by Andrea Wulf
But gardening and planting were more than patriotic occupations to Jefferson—they were also a refuge from the wranglings of politics. As the dispute with Hamilton wore on and the rift between the old revolutionaries deepened, Jefferson became increasingly troubled. Political quarrels in particular burdened him because he hated conflicts and arguments that were, he grumbled to Washington, “against my love of silence and quiet.” Instead he longed for nature and whenever he thought of his garden, he said, “I feel with redoubled ardor my desire to return home.” This wish was exacerbated by the lack of outside space at the house he had rented in Philadelphia, where Congress had moved from New York in December 1790.7 Without his daily rounds through his garden and across his fields, Jefferson felt deprived and unhappy. He was yearning to leave Philadelphia, where he was “labouring without pleasure.”
Without pleasure, and also without success, for by the end of February 1791 Congress had passed Hamilton’s momentous bank bill. Modeled on the Bank of England, a federal bank would be founded that would concentrate the country’s capital to provide credit and regulate commerce. Though imbued with national economic powers the bank was funded largely by private investors—a financial aristocracy, Jefferson and Madison believed, who would effectively run the country. The bank, Jefferson later wrote, was “invented for the purposes of corruption” based on the “rotten” model of Britain.
Just days after the bank was chartered, the downhearted pair resolved to escape to nature and take a botanical ramble up the Hudson River valley. Apart from anything else, Jefferson hoped that some time off would rid him of the furious headache that had become a recurring ailment. Madison too felt ill and believed that the best remedy in the world was “a long journey, at a mild season, thro’ a pleasant Country.”
Yet, as they prepared for their departure to the Hudson River valley, Jefferson unwittingly found himself embroiled in another political storm, one that threatened to splinter the unity of the founding fathers even further. At the center of this dispute was the pamphlet Rights of Man, written by Thomas Paine. An Englishman who had transcended his nationality, Paine had become an American hero fifteen years earlier, when his widely read Common Sense had convinced many colonists to seek independence from Britain. This latest publication was Paine’s response to Edmund Burke’s condemnation of the French Revolution,8 widely praised as a clarion call to the American people, imploring them never to forget the essence of their own revolution. To Jefferson, however, it was also a timely attack on an old friend who in recent years, he believed, had come to betray the very spirit of 1776: Vice President John Adams.
Since their garden tour in England five years previously, Adams and Jefferson had moved apart in their political thought. Where Jefferson was an Anglophobe, Adams had come to regard the British constitution as “the most stupendous fabric of human invention.”9 In the Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, which Adams had written during his time in London, he declared that the balance of power inscribed in the British constitution was a model that the United States of America should applaud. Their opposing opinions about the French Revolution only intensified the disagreement. Paine, Jefferson and Madison had greeted it with enthusiasm—Jefferson had witnessed the birth pangs of the revolution during his last summer in Paris and had even helped Lafayette draft the French Declaration of Rights. And though shocked by the riots and the violence that led to the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, he had never once questioned the revolution’s legitimacy. “We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty, in a feather-bed,” Jefferson mused, certain that other countries in Europe would soon follow suit with the United States of America as the model for all these new republics.
By contrast, Adams with his background as a lawyer feared the fury of uncontrolled mobs and fundamentally disagreed with Jefferson, Madison and Paine, condemning the revolution as nothing more than a “shambles.” In response to the French Revolution he had published a series of essays that warned against the dangers of unchecked democracy and the perils of turbulent passions. To Adams’s mind it would lead to anarchy and tyranny for the simple reason that the French revolutionaries were out of control. They were, he said, like men “flushed with recent pay or prize Money, mounted on wild Horses, lashing and speerring [sic], till they would kill the Horses and break their own Necks.”
These essays went to the core of an ideological disagreement between the old revolutionaries. Jefferson and Madison, like so many other Virginia tobacco planters, despised the British and had interpreted Adams’s polemic against uncontrolled democracy in France as a yearning for a monarchy in the United States of America. It did not help that Adams had tried to introduce monarchical titles to the American republic, suggesting for example that Washington be addressed “His Highness the President of the U.S.”—according to Jefferson the “most superlatively ridiculous thing I ever heard” and a sign that Adams was “absolutely mad.”
The row had been rumbling on in private for some time, with the irascible Adams denouncing Madison as a “creature of French puffs” and Jefferson accusing Adams of a pernicious obsession with monarchy. By 3 May 1791, however, these thoughts erupted onto the public stage. As the first American edition of Paine’s pamphlet rolled off the printing presses in Philadelphia, every reader saw Jefferson’s words on the first page—words that he had written in a personal note to the printer and that had never been meant for public consumption. The Rights of Man, so Jefferson’s unintended endorsement read, was the answer to “the political heresies which have sprung up amongst us.” Everybody who read these words understood that the secretary of state of the United States had turned against the vice president.
