt. Lewis, my secretary, to conduct it.” (Ibid.)

  THE PRESIDENT ASKED FOR TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/jeffersons-confidential-letter-to-congress (accessed 2012).

  FIFTEEN TIMES THAT AMOUNT Jackson, Letters of Lewis and Clark, II, 428. The best estimate of the cost is $38,722.25. I am grateful to Barbara Oberg and to Gary Moulton for their help on this point.

  “CAPT. LEWIS IS BRAVE” PTJ, XXXIX, 599.

  LEWIS ASKED WILLIAM CLARK TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/expedition-timeline (accessed 2012).

  THIRTY-FOUR · VICTORIES, SCANDAL, AND A SECRET SICKNESS

  “BY THIS WENCH SALLY” PTJ, XXXVIII, 324.

  IT WAS AN IDEAL OF THE AGE Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution, 298–301.

  HAD WARNED AGAINST PARTISAN SPIRIT George Washington, Writings, ed. John H. Rhodehamel (New York, 1997), 962–77.

  WERE NEVER TO BE REALIZED Jefferson himself came to see that total unity of interest was simply not an element of the political condition. He would later tell John Adams that all societies in all times had been divided roughly along Whig and Tory (or Republican and Federalist) lines. In his Origins of American Politics, Bernard Bailyn quotes a 1733 essay in the New York Gazette on the practicalities of partisanship. “I may venture to say that some opposition, though it proceed not entirely from a public spirit, is not only necessary in free governments but of great service to the public. Parties are a check upon one another, and by keeping the ambition of one another within bounds, serve to maintain the public liberty. Opposition is the life and soul of public zeal which, without it, would flag and decay for want of an opportunity to exert itself.… It may indeed proceed from wrong motives, but still it is necessary.” (Ibid., 126.)

  Bailyn found a Pennsylvania writer saying much the same thing in 1738 and a New York writer in 1748 arguing that “regard for liberty has always made me think that parties in a free state ought rather to be considered as an advantage to the public than an evil. Because while they subsist I have viewed them as so many spies upon one another, ready to proclaim abroad and warn the public of any attack or encroachment upon the public liberty and thereby rouse the members thereof to assert those rights they are [entitled?] to by the laws.” (Ibid., 127.) Such sentiments were the exception, not the rule, but Jefferson articulated similar views.

  “YOU MAY SUPPOSE” Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, 102.

  “THE MEN OF THE DIFFERENT PARTIES” Ibid.

  “NO TAVERN OR BOARDING HOUSE” Ibid., 103.

  “NOTHING SHALL BE SPARED” Ibid., 8.

  “THE ATTEMPT AT RECONCILIATION” Ibid., 9.

  “THERE IS NOTHING TO WHICH A NATION” PTJ, XXXIII, 234.

  “REIGN OF WITCHES” Ibid., XXX, 389.

  “THE COUNTRY IS SO TOTALLY” Diary of John Quincy Adams, 1794–1845: American Political, Social, and Intellectual Life from Washington to Polk, ed. Allan Nevins (New York, 1969), 21.

  “MR. JEFFERSON DOESN’T AT ALL” Louis-Andre Pichon, Les Archives Diplomatiques.

  THE NEW JUDICIARY ACT OF 1802 See, for instance, Richard E. Ellis, The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (New York, 1971), and Johnstone, Jefferson and the Presidency, 164–80.

  PROCEEDED WITH CAUTION Johnstone, Jefferson and the Presidency, 170–73. While Richard E. Ellis argued that Marbury v. Madison triggered Jefferson’s push for judicial reform (Ellis, Jeffersonian Crisis, 40–45), Johnstone believed that “the little evidence available … seems to point to the conclusion that while the Marbury ‘show cause’ order did galvanize Republicans into demands for immediate action and may well have convinced Jefferson to agree to put repeal first on the Senate’s agenda at the December session of Congress, the president’s basic commitment for repeal had already been made.” (Johnstone, Jefferson and the Presidency, 172.)

