When Genet had approached him the previous month to write a letter of recommendation Michaux could present to Governor Shelby, it apparently had not occurred to Jefferson to record the incident. To him, Michaux’s expedition was a purely scientific venture. It was a matter for the American Philosophical Society, not the American government. Now recognizing Genet’s ulterior motives, he realized that Michaux’s expedition was indeed pertinent to American diplomacy. He hastily filled in his previous encounter with Genet concerning Michaux’s expedition.
Having informed Jefferson of Michaux’s extrascientific mission, Genet asked him if he would revise his letter of recommendation to Governor Shelby in order to identify Michaux as something more than “a person of botanical and natural pursuits.” Instead, Genet wished Jefferson’s letters to depict Michaux as a French citizen “possessing his confidence.” Without agreeing to the mission Genet planned for Michaux, Jefferson agreed to rewrite the letter.
Against Washington’s policy of neutrality, Genet also began outfitting privateers to harass British vessels. When he outfitted a captured British ship as a privateer to sail against the British in July, Genet went too far. Washington asked Jefferson to draft a letter to Gouverneur Morris, the current American minister to France, asking for Genet’s recall. Washington then called a meeting of his cabinet to discuss the letter Jefferson drafted.
They met on Tuesday, August 20, 1793, and Jefferson detailed the meeting in The Anas. The level of consensus among them was extraordinary. The president and all the members of the cabinet agreed with the reasons for Genet’s recall that Jefferson outlined in the letter, which is considered one of his most accomplished diplomatic papers.24 Hamilton did take issue with one particular phrase, which happened to be Jefferson’s favorite phrase in the whole letter. In his draft, Jefferson suggested that Genet’s actions were leading to a rift between France and the United States. A conflict between these two republics, Jefferson wrote, would present the spectacle of “liberty warring on herself.”25
Hamilton moved to strike out the phrase. He argued that Great Britain and its allies would take offense with the statement and questioned whether the cause of France was really the cause of liberty. Regardless, it was not up to the United States to declare what the cause of France really was. Despite their difference of opinion, Jefferson gave Hamilton’s argument a fair amount of space in The Anas. The same cannot be said for his depiction of Henry Knox’s reaction to Hamilton’s position: “Knox according to custom jumped plump into all his opinions.”26
Washington sided with Jefferson. “With a good deal of positiveness,” Washington “declared in favor of the expression, that he considered the pursuit of France to be that of liberty, however they might sometimes fail of the best means of obtaining it, that he had never at any time entertained a doubt of their ultimate success, if they hung well together, and that as to their dissensions there were such contradictory accounts given that no one could tell what to believe.”27
Suspecting the phrase might generate dissension within the cabinet, Jefferson had an elaborate counterargument planned. One of Jefferson’s reasons for including this particular phrase was literary. So far, his role as secretary of state had severely limited his writing abilities. In his official correspondence, he had “avoided the insertion of a single term of friendship to the French nation.” As a result, the official letters “were as dry and husky as if written between the generals of two enemy nations.” Furthermore, the phrase about liberty warring on herself would clarify that the U.S. complaint was against Genet, not against France. As he argued during this meeting and recorded in The Anas, Jefferson “thought it essential to satisfy the French and our own citizens of the light in which we viewed their cause, and of our fellow feeling for the general cause of liberty.” Furthermore, this brief phrase was the only mention of liberty in the entire letter. Surely, the subject of the letter demanded at least one reference to liberty.28
Washington spoke again, declaring “his strong attachment to the expression” but leaving the matter to his cabinet to decide. Jefferson found himself on the short end of the stick. The sentence, he recorded, “was struck out, of course, and the expressions of affection in the context were a good deal taken down.”29
The Anas concludes with the entry for December 1, 1793, thirty days before Jefferson’s resignation as secretary of state took effect. In his final entry, Jefferson recorded something he had heard from his friend and supporter John Beckley, who was repeating what Tobias Lear had told him:
Langdon, Cabot, and some others of the Senate, standing in a knot before the fire after the Senate had adjourned, and growling together about some measure which they had just lost, “ah!” said Cabot, “things will never go right till you have a President for life and an hereditary Senate.” Langdon told this to Lear, who mentioned it to the President. The President seemed struck with it, and declared he had not supposed there was a man in the US. who could have entertained such an idea.30
Washington’s appearance in this closing episode is consistent with his character throughout The Anas. Whereas Jefferson is an advocate for the democratic principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution and Hamilton is an advocate of the British form of government, President Washington is the stabilizing force whose good nature prevents him from thinking ill of others. In The Anas, Washington’s positive attitude and his levelheadedness allow him to effectively mediate between Jefferson and Hamilton. Written to record what went on during Washington’s administration and edited to refute Marshall’s Life of Washington, The Anas, in terms of form, is a documentary record of the conversations that occurred during Jefferson’s time as secretary of state. Like no other document before the emergence of modern recording equipment, it dramatizes what went on behind the scenes of an American presidency.
