This entry records another contemporary conversation, not one he personally had but one he had heard about secondhand, a conversation between Alexander Hamilton and Senator James Gunn of Georgia. They had been talking about Rufus King of New York. King’s erratic voting record provided Gunn with numerous instances to illustrate his legislative vagaries. For example, Gunn mentioned to Hamilton the recent bill to reapportion congressional representation in accordance with the 1790 census. Though Jefferson heard about this conversation secondhand, he recorded it using direct discourse.
The use of direct discourse often lends a narrative a greater sense of immediacy. But in this instance and elsewhere in The Anas, Jefferson used direct discourse when reporting conversations mediated by others. In this case, he heard about the conversation between Gunn and Hamilton from an acquaintance of Gunn’s, not from Gunn himself. Following his source, who was ostensibly repeating what Gunn and Hamilton had said, Jefferson placed their words in quotation marks and included tag clauses to clarify who said what. Like the first episode in The Anas, Jefferson also recorded how he learned of this conversation.8
“I wish Sir you would advise your friend King, to observe some kind of consistency in his votes,” Gunn told Hamilton. “There has been scarcely a question before Senate on which he has not voted both ways. On the Representation bill, for instance, he first voted for the proposition of the Representatives, and ultimately voted against it.”
“Why,” Hamilton replied, “I’ll tell you as to that Colo. Gunn, that it never was intended that bill should pass.”
Juxtaposing the account of his August conversation with Hamilton and the December conversation between Gunn and Hamilton, Jefferson applied an innovative method of editing, which he would continue to use throughout The Anas. The way he presents his material anticipates montage, a discursive practice that would not be defined or codified into theory for another century. As it has since been practiced, montage occurs when two texts are placed together, and their juxtaposition creates a new concept.9 The first two episodes in The Anas function in this manner. The initial episode records a private comment Hamilton made that nevertheless has the quality of a formal declaration, a comment supporting the kind of representative government the United States exemplified. The second episode records what Hamilton said to someone else on a separate occasion. This comment undermines the notions of representative government and thus contradicts what Hamilton had said earlier.
Together, the two episodes create a picture of Hamilton more complex than that presented by either individual episode. Hamilton emerges from The Anas as a duplicitous figure, one who says one thing to Jefferson and something else to Senator Gunn. Using montage to create this image of Hamilton, Jefferson avoided partisan editorializing and simply allowed the concept of Hamilton to emerge within the minds of his readers through his juxtaposition of the two episodes.
The third episode in The Anas is a lengthy one that records conversations that occurred between Jefferson and President Washington on the last two days of February 1792, a leap year. These conversations concerned Jefferson’s plan for doubling the velocity of post riders and his general ideas for putting the American government on a solid footing before the end of Washington’s first term, at which time Jefferson planned to retire.
On the afternoon of the twenty-eighth, Washington did not have time to discuss these issues at length, so he invited Jefferson back the next morning. Jefferson returned after breakfast, and the two engaged in a lengthy discussion. Washington coaxed him into remaining secretary of state a little longer. For this lengthy anecdote, Jefferson used indirect discourse instead of quoting either himself or Washington. He ended the entry by commenting that the conversation “is here stated nearly as much at length as it really was, the expressions preserved where I could recollect them, and their substance always faithfully stated.”10
In The Anas, this entry is dated March 1, 1792, the day after the conversation at Washington’s home concluded. The next three entries are dated from January, but the one after the last of these three is dated March 7, which begins, “The subject resumed” and refers to the same subject the three January entries discuss. Though Jefferson organized The Anas chronologically, he was not so committed to his organization that he never deviated from it. In this case, he understood that it would be better to group these four entries together instead of placing the three brief January entries before his February conversations with Washington and the March 7 entry afterward.11 The deviation from strict chronological order further reinforces the care Jefferson took in effectively organizing his materials.
Wherever he could, Jefferson tried to capture the tenor of each conversation he recorded, as two separate entries from March 11, 1792, clarify. The first records a conversation between Jefferson and Washington concerning a possible treaty with Algiers. A senate committee consisting of Ralph Izard, Rufus King, and Robert Morris wished to consult with President Washington regarding the necessity of applying to the House of Representatives for funds to negotiate the treaty. Washington sought Jefferson’s opinion before speaking with the committee.