  “IN PURSUANCE OF THE RECOMMENDATION�
�� Ibid., 173. On Saturday, February 20, 1802, in a seven-hour speech, James Bayard attacked the repeal of the 1801 act. (PTJ, XXXVI, 618–19.) “There are many,” he said, “very many who believe, if you strike this blow, you inflict a mortal wound on the Constitution. There are many now willing to spill their blood to defend that Constitution. Are gentlemen disposed to risk the consequences?” (Ibid., 619.) Jefferson reacted coolly—and hoped his equanimity would be noticed. “They expect to frighten us: but are met with perfect sangfroid,” Jefferson told Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., the day after Bayard’s remarks. (Ibid., 618.)

  THE REPEAL PASSED PTJ, XXXVII, 72–74.

  THE HOUSE VOTE REFLECTED Johnstone, Jefferson and the Presidency, 175.

  A SINGLE VOTE Ibid.

  THE FEDERALISTS WERE HORRIFIED “If the principle becomes settled which is established by this decision of the Legislature, I shall hereafter consider the Constitution of no value,” Roger Griswold wrote on Friday, March 5, 1802. (Letter of Roger Griswold, March 5, 1802, William Lane Griswold Memorial Collection, Yale University.)

  “THE JUDGE’S INVETERACY IS PROFOUND” Henry Adams, History, 132.

  THE CASE OF MARBURY V. MADISON Simon, What Kind of Nation, 173–90.

  PICKERING WAS UNSTABLE Irving Brant, Impeachment: Trials and Errors (New York, 1972), 46–57, is good on Pickering’s alcoholism. Also see Lynn W. Turner, “The Impeachment of John Pickering,” American Historical Review 54 (April 1949), 485–507, and Eleanore Bushnell, Crimes, Follies, and Misfortunes: The Federal Impeachment Trials (Urbana, Ill., 1992), 43–55.

  THE EFFORT AGAINST CHASE Brant, Impeachment, 58–83, and Richard Ellis, “The Impeachment of Samuel Chase” in American Political Trials, ed. Michael R. Belknap (Westport, Conn., 1981), 57–78.

  “WHERE THE LAW IS UNCERTAIN” Henry Adams, History, 402.

  “OUGHT THIS SEDITIOUS AND OFFICIAL ATTACK” Ibid., 402–3.

  “I ASK THESE QUESTIONS” Ibid.

  THE SENATE CONVICTED JOHN PICKERING EOL, 422.

  THE HOUSE IMPEACHED SAMUEL CHASE Ibid., 422–24.

  AN ACQUITTAL FROM THE SENATE Ibid., 424.

  AN “ELECTIONEERING PARTISAN” Henry Adams, History, 456.

  HOPES “THAT YOUR EXCELLENCY” PTJ, XXXV, 477.

  ASKED “TO GO TO WASHINGTON” Ibid., XXXVI, 581.

  “YOU ARE IN DANGER” Ibid., 641.

  “AN ENERGETIC TONE” Ibid., XXXIII, 257.

  “AT LENGTH THE POOR ARTS” Ibid., 208. See also The Hutchinson Illustrated Encyclopedia of British History, ed. Simon Hall (Chicago, 1999), 224, and Edward Hale, The Fall of the Stuarts and Western Europe from 1678 to 1697 (New York, 1913), 36–37.

  A MODERATE TONE Ibid., 208–9.

  “WE MUST BE EASY” Ibid., 423.

  HE DID NOT FAIL TO TAKE DECISIVE ACTION Carl E. Prince, “The Passing of the Aristocracy: Jefferson’s Removal of the Federalists, 1801–1805,” The Journal of American History 57, no. 3 (December 1970): 563–75. See also Carl Russell Fish, “Removal of Officials by the Presidents of the United States,” in Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1899, I (Washington, D.C., 1900), 67–70.

  HE DISPLACED ABOUT 46 PERCENT Prince, “Passing of the Aristocracy,” 565–66.

  THE STRONG MAJORITY OF WHOM Ibid.