Within a few days the book’s endorsement, as it passed from hand to hand in the taverns of Philadelphia and New York, created a political scandal. Hamilton was “open mouthed against me,” Jefferson wrote to Madison, and Washington’s secretary warned that Jefferson’s note would put the secretary of state in direct opposition to Adams. The intensely private Jefferson was “mortified” and “thunderstruck” about the printer’s incompetence and indiscretion. He had never made a secret of being antimonarchical, he wrote to Washington by way of excuse, and said he would not mind telling Adams to his face that he believed him to be a heretic. But to have his opinions ping-ponged publicly in pamphlets and newspapers was not what Jefferson had intended. Adams, Jefferson correctly concluded, would be “displeased” to say the least.
In the midst of this dispute Jefferson found comfort in the thought of his and Madison’s imminent botanical excursion, but at the same time he also subtly shifted its scope by injecting politics into the itinerary. On 9 May, Jefferson wrote to Madison suggesting they travel north along the Hudson River valley, and that instead of coming back the same way they go east into Vermont before turning south into Massachusetts and Connecticut. The trip that had originally been conceived as a ramble along the Hudson River valley would thus become a tour of the northern states. As well as examining the forests and fields in Vermont, which had become the fourteenth state only two months earlier, the detour would also allow them to meet some of the local political leaders.
The controversy over Rights of Man ossified the division of the young administration and marked a dramatic change, because until then political disagreements had been played out on a local or regional level. Within a few years, however, this would turn into concerted party action between the Federalists and the Republicans in the national arena. As the divisions crystallized, Jefferson and Madison delayed their tour and instead of immediately heading north they met some political allies in New York. One of them was Madison’s old friend the poet Philip Freneau, whom they tried to persuade to establish a national newspaper—the mouthpiece of what would become the Republican party and a counterpart to the Gazette of the United States, which supported Hamilton and his policies.
They also met the chancellor of New York, Robert Livingston, yet a
nother experimental farmer who corresponded with Jefferson about innovative agriculture and politics, and whom Jefferson later called his “brother agriculturalist,” and Aaron Burr, who fifteen years later would kill Hamilton in a duel. Livingston and Burr had already joined forces with the governor of New York, George Clinton10—a coalition through which Burr had recently won the seat of Hamilton’s father-in-law in the Senate. Unsurprisingly, Hamilton’s supporters accused Jefferson and Madison of pursuing “a pasionate courtship” with his opponents.
Although there wasn’t yet a coherent national opposition, Jefferson knew that Livingston was also worried about Hamilton’s fiscal policies, and had written to him earlier in the year to discuss Hamilton’s bank bill. Their meetings in New York did not go unnoticed, Hamilton’s supporters reporting the “twistings, combinations, and maneuvres” as well as, even more worryingly, the “Ghost of Antifederalism.”
Only after these political meetings did Jefferson and Madison finally leave New York, on 21 May, equipped with a list of the best taverns along their route. Just as Jefferson had escaped from the tedious trade negotiations with the British in 1786 on a garden tour with Adams, he was once again turning to nature for comfort and inspiration. This time, however, he would not be visiting staged garden scenes laced with political meaning but rather, some of the United States of America’s most spectacular landscapes—rugged nature that decades later would inspire the first generation of American painters and poets (the Hudson River School) to celebrate the American wilderness.
Averaging an impressive thirty miles a day, they bumped along the rough mud roads in Jefferson’s phaeton, talking botany and politics as they passed the forested mountain ranges of the Catskills and Adirondacks. Now and again, they stopped and wandered on foot into the forest to investigate. These were the moments when party politics vanished from their minds, because “you should … not permit yourself even to think while you walk,” Jefferson insisted. Madison hoped that the tour would satisfy his considerable botanical curiosity, and he was not to be disappointed. Throughout the trip he and Jefferson diligently documented observations in their journals, particularly their admiration for trees that were “either unknown or rare in Virginia.”11
There was the dense conical conifer arborvitae, for example, the northern bayberry with its fragrant leaves and a flowering shrub that would make a wonderful addition to gardens because it was “loaded richly with large flowers of a strong, pink fragrance.” Its delicately sculpted, deep red blossom greatly intrigued them and Jefferson thought it was “the richest shrub I have ever seen.” It was an azalea, he was certain, but it could not be the pinxterbloom azalea which he knew from Virginia. When he looked through his botanical books on his return to Philadelphia he thought it might be Azalea viscosa (today’s Rhododendron viscosum), but he couldn’t be entirely sure.12
A week after leaving New York they reached Lake George, nestled in the Adirondacks. The heat was stultifying, the embankments were alive with rattlesnakes (two of which they killed to examine more closely) and they were besieged by swarms of mosquitoes and other insects. But despite nature’s assaults, they were enchanted by Lake George, marveling at what was “unquestionably the most beautiful water” they had ever seen, clear “as chrystal.” This long finger of a lake stretched for miles, weaving in and out of the surrounding forested mountains. As sea gulls circled above the lake, Jefferson and Madison walked in the shade of rich groves of arborvitae, white pine and aspen. There were wild gooseberries (probably Ribes cynosbati or Ribes hirellum) loaded with black fruit, a species of wild cherry (probably Prunus pensylvanica) that they had never seen before and wild strawberries in abundance underfoot. They were amazed to find the “honey suckle of the gardens” (most certainly Lonicera canadensis) growing wild on the banks of one lake. When they found paper birches, Jefferson stopped to peel off some bark on which he wrote letters to his daughters. The trees and shrubs reminded him of his own garden, which never left his mind, and throughout the trip he sent instructions to Monticello on pruning, grafting and other essential horticultural tasks.
