American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Peltason on Marshall stating the question so that the answer was obvious]: Jack W. Peltason and James MacGregor Burns, Government by the People (Prentice-Hall, 1952), p. 107.

  [Boston Independent Chronicle on Marbury]: quoted in Baker, pp. 409-10.

  [Jefferson’s executive leadership and his quotations thereon]: Johnstone, pp. 86, 56.

  [Jefferson on harmony in his Cabinet]: Jefferson to Destutt de Tracy, Jan. 26, 1811, Ford, Vol. 9, p. 307.

  [Jefferson on President’s power of decision]: ibid., p. 308.

  [Cunningham on Jefferson as Republican party unifier]: Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, p. 304.

  [Jefferson’s moderate appointment policy]: Ellis, p. 234.

  [Jefferson on likelihood that Republican party would split]: Jefferson to Joel Barlow, May 3, 1802, Ford, Vol. 8, p. 150.

  [His tendency to equate the Republican party with the nation]:Jefferson to William Duane, March 28, 1811, ibid., Vol. 9, pp. 310-14.

  [Hamilton-Burr duel]: Milton Lomask, Aaron. Burr (Farrar, Straus Sc Giroux, 1979), pp. 346-55.

  [Jefferson on majority rule in his Inaugural Address]: Ford, Vol. 8, p. 2 (reprinted in abbreviated note form in Ford).

  6. THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR

  [Coronation of Napoleon]: Frederic Masson, Napoleon and His Coronation (Lippincott, [1907]), pp. 171-240; Vincent Cronin, Napoleon Bonaparte: An Intimate Biography (William Morrow, 1972), pp. 246-54.

  [French attack to the east]: Theodore A. Dodge, Napoleon, Vol. 2 in Great Captains series (Houghton Mifflin, 1904).

  [British court and politics]: John Brooke, King George III (Constable, 1972).

  [Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar]: David Walder, Nelson (Dial Press, 1978), Ch. 33.

  [Jefferson on “chance”]: Jefferson to Barnabus Bidwell, July 5, 1806, quoted in Robert M. Johnstone, Jr., Jefferson and the Presidency (Cornell University Press, 1978), p. 132.

  [Jefferson on inexperience of American diplomats]: cited by Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President (Little, Brown, 1970); Vol. 4, p. 299, as Jefferson to Madison, March 19, 1803; cited in ibid., Vol. 5, Jefferson the President: Second Term, 1805-1809, p. xviii, as of date of Nov. 19, 1803.

  [Barbary pirates]: Louis B. Wright and Julia H. MacLeod, The First Americans in North Africa (Princeton University Press, 1945); Ray W. Irwin, The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with the Barbary Powers (University of North Carolina Press, 1931).

  [Burr, Wilkinson, and western adventurism]: Thomas P. Abernethy, The Burr Conspiracy (Oxford University Press, 1954); James Ripley Jacobs, Tarnished Warrior (Macmillan, 1938); Nathan Schachner, Aaron Burr (Frederick A. Stokes, 1937); Isaac J. Cox, “Hispanic American Phases of the ‘Burr Conspiracy,’ ” Hispanic American Historical Review; Vol. 12, No. 2 (May 1932), pp. 142-75.

  [Frederick Jackson Turner on Wilkinson]: quoted in John A. Garraty, ed., Encyclopedia of American Biography (Harper & Row, 1974), p. 1204.

  [Jefferson’s proclamation against the conspiracy]: Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897), Vol. 8, pp. 481-82 (Nov. 27, 1806).

  “The Hurricane … Now Blasting the World”

  [The “broken voyage”]: A. L. Burl, The United States, Great Britain, and British North America from the Revolution to the Establishment of Peace After the War of 1812 (Yale University Press, 1940), pp. 218-24; see generally Eli F. Heckscher, The Continental System (Humphrey Milford, 1922).

  [Identifying English deserters on American ships]: Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People (F. S. Crofts, 1941), p. 112; James F. Zimmerman, Impressment of American Seamen (Longmans, Green, 1925), passim.

  [Jefferson on public opinion following the Chesapeake incident]: Jefferson to Du Pont de Nemours, July 14, 1807, cited in Bailey, pp. 116-17; Jefferson to William Duane, July 20, 1807, Ford, Vol. 9, p. 120.

  [Jefferson and the embargo]: Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President: Second Term, 1805-1809 (Little, Brown, 1974), Ch. 26; Louis Martin Sears, Jefferson and the Embargo (Duke University Press, 1927).

  [Impact of the embargo and New Hampshire song]: Bailey, pp. 119-120, quoted from p. 119.

  [Jefferson’s failure to elicit full support for the embargo from his colleagues]: Johnstone, p. 266.

