Madison and Jefferson

by Nancy Isenberg;Andrew Burstein

  Madison’s and Jefferson’s concerns had an immediacy that was far more central to the contests of their lives than to any thoughts of legacy. The demons they faced were the forces they considered hostile to republicanism or that threatened to compromise American independence as they conceived it. This begins to explain their do-or-die contest with the High Federalists and the hysterical labeling that accompanied it. It also explains their eagerness to bulldoze over traditional Indian lands and lawfully Spanish lands, which they did to prevent the mere possibility of future British or French expansionism.

  England’s bullying on the high seas challenged a sense of national honor. Fear of perpetual vassalage was a humiliating thought as well as an effective legal limitation on national sovereignty. It led Jefferson to embark on the Tripolitan War, and it led Madison to envision the conquest of Canada. They and their associates adopted an inflated rhetoric meant to overcome concerns about the vulnerability of the Union; and they justified acts of aggression in order to prove their manhood on an international stage. In their retirement years, Madison and Jefferson were able to witness the fundamental collapse of the world system they abhorred. The iniquitous routine of impressment eventually ended; and the prejudicial navigation laws that had for decades caused Anglo-American relations to alternate between wary and unfriendly finally moderated.

  Despite Virginia’s monopolization of the executive branch of government from 1801 to 1825, southerners remained transfixed on the economic engine of the North. They saw themselves losing ground. In this environment, with all their nationalistic pronouncements, Madison and Jefferson did not simply transfer allegiance to the nation on the basis of abstract republican theory. Jefferson’s retreat to the theory of nullification in 1798 is only the most obvious example, showing the extent of his preoccupation with protecting Virginia rather than protecting his earlier vision of union. Virginia was on Madison’s mind when he battled to situate the national capital on the Potomac—he wanted Virginia’s river to be America’s Amazon, its primary economic artery.

  Politics always trumped abstract ideas for Madison. The Federalist Papers belonged to a very small fraction of his career, and yet they constitute at least 50 percent of modern scholars’ efforts to describe his mind. What he wrote as “Publius” was simply meant as propaganda for passage of the new Constitution and certainly did not represent the pure distillation of his thought—there was nothing timeless about it. The political wisdom he demonstrated as a partisan writer after 1790 was far greater, and should be more valuable to us today, than his studies of government in 1787–88. If the writings of those few years made him a better politician, it was because he discovered which of his ideas worked and which did not. And just as important, he discovered which of Jefferson’s most cherished ideas had to be countered. He was a problem solver.

  Jefferson took more chances. He often believed he could actualize what he read in books. At times he was impulse-driven and highly inventive; in other ways he refused to unglue himself from outmoded thinking. He was hardheaded, and Madison was one of a very few who could move him to question basic assumptions. Yet he was also a superb manager of personnel; he was a doer, not just a thinker.

  Jefferson’s words have malleable meaning. They have provided much fodder for students in disciplines such as botany and architecture, in addition to history and politics. As an indebted slave owner recording his day-to-day accounts in portable notebooks, he was weighed down by an anxious regard for the meaning of human happiness that was anything but abstract. At times he got lost rhapsodizing the healthful life amid the gently sloping landscape and red clay soil of Virginia’s Piedmont. And then there was his final experiment—a university.

  That does not mean that the legacy Madison and Jefferson left behind is a cloudy one. In a multitude of ways, they confronted old ideas with sobriety and commanding commitment. They did what the celebrated in all historical eras do: they fought passivity. They did not claim to have performed miracles; but they did claim to have fought superstition, ignorance, and corruption—all servile forces besetting the world into which they were born. For better or worse, they gave the United States its profoundly paradoxical character, enabling the nation to claim itself a generator of positive change in the world, at the same time rendering it a world unto itself.

  As serious as they were in their mission, we should not forget the other, less well known side of their collaboration—the spirited. In 1830 Madison wrote to the Washington grande dame Margaret Bayard Smith with reference to the journey he and Jefferson took to upstate New York back in 1791. At a dinner party in an unspecified town, they were engaged in polite conversation with one who assured them that the new nation would be best served by having a hereditary chief executive. As Madison tells it, “At the close of an eloquent effusion against the agitations and animosities of a popular choice, and on behalf of birth as, on the whole, affording even a better chance for a suitable head of the Gov’t, Mr. Jefferson, with a smile remarked that he had heard of a University somewhere in which the professorship of Mathematics was hereditary. The reply, rec’d with acclamation, was a coup de grace to the anti-republican Heretic.” Now that reveals more of the real personality of two who are ordinarily depicted in stern, classical poses—it speaks both to the narrator’s sublime memory and to his friend’s sublime wit.31

  James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were durable, purposeful men and politicians to the core. Their handling of the historical record helped guarantee that posterity would remember the Revolution and what followed as a triumph of enlightened idealism. They wished for us to become their disciples, and whether or not they intended it directly, they ensured that the history of the United States would be told in nostalgic strains. But they were not prophets, nor high-flown storytellers. Once again, they were politicians, who knew enough about the nature of tyranny to renounce complacency when it hindered the honest pursuit of truth.

