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 FIGURES FROM AMERICAN W DRY 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEi, itt ^. 
 
FIGURES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY 
 Each 12mo. $1.50 net 
 
 Now Ready 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 By David Saville Muzzey 
 JEFFERSON DAVIS 
 
 By Armistead C. Gordon 
 
 Published Later 
 ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 By Henry Ford Jones 
 ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 By Dr. Douglas Southall Freeman 
 
 Further volumes will follow at short intervals, 
 the list including WASHINGTON, LINCOLN, 
 WEBSTER, GRANT, CLEVELAND, and others. 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, PUBLISHERS 
 
FIGURES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY, Ph.D. 
 
 ASSOCIATE PHOFESSOB OF HI8TOBT IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 NEW YOBK 
 
 Ab eo libertas a quo spiritus 
 He that gave us life gave us liberty 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1918 
 
Copyright, 1918, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published September, 1918 
 
 2 
 
 /v60 
 
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PREFACE 
 
 The story of illustrious men cannot be too often 
 retold. Like great outstanding mountain-peaks, 
 these men invite description but elude definition; 
 they provoke examination but defy exhaustion. 
 The changing hues of political atmosphere, the 
 shifting perspective of social and economic theories, 
 combine with the peculiar equipment, apperception, 
 penchants, and even (alas !) prejudices of each bi- 
 ographer to make any and every interpretation of 
 his hero only a partial, restricted, and temporary 
 one. We grasp so much of the spirit as we can com- 
 prehend — and as there are infinite gradations of 
 comprehension, so there are infinite varieties of 
 portrayal. The wonder is not that there are so 
 many different interpretations of the lives of great 
 men, but rather that there is so large a consensus 
 in the case of a great number of them. 
 
 Of this number, however, Thomas Jefferson is 
 not one. Though placed by the common consent 
 of scholars in the first class of American statesmen, 
 with Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, Webster, 
 and Lincoln, Jefferson seems far less willing than 
 any of his illustrious compeers to fall into his defini- 
 tive place of honor. Washington and Lincoln were 
 maligned in life as no other Americans have been; 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 their abuse, like their merit, was superlative. But 
 to-day their merit alone remains, acknowledged by- 
 all. No one contests Benjamin Franklin's position 
 as our first great statesman, philosopher, and scien- 
 tist — the man who raised common sense to the level 
 of genius, and made the name America known and 
 respected in the world. Few to-day, even though 
 they may detest his politics, would deny to Alex- 
 ander Hamilton the title of the master genius of 
 American finance or refuse to acknowledge the 
 unique contribution of the Federalist to political 
 theory. But Thomas Jefferson is still a subject 
 for acrimonious criticism and chivalrous defense. 
 The campaign controversies of the year 1800 have 
 not yet died down to silence. The perpetuation or 
 the refutation of slanders, objurgations, innuendoes 
 occupies even the latest of Jefferson's biographers. 
 The very men often who acclaim him cannot re- 
 frain from sneers; and even his bitter political 
 enemies lean on his authority. A Populist senator 
 of the last generation remarked that "every opinion 
 delivered in the Senate of the United States was 
 backed by a quotation from Thomas Jefferson." 
 His name is cited more often than any other in our 
 political platforms, his portrait hangs with Wash- 
 ington's and Lincoln's in our convention halls, his 
 principles are appealed to as the creed of every true 
 American. Surely, there is no stranger problem of 
 our political psychology than this mixture of venera- 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 tion and vituperation, of inspiration and exaspera- 
 tion, still provoked by the mention of the name of 
 Thomas Jefferson. 
 
 Suggestions in explanation of this anomaly will 
 appear frequently in the following pages. Here I 
 can only urge the obvious but too often neglected 
 truism that the excellences of men are diverse, and 
 that genius, as Lord Acton said long ago, deserves 
 to be judged by its own best performance. To call 
 Kreisler a second-rate fiddler because he cannot 
 sing like Caruso, or Botticelli a mere dauber because 
 he does not paint in the style of Raphael, appears 
 at once as arrant nonsense; yet many a respectable 
 historian has based his whole condemnatory judg- 
 ment of Jefferson on the fact that he was not like 
 Hamilton. Indeed, no more astonishingly persistent 
 prejudice can be found in our American historiog- 
 raphy than the treatment of these two great men 
 like twin buckets in a well, alternately elevated or de- 
 pressed according as an historian of the Federalist or 
 the Republican school manipulated the chain. Jef- 
 ferson was in public life almost continuously from 
 his entrance into the Virginia House of Burgesses 
 in 1769 to his retirement from the presidency in 
 1809. During less than four of those forty years 
 was he in direct contact with Hamilton in the stormy 
 scenes around Washington's cabinet table. Grave 
 and important differences between these men were 
 there revealed, to be sure; disagreement on the 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 extent and nature of the powers of the central govern- 
 ment, on the relative value of urban-industrial 
 and agricultural communities, on the capacity of 
 the common people for self-government. But im- 
 portant as these matters are, they by no means 
 exhaust the interests of Jefferson's many-sided ac- 
 tivity; nor should they be dwelt on, as they often 
 have been, to the exclusion or obscuration of his 
 splendid services to our diplomacy and public law, 
 to the reform of inveterate social despotisms, to 
 the clarification of the political philosophy of democ- 
 racy, and to the advancement of freedom of thought, 
 speech, and creed through a widely extended system 
 of public education. 
 
 It has been my desire to present the whole man 
 Jefferson in this modest volume, and to present him 
 as far as possible in the first person. The portrait 
 need not be less faithful because the canvas is small; 
 though the form and size of my book are them- 
 selves a sufficient disclaimer of any attempt to add 
 an "original contribution" to the mass of Jeffer- 
 sonian scholarship. I have wished only to write a 
 truthful and readable account of the life of a great 
 American citizen, who served his fellow-citizens long 
 and devotedly in public office, and who will continue 
 to serve his fellow-men so long as freedom is loved 
 
 and fought for. 
 
 D. S. M. 
 
 Columbia University, New York, 
 1918. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Equipment and Apprenticeship 1 
 
 II. The Declaration of Independence. ... 26 
 
 III. The Reform of the Virginia Code. ... 52 
 
 IV. Jefferson as War Governor 75 
 
 V. The Mission to France 101 
 
 VI. In Washington's Cabinet 135 
 
 VII. The Republican Triumph 172 
 
 VIII. Jefferson the Expansionist . 213 
 
 IX. The Struggle for Neutrality 246 
 
 X. Jefferson in Retirement 286 
 
 Index 315 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 
 
 But exercise produces habit, and in the instance of which we speak 
 the exercise being of the moral feelings, produces a habit of thinking and 
 acting virtuously. (Jefferson to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771.) 
 
 A few years after the affable and indolent King 
 Charles II returned from his "travels" and took up 
 his abode in the royal palace of Whitehall, which 
 had been polluted by the presence of Oliver and his 
 saints, a certain William Randolph, gentleman, from 
 Warwickshire, who had sacrificed most of his patri- 
 mony in the defense of Charles's martyred father, 
 came to the royal colony of Virginia and started his 
 fortunes anew at Turkey Island, on the broad banks 
 of the lower James. Randolph traced his descent 
 through a long line of nobles, warriors, and states- 
 men to the royal Earl of Murray, half-brother of the 
 ill-fated Mary, Queen of the Scots. He married 
 Mary Isham, daughter of a baronet, and from this 
 distinguished couple descended a goodly number of 
 
2 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 the men who have made the name of the Old 
 Dominion illustrious. 1 In the year 1738 a daughter 
 of the house of Randolph left the rich halls of the 
 "tidewater aristocracy " to follow her more plebeian 
 husband up the river to his frontier farm of a thou- 
 sand acres in the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge, where 
 five years later she became the mother of Thomas 
 Jefferson. 
 