  [Jefferson’s “un-Jeffersonian” behavior in enforcing embargo]: ibid., p. 284.

  [Poetic attack on Jefferson by William Cullen Bryant]: William Cullen Bryant, The Embargo, “By a Youth of Thirteen” (Printed for the Purchasers, 1808); quoted in part in Malone, Jefferson: Second Term, p. 606.

  [Jefferson on the sudden unaccountable revolution]: Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Feb. 7, 1809, Ford, Vol. 9, p. 244.

  [Jefferson on “hurricane…now blasting the world”]: Jefferson to Caesar Rodney, Feb. 10, 1810, ibid, p. 271.

  [Impeachment of Justice Chase]: Johnstone, pp. 182-87. [Chase on “mobocracy”]: quoted in Nathan Schachner, Thomas Jefferson (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951), Vol. 2, p.

  778.

  [Jefferson as political leader]: Johnstone, passim; Dumas Malone, Thomas Jefferson as Political Leader (University of California Press, 1963).

  [The Marshall court]: Albert J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall (Houghton Mifflin, 1919), Vol. 3; Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History (Little, Brown, 1924), Vol. 1.

  [Trial of Aaron Burr]: Richard B. Morris, Fair Trial (Alfred A. Knopf, 1952); Francis F. Beime, Shout Treason: The Trial of Aaron Burr (Hastings House, 1959); cf. Julius W. Pratt, “Aaron Burr and the Historians,” New York History, Vol. 26, No. 4 (October 1945). PP 447-70.

  [Jefferson on the Madison-Monroe friction]: Jefferson to Monroe, February 18, 1808, Ford, Vol. 9, p. 17, 7-78.

  [Election of 1808]: Irving Brant, “Election of 1808,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., cd., History of American Presidential Elections (Chelsea House, 1971), Vol. 1, pp. 185-246.

  The Irresistible War

  [Dolley Madison’s interposition between the French and English ministers]: Irving Brant, The Fourth President (Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), p. 404.

  [Origins of War of 1812]: Bradford Perkins, Prologue to War, 1805-1812 (University of California Press, 1961); George R. Taylor, “Agrarian Discontent in the Mississippi Valley Preceding the War of 1812,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 39, No. 4 (August 1931), pp. 471-505; William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History (World, 1961), pp. 192-96. Roger H. Brown offers a somewhat different analysis in The Republic in Peril: 1812 (Columbia University Press, 1964).

  [War of 1812]:Patrick C.T. White, Nation on Trial: America and War of 1812 (John Wiley & Sons, 1965); Reginald Horsman, The War of 1812 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1969); Harry L. Coles, The War of 1812 (University of Chicago Press, 1965).

  [John Randolph as legislative leader]: William Cabell Bruce, John Randolph of Roanoke (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922), Vol. 1, Ch. 7.

  [Tension earlier between Madison and Monroe]: Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (McGraw-Hill, 1971), Ch. 15; Brant, The Fourth President, Ch. 40.

  [Monroe’s appointment as Secretary of State]: Ammon, pp. 454-56; Irving Brant, James Madison the President (Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), Ch. 18.

  [Boston Columbian Centinel on western “hypocrisy”]: quoted in Bailey, p. 135.

  [Benton on question of war]: Thomas Hart Benton to Henry Clay, Feb. 7, 1810, in James F. Hopkins, ed., The Papers of Henry Clay (University Press of Kentucky, 1959), Vol. l, p. 447.

  [Clay on conquest of Canada]: ibid., p. 450.

  [Macon on the governments of England and France]: quoted in Bailey, p. 137.

  [Madison on going to war against England and/or France]: James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 25, 1812, Gaillard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), Vol. 8, p. 191.

  [Monroe’s anonymous letter]: Washington National Intelligencer editorial, April 14, 1812, Hopkins, Vol. 1, p. 645; originally thought to have been written by Clay, it has been proved to be the work of Monroe.
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  [Madison’s war message]: Hunt, Vol. 8, p. 198.

  [John Quincy Adams on impressment]: Perkins, p. 428. [Calhoun on same]: ibid, p. 434.

  [Fourth of July toast]: ibid., p. 435.

  [Election of 1812]: Norman K. Risjord, “The Election of 1812,” in Schlesinger, pp. 249-72.

  [Madison on “Experimentum crucis”]: Madison to Thomas Jefferson, Oct. 14, 1812, Hunt, Vol. 8, p. 220.

  [English commander on regulars]: Coles, p. 157.

  [The American way of war]: Merle Curti, Peace or War: The American Struggle, 1636-1936. (W. W. Norton, 1936); Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Macmillan, 1973); Walter Millis, Arms and Men (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1956).

