He did want to stay in Washington long enough to host his first Fourth of July celebration as president. Mrs. Smith usually spent the summer at their house in the country, so she was not around to enjoy the celebration. Her husband, who remained in town to run his newspaper, did attend the festivities. On July 4, 1801, Smith and a guest entered the President’s House about noon, when they were astonished to find Jefferson surrounded by five Cherokee chiefs. Throughout his presidency, Jefferson welcomed Native Americans to the White House. Furthermore, he wrote several addresses to them that effectively utilize Native American rhetoric.
On this occasion, shortly after Smith had arrived, the president invited his company into the dining room, where four large sideboards were covered with refreshments—“cakes of various kinds, wine, punch, etc.” The company eventually swelled to more than a hundred guests. To accompany this pleasant holiday afternoon, the U.S. Marine Band played patriotic airs.23
It was Jefferson who titled this band “The President’s Own” and thus defined the mission of the Marine Band, which continues to provide music for the president. Jefferson greatly improved the band as he sanctioned the recruit of several Italian musicians to its ranks. He recognized the importance of music to the nation as a whole and to the military in particular. As president, he did what he could to encourage the development of music in the United States.
He left Washington for Monticello that year on July 30 and stayed away for the next two months, taking full advantage of the time by enjoying the company of his grandchildren. Anne, the oldest, had turned ten earlier that year. At four, Ellen was learning to read, but she did not let on how much she knew during her grandfather’s visit. A little shy or a little coy or maybe a little of both, Ellen feigned ignorance in order to surprise and amaze her grandfather at a later time. While he was home that summer, two more grandchildren were born. On August 22, Martha gave birth to Virginia Jefferson Randolph, and on September 20, Maria gave birth to Francis Eppes.
Jefferson returned to Washington the last day of September. The most important literary task he faced was drafting his first annual message to Congress. Much official correspondence demanded his attention, but he still managed to find time to write his grandchildren. One particular letter gave him more satisfaction than just about any other, the first letter he ever wrote his granddaughter Ellen, which responds to her first letter to him. As short as it is, four-year-old Ellen’s letter contains multiple comments about books. In the body of the letter, she wrote, “I hope you will bring me some books my dear grand papa.” In a postscript, she added, “Make hast to come home to see us and all our books in the press.”24 Here was a little girl after her grandfather’s heart. Not only did she express a desire for more books, but she was also already helping arrange her books and those of her siblings.
Ellen’s grandfather was amazed by her precociousness. He responded, “When I left Monticello you could not read, and now I find you can not only read, but write also. I inclose you two little books as a mark of my satisfaction and if you continue to learn as fast, you will become a learned lady and publish books yourself.” He would continue to send Ellen and his other grandchildren books throughout his presidency.25
It is impossible to identify all the books Jefferson acquired for Ellen and the others, but sporadic evidence provides some indication. Maria Edgeworth was one of the girls’ favorites: The Modern Griselda, Moral Tales for Young People, The Parent’s Assistant; or, Stories for Children, and Rosamond all became a part of his granddaughters’ bookshelf. While purchasing Edgeworth’s works for them, Jefferson sometimes questioned their value. Presenting a copy of Moral Tales to one granddaughter, he said that it seemed “better suited to your years than to mine.” Though his daughter Martha enjoyed The Modern Griselda and shared it with her children, Jefferson expressed uncertainty about the book. Describing it to Anne, he explained, “The heroine presents herself certainly as a perfect model of ingenious perverseness, and of the art of making herself and others unhappy. If it can be made of use in inculcating the virtues and felicities of life, it must be by the rule of contraries.”26
The Modern Griselda was one of Edgeworth’s most daring efforts. The Parent’s Assistant, a more conservative work, makes its instructive value apparent from its title page. The Parent’s Assistant presented a collection of stories and plays, all designed for the purposes of moral inculcation. For example, the virtuous title character of “Simple Susan,” one of Edgeworth’s best-known tales, experiences many personal tribulations but is ultimately rewarded in the end.27 Jefferson was happy to present this work to his granddaughters. One of them remembered when he gave it to them. They drew lots to determine who would get to read the book first: “She who drew the longest straw had the first reading of the book—the next longest straw entitled the drawer to the second reading—the shortest, to the last reading and ownership of the book.”28
During his presidency, Jefferson subscribed to Captain John Smith and Princess Pocahontas, John Davis’s romantic retelling of the story of Virginia’s early years. The work does not appear in his library catalogue. More than likely, he gave it to his grandchildren. In 1802, the Reverend Thomas Davis sought subscriptions for Miscellaneous Poetry, an anthology of British verse, and the president subscribed to the book. The work is also not listed in his library catalogue; this, too, seems intended as a present for his grandchildren. He also subscribed to Richard Dinmore’s 1802 anthology, Select and Fugitive Poetry—the first volume of poetry printed in Washington, D.C. Jefferson initialed this volume with his characteristic identifying marks, but he subsequently presented it to his daughter Martha.29
Hard-to-get books Jefferson had to order from elsewhere. Philadelphia book dealer Nicolas Gouin Dufief was an important source for books. During his presidency, Jefferson also developed a good relationship with Baltimore book dealer J. P. Reibelt. Altogether, they exchanged dozens of letters. Reibelt would write to inform Jefferson of the latest titles he had imported, and Jefferson would write back to purchase some books and special order others. Sometimes, Reibelt would pack up entire boxes of books and send them to the President’s House on approval. Jefferson would then pick and choose the ones he wanted and return the ones he did not.30
The book culture of Washington, D.C., continued to develop throughout Jefferson’s presidency. Dinmore ran a bookstore and circulating library at “the first door west of the President’s Square.” Jefferson subscribed to Dinmore’s circulating library and purchased other books from him, too.31 Late in 1801, William Duane opened the Apollo Press and Aurora Bookstore at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street N.W., and Jefferson bought several books there.32 He also continued to shop at Rapin, Conrad, and Company and began to patronize John March’s Store, a stationery shop and book bindery on High Street in Georgetown.
John March’s reputation as a bookbinder rivaled that of Robert Aitken. March was especially skilled with tree calf bindings, that is, calf bindings decorated with elaborate wood-grain patterns. Surviving examples of March’s bindings testify to his craftsmanship and his aesthetic sensibilities. The first week of November Jefferson paid him to have dozens of volumes bound. He would bring dozens more volumes there in the coming years.
After March’s death the first week of June 1804, Joseph Milligan took over the business. Capitalizing on the excellent reputation March had established, Milligan kept the name John March’s Store. Milligan also perpetuated the shop’s reputation. He stocked an excellent selection of books, and could turn out handsome tree calf bindings himself. Jefferson observed, “For elegant bindings to choice books, there is no one in America comparable to him. His bindings are so tasty, so solid, and as heavy as blocks of metal.”33
By the second week of November, Jefferson had finished a draft of his “First Annual Message.” (The president’s annual message would not be known as the “State of the Union” until the twentieth century.) He sent a copy of it to James Madison, asking him to give it a “serio
us revisal, not only as to matter, but diction.” Jefferson’s instructions did not stop here. “Where strictness of grammar does not weaken expression, it should be attended to in complaisance to the purists of New England. But where by small grammatical negligences the energy of an idea is condensed, or a word stands for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt.”34
Elsewhere Jefferson similarly criticized those who advocated grammatical rigor. To one like-minded author, he wrote, “I concur entirely with you in opposition to Purists, who would destroy all strength and beauty of style, by subjecting it to a rigorous compliance with their rules. Fill up all the ellipses of Tacitus, Sallust, Livy, etc., and the elegance and force of their sententious brevity are extinguished.”35 Jefferson’s comments react to the criticism his inaugural address had received. Finding it difficult to critique the substance of his inaugural address, some of his bitterest critics had attacked his grammar. He was happy to clean up his grammar to minimize criticism in this regard, but he shunned grammatical correctness if it detracted from the power of his words.
On Tuesday, December 8, 1801, Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis to the Capitol with his first annual message and a cover letter explaining it. The explanation was necessary because Jefferson was breaking with a tradition established by George Washington and perpetuated by John Adams. Both had delivered their annual messages to Congress orally, but Jefferson preferred communicating through the written word. Early in the first year of his presidency, he had decided against delivering the address orally. He felt that a written message would be more convenient, saving time and freeing Congress from having to answer it without having the time to consider it properly.
In his message, Jefferson celebrated the fact that the United States had remained at peace during his first year in office. The general peace allowed Americans “quietly to cultivate the earth and to practice and improve those arts which tend to increase our comforts.”36 The word “increase” introduces a leitmotif that recurs throughout the message. Jefferson would repeat and elaborate the connotations of the word, which comes to mean “increase and multiply.”
Continuing his message, he admitted that there was one exception to the general peace: the war with Tripoli. He explained that he had sent a small squadron there and reported what had happened. The schooner Enterprise had engaged a Tripolitan cruiser and defeated it without loss of life on the American side. “The bravery exhibited by our citizens,” Jefferson stated, will be “testimony to the world that it is not the want of that virtue which makes us seek their peace, but a conscientious desire to direct the energies of our nation to the multiplication of the human race, and not to its destruction.” Though brave and devoted to defending their nation, American sailors were still anxious to return home to their families and farms.
The subject of the 1800 census gave Jefferson the opportunity to reiterate his central theme. The results of the census promised “a duplication in little more than twenty-two years. We contemplate this rapid growth, and the prospect it holds up to us, not with a view to the injuries it may enable us to do to others in some future day, but to the settlement of the extensive country still remaining vacant within our limits, to the multiplications of men susceptible of happiness, educated in the love of order, habituated to self-government, and value its blessings above all price.” With keen foresight, Jefferson created an idyllic picture of North America gradually filling up with the burgeoning American population.
Hearkening back to an idea he had been advocating publicly at least since his revision of Virginia law, he offered another way to help disseminate news and ideas throughout the nation. He recommended eliminating postage on newspapers “to facilitate the progress of information.” Newspaper postage was just one of many internal taxes Jefferson thought could be eliminated. In fact, he advocated eliminating all internal taxes in his message to Congress.
Bringing the message to a close, he provided its most memorable sentence: “Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.” Jefferson’s careful word choice unites this part of the message with its earlier part. Much as the schooner Enterprise defeated its Tripolitan rival, American enterprise will overcome all obstacles and ensure a prosperous and mighty nation.
On New Year’s Day, 1802, an extraordinary gift arrived at the President’s House, an enormous Cheshire cheese, which had already become known as the Mammoth Cheese. The cheese had been made to celebrate Jefferson’s election by the Republican citizens of Cheshire, a small community in western Massachusetts. It had been transported partly by sea and partly by land from Massachusetts to Washington, and it met great fanfare wherever it went. The last leg of the journey took it down Pennsylvania Avenue to the President’s House, where it arrived the first morning of the new year. John Leland, the Baptist preacher who came up with the idea for this great cheese, personally presented it to President Jefferson. In his presentation speech, Leland called it “the greatest cheese in America, for the greatest man in America.”37
The huge cheese was four feet in diameter, thirteen feet in circumference, and seventeen inches tall. Its crust was stained red and adorned with the motto “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”38 It deserves a place in early American literary history because it inspired numerous verses, whose tone and content divided sharply according to party lines. The Republican Ode to the Mammoth Cheese, for example, ends with the following lines:
All that we want or wish for in life’s hour,
Heaven still will grant us—they are only these,
Poetry—Health—Peace—Virtue—Bread and Cheese.
A Federalist poem that appeared in the Courier of New Hampshire the first week of January 1802 included a stanza about the Mammoth Cheese:
But, Muse, you’ll not forget to squeeze
A word out ’bout the “Mammoth Cheese”;
Such Cheese no man before set face on;
’Tis bigger than Don Quixot’s bason—
Such Cheese, my stars! ’twould make one swoon
To view—’tis bigger than a moon!
This Cheese is surely honour’d more,
Than ever any Cheese before;
To feel the weight and force, forsooth,
And crash, of Presidential tooth.
Ye maggots, that dwell in the Cheese,
With horror how your limbs will freeze,
How will you kick, and squirm, and claw,
Beneath the Jeffersonian jaw!
The Mammoth Cheese symbolized the support Jefferson received from religious groups who benefited from his policy of religious freedom. Early in his presidency, he received many other messages of support, none so extravagant but many as heartfelt. Recently, he had received a letter from Connecticut written by members of the Danbury Baptist Association congratulating him upon his election. On this busy New Year’s Day, Jefferson drafted a response to the association, thanking them for their support and outlining his basic principles toward the relationship between church and state. His words are inspiring:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.39
Though written as a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, Jefferson knew his words would be published throughout the United States. With his response
to the Danbury Baptists, he took the opportunity to influence public attitudes toward the separation of church and state. Sending a copy of his letter to Levi Lincoln, Jefferson explained his reaction to this and similar addresses he had received: “I have generally endeavored to turn them to some account, by making them the occasion, by way of answer, of sowing useful truths and principles among the people, which might germinate and become rooted among their political tenets. The Baptist address now inclosed admits of a condemnation of the alliance between church and state, under the authority of the Constitution.”40 Jefferson intended his statement as a gloss on the First Amendment, and such it has become. His wall-of-separation metaphor brilliantly encapsulates the proper relationship between church and state.
Jefferson’s metaphor is so well known that some think he coined it, but the phrase “wall of separation” occurs repeatedly in earlier literature. It was used often enough to become proverbial. The Boston preacher Samuel Willard said, “Man, by the instigation of Satan was allured and invited, and by the abuse of his own free will led away to fall from his obedience, and became a Covenant-breaker; whereby a wall of separation was set up between him and God.” In her Moral Tales, Madame Le Prince de Beaumont told the story of two star-crossed lovers divided by a wall of separation. And, to cite one further example, Frederick Schiller spoke of a wall of separation between good and evil in Don Carlos: A Tragedy.41 In these various works, the wall of separation connotes a barrier that is impenetrable, impermeable, unbreakable. Jefferson played upon these traditional associations to build his wall of separation between church and state.
In terms of Jefferson’s personal life, the most important event of his first term as president was his daughters’ visit to Washington. They arrived on November 21, 1802. Not surprisingly, Margaret Bayard Smith’s correspondence provides the best information about their stay. She characterized Maria as “beautiful, simplicity and timidity personified when in company, but when alone with you of communicative and winning manners.” Martha she described as “rather homely, a delicate likeness of her father.” Still, Mrs. Smith found Martha more interesting than her sister. Speaking more in terms of personality than appearance, she called Martha, “one of the most lovely women I have ever met with, her countenance beaming with intelligence, benevolence and sensibility, and her conversation fulfils all her countenance promises. Her manners, so frank and affectionate, that you know her at once, and feel perfectly at your ease with her.”42
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