CHAPTER 29
Letters from a Virginia Farmer
Writing to Mann Page in the summer of 1795 to apologize for not joining him in Fredericksburg as they had planned, Jefferson began by listing excuses—“the heat of the weather, the business of the farm”—but he stopped short. Instead of providing any more specific reasons for his absence, he decided to supply a general excuse or, as he put it, “one round reason for all.” He said, “I have laid up my Rosinante in his stall, before his unfitness for the road shall expose him faultering to the world.”1 Jefferson’s “round reason” is both figurative and literary. The name Rosinante refers to Don Quixote’s superannuated steed. Once again, Jefferson was casting himself in the role of Cervantes’ hero. But no longer was he tilting at windmills: Thomas Jefferson was now Don Quixote in retirement.
The sentiments he expressed in this letter pervade his correspondence from his return to Monticello in early 1794 through the next three years. Four predominant themes recur in the personal letters he wrote during this period. They extol the pleasures of retirement, describe his enjoyment of the farmer’s life, reinforce his dedication to reading and study, and celebrate his ignorance of current political intrigue. To an extent, each of these aspects is a literary pose, and sometimes these different poses contradict one another. But all the personae Jefferson assumed in his letters of the mid-1790s—retired gentleman, farmer, scholar, political naif—reflect the profound satisfaction he felt upon returning to Monticello, where he hoped to remain the rest of his days.
The Retired Gentleman
In many of the letters from this period, Jefferson told correspondents how happy he was to have retired from public life. To one, he asserted that nothing—neither politics nor private business—could lure him from home again: “The length of my tether is now fixed for life from Monticello to Richmond.” In a letter to Edmund Rutledge, whose son had recently visited Monticello, he recreated the son’s experience for his father: “He found me in a retirement I doat on, living like an Antediluvian patriarch among my children and grand children, and tilling my soil.”2 Jefferson’s figurative comparison is not unusual for the eighteenth-century Virginia planter. A gener
ation earlier, William Byrd II had made much the same comment to characterize his situation at Westover.
Thomas Jefferson, from Life, 1796–1797, by James Sharples, Senior. (Independence National Historical Park)
Using the plural “grandchildren,” Jefferson revealed another recent development: the year after giving her father a granddaughter, Martha gave him a grandson and namesake. Thomas Jefferson Randolph had been born September 12, 1792. She ultimately delivered twelve children, with eleven surviving into adulthood. The Christian names of Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s younger brothers read like a roster of his grandfather’s best friends: Benjamin Franklin Randolph, George Wythe Randolph, James Madison Randolph, and Meriwether Lewis Randolph. Martha’s daughters—Anne, Cornelia, Ellen, Mary, Septimia, and Virginia—would all become special objects of Thomas Jefferson’s love. Some of his most delightful letters are those he wrote his granddaughters.
