Madison and Jefferson
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36. Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2001), 51–66; Pasley, “The Two National Gazettes: Newspapers and the Embodiment of American Political Parties,” Early American Literature 35 (2000): 66; Richard A. Harrison, Princetonians, 1769–1775: A Biographical Dictionary (Princeton, N.J., 1980), 149–53.
37. “Jefferson, Freneau, and the Founding of the National Gazette,” PTJ, 20:718–56; Ketcham, 326–27; Pasley, “Tyranny of Printers,” 74–76. While Madison took the lead in recruiting Freneau, Jefferson did all he could to smooth the way. As parties became better defined in 1792, both Virginians insisted that they did not have in mind an antiadministration paper, only one that would criticize the political theory they saw as monarchism in Adams’s writings. For an early elaboration, see Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 13–19.
38. “Population and Emigration,” National Gazette, November 21, 1791, PJM, 14:117–22.
39. For more on “the class of literati” as “cultivators of the human mind—the manufacturers of useful knowledge,” see Madison’s “Notes for the National Gazette Essays,” December 19, 1791–March 3, 1792, PJM, 14:168. The relevant books that Madison read were those sent by Jefferson from France. French thinkers associated public opinion with the growth of print media and the free exchange of ideas among enlightened men. They drew a sharp distinction between this and the other definition of popular opinion—the unsophisticated views of the masses. See Colleen A. Sheehan, “Madison and the French Enlightenment: The Authority of Public Opinion,” William and Mary Quarterly 59 (October 2002): 925–56.
40. “Notes for the National Gazette Essays,” PJM, 14:163–64.
41. “Consolidation,” National Gazette, December 5, 1791, PJM, 14:137–39.
42. “Public Opinion,” National Gazette, December 19, 1791, PJM, 14:170; on Madison’s support for lowering the postage for newspapers, which failed to gain approval, see ibid., 186. He continued to denigrate orators, who he felt were the bane of society. He imagined that public opinion expressed in print was less likely to excite the passions and more reasonable than the inflamed rhetoric of public speakers such as Patrick Henry. The acerbic, highly emotionalized partisan direction of newspapers would soon show that Madison was wrong. For his continuing distrust of orators, see “Notes for National Gazette Essays,” PJM, 14:165.
43. Madison sharpened his criticism in the essay “Spirit of Governments,” leaving the impression that Hamilton was distributing “bounties” to “favorites” and converting republican government into the “real domination of the few.” Here Madison took a swipe at Adams as well, warning that Americans would only remain “happy and honorable” if they “never descend to mimic the costly pageantry” of Old World forms. See “Universal Peace,” “Spirit of Governments,” National Gazette, January 31, February 18, 1792, in PJM, 14:207–8, 233–34.
44. Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (New York, 1980), 148, 151, 159; Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 258–63. Proponents of the Paterson experiment, including Hamilton, would be deeply troubled when they learned that some of the chief private investors—presumed friends of the federal government—promptly sold off their subscriptions to others, before operations were even under way, so as to make a quick profit.
45. JM to Lee, January 1, 1792; Lee to JM, January 8, 1792, PJM, 14:180, 184. Madison told Edmund Pendleton that Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures defied “the sense in which the Constitution is known to have been proposed, advocated and adopted. If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” See JM to Pendleton, January 21, 1792, ibid., 195.
46. PTJ, 20:315–22; Jacob E. Cooke, Tench Coxe and the Early Republic (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1978), esp. chap. 9. Coxe had given his preliminary “Plan for a Manufacturing Society” to both Hamilton and Jefferson in April 1791. See ibid., 191.
47. “Republican Distribution of Citizens” and “Fashion,” National Gazette, March 5 and March 20, 1792, PJM, 14:245–46, 257–59. The historian Drew R. McCoy has concluded that Hamilton was unconcerned about the dehumanization that attended progress. See McCoy, Elusive Republic, 149.
48. On the death of Lee’s wife, see Paul C. Nagel, The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family (New York, 1992), 165.
49. National Gazette, December 5 and December 19, 1791, January 23 and April 2, 1792. See in this context Jack Rakove’s appraisal of Madison’s “calculated” but not “cynical” reassessment of the proper balance between national and state authority, in Rakove, James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic (New York, 1990), 99–102.
50. Madison’s memorandum, dated May 5, 1792; Brant, 3:355–56; Malone, 2:420–21. When Washington some months later confided in a female friend, the wife of a Pennsylvania official, that he wished to resign, she wrote to him: “Your Resignation wou’d elate the Enemies of good Government and cause lasting regret to the friends of humanity … The Anti-federalist would use it as an Argument for dissolving the Union, and would urge that you, from Experience, had found the present System a bad one, and had, artfully, withdrawn from it that you might not be crushed under its Ruins.” Elizabeth Willing Powel to Washington, November 17, 1792, PGW-PS, 11:395–96.