  [Jay on the supreme need for safety]: Federalist No. 3, in Edward Mead Earle, ed., The Federalist (Modern Library, n.d), p. 13.

  [Relative size of American and European military efforts]: John K. Mahan, The War of 1812 (University of Florida Press, 1972), p. 325.

  Waterside Yankees: The Federalists at Ebb Tide

  [The Hartford Convention]: Henry Adams, History of the United States, 1813-1817 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891), Vol. 2; James M. Banner, Jr., To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789-1815 Alfred A. Knopf, 1970); David H. Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism (Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 177-78 and passim; Samuel Eliot Morison, Harrison Gray Otis (Houghton Mifflin, 1969), esp. Ch. 17.

  [Monroe’s effort to monitor the convention]: Ammon, pp. 341-42.

  [Waterside Yankee leaders]: my portraits are drawn mainly from Fischer’s brief biographies of old Federalists in Fischer, pp. 245-59. [Ames as “lethargic, “etc.]: ibid., p. 21.

  [Salem in 1790]: Samuel Eliot Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts (Houghton Mifflin, 1921), p. 79.

  [Marblehead]: Samuel Eliot Morison, By Land and By Sea (Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), p. 183.

  [Other ports]: Robert C. Albion, William A. Baker, and Benjamin W. Labaree, New England and the Sea (Wesleyan University Press, 1972), passim; see also David T. Gilchrist, ed., The Growth of the Seaport Cities, 1790-1825; (University Press of Virginia, 1967).

  [Plymouth rope making]: Samuel Eliot Morison, The Ropemakers of Plymouth (Houghton Mifflin, 1950).

  [The sight of Boston]: quoted by Morison from unnamed source, in Morison, Maritime History of Massachusetts, p. 42.

  [Connecticut Valley trade]: Margaret Elizabeth Martin, Merchants and Trade of the Connecticut River Valley, 1750-1820 (Smith College Studies in History, Vol. 24, October 1938-July 1939).

  [Yankee merchants]: Arthur Meier Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763-1776 (Longmans, Green, 1918); see also George E. Brooks, Jr., Yankee Traders, Old Coasters and African Middlemen (Boston University Press, 1970).

  [Yankee merchants’ preoccupation with commerce]: Brissot de Warville, 1788, quoted in Morison, Maritime History of Massachusetts, p. 43.

  [Mariner’s life]: Albion, Baker, and Labaree, p. 86.

  [Social deference in the port towns]: Fischer, p. xiv; for a broad view of a specific social order, that of the merchants of Newburyport, see Benjamin W. Labaree, Patriots and Partisans (Harvard University Press, 1962); see also Albion, Baker, and Labaree, pp. 50-53.

  [Boston and Cambridge cultural scenes around 1815]: Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865, E. P. Dutton, 1936), Chs. 1-2, quoted at p. 8. See also Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (Harcourt, Brace, 1930). Vol.2, Book 3, Part I.

  [The Essex Junto]: David H. Fischer, “The Myth of the Essex Junto,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 21, No. 2 (April 1964). pp. 191-235.

  [Essexmen as conservatives]: Fischer, “Myth of the Essex junto,” p. 199.

  [John Quincy Adams on Essexmen’s selfishness]: J. Q. Adams to Josiah Quincy, Dec. 4, 1804, cited in Edmund Quincy, Josiah Quincy (Fields, Osgood, 1869), p. 64.

  [John Adams’ instructions to himself on the proper pursuit of knowledge]: L. H. Butterfield, ed., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Belknap Press, 1961), Vol. 1, p. 73 (diary notation of a Tuesday in Jan. 1759).

  [Adams’ moral instructions to himself]: ibid., p. 72 (same date).

  [Adams on individual self-interest versus public virtue]: quoted in Page Smith, John Adams (Doubleday. 1962), p. 234.

  [Wood’s summary of reasons for balanced government]: Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (University of North Carolina Press, 1969), p. 198.·

  [John Adams on executive power]: see Manning J. Dauer, The Adams Federalists (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1953), esp. Ch. 3.

  [Adams’ fear of the few]: Adams to Jefferson, March 1, 1778, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston.

  [Adams quoted on liberty]: Smith, pp. 78-79.

  [Adams on equality]: quoted in Smith, Vol. 1, p. 259, from Charles Francis Adams, ed., Works (Little, Brown, 1854), Vol. 9, pp. 375-78 (Adams to James Sullivan, May 26, 1776).

  [Adams on properly as a liberty]: quoted in Dauer, p. 42.

  [Adams’ views in general]: see also Zoltán Haraszti, John Adams and the Prophets of Progress (Crosse t& Dunlap, 1964); Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Alfred A. Knopf, 1955).