The oldest boy was known in the family as Jefferson, but his sisters often called him Jeff. He became his grandfather’s pride and joy. When Martha was away from Monticello during the mid-1790s, she sometimes left Anne and Jeff with their grandfather, who frequently wrote to inform her of their well-being. His letters reflect his love for the children. Writing to Martha the winter following his grandson’s third birthday, he explained, “They are both well, and have never had even a finger-ach since you left us. Jefferson is very robust”—“robust as a beef,” according to a follow-up letter. “His hands are constantly like lumps of ice, yet he will not warm them. He has not worn his shoes an hour this winter. If put on him, he takes them off immediately and uses one to carry his nuts etc.” As a solution to this dilemma, Grandpa decided to put both children in moccasins, “which being made of soft leather, fitting well and lacing up, they have never been able to take them off.”3 Thomas Jefferson was well known for his cool temper; he was pleased to see Anne’s temper develop similarly. Jeff, on the other hand, had a fiery temper. Anne’s grandfather hoped that her example would eventually mellow her brother’s temper. It did.
Numerous letters reflect Thomas Jefferson’s pleasure at retiring from public life. The one he wrote Pierre Auguste Adet is among the best. Adet became French minister to the United States in 1795, but his background was in the sciences. A virtuoso in chemistry, he had devised and published a new system of chemical nomenclature. Adet was like many of the French philosophes Jefferson befriended in Paris: while serving his country, he did what he could to make advances in the cause of science.
After assuming his ministerial post, Adet wrote Jefferson to initiate a scientific correspondence with him. In response, Jefferson regretted that Adet had not come to Philadelphia when he was still serving as secretary of state: “It would have been a circumstance of still higher satisfaction and advantage to me if fortune had timed the periods of our service together, so that the drudgery of public business, which I always hated, might have been relieved by conversations with you on subjects which I always loved, and particularly in learning from you the new advances of science on the other side the Atlantic.” These comments reflect a slight twinge of regret at not being in Philadelphia, a great city for scientific and literary conversation. Still, Jefferson closed the letter by reinforcing the pleasures of Monticello: “My books, my family, my friends, and my farm, furnish more than enough to occupy me the remainder of my life.”4 Placing his books on the same level as family, friends, and farm, Jefferson showed how integral his library was to the idyllic life he planned to lead into the foreseeable future.
The Farmer
In many personal letters of the mid-1790s, Jefferson depicted his life at Monticello as that of a simple farmer. He celebrated the virtues of the soil. He detailed his agricultural schemes and experiments. And he proudly described the pleasures of overseeing his fields.
During his last year as secretary of state, he had prepared for his return to farming. He consulted Senator George Logan, whom Jefferson called the best farmer in Pennsylvania in terms of both theory and practice. Logan offered much good advice about what books belong in a proper agricultural library. Jefferson also spent time talking agriculture with George Washington. Since these conversations were outside the purpose of The Anas, Jefferson did not record what Washington said on the subject of farming, and these valuable discussions have been lost to history.
He also spoke with John Spurrier, an English farmer who had settled in Delaware. Upon his retirement, Jefferson took Spurrier’s advice about growing horse beans, but they would not take to the soil at Monticello. Jefferson nonetheless appreciated Spurrier’s advice on this and many other agricultural matters. Spurrier, in turn, appreciated Jefferson’s attention. When he collected his lifetime of agricultural experience in a book titled The Practical Farmer, Spurrier dedicated it to Jefferson, whom he called “a promoter of every degree of useful knowledge” who set “an example worthy of imitation.”5
Before retiring from the State Department and returning to Monticello, Jefferson tried to learn as much as he could about crop rotation. Senator Logan gave him more information on this subject than everyone else combined. The summer preceding his retirement, Jefferson devised an elaborate plan for rotating crops at Monticello and submitted it to Logan for his approval. Jefferson initiated his scheme in 1794, but he never stopped tinkering to improve it. Learning about John Beale Bordley’s pamphlet, Sketches on Rotations of Crops, the following winter, he asked James Madison to find a copy for him. Madison located the book and sent it to Monticello. Jefferson’s new agricultural collection was growing quickly. By the time he was through, he would possess the greatest agricultural library in the nation.
