Madison and Jefferson

by Nancy Isenberg;Andrew Burstein

  It turned out that Jefferson did not stay long in Philadelphia, because Congress was on the move. The Revolution may have ended in triumph, but the unpaid soldiery had some sticky issues to resolve with their representatives. An irritated bunch of veterans had poured into Philadelphia in June 1783 to make their grievances known to the assembled Congress, causing the delegates to remove to the modest town of Princeton. There they reconvened temporarily.24

  Though his seat in Congress would be fixed elsewhere, Jefferson settled his motherless, eleven-year-old daughter in the City of Brotherly Love. During her father’s absence, Patsy would be exposed to the best of Philadelphia society, including the children of astronomer David Rittenhouse, a man whom Jefferson ranked among the world’s geniuses. He gave his daughter money for music lessons and arranged for her to study drawing with Pierre du Simitière, the Swiss designer of the American and Virginian great seals, who proved impatient with children and would find her wanting in talent.

  Having done what he could for Patsy, he rode on to Princeton. He learned there that Congress was doing little and would reconvene in Annapolis a bit later on. So he returned to Philadelphia, spending two weeks there with Madison, buying and discussing books, synthesizing Madison’s experience over the past three years, and agreeing on an agenda so that Jefferson could further what Madison had begun. Then the two rode to Annapolis together, where Jefferson was finally able to join the roaming Congress.25

  Ex-Congressman Madison had no reason to remain in Annapolis. He left Jefferson after a short stay and stopped briefly in northern Virginia to talk politics with George Mason at his estate, Gunston Hall. He informed Jefferson that Mason was amenable to a state convention to consider Jefferson’s proposed constitution, though the touchy politician was perhaps less committed than either Madison or Jefferson to solidifying the national union. After he left Mason, Madison rode on to Montpelier. It was now December 1783 and the first time he had been at home with his family since departing for Philadelphia at the beginning of 1780. Easing Jefferson’s loss of good company, James Monroe had moved from his position on the Governor’s Council in Richmond to a seat in Congress at Annapolis, where they lodged together.

  Not to be long diverted from his favorite subjects, Madison spent the snowy months studying constitutions and laws of nations. As things stood, no one was more familiar with the federal system under the Articles of Confederation, and Jefferson often sought his counsel by letter. Noting the absence of many of the states’ delegates and expressing frustration over the slow pace of deliberations, he queried Madison about the extent of congressional influence: “Did not you once suppose in conversation with me that Congress had no authority to decide any cases between two differing states, except those of disputed territory? I think you did.”

  Madison responded with a dissertation upon government. He gave an interpretation of Benjamin Franklin’s 1775 “Sketch of Articles of Confederation,” looked closely at the role of Congress in treaty making, and weighed precedents in determining where a simple majority of states and where a two-thirds majority was required to enact law. He dwelled at length on the uncertain posture of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania when it came to any prospective cession of western territory to the federal government. “As all the soil of value has been granted out to individuals,” he argued, “a cession of the jurisdiction to Congress can be proper only where the Country is vacant of settlers.” He knew Jefferson would have to deal with this issue at length, and he harbored doubts as to Virginians’ understanding of the true complexity of the matter of land cessions. Madison and Jefferson appreciated—but did their fellow Virginians?—the degree of compromise with neighboring states that was yet required to cement the Union.26

  The Madison-Jefferson alliance was thriving. At the end of increasingly long letters, Jefferson expressed warmth and devotion directly. He invited Madison to ride over to Monticello in his absence and make use of its library, and at one point he ramped up his appeal for steadier companionship. While certainly appreciative of such sentiments, Madison remained tentative at best. In mid-March 1784, explaining that snowy conditions prevented him from accessing Monticello, he addressed Jefferson’s larger object of bringing them permanently closer: “I know not my dear Sir what to reply to the affectionate invitation … I feel the attractions of the particular situation you point out to me; I can not altogether renounce the prospect; still less can I as yet embrace it.”

  The “particular situation” he projected was for Madison to move from the family plantation, where his still-healthy father managed everything well. “Monroe is buying land almost adjoining me,” Jefferson taunted him. “Short will do the same. What would I not give [if] you could fall into the circle. With such a society I could once more venture home and lay myself up for the residue of life, quitting all it’s contentions … Think of it. To render it practicable only requires you to think it so.”

  Madison was not always stirred by Jefferson’s wistful themes, but on this occasion he was responsive. They were both without wives, Jefferson hinting that he could “once more venture home” only when Monticello no longer wore the pallor of irreparable loss. A Dutch observer at Congress who spent time with Jefferson in Annapolis presumably heard him refer to his bereavement and recorded these comments: “Retired from fashionable society, he concerned himself only with the affairs of public interest, his sole diversion being offered by belles lettres … His mind, accustomed to the unalloyed pleasure of a lovable wife, was impervious[,] since her loss[,] to the feeble attractions of common society, and that his soul, fed on noble thoughts, was revolted by idle chatter.” Allowing for overstatement in the service of literature, G. K. van Hogendorp was apparently able to glimpse the intellectual passion Thomas Jefferson exuded as well as the tautness that brought on his fierce tension headaches and disrupted his famously unruffled bearing.

