American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

[Impossibility of one code of laws]: ibid.

  [Barber on experiment]: ibid., p. 9.

  [Madison on lessons of experience]: ibid.

  [French traveler on slaves]: J. P. Brissot de Warville, New Travels in the United States of America (J. S. Jordan), p. 284.

  [Polish poet at Mount Vernon ]: Julian Niemcewicz, quoted in Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (Columbia University Press, 1943), p. 125.

  [Abigail Adams on women as “Lordess”]: quoted in Smith, John Adams, Vol. 2, p. 1006.

  [John Adams on the subordination of women and children]: ibid., pp. 1016-17.

  [John Randolph’s credo]: quoted in Robert Dawidoff, The Education of John Randolph (W. W. Norton, 1979), p. 32.

  [Washington on religion and morality]: Fitzpatrick, Writings of Washington, Vol. 35, p. 229.

  [William Manning on education]: Manning, pp. 61, 20-21.

  Showdown: The Election of 1800

  [Jefferson to Aaron Burr on the “Eastern” states]: Jefferson to Burr, June 17, 1797, Ford, Vol. 7, pp. 147-48.

  [Jefferson on laying purpose and pen to the cause]: Jefferson to James Madison, Feb. 5, 1799, ibid., p. 344.

  [Intra-party factionalism]: Daniel Sisson, The American Revolution of 1800 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), pp. 363 ff.

  [Hamilton on Adams’ pardon of Fries]: Miller, Alexander Hamilton, p. 507. [Adams to McHenry on Hamilton]: quoted in Smith, John Adams, pp. 1027-28.

  [Burr’s election activities]: Burns, p. 34.

  [Jefferson on role of the central states]: Jefferson to Madison, March 4, 1800, Ford, Vol. 7. P· 434.

  [Jefferson’s refusal to answer “lies”]: Jefferson to James Monroe, May 26, 1800, ibid., p. 448.

  [Marching women and children to the polls]: Miller, The Federalist Era, p. 264.

  [Hamilton on not being overscrupulous]: Hamilton to John Jay, May 7, 1800, in Henry Cabot Lodge, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Constitutional Edition (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [1917]), Vol. 10, pp. 371-74; Frank Monaghan, John Jay: Defender of Liberty (Bobbs-Merrill, 1935), pp. 419-21.

  [Electioneering in l800]: Burns, p. 34.

  The section on Gabriel’s revolt of 1800 was drafted jointly by the author and Stewart Burns.

  [Gabriel’s revolt]: See in general Aptheker, pp. 219-26; Nicholas Halasz, The Rattling Chains (David McKay, 1966), pp. 87-100; Thomas W. Higginson, Black Rebellion (Arno Press, 1969), pp. 185-214; Gerald W. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (Oxford University Press, 1972), passim; Willie Lee Rose, A Documentary History of Slavery in North America (Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 107-14.

  [“Othello” on liberty]: Carter G. Woodson, ed., Negro Orators and Their Orations (Associated Publishers, 1925), pp. 14-15.

  [Du Bois on “the Preacher”]: quoted in Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (Pantheon Books, 1974), p. 258.

  [Black resistance and while controls]: Aptheker, pp. 140-49; Raymond A. Bauer and Alice H. Bauer, “Day to Day Resistance to Slavery,” in Robert V. Haynes, ed., Blacks in White America before 1865 (David McKay, 1972), pp. 235-57.

  [Gabriel Prosser described]: Aptheker, p. 219. [Election of leaders by slaves]: Mullin, p. 148.

  [Rebel leader on right to fight for liberty]: Aptheker, p. 220. [Brother Martin quotes Scripture]: Rose, p. 114.

  [Rebels to spare those “friendly to liberty”]: ibid.

  [Insurrection organized on “true French plan”]: Higginson, p. 199. [Monroe seeks advice]: Monroe to Thomas Jefferson, Sept. 15, 1800, in Stanislaus M. Hamilton, ed., The Writings of James Monroe (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1900),Vol. 3, p. 209.

  [Jefferson on execution of rebels]: Jefferson to James Monroe, Sept. 20, 1800, Ford, Vol. 7., pp. 457-58.