 The Jeffersons could make no boast of gentle 
 blood, but their yeoman stock was not without 
 honor in the colony. Their ancestor had come from 
 Wales, so the tradition ran, from beneath the shadow 
 of Mount Snowdon. A Jefferson had sat for 
 Flower de Hundred in the famous House of Bur- 
 gesses convened by Governor Yeardley in the little 
 church at Jamestown in 1619 — the first legislative 
 body on the soil of America; and Jeffersons of the 
 seventeenth century were accepted as sons-in-law 
 by the burgesses and even by a speaker of the house. 
 But the true founder of the family was the man who 
 in 1738 took Jane Randolph into the wilderness, 
 "where the trails of the hostile Monacons or Tusca- 
 roras were yet fresh on the lands." Peter Jefferson, 
 
 1 Besides the Randolphs themselves (Peyton, first president of 
 the Continental Congress; John the eccentric, of Roanoke; Edmund, 
 attorney-general and secretary of state in Washington's cabinet); 
 William Stith, the historian of Virginia; John Marshall, for thirty- 
 four years chief justice of the supreme court; Richard Bland, the 
 celebrated Revolutionary leader; Robert E. Lee, the idol of the 
 Southern Confederacy, and Thomas Jefferson could trace their de- 
 scent directly to the aristocratic ancestors of Turkey Island. 
 
EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 3 
 
 then thirty years of age, was the finest type of the 
 American pioneer — tall and straight, strong as an 
 Homeric god, without a drop of fear or meanness 
 in his blood, honest as the daylight, industrious, 
 public-spirited, sociable, and intensely human. He 
 had had little schooling, but his innate nobility of 
 mind drew him to the companionship of the noblest 
 authors. Addison, Swift, and Shakespeare were fa- 
 vorites, whose works he delighted to read aloud to 
 his family around the evening fire of logs. , Honors 
 and moderate wealth came to him as the years 
 passed. He was made a justice of the peace and 
 surveyor for the new county of Albemarle, in which 
 his lands lay, then was appointed colonel of the 
 militia of his county, and finally, in the disastrous 
 year of Braddock's defeat (1755), he was elected a 
 member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. He 
 survived this crowning honor but two years, dying 
 suddenly on August 17, 1757, near his fiftieth birth- 
 day. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson was fourteen years old when 
 his father died, and was already showing the happy 
 result of the mixture of the blood of the Jeffersons 
 and the Randolphs by the blend of strength and 
 grace in his nature. From Peter Jefferson he had 
 his tall frame and serious mind, his capacity for labor, 
 his self-reliance, and above all, the robust demo- 
 cratic faith of the frontier. ' At the same time the 
 gentler qualities of the Randolph blood appeared in 
 
4 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 a certain suavity of manner and extreme delicacy of 
 taste, in his idealism, his musical appreciation, his 
 "almost feminine sensitiveness." He could have 
 appreciated Goethe's famous quatrain, except for 
 the last infinitive: 
 
 "Vom Vater nab' ich die Statur, 
 Des Lebens ernstes Fuhren; 
 Vom Mutterchen die fron* Natur, 
 Die Lust zu fabuliren." 
 
 Like many a "self-made" man who has reached 
 easy circumstances, Peter Jefferson wanted his son 
 to enjoy the education which he himself had missed. 
 He left special instructions that Thomas should have 
 a thorough training in the classics, and the boy's 
 tutors carried out the father's will with zeal; for to 
 the end of his days Jefferson protested that he would 
 rather have been deprived of the paternal estate 
 than to have missed his classics. He proved the 
 truth of Cicero's panegyric on Archias by making 
 those studies the food of youth and the joy of old 
 age, the adornment of his prosperity and the solace 
 of his adversity. About two and a half years after 
 his father's death the young Jefferson wrote a short, 
 businesslike note to his guardian, John Harvey, sug- 
 gesting that it might be better for his serious appli- 
 cation to study, for his wider acquaintance with men 
 and books, and for the economy of the household 
 
EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 5 
 
 at Shadwell 1 if he went away to college. So in 1760 
 the young man of seventeen rode down the river to 
 Williamsburg and entered William and Mary Col- 
 lege, next to Harvard the oldest college in the colo- 
 nies. 
 
 Williamsburg was not a very imposing town, with 
 its two hundred houses and its unpaved streets, 
 across whose deep mud-gullies the pedestrian picked 
 Ins careful way. But it was the capital of the col- 
 Dny, where the burgesses met and where the gov- 
 ernor's mansion stood as the centre of the social life 
 3f the tidewater aristocracy. It was a decided event 
 n the life of the impressionable lad from the pied- 
 nont region when he was taken up by his fashion- 
 able relatives and friends at the capital. He grati- 
 ied his passion for riding, attended parties, from 
 vhich he carried into his class-rooms distracting 
 thoughts of Virginia beauties, and even became a 
 nember of a little club of four who met regularly 
 tround the dinner-table of the convivial governor, 
 Fauquier. He was somewhat shocked when he 
 nade a report of his first winter's expenses to his 
 ;uardian, to find how much his innocent dissipations 
 tad cost; and for amends made the very honorable 
 uggestion that the sum be charged exclusively to 
 
 1 Shadwell was the name of the house which Peter Jefferson built 
 a the Rivanna, given in honor of his bride, Jane Randolph, who 
 as born m the parish of Shadwell, London. The mansion at Shad- 
 ell was burned in February, 1770, shortly after Jefferson had begun 
 le work on Monticello. 
 
6 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 his own share of the paternal inheritance. The next 
 year he made a more substantial sort of amends in 
 devotion to his work. 
 
 A youth of less sense and character than Jefferson, 
 without rebuke or restraint from his guardian, would 
 have had his head turned by the flattering notice of 
 the Williamsburg aristocrats, and would probably 
 have considered it the most manly thing to do to 
 imitate the governor in his devotion to the gaming- 
 table. Many years later, when he was President of 
 the United States, Jefferson wrote a letter to his 
 grandson, who was away from home at school, warn- 
 ing him of the dangers which he himself had escaped, 
 and (like Warren Hastings, reviewing his career in 
 India), expressing wonder at his own " moderation' I 
 in the " various sorts of bad company with which he \ 
 [I] associated from time to time." The letter hasi 
 furnished a good deal of amusement for Jefferson's 
 hostile critics, who see in it only a pedant's didactic 
 sermon on his own extraordinary and precocious 
 sagacity. But such a judgment only returns on the 
 head of the critic. Jefferson's mastery of his own 
 spirit in this year of his first choice of the paths of 
 Heracles in Williamsburg was perhaps the most sig- 
 nificant act of his whole long life. With the begin- 
 ning of his second and last year at the college, he 
 threw himself into his work with wonderful single- 
 ness of purpose, his " assault on omniscience" win- 
 ning for him the college degree at the end of the 
 
EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 7 
 
 year. Probably this rapid success tells us more of 
 the standards of scholarship at William and Mary 
 than of the actual intellectual attainments of Jeffer- 
 son at the age of eighteen; but the important fact 
 remains that he had dedicated himself, with a 
 fidelity that never weakened, to the jealous service 
 of the goddess of truth. 
 
 After his graduation Jefferson began the study of 
 law in the office of George Wythe, one of the most 
 brilliant ornaments of the Virginia bar, the privilege 
 of whose professional guidance was afterward shared 
 by Jefferson's younger kinsman, John Marshall, and 
 also by Henry Clay. Wythe was attracted at once 
 to the promising young student, who many years 
 later, on the verge of eighty, wrote in reminiscent 
 gratitude: "Mr. Wythe continued to be my faithful 
 and beloved Mentor in youth, and my most af- 
 fectionate friend through life." The breadth and 
 profundity of Jefferson's knowledge of law, as 
 shown in his reform of the code of Virginia, in his 
 diplomatic correspondence in France, and in his 
 despatches as secretary of state, are sufficient testi- 
 mony to the use he made of the privilege of the 
 advice and example of George Wythe. 
 
 If Jefferson's apprenticeship in the law was long, 
 it was because of his passion for thoroughness. 
 Every step in knowledge won opened his view on a 
 wider vista of knowledge to be attained. He was 
 not content with accumulating facts and cases. Be- 
 
8 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 neath the harsh style and blunt reasoning of Coke 
 on Littleton (the "dull old scoundrel") he detected 
 and approved the political philosophy of the Whigs; 
 while he thought that the student of Blackstone 
 would only "slip backward into Toryism" on his 
 smooth phrases. From the beginning he took the 
 study of the law as an historical training in the prin- 
 ciples of jurisprudence, and not simply a hasty pro- 
 fessional equipment to fit him to win cases in the 
 courts of Virginia. His friend, the jovial, adven- 
 turous, confident Patrick Henry, was admitted to 
 the bar after studying law for six weeks; but Jeffer- 
 son did not apply for a license until 1767, five years 
 after he had entered Wythe's office. 
 
