Madison and Jefferson

by Nancy Isenberg;Andrew Burstein

  The rags of royalty. It was a perfect paradox for the republican thinker to bring into play. In his tacit acceptance of a quasi-royal court, Washington could no longer be seen as an innocent. In 1793 the executive branch was bound to those whom Hamilton had openly and wantonly embraced two years earlier as “the monied interest of every state.” America was heading in the wrong direction, and as president, Washington was doing nothing to resist.25

  Madison and Jefferson saw the world around them as one where power corrupted. They seemed not to grasp that Washington was a serious-minded man of business who hated inefficiency. What made him a mature military commander had also made him amenable to a central government with a dynamic executive. The raw material he had at his disposal—the citizenry—was a hodgepodge he could not count on to mobilize effectively. People needed direction, and government required good organization. Madison had believed this too, not long ago. But as Madison rejected the Hamiltonian vision in favor of the Republican theory of checks on the concentration of power, Washington did not veer from the Federalist assignment of power. Madison and Jefferson prized efficiency, just as Washington did. The difference arose over the emphasis they placed on the principle of constitutional balance—Madison and Jefferson felt they were engaged in preserving it while Hamilton was shamelessly defying it.

  One sign of the uphill struggle that Virginia Republicans faced was the failure of the Giles resolutions to result in Hamilton’s censure. Like Madison, William Branch Giles was a graduate of Princeton; like Jefferson, he had studied the law under George Wythe. The Virginia native had recently arrived in the House of Representatives, full of boisterous energy and unafraid of tangling with Hamilton. Early in 1793, whether or not he was aware of the treasury secretary’s adulterous liaison and resulting payments to the offended husband, which the Republicans had decided to bury, Giles proposed a detailed investigation into Hamilton’s conduct while in office. Could the secretary submit evidence to verify that he was not misusing public funds?

  Congressman Giles was speaking for the silent Madison and Jefferson—quite literally. Notes in Jefferson’s hand have survived. He appears to have penned many of the resolutions Giles read in the House, which were filtered through Madison before being finished by Giles. Madison believed that Hamilton had taken funds borrowed in Europe to discharge America’s foreign debt and placed that money in the national bank “for the benefit of speculators.” In his dramatic letter to Washington of September 1792, in which he complained of Hamilton’s “tissue of machinations” against his country, Jefferson had also accused his high-and-mighty colleague of “shuffling” millions between U.S. and European accounts without reporting on what he was doing. Giles served as messenger to make this suspicion public.

  Early in 1793 Jefferson had asked Washington to open a separate executive branch inquiry into Hamilton’s financial dealings, and Washington refused him. Was Jefferson being paranoid? In this case, the answer is no. He had every reason to suspect Hamilton’s motives. The treasury secretary unapologetically meddled in the business of every department within the executive branch. Some people are happy to be team players; Alexander Hamilton was not. He did not understand boundaries. He assumed he knew best, and he did what he wanted.

  Passion-driven, hard-nosed, and perhaps less brilliant than his academic pedigree implied, William Branch Giles introduced a cluster of resolutions at different times during the early months of 1793. When all was said and done, though, the Virginians came up empty. They were outdone by the inspired and imperious treasury secretary. With great dispatch, Hamilton provided facts and figures that made the allegations appear weak, or at least unproven. The Giles resolutions made Hamilton pause, but they did not stop him for very long.26

  Still, the ranks of activist Virginians swelled. Edmund Pendleton’s nephew and protégé, redheaded, thirty-nine-year-old John Taylor of Caroline, was a U.S. senator and an increasingly important Madison-Jefferson ally. In May 1793 he began work on what would be, when complete, a stinging pamphlet condemning Hamilton’s vision of the banking system. Monroe immediately saw its promise, alerting Madison to Taylor’s talent and praising the “many useful & judicious observations addressed in his humorous style concluding in the sentimt. that the bank shod. be demolished.” After Monroe had weighed in, Taylor asked Madison to review his work and help to improve it; he asked the same of his venerable uncle. He initially hesitated to present it to Jefferson, but only because he did not wish to add to the secretary of state’s burdens. Eventually he asked Madison to forward it. A preview of Taylor’s pamphlet appeared in Freneau’s National Gazette under the unassuming heading “Reflections on Several Subjects.” It was an anonymous column, printed without Taylor’s permission. Madison rejoiced to Monroe: “Mr. J. is in raptures with the performance of our friend.”