51. Beeman, Old Dominion and New Nation, 114–18.
52. “T.L. No. III,” August 11, 1792, PAH, 12:193–94.
53. “An American, No. I,” August 4, 1792; “Metellus,” October 24, 1792, PAH, 12:157–64, 617; Gazette of the United States, September 22 and November 24, 1792.
54. National Gazette, September 26 and December 22, 1792.
55. TJ to JM, October 1, 1792, RL, 2:742.
56. Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 33–49; Raymond Walters, Jr., Alexander James Dallas (Philadelphia, 1943), chap. 4; Albany Gazette, June 28, 1792; JM to Edmund Pendleton, December 6, 1792, PJM, 14:421; Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York, 2007), 108–19; Brant, 3:359.
57. Hamilton to Adams, June 25, 1792, PAH, 11:559.
58. TJ to JM, March 13, 1791; JM to TJ, March 13 and ca. April 18, 1791, RL, 2:682–85.
59. Brant, 3:337, 358–59; Malone, 2:393–99, 413.
60. Morris to TJ, August 22, 1792, PTJ, 24:313.
61. Tom Paine was as vocal as Lafayette in his opposition to the politically conservative Morris, appealing to Jefferson to reverse what he saw happening in U.S. foreign policy. See Paine to TJ, February 13, 1792; Short to TJ, July 26, September 18, and September 28, 1792, PTJ, 23:115; 24:252, 402, 425–26.
62. Morris to Hamilton, October 24, 1792, PAH, 12:618. On Adams’s symbolic victory over Jefferson, see Ellis, Passionate Sage, 92–93.
63. Hamilton to Carrington, May 26, 1792, PAH, 11:426–44.
64. JM to Pendleton, November 16, 1792, PJM, 14:408–9; Maria Reynolds to Hamilton, June 2, 1792; Hamilton to James Reynolds, June 3–22, and June 24, 1792; PAH, 11:481–82, 558; Jacob Katz Cogan, “The Reynolds Affair and the Politics of Character,” Journal of the Early Republic 16 (Autumn 1996): 398–417; Brant, 3:365–69.
65. Washington to TJ, August 23, 1792; TJ to Washington, September 9, 1792, PTJ, 24:317, 351–59. Jefferson was more cautious when he wrote to Edmund Randolph the following week. The latest in Hamilton’s unsigned attack essays could easily be proven false, he said, but he had resolved to keep his anger in check. “For the present,” Jefferson qualified, “lying and scribbling must be free to those mean enough to deal in them, and in the dark.” He wished to give Randolph the impression that he could exercise control, whereas Hamilton could not. TJ to Randolph, September 17, 1792, PTJ, 24:387.
66. Hamilton to Washington, September 9, 1792, PAH, 12:347–49.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Party Spirit, 1793
1. TJ to JM, March 25, 1793; JM to TJ, A
pril 12, 1793, RL, 2:765, 768.
2. Lee to Washington, April 29, 1793; Washington to Lee, May 6, 1793, PGW-P, 12:493–94, 533; Lee to Hamilton, May 6, 1793, PAH, 14:416–17. Lee was originally inspired by the prospect of serving with Lafayette and had asked the marquis for a commission.
3. George Green Shackelford, Jefferson’s Adoptive Son: The Life of William Short, 1759–1848 (Lexington, Ky., 1993), 64–67, 115.
4. Noailles Lafayette to Washington, March 12, 1793; TJ to Washington, March 15, 1793; Washington to Noailles Lafayette, March 16, 1793, PGW-PS, 12:307–9, 321, 331–32; TJ to Washington, March 13 and March 15, 1793; to Gouverneur Morris and Thomas Pinckney, March 15, 1793, PTJ, 25:382, 387–88, 390–92.
5. TJ to Short, January 3, 1793, PTJ, 25:14–16; Shackelford, Jefferson’s Adoptive Son, 68–69; Gore Vidal, Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson (New Haven, Conn., 2003), 57.
6. TJ to Lafayette, June 16, 1792, PTJ, 24:85.
7. Thomas O. Ott, The Haitian Revolution, 1789–1804 (Knoxville, Tenn., 1973), 6–17; Laurent DuBois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 29–33, 40, 45, 56; Donald R. Hickey, “America’s Response to the Slave Revolt in Haiti, 1791–1806,” Journal of the Early Republic 2 (Winter 1982): 362–63; John H. Coatsworth, “American Trade with European Colonies in the Caribbean and South America, 1790–1812,” William and Mary Quarterly 24 (April 1967): 245–47. For the most accurate account of the population of St. Domingue in 1789, see David P. Geggus, Slavery, War, and Revolution: The British Occupation of Saint Domingue, 1793–1798 (Oxford, U.K., 1982), 405; for the repressive nature of the planter elite, see ibid., 6, 25.
