Jefferson did find fault with Milligan’s plan to publish the Manual in octavo: “I wonder you should think of printing them in 8vo. It is essentially a book for the pocket, and which members will carry to their house in their pocket occasionally, and some habitually.”28 Milligan took Jefferson’s advice to heart and chose a smaller format for the book. Sending some preliminary proof sheets to Jefferson for his approval, Milligan explained, “As you will see by the Enclosed proof of the first 12 pages of the Manual I have had it printed to meet your Idea as to size and think that it is certainly a great improvement as it may be bound like the Volume of the British Spy herewith sent so as to make an Elegant pocket Volume.” This other book Milligan sent was the fourth edition of William Wirt’s Letters of the British Spy, handsomely bound in calf and gilt. Its small format made it ideal for Jefferson’s vacation library.29
Milligan’s edition of the Manual appeared in 1812. Other American publishers issued reprints in 1820, 1822, and 1823. Jefferson’s Manual influenced not only legislatures in the United States, but also foreign legislatures. In his lifetime, it was translated into French (1814), German (1819), and Spanish (1826). Think back to the time when Jefferson chuckled at the proceedings of the colonial Maryland legislature. A Manual of Parliamentary Procedure established methods that allowed any legislature to proceed with fairness and decorum. A half a century later, Jefferson’s chuckle became a grin of satisfaction.
Late in the summer of 1809, Jefferson learned of a French writer and politician who needed his help. In August he received a letter from Lafayette, introducing Destutt de Tracy and letting him know that Tracy would be sending him a manuscript he was hoping to publish in America, a redaction of Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws.30 Jefferson had appreciated Montesquieu’s work for decades, even as he disliked its incongruities. He called the work “a book of paradoxes; having, indeed, much of truth and sound principle, but abounding also in inconsistencies, apocryphal facts, and false inferences.”31 Upon receiving the manuscript, Jefferson recognized how well Tracy had methodized Montesquieu. He saw great value in the work and agreed to help him get it into print.
Jefferson took no action immediately, but after about a year, he translated one chapter into English and sent it to William Duane to see if he would be interested in publishing Tracy’s entire work. Duane agreed. He lined up a translator and, when the translation was finished, sent it to Jefferson for his approval. Jefferson made some minor changes to the translation, but there was one aspect of it he could not remedy: overall, it lacked the fluidity to be the work of a native English speaker.
Jefferson devised an ingenious solution. He imagined a fictional author for the work and drafted a “short Proem” in which this author introduces himself. Since Tracy did not want to be identified as the author, Jefferson had to develop a distinct personality for his fictional author. He decided to make him a Frenchman now living in America, and wrote the proem from this point of view. The use of a fictional persona was a commonplace literary device of the period. Some of the finest writers in early America, including Benjamin Franklin, wore the masks of many different personae. Jefferson rarely used the technique. Consequently, this proem marks an unusual departure for Jefferson—but one that is great fun. It begins:
I am a Frenchman by birth and education. I was an early friend to the revolution of France, and continued to support it, until those entrusted with its helm, had evidently changed its direction. Flying then from the tyrannies of the monster Robespierre, I found, and still enjoy, safety, freedom, and hospitality, among you. I am grateful for these boons, and anxious to shew that gratitude, by such services as my faculties and habits enable me to render. Reading and contemplation have been the occupations of my life, and mostly on those subjects which concern the condition of man.
At this point, Jefferson’s preface seems like a fantasy piece. Often throughout his personal correspondence he had explained that the Revolutionary times in which he lived had taken him from his natural, scholarly pursuits. Writing from a persona, Jefferson became in imagination what he had always wanted to be, a man whose lifetime occupations involved reading and contemplation.
Duane published the work in 1811 as A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws. Tracy was thrilled with the result. He also appreciated Jefferson’s ongoing efforts to promote the work. A half a dozen years later, Tracy sought Jefferson’s help publishing another work, A Treatise on Political Economy. Jefferson ended up translating the work himself and arranged for Milligan to publish it.