  Freneau introduced the unnamed author to his readers, saying there was a certain party in America whose “persecuting spirit” was more akin to the Vatican than to any more modern political body. It was a mere “party” though it styled itself a “government”; it was a religion established by law, demanding faith (“blind idolatry”) while refusing to confront truth. In taking on the national bank, Taylor explained that instead of acting in the public’s interest, it was deviously contrived by the party in power “to accelerate … a political moneyed engine.” The previously unheralded polemicist loaded his pamphlet with ready axioms: “If a bank will stick by a minister, a minister will stick by a bank.” In short, the institution was a “blot” on America’s republican character.27

  Around the same time Taylor’s uncle wrote a warm but testy letter to his old acquaintance George Washington. In the space of a page or two, the veteran Revolutionary concisely outlined what he saw as Hamilton’s power-amassing moves, asking Washington, in effect, whether he could see what was happening around him. Referring to the treasury secretary not by name but only as “the Gentleman at the head of that Department,” Pendleton urged a thorough probe. Then, to soften his message, he concluded by telling the president that he would not feel hurt if all his suggestions were ignored, provided they were accepted as “the well meant reveries of a Fireside Politician, who never had much Pretentions to the Character of a Statesman, but cordially hates all Intrigues, Finesse and Strategems in Government.” Edmund Pendleton had lost neither his commitment to principle nor his ready wit.28

  “Fermentation”

  Before his friend from Orange would allow him to retire, Jefferson was obliged to sit through a good many more cabinet meetings, all of them unpleasant for him. The meetings of August 1793 pivoted on what he described to Madison as “three speeches of ¾ of an hour each” by Hamilton, outlining possible ways to respond to the dangers posed by French ideas. Each argument was aimed at convincing Washington to “dismount” as “head of the nation” and take up as “the head of a party”—in effect declaring war against “the Republican party.” As he committed these words on the page, Jefferson made it clear to Madison that he was not just airing private grievances to a friend—no, these were the very words he had uttered to the president in Hamilton’s presence. For once, he had not held back. There was no point in maintaining false courtesies anymore.29

  Washington and Jefferson met prior to one of those August cabinet meetings in which Jefferson was monitoring his timepiece to chronicle Hamilton’s long-windedness. The president confessed to him that he did not know what to make of the “fermentation” taking place in political society. Jefferson tells us—we have no evidence other than his private notes—that he tried to assure Washington that the emerging Republicans continued to esteem their president and trusted fully in his republican sympathies. Responding to Washington’s unhidden concern that what he saw printed in the newspapers could easily spin out of control, Jefferson reminded him how his own words, ever since the Rights of Man blowup, had been “caught, multiplied, misconstrued, and even fabricated and spread” to do him injury. Though Jefferson continued to go through the motions of tryi
ng to persuade Washington that he should see Hamilton’s crowd as “the monarchical party,” nothing in Jefferson’s notes suggests that he believed their meeting convinced the president of anything. Washington did, however, convince the secretary of state to stay on through the end of 1793.30

  Jefferson had previously given Washington his reasons for resigning. Hamilton too expressed his intent to leave within a year. The two senior cabinet officers possessed superior managerial expertise, and yet the executive was in shambles. Washington would not have agreed to a second term if he had known in advance that Jefferson and Hamilton would depart early. Now he had three more years in office and, under these inflamed circumstances, did not know who had the right skills and the right temperament to take over at State and Treasury. He told Jefferson that his first choice for State was Madison but held out little hope that Madison would oblige him.