 Jefferson practised law for seven years, until, as 
 he says in his Memoir, "the Revolution shut up the 
 courts of justice." He was not a good barrister, for 
 he lacked all the gifts of the rostra. His voice was 
 thin, with a tendency to huskiness after long speak- 
 ing; contentious assertion was always distasteful to 
 him; and far from enjoying the clash of forensic 
 arms, he shrank by a native fastidiousness from 
 even the disturbance of a private altercation. He 
 seems also, in his later years at least, not to have 
 had a very high opinion of lawyers. In a letter 
 written from Monticello to his friend David Camp- 
 bell, in 1810, he contrasts the satisfaction it must 
 give a physician to look back at the lives he has 
 saved with the lawyer's miserable recollection of 
 
EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 9 
 
 the many who "by his dexterity have been cheated 
 out of their rights and reduced to beggary." Cer- 
 tainly not a very just comparison ! Ten years later, 
 in his Memoir, he chides "the present Congress" 
 for its garrulousness, but adds in extenuation: "How 
 could it be otherwise in a body to which the people 
 send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it 
 is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk 
 by the hour?" Still, even if Jefferson was not a 
 very enthusiastic lawyer, his success as an attorney 
 : was far above the average of his day. Henry S. 
 Randall, his most painstaking and exhaustive biog- 
 irapher, has compiled a table of his cases in the 
 igeneral court during his seven years of practice. 
 I They amount to about a thousand, and the average 
 yearly income from them was not far from three 
 ithousand dollars. 
 
 In the midst of his law studies in Wythe's office 
 * Jefferson came of age, and celebrated the event in 
 (characteristic fashion by planting an avenue of trees 
 jat Shadwell. He was now master of the estate, for 
 Iby the laws of entail and primogeniture — laws which 
 J lie himself abolished in the reform of the Virginia 
 llaw code — the oldest son inherited the undivided 
 {property. Jefferson was an ideal figure for a 
 anded proprietor. He was passionately fond of 
 30untry life, riding his beloved horses at early morn 
 jver his broad acres, watching with perennial en- 
 thusiasm the budding of the trees and the ripening 
 
10 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 of the vegetables, noting in his closely written ac- 
 count-books every item of income and outgo. His 
 native gifts of intellect and grace of manner, supple- 
 mented by a remarkably fine education, made him 
 a charming host; while his genuine humanitarian 
 interest extended to the meanest slave on his estate. 
 From the day of his majority to the day of his 
 death, more than threescore years later, this tall, 
 sandy-haired master, with eyes " flecked with hazel," 
 was loved by his family, his friends, and his servants 
 as few were loved even in Virginia, the land of loyal 
 devotions. 
 
 With his new manorial dignity Jefferson took up 
 the duties of a country squire. He became a justice 
 of the peace and a vestryman of the parish. He 
 also initiated his lifelong crusade for the improve- 
 ment of material conditions through applied science, 
 by starting a petition to the legislature for making 
 the Rivanna River a navigable highway for the 
 commerce of Albemarle County. 
 
 Just at the moment when Jefferson was coming 
 into his inheritance the curtain rose on the prologue 
 to the tragedy of the American Revolution. George 
 Grenville was prime minister in a cabinet which 
 Macaulay characterizes as the worst that had gov- 
 erned England since the revolution of 1688. In 
 March, 1764, Grenville began to put into operation 
 a plan for the taxation of the American colonies, 
 with the threefold object of increasing the British 
 
EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 11 
 
 revenue to meet the large debt contracted in the 
 French war, of restoring the vigor of the Navigation 
 Acts, which bound the commerce of the colonies by- 
 rules imposed by the British Parliament, and of 
 raising money to defray the expenses of " defending, 
 protecting, and securing the King's dominion in 
 America/ ' "so happily enlarged" by the expulsion 
 of the French from the St. Lawrence and Mississippi 
 valleys. In addition to various tariff duties levied 
 by the Act of April, 1764, the ministry announced its 
 intention of imposing on the American colonies the 
 next year an "internal tax," that is, a tax not on 
 their foreign trade, which as an "imperial" matter 
 the colonists had been willing, at least in theory, to 
 concede, but a tax on their ordinary business trans- 
 actions within the colonies themselves. All kinds of 
 legal and public documents, including wills, deeds, 
 mortgages, bills of sale, promissory notes, contracts, 
 as well as pamphlets, newspapers, almanacs, and 
 playing-cards, were to be subject to stamp-duties 
 ranging from three pence to ten pounds. 
 
 King George approved the vigorous policy of his 
 new ministers. In proroguing Parliament on the 
 19th of April — a day made memorable on Lexington 
 Green and at Concord Bridge eleven years later by- 
 certain events not unconnected with the stamp-tax 
 — George III complimented his ministers on "the 
 wise regulations" which they had adopted "to aug- 
 ment the public revenues and unite the interests of 
 
12 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 the most distant possessions of the crown." While 
 the King was speaking Thomas Jefferson was per- 
 haps musingly inspecting the condition of his newly- 
 planted shade-trees at Shadwell. 
 
 The next spring the Stamp Act was passed through 
 Parliament, with scarcely any debate in the House 
 of Commons and without a division in the Lords. 
 News of the act reached America in May, as the 
 session of the Virginia Burgesses was nearing its 
 close. The representatives of the old conservative 
 families, the Pendletons, Wythes, Blands, and Ran- 
 dolphs, with all the "cyphers of aristocracy/ ' as 
 Jefferson later called them, were willing to dissolve 
 without a protest. There was something sacred 
 and inviolate to them in an act of Parliament. But 
 Patrick Henry, delegate from the upland county of 
 Louisa, spoke out. He offered resolutions condemn- 
 ing the Stamp Act, declaring that the right of taxing 
 the colonies lay in their own legislative assemblies, 
 and that any attempt of the British Parliament to 
 usurp this right tended to the destruction of liber- 
 ties both here and in England. He supported his 
 resolutions in a fiery speech which drew cries of 
 " Treason ! " from the consternated aristocrats. And 
 he carried his point by a single vote. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson was standing in the lobby at 
 the door of the hall of the burgesses when Henry 
 made his speech, and was still under the spell of 
 that Homeric eloquence when his kinsman, Peyton 
 
EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 13 
 
 Randolph, attorney-general of the colony, came 
 storming out of the door with a vow that he would 
 have given a hundred guineas for the one vote 
 needed to kill the resolutions. It was a red-letter 
 day in Jefferson's life — one of those rare moments 
 whose influence lasts to the grave. Forty-five years 
 later Jefferson wrote to his friend William Wirt, 
 who was preparing a biography of Patrick Henry: 
 "By those resolutions Mr. Henry took the lead out 
 of the hands of those who had heretofore guided 
 the proceedings of the House. . . . Subsequent 
 events favored the policy of the bolder spirits . . . 
 with whom I went on all points." 
 