8. Nathaniel Cutting to TJ, August 4, 1790, PTJ, 17:301; David P. Geggus, “Racial Equality, Slavery, and Colonial Secession during the Constituent Assembly,” American Historical Review 94 (December 1989): 1297–98, 1300–1303; Ott, Haitian Revolution, 36–38. David Geggus observed that the insurrection “produced acts of great savagery from the slaves, as from whites and coloured.” Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution, 41. John D. Garrigus argues that racial reforms for free blacks were crucial in undermining the slave regime. Garrigus, Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue (New York, 2006), 227–63.
9. TJ to Short, November 24, 1791, PTJ, 22:330–31. Rumors of British intervention circulated in England’s newspapers as early as October 1791, but Britain did not get involved until after France had declared war against it. See David P. Geggus, “The British Government and the Saint Domingue Slave Revolt, 1791–1793,” English Historical Review 96 (April 1981): 289; Tim Matthewson, A Proslavery Foreign Policy: Haitian-American Relations during the Early Republic (Westport, Conn., 2003), 12, 20, 28–29.
10. Jefferson’s use of the word assassins was not accidental but echoed what he was hearing. Jeremy Popkin argues that descriptions of the insurrection followed a rigid formula, focusing on the carnage, including the murders of women and children; blacks were denoted “assassins.” The word assassins appeared in the first appeal for aid from the colonial assembly on August 24, 1791, and American newspapers carried similarly graphic accounts. Just days before Jefferson wrote to Short, the National Gazette reprinted a letter stating: “St. Domingo continues to bleed by the hands of the infatuated Africans, who have doubtless been led on by emissaries, to act this scene of murder and desolation.” See National Gazette, November 17, 1791; and Jeremy D. Popkin, Facing Racial Revolution: Eyewitness Accounts of Haitian Insurrection (Chicago, 2007), 6–9; also Matthewson, Proslavery Foreign Policy, 12, 29.
11. Some reckoned that the United States might someday annex St. Domingue. That was certainly the conviction of Jefferson’s principal informant on the island, Nathaniel Cutting, an American businessman who had done small favors for Jefferson in Europe. In 1790 he had sailed to Africa from Le Havre and was still actively engaged in the slave trade at the time he wrote Jefferson from St. Domingue that “every Free American who indulges Political Reflections must feel himself peculiarly interested in the Fate of this valuable and flourishing Colony of Saint Domingue, which at some future point may possibly fall within the Jurisdiction of the Thirteen United States!” While Jefferson would not speak of independence for the whites of the troubled colony, he did want to use leverage to pressure France into removing trade restrictions to benefit the United States. See Cutting to TJ, April 19, 1791, PTJ, 17:240; Simon Newman, “American Political Culture and the French and Haitian Revolutions: Nathaniel Cutting and the Jeffersonian Republicans,” in David P. Geggus, ed., The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia, S.C., 2001), 73–74, 78.
12. TJ to William Short, November 24, 1791, PTJ, 22:331; Matthewson, Proslavery Foreign Policy, 25–26, 29, 38.
13. There was precedent for this. In Jamaica in 1739 the British resolved a rebellion diplomatically by recognizing a completely separate maroon colony of free blacks in the mountains of the interior. Doing so, they secured the plantation economy, preserved the institution of slavery, and satisfied a defiant free black population all at once. The British strategy in Jamaica was consistent with Jefferson’s thinking in Notes on Virginia: segregation, removal, and rejection of a biracial political unit ensured social stability. See TJ to Lafayette, June 16, 1792, PTJ, 24:85; Matthewson, Proslavery Foreign Policy, 39. Laurent DuBois has argued the importance of maroon communities, in Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 52–57.
14. Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution, 42–45, 64, 78.
15. JM to Pendleton, March 25, 1792, and “Santo Domingan Refugees,” January 10, 1794, in PJM, 14:263, 15:177–79; Eva Sheppard Wolf, Race and Liberty in the New World: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner’s Rebellion (Baton Rouge, La., 2006), 26–27, 115; TJ to James Monroe, July 14, 1793, PTJ, 26:503.
16. TJ to Martha Jefferson Randolph, May 26, 1793, in The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Edwin Morris Betts and James Adam Bear, Jr. (Charlottesville, Va., 1986), 119–20.