  [Monroe on Gabriel’s stoicism]: Monroe to Colonel Thomas Newton, Oct. 5, 1800, Hamilton, Vol. 3, p. 213. [Rebel on endeavor for liberty]: Aptheker, p. 224.

  [Story about Adams’ mistresses]: Smith, John Adams, p. 1034.

  [Invective against Jefferson in 1800 campaign]:Charles O. Lerche, Jr., “Jefferson and the Election of 1800: A Case Study in the Political Smear,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 5, No. 4 (January 1948), pp. 467-91; see also Cunningham, p. 239.

  [Jefferson’s political stands during election of 1800]: Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, Jan. 26, 1799, Ford, Vol. 7, pp. 327-29.

  [George Cabot to Hamilton, on Burr and Jefferson]: letter of Aug. 10, 1800, Syrett, Vol. 25, pp. 63-64.

  [Miller on the feeling for Burr]: Miller, The Federalist Era, p. 269.

  [Jefferson’s letters after receiving election results]: Jefferson to Robert R. Livingston, Dec. 14, 1800, Ford, Vol. 7, pp. 462-66; Jefferson to Aaron Burr, Dec. 15, 1800, and Feb. 1, 1801, ibid., pp. 466-68 and 485-86, resp.

  [Jefferson as a moderate]: Sisson, p. 407.

  [Hamilton on Burr]: quoted in Miller, The Federalist Era, p. 270.

  [Jefferson on the Federalist effort to “debauch” Burr]: Jefferson to Mary Jefferson Eppes, Jan. 4, 1801, Ford, Vol. 7, p. 478.

  [Burr and the election of 1800]: works cited above; Sisson; John S. Pancake, “Aaron Burr: Would-be Usurper,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 8, No. 2 (April 1951), pp. 204-13.

  [Marshall’s angling toward presidency in 1800 elections]: Albert J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall (Houghton Mifflin, 1916), Vol. 2, pp. 540-43.

  [Jefferson’s indirect assurances to Federalists about his presidency]: Jefferson to Benjamin Smith Barton, Feb. 14, 1801, Ford. Vol. 7. pp. 489-90; Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, Vol. 109, p. 18739; Matthew L. Davis, Memoirs of Aaron Burr (Harper & Brothers, 1858), Vol. 2, pp. 129-33; Schachner, p. 658.

  [Jefferson on the “revolution” of 1800]: quoted in Sisson, p. 21.

  5. JEFFERSONIAN LEADERSHIP

  [Conrad & McMunn’s boardinghouse]: Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President (Little, Brown, 1970), pp. 3, 29;James Sterling Young, The Washington Community, 1800-1828 (Columbia University Press, 1966), Ch. 5, esp. pp. 100-1.

  [Jefferson as “all ends and angles”]: Marshall Smelser, The Democratic Republic (Harper &Row, 1968), p. 1.

  [Jefferson’s Inaugural Address]: Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897), Vol. 8, pp. 1-6.

  [John Marshall’s Inaugural Day letter to Charles Pinckney]: quoted in Leonard Baker, John Marshall: A Life in Law (Macmillan, 1974), pp. 359-60.

  [Reactions by opposition leaders and publicists to Jefferson’s assumption of office and Inaugural Address]: Malone, pp. 4-5; Smelser, pp. 18-19.

  [Jefferson on the “sprig of grass”]: quoted in James MacGregor Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy (Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 25; see general sources quoted therein, in Sources, on Jefferson. I have used occasional sentences or phrases from this work in describing Jefferson.

  [Smelser on liberty as Jefferson’s guiding star]: Smelser, p. 13.

  [Celebrations of Jefferson’s inaugural]: Malone, pp. 29-32.

  “The Eyes of Humanity Are Fixed on Us”

  [Jefferson on the newness of things]: Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, March 21, 1801, Ford, Vol. 8, p. 22.

  [Jefferson on the storm through which the “Argosie” had passed]: Jefferson to John Dickinson, March 6, 1801, ibid., p. 7.