Eighteenth-century agricultural writers clashed when it came to the matter of experience. Those like Spurrier, who incorporated the word “practical” into the titles of their works, emphasized the importance of agricultural experience and differentiated themselves from authors who treated agriculture solely on theoretical principles. Applauding Logan for his agricultural theory and practice, Jefferson suggested that both were necessary to the farmer, an idea his own behavior confirms. He formulated agricultural theories, put them into practice, sought additional information through conversation and reading, and modified his practice according to his experience in the field and the ideas of others.
The Duc de La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, an old friend from his Paris days who visited Monticello in 1796, highly approved Jefferson’s dual approach to agriculture: “Much good may be expected, if a contemplative mind, like that of Mr. Jefferson, which takes the theory for its guide, watches its application with discernment, and rectifies it according to the peculiar circumstances and natures of the country, climate and soil, and conformably to the experience which he daily acquires.”6 In his letters, Jefferson depicted himself as an amateur when it came to agricultural endeavors, but his meticulousness belies the amateurish pose he struck.
Perhaps the most delightful letters that take farming as their subject are those that speak in more general terms instead of those that discuss specific agricultural practices. In 1795, William Branch Giles, a Virginia congressman who tirelessly battled the Federalist policies of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, received a delightful invitation from the former secretary of state. Inviting Giles to Monticello, Jefferson cautioned him against talking politics. He wrote: “If you visit me as a farmer, it must be as a condisciple: for I am but a learner; an eager one indeed, but yet desperate, being too old now to learn a new art. However, I am as much delighted and occupied with it, as if I was the greatest adept. I shall talk with you about it from morning till night, and put you on very short allowance as to political aliment. Now and then a pious speculation for the French and Dutch republicans, returning with due dispatch to clover, potatoes, wheat, etc.”7
Stressing the joys of the farmer’s life, Jefferson painted an idyllic picture designed to make his correspondents in the political world wince with jealousy. In a letter to Madison one April, he engaged his friend’s senses of taste, smel
l, sight, and sound: “Asparagus is just come to table. The Lilac in blossom, and the first Whip-poor-will heard last night.”8 This passage presents a beautiful picture of rural harmony. It does contain a fib, however. According to Jefferson’s Garden Book, the asparagus had come up the week before; it would not come to the table until the following week. In his imagination, he hurried the asparagus along to create for Madison a more alluring picture of the natural fecundity of Monticello.
Jefferson’s love of books was well known to his correspondents, but in his letters from the mid-1790s he sometimes downplayed his scholarly activities and literary pursuits in favor of his agricultural activities. He wrote John Adams, “I return to farming with an ardour which I scarcely knew in my youth, and which has got the better entirely of my love of study. Instead of writing 10. or 12. letters a day, which I have been in the habit of doing as a thing of course, I put off answering my letters now, farmer-like, till a rainy day, and then find it sometimes postponed by other necessary occupations.”9 Few of his correspondents understood Jefferson’s love of study more than Adams, who naturally recognized his friend’s farmerlike pose and knew full well that few activities could distract him from the pen and the book. Telling Adams that he was neglecting his literary work, Jefferson was writing to someone who knew that he would never neglect his studies given half a chance to pursue them.
The Scholar
When he was not in the field tending his crops, Jefferson could be found indoors setting his library to rights. It had been years since he had had time to organize his books, and the library was in rough shape. Much as his fields had suffered from years of neglect, so, too, had his library. A large box of books he had ordered from Froullé two years earlier had only just arrived in February 1794 after bouncing around “from port to port in America by various mistakes.”10 Upon opening the crate, Jefferson was shocked by what he saw. Most of the books were damp and mildewed, and some were already rotten.
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