Nearly a year passed between the time Jefferson first received Tracy’s manuscript of A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws and the time he approached Duane about publishing it. Another arduous writing project had intervened. During that time, Jefferson wrote another book, one he had not planned to write, and did not want to write, but one that circumstances demanded of him.
The acquisition of Louisiana during Jefferson’s presidency had generated a local controversy in New Orleans. Below the levee was a part of the Mississippi riverbed opposite the suburb of Ste. Marie known as the batture, which was dry for about half the year and submerged the other half. Most people in New Orleans treated the batture as public property, but one resident, Monsieur Jean Gravier, who owned the property in the facing suburb, laid claim to the batture. Townsfolk feared that Gravier would reclaim the batture, a project that might alter the course of the Mississippi, hinder navigation, and possibly endanger the levees. Clearly, something had to be done.
Jefferson learned of the controversy in 1807. Attorney General Caesar Rodney recommended that the batture was the property of the U.S. government, which could justifiably eject intruders. Jefferson had concurred: after consulting with the rest of his cabinet, he authorized U.S. marshals to forcibly remove anyone who settled on the batture.
Before President Jefferson’s decision was executed, Gravier had secretly conveyed his supposed title to the batture to Edward Livingston. A formidable attorney, Livingston took up the fight. Upon retiring from office, Jefferson put the batture controversy behind him, or so he thought. But in May 1810, he was shocked to learn that Livingston was suing him for $100,000 for trespass and damages: Thomas Jefferson, private citizen, was being sued for decisions he had made while president of the United States.
Shocked at this unprecedented suit, Jefferson sprang into action. He hired three expert attorneys, George Hay, Littleton Waller Tazewell, and William Wirt, and began preparing a brief that is a masterpiece of legal erudition. By midsummer, he had drafted the work, which he shared with his former cabinet members, James Madison, Albert Gallatin, and Caesar Rodney. He revised and polished the brief in light of their feedback.
The result of the case was anticlimactic: Livingston v. Jefferson did not come to trial until December 1811, and the case was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. Jefferson was disappointed with the result. Knowing he held the upper hand, he had been looking forward to the fight. Most of all, he wanted to lay the case before the public. With the case dismissed on a technicality, the only way for him to present his arguments to the public would be for him to publish his brief.
Jefferson arranged with New York publisher Ezra Sargeant to issue the work. To Jefferson’s mind, Sargeant’s was the only publisher in America who could issue a book so complicated. Filled with quotations from French, Greek, Latin, and Spanish, double columns of parallel texts, numerous marginal glosses, and lengthy footnotes, Jefferson’s brief presented a challenge to even the best of printers.
The work appeared in March 1812 as The Proceedings of the Government of the United States, in Maintaining the Public Right to the Beach of the Missisipi, Adjacent to New-Orleans, against the Intrusion of Edward Livingston, a closely printed volume of more than eighty pages. Jefferson presented copies to Congress and many other figures in the federal government.
In the preface to the Proceedings, Jefferson apologized for the arid quality of the document, originally written solely for
the use of his counsel. Remarkably, the Proceedings found a handful of enthusiastic readers. William Wirt, one of the attorneys Jefferson had hired and author of Letters of the British Spy, one of the most respected contemporary works of American literature, was ecstatic about it: “It is by far the best piece of grecian architecture that I have ever seen, either from ancient or modern times. I did not think it possible that such a subject could be so deeply and at the same time so airily treated—because I never before had seen such a union of lightness and solidity, of beauty and power, in any investigation.”32
While a legal brief is not usually a place for fine writing, Jefferson’s Proceedings does contain several charming nuggets of humor and wisdom, starting on the first page with an allusion to one of Shakespeare’s history plays, Henry IV, Part I. In a hilarious exchange with Prince Hal, Falstaff boasts about having successfully attacked two rogues clad in buckram. Before he finishes one speech, the two rogues have become four. As Hal questions him, Falstaff’s boast continues to grow. The four rogues become seven, and the seven become eleven. Jefferson, in tracing the transfer of title to seven arpents of riverfront property from a Monsieur Pradel to the widow Pradel to Monsieur Renard to the widow Renard to Monsieur Gravier, who married the widow Renard, Jefferson observed, “How these 7 arpents, like Falstaff’s men in buckram, became 12 in the sale of the widow Pradel to Renard, 13 in Gravier’s inventory, and nearly 17, as is said in the extent of his fauxbourg, the plaintiff is called on to show, and to deduce titles from the crown, regularly down to himself.”33
The aphorisms Jefferson composed to punctuate the Proceedings need no explanation:
Sound reason … should constitute the law of every country.