Jefferson recorded what Washington asked and how he responded. The most intriguing aspect of their conversation concerns how Washington learned of the committee’s concerns: Izard rudely informed him at a dinner party. Washington described Izard’s indecorous behavior to Jefferson, who made sure to get the episode down:
Mr. Izard made the communication to him setting next to him at table on one hand, while a lady (Mrs. Mclane) was on his other hand and the Fr. minister next to her, and as Mr. Izard got on with his communication, his voice kept rising, and his stutter bolting the words out loudly at intervals, so that the minister might hear if he would. He [Washington] said he had a great mind at one time to have got up in order to put a stop to Mr. Izard.12
Directly after this entry but separated from it with a horizontal rule, Jefferson recorded a second entry of the same date: “Mr. Sterret tells me that sitting round a fire the other day with 4 or 5. others of Mr. Smith (of S. C.) was one, some body mentioned that the murderers of Hogeboom, sheriff of Columbia county, N. York, were acquitted. ‘Aye,’ says Smith, ‘This is what comes of your damned trial by jury.’ ”13
Jefferson’s record of this exchange is fascinating. He phrased the words of his immediate source—Samuel Sterett—as indirect discourse, but he presented the words of William Loughton Smith, a congressman from South Carolina, as direct discourse. In this instance, Jefferson found it crucial to get Smith’s words down precisely, expletive and all. The phrase “trial by jury” was one of the most revered phrases in Jefferson’s vocabulary. Two years earlier he told Thomas Paine that he considered trial by jury as “the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” He maintained this belief throughout his life. Three decades later, he informed a correspondent, “Trial by jury is the best of all safeguards for the person, the property, and the fame of every individual.”14
This entry in The Anas refers to the brutal slaying of Sheriff Cornelius Hogeboom. While serving a writ, Hogeboom was shot to death in October 1791. Those tried for his murder were acquitted of all charges. The acquittal disturbed many people, but Smith’s startling response to the verdict disturbed Jefferson even more so. He refrained from editorializing in The Anas, letting the quotation from Smith speak for itself. Jefferson’s straightforward record of the incident nonetheless registers his shock.
He also noted the setting of this conversation, which not only enhances the drama, but also provides an interpretive frame through which to understand the context of Smith’s remark. Occurring within a small group of men seated around a fire, the conversation took place at a casual time, a time when men were less guarded than they were during more formal occasions. With a bottle going round, perhaps, tongues loosened and true feelings emerged.
This entry also reflects Jefferson’s growing sense of purpose as he compiled The Anas. Upo
n its completion, The Anas not only would be a lively record of Washington’s administration, but also would form a set of comments reflecting the varying beliefs of many people involved with the establishment of the U.S. government and, more generally, involved in the experiment of American democracy.
Restricted as it is to conversations that occurred among those in government, The Anas reveals little about Jefferson’s daily life. For example, it does not mention that in April 1793—the month he turned fifty—his domestic arrangements in Philadelphia changed significantly. He moved from the townhouse he had been renting on Market Street to a three-room cottage on the east bank of the Schuylkill River near Gray’s Ferry. Considerably smaller than his townhouse, the cottage had no room for his excess furniture and books, which he sent back to Monticello. The cottage was a kind of halfway house between the center of Philadelphia and the top of Monticello. Though Jefferson wanted to retire from public life, the keen responsibility he felt toward his nation and its president prevented him from retiring as soon as he wished. The Schuylkill cottage let him enjoy the countryside while fulfilling his duties as secretary of state.
Jefferson’s description of the cottage and its grounds in letters to his daughter Martha make it seem idyllic. Her sister Maria, who was attending a Philadelphia boarding school, visited often. “She passes two or three days in the week with me, under the trees, for I never go into the house but at the hour of bed,” Jefferson told Martha. “I never before knew the full value of trees,” he continued. “My house is entirely embosomed in high plane trees, with good grass below, and under them I breakfast, dine, write, read and receive my company. What would I not give that the trees planted nearest round the house at Monticello were full grown.”15
When the weather was sunny, Maria enjoyed sauntering along the banks of the Schuylkill. Across the river, she and her father could see Bartram’s Gardens and Gray’s Gardens, too. On rainy days, the two stayed indoors catching up their correspondence.16
Within the family, Maria’s difficulty writing letters was notorious. Describing one particular day at the cottage in a letter to Martha, Jefferson captured a delightful moment as Maria tried writing a letter to her brother-in-law: “Maria’s brain is hard at work to squeeze out a letter for Mr. Randolph. She has been scribbling and rubbing out these three hours, and this moment exclaimed ‘I do not think I shall get a letter made out to-day.’ ”17 With great charm, Jefferson used direct discourse to capture his daughter’s mood. Why didn’t he use direct discourse more often in The Anas? Recording the conversations of his nation’s leaders, it seems, he held himself to a higher standard. He hesitated to put words in the mouths of others when he could indirectly convey what they said.
One of the most unusual entries in The Anas reports a conversation about Philip Freneau between Washington and Jefferson that occurred on May 23, 1793. Two years earlier, poet and essayist Freneau had turned to journalism and briefly edited the New York Daily Advertiser. When Jefferson became secretary of state, he offered Freneau the post of translating clerk for the state department. Freneau accepted the position and relocated to Philadelphia, where he established the National Gazette with Jefferson’s approval. Freneau’s purpose was to counter the Federalist tendencies of John Fenno’s Gazette of the United States. Like Jefferson, Freneau saw the federal government backsliding to aristocratic English ways and filled his paper with harsh invective against the prevailing governmental policies.18
In the May 23 conversation Jefferson recorded, Washington expressed his displeasure with an article that had appeared in the National Gazette the previous day. Furthermore, Washington made some general comments about the negative tenor of all of Freneau’s articles and implied that Jefferson should do something to censure Freneau. Jefferson wrote:
He was evidently sore and warm, and I took his intention to be that I should interpose in some way with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating clerk to my office, but I will not do it: his paper has saved our constitution which was galloping fast into monarchy, and has been checked by no one means so powerfully as by that paper. It is well and universally known that it has been that paper which has checked the career of the Monocrats, and the President, not sensible of the designs of the party, has not with his usual good sense, and sang froid, looked on the efforts and effects of this free press, and seen that tho some bad things had passed thro’ it to the public, yet the good had preponderated immensely.19
The Anas does not mention which article in Freneau’s paper provoked Washington’s ire this May, but Jefferson’s editors conjecture that it was an article applauding Philadelphians for their enthusiastic reception of Edmund Charles Genet, the new French minister to the United States.