 Four years later Jefferson was elected to the 
 House of Burgesses from Albemarle County. Much 
 water had flowed under the political bridges mean- 
 while. The British Parliament had repealed the 
 Stamp Act in 1766, but, under the spur of Charles 
 Townshend's mocking provocation, had returned to 
 the charge the next year and imposed a fresh set of 
 duties on colonial imports, together with a declara- 
 tion of the legality of writs of assistance, and a 
 general tightening up of the customs control. Mas- 
 sachusetts had protested in a circular letter to the 
 colonies, drawn up by Samuel Adams, and Lord 
 Hillsborough had ordered the unruly legislature of 
 Massachusetts, through Governor 'Bernard, to re- 
 scind the letter. The legislature refused to obey by 
 a vote of ninety-two to seventeen, and was dissolved 
 
14 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 by the governor. Two regiments of redcoats were 
 brought from Halifax and quartered in Boston 
 (1768). A few months later (May, 1769) the bur- 
 gesses of Virginia were convened to meet their newly 
 appointed governor, Lord Botetourt; but their 
 reply to his inaugural speech was ominous. The 
 "bolder spirits " were in control. They reasserted 
 their determination to levy their own taxes, pro- 
 tested against the removal to England for trial of 
 persons accused of treason in the colonies, and, 
 with unmistakable indorsement of the behavior of 
 the Massachusetts Legislature, declared the right of 
 the colonies to make their petitions for redress of 
 grievances an affair of common colonial action. 
 Jefferson was on the connnittee to prepare the ad- 
 dress in reply to the governor's speech, and at the 
 request of his colleagues he drew up a paper. But 
 it was not considered "sufficiently amplified" (which 
 probably meant "sufficiently vague") by the more 
 conservative members, and Colonel Nicholas pre- 
 pared one in its place. Jefferson was somewhat 
 chagrined by the incident. "Being a young man 
 as well as a new member," he wrote many years 
 later, "it made on me an impression proportioned 
 to the sensibility of that time of life." 
 
 Lord Botetourt dissolved the burgesses after a 
 session of five days, but the members reconvened in- 
 formally in the Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern 
 and had out their say. They passed resolutions 
 
EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 15 
 
 boycotting the articles which were subject to the 
 Townshend duties, and discouraged British impor- 
 tations generally. They even agreed to keep their 
 lambs alive for shearing; they would walk in home- 
 spun rather than in slavery. Jefferson was one of 
 the most enthusiastic advocates of these measures, 
 which were signed by George Washington, Patrick 
 Henry, Peyton Randolph (now converted), and 
 about eighty other members of the legislature, every 
 one of whom received the indorsement of re-election 
 by his constituents. Two or three years of com- 
 parative quiet in the rising dispute with the mother 
 country followed the appointment of Lord North 
 as prime minister in 1770, a period in which, as Jef- 
 ferson complained, "our countrymen seemed to fall 
 into a state of insensibility to our situation." 
 
 But if politics were dull there was plenty of ex- 
 citement in Jefferson's private life during these 
 years. The paternal home at Shadwell was burned 
 to the ground in the midwintei of 1770, and nothing 
 saved but Jefferson's favorite fiddle. The disaster 
 hastened the building of the new mansion which 
 Jefferson had already begun on the favorite hilltop, 
 where he used to sit and read and dream as a boy. 
 He called it Monticello, the "little mountain," and 
 the house he built on it, wholly from his own plans 
 and partly with his own hands, is one of the treasures 
 of our colonial architecture. Only a single pavilion 
 of the mansion was finished, with three or four 
 
16 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 small chambers above, when Jefferson brought his 
 bride to Monticello, through a heavy snow, on New 
 Year's night of 1772. She was Martha Skelton, a 
 widow of twenty-three, and daughter of a prosper- 
 ous lawyer and proprietor, John Wayles. Her 
 father died the year after the wedding, leaving her 
 property in land (somewhat encumbered by debt) 
 and slaves that was about equal to Jefferson's own 
 estate. Mrs. Jefferson was extraordinarily endowed 
 with both charm and sense, though her physical 
 strength began to fail soon after her marriage. Her 
 death in 1782 broke a perfect union of ten years. 
 She left no sons to continue the name of Jefferson, 
 and of her five daughters only two grew beyond 
 babyhood. These two — Martha (Randolph) and 
 Maria (Eppes), were their father's constant solace 
 and joy. He never married again. 
 
 The " insensibility " into which Jefferson feared 
 his country had fallen in 1770 was roused to protest 
 in the spring session of the burgesses in 1773, and 
 again the cause was news from New England. The 
 British schooner Gaspee, of eight guns, while chasing 
 smugglers in Narragansett Bay, had run aground on 
 a mud-bank about seven miles from Providence, on 
 the afternoon of June 9, 1772. Late that night the 
 stranded schooner was surrounded by boat-loads 
 of armed citizens of Providence, who easily over- 
 powered the drowsy crew and burned the Gaspee to 
 the water's edge. England's retaliation was an act 
 
EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 17 
 
 of Parliament "for the better securing and preserv- 
 ing His Majesty's dockyards, magazines, ships, am- 
 munition, and stores/' which threatened with the 
 penalty of death any one who should destroy the 
 least part of His Majesty's naval equipment, even 
 to a brass button on an officer's coat, and gave the 
 court of inquiry in Rhode Island the power to send 
 the accused to England for trial. 
 
 Indignant at this monstrous disproportion be- 
 tween the punishment and the crime, the "bolder 
 spirits" among the burgesses, Patrick Henry, the 
 Lees, Jefferson, and his brilliant brother-in-law, 
 Dabney Carr, held a private evening meeting at the 
 Raleigh Tavern and prepared resolutions censuring 
 the retaliatory act against Rhode Island, and calling 
 for the establishment of a standing committee of 
 correspondence and inquiry, whose business it should 
 be to keep informed of important matters going on 
 in all the American colonies and of the measures 
 taken by Parliament for their regulation. The reso- 
 lutions were adopted unanimously on March 12, 
 1773, and a committee of eight, including Jefferson 
 and Carr, was appointed. Governor Dunmore, like 
 Governor Botetourt before him, dissolved the house. 
 But the committee met in the famous Apollo Room 
 the next day and sent their resolutions out to the 
 sister colonies, with the invitation to each to ap- 
 point a similar committee to correspond "on any 
 measures or rumors of proceedings tending to de- 
 
18 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 prive them of their ancient, legal, and constitutional 
 rights." 
 
 Still a third time New England provoked the 
 British Parliament to punitive measures, and a 
 third time Virginia stood by the northern colonies. 
 The English Government, "blundering into a policy 
 one day and backing out of it the next, seeking fresh 
 principles of action with every fresh mail from 
 America," as Edmund Burke tauntingly put it, had 
 repealed the Townshend duties, leaving only the 
 trifling tax of threepence a pound on tea to maintain 
 the principle of Parliament's right to tax the colo- 
 nies' trade. In 1773 the British East India Com- 
 pany, in financial straits, and with a glut of millions 
 of pounds of unsold tea in its English warehouses, 
 applied to the government for relief. Here was a 
 rare opportunity for George III to accomplish two 
 desirable objects by a single stroke. By remitting 
 the shilling duty payable in England he could allow 
 the East India corporation to dispose of its tea in 
 America at a lower price, even including the three- 
 penny tax, than the colonists had to pay for their 
 smuggled cargoes from European ports; and at the 
 same time he could tempt the Americans to take 
 the tea at the good bargain offered and, by paying 
 the duty, indorse the principle, so dear to his heart, 
 of Parliament's right to tax them. 1 
 
 1 Figures from the office of the inspector of imports and exports 
 show that the importation of tea from English ports into the Ameri- 
 
EQUIPMENT. AND APPRENTICESHIP 19 
 
 So the late autumn of 1773 saw several ship-loads 
 of the East India Company's tea on the way to 
 American ports. But the clever trick did not work. 
 The people of Charleston got the consignees of the 
 cargo destined for that port to resign, and eventually 
 sold the tea at auction for the benefit of the revo- 
 lutionary government. Public opinion in Philadel- 
 phia and New York prevailed with the consignees 
 and customs officers to send the tea ships back to 
 England without unloading. But in Boston, where 
 the consignees would not resign, nor the customs 
 officers give clearance papers for a return voyage 
 without unloading, nor the governor sign a pass per- 
 mitting the ships to sail without clearance papers, 
 there seemed but one way left to prevent the tea 
 from being landed and the duties paid. On the 
 night of December 16, 1773, a group of citizens 
 dressed like Indians boarded the ships at Long 
 Wharf, and ripping open the chests with their toma- 
 hawks dumped the tea into Boston harbor. 
 
