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70. John Jay to Jefferson, October 27, 1786, Boyd, X, 488–89; Abigail Adams to Jefferson, January 29, 1787, Cappon, I, 168–69. On Shays’s Rebellion, see David P. Szatmary, Shays’s Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection (Amherst, 1980) and Robert Gross, ed., In Debt to Shays: The Bicentennial of an Agrarian Rebellion (Charlottesville, 1993).
71. Jefferson to Abigail Adams, February 22, 1787, Cappon, I, 173; Jefferson to Ezra Stiles, December 24, 1786; Jefferson to James Madison, January 30, 1787; Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787, Boyd, X, 629; XI, 92–93; XII, 356–57.
72. Jefferson to James Madison, January 30, 1787; Jefferson to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787, Boyd, XI, 92–93, 48–50.
73. James Madison to Jefferson, March 19, 1787; Jefferson to James Madison, June 20, 1787; Edward Carrington to Jefferson, June 9, 1787, ibid., XI, 219–20, 480, 407–11. Jefferson to John Adams, November 13, 1787, Cappon I, 212.
74. Jefferson to C. W. F. Dumas, September 10, 1787; James Madison to Jefferson, July 18, 1787, Boyd, XII, 113; XI, 600.
75. James Madison to Jefferson, October 24, 1787; Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787, ibid., XII, 270–86, 438–43.
76. Jefferson to Edward Carrington, December 21, 1787, ibid., XII, 446.
77. Jefferson to George Washington, May 2, 1788, ibid., XIII, 128.
78. Francis Hopkinson to Jefferson, December 1, 1788; James Madison to Jefferson, July 24, 1788, ibid., XIV, 324; XIII, 412.
79. Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, February 2, 1788; Jefferson to John Brown, May 28, 1788; Edward Carrington to Jefferson, May 14, 1788; Jefferson to James Madison, November 18, 1787; Jefferson to James Madison, July 31, 1788; Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789, ibid., XII, 557–58; XIII, 212–13, 157; XIV, 188; XIII, 443; XIV, 650.
80. The secondary literature on the French Revolution defies succinct summary. The classic general accounts are George Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton, 1947) and R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800 (2 vols., Princeton, 1959–64). A more recent account that emphasizes the violent and catastrophic character of the events is Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York, 1988).
81. Jefferson to Lafayette, February 28, 1787; Jefferson to James Monroe, August 5, 1787, Boyd, XI, 186, 687–88; Jefferson to John Adams, December 10, 1787, Cappon, I, 214.
82. Jefferson to John Jay, October 8, 1787; Jefferson to James Madison, August 2, 1787, Boyd, XII, 218; XI, 664.
83. Jefferson to John Jay, June 21, 1787, ibid., XI, 489–90.
84. Jefferson to James Monroe, August 9, 1788; Jefferson to George Washington, November 4, 1788; Jefferson to James Madison, November 18, 1788; Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, December 21, 1788, ibid., XIII, 489; XIV, 330, 188–89, 369–70; Jefferson to John Adams, August 2, 1788, Cappon, I, 230.
85. Jefferson to Madame de Tessé, March 20, 1787, Boyd, XI, 228. In his note Boyd dates the insertion as made between 1809 and 1826, on the basis of the watermark on the paper. Representative expressions of his confidence can be found in Jefferson to John Jay, November 19, 1788; Jefferson to James Madison, January 12, 1789, ibid., XIV, 211–17, 436–40.
86. Jefferson’s fullest account of his faith in the Patriot Party can be found in Jefferson to John Jay, May 9, 1789; Jefferson to Richard Price, January 8, 1789, ibid., XV, 110–13; XIV, 420–24. For his faith in Lafayette, see Jefferson to Lafayette, May 6, 1789, ibid., XV, 97–98. For a full account of Lafayette’s role in the French Revolution, see Louis Gottschalk, Lafayette Between the French and the American Revolution, 1783–89 (Chicago, 1950) and Louis Gottschalk and Margaret Maddox, Lafayette in the French Revolution (Chicago, 1969).
87. Jefferson to John Jay, May 23, 1788; Jefferson to David Ramsay, May 7, 1788; Jefferson to Ralph Izard, July 17, 1788; Jefferson to John Jay, June 17, 1789; Jefferson to Tom Paine, May 19, 1789, Boyd, XIII, 188–97, 140, 373; XV, 188–91, 136–37. For Jefferson’s draft of a Charter of Rights, ibid., XV, 167–68 and 230–33 for Lafayette’s version of same.