  Federalists: The Tide Runs Out

  [Federalist party]: Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism, passim; see also Linda K. Kerber, Federalists in Dissent (Cornell University Press, 1970); Shaw Livermore, Jr., The Twilight of Federalism (Princeton University Press, 1962).

  [Fischer on Adams’ “curious relationship”]: The Revolution of American Conservatism, p. 7.

  [Adams’ puzzling motives]: Ebenezer Mattoon to Thomas Dwight, March 2, 1801, quoted in Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism, p. 18.

  [Adams on his Federalist foes’ “stiff·rumped stupidity”]: John Adams to John Quincy Adams, Dec. 14, 1804, Adams Family Papers, Reel 403, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  [John Quincy Adams’ alienation from the Federalist party in Massachusetts]: Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), pp. 138-50.

  [Samuel Chase on liberty]: Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism, p. 358.

  [Samuel Lyman on nothing so unequal as equality”]: ibid., p. 251.

  [Sewall on security]: ibid., p. 256.

  [Ames on “Madam Liberty”]: ibid., p. 26.

  [Ames on disorganization of Federalists]: ibid, p. 53.

  [Federalist satire of the “Grand Caucus”]: ibid., p. 57.

  [Federalist attempts to organize a party mechanism]: See in general Linda K. Kerber, “The Federalist Party,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of U.S. Political Parties (Chelsea House, 1973), Vol. 1, pp. 3-29. See also Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism, Ch. 3.

  [Jeremiah Smith on “red hot feds”]: ibid., p. 64.

  [Pickering’s secession “plot” of 1804]: Fischer, “The Myth of the Essex Junto,” pp. 229-32.

  [Hartford Convention finale]: Banner, Ch. 8; Morison, Harrison Gray Otis; review of Banner by Fischer in American Historical Review, Vol. 75, No. 6 (October 1970), pp. 1778-79.

  [Hartford Convention report]: quoted in Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, rev. ed. (Harper & Brothers, 1961), p. 153.

  [Madison on hearing of the proposed Hartford Convention]: Brant, The Fourth President, p. 582.

  [Jefferson on Hartford Convention]: Ford, Vol. 8, p. 67.

  7·THE AMERICAN WAY OF PEACE

  [Gallatin at Ghent]: Henry Adams, The Life of Albert Gallatin (Lippincott, 1879), pp. 508-48.

  [Negotiations at Ghent]: A. L. Burt, The United States, Great Britain, and British North America (Yale University Press, 1940), Ch. 15; Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), Chs. 9 and 10.

  [J. Q. Adams on his colleagues’ drinking and smoking
habits]: Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (Lippincott, 1874), Vol. 2, p. 656 (diary entry of July 8, 1814).

  [Albert Gallatin as peacemaker]: Viscount Bryce, ed., A Great Peace Maker: The Diary of James Gallatin (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), p. 28.

  [France as a political volcano]: William H. Crawford to Henry Clay, May 15, 1814, in James F. Hopkins, ed., The Papers of Henry Clay (University Press of Kentucky, 1959), Vol. 1, p. 911.

  [Clay on being surrounded by a British garrison]: Clay to William H. Crawford, July 2, 1814, ibid., p. 939.

  [Gallatin on the lot of 100,000 American citizens in the proposed buffer area]: Bryce, p. 28 (diary entry of Aug. 8, 1814).

  [Wellington on American naval power on the Great Lakes]: Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People (F. S. Crofts, 1941), p. 150 (Wellington to Castlercagh, Nov. 9, 1814).

  [“Dreadful day” and Wellington’s alleged note to Gallatin]: Bryce, p. 34 (diary entry of Nov. 28, 1814); see also pp. 34-35 (diary entry of Dec. 12, 1814).

  [Bailey on the treaty as a truce of exhaustion]: Bailey, pp. 151-52.

  [Concluding festivities]: Bryce, pp. 35-36 (diary entries of Dec. 24, 1814, Christmas Day, 1814); see also Adams, Memoirs, Vol. 3, pp. 127, 131, 137-39.

  Good Feelings and Ill

  [Niles’ Weekly Register and New York Evening Post on the news from Ghent]: quoted in Bailey, pp. 154-55. [The treaty of Ghent as one of the most popular of treaties]: ibid, p. 155.

  [London Times laments treaty]: quoted in Glenn Tucker, Poltroons and Patriots (Bobbs-Merrill, 1954), Vol. 2, p. 671.

  [Disarmament of the Great Lakes]: Burt, quoted at p. 388.

  [Madison’s message to Congress]: December 5, 1815, Gaillard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), Vol. 8, pp. 337-38.