Madison and Jefferson
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30. TJ to Harrison, November 11, 1783; and “George Washington’s Resignation as Commander-in-Chief,” PTJ, 6:351–53, 402–7; Ronald Byrd, “George Washington and Wellness,” in Kevin L. Cope, ed., George Washington in and as Culture (New York, 2001), 249–67; Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York, 2004), 144–46; John E. Ferling, The First of Men: A Life of George Washington (Knoxville, Tenn., 1988), 263–65. For a nuanced reading of Washington’s symbolic value during his lifetime, as well as insights into his intellectual life, see Paul K. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington (Berkeley, Calif., 1988), 213–26 and passim.
31. TJ to Chastellux, January 16, 1784, PTJ, 6:467.
32. “The Virginia Cession of Territory North of the Ohio,” PTJ, 6:571–617; Onuf, Origins of the Federal Republic, chap. 7; Richard P. McCormick, “The ‘Ordinance’ of 1784?” William and Mary Quarterly 50 (January 1993): 112–22; JM to Monroe, May 29, 1785, PJM, 8:285–86; Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (Charlottesville, Va., 1971), 41–45, 51–54.
33. Another promoter of the new America was Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College and a Congregationalist minister, who published a popular sermon just months before passage of the 1784 Land Ordinance, in which he proclaimed: “The whole continent is activity, and in the lively vigorous exertion of industry.” Owing to the “enterprising spirit of Americans for colonization and removing out into the wilderness,” an invigorated population would “soon overspread the vast territory from the Atlantic to the Mississippi.” See Andrew Burstein, Sentimental Democracy (New York, 1999), 38–39, 88, 162–64; Stiles, The UNITED STATES Elevated to GLORY and HONOUR (Worcester, Mass., 1785), 12–13.
34. Peter S. Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (Bloomington, Ind., 1987), chap. 1; Onuf, Origins of the Federal Republic, 17, 99–102; TJ to JM, November 11, 1784, RL, 1:350.
35. TJ to JM, May 8 and May 11, 1784, RL, 1:315–16.
36. TJ to JM, May 7, 1783; JM to TJ, May 15 and July 3, 1784, RL, 1:245, 318, 322. Underscoring Henry’s dangerousness as an opponent, David A. McCants has written of how Virginia’s model orator succeeded: “Henry pleaded causes, not cases; he presented dramas, not arguments.” See McCants, Patrick Henry, the Orator (New York, 1990), 103.
37. Printers in Boston and Virginia picked up the story and reprinted it verbatim, which is what newspapers of this era typically did. The original dateline is Providence, June 19, 1784, but available copies are in Boston’s American Herald, June 28, 1784; Salem Gazette, June 29, 1784; and Virginia Journal, July 15, 1784. On the definition of civilian, see Johnson’s Dictionary (Philadelphia, 1813); on uses of politician, see the progression in various American newspapers between 1706 and 1786, including Boston News-Letter, September 9–16, 1706, American Weekly Mercury [Philadelphia], February 13–20, 19–26, 1722, New-England Courant, July 2–9, 1722, Boston Evening-Post, December 26, 1743, Boston Gazette and New-York Mercury for 1756, Political Intelligencer [New Brunswick, N.J.], May 11, 1784, Independent Journal [New York] issues of 1785, Charleston Evening Gazette, June 9, 1786. The New-Hampshire Gazette [Portsmouth], February 18, 1786, reprints an address by Benedict Arnold, from London, using the word dismissively to belittle the republican pretensions of Congress and the states: “The Americans are certainly the most extraordinary politicians in the world.”
38. TJ to JM, November 11, 1784, RL, 1:350–51.
39. As early as May 1783, Jefferson had let Madison know that he considered Short an ideal person for him to work with in Paris: “You may know my high opinion of his abilities and merits,” he said. “I will therefore only add that a peculiar talent for prying into facts seems to mark his character as proper for such a business.” TJ to JM, May 7, 1783, RL, 1:245. Short took quite a chance, sailing to France before he had any assurance that he would be officially compensated by the U.S. government.
40. George Green Shackelford, Jefferson’s Adoptive Son: The Life of William Short, 1759–1848 (Lexington, Ky., 1993), 5–16.
41. JM to TJ, July 3, 1784; TJ to JM, December 8, 1784, RL, 1:322–23, 353–54; Brant, 2:322–23.
42. JM to TJ, April 27, 1785, RL, 1:367–71.
43. Louis Gottschalk, Lafayette between the American and the French Revolution, 1783–1789 (Chicago, 1950), 23–25, 38–39, 63, 69, 73, 83–84.