Common sense [is] the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction.
There is more honour and magnanimity in correcting than preserving an error.
He who has done his duty honestly, and according to his best skill and judgment, stands acquitted before God and man.34
Judge John Tyler was also impressed. He read the Proceedings “with great delight.”35 Writing to Jefferson to express his appreciation, the judge told him, “You still retain the power of turning whatever you touch to gold—Your Streams are brought from so many fountains—like the great Missisippi so strong and irresistible that Livingston and his bold, but corrupt Enterprize, are swept together into the Gulf without hope of redemption.”
CHAPTER 36
Letters to an Old Friend
As a literary device, the dream vision reached its peak during the time of Pierce Plowman. By no means did it disappear from the literary discourse once the medieval period gave way to the Renaissance. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the best-known dream vision of the seventeenth century, influenced such works as Benjamin Franklin’s “Silence Dogood, No. 4,” the best-known dream vision in early American literature. But Franklin was not the only early American author and, for that matter, not the only signer of the Declaration of Independence who wrote dream visions. Benjamin Rush greatly enjoyed writing them and sometimes built dream visions into his personal letters.
Writing John Adams on October 17, 1809, Rush described a dream that is set several years in the future. As it begins, Rush sees his son Richard reading a history of the United States. Richard offers to let him read the book. His father refuses until Richard informs him that the book mentions his friend John Adams. Rush takes the volume and reads the entry for 1809, which begins: “Among the most extraordinary events of this year was the renewal of the friendship and intercourse between Mr. John Adams and Mr. Jefferson, the two ex-Presidents of the United States.” This historical account explains that their initial exchange of letters in 1809 was followed by a correspondence extending for years and containing “many precious aphorisms, the result of observation, experience, and profound reflection.” The account ends observing that both Adams and Jefferson “sunk into the grave nearly at the same time, full of years and rich in the gratitude and praises of their country.”1
Responding to Rush’s fanciful letter, Adams exclaimed, “A Dream again! I wish you would dream all day and all Night, for one of your dreams puts me in spirits for a Month. I have no other objection to your Dream, but that it is not History. It may be Prophecy.”2 Rush’s dream vision was prophetic indeed. The reconciliation of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who had not communicated since March 1801, the month Jefferson took over the presidency from Adams, would not happen as soon as Rush dreamed, but it would happen within a few more years, largely due to Rush’s persistence.
Benjamin Rush (1805), by Ellen Sharples, after James Sharples, Senior. (Independence National Historical Park)
The first week of January 1811 Rush encouraged Jefferson to write Adams. No dream vision this time: Rush’s letters to Jefferson are not nearly as playful as his letters to Adams. He understood what would persuade Jefferson to change his mind: he appealed to his humanity and his sense of the future. Rush observed, “Posterity will revere the friendship of two ex-Presidents that were once opposed to each other. Human nature will be a gainer by it. I am sure an advance on your side will be a cordial to the heart of Mr. Adams.”3 Jefferson told Rush he would be happy to write John Adams but suspected that his advances would be rebuffed. To explain why, Jefferson related the story of his disheartening correspondence with Abigail Adams over James Cal-lender. To convince Rush, Jefferson sent her letters and copies of his responses, the first time he had shared them with anyone.
Naturally enough, Jefferson assumed that Abigail Adams had written to him with her husband’s approval. She had not. She and Jefferson exchanged letters discussing Callender from May to November 1804, when she finally showed her husband Jefferson’s letters and letter book copies of her letters to him. After reading the correspondence, Adams wrote in the letter book: “I have no remarks to make upon it at this time and in this place.”4 For once, John Adams was speechless.
