Dear Thomas, deem it no disgrace
With slaves to mend thy breed.
Nor let the wench’s smutty face
Deter thee from the deed.73
Jefferson made no response whatsoever to all these charges and satires, but he knew about them. His friends usually dismissed them as slander. Adams did not. “Callender and Sally will be remembered as long as Jefferson has Blotts in his Character.” The story, he told a Massachusetts correspondent in 1810, was “a natural and almost Unavoidable Consequence of the foul contagion in the human Character [of] Negro Slavery.” He had heard said by a great lady that there was not “a Planter in Virginia who could not reckon among his Slaves a Number of his Children.” Still, he added, none of Jefferson’s scandals, including that involving his youthful attempts to seduce Mrs. Walker, were as bad as the “much more atrocious” tales involving Hamilton.74
Although Adams liked to brag that “never in my Life did I own a slave,” he was no abolitionist and was much more a man of his own time than ours. In 1790 he had been disgusted when the Abolition Society of Pennsylvania had introduced into Congress a petition, signed by Benjamin Franklin, calling for the abolition of slavery in the United States. “What motives the eastern members can have to support the silly petition of Franklin and his Quakers, I never could conceive.”75 For most leaders in 1790, that was certainly the realistic position. Although Franklin’s petition sparked outrage from southern congressmen, one of them saying the Pennsylvanian proposal if accepted would result in a civil war, most elites, including President Washington, agreed with Adams that the petition was ill timed, for it threatened to break up the Union just as it was getting on its feet.
In 1795 Jeremy Belknap, a Boston clergyman and a major founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society, asked Adams how slavery had been abolished in Massachusetts. Adams replied that although he had been involved in several cases before the Revolution in which slaves had sued for their freedom, the rise and progress of slavery was “a subject to which I have never given any very particular attention.” The fact that in at least four recorded cases Adams was the counsel for the master and lost three of them may have helped account for his lack of interest in the subject.76
In his answer to Belknap, Adams assumed that slavery would decline elsewhere just as it had in Massachusetts. One thing was clear: it had not been abolished by intellectual arguments or court decisions. “The real Cause was the multiplication of labouring White people, who would no longer Suffer the Rich to employ these Sable Rivals, So much to their Injury.” These common white people turned black slaves into unprofitable servants. “Their Scoffs & Insults . . . filled the Negroes with Discontents, made them lazy idle, proud, vicious and at length wholly useless to their Masters: to such a Degree that the Abolition of slavery became a measure of Oeconomy.” This same principle had “kept Negro slavery out of France England and other Parts of Europe.”77
At any rate, Adams did not think it wise to suddenly turn the slaves “loose upon a World in which they have no Capacity to procure even a Subsistence.” He asked Belknap, “What would become of the old? The young? The infirm?” The only just way to abolish slavery, said Adams, was “to prohibit the Importation of new Negroes,” and “soften the Severity of the Condition of old ones, as much as possible.” This would buy time “until the increasing Population of the Country shall have multiplied the Whites to such a superiority of Numbers, that the Blacks may be liberated by Degrees, with the Consent of Master and Servant.”78
In 1801 he repeated his admonition to two antislavery Quakers that “the Abolition of slavery must be gradual and accomplished with much caution and Circumspection.” To do it forcefully and abruptly, he said, “would produce greater violations of Justice and Humanity than the continuance of the practice.” He presumed that neither of his Quaker correspondents “would be willing to venture on Exertions which would probably excite Insurrections among the Blacks to rise against their Masters and imbue their hands in innocent blood.” Besides, he said, there were “many other Evils in our Country” that were a more immediate threat to the United States “than the oppression of the blacks . . . hatefull as that is.” These evils, he said, at the very moment the Jeffersonian Republicans were about to take office, were “a general Debauchery as well as dissipation, produced by pestilential phylosophical Principles of Epicurus” that were undermining both government and education. These were more pressing social evils than slavery. Like many other leaders in the early nineteenth century, Adams thought that “the practice of slavery was fast diminishing.”79
Actually, at this point Adams’s position on biding time and softening the condition of the slaves was not all that different from Jefferson’s. By the time Jefferson had returned from France in 1789, he had essentially abandoned his earlier goal of abolishing slavery outright. Instead, he had come to terms with the institution and had begun concentrating on what he called “ameliorating” the condition of the slaves. It was part of his new appreciation of the superiority of America over Europe. Despite its fine arts and culture, the Old World was no longer the measure of civilization. America may have had slaves, but he thought most of them were better off than the great mass of oppressed peasants in Europe.80
When he had left the Washington administration at the end of 1793, he had told people he was returning to Monticello “to watch out for the happiness of those who labor for mine.” Masters and slaves were no longer in the state of war he had described in his Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson had come to believe that a paternalistic slaveholder could have the best interests of the slaves at heart. He had witnessed the way prisoners were treated at the Walnut Street Prison in Philadelphia, where the aim was to eliminate corporal punishment and create rational and useful members of society; and he now sought to apply those principles to the running of Monticello.