At war with other European nations, including Great Britain and Spain, France wanted the support of its longtime ally, the United States. Genet was appointed to secure American support by renegotiating the 1778 treaty between the two nations. Genet was further instructed to outfit privateers to attack British and Spanish vessels and also to plan expeditions against Florida and Louisiana, both Spanish possessions.
Hamilton strongly opposed Genet’s reception. Washington cordially received him but issued a proclamation of neutrality, refusing to take sides in the European conflict. Jefferson welcomed him initially, but Genet quickly wore out his welcome. Starting from Charleston, South Carolina, he stirred up support for the French cause at the grassroots level, convincing many Americans that the cause of France was theirs, too—the cause of freedom.
The enthusiasm Genet expressed for André Michaux’s planned expedition across the continent pleased Jefferson at first. Since coming to America in 1785, Michaux had traveled the East Coast extensively. In 1792, he approached the American Philosophical Society with a plan to cross the continent. Long an advocate for Western exploration, Jefferson took the responsibility for raising funds to support Michaux’s scientific excursion. To that end he actively solicited subscribers among Society members and other interested parties. Once Jefferson had enough subscribers to support the expedition, he gave Michaux a set of instructions prepared by himself on behalf of the American Philosophical Society.
These instructions anticipate subsequent ones he would write for the Lewis and Clark expedition. Jefferson told Michaux to find the shortest and most convenient route to the Pacific, to concentrate on following the Missouri River and its tributaries, to note “the country you pass through, its general face, soil, rivers, mountains, its productions animal, vegetable, and mineral so far as they may be new to us and may also be useful or very curious,” and to record the culture of the native inhabitants.20
Echoing advice he had given John Ledyard earlier, Jefferson recommended that Michaux tattoo the most important observations on his skin. Other information could be recorded on birch bark for safekeeping. “When you shall have reached the Pacific ocean,” Jefferson continued, “if you find yourself within convenient distance of any settlement of Europeans, go to them, commit to writing a narrative of your journey and observations and take the best measures you can for conveying it by duplicates or triplicates thence to the society by sea.” The preservation of new information should be the utmost goal: “It is strongly recommended to you to expose yourself in no case to unnecessary dangers, whether such as might affect your health or your personal safety: and to consider this not merely as your personal concern, but as the injunction of Science in general which expects its enlargement from your enquiries, and of the inhabitants of the US. in particular, to whom your Report will open new feilds and subjects of Commerce, Intercourse, and Observation.”21
Doing what he could to encourage Michaux’s expedition, Genet approached Jefferson in June and asked him to write a letter of recommendation to Isaac Shelby, the governor of Kentucky. Jefferson complied, informing Governor Shelby of Michaux’s expedition and applauding him as “a man of science and merit” who “goes to Kentuckey in pursuit of objects of Natural history and botany, to augment the literary
acquirements of the two republicks.”22
Within The Anas, Genet makes his first appearance on July 5, 1793, when he called on Jefferson to inform him of the alternate instructions he had prepared for Michaux. Genet’s instructions were all written out, and he read them to Jefferson very quickly. What Jefferson heard came as a shock: Genet had singlehandedly transmogrified the scientific expedition sponsored by the American Philosophical Society into a military expedition. Genet’s instructions to Michaux included addresses to be delivered to the inhabitants of Louisiana and Canada encouraging them to rise up against their Spanish and British governors. Furthermore, Genet had arranged with American military leaders in Kentucky to capture New Orleans on behalf of the French government.
According to Genet’s plan, two particular generals would form battalions of men recruited from Kentucky and Louisiana and bolster their ranks with whatever Indians they could recruit. Once they captured New Orleans, they would establish Louisiana as an independent state connected in commerce with France and the United States. Closing his remarks, Genet told Jefferson that he was communicating his message to him as a private citizen, not as secretary of state.
Seldom in The Anas did Jefferson record what he himself said in conversation, but in this instance he recorded his disapproval. Jefferson phrased his own response as indirect discourse, but reading The Anas, you can almost hear him talking: “I told him that his enticing officers and souldiers from Kentuckey to go against Spain, was really putting a halter about their necks, for that they would assuredly be hung, if they commenced hostilities against a nation at peace with the US.”23
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