44. JM to JM, Sr., September 6, 1784, PJM, 8:112; JM to TJ, October 17, 1784, RL, 1:347–49; TJ to JM, March 18, 1785, and February 8, 1786, RL, 1:365, 411; Gottschalk, Lafayette between the American and the French Revolution, chap. 8; Ketcham, 155–57.
45. Leibiger, Founding Friendship, 53–56; “Deed of Gift of Orange County Lands,” August 19, 1784; JM to Randolph, July 26, 1785; to Monroe, March 14, 1786, PJM, 8:99, 328, 497; JM to TJ, August 12, 1786, RL, 1:432–33; Brant, 2:328–35, 340–41; Ketcham, 145–47. The Madison-Monroe purchase of nine hundred acres was not concluded until 1790, when they made their final payment—having only been able to raise $675 in 1786. See Monroe to JM, July 19, 1789, PJM, 12:297.
46. “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” ca. June 20, 1785, PJM, 8:295–304; Ketcham, 162; Koch, Jefferson and Madison, 27–30.
47. William Peden, ed., Notes on the State of Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1954), Query XVII, 159.
48. Virginia Journal [Alexandria], April 14, 1785; JM to TJ, January 22, 1786, RL, 1:402–3; Ketcham, 163–68. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom became law in January 1786.
49. George Green Shackelford, Thomas Jefferson’s Travels in Europe, 1784–1789 (Baltimore, 1995), chap. 1; William Howard Adams, The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson (New Haven, Conn., 1997); Malone, 2:3–20, 44, 213.
50. Lafayette to McHenry, December 3, 1785, in Gottschalk, Lafayette between the American and the French Revolution, 208; TJ to Chastellux, January 16, 1784, PTJ, 6:467.
51. For modern commentary on the Notes, see Douglas L. Wilson, “Jefferson and the Republic of Letters,” in Peter S. Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies (Charlottesville, Va., 1993), 53–57, 63–64; Charles A. Miller, Jefferson and Nature: An Interpretation (Baltimore, 1988), 15–19; Henry Steele Commager, Jefferson, Nationalism, and the Enlightenment (New York, 1975), 36–39; and Kevin J. Hayes, The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 2008), chap. 17.
52. TJ to JM, May 11, 1785; JM to TJ, November 15, 1785, RL, 1:372, 392; Rev. JM to TJ, March 27, 1786, and February 10, 1789, PTJ, 9:357, 14:534. In 1786 Reverend Madison was first shown a copy of the Notes by James Madison, Sr., and was not given time to read in depth. For a good analysis of Jefferson’s self-conscious concern about the personal and political dimensions of publishing Notes on a large scale, see Douglas L. Wilson, “The Evolution of Jefferson’s ‘Notes on the State of Virginia,’ ” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 112 (2004): 98–133.
53. TJ to JM, February 8, 1786; JM to TJ, May 12, 1786, RL, 1:410, 419; “Autobiography,” TJP-LC.
54. See Introduction to Peden, ed., Notes on Virginia. For an examination of Jefferson’s take on Virginia in the context of various published perspectives, see Jack P. Greene, “The Intellectual Reconstruction of Virginia,” in Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies, 225–53.
55. Peden, ed., Notes on Virginia, Queries II, IV, VI, VII; on plants and power, see Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (New Haven, Conn., 2000), esp. 44–49.
56. Peden, ed., Notes on Virginia, Queries VIII and XIV.
57. John Wood Sweet, Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730–1830 (Baltimore, 2003), chap. 4, “Strange Flesh,” and chap. 7, “Conceiving Race,” quote at 189.
58. On this tradition, and the culture of patronage and publishing, see esp. Richard B. Sher, The Enlightenment and the Book (Chicago, 2006), chap. 3.
59. Washington to JM, November 30, 1785; Mason to JM, December 7, 1785; JM to Washington, December 9, 1785, PJM, 8:429, 433, 438–39.
60. “Act Concernin
g Statehood for the Kentucky District,” December 22, 1785, PJM, 8:450–53. Kentucky statehood was delayed until 1792. Madison had long seen Kentucky as a virtual colony of Virginia and continued to assume that Virginians would sell goods to the settlers in the West, replicating the British model of center and periphery. Madison backed George Washington’s idea of a Potomac canal for the same reason.
61. Shackelford, Jefferson’s Adoptive Son, 111–13; William Howard Adams, The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson (New Haven, Conn., 1997), 10.