 The punishment which Parliament meted out for 
 this defiance of royal authority and wanton destruc- 
 tion of property was swift and sure. The whole 
 
 can colonies had fallen off from 877,193 pounds, paying a duty of 
 £9,723, in 1768-9, to 237,062 pounds, paying a duty of only £1,677, 
 in 1772-3. Yet no one could believe that the Americans were drink- 
 ing only one-quarter as much tea in the latter as in the former year. 
 The King believed, with apparent good reason, that the virtual 
 monopoly which he granted the East India Company would put an 
 end to smuggling and restore the British tea trade to its normal 
 figures. 
 
THOMAS JbFFERSON 
 
 province was chastised for the act of a few score 
 iien. The charter was revised in such a way as to 
 ;hrow almost despotic power into the hands of the 
 -oval governor; town meetings, those nurseries of 
 ndependence, were forbidden, except for the annual 
 election of officers; public buildings were designated 
 as barracks for the King's troops; and the port of 
 Boston was closed by British war-ships, except for 
 : 'fuel or victual ... for the necessary use and sus- 
 tenance of the inhabitants of the said town," from 
 Tune 1, 1774, until the tea should be paid for. 
 
 When the news of the punishment of Boston 
 •eached the Virginia Burgesses in their spring ses- 
 ion of 1774, the same group of " bolder spirits" who 
 lad taken the lead from the older members in 1769, 
 agreeing with Jefferson that they "must take an un- 
 quivocal stand in the line with Massachusetts," 
 oted a resolution to observe the 1st of June as a 
 Jay of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, "to implore 
 • \eaven to avert from us the evils of civil war, to in- 
 ^pire us with firmness in support of our rights, and 
 lo turn the hearts of the King and Parliament to 
 moderation and justice." The reply to such inso- 
 lence could not be in doubt. "The governor dis- 
 solved us as usual," is Jefferson's laconic comment, 
 and, as usual, again the members "retired to the 
 Apollo," where they adopted resolutions boycotting 
 British goods, declaring that an attack on one colony 
 \ /as an attack on all, and instructing their committee 
 
EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 21 
 
 of correspondence to sound the other colonies on the 
 advisability of general annual congresses, the first 
 to be held at Philadelphia in the following Septem- 
 ber. They further agreed that a convention should 
 meet at Williamsburg on August 1 to appoint dele- 
 gates to the Philadelphia Congress if the colonies re- 
 ported favorably on the plan. 
 
 Albemarle County designated its newly elected 
 burgesses, Jefferson and Walker, as delegates to the 
 convention at Williamsburg. Their instructions, 
 drawn up by Jefferson himself, contained resolutions 
 asserting that the natural and legal rights of the 
 colonists had been invaded by Parliament in fre- 
 quent instances, and pledging the co-operation of the 
 Virginians "with their fellow-subjects in every part 
 of the Empire for the reestablishment and guaran- 
 teeing such their constitutional rights, when, where, 
 and by whomsoever invaded." These instructions, 
 more radical than those of any other county, 1 more 
 defiant even than the Stamp Act resolutions of Pat- 
 rick Henry, were only the text of a most remarkable 
 
 1 The resolutions of the Fairfax County meeting, for example, over 
 which George Washington presided, acknowledged Parliament's 
 power, "directed with wisdom and moderation," to regulate Ameri- 
 can trade and commerce. All the Virginia patriots, except George 
 Wythe, says Jefferson in his Memoir, "stopped at the half-way house 
 of John Dickinson, who admitted that England had a right to regu- 
 late our commerce, and to lay duties on it for the purpose of regula- 
 tion, but not of raising revenue." Jefferson took the ground from 
 the beginning that our connection with England was simply the per- 
 sonal union of the American and British parts of the Empire under 
 the same sovereign. 
 
22 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 document which Jefferson prepared in the summer 
 of 1774, to serve as instructions for the delegates 
 from Virginia to the general Continental Congress 
 at Philadelphia. 
 
 Jefferson was taken ill on the way to Williams- 
 burg and obliged to return to Monticello. But he 
 sent on two copies of his paper, one to Patrick Henry, 
 the other to Peyton Randolph, who he was sure 
 would be chosen chairman of the convention. Ran- 
 dolph placed his copy on the table for the members' 
 perusal. They thought it "too bold for the present 
 state of things," and in its place drew up a briefer 
 and milder set of instructions, in which they de- 
 clared their "faith and true allegiance to His Maj- 
 esty, King George the Third, our lawful and rightful 
 sovereign," and their ardent wish for the return of 
 the affection and commercial ties which formerly 
 united both countries; protesting only against some 
 specific abuses (notably Governor Gage's conduct in 
 Massachusetts), without whose redress America 
 could "neither be safe nor free nor happy." 
 
 The paper which Jefferson's colleagues generally 
 thought "too bold for the present state of things," 
 was nevertheless printed by some of the author's 
 friends under the title, A Summary View of the 
 Rights of British America. This celebrated pam- 
 phlet opens the list of American polemic and apolo- 
 getic papers on the Revolution which Englishmen 
 like Burke, Pitt, and Conway declared were unsur- 
 
EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 23 
 
 passed in the literature of political argumentation. 
 It was the boldest declaration of American rights — 
 almost a declaration of independence. It denied 
 in toto the supremacy of Parliament over the colo- 
 nies, asking by what right one hundred and sixty 
 thousand electors in the island of Great Britain pre- 
 tended to give laws to four million in the states 
 (note the word !) of America. When the colonists 
 left England, Jefferson maintained, they carried 
 their liberties with them and escaped the control of 
 their fellow Britons left behind as completely as 
 their common ancestors who came over from Saxony 
 escaped the rule of their German kinsfolk. Every 
 act of Parliament touching the manufactures and 
 trade of the Americans had been a usurpation and 
 a wanton assault "upon the rights which God and 
 the laws have given equally and independently to 
 us all." The rapid succession of such acts during 
 the reign of George III "pursued unalterably through 
 every change of ministers, too plainly prove a de- 
 liberate and systematical plan of reducing us to 
 slavery." 
 
 Jefferson reviews these acts: the revenue mea- 
 sures, the suspension of colonial legislatures, the 
 punishment of Boston. He examines the conduct 
 of George III : the vetoes on colonial laws, the arbi- 
 trary instructions to colonial governors, the exercise 
 of feudal privileges over the soil, the landing of 
 troops on our shores, the subordination of the civil 
 
24 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 to the military power. He entreats the King, as 
 "the only mediatory power between the several 
 states of the British Empire/ ' to recommend to Par- 
 liament the total revocation of its offensive acts, 
 and himself to cease to sacrifice the rights of one 
 part of the empire to the inordinate desires of an- 
 other. The language of the address from beginning 
 to end is that of freemen claiming their rights, not 
 suppliants asking a boon. The customary bending 
 of the knee and lavishing of obsequious adjectives 
 are wanting. Instead, there is protest, remon- 
 strance, defiance, warning, and even exhortation. 
 The young lawyer of Albemarle County dares to 
 sermonize the ruler of the British Empire: "Open 
 your breast, sire, to liberal and expanded thought. 
 Let not the name of George the Third be a blot on 
 the page of history. The whole art of government 
 consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do 
 your duty, and mankind will give you credit where 
 you fail." Intolerable insolence ! 
 
 With the publication of the Summary View in 
 1774, as the delegates of the colonies were gathering 
 in Philadelphia, the period of Jefferson's apprentice- 
 ship comes to a close. The crisis in his country's 
 life was a milestone in his own. He had reached 
 his political majority. Up to now he had served on 
 committees, drawn up resolutions, signed remon- 
 strances with his colleagues at the Raleigh Tavern, 
 returning to his law practice or to his farms at Mon- 
 
EQUIPMENT AND APPRENTICESHIP 25 
 
 ticello. But from now on he became altogether a 
 public servant. His law office was closed and the 
 good-will and the clients turned over to his distant 
 cousin, Edmund Randolph. And though he was to 
 protest till the day of his release from the presi- 
 dency, thirty-five years later, that he would have 
 laid down high office any moment for the joy of 
 returning to his estate, the call of his country and 
 the response of his own lofty sense of responsibility 
 to his country's service kept him almost a stranger 
 to Monticello until he returned at last, ripe with age 
 and honors, to spend his declining years amid the 
 dream scenes of his youth. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 By the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a con- 
 nection on such terms as the British Parliament propose. (Jefferson 
 to John Randolph, November 29, 1775.) 
 