  “To render it practicable only requires you to think it so”: Jefferson’s notion that Madison would be well served by erecting an estate independent of Montpelier obliged Madison to at least ponder the possibility. “Life is no value but as it brings us gratifications,” Jefferson orchestrated. “Among the most valuable of these is rational society. It informs the mind, sweetens the temper, chears our spirits, and promotes health.” He prodded with Epicurean accents—Epicurus was Jefferson’s constant guide to the ideal life. And then he coaxed: “There is a little farm of 140 a[cre]s, and within two miles, all of good land … It is on the road to Orange.” “Think of it,” he pressed a second time, “and Adieu.”27

  In April 1784 Madison was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. As his accomplishments in Congress were widely known, no one in Virginia doubted that his presence would make a great difference in all matters of state policy. He was a “general” in the eyes of Edmund Randolph, who wrote Jefferson with complete assurance that “our friend of Orange will step earlier into the heat of battle, than his modesty would otherwise permit.” Jefferson, for his part, had written to his teenage nephew Peter Carr that he should look up Madison from time to time; while absent in Congress, he wanted a means to confirm that the lad’s education was proceeding as it should. “His judgment is so sound and his heart so good,” Jefferson urged Peter. “I wish you to respect every advice he would be so kind to give you, equally as if it came from me.” For starters, Madison was conveying a copy of Homer for him to read. And though Madison had traded Philadelphia for Richmond, Jefferson, as his promoter, was making the case that he should be accorded membership in the American Philosophical Society.28

  “Lopped Off from Other States”

  As a member of the Confederation Congress from Virginia, Jefferson was front and center when George Washington came to Annapolis and on December 23, 1783, formally resigned his commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army. It was a more than symbolic rejection of military dictatorship before civilian authority; it was a pointed, if rhetorical, corrective to an incipient spirit of defiance that had sprung up am
ong some of his officers. The Newburgh Conspiracy, so called, had been a drama staged for a slow-moving Congress during the spring of 1783, a devious ploy by some, including Alexander Hamilton, to fund the nation’s debt and strengthen the federal structure. Its purpose was to change the direction of the country.29

  Washington had acquitted himself well in the Newburgh episode, using the power of his personality to calm a discontented but ultimately loyal officer corps, and he continued to display dignity and self-possession. In November 1783 Jefferson met him for the first time in seven years and remarked to Virginia’s present governor, Benjamin Harrison, that Washington looked healthier than before, despite the many trials he had endured. Jefferson was present at the spectacle in December, when the imposing, six-foot-three-inch Washington resigned his commission and brought his listeners, “especially the fair ones,” to tears. Announcing his decision to “retire from the theatre of action” and return to a simpler private life, Washington spoke in a weak and wavering voice, his unexpected humanity electrifying those in attendance. Wise though intellectually unexceptional, eager for respect and admiration, and susceptible to sycophancy, George Washington had learned political savvy over the course of the war. Now fifty-one, he was secure as the preeminent symbol of the American Revolution.30

  During his months in Congress, Jefferson was involved in the official approval of the Treaty of Paris, which affirmed American independence. That seemingly customary legislative function was complicated by the lack of signatures from some state delegations, prompting Jefferson to consult with Madison on the constitutional questions involved. It was a symptom of the country’s lack of cohesion that nine states could not be corralled long enough to attain official recognition of the union of states that had been declared on July 4, 1776.

  A certain amount of discussion in Congress dealt with housekeeping issues—anything could become political—so that Jefferson found himself taking part in conversations about where Congress should meet next. While every section of the Union had a favorite site convenient to its own delegation, the choice was narrowed down to an as-yet-unnamed town on the Delaware or one on the Potomac. Trenton, New Jersey, finally won out. Seeing how fractured Congress was, Jefferson could only think of America’s domestic ills, its “politics and poverty,” when he wrote to the America-loving Marquis de Chastellux, who had recently returned to France.31

  The most significant matter Jefferson took up in Annapolis was the disposition of western land. This was the final stage in the debate over land cessions, and his communication with Madison was critical in giving Jefferson full confidence in the road that lay ahead. With the largest claimant, Virginia, ready to cede its rights to the Northwest, an efficient, government-controlled process of settlement could begin, moderating the lawless speculation that had muddied the waters for years. Imposing order on a certain hypothetical westerner, the unruly “adventurer,” was now the consensus view. Federal land would be sold in stages, to avert a land rush and keep prices relatively high. All parties to the negotiation figured that by preventing the haphazard settlement of widely separated communities, the likelihood of armed conflict with Indians would also be reduced.

  As Virginia’s historic claim to the West, based on its seventeenth-century charter, dissolved as an issue, peace among the states appeared to be at hand. But below the surface, sectional problems remained, because New England expected Ohio to be settled by northerners, who would impart their values to the new West, while Virginia expected the majority of new states to be politically and commercially aligned with it, as its offspring Kentucky was. Not until the Constitutional Convention of 1787 would the large state–small state rivalry be conclusively dealt with; and by then there would be nothing left to mask the intense, competing visions of North and South.

  Congress passed the interim Land Ordinance in April 1784. As chair of the committee that formulated the draft resolution, Jefferson was instrumental in drawing up a plan to divide the new western territories into distinct forms with known boundaries. After reaching an established level of population, each would then attain statehood on an equal basis with the original thirteen. Without detracting from Jefferson’s efforts, it can be said that the 1784 ordinance was no less the culmination of Madison’s previous work in Congress to federalize expansion without compromising Virginia. Congressman Monroe was on board too, taking the issue so seriously that, after the close of the congressional session, he traveled to westernmost New York State and as far north as Montreal. The next year he visited Pittsburgh and then floated down the Ohio to Kentucky, where he himself had land interests.

  Madison regularly compared notes with Monroe on western affairs. He saw immediate prospects for adding new states to the republic, writing in May 1785 of the possibility that Kentucky might be the first, its delegates to the Virginia Assembly having already been instructed to propose “the separation of that Country from this, and its being handed over to Congress for admission into the Confederation.” In Madison’s estimation, as soon as the Kentuckians went through the process, others would see how smoothly it could be done: “They will not only accomplish it without difficulty but set a useful example to other Western Settlemts. which may chuse to be lopped off from other States.”

  This did not make Madison and Monroe clones of each other. Madison was, at this point, the more comfortable with prompt and decisive action. He considered the “lopping off” a natural act of evolutionary growth; and when a congressional committee proposed setting up an established church in each township of the newly created western territories—“smelling so strongly of an antiquated Bigotry”—he groaned audibly, finding Monroe ambivalent, if not sympathetic, to the friends of religious establishment. There was no other subject on which Madison took so unconditional a stand. When it came to the cause of religious liberty, Madison and Jefferson alike never relented. They were merely waiting for the moment to be right.

  Madison and Monroe did see eye to eye on the enlargement and improved management of land. On his travels in 1784, Monroe had learned firsthand about Indian affairs and protested ongoing British interference along the ill-maintained frontier. When he observed land-redistribution methods under federal guidelines, he took heart. In 1785, then, Monroe followed in Jefferson’s footsteps and chaired the committee assigned to reexamine the 1784 ordinance.

  Fortune smiled on Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. Though none of them was present when the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 passed and Congress finally and firmly established the means for new state formation, the document was to a significant degree the product of the three Virginians’ collaborative efforts. Not only did the ordinance contain Jefferson’s stricture against slavery’s expansion; it also marked the first time that the third, fourth, and fifth presidents, whose terms would collectively comprise the “Virginia Dynasty,” worked closely together.32

  It was much more than the Virginians’ land hunger that made the West central to political discourse. Americans’ sense of their future greatness as a people had been tied to the land for some time. During the French and Indian War, in The New American Magazine, “Sylvanus Americanus” (literally, “American Woodsman”) sang the praises of the happy, neighborly cultivator, “boast of our nation.” The Boston Gazette told readers that agriculture was “the most solid Foundation on which to build Wealth,” ensuring “the political Virtue of a Common Wealth.” In 1775 Alexander Hamilton found a “dawning splendour” in the “boundless extent of territory we possess, the wholesome temperament of our climate, the luxuriance and fertility of our soil.” And in 1784 the author John Filson made a national hero of the pioneering Daniel Boone, who spoke of Kentucky as “a second paradise.” Western settlement was seen as regenerative.33

  The new nationalism involved a certain amount of hypocritical thinking. The “virtuous” Washington had been, for years, among the hungriest of the speculators, a typical land-loving American ever on the make. He was now cautioning others to avoid rampant speculation, as if recognizing
, belatedly, that the public’s interest was always meant to supersede private gain. Jefferson, whose land was inherited, insisted that he did not profit from speculation. In a letter to Madison, he vehemently denied that he deserved to be classed with the speculators. He had withdrawn from a land company a few months after his wife’s death, he said, thinking it a conflict of interest if he should go to Europe and be party to negotiations over the disposition of western lands. He had, he noted further, taken “a single step” toward speculating in the West, only to “retract” at the “threshold” of opportunity. Madison was in a less certain position, and he clearly did not share in Jefferson’s moral outrage. His father was deep in speculation, and he himself wanted to cross that “threshold,” in order to free himself from dependence upon his family. Yet being Madison, he would not enter into any venture unsystematically.34

  “Civilian and Politician”

  In the middle of 1784 an ocean came between Madison and Jefferson. From Annapolis that May, Jefferson notified his friend in Orange that Congress had authorized him to join Franklin and Adams in Paris as a commercial negotiator. Not knowing how long his mission would last, he set terms for Madison and himself: “I pray you to continue to favor me with your correspondence … On my part I shall certainly maintain the correspondence.” He repeated his desire to operate as a purchasing agent for Madison, employing words that sound formal to us but were, in fact, entirely unceremonious: “If moreover you can at any time enable me to serve you by the execution of any particular commission I shall agree that my sincerity may be judged by the readiness with which I shall execute it. In the purchase of books, pamphlets, etc. old and curious, or new and useful I shall ever keep you in my eye.”