62. TJ to JM, February 8, 1786, and January 30, 1787, RL, 1:412, 462–63; Shackelford, Thomas Jefferson’s Travels in Europe, 37–39. The attitude of the English toward the United States persisted, as Britain-based American John Brown Cutting demonstrated in a subsequent letter to Jefferson on Americans’ degradation in the press and government alike: “Why every species of contumely and abuse against the citizens of [A]merica is so much relished here it is obvious to discern.” The king and his ministers had created a “political fashion”: America-bashing. “To gratify the irascible feelings of the monarch,” Britons would recommence hostilities, if they could be assured of only a minor derangement in their internal affairs. “I own in the present moment of [B]ritish insolence and royal hatred, a fresh conflict with us may not be very distant.” Cutting to TJ, August 3, 1788, PTJ, 13:461–62.
63. Monroe to JM, February 11 and February 16, 1786; Lee to JM, February 16, 1786; JM to Monroe, March 19, 1786; Grayson to JM, March 22, 1786, PJM, 8:492–93, 504–5, 510. Lee, like Madison, would finally marry in his forties.
64. JM to TJ, March 18, 1786, RL, 1:413–16; JM to Lafayette, March 20, 1785, PJM, 8:250–55; Onuf, Statehood and Union, 54–58.
65. John Fiske, The Critical Period in American History, 1783–1789 (Boston, 1888), Preface. Fiske found his title after considering Thomas Paine’s comment when his wartime series, “The Crisis,” ended, in 1783, and Paine asserted: “The times that tried men’s souls are over.” The historian differed, thinking the next five years were even more critical. JM to Monroe, March 14 and March 19, 1786, PJM, 8:497–98, 505–6; Ketcham, 175–76. Madison had referred to “the present paroxysm of jealousy” among the states as early as 1783.
66. JM to TJ, August 12, 1786 RL, 1:429–30.
67. TJ to JM, April 25, 1786, RL, 1:417; TJ to Washington, May 2, 1788, PTJ, 13:127–28.
68. Lance Banning, The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995), 66–69; JM to TJ, April 23, 1787, RL, 1:475–76.
69. JM to TJ August 12, 1786; TJ to JM, January 30–February 5, 1787, RL, 1:431, 461–62.
70. TJ to John Banister, Jr., October 15, 1785, PTJ, 8:636–37; Burstein, Jefferson’s Secrets, chap. 6.
71. Maria Cosway to TJ, April 29, 1788, PTJ, 13:116; Burstein, Inner Jefferson, 98–99.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Division of Power, 1787
1. Washington to Knox, December 5, 1784; Knox to Washington, April 9, 1787, PGW-CS, 2:170–72, 5:134; JM to TJ, March 19, 1787, RL, 1:470.
2. Madison called paper money “fictitious money,” and Lee considered the fluctuation in currencies enough of a cause for alarm that he wrote: “Knaves assure, and fools believe, that calling paper money, and making it tender, is the way to be rich and happy; thus the national mind is kept in constant ferment.” Congress, he warned, had to put its foot down so that the “continual disturbance by the intrigues of wicked men” would be stopped. Lee to Mason, May 15, 1787, Papers of George Mason, 3:876–79.
3. TJ to JM, October 28, 1785; JM to TJ, June 19, 1786, RL, 1:390, 423–24.
4. See “Notes on Ancient and Modern Confederacies,” PJM, 9:3–24.
5. “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” PJM, 9:348–50. For the importance of Madison’s experience in the Virginia Assembly in convincing him of the need for a new federal system of government, see Charles F. Hobson, “The Negative on State Laws: James Madison, the Constitution, and the Crisis of Republican Government,” William and Mary Quarterly 36 (April 1979): 223–24.
6. “Vices of the Political System,” PJM, 9:353–54; JM to TJ, October 15, 1788 (containing Madison’s observations on Jefferson’s draft of a constitution for Virginia), RL, 1:555; JM to Washington, April 16, 1787, PJM, 9:383.
7. Ketcham, 169–70, 185.
8. JM to TJ, December 4, 1786, RL, 1:454.
9. It was Randolph’s idea that the general propositions of reform should be “prepared for feeling the pulse of the convention,” and that an “address” should accompany the Virginia plan. See Randolph to JM, March 27, 1787, PJM, 9:335.
10. Madison let Washington know that his name was needed to convince the Virginia legislature of the “magnitude of the occasion.” See JM to Washington, November 8, 1786; also JM to Washington, December 7 and December 24, 1786, PJM, 9:166, 199, 224–26. Madison was concerned about the best way to capitalize on Washington’s stature. In April he wrote to Randolph that it might be wise for the general to postpone his arrival, as it would be disastrous if he should be attached to “any abortive undertaking.” Yet Madison also considered that his late arrival might keep him from presiding over the convention and subject him to a “less conspicuous” role. He thought Washington’s delay might enable Pennsylvania to nominate Benjamin Franklin as chair. Madison was willing to sacrifice Washington’s role, if it would reinforce the alliance with Pennsylvania. See JM to Edmund Randolph, April 15, 1787, PJM, 9:378. On Madison’s relationship with Robert Morris, see Ketcham, 117, 130–35; David Brian Robertson, The Constitution and America’s Destiny (New York, 2005), 78–79.