  Acknowledgments

  One positive aspect of a collaborative study—drawing our analogy from the U.S. Constitution—is that the process involves a balance of power. Like those who met in Philadelphia in 1787, we have sparred constructively, paragraph by paragraph, over the narrative. We dare not say that the exercise has produced a “more perfect union,” but we trust it has resulted in less arbitrary and better reasoned conclusions. And we hope, of course, that it has provided a meaningful and provocative engagement for the reader.

  Over the years, we have profited greatly from spirited conversations with other specialists in the field of early American politics. We open our acknowledgments with names associated with the history of the ambitious and irreplaceable documentary editions of the James Madison and Thomas Jefferson Papers. Of the generation of scholars who preceded us, we were fortunate to have had Robert A. Rutland as a friend and colleague in the last year of his life. Bob was a pioneer at both the Madison and George Mason Papers projects in the 1960s. Another editor-turned-biographer, Ralph Ketcham, knows the mind of Madison as few others do, and it was good to have him just an email away. The late Merrill Peterson also offered considerable encouragement.

  Taking care not to conflate scholarly generations and prematurely age our colleagues, we insert this paragraph break before expressing gratitude to the current editors of the Madison, Jefferson, and Washington Papers projects, especially to David Mattern, Mary Hackett, Barbara Oberg, James McClure, Elaine Pascu, J. Jefferson Looney, and Ted Crackel, with whom we consulted at different stages of our own project. Because of their meticulousness, historians are able to research and write with greater confidence.

  Of course, twenty-first-century methods are not without meaning to lovers of paper and ink. The wide availability of digitized early American newspapers, pamphlets, and broadsides makes it simpler than ever before to comb these critical sources. Mixing media at institutions that have adapted to the new conditions, we were able to move ahead with greater ease and energy. We owe much to the highly professional and knowledgeable staffs at th
e American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts; Alderman Library and Special Collections at the University of Virginia; the Jefferson Library at Monticello; the Huntington Library in San Marino, California; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; and Hill Memorial Library at Louisiana State University.

  Our colleagues at LSU have all helped us improve our focus. Special thanks go to Gaines Foster, Bill Cooper, Paul Hoffman, Charles Royster, Alecia Long, and Gibril Cole. We are grateful as well to Daniel K. Richter for including us in the McNeil Center seminar in Philadelphia, corralling an audience of scholars who read a compressed version of the manuscript in the autumn of 2009 and gave us much to think about.

  In the wider community of early American scholars, we have significantly profited from the work of Peter Onuf, John Stagg, Drew McCoy, Jeffrey Pasley, Saul Cornell, David Waldstreicher, Eva Sheppard Wolf, Douglas Egerton, Woody Holton, Jack Rakove, Jim Broussard, William Howard Adams, and Charles Hobson. We were able to bounce ideas off a number of those immersed in the ever-vital field of Jefferson studies, most notably Daniel P. Jordan, Susan Stein, Jack Robertson, Mary Scott-Fleming, and Frank Cogliano. We owe a particular debt to the Anglo-Virginian Andrew O’Shaughnessy, director of the International Center for Jefferson Studies, for his critical reading of a portion of the manuscript; and to Beth Taylor at Montpelier, for her insights on Madison and slavery.

  Our literary agent, Geri Thoma, has a strong sense of what makes a good book, and she has done much to lift our spirits through this and earlier book projects. Old friend and accomplished graphic designer Mark Nedostup tidied up the illustrations without compromising their historical character. Newer friend Jennifer Blakebrough-Raeburn has served as a guiding spirit in the writing process. Our editor at Random House, Jonathan Jao, is as astute as he is enthusiastic, having helped immensely to improve the book’s readability. He envisioned a bold and comprehensive history of America’s national beginnings, and we have done our best to deliver it.

  Notes

  Abbreviations

  Brant Brant, Irving. James Madison. 6 vols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1941–61.

  JMB Jefferson’s Memorandum Books. Edited by James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton. 2 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997.

  JMP-LC James Madison Papers, Library of Congress. Digitized. Online at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/madison_papers.

  Ketcham Ketcham, Ralph. James Madison: A Biography. New York: Macmillan, 1971.

  Malone Malone, Dumas. Jefferson and His Time. 6 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1948–81.

  PAH The Papers of Alexander Hamilton. Edited by Harold Syrett. 27 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962–87.

  PGW-CS The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series. Edited by W. W. Abbot et al. 6 vols. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992–97.

  PGW-PS The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series. Edited by W. W. Abbot et al. 13 vols. to date. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987–.

  PGW-RS The Papers of George Washington, Retirement Series. Edited by W. W. Abbot et al. 4 vols. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998–99.

  PGW-RW The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series. Edited by W. W. Abbot et al. 16 vols. to date. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987–.

  PJM The Papers of James Madison. Edited by William T. Hutchinson et al. 17 vols. Chicago and Charlottesville: University of Chicago Press (1961–77) and University Press of Virginia (1977–91).

  PJM-PS The Papers of James Madison, Presidential Series. Edited by Robert A. Rutland et al. 6 vols. to date. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984–.