Lake George (Illustration credit 4.1)
They also visited some old battlefields from the revolution but, as Jefferson wrote to his son-in-law, they infinitely preferred “the botanical objects which continually presented themselves.” The headache that had been a constant companion throughout the past months had by this time disappeared completely, proof enough that “the drudgery of business” was to blame.
Plants and agriculture had always been a part of the friendship between Madison and Jefferson, and their letters abounded with remarks about seeds, trees and crops. Even when Madison was in the midst of crafting the Constitution, he had found time to organize seeds for Jefferson and to dispatch the rare pecan nuts, maple and honey locust seeds, dozens of cuttings of apple trees and other American shrubs for Jefferson’s French friends. At the same time Jefferson had used Madison’s position as a member of Congress to gain access to other congressmen, sending seed boxes to his friend to distribute among the politicians.
And once again, as they traveled through New England, the old friends observed the landscape as gardeners and plantsmen. As the countryside unfolded they also saw a republic of farmers spread out before them, a nation that to their mind was endangered by Hamilton’s plans. This was how most white Americans lived—on farms spread across the United States. Only one in twenty of the population lived in towns. No city was larger than 50,000 people and, except for New York and Philadelphia, no city had more than 25,000 inhabitants. “Each man,” one foreigner remarked, “owns the house he lives in and the lands which he cultivates, and every one appears to be in a happy state of mediocrity.” The scenery was one of “meadows, newly snatched from uncultivated nature,” and a “mixture of romantic wilderness and cultivated beauty.”
But as Jefferson and Madison reveled in this scenery, they also investigated it scientifically. Equipped with a questionnaire, they asked farmers and landowners about an insect that had been ravaging the wheat harvest.13 The Hessian fly, so called because it was originally thought (though wrongly) to have arrived in the straw bedding of the Hessian troops during the Revolutionary War, had spread from Long Island to Pennsylvania and as far south as Mount Vernon’s fields. The larvae of the fly sucked the sap from the green wheat and stunted the growth of the plants, destroying the crops. No method had been found to halt its destructive path, and farmers across the United States were terrified, predicting that “the whole continent will be over-run—a calamity more to be lamented than the ravages of war.” Such was the danger to America’s economy that Jefferson had called a meeting of the American Philosophical Society (of which he and Madison were members) six days before he set out on the tour. He had offered to conduct a survey about the pest and how it had spread, he told them, if they could provide him with a questionnaire.
The insect had also become a political issue when, on the advice of Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society in London, Britain closed its ports to American wheat for fear of introducing the fly to their fields. Even Thomas Paine became involved, telling Banks that he believed the embargo was “only a political manoeuvre.” Jefferson thought it was yet again a British plot “to do us injury,” while Banks warned that “obloquy” would descend on Americans if they would “wilfully bring over the Fly” in revenge against the British. The former British prime minister, the duke of Grafton, even believed that the Americans deserved the Hessian fly—a “scourge of Heaven … upon such ungratefull colonies and rebellious people.”
In the meantime, rumors continued to spread that they were not just on a nature vacation but were clandestinely nurturing a political agenda. Furthermore, the British consul general in the United States dispatched a warning to London, writing that Jefferson and Madison had gone north “to proselyte as far as they are able to a commercial war with Great Britain.” Another British diplomat sent reports to London accusing them of touring the north to advocate their �
�favorite objects on behalf of France.” There was some truth to these allegations, in that Jefferson wanted to shift more trade from Britain to France (as he had already tried to do during his time as American Minister in Paris). On their way up the Hudson River valley, for example, they stopped at the small port town of Hudson, where Jefferson tried to persuade a large distillery owner that wine imported from France would produce better spirits than the molasses from the British West Indies. The advantage was that Americans would be able to deal with French rather than British merchants.
In addition Jefferson had been concocting a plan that would allow him to outmaneuver Hamilton, who had been working to strengthen the commercial relationship between America and Britain. His weapon would be a botanical one: the native sugar maple. Not only was this a magnificent tree that turned the northern mountains into a kaleidoscope of reds and oranges in autumn, but Jefferson believed it also could be of great economic and political value. American sugar maple orchards chimed with Jefferson’s and Madison’s vision of a country of small farmers, because the tree had the potential to rid America of its dependence on British West Indies sugarcane. It was an ideal crop for small-scale home production because it didn’t require large plantations and slave labor as sugarcane did. Instead the tree’s sap could easily be harvested by the wives and children of American farmers during the weeks when not much work could be done on the fields.