  Jefferson was not angered just by Hamilton, who could not be reasoned with in the least. He was also greatly disappointed in Madison’s old friend Edmund Randolph, the first attorney general of the United States, and roundly criticized him for his wishy-washy whiggism. In the cabinet, after Jefferson made his final stand against Hamilton and Knox, who always voted as a bloc, Randolph, instead of helping him, hedged.

  For Jefferson, the most exasperating thing Randolph did was to suggest that Washington delay (not dismiss) carrying out Hamilton’s proposition that the president issue a public message, instructing the American people to guard against French principles. Jefferson interpreted the move as rank hypocrisy: Randolph was saying, in effect, that it was all right to alienate the French in stages. “He is the poorest Cameleon I ever saw,” Jefferson fumed in a letter to Madison. The sticky-tongued attorney general had no color of his own but reflected his environment: “When he is with me he is a whig, when with H[amilton] he is a tory, when with the P[resident] he is what he thinks will please him.” This was an insurmountable problem for Jefferson. Randolph’s inconsistency gave Hamilton a clear edge. Randolph was the swing vote in the cabinet, and the president, Jefferson stressed, “acquiesces always in the majority.”31

  But nothing really suggests that Randolph was indecisive, or chameleonlike, as Jefferson was charging. He was his own man, apt to follow Jefferson in many, but by no means all, policy disputes in the cabinet. Jefferson was being a bit cranky in expecting Randolph to agree all the time. Anyway, it is perfectly clear that Hamilton never mistook Randolph for an ally.32 Nor did Madison automatically endorse Jefferson’s view. When the president sent his attorney general to Virginia to get a sense of popular opinion on the neutrality issue, Jefferson urgently appealed to Madison to contact Randolph’s brother-in-law, Wilson Cary Nicholas, and to make sure that Nicholas persuaded Randolph that Virginians were unified in their support of France. Madison did not see the same urgency Jefferson did and reassured him that Nicholas would “fairly state the truth & that alone is wanted.” But even after hearing from Madison, Jefferson left nothing to chance. He considered compromise under present circumstances a sign of weakness and vacillation. In simple terms, Jefferson was reproaching Randolph for getting in the way of his war on Hamilton.33

  Adding to Jefferson’s woes, Citizen Genet still refused to calm down. The notorious French minister came before the public again and again, financing the defense of an American who stood trial for enlisting on a French privateer. With Attorney General Randolph arguing the government’s case, and Hamilton aiding him, Genet’s side still won. Being linked to Genet was a “cruel dilemma” for him, Jefferson told Madison. Emboldened after the trial, the Frenchman placed ads in American newspapers soliciting new recruits and comparing them to those French who had served in the American Revolution.

  Genet repeatedly circumvented Jefferson, as he set out to humiliate Washington. During that already wearisome month of August, he insisted that the president publish in the papers an unambiguous statement in defense of the envoy’s right to continue on the same course. “My conduct,” Genet informed the president, “has accordingly been marked with all the energy and frankness which ever characterize a true republican.” It fell to Jefferson to admonish Genet that it was “not the established course” for any diplomat to correspond directly with the president.34

  As if this were not enough, Genet offered French government backing to military expeditions designed to capture the Spanish territories of Louisiana and East Florida. He contacted George Rogers Clark in Louisville, who was ready to lead the assault on New Orleans. This was not a new idea. There is circumstantial evidence that before Genet arrived on the scene, Jefferson was consulted on Clark’s suitability for such a mission. Jefferson, like Madison, was concerned about the fading attachment of America’s western settlers to a federal government unresponsive to their quest for land and need for protection against Indians. The French government had no qualms about providing such support.

  The Virginians were as keen as ever to secure the rights of Americans to ply the Mississippi. What may have happened is that the secretary of state, initially open to westerners’ claims, changed his mind after Genet embarrassed him, then forbade American citizens from joining any Louisiana filibuster in violation of neutrality laws. Under the circumstances, he had little choice but to make it clear that the United States was not at war with Spain.