88. Jefferson to John Jay, June 29, 1789; Jefferson to Tom Paine, July 11, 1789, ibid., XV, 221–23, 268.
89. Jefferson to John Jay, July 19, 1789; Jefferson to James Madison, July 22, 1789, ibid., XV, 284–91, 299–301.
90. Jefferson to Edward Bancroft, August 5, 1789, ibid., XV, 333.
91. Jefferson to James Madison, September 6, 1789, ibid., XV, 392–98. All previous work on the issues raised by Jefferson’s letter has been synthesized and then superseded by Herbert E. Sloan, Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt (New York, 1995), which is one of those truly pathbreaking books that comes along, excuse the pun, about every generation.
92. James Madison to Jefferson, February 4, 1790, Boyd, XVI, 131–34.
93. Drew R. McCoy, The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy (Cambridge, 1989), 45–61; Sloan, Principle and Interest, 140.
94. Jefferson to James Madison, October 28, 1785, Boyd, VIII, 682.
95. Gottschalk and Maddox, Lafayette in the French Revolution, 72–99; Sloan, Principle and Interest, 63–67.
96. Thomas Paine to Jefferson, (no date), Boyd, XIII, 4–8; for Julian Boyd’s note on the August 26 meeting in Jefferson’s residence, see ibid., XV, 354–55, and for his note on the generational idea, 384–91. The proposition by Richard Gem is in ibid., XV, 391–92.
97. Jefferson to Nicholas Lewis, July 29, 1787, ibid., XI, 639–42. Additional expressions of deepening concern about his indebtedness can be found in Jefferson to Nicholas Lewis, December 19, 1786; Jefferson to Nicholas Lewis, September 17, 1787; Jefferson to James Madison, May 25, 1788; Jefferson to Nicholas Lewis, July 11, 1788, ibid., X, 614–16; XII, 134–36, 201–03, 339–44. This emphasis on Jefferson’s personal indebtedness as the major source of his motivation is a central argument in Sloan, Principle and Interest.
98. James Madison to Jefferson, May 27, 1789; Jefferson to James Madison, August 28, 1789, Boyd, XV, 153–54, 369.
99. Jefferson to Lucy Ludwell Paradise, September 10, 1789; Jefferson to Richard Price, September 13, 1789, ibid., XV, 412, 425.
100. Jefferson to David Ramsay, September 18, 1789; Jefferson to John Jay, September 19, 1789, ibid., XV, 450, 454–61.
101. William Short to Jefferson, October 8, 1789; Maria Cosway to Jefferson, October 8, 1789; George Washington to Jefferson, October 13, 1789, ibid., XV, 510–12, 513, 519–20.
3. MONTICELLO: 1794–97
1. Jefferson to Enoch Edwards, December 30, 1793, Ford, VI, 495; Jefferson to George Washington, July 31, 1793, Domestic Life, 218.
2. John Adams to Abigail Adams, January 14, 1797, quoted in Smith, II, 895, where Adams is in fact referring to Madison’s retirement. On the influence of the classical tradition and its enshrinement of agrarian solitude, see Douglass Adair, “Fame and the Founding Fathers,” in Colbourn, ed., Fame and the Founding Fathers, 3–26.
3. Jefferson to James Madison, April 27, 1795, Smith, II, 897–98; Jefferson to Angelica Church, November 27, 1793, Ford, VI, 455; Jefferson to Horatio Gates, February 3, 1794, quoted in Malone, III, 168; Jefferson to John Adams, April 25, 1794, Cappon, I, 254.
4. For Isaac Jefferson’s recollections of the rheumatism, see Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, 19; Jefferson to Edmund Randolph, September 7, 1794, Domestic Life, 231, and ibid., 233, for “the effects of age” quotation.