  [Jefferson on the “event of our experiment”]: Jefferson to Governor Hall, July 6, 1802, ibid, p. 156.

  [Jefferson’s attempt to heal party schisms while expecting new opposition to arise from within Republican ranks]: Jefferson to John Dickinson, July 23, 1801, ibid., pp. 75-77; Jefferson to Wilson C. Nicholas, March 26, 1805, ibid, pp. 348-49; Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, July 9, 1807, ibid., Vol. 9, pp. 102-3.

  [Jefferson’s desire to unite Federalists and Republicans he felt he could win to his purpose]: see Jefferson to Horatio Gates, March 8, 1801, ibid., Vol. 8, pp. 11-12.

  [Jefferson’s characterizations of his high Federalist adversaries]: ibid., pp. 41, 147, 169.

  [Jefferson on separating “patrioti
c” Federalists from their congressional leaders]: Jefferson to Thomas Lomax, Feb. 25, 1801, ibid., Vol. 7, p. 500. [Jefferson on avoiding shocking Federalist feelings]: Jefferson to William B. Giles, March 23, 1801, ibid, Vol. 8, p. 26. [Jefferson on the “Essex Junto”]: Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, July 11,1801, ibid., p.67. [Jefferson to Du Pont de Nemours on consolidating great body of people]: ibid., Jan. 18, 1802, p. 126 n.

  [Jefferson on likely extinction of Federalist party]: Jefferson to Du Pont de Nemours, Jan. 18, 1802, ibid.

  [Relationship of Jefferson and Madison]: Adrienne Koch, Jefferson and Madison: The Great Collaboration (Alfred A. Knopf, 1950), passim.

  [Jefferson on “appointments and disappointments”]: Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, March 24, 1801, ibid., p. 31. [Jefferson on making ingrates and enemies]: Jefferson, Jan. 13, 1807, quoted in Leonard D. White, The Jeffersonians (Macmillan, 1951), p. 349· [Jefferson on simple questions]: Jefferson, July 12, 1801, quoted in White, p. 352. See White for extensive discussion of Jefferson’s personnel and patronage policies.

  [Smelser on New Haven as the Vatican City of Federalism]: Smelser, p. 49.

  [Jefferson on his “painful office”]: quoted from his answer to the remonstrance of a committee of the merchants of New Haven, Jefferson to Elias Shipman and others, July 12, 1801,whole text in Ford, Vol. 8, pp. 67-70; see also White, pp. 351-52.

  [Collective leadership of Jefferson with his Cabinet]: Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Process of Government Under Jefferson (Princeton University Press, 1978, Chs. 2-3.

  [Jefferson on public administration as simple]: White, p. 4; Jefferson to James Monroe, May 29, 1801, Ford, Vol. 8, p. 59.

  [Newspaper description of President’s house]: Alexandria Advertiser, quoted in Malone, p. 38.

  [Federalist charge that Jefferson collected rent from his guests in the President’s house]: Irving Brant, James Madison: Secretary of State (Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), p. 42.

  [Jefferson on Washington, DC, as pleasant country residence]: Jefferson to Joel Barlow, May 3, 1803, Ford, Vol. 8, p. 150. [Jefferson to son-in-law on same]: Jefferson to T. M. Randolph. June 4, 1801, quoted in Brant, p. 42.

  [Pennsylvania Avenue as “streak of mud”]: Brant, p. 41. See also Young.

  [Jefferson on paying off “Hamilton’s” debt]: Jefferson to Du Pont de Nemours, Jan. 18,

  1802, Ford, Vol. 8, p. 127 n.

  [Johnstone on causes of Republican disunity in Congress]: Robert M. Johnstone, Jr., Jefferson and the Presidency (Cornell University Press, 1978), p. 119.

  [Significance of congressmen living in separate boardinghouses]: Young, esp. Ch. 6. See also Cunningham, pp. 282-86.

  [John Quincy Adams on typical Republican legislator]: quoted in Johnstone, p. 118.