He introduced incentives of rewards and distinctions and began doling out random acts of leniency and paying money for some jobs. He established a nail factory, in which young enslaved boys aged ten to sixteen would learn self-discipline and efficiency. He wanted to use “the stimulus of character” rather than “the degrading motive of fear” to get the boys to work productively. Using the whip on the boys (except “in extremities”) would “degrade them in their own eyes” and thus destroy the value of Jefferson’s experiment.81
This was only a respite, however; the burden of slavery on Jefferson would only get heavier as time went on.
• • •
BOTH ADAMSES RETAINED an interest in Jefferson’s life. Abigail learned that in April 1804 Jefferson’s younger daughter, Mary Eppes, known as Polly, died at age twenty-five of a lingering illness following the birth of her second child. Learning of Jefferson’s loss, Abigail wrote Jefferson in May to offer her condolences. Since Abigail had not been in touch with Jefferson for three and a half years, she said she had at first hesitated to write for “reasons of various kinds.” But her feelings for Polly, whom as a nine-year-old arriving in Europe she had cared for, “burst through the restraint.” Having lost her son Charles in 1800, Abigail knew what Jefferson was going through. With what Jefferson called his “evening prospects” now hinging on “the slender thread of a single life”—his elder daughter, Martha Randolph—he had been utterly devastated by Polly’s death. Abigail knew that he needed all the sympathy he could get. She signed her letter as someone “who once took pleasure in subscribing Herself as your Friend.”82
On June 13, 1804, Jefferson responded warmly, recalling the friendship “with which you honoured me,” and expressing “regret that circumstances should have arisen which have seemed to draw a line of separation between us.” He reminded Abigail of his long friendship with Mr. Adams that went back to the very beginning of the Revolution. He said that the political difference that had produced “a rivalship” in the minds of their respective followers was not duplicated in their minds, and thus the “mutual esteem” tha
t each man had for the other was never lessened. This was “sufficient to keep down all jealousy between us, and to guard our friendship” from any sense of rivalry.
Jefferson seems to have assumed that the old friendship was unbroken and that Abigail valued it as much as he did. Perhaps too eager to reconcile, he misinterpreted the tone of Abigail’s letter. He apparently thought their friendship was strong enough that he could invoke it as a reason for excusing Adams for something offensive he had done. He told Abigail “with truth” that there was “only one act of Mr. Adams’s life, and one only,” that ever displeased him. And that was Adams’s many lame-duck appointments to the judiciary. These Jefferson considered “personally unkind.” He believed “it seemed but common justice to leave a successor free to act by instruments of his own choice.” But after brooding for some time, Jefferson said he had “cordially” forgiven Adams’s action because of their friendship and had restored all the esteem and respect for Adams that he had earlier felt. Mentioning this one act that had displeased him was a disastrous mistake.83
Abigail answered Jefferson immediately. She said that if Jefferson had written only the first page of his letter there would have been no further need to write. But his comments about the lame-duck appointments called for a response, and she gave him a long and passionate one. Adams, she said, had assumed that all officeholders with the exception of the cabinet officials would be kept on. Then she launched into a bitter diatribe against the way in which Jefferson’s supporters carried on the campaign for the presidency. She was very angry, and she decided to “freely disclose” to Jefferson just what he had done to sever “the bonds of former Friendship.”
Abigail told Jefferson that one of the first acts of his administration had been to liberate that “wretch” James Callender, who had vilely slandered Adams in the campaign and deserved to remain in jail. Actually, Callender had completed his prison sentence, but Jefferson had pardoned him, thus remitting his fine, which Abigail regarded as “a public approbation of his conduct.” She was furious and cut Jefferson no slack whatsoever. She said “the Chief Magistrate of a Nation, whose elevated station places him in a conspicuous light,” should never forget that his behavior, giving “countenance to a base Calumniater,” for example, could have a very bad effect on the manners and morals of the community. She blamed Jefferson for encouraging Callender and financially supporting him and she couldn’t help reminding the president that this “serpent” whom he had “cherished and warmed” had turned and “bit the hand that nourished him.” She regarded the whole business of Callender “as a personal injury.” She ended by saying that there was one other act of his administration that she considered “personally unkind,” but since “it neither affected character, or reputation,” she decided not to describe it. She told Jefferson that she wrote in confidence and no one had seen her letter. “Faithful are the wounds of a Friend.” Often, she said, she had wished that Jefferson had behaved differently. She bore no malice, she said, but of course she did.84
Jefferson quickly protested. He knew nothing of Callender’s character and his “charities to him were no more meant as encouragements to his scurrilities than those I give to a beggar at my door are meant as rewards for the vices of his life.” Besides, he paid no more attention to what Callender was writing than Mr. Adams paid to the Federalist scandalmongers. He said he pardoned all the victims of “the pretended Sedition law.” His motives ought to be judged, he said, “by the general tenor of my life.”85
Abigail wrote back with “the freedom and unreserve of former Friendship,” to which she would gladly return if all the causes could be removed. These causes went beyond mere differences of opinion, differences, for example, over the Sedition Act. She wouldn’t judge its constitutionality. She presumed that was the job of the Supreme Court. All she knew was that “in no Country has calumny falsehood, and reviling stalked more licentiously than in this.” Not appreciating that the Sedition Act had expired when Jefferson assumed office, she accused Jefferson of taking it upon himself, like a despot, to annul the law. “You exculpate yourself from any intentional act of unkindness towards any one.” She then told him that the other act she faulted him for was his removal of her son John Quincy from a district judgeship.86
By this time, Jefferson must have been wondering what he had gotten himself into. He patiently explained that he knew nothing about John Quincy’s removal as a bankruptcy judge, and if he had known he would have been pleased to have appointed him over anyone else. He then went on to deny Abigail’s suggestion that the Supreme Court alone could decide the validity of the Sedition Act. The executive had an equal right to decide for itself the constitutionality of acts. Indeed, each branch of government had a coordinate power to determine the constitutionality of a law. For Jefferson the Constitution was primarily a political, not a legal, document, and judges had no monopoly on interpreting it. If slander by the press needed to be curbed, then leave it to the states, “and their exclusive right, to do so.” The First Amendment prohibited the Congress, but not the states, from controlling the press.
Jefferson hoped that Abigail would understand his position. He accepted wide differences of opinion. Both political parties wanted to promote the public good but differed over means. “One fears most the ignorance of the people: the other the selfishness of rulers independent of them.” Time will tell which is right; the body of the nation would decide. All he knew was that these differences of opinion and his anxieties over the future had never allowed him to use anything but “fair and honorable means, of truth and reason” in his politics. Nor had these differences and anxieties “ever lessened my esteem for moral worth; nor alienated my affections from a single friend who did not first withdraw himself.” When friends had become estranged from him, he had kept himself “open to a return of their justice.” The ball of friendship was in the Adamses’ court.87
Abigail wrote one final letter explaining to Jefferson at length why she had been hurt by his actions and why she had withdrawn her esteem for him. She grudgingly accepted his explanation for his behavior, but added that she did not believe that the First Amendment prohibited the Congress from protecting the national government from a scurrilous press. She hoped that posterity would judge “with more candour, and impartiality” than the opposing parties just what measures had best promoted the happiness of the people. She also hoped that he as president would contribute to that happiness. But with her underlying anger unabated, she asked “whether in your ardent zeal, and desire to rectify the mistakes and abuses as you may consider them, of the former administration, you are not led into measures still more fatal to the constitution, and more derogatory to your honour, and independence of Character? Pardon me Sir if I say, that you are.” This was candor with a vengeance.
