Martin’s critique of Logan’s speech was one of many newspaper attacks Vice President Jefferson suffered. Another concerned the 1796 letter he had sent Philip Mazzei. Upon receiving the letter, Mazzei had excerpted a paragraph that seemed to critique George Washington and sent copies of the excerpt to others. Jacob Van Staphorst, a correspondent of both Mazzei and Jefferson, upbraided Mazzei for circulating a personal letter without his correspondent’s permission. Van Staphorst understood what Mazzei apparently did not: what is written in a personal letter should remain personal. Mazzei went even further, however: he sent the excerpt to a French correspondent, who translated and published it in the French press with a detailed commentary. Noah Webster obtained a copy of the article from the Moniteur, the French paper in which it appeared in early 1797, had it translated from French back into English, and published it in the New York Minerva on May 2, 1797. Several other Federalist papers reprinted the “Mazzei letter,” as it became known, including Porcupine’s Gazette.
Jefferson’s keen literary abilities had come back to haunt him. The most memorable sentence of the Mazzei letter, the one about “Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council,” whose heads were “shorn by the harlot England,” proved so memorable that it was repeated over and over again. In its retranslation into English from the French, Jefferson’s words got twisted. In the Minerva, the passage read, “Solomons in council, and Sampsons in combat, but whose hair has been cut off by the whore England.”14 In the retranslation, the fine literary qualities of Jefferson’s original disappear. It sounds vulgar and mean-spirited.
It was not long before Jefferson learned about the publication of his letter to Mazzei. The first week of May 1797, he left Monticello to attend a special session of Congress. One morning he stopped for breakfast at Bladensburg, Maryland, where he learned the letter’s fate. The attacks on his character and his policy were swift in coming, as Jefferson knew they would be, but he again refused to enter into a newspaper controversy.
Jefferson’s fullest expression of his general position toward newspaper controversy occurs in a letter he wrote Maryland congressman Samuel Smith the following year. After explaining his position concerning war with France, he cautioned Smith against publishing what he wrote in this letter and offered him a lengthy discussion of why he avoided newspaper publication:
At a very early period of my life, I determined never to put a sentence into any newspaper. I have religiously adhered to the resolution through my life, and have great reason to be contented with it. Were I to undertake to answer the calumnies of the newspapers, it would be more than all my own time, and that of 20. aids could effect. For while I should be answering one, twenty new ones would be invented. I have thought it better to trust to the justice of my countrymen, that they would judge me by what they see of my conduct on the stage where they have placed me, and what they know of me before the epoch since which a particular party has supposed it might answer some view of theirs to vilify me in the public eye…. Though I have made up my mind not to suffer calumny to disturb my tranquillity, yet I retain all my sensibilities for the approbation of the good and just. That is indeed the chief consolation for the hatred of so many who, without the least personal knowledge, and on the sacred evidence of Porcupine and Fenno alone, cover me with their implacable hatred. The only return I will ever make them, will be to do them all the good I can, in spite of their teeth.15
Jefferson deserves credit for taking the moral high ground, but his words mask an important aspect of his relationship with the press: though he refused to contribute to the newspapers himself, he was not averse to encouraging friends and supporters to write newspaper articles critiquing his enemies. As secretary of state, he had hired Philip Freneau as his translating clerk, thus putting him in a position to edit a paper friendly to his side and against the Federalists. With a few minor exceptions, Jefferson never contributed to Freneau’s National Gazette, but he continually sanctioned Freneau’s attacks on the Federalists.16
When Jefferson told Smith that he never authored any newspaper articles, he was taking a narrow view of authorship. To him, the author was the one who put pen to paper and strung words together to form the sentences and paragraphs that comprise a newspaper article. But this is not the only possible definition of an author. Seen from a broader perspective of authorship, Jefferson can be considered the author of many articles that appeared in Freneau’s and other papers friendly to his views, especially the Philadelphia Aurora. Owned and edited by Benjamin Franklin Bache until his death by yellow fever in 1798, the Aurora was one of Jefferson’s staunchest supporters. When William Duane took over editorial responsibilities upon Bache’s death, he maintained support for Jefferson’s policies. The articles Bache and Duane wrote for the Aurora were often written with Jefferson’s advice and approval. He discussed his ideas with Freneau, Bache, Duane, and others, encouraged them to articulate these ideas in the press, and applauded them for their efforts.