Rush was moved by the confidence Jefferson had in him. After reading the letters Jefferson had written Abigail Adams, Rush found that they reflected his “kindness, benevolence, and even friendship.”5 In light of her letters, Rush did not push Jefferson to pursue the correspondence with John Adams—though he did mention that Adams had made some favorable comments about him in a recent letter.
A chance encounter changed everything. Jefferson’s friend and neighbor Edward Coles happened to visit New England in the summer of 1811. Supplied with letters of introduction from President Madison, he visited Quincy, Massachusetts, where he met John Adams. Naturally enough, Jefferson’s name came up in conversation. Adams told Coles how icy and awkward their last meeting had been. He interpreted Jefferson’s cool demeanor as a sign of insensitivity. Coles disagreed. Having heard Jefferson tell the story of his last meeting with Adams on multiple occasions, Coles told Adams that Jefferson had been sensitive to Adams’s feelings and had wanted to part on friendly terms. In light of Coles’s information, Adams softened considerably. He expressed kind feelings for Jefferson, admiring his character and appreciating his services to the nation.6 As he conveyed his friendship for Jefferson, Adams became effusive.
“I always loved Jefferson,” he said, “and still love him.”
Upon his return to Virginia, Coles visited Jefferson, told him about his visit to Massachusetts, and repeated what Adams had to say. Afterward, Jefferson wrote Rush and told him about Coles’s visit to Quincy. Referring to Adams’s expression of friendship, Jefferson wrote, “This is enough for me. I only needed this knowledge to revive towards him all the affections of the most cordial moments of our lives.” He was ready to resume his correspondence with Adams, but he saw one difficulty: “There is an awkwardness which hangs over the resuming a correspondence so long discontinued, unless something could arise which should call for a letter.” Taking advantage of Rush’s desire to reunite them, Jefferson hinted how to resolve this difficulty: “In your letters to Mr. Adams, you can, perhaps, suggest my continued cordialit
y towards him, and knowing this, should an occasion of writing first present itself to him, he will perhaps avail himself of it, as I certainly will should it first occur to me. No ground for jealousy now existing, he will certainly give fair play to the natural warmth of his heart.”7
Rush took the hint. On December 16, the same day he received Jefferson’s letter, he wrote Adams, repeated what Jefferson had told him, and suggested he “receive the olive branch which has thus been offered to you by the hand of a man who still loves you.” The next day Rush wrote back to Jefferson, telling him that he had written Adams and expressing hope that the two would resume their correspondence: “Patriotism, liberty, science, and religion would all gain a triumph by it.”8
On New Year’s Day, 1812, Adams drafted a brief letter to Jefferson. The ostensible purpose of the letter was to present a copy of John Quincy Adams’s two-volume pedagogical work, Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory. Instead of directly mentioning the book or its author, Adams chose a clever metaphor ideally suited to Jefferson: “As you are a Friend to American Manufactures under proper restrictions, especially Manufactures of the domestic kind, I take the Liberty of sending you by the Post a Packett containing two Pieces of Homespun lately produced in this quarter by One who was honoured in his youth with some of your Attention and much of your kindness.”9
Adams’s letter arrived before either volume of the Lectures. Consequently, Jefferson took the metaphor literally and assumed that Adams was indeed sending some homespun fabric. Before receiving this gift, Jefferson wrote a letter of thanks to his old friend, which begins with a celebration of American textile manufacture. The same day he wrote Adams, January 21, Jefferson also wrote Rush, informing him that they had resumed their correspondence and enclosing copies of Adams’s letter and his response.
Writing to Rush, Jefferson characterized his letter to Adams. He called it “a rambling, gossiping epistle.” With this description, Jefferson was being nonchalant: his letter is carefully crafted. Mentioning that he had made “openings for the expression of sincere feelings,” Jefferson provided a better indication of its craftsmanship.10 Like a well-designed home, this letter contains entryways to welcome the invited guest.
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