11. JM to TJ, May 12, 1786; JM to James Monroe, May 13, 1786, PJM, 9:50, 55.
12. Clinton Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention (New York, 1966; revised ed., 1987), 121–23; JM to TJ, April 23, 1787, RL, 1:476; JM to Edmund Randolph, April 8, 1787, JM to Washington, April 16, 1787, PJM, 9:369, 382–83.
13. JM to Randolph, April 8, 1787, JM to Washington, April 16, 1787, PJM, 9:369–70, 383; Jack N. Rakove, “The Great Compromise: Ideas, Interests, and the Politics of Constitution Making,” William and Mary Quarterly 44 (July 1987): 427–28.
14. It was an accepted theory at the time that migration patterns overwhelmingly favored the Southwest, as available land there would lure Americans away from the northern states and toward the Gulf of Mexico.
15. JM to Washington, April 16, 1787, PJM, 9:383.
16. JM to Randolph, April 8, 1787; to Washington, April 16, 1787, PJM, 9:370, 384–85.
17. JM to Randolph, April 8, 1787; to Washington, April 16, 1787, PJM, 9:369–70, 383–84. Also see the discussion in Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969), chap. 12.
18. JM to TJ, October 24 and November 1, 1787, RL, 1:500; on the pervasive influence of Locke’s educational theory, see Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority, 1750–1800 (New York, 1984), 13–15, 30–31; and on the importance of pedagogical discipline under Witherspoon at Princeton, see Christopher Castiglia, “Pedagogical Discipline and the Creation of White Citizenship: John Witherspoon, Robert Finley, and the Colonization Society,” Early American Literature 33 (1998): 192–214.
19. Comments by JM, June 8, in Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 (Athens, Ohio, 1966), 88–89.
20. TJ to JM, June 20, 1787, RL, 1:480.
21. Examples of the correspondence: Cosway to Jefferson, “I will write two words, to show you I can write if I please but as I dont please I shall say no More, as I wait to hear from you … tho’ you neglect me, I force myself to your recolection.” To which Jefferson replied, only half-convincingly, that she should cross the Channel again to see how well her paintings were being admired, whence he would “take refuge every day in your coterie.” Of course, a coterie was a flock, and as such would prevent the two of them from sneaking off alone. He had moved from poetic longing to prosaic flattery. TJ to Cosway, April 24 and July
27, 1788; Cosway to TJ, June 23, 1788; Angelica Schuyler Church to TJ, July 21, 1788, PTJ, 13:103–4, 287–88, 391, 424.
22. Abigail Adams to TJ, September 10, 1787, PTJ, 12:112; Malone, 2:133–38.
23. TJ to Monroe, June 17, 1785; to Lafayette, April 11, 1787; to George Gilmer, August 12, 1787, PTJ, 8:233, 11:283–85, 12:26.
24. Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, comp. E. Millicent Sowerby (Washington, D.C., 1952–59), 5:143–45; Francis D. Cogliano, Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy (Charlottesville, Va., 2006), 44–48.
25. TJ to Monroe, June 17, 1785, PTJ, 8:233.
26. Rossiter, 1787: Grand Convention, 104–6; Ketcham, 191.
27. Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1938), 744–45.
28. JM to TJ, May 15, 1787, RL, 1:477; Ketcham, 192–93.
29. George Mason to George Mason, Jr., May 20 and June 1, 1787, Papers of George Mason, ed. Robert A. Rutland (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1970), 3:881, 892–93.
30. JM to TJ, May 15, 1787, RL, 1:477; TJ to John Adams, August 30, 1787, PTJ, 12:69. On May 25 the southern states were present in force, whereas New England had not as yet assembled complete delegations. The most recent scholar to write on the convention sees this, in part, as a function of some New Englanders’ “apathy” toward the proceedings. See Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (New York, 2009), 58–60.
31. After Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, Dr. McClurg of Virginia was the most conspicuous holder of state and continental securities at the convention. See Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention, 124.
32. Nathan Schachner, Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1949), 102–3, 124–25; Robert Ernst, Rufus King: American Federalist (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1968), 66–68; Malone, 1:409; John E. O’Connor, William Paterson: Lawyer and Statesman, 1745–1806 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1979), 88, 111, 130, 133–34; Christopher Collier, Roger Sherman’s Connecticut: Yankee Politics and the American Revolution (Middletown, Conn., 1971), 102, 194, 234–35; Paul S. Clarkson and R. Samuel Jett, Luther Martin of Maryland (Baltimore, 1970), 41.