17. TJ to James Monroe, July 14, 1793, PTJ, 26:503. Jefferson did not consider that the principles which set in motion the American and French revolutions had meaning in St. Domingue; but Nathaniel Cutting did, blaming the French Revolution and its “leveling principles” for destroying St. Domingue. See Newman, “American Political Culture and French and Haitian Revolutions,” 79.
18. See the extended discussion of the wrangling that took place over the neutrality proclamation in John Lamberton Harper, American Machiavelli: Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2004), 104, 108–14.
19. TJ to JM, July 11 and August 3, 1793; JM to TJ, July 18 and September 2, 1793, RL, 2:792–93, 797, 814–15; Alexander DeConde, Entangling Alliance: Politics and Diplomacy Under George Washington (Durham, N.C., 1958), 206–13. Adding to the confusion, Genet’s predecessor, Ternant, did not know which way to turn when the Jacobins refused to credit him for his work in America. Having sentiments for Louis XVI, Ternant turned for comfort to Hamilton, “put on mourning for the king, and became a perfect Counter-revolutioner.” Then he received word from Genet that he might be given an army appointment under the Jacobins and did another turnabout. TJ to JM and Monroe, May 5, 1793, RL, 2:770–71.
20. The seven “Pacificus” essays were published between June 29 and July 27, 1793; quotes are from “Pacificus No. V,” July 13–17, 1793, PAH, 15:90–91, 95.
21. TJ to JM, May 13, 1793, RL, 2:773; “Notes of a Conversation with George Washington,” August 6, 1793, PTJ, 26:628; Brant, 3:377–79.
22. JM to Monroe, September 15, 1793, PJM, 15:110–11.
23. Madison wrote the “Helvidius” essays from August 24 to September 18, 1793. He published them in Fenno’s United States Gazette, wishing for the essays to appear in the same publication as Hamilton’s “Pacificus.” See “Helvidius No. 1,” August 24, 1793, “Helvidius No. 5,” September 18, 1793, PJM, 15:67–68, 71, 73, 115–16; JM to TJ, June 19, 1793, RL, 1:786.
24. Madison’s knowledge o
f Helvidius Priscus most likely comes from Book 4 of Tacitus.
25. JM to TJ, May 27, 1793; TJ to JM, June 9, 1793, RL, 2:776, 779–81.
26. Eugene R. Sheridan, “Thomas Jefferson and the Giles Resolutions,” William and Mary Quarterly 49 (October 1992): 589–608; Malone, 3:14–33; Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800 (New York, 1993), 295–301.
27. Taylor to JM, May 11, June 20, and September 25, 1793; Monroe to JM, May 18, 1793; JM to Monroe, September 15, 1793, PJM, 15:13–14, 17, 34–35, 110–11, 123; National Gazette, September 11, 1793. The pamphlet would be published as An Enquiry into the Principles and Tendency of Certain Public Measures.
28. Pendleton to Washington, September 11, 1793, The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton, ed. David John Mays (Charlottesville, Va., 1967), 2:613–15.
29. TJ to JM, August 11, 1793, RL, 2:802–3.
30. “Notes of a Conversation with George Washington,” August 6, 1793, PTJ, 26:627–30; PGW-PS, 13:312n.
31. TJ to JM, August 11, 1793, RL, 2:803–4. Jefferson first expressed frustration with Randolph a few months earlier, when Randolph came up with a compromise position for enforcement of neutrality laws in U.S. ports. Hamilton wanted the responsibility conferred upon customs officials, which meant shifting more power to the Treasury Department. To mollify Jefferson, Randolph proposed that all customs officials report instead to federal attorneys. Rather than see this as a workable solution, Jefferson came to resent Randolph’s mediation. It appeared to him that Randolph was subtly outmaneuvering both Hamilton and him and puffing himself up.
32. TJ to JM, May 13, 1793, RL, 1:772–73. Randolph agreed with Jefferson on sixteen out of nineteen issues raised in cabinet meetings. When Hamilton attacked Jefferson for supporting Freneau’s newspaper, Randolph was the first to defend him in print, calling his “calumniator” a “cowardly assassin.” But Randolph refused to be bullied by Jefferson. In most of his disagreements with Jefferson, he had valid reasons. When Jefferson suggested sending the controversial Gouverneur Morris, currently the minister to France, to England, Randolph warned that such a move would insult France since that country might soon be at war with Great Britain. In 1793 Jefferson suggested a special Board of Advice to decide on constitutional questions, which would have usurped the duties of the attorney general. Randolph refused to allow this to happen. For a balanced view of Randolph’s actions, see John Garry Clifford, “A Muddy Middle of the Road: The Politics of Edmund Randolph, 1790–1795,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 80 (July 1972): 288–94.