James Thomson Callender was another journalist who received Vice President Jefferson’s encouragement and support. Callender first emerged as a controversial author in Great Britain, which he fled to avoid being prosecuted for sedition for his highly critical work Political Progress of Britain. He reached Philadelphia in 1793, where he joined the circle of Republican propagandists led by Bache. Callender contributed to the Aurora and published controversial books and pamphlets on his own. The History of the United States for 1796, which originally appeared in a series of eight pamphlets, exposed Alexander Hamilton’s affair with Maria Reynolds, a married woman. Callender’s exposé effectively destroyed Hamilton’s political career.17
Later explaining their relationship, Jefferson downplayed his support of Callender. He told James Monroe that on the strength of Political Progress of Britain he considered its author “a man of science fled from persecution.” Similarly, he told Abigail Adams that he considered Callender “a fugitive from persecution for having written that book, and in distress.”18 Consequently, Jefferson sought to do whatever he could to help him. His support of Callender alienated Abigail Adams, who broke off their friendship in the face of Callender’s mean-spirited attacks on her husband, the president. Jefferson and Abigail Adams subsequently exchanged a series of letters regarding the matter, accusatory on her side, explanatory on his. Jefferson’s letters left her unconvinced. Indeed, his explanations to both her and Monroe obscure the extent of his support.
His memorandum books tell a different story: On June 20, 1797, Jefferson paid Callender $15.14 for his History of the United States for 1796. On October 8, he gave him twenty dollars “for his pamphlets.” On December 12, sixteen dollars. Two days later $4.33 “for pamphlets.” Three days after that $1.25 for a copy of The History of the United State for 1796 for a friend. On December 23, five dollars “for books and pamphlets.” On February 9, 1798, $97.50 for five copies of Callender’s latest book, Sketches of the History of America. March 23: sixteen dollars. May 23: three dollars “for books.” June 25: five dollars “for his next book.”19 To Jefferson’s mind, his payments to Callender were instances of literary patronage, but the sums he paid were all out of proportion for what he got, especially that one on February 9: $97.50 for five books!
Shortly after receiving the June 25 payment, Callender left Philadelphia in fear of the Sedition Act, which President Adams would soon sign into law. Severely critical of the president’s policies, Callender knew he would be one of the first to face prosecution. He fled to Virginia, where he continued his campaign in the newspapers and in pamphlets—and where Jefferson continued to support him. But Callender’s days were numbered. The Prospect before Us, a severe critique of the Adams administration he published in 1800, led to his prosecution and conviction under the Sedition Act.
But even from jail, Callender kept up his attacks. He expected great changes soon. As the 1800 presidential election approached, he foresaw Jefferson’s victory and imagined being pardoned, vindicated, and rewarded for his unwaveri
ng support of the Republican cause. Starting his presidency with a spirit of reconciliation, Jefferson had no place in his administration for Callender or, for that matter, any other contentious, mean-spirited journalist and pamphleteer. Callender felt betrayed. Scoundrel to the core, he switched sides and began launching attacks on Jefferson.
It did not take long for his attacks to become personal. Callender was the one who first published the salacious rumor about a romantic liaison between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. The story gave Jefferson’s enemies the chance to attack him on personal grounds. It quickly entered the political discourse and captured the popular imagination. Though its publication was motivated by personal vindictiveness, the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings has long outlived the person who gave it currency. Callender drowned himself in the James River in 1803, yet the story he published remains a part of the historical discourse and continues to fascinate the popular imagination.
In the face of newspaper attacks on his personal and professional conduct, Vice President Jefferson did more than merely uphold the freedom of the press. He vigorously sought to reestablish the freedom of the press in the face of its biggest threat since the Bill of Rights had been passed. Hard on the heels of the Alien Act, which authorized the expulsion of any alien deemed dangerous to the United States without a hearing, the Sedition Act proved to be the last straw. No longer could Jefferson stand by and witness the erosion of basic American freedoms. With the Federalists in control of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government, he had no recourse at the national level. He decided to make a stand at the state level and drafted what would become known as the “Kentucky Resolutions,” which declared the Alien and Sedition Acts unconstitutional.
He wrote the “Kentucky Resolutions” in secrecy and kept his authorship secret for decades, so little information survives to explain their genesis. His editors persuasively suggest that Jefferson began writing them to present before the Virginia legislature, but since the Kentucky legislature was scheduled to meet before the Virginians, Jefferson took the opportunity to have John Breckinridge, his contact in Kentucky, present them. The Kentucky General Assembly convened the first week of November 1798. Breckinridge introduced the “Kentucky Resolutions” early the second week of the month. By the end of that week, both the General Assembly and the Kentucky Senate had passed the resolutions. The third week of November, the governor approved them.20 The Kentuckians had made a few minor changes in the wording, but by and large, the resolutions passed as Jefferson had written them. They lack the pithy, aphoristic quality of earlier legislative resolutions he had written, but they gain power in the aggregate. The “Kentucky Resolutions” stand as a stern warning to the federal government: the states will not tolerate the federal abuse of power.