5. Jefferson to James Madison, June 9, 1793, Smith, II, 781. The secondary literature on the hyperbolic character of politics in the 1790s is vast. Jefferson’s own role is discussed in loving detail in Malone, II, 281–488, and III, 3–166. See also Dumas Malone, Thomas Jefferson as a Political Leader (Westport, 1979), in which Malone summarizes his interpretive conclusions and acknowledges that “after living intimately with Jefferson in earlier periods of his life, I found him a rather different man in parts of this one.” The standard work on Jefferson’s ideologi
cal posture in the 1790s is Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca, 1978). The best general overview of the intellectual frenzy is Richard Buel, Jr., Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American Politics, 1789–1815 (Ithaca, 1972). Two seminal articles are quite suggestive: Marshall Smelser, “The Federalist Period as an Age of Passion,” American Quarterly, X (1958), 391–419, and John R. Howe, Jr., “Republican Thought and the Political Violence of the 1790s,” American Quarterly, XIX (1967), 147–65. The most authoritative account of the political history of the period is Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800 (New York, 1993).
6. The scholarly literature on the intellectual issues at stake is both vast and contentious. Perhaps the best place to begin is with Banning, Jeffersonian Persuasion, then proceed to Joyce O. Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s (New York, 1984) along with the relevant essays in her collection, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, 1992). At this point one begins to realize that the term “republicanism” has created an electromagnetic field within the scholarly world. Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992) offers the most comprehensive synthesis of the interpretive trends. The terms of the ongoing debate are best reviewed in the Banning-Appleby exchange: “Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited: Liberal and Classical Ideas in the New American Republic” and “Republicanism in Old and New Context,” WMQ, XLIII (1986), 3–34. An elegant synthesis is available in Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 3–29. The best summary of the inconclusive character of the current debate as it relates to Jeffersonian scholarship is in Onuf, “The Scholar’s Jefferson,” WMQ, L (1993), 675–84.
7. Once again, the literature on the emergence of political parties defies easy summary. Three old but still-useful books are: Charles Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York, 1915), Joseph Charles, The Origins of the American Party System (New York, 1961) and Noble Cunningham, Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization, 1789–1801 (Chapel Hill, 1957). More recent studies that emphasize the nascent character of the “party” idea are: Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (Berkeley, 1969), Buel, Securing the Revolution and Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism.
8. The classic account is Koch, Jefferson and Madison. The new edition of the correspondence between Jefferson and Madison, edited by James Morton Smith, provides the most up-to-date account of their relationship in the introductory essay that precedes each section of the correspondence. If read as a series of chapters, they offer the most comprehensive version of the story available. They deserve to be published as a separate volume. The quotation from John Quincy Adams is in Smith, I, 1–2.
9. Malone, II, 370, III, 109; Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, I, 616.
10. James Monroe to Jefferson, March 3, 1794, quoted in Malone, III, 162–63.
11. Pierre Adet to minister of foreign affairs, December 31, 1796, Smith, II, 942. The standard account of Jefferson’s years as secretary of state is Malone, II, 256–88, III, 3–166. The most recent and revisionist account is Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 209–56. The best overview of Jefferson’s foreign policy views is Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1990).
12. This is a highly telescoped account most influenced by Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 209–56, and Charles R. Ritcheson, Aftermath of Revolution: British Policy Toward the United States, 1783–95 (Dallas, 1969). See also Walter La Feber, “Jefferson and American Foreign Policy,” in Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies, 370–91.
13. For the linkage between his personal debt and his Anglophobia, see Sloan, Principle and Interest, 86–124.
14. Jefferson to James Madison, August 11, 1793, Smith, II, 803. On Genêt’s disastrous career in America, see Harry Ammon, The Genêt Mission (New York, 1973).
15. Jefferson to William Short, January 3, 1793, Ford, VI, 153–57.
16. Jefferson to Trench Coxe, June 1, 1795, Ford, VII, 22. The classic comparative account of the American and French experience with Revolution is Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution. For Paine’s career in France, see John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life (Boston, 1995), 267–452. For the best and most recent edition of The Rights of Man, see Eric Foner, ed., Paine: Collected Writings (2 vols., New York, 1995).
17. John Adams to Abigail Adams, December 19, 1793, Adams, ed., Works, I, 460; Jefferson to George Washington, September 9, 1792, Boyd, XXIV, 352. On the dinner table bargain, see Norman Risjord, Chesapeake Politics, 1781–1800 (New York, 1978) and also his “The Compromise of 1790: New Evidence on the Dinner Table Bargain,” WMQ, XXXIII (1976), 309–14.