  The ironies compounded. As the Jacobin leader Robespierre took over in Paris, France exited the filibuster game. Calling off the Louisiana and Florida projects, the Jacobins demanded Genet’s return in shackles. The move came in large measure as a result of a letter Jefferson wrote at the behest of the president and a united cabinet, recommending the minister’s recall. Genet’s failure to respect American neutrality had led him to poor judgments. He had not alienated all parts of the country, but he had embarrassed Jefferson. Genet had no choice now but to act to save his own skin; and so the obnoxious emissary of republican brotherhood fled to New York State. Next, the French demanded the recall of the unrepublican Gouverneur Morris. Tit for tat.

  All ended well for Genet. President Washington magnanimously granted him political asylum, and in 1794 he married a daughter of Governor George Clinton, earning American citizenship ten years later. Once a provocateur, Genet spent the remainder of his life farming in well-deserved obscurity except for occasional labor as the publisher of others’ pamphlets. His replacement, Jean-Antoine-Joseph Fauchet, though more prudent than his predecessor, would prove equally controversial and equally enfeebled by the Hamiltonians.35

  “A Man As Timid As He Is”

  In mid-1793 Madison’s longtime Philadelphia landlady, Mary House, died. “She extinguished almost like a candle,” Jefferson apprized him in June. Her daughter Eliza House Trist would sell the boardinghouse where, since he first joined Congress, Madison had resided for a greater amount of time than he lived with his family at Montpelier.

  The sale of the House-Trist establishment redirected the life of Madison’s former slave Billey Gardner. Brought north by his master in 1780, Billey had run away three years later, only to be recaptured and sold, without acrimony, but sold nonetheless, into a servitude in Pennsylvania of seven years’ duration. After 1790 he found jobs in Philadelphia. Mrs. House employed him for a period of time, and Madison occasionally paid him to carry goods to Virginia. Jefferson interacted with Billey as well, utilizing the services of his wife, Henrietta, a washerwoman. Finally Billey found work as a merchant seaman, while his parents remained as slaves at Montpelier. Tragically, he would perish off the coast of Louisiana not long after.36

  Billey Gardner’s conditional existence—his curious passage from slavery to freedom—was acted out on a larger scale in Congress, but with far less humanity than Madison had shown. A court case in Pennsylvania involving the rendition of a fugitive slave from Virginia resulted in the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, fortifying the constitutional understanding that slaves were property and not afforded the rights of U.S. citizens to a fair trial. The Annals of Congress denoted it “an Act respecting f
ugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters.” Anyone who tried to rescue or in any way interfered in the return of a “fugitive from labor” was to be fined $500. Without any protest over its constitutionality, and few votes in opposition, President Washington signed the bill, and it became law.37

  In August and September 1793 death descended on Philadelphia. While Jefferson was still dealing with repercussions of the Genet fiasco, an epidemic of unprecedented proportions struck the city of thirty thousand. Though fairly common in the tropics, yellow fever had not been visited upon Philadelphia for some thirty years. Nearly half the city fled to the uninfected countryside, among them the president of the United States. Government was at a standstill. By the time the contagion passed, several thousand were dead, including the attorney John Todd, who left behind a wife, Dolley (the future Mrs. Madison), and their one-year-old son. What made the fever “yellow” was the discoloration of the skin of its victims; in the final phase of the disease, nausea and internal bleeding led to delirium and coma.

  Death on so large a scale produced scenes of daily horror, with many more rotting corpses in sight than there were brave nurses. Approximately half of those who exhibited symptoms eventually died from the yellow fever. While it raged, Jefferson refused to flee the stricken city and in the midst of the horror found a new way to unload on his chief adversary. Writing to Madison in early September, he announced, almost giddily, that Hamilton was ill. From sources close to the patient, Jefferson had learned that Hamilton’s life was in danger. But Jefferson had his doubts. He knew Hamilton’s tendencies as well as anyone and figured he could read meaning into his ailing enemy’s behavior: Supposedly, an overwrought Hamilton had been pacing back and forth in recent days, certain that he was going to catch yellow fever and die. Friends of Hamilton’s presumed that he was in fact suffering from nothing more than the common, nonlethal “autumnal fever.”