  PJM-RS The Papers of James Madison, Retirement Series. Edited by David B. Mattern et al. 1 vol. to date. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009.

  PJM-SS The Papers of James Madison, Secretary of State Series. Edited by Robert J. Brugger et al. 8 vols. to date. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986–.

  PTJ The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Julian P. Boyd et al. 36 vols. to date. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950–.

  PTJ-RS The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series. Edited by J. Jefferson Looney. 6 vols. to date. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2004–.

  RL The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, 1776–1826. Edited by James Morton Smith. 3 vols. New York: W. W. Norton, 1994.

  TJP-LC Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. Microfilm and digitized. Online at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mtjquery.html.

  Preface

  1. William Peden, “A Book Peddler Invades Monticello,” William and Mary Quarterly 6 (October 1949): 635. The bookseller, Samuel Whitcomb, was from Massachusetts.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Virginians, 1774–1776

  1. Jack P. Greene, “The Intellectual Reconstruction of Virginia in the Age of Jefferson,” in Peter. S. Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies (Charlottesville, Va., 1993), 225–53. A Scottish physician who immigrated to Maryland and toured the colonies in the 1740s described ordinary people in Rhode Island as “rude” and the “middling sort of people” in Massachusetts as generally untrustworthy and suspicious of strangers; Pennsylvania merchants “will tell a lye with a sanctified, solemn face.” See Elaine G. Breslaw, Dr. Alexander Hamilton and Provincial America (Baton Rouge, La., 2008), chaps. 9 and 10, quote at 132. In 1785 Jefferson wrote to a French aristocrat that northerners were “cool, sober, laborious” (the last of which meant “industrious”) but also “chicaning,” or tricky; southerners, he said, were “fiery, Voluptuary” (pleasure seeking), and “indolent” but also “candid.” To Jefferson, these traits permeated the societies of the respective sections. See TJ to the Marquis de Chastellux, September 2, 1785, PTJ, 8:468.

  2. Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America (New York, 2000), chaps. 3–5; Kenneth P. Bailey, Christopher Gist: Colonial Frontiersman, Explorer, and Indian Agent (Hamden, Conn., 1976), 75–88; Louis Knott Koontz, Robert Dinwiddie: His Career in American Colonial Government and Westward Expansion (Glendale, Calif., 1941), 279–305.

  3. John Richardson, “Atrocity in Mid Eighteenth-Century War Literature,” Eighteenth-Century Life 33 (Spring 2009): 92–114; Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York, 2008).

  4. John Ferling, Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution (New York, 2000), 45.

  5. James Parton, “Thomas Jefferson a Virginia Lawyer,” Atlantic Monthly 29 (March 1872): 320. According to Parton’s source, Madison was heard to speak of having observed Jefferson in court; this would have been sometime after 1767, when Jefferson began to practice law in Virginia.

  6. David John Mays, Edmund Pendleton, 1721–1803: A Biography (Richmond, Va., 1952), 1:11–12, 238–39; 2:126–30; Robert Leroy Hilldrup, The Life and Times of Edmund Pendleton (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1939), passim; Jack P. Greene, “Society, Ideology, and Politics: An Analysis of the Political Culture of Mid-Eighteenth-Century Virginia,” in Richard M. Jellison, ed., Society, Freedom, and Conscience: The American Revolution in Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York (New York, 1976), 14–76; Jefferson’s Autobiography, Library of Congress.

  7. The Boston Port bill used the British military to stop all trade and commerce in the harbor, thus crippling the entire Massachusetts economy; the Massachusetts Government Act annulled the colonial charter and vested the governor and council with virtually absolute political authority; the Justice Act, known as the “murdering bill,” protected Crown officials from facing trial in the colony. See Alison Gilbert Olson, Making the Empire Work: London and American Interest Groups, 1690–1790 (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 167; Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly, December 23, 1773, and Boston Gazette, December 20, 1773; Virginia Gazette, September 1, 1774; Jerrilyn Greene Marston, King and Congress: The Tran
sfer of Political Legitimacy, 1774–1776 (Princeton, N.J., 1987), 40–45; John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783 (Williamsburg, Va., 1988), 7–8.

  8. Seven of the eleven members of the Committee of Correspondence were sent as delegates to the First and Second Continental Congresses (to the first: Peyton Randolph, Richard Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry; to the second: Thomas Jefferson). See “Resolutions of the House of Burgesses Establishing a Committee of Intercolonial Correspondence, 12 March 1773,” “Resolution of the House of Burgesses Designating a Day of Fasting and Prayer, 24 May 1774,” “Association of Former Burgesses … 27 May 1774,” and “Convention of 1774,” in Robert L. Scribner et al., eds., Revolutionary Virginia: The Road to Independence (Charlottesville, Va., 1973–81), 1:90–102; “Resolution of the House of Burgesses Designating a Day of Fast and Prayer, May 24, 1774,” in PTJ, 1:105–7; Andrew Burstein, Sentimental Democracy: The Evolution of America’s Romantic Self-Image (New York, 1999), chap. 3; John E. Ferling, A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic (New York, 2003); Jack Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretative History of the Continental Congress (New York, 1979), 21–25.