  THE HISTORICAL COMPANY OF ANDREW JACKSON Ibid., 566.

  HARD ON ADAMS’S LAST-MINUTE DECISIONS PTJ, XXXIII, 428. “The nominations crowded in by Mr. Adams after he knew he was not appointing for himself, I treat as mere nullities,” Jefferson said on March 24, 1801. (Ibid.)

  THAT OF ELIZUR GOODRICH Ibid., XXXIV, 90–94.

  A REMONSTRANCE AGAINST GOODRICH’S REMOVAL Ibid., 381–84. Also see ibid., 301–2.

  “DECLARATIONS BY MYSELF” Ibid., 555–56.

  THE NATURE OF THE ENTERPRISE Louis-André Pichon, Les Archives Diplomatiques. From the perspective of an outsider, Louis-André Pichon clearly got the message Jefferson was sending. “Mr. Jefferson doesn’t at all hesitate to say that the previous administration conducted itself under anti-republican maxims” and that he was going to correct such “inequalities and errors.” To Pichon, the New Haven matter left “no doubt about the course which he proposes to follow during his administration.” (Ibid.)

  “THE INFAMOUS AND SEDITIOUS LIBELS” PTJ, XXXIX, 473.

  “ON THE SUBJECT OF PROSECUTIONS” Ibid., 553.

  “IT IS WELL KNOWN THAT” PTJ, XXXVIII, 323–25. The editors of PTJ cite: Richmond Recorder, 15, 22, 29 Sep., 20 Oct., 10, 17 Nov., 8 Dec. 1802; anb, s.v. “Hemings, Sally”; Durey, Callender, 157–63; Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville, Va., 1997), 59–77; Joshua D. Rothman, “James Callender and Social Knowledge of Interracial Sex in Antebellum Virginia,” in Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf, eds., Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture (Charlottesville, Va., 1999), 87–113.

  HE CORRECTED THOSE HE MISSED Ibid., 325.

  “THE LICENSE THAT HAS BEEN INDULGED” Louis-André Pichon, P19507 États-Unis 1802–1803 (an XI), Les Archives Diplomatiques.

  AN 1805 LETTER Thomas Jefferson to Robert Smith, Washington, July 1, 1805, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.

  IT IS POSSIBLE, THOUGH, THAT JEFFERSON WAS NOT ADDRESSING TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/iii-review-documentary-sources (accessed 2012).

  “CALLENDER AND SALLY” McCullough, John Adams, 581. Jefferson’s friends hurried to reassure him. “I would at this time only remark that as to the case of the lady there is not a gentleman in the U. States of either party who does not hold in detestation the pitiful propagations of so pitiful a tale,” Smith replied from Baltimore on July 4, 1805. “Your country by their approving voice at the last election have passed sentence on all the allegations that malice has exhibited against you.”

  Of Callender in particular, John Quincy Adams wrote Rufus King on October 8, 1802: “He writes under the influence of personal resentment and revenge, but the effect of his publications upon the reputation of the President has been considerable.” (Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, IV, 176.)

  WAS FOUND DROWNED Lewis and Onuf, Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, 104.

  IN THREE FEET OF WATER Hyland, In Defense of Thomas Jefferson, 9–10.

  OBSERVED WANDERING DRUNKENLY Ibid.

  THE INQUEST FOUND NO EVIDENCE Ibid.

  IN 1806, THOMAS MOORE, AN IRISH POET Stanton, “Those Who Labor for My Happiness,” 27–29.

  “THE WEARY STATESMAN” Ibid., 29.

  PATSY AND A FORMER SECRETARY Ibid., 30.

  “OBNOXIOUS PASSAGES” Ibid.

  LAUGHED THEM OFF Ibid. Patsy and Burwell, it was reported, ultimately “joined heartily in the merriment.” (Ibid.)

  “MY HEALTH HAS ALWAYS BEEN” PTJ, XXXVI, 178.

  “I HAVE SAID AS MUCH” Ibid.

  THE COMPLAINT WAS DIARRHEA JHT, IV 186.