  [Jefferson’s views on the role of the legislature in a tripartite balance]: Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia (Harper Torchbooks, 1964), pp. 110-24; Jefferson to James Madison, June 20, 1787, Ford, Vol. 4, pp. 390-96; Jefferson to Spencer Roane, Sept. 6, 1819, ibid, Vol. 10, pp. 140-43; Jefferson to Abigail Adams, Sept. 11, 1804, in H. A. Washington, ed. The Works of Thomas Jefferson (Townsend Mac Coun, 1884), Vol. 4, pp. 560-62.

  [Jefferson’s pledge to carry out the legislative will]: reply to notification of election, Feb. 20, 1801, in Saul K. Padover, ed., The Complete Jefferson (Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1943), p. 383.

  [Jefferson’s dinner invitations to Republicans and Federalists]: Young, p. 169.

  [John Quincy Adams on his 1804 dinner with Jefferson]: Charles Francis Adams, ed, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (Lippincott, 1874), Nov. 23, 1804, Vol. 1, p. 316.

  [Adams on his later dinner]: Memoirs, Nov. 3, 1807, quoted in Francis Coleman Rosenberger, ed., Jefferson Reader (E. P. Dutton, 1953). pp. 60-61.

  [Johnstone on flow chart]: Johnstone, p. 121.

  [Jefferson’s party leadership]: See in general Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power (University of North Carolina Press, 1963), esp. Ch. 4. For a sharply dissenting view, see Young.

  To Louisiana and Beyond

  [Madison on the Mississippi]: quoted in Malone, p. 266.

  [Jefferson’s “peculiar confidence” in western men]:Jefferson to J. P. G. Muhlenberg, Jan. 31, 1781, in Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton University Press, 1951), Vol. 4, p. 487.

  [Jefferson on America’s favored international position, in Inaugural Address]: Ford, Vol. 8, p. 3 (text here spelled out from abbreviated form in Ford).

  [Jefferson on having nothing to do with European interests]: Jefferson to George Logan, March 21, 1801, Ford, Vol. 8, p. 23.

  [Jefferson on “unwise” French policy of regaining Louisiana]: Jefferson to James Monroe, May 26, 1801, ibid., p. 58.

  [The Jefferson administration’s reaction to French policy in Saint Domingue]: Carl Ludwig Lokke, “Jefferson and the Leclerc Expedition,” American Historical Review, Vol. 33, No. 2 (January 1928), pp. 322-28. [Jefferson’s fear of implications of independent black republic]: Arthur Burr Darling, Our Rising Empire (Yale University Press, 1940), pp. 415-16; Lokke, p. 324.

  [Jefferson’s warning to France against taking possession of Louisiana]: Jefferson to Robert R. Livingston, April 18, 1802, Ford, Vol. 8, p. 145.

  [Jefferson’s military preparations in response to recession of Louisiana]: Mary P. Adams, “Jefferson’s Reaction to the Treaty of San Ildefonso,”Journal of Southern History, Vol. 21, No. 2 (May 1955), pp. 173-88.

  [Handlin on New Orleans as a fulcrum]: Oscar Handlin, “The Louisiana Purchase,” Atlantic Monthly, January 1955, p. 47.

  [Louisiana policy of the Spanish court]: ibid., pp. 48-49.

  [Jefferson’s notification to Monroe of his appointment]: Jefferson to Monroe, Jan. 10, 1803, Ford, Vol. 8, p. 188. For the formal communications and instructions from the Administration to Livingston and Madison, see Gaillard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), Vol. 7, passim.

  [Monroe’s inability to resist the call to duty]: Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (McGraw-Hill, 1971), pp. 204-5.

  [National Intelligencer on Louisiana treaty, July 8, 1803]: quoted in Malone, p. 297.

  [Jefferson on peace]: Jefferson to John Sinclair, June 30, 1803, quoted in ibid, p. 295.

  [“Fabricus” in the Columbian Centinel, July 13, 1803]: quoted in ibid., p. 297.

  [Paine on constitutionality of power to acquire territory]: Paine to Jefferson, Sept. 23, 1803, in Philip S. Foner, ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine (Citadel, 1945), Vol. 2, pp. 1447-48.

  [Jefferson on “written laws”]: Jefferson to John Calvin, Sept. 20, 1810, Ford, Vol. 9, p.