Late in 1798, Jefferson received a letter from William G. Munford, reputedly one of the brightest young Virginians of his generation. This was the kind of letter Jefferson liked best—Munford wrote asking advice about books. Jefferson responded with a detailed list of reading. Munford’s initial letter to him does not survive, but he apparently expressed an interest in studying law. Jefferson’s reading list emphasizes law and history but also includes sections on politics, moral philosophy, mathematics, and fine arts.21
Munford appreciated Jefferson’s list of recommended reading and wrote back to ask him if he would acquire some of the books for him. Requesting the vice president to run errands for him, Munford asked a lot, but Jefferson did not seem to mind. He was always happy to encourage learning, especially among bright and ambitious young men. On Munford’s behalf, he visited nearly every bookshop in Philadelphia to find the requested books. By late February 1799, he had located four of them. On his search, Jefferson came across two other books he thought Munford would appreciate, which he also included: Nathaniel Chipman’s Sketches of the Principles of Government and the Marquis de Condorcet’s Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind, the English translation Benjamin Franklin Bache had recently published.22
Recommending this last work, Jefferson emphasized Condorcet’s established reputation. He had become friends with Condorcet in Paris and had several of his works in his Monticello library, including the French first edition of this particular work. Jefferson’s annotated copy, which survives at the Library of Congress, shows how carefully he read the work.
Condorcet’s celebration of the printed word makes for memorable reading:
To the press we owe those continued discussions which alone can enlighten doubtful questions, and fix upon an immoveable basis, truths too abstract, too subtile, too remote from the prejudices of the people or the common opinion of the learned, not to be soon forgotten and lost. To the press we owe those books purely elementary, dictionaries, works in which are collected, with all their details, a multitude of facts, observations, and experiments, in which all their proofs are developed, all their difficulties investigated. To the press we owe those valuable compilations, containing sometimes all that has been discovered, written, thought, upon a particular branch of science, and sometimes the result of the annual labours of all the literati of a country. To the press we owe those tables, those catalogues, those pictures of every kind, of which some exhibit a view of inductions which the mind could only have acquired by the most tedious operations; others present at will the fact, the discovery, the number, the method, the object which we are desirous of ascertaining; while others again furnish, in a more commodious form and a more arranged order, the materials from which genius may fashion and derive new truths.23
The general purpose of Condorcet’s book is to tell the story of mankind’s progress, and the printing press is an essential player in the drama.
Munford never really followed the educational scheme Jefferson outlined for him. In fact, he never lived up to his potential as a scholar or, for that matter, as a gentleman. After visiting Europe, he returned to Virginia a changed man. He now called himself W. G. Montfort. From Bishop James Madison’s perspective, he had assumed the character of a scoundrel. Rumors circulated that he was now an agent for the French government. Before the results of the 1800 presidential election were finalized, the ungrateful Munford came out against Jefferson and attacked him in the newspapers. The remainder of his history is brief but mysterious. In 1804, he was in Bordeaux, France, where he died of smallpox. William Lee, U.S. consul at Bordeaux, found three of Jefferson’s letters among Munford’s effects, which he sent back to him.24
One of these letters, which Jefferson had written Munford on June 18, 1799, is among the finest letters he ever wrote. The only reason Munford has not completely disappeared from the pages of history is because he was the recipient of this letter. For a brief moment in his otherwise short life, William G. Munford was able to solicit Thomas Jefferson’s most heartfelt thoughts on the importance of scientific progress and the value of the printing press. Echoing Condorcet, perhaps recalling ideas he and Condorcet had discussed in Paris, Jefferson observed, “While the art of printing is left to us science can never be retrograde; what is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost. To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.”25
Even when read out of context, Jefferson’s words are stirring. Read in light of the almost constant barrage of newspaper attacks he suffered as vice president, his enduring faith in a free press is awe-inspiring. The onslaught of insensitive and mean-spirited political attacks was a small price to pay for a free press, which offered the best way to ensure mankind’s progress.
Throughout his vice presidency, Jefferson had been working on a new book, and it began to coalesce during his last year in the office. Before he began presiding over the Senate, he had commonplaced the British treatises on parliamentary procedure. This formed his “Parliamentary Pocket-Book,” wh
ich he used throughout his vice presidency. Nearing the end of his term, he wanted to put the rules of parliamentary procedure into a more permanent form for others to use once he retired. The result would be A Manual of Parliamentary Practice.
The first known reference to the project occurs in a letter to George Wythe on February 28, 1800. Recognizing Wythe as the nation’s foremost expert on the subject, Jefferson asked his help in clarifying several minor points. Jefferson explained to Wythe the difficulties he was having in codifying the rules of order: “In the course of this business I find perplexities, having for 20. years been out of deliberative bodies and become rusty as to many points of proceedings: and so little has the Parliamentary branch of the law been attended to, that I not only find no person here, but not even a book to aid me…. Some of them are so minute indeed and belong so much to every day’s practice that they have never been thought worthy of being written down.”26 Jefferson was caught between oral tradition and the printed word. Many of the rules of order had evolved as representative government had evolved but had never been recorded. Jefferson was hoping Wythe could remember the unwritten rules.
Without knowing the unwritten rules, Jefferson hesitated to publish his Manual of Parliamentary Practice. Initially, he decided to make the book as thorough as he could and then deposit a manuscript copy with the Senate. In the coming years, future senators and vice presidents could revise and refine the manual. There was a danger with this solution: someone else might publish it without his approval, errors and all. If he published it himself, at least he would be able to oversee its publication.
The Road to Monticello Page 58