  A “DISEASE CHARACTERIZED BY” Robley Dunglison, Medical Lexicon: A Dictionary of Medical Science (Philadelphia, 1846), 244.

  “MRS. EPPES IS BEAUTIFUL” Margaret Bayard Smith, First Forty Years, 34.

  “GAVE ME AN ACCOUNT” Ibid., 35.

  “I HAVE ONLY TIME” Mary Jefferson Eppes to John Wayles Eppes, November 25, 1802. Extract published at Papers of Thomas Jefferson Retirement Series Digital Archive, http://retirementseries.dataformat.com (accessed 2012).

  “ADIEU ONCE MORE” PTJ, XXXIX, 309–10.

  JEFFERSON SET ABOUT ACQUIRING TJ to Martha Jefferson Randolph, May 6, 1805, Pierpont Morgan Library.

  OBSERVED THE PRESIDENT SITTING Margaret Bayard Smith, First Forty Years, 396.

  “I WILL CATCH YOU” PTJ, XXXVIII, 111.

  “I HAVE WROUGHT” Ibid., XVIII, 499–500.

  SEEKING
CONGRESSIONAL SEATS TJ to Mary Jefferson Eppes, (RC [Gabriel Wells, New York City, 1946]; at foot of text: “Mrs. Eppes.” PrC (CSmH).

  THIRTY-FIVE · THE AIR OF ENCHANTMENT!

  “THE NEWS OF THE CESSION” Margaret Bayard Smith, First Forty Years, 38.

  “THE FAME OF YOUR POLITICAL WISDOM” Horatio Gates to TJ, July 7, 1803, Thomas Jefferson Papers, LOC.

  THE THIRD TREATY OF SAN ILDEFONSO See Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansionism (New York, 2008), 57.

  GLORIOUS EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PALACE International Dictionary of Historic Places, III, eds. Trudy Ring and Robert M. Salkin (Chicago, 1995), “La Granja de San Ildefonso (Segovia, Spain),” Elizabeth Brice, 300–3.

  “WORKS MOST SORELY” PTJ, XXXVII, 264.

  “I AM WILLING TO HOPE” Joseph J. Ellis, American Creation, 212–13.

  “I BELIEVE THAT THE DESTINIES” PTJ, XXXVII, 298.

  “THERE IS ON THE GLOBE ONE SINGLE SPOT” Ibid.

  IN A CONVERSATION “OF SOME LENGTH” Edward Thornton to Lord Hawkesbury, March 6, 1802, FO 3/35, National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew.

  “THE OCCUPATION OF THIS COUNTRY” Ibid.

  “THE INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCES” Ibid.

  “THE DAY THAT FRANCE TAKES POSSESSION” PTJ, XXXVII, 264–66.

  WILLING TO SHIFT HIS SYMPATHIES Joseph J. Ellis, American Creation, 213.

  “FRANCE PLACING HERSELF” PTJ, XXXVII, 264.

  A COPY OF A SUBSEQUENT TREATY Nugent, Habits of Empire, 57.

  A TUTORIAL ON THE PRACTICALITIES OF POWER PTJ, XXXVII, 372–75.

  “A MOST IMPORTANT PIECE OF POLITICAL BUSINESS” Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison, 52.

  “IN THIS SITUATION” TJ to James Monroe, January 10, 1803, James Monroe Papers, LOC.

  A SNOWSTORM AND UNFAVORABLE WINDS James Monroe to TJ, March 7, 1803, Thomas Jefferson Papers, LOC.

  “I HOPE THE FRENCH GOVT.” Ibid.

  A DRAWING ROOM GATHERING IN PARIS Robert R. Livingston to TJ, March 12, 1803, Thomas Jefferson Papers, LOC.

  “WHEN THE FIRST CONSUL” Ibid.

  “YOU MAY EASILY SURMISE THE SENSATION” Ibid.

  “I RENOUNCE LOUISIANA” Joseph J. Ellis, American Creation, 220–21.