  279.

  [Jefferson’s draft of a proposed constitutional amendment]: quoted in Malone, p. 316.

  [Jefferson’s willingness to acquiesce in not following constitutional amendment route]: Jefferson to W. C. Nicholas, Sept. 7, 1803, quoted in Johnstone, p, 73.

  [Jefferson’s curiosity about soil, fauna, etc., of Louisiana Territory]: Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, April 27, 1803, Ford, Vol. 8, pp. 193-199; see also references to remainder of this section.

  [The Lewis and Clark expedition]: the key documentary sources are the notes and diaries of the two leaders. Of the several editions, I have used James K. Hosmer, ed., History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark 1804-5-6., - reprinted from the edition of 1814 (A. C. McClurg, 1902), Vols. 1 and 2; and Ernest Staples Osgood, The Field Notes of Captain William Clark, 1803-1805 (Yale University Press, 1964). John Bakeless, Lewis & Clark: Partners in Discovery (William Morrow, 1947), usefully summarizes these and other sources.

  [Jefferson’s concern about the fur trade]: Ralph B. Guinness, “The Purpose of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 20, No. 1 (June 1933), pp. 90-100.

  [Jefferson on Meriwether Lewis]: from “Life of Captain Lewis by Thomas Jefferson” (written in 1813 and included in Hosmer, Vol. 1, pp. xli-lvi, at xlvi).

  [Jefferson’s instructions to Lewis]: Jeffer
son to “Merryweather” Lewis, June 20, 1803, ord, Vol. 8, pp. 194-99.

  [Indian chief on not whipping Indian children]: quoted in Bakeless, p. 124.

  [Jefferson-Lewis exchange at end of expedition]: Lewis to Jefferson, Sept. 23, 1806, quoted in Bakeless, p. 376; Jefferson to Lewis, Oct. 20, 1806, Ford, Vol. 8, p. 476.

  Checkmate: The Federalist Bastion Stands

  [Major sources on judicial review and the Marshall Court]: Robert K. Carr, The Supreme Court and Judicial Review (Farrar and Rinehart, 1942); Gottfried Dietze, ed., Essays on theAmerican Constitution (Prentice-Hall, 1964), esp. Ch. 1; Edward S. Corwin, John Marshall and the Constitution (Yale University Press, 1921); Richard E. Ellis, The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (Oxford University Press, 1971); Robert Kenneth Faulkner, The Jurisprudence of John Marshall (Princeton University Press, 1968); Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History (Little, Brown, 1924), Vol. 1; Benjamin F. Wright, The Growth of American Constitutional Law (Houghton Mifflin, 1942).

  [Jefferson’s reaction to Federalist “courtpacking”]: Jefferson to William B. Giles, March 23, 1801, Ford, Vol. 8, pp. 25-26; Jefferson to William Findley, March 24, 1801, ibid., pp. 27-28; Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, March 24, 1801, ibid, pp. 31-33; Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, March 29, 1801, ibid., pp.40-43. [The “one act of Mr. Adams’s” that displeased Jefferson]: Jefferson to Abigail Adams, June 13, 1804, ibid., Vol. 8, pp. 306-8.

  [Gouverneur Morris on Federalists’ need to cast anchors]: quoted in Johnstone, p. 172.

  [Justice Chase on judicial power]: quoted in Baker, p. 379.

  [Jefferson’s designation “sweeping Republicans”]: cited in Schachner, p. 683.

  [Giles on the Federalist “fortress”]: William B. Giles to Jefferson, June 1, 1801, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress.

  [Jefferson’s involvement in repeal of Judiciary Bill]: Johnstone, p. 175.

  [Reaction of Supreme Court justices to Republican judicial measures]: Baker, pp. 378-79.

  [Marshall opinion in Marbury v. Madison]: William Cranch, Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme, Court of the United States, known also as Cranch Reports (Banks Law Publishing Co., 1911), Vol. 1, pp. 152-80. [Withholding of Marbury commission]: ibid., p. 161. [Peoples “original right”]: ibid., pp. 175-76.