18. The Adams epithet is from John Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, January 25, 1806, The Microfilm Edition of the Adams Papers, Reel 118. This brief sketch of Hamilton makes no effort to comprehend the whole man. The best biographies are: John C. Miller, Alexander Hamilton: Portrait in Paradox (New York, 1959) and Gerald Stourz, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government (Stanford, 1970). See also the first chapter of Clinton Rossiter, Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution (New York, 1964) for the differing views of his character. There is also a brilliant profile of the man and his ideas in Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 90–131.
19. For the Hamiltonian attacks on Jefferson’s character, see Harold Syrett, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (26 vols., New York, 1974–92), XXI, 432, 504.
20. All previous discussions of Jefferson’s role in the creation of the Giles Resolutions have been superseded by the brilliant detective work in Eugene R. Sheridan, “Thomas Jefferson and the Giles Resolutions,” WMQ, XLIV (1992), 589–608.
21. Jefferson to George Washington, September 9, 1792, Boyd, XXIV, 358–59.
22. The leading spokesman for the “Country” interpretation is Banning, Jeffersonian Persuasion. See also David N. Mayer, The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville, 1994) for a similar argument.
23. The standard work on the subject is Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York, 1965). On the integrity of conspiratorial thinking in the revolutionary era, see Gordon S. Wood, “Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century,” WMQ, XXXIX (1982), 401–41.
24. Matthews, The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson, makes the clearest case for Jefferson’s credentials as a radical utopian. While not landing squarely in the middle of his position, I am prepared to cozy up to it, though Matthews seems to endorse the utopianism while I consider it inherently illusory. If I land squarely anywhere, it is on Jefferson’s multiple personae and ideological versatility, which makes him capable of sounding like a republican of the Old Whig sort in certain contexts (i.e., the party wars of the 1790s), a liberal in other contexts (i.e., the defender of the French Revolution in the Thomas Paine mode) and a radical on yet other occasions (i.e., his generational argument and deeply felt hostility to any source of authority outside the self). This latter persona has more in common with the American radicalism of the New Left in the 1960s than with any Marxist tradition, although its antigovernment ethos also can blend easily with the conservatism of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. The core conviction, as I see it, is individual sovereignty.
25. Notes on Professor Eberling’s letter of July 30, 1795, Ford, VII, 44–49.
26. On the concept of “the people” as an invention or, if you will, a fiction, see Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York, 1988).
27. Jefferson to George Washington, May 14, 1794, Ford, VI, 509–10; Jefferson to James Monroe, May 26, 1795, Ford, VII, 15–22; Jefferson to Maria Cosway, September 8, 1795, quoted in Bullock, My Head and My Heart, 142–43; Jefferson to Edw
ard Rutledge, November 30, 1795, Ford, VII, 39–40.
28. Jefferson to François de Barbé-Marbois, December 5, 1783, Boyd, VI, 373–74; for Randolph’s character, see William H. Gaines, Jr., Thomas Mann Randolph: Jefferson’s Son-in-Law (Baton Rouge, 1966). On the domestic situation at Monticello, see Donald Jackson, A Year at Monticello (Golden, 1989) and Lewis, The Pursuit of Happiness, as well as her “ ‘The Blessings of Domestic Society’: Thomas Jefferson’s Family and the Transformation of American Politics,” Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies, 109–46.
29. The La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt court quotations are from Merrill D. Peterson, Visitors to Monticello (Charlottesville, 1989), 29; Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, June 8, 1797, Domestic Life, 245.
30. Gaines, Thomas Mann Randolph, 46–48; Jefferson to James Monroe, May 26, 1795, Ford, VII, 20–21, for the report that Randolph “is very frail indeed… , the more discouraging as there seems too have been no founded conjecture what is the matter with him.” For additional reflections, see Robert P. Sutton, “Nostalgia, Pessimism, and Malaise: The Doomed Aristocrat in Late-Jeffersonian Virginia,” VMHB, LXXVI (1968), 41–55. On the imaginative response to the decay of Virginia’s gentry in the Randolph mode, see William R. Taylor, Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and the American National Character (New York, 1961), 67–94.
31. Martha Jefferson Randolph to Jefferson, July 1, 1798, Family Letters, 166. Although I cannot accept the central premise of her book, Fawn Brodie’s treatment of Martha provides one of the fullest renderings of the father-daughter relationship after Martha’s marriage. See especially Brodie, Intimate History, 287–300. Martha still awaits a biographer who can see her as the most important woman in Jefferson’s life and not just as a footnote to Sally Hemings.