In a postscript added three weeks later to Abigail’s letter-book copy of this extraordinary letter, John Adams noted that at Abigail’s request he had just read “the whole of this Correspondence,” and wanted posterity to know that it “was begun and conducted without my Knowledge or Suspicion.” He had “no remarks to make upon it at this time and in this place.”88 The friendship between the Adamses and Jefferson was as dead as ever.
Having won the election in 1800 and riding high in popularity with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Jefferson was certainly more open to a renewal of the friendship in 1804 than Abigail. If he had avoided any criticism whatsoever of Adams in his letter of June 13, and had instead fulsomely praised him, he might have gradually warmed Abigail up. But her anger was so pervasive and powerful that the slightest criticism of her husband was bound to touch it off.
ELEVEN
RECONCILIATION
BENJAMIN RUSH HAD BEEN A GOOD FRIEND of both Adams and Jefferson ever since the meeting of the Continental Congress in 1775. When Adams returned from Europe in 1789, he and Rush had become especially close, with Adams feeling free to express the most outrageous opinions—opinions that sometimes left Rush fl
abbergasted. Although Rush’s support for Jefferson and the Republicans in the 1790s had cooled the relationship, it didn’t prevent President Adams from helping Rush out financially by appointing him treasurer of the Mint in 1797. Rush was grateful but told Adams that he was not changing his political principles. According to Rush, Adams took him “by the hand and with great kindness said, ‘You have not more pleasure in receiving the office I have given you, than I had in conferring it upon an old Whig.’”1
In 1805 Adams and Rush were thus emotionally prepared to renew their friendship. Adams initiated the correspondence by telling Rush “that you and I ought not to die without saying Goodbye or bidding each other Adieu.”2 Rush responded warmly and for the next eight years the letters flowed back and forth, with Adams once again engaging in his usual “facetiousness” on some subjects, which unfortunately was “seldom understood,” except by those, like Rush, who knew him well.3
• • •
AS ADAMS AND RUSH EXCHANGED LETTERS, they were bound to mention Jefferson. When Jefferson’s second term was nearing its end in 1808, Adams wondered how the president would deal with his guilt after he retired. “He must know,” he said to Rush, “that he leaves the Government infinitely worse than he found it and that from his own error or Ignorance.” But since Jefferson had “a good Taste for Letters and an ardent curiosity for Science,” Adams assumed that the president would be able to amuse and console himself after leaving office. He told Rush that he had no resentment toward Jefferson, “though he has honoured and salaried almost every villain he could find who had been an enemy to me.”4
On the day in March 1809 that Jefferson turned over the presidency to his friend James Madison, Adams asked Rush, who had often spoken of his many dreams, “to take a Nap, and dream for my Instruction and edification a Character of Jefferson and his Administration.”5 Rush didn’t respond to this request, but seven months later, in October, he told Adams of a dream he did have, involving “one of the most extraordinary events” of the year 1809—“the renewal of the friendship” of Adams and Jefferson. In the dream Rush briefly related the careers of the two ex-presidents, who were now retired to their homes just waiting to be reconciled. According to the dream, Adams had written a short note to Jefferson congratulating him “upon his escape to the shades of retirement and domestic happiness” and expressing “good wishes for his welfare.” Only a man like Adams, someone possessing “a Magnanimity known only to great minds,” could initiate the renewal of the friendship.
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