 When unauthorized bodies meet to review and re- 
 dress the policies of absolute kings, revolution has 
 begun: witness the Convention Parliament and the 
 Tennis Court Oath. Such a body were the sixty 
 delegates of what Jefferson called "the American 
 States of the British Empire/ ' who met on Septem- 
 ber 5, 1774, in the Carpenters' Hall of Philadelphia. 
 " Certain persons/' the lord governor of Virginia 
 called them, "who have presumed without his 
 Majesty's authority or consent to assemble to- 
 gether." Their arrival was scarcely noticed by the 
 Philadelphia newspapers, their session lasted only 
 fifty-two days, and their measures were mild — for 
 the majority of the delegates were still conservative. 
 They sent a respectful petition to the King for a 
 redress of grievances, not differing much in tone 
 from that sent by the Stamp Act Congress nine 
 years earlier, and adopted an "association" or non- 
 importation agreement to be binding on all the colo- 
 nies. Their significance was rather in the meeting 
 
 26 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 27 
 
 itself than in its resolutions. They were for the 
 first time expressing the will of the united colonies. 
 Jefferson was not a member of the first Conti- 
 nental Congress, but he came to the forefront in the 
 revolutionary politics of Virginia. On New Year's 
 day, 1775, he was elected chairman of the Commit- 
 tee of Public Safety of Albemarle County, 1 and the 
 following March was sent as delegate to the second 
 Virginia convention, which met, not at Williams- 
 burg, within reach of the King's war-ships, but at the 
 little village of Richmond up the river. Here again 
 the irresistible torrent of Patrick Henry's eloquence 
 swept the assembly on to revolution. "We must 
 fight !" he cried. "The next gale that sweeps from 
 the North will bring to our ears the clash of resound- 
 ing arms. Our brethren are already in the field. 
 Why stand we here idle ? Is life so dear or peace so 
 sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and 
 slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not 
 what course others may take; but as for me, give me 
 liberty or give me death !" The motion to arm the 
 colony was carried, and Jefferson was placed, with 
 Henry, Lee, Washington, and nine others, on a com- 
 mittee to prepare a plan of defense. Before ad- 
 
 1 " The powers of these committees were almost unlimited. They 
 inspected the books of merchants to see if they imported prohibited 
 articles, or sold at exorbitant prices. They examined all suspected 
 persons, disarmed, fined, or imprisoned them, and from their deci- 
 sions there was no appeal. They even enlisted, trained, armed, and 
 officered independent companies and minute-men in each county," 
 says Girardin in his History of Virginia. 
 
28 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 journing, the convention re-elected its seven dele- 
 gates of 1774 to the new session of the Continental 
 Congress, to be held in Philadelphia on May 10, 
 adding the name of Thomas Jefferson to replace 
 Peyton Randolph, in case the latter should be re- 
 called to preside over the Virginia House of Bur- 
 gesses. 
 
 Soon after the opening of the Congress, the King's 
 governors in America received a conciliatory pro- 
 posal from Lord North, to the effect that any colony 
 agreeing to raise the sum assessed by Parliament 
 and to leave the spending of the money to royal 
 authority, should be free to levy the tax in its own 
 way. Much as he hated and feared to call together 
 the House of Burgesses, which he had twice sum- 
 marily dissolved, and some of whose members (Ran- 
 dolph, Henry, Jefferson) he was even thinking of 
 prosecuting for treason, Governor Dunmore was per- 
 suaded by his Council that there wa's no other way 
 of getting Lord North's proposal before the colony 
 or of preserving his own remnant of authority. Ac- 
 cordingly, the burgesses were convened the 1st of 
 June, 1775, some of them coming down from the 
 upper counties in hunting-shirts with their rifles 
 slung across their shoulders. Governor Dunmore 
 did not wait to hear their answer to Lord North's 
 proposals. The wounding of two young men who 
 had entered the magazine to secure arms, by spring- 
 guns trained on the doors, raised such a storm 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 29 
 
 again?! the "murderous governor" in Williamsburg 
 that Lord Dunmore thought it wise to slip away 
 from his capital and take refuge on the deck of the 
 war-ship (June 8). It was the end of the rule of 
 George IIFs servants in Virginia. 
 
 The summons of the House of Burgesses recalled 
 Peyton Randolph from the Congress at Philadelphia, 
 leaving the vacancy which Jefferson had been chosen 
 to fill. Randolph asked Jefferson to remain at Wil- 
 liamsburg, however, long enough to prepare the 
 answer of the burgesses to Lord North. The paper 
 which Jefferson drew up, and which was adopted on 
 June 10, was a respectful but firm rejection of the 
 terms offered. They only " changed the form of 
 oppression without lightening its burdens." The 
 colony could not agree to saddle itself with a per- 
 petual tax, whose amount was to be determined by 
 the British Parliament. Besides, Lord North left 
 all the other grievances of the colonies unredressed : 
 the laws against their trade, the interference with 
 their legislatures, the reconstruction of their courts, 
 the suppression of trial by jury, the introduction of 
 standing armies. Finally, it was too late to appeal 
 to the separate colonies with offers of conciliation. 
 Virginia was committed to the common cause, and 
 her delegates were sitting in the general Congress, 
 before which his lordship's papers should be laid 
 for common deliberation. "We consider ourselves 
 as bound in honor, as well as interest, to share one 
 
30 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 general fate with our sister colonies, and should hold 
 ourselves base deserters of that union to which we 
 have acceded, were we to agree on any measures 
 distinct and separate from them." In other words, 
 it was to Philadelphia and not to Westminster that 
 the Americans now looked for their authority. 
 
 The day after his reply to Lord North was ac- 
 cepted by the burgesses, Jefferson set out by car- 
 riage for Philadelphia, taking a copy of the reply in 
 his pocket. 1 He could make only about twenty 
 miles a day over the poor roads and across the slow 
 ferries. There were eight unbridged rivers to cross 
 in his journey of two hundred and fifty miles. He 
 arrived on June 20, just in time to see George Wash- 
 ington set out for Cambridge to take command of 
 the American army of sixteen thousand New Eng- 
 land farmers. Although he was but thirty-two years 
 of age — the youngest man in Congress, with the ex- 
 ception of Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, and 
 John Jay of New York — Jefferson was already 
 known to the leading men of Philadelphia. a He 
 brought with him," wrote John Adams, "a reputa- 
 tion for literary science and a happy talent of com- 
 position. Writings of his [the Summary View and 
 the Reply to Lord North] were handed about, re- 
 
 1 Jefferson says in his Memoir that he "conveyed to Congress the 
 first notice they had of it." But here, as in many minor points in 
 the Memoir, memory played the old man of seventy-seven false. 
 New Jersey had laid the proposal of North before the Congress on 
 May 20. 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 31 
 
 markable for their peculiar felicity of expression." 
 Jefferson had no talent for public debate, but in 
 consultation and committee work his opinion was 
 " prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive," says John 
 Adams in the same letter. He was a welcome ac- 
 cession to the radical cause in Congress, especially 
 as he had the learning and the art to write a power- 
 ful apology for that cause. Our affairs were, as the 
 writers of the time phrased it, "in a delicate pos- 
 ture." War had actually begun, yet we were still 
 protesting our loyalty and sending our petitions to 
 George III; united action was the only hope for our 
 cause, and yet further measures of violence might 
 drive the hesitating into the arms of England; and 
 in England itself we had to convince the Tories 
 of our candor and the Whigs of our courage. 
 
 It was not long before the masterly pen of Jeffer- 
 son was called into requisition. News of the ter- 
 rible slaughter of Bunker Hill reached Congress. 
 Lexington and Concord might be explained away as 
 skirmishes, but here was war in grim array, serried 
 ranks of redcoats marching up the hill again and 
 again to silence the murderous fire from the Ameri- 
 can ramparts. Congress hastened to appoint a 
 committee to explain and justify the colonists' resort 
 to arms, in a " declaration to be published by Gen- 
 eral Washington upon his arrival at the camp before 
 Boston. ' ' John Rutledge's report was unsatisfactory 
 to Congress, and John Dickinson and Thomas Jef- 
 
32 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ferson were added to the committee. "I prepared 
 a draft/' says Jefferson in his Memoir, "of the Dec- 
 laration committed to us. It was too strong for 
 Mr. Dickinson. . . . We therefore requested him 
 to take the paper and put it into a form that he 
 could approve. He did so, preparing an entire new 
 statement, and preserving of the former only the 
 last four paragraphs and half the preceding one. 
 We approved and reported it to Congress, who 
 accepted it." 
 
 Now the last four and a half paragraphs of this 
 famous Declaration on the Colonists Taking up Arms 
 are worth all the rest of the paper. They are ner- 
 vous, forceful, and thoroughly radical. It is from 
 them that the epigrammatic phrases are often 
 quoted: "Our cause is just, our union is perfect," 
 "resolved rather to die free than live slaves," "we 
 fight not for glory or conquest," "against violence 
 actually offered we have taken up arms, we shall 
 lay them down when hostilities cease on the part of 
 the aggressor." It was these sentiments that were 
 received with "thundering huzzas" by the soldiers 
 encamped around Boston. They are sentiments we 
 should expect from Jefferson, but not at all from 
 the conservative John Dickinson. Yet, in spite of 
 their Jeffersonian style, our documentary evidence 
 seems to prove that they were written by Dickinson. 
 The manuscript of Jefferson's rejected draft of the 
 Declaration is among the original Jefferson papers in 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 33 
 
 the Department of State at Washington. In 1882 
 Doctor George H. Moore, of the New York Histori- 
 cal Society, found among its papers a draft of the 
 entire Declaration, with corrections and interlinings, 
 in the handwriting of John Dickinson. A compari- 
 son of these two documents shows that Dickinson 
 embodied several of Jefferson's ideas and even kept 
 some of his phrases (as he would naturally do, being 
 asked to " amend" Jefferson's draft). But there is 
 no more, or very little more, of Jefferson's draft in 
 the last four and a half paragraphs than in the rest 
 of the paper. We are at a loss to explain Jefferson's 
 explicit statement in the Memoir. 1 
 
 On the day before Congress adjourned (July 31, 
 1775) it adopted a reply to Lord North's conciliatory 
 resolution. Jefferson, having written the reply of 
 the Virginia Burgesses, which was approved by 
 Congress, was asked to draft the paper. It em- 
 
 1 Still we object to the tone of censorious hostility to Jefferson in 
 the address of Doctor Moore, as printed in Stille's Life and Times 
 of John Dickinson: "If any man can discover any good, honest 
 reason why Mr. Jefferson wrote such a story [of the last four and 
 a half paragraphs] in his Autobiography, he will render a seasonable 
 and important service to the much exalted reputation of the author." 
 (P. 361.) The innuendo and the sneer are both undeserved. No 
 one believes that Thomas Jefferson deliberately lied. There may 
 have been consultations and tentative drafts in which both Jefferson 
 and Dickinson had a part, leaving on the former the distinct impres- 
 sion that the closing paragraphs were his suggestion primarily. At 
 any rate, Doctor Moore goes beyond the warrant of the evidence 
 when he asserts in italics that the draft in Dickinson's handwriting 
 
 proves that the author of any part was the author of every part, and that 
 there was but one hand in the work, and that the hand of John Dickin- 
 son." It proves no such thing, as every historical student knows. 
 
34 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 bodied ; "in statelier form/' the resolutions of the 
 Virginia House which we have already analyzed. 
 On the adjournment of Congress till the fifth of the 
 following September, Jefferson returned with Henry, 
 Harrison, and Lee to the Virginia Convention at 
 Richmond. He remained here only ten days, but 
 before he returned to Monticello he had the satis- 
 faction of being re-elected to Congress by a very 
 large majority, and of seeing the first breach made 
 in the exclusive privilege of the Anglican establish- 
 ment in Virginia. Baptist and Congregationalist 
 patriots, with the reverend John Clay, father of the 
 great Henry, among their leaders, secured the pas- 
 sage of a resolution by the convention allowing the 
 dissenting ministers to preach in camp, "for the 
 ease of such consciences as may not chuse to attend 
 divine service as celebrated by the chaplain." We 
 shall see in later pages with what zeal Jefferson 
 threw himself into the struggle for complete religious 
 freedom in Virginia. 
 
 While Peyton Randolph was being returned to 
 Congress at the head of the poll, his brother John 
 was making his preparations to emigrate to England, 
 for he adhered to the royal cause. Jefferson wrote 
 him a letter from Monticello in August, 1775, beg- 
 ging him to make the true sentiments of the Ameri- 
 cans understood in England. It is one of the most 
 valuable letters we have from Jefferson's pen, de- 
 scribing both his own and his countrymen's feelings 
 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 35 
 
 at a most critical moment in our history. He voices 
 the hope that "the returning wisdom of Great Brit- 
 ain will ere long put an end to this unnatural con- 
 test." He professes the sincere preference "to be 
 in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, 
 than on any other nation upon earth or than on no 
 nation." He fears that the King's ministers have 
 been deceived by their officials on this side of the 
 water, who represent the American opposition as a 
 small faction, and as cowards who will surrender at 
 discretion to a small force. He insists that the 
 Americans are in earnest, and that "no partial con- 
 cessions of right will be accepted." He warns the 
 men who are directing the policy of the British Em- 
 pire that it is "the most dritical time certainly that 
 it has ever seen," a crisis which will determine 
 "whether Britain shall continue the head of the 
 greatest empire on earth, or shall return to her origi- 
 nal station in the political scale of Europe." And 
 he adjures the ministry not "to trifle with accom- 
 modation till it shall be out of their power forever 
 to accommodate." There is little probability that 
 John Randolph urged these "instructions" on the 
 British ministry, but the writing of them in the 
 quiet of Monticello, after the stirring scenes of the 
 summer, must have been a kind of mental stock- 
 taking for Jefferson, still further clarifying his ideas 
 and fortifying his convictions on the rights of 
 "British America." y 
 
36 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Jefferson returned to Congress late in September 
 with a heavy heart. His second child, Jane, had 
 just died at the age of eighteen months, his mother 
 was failing fast, and his wife's health was very poor. 
 He was sorely needed at Monticello for comfort, 
 protection, and support. Lord Dunmore was en- 
 gaged in the dastardly policy of revenge by inciting 
 the slaves to revolt and offering them arms. Al- 
 though the merest handful replied to his solicitation, 
 the anxiety on the farms and plantations of Virginia 
 was great; for the slightest rumor of a slave insur- 
 rection always caused a panic in the Old Dominion. 
 Jefferson had over eighty slaves at Monticello, and 
 a " family" of thirty-four whites. There was no 
 man capable of caring properly for the estate 
 but himself. His letters from Philadelphia to his 
 brother-in-law, Francis Eppes, betray his anxiety. 
 On November 7 he writes that he has not heard a 
 word from any mortal in Virginia during the seven 
 weeks since he left home: "The suspense under 
 which I am is too terrible to be endured; if any- 
 thing has happened, for God's sake let me know it." 
 Finally, toward the close of December, he left Phila- 
 delphia, the rules requiring only that a majority of 
 the delegation from the State be present at Con- 
 gress. The next four and a half months he spent at 
 Monticello. 
 
 The irony of our protestations of allegiance to 
 Great Britain and the futility of any hopes for a 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 37 
 
 reconciliation with Parliament were becoming more 
 patent with every month that passed. The King 
 refused to receive the "olive branch petition" which 
 Dickinson, Jay, and Wilson had persuaded Congress 
 to send in July, 1775, as a last appeal to "his most 
 gracious Majesty." Instead, he had declared the 
 American colonies to be in a state of rebellion and 
 sedition. 1 He prohibited all trade and intercourse 
 with them, bombarded and burned their towns 
 (Falmouth and Norfolk), and hired German mer- 
 cenaries to reduce them to obedience. In Novem- 
 ber, 1775, Parliament, by a vote of 83 to 33 in the 
 Lords and 210 to 105 in the Commons, rejected mo- 
 tions for conciliation. On this side of the water 
 there was no less determination. Congress main- 
 tained an army in active opposition to the royal 
 governor of Massachusetts, made war contracts, 
 granted military commissions, appointed a diplo- 
 matic committee to sound the courts of Europe for 
 aid, and recommended to the patriots of New Hamp- 
 shire, South Carolina, and Virginia to follow the 
 lead of Massachusetts in establishing such forms of 
 
 1 When Benjamin Franklin returned to America in March, 1775, 
 after ten years' official residence in London as "agent" of several 
 colonies, he told the Americans how their petitions to the King were 
 treated: "Transmitted to Parliament with a great heap of letters, 
 newspapers, handbills, etc., and laid on the table undistinguished 
 by any recommendation and unnoticed in the royal speech." In 
 spite of Franklin's report, Congress addressed the throne in most 
 obsequious language in its petition of July 8, 1775, two days after 
 the Declaration on the Colonists Taking up Arms. John Dickinson 
 was the author of both papers ! 
 
38 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 government as, in their judgment, would "best pro- 
 duce the happiness of the people and most effectually 
 secure peace and good order during the continuance 
 of the present dispute between Great Britain and the 
 colonies." It is difficult to see what further act of 
 sovereignty the colonists could perform. The in- 
 consistency of such behavior with professions of 
 loyalty to the crown was convincingly shown by 
 Thomas Paine in his famous pamphlet, Common 
 Sense (January, 1776), which urged the colonies to 
 drop their sentimental attachment to a stupid King 
 and a servile Parliament, and to wake to their pro- 
 phetic mission as founders of a new nation destined 
 to be vast and populous, an example of freedom 
 and democracy to the whole world. 
 
 Thomas Paine's pamphlet was running into the 
 tens of thousands, its "sound doctrine and unan- 
 swerable reasoning' ' (the words are Washington's), 
 stirring a new spirit of independence throughout the 
 land, when Thomas Jefferson went up in May, 1776, 
 to resume his seat in Congress. Already the ties 
 which bound the colonies to England were snapping. 
 The local committees of safety had virtually suc- 
 ceeded the King's officials in New England and the 
 colonies south of the Potomac. Only the middle 
 group — New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and 
 Maryland — held firm in their allegiance, instructing 
 their delegates in Congress as late as January, 1776, 
 to resist any proposition for a separation from 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 39 
 
 Great Britain. On April 12 the convention of 
 North Carolina authorized its delegates "to concur 
 with the delegates of other colonies in declaring in- 
 dependency"; and a month later the Virginia Con- 
 vention took the decisive step of instructing its dele- 
 gates in Congress "to propose to that respectable 
 body to declare the united colonies free and inde- 
 pendent States, absolved from all allegiance to or 
 dependence upon the Crown or Parliament of Great 
 Britain." Mr. H. S. Randall, in his elaborate biog- 
 raphy of Jefferson, thinks it likely that this momen- 
 tous resolution of the convention of Virginia was 
 connected with Jefferson's vacation from Congress, 
 and he urges, among other reasons for his belief, 
 that Jefferson's election to the first place on the 
 committee chosen June 10 to draft a declaration of 
 independence would scarcely be the reward be- 
 stowed on a prodigal returning after four and a half 
 months of inglorious ease. At any rate, it is a 
 pleasing surmise that the man who wrote the im- 
 mortal document was influential in securing the in- 
 troduction of the motion for independence, and 
 there may have been more than a mere coincidence 
 in the fact that appearance of the resolution in the 
 Virginia Convention followed so hard upon the de- 
 parture of Jefferson for Philadelphia. 1 
 
 1 Mr. Randall might have added another weight to his scale of 
 probabilities by quoting some of the abundant testimony of con- 
 temporary Virginians to the part played by the piedmont counties 
 (where, of course, Jefferson was most influential) in the campaign 
 
40 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Richard Henry Lee, in behalf of the Virginia del- 
 egation, introduced the triple motion into Congress, 
 June 7, 1776, declaring our independence, recom- 
 mending the solicitation of aid from foreign Powers, 
 and urging the formation of a confederation to 
 bind the colonies more closely together. The first 
 clause was debated fiercely. "The Congress sat 
 till seven o'clock this evening," wrote Rutledge to 
 Jay, "in consequence of a motion of R. H. Lee's ren- 
 dering ourselves free and independent States: the 
 sensible part of the House opposed the Motion . . . 
 I wish you had been here. The whole argument 
 was sustained on the one side by R. Livingston, 
 Wilson, Dickinson, and myself, and by the Power 
 of all New England, Virginia and Georgia at the 
 other. " Jefferson produces a score or more of argu- 
 ments on each side in brief synoptic paragraphs in 
 his Memoir, and adds that since "the colonies of 
 New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, 
 Maryland, and South Carolina were not yet ma- 
 tured for falling off from the parent stem, but were 
 fast advancing to that state, it was thought most 
 prudent to wait a while for them and to postpone 
 the decision. " At the same time a committee of 
 
 for independence. Mason wrote to R. H. Lee that the resolution of 
 May 15 in the convention "was carried by the western vote," i. e., 
 by the members living north and west of Richmond; and Jefferson 
 himself wrote from Philadelphia to Thomas Nelson, just after taking 
 his seat: "When at home I took great pains to inquire into the sen- 
 timents of the people on that head [independence]. In the upper 
 counties I think I may say nine out of ten were for it." 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 41 
 
 five was appointed to draw up a Declaration of In- 
 dependence to be adopted in case the motion should 
 pass. Thomas Jefferson was chosen first on the 
 committee ; with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, 
 Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston following 
 in the order named. In response to the unanimous 
 request of his colleagues, Jefferson undertook to 
 draft the paper. 
 
 To analyze the Declaration of Independence 
 would be as gratuitous a piece of work as to analyze 
 the Ten Commandments. It is the Bible of Ameri- 
 can democracy. The equality of all men in the eyes 
 of nature and the law, the inalienable rights of all 
 to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the func- 
 tion of government as a guarantee of those rights, 
 its just powers derived from the consent of the gov- 
 erned — these are the political principles on which 
 our republic is founded and from which it will draw 
 its inspiration as long as it lives. Without them it 
 would not be a republic; without them it would not 
 be America. 
 
 Congress handled Jefferson's draft rather roughly 
 in its debate of July 2-4, and the author confesses 
 himself that he writhed a little under the acrimoni- 
 ous criticism of some of its parts. Very few addi- 
 tions were made, and those only of a few words, but 
 some passages were suppressed. In the long list of 
 indictments against the tyrannical conduct of 
 ' George III, which comprise the body of the Declara- 
 
42 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 tion, Jefferson had included a rebuke of the King 
 for his perpetuation of the American slave-trade. 
 The section was stricken out. New England had 
 hundreds of vessels engaged in the traffic, and the 
 Southern planters had not kept pace with Jefferson 
 in his emancipation sentiments. Another paragraph 
 suppressed was the severe arraignment of the Eng- 
 lish people as " unfeeling bretheren/' whose- support 
 of a tyrannical government had " given the last stab 
 to agonized affections and forced us to endeavor to 
 forget our former love for them." The passage was 
 melodramatic and inopportune. Our quarrel was 
 with George III and his Parliament, not with the 
 English people. A comparison of Jefferson's origi- 
 nal draft with the Declaration as amended and 
 adopted leaves no doubt that the pruning process, 
 however painful to the sensitive author, was wise 
 and wholesome. 
 
 Jefferson states in that part of his Memoir which 
 he claims was composed from notes taken at the 
 time of the events that the Declaration was accepted 
 by Congress on July 4, and "signed by every member 
 present except Mr. Dickinson." But in this, as in 
 many of the statements in the Memoir, he is mis- 
 taken — unless we take refuge with his devoted biog- 
 rapher, Mr. Randall, in the rather absurd supposi- 
 tion that in July all the members but one signed a 
 paper which (in spite of its immense importance) 
 soon disappeared from view, while several weeks 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 43 
 
 later considerable difficulty was experienced in get- 
 ting them to sign the engrossed copy now preserved 
 in the Department of State at Washington. Be- 
 sides, Dickinson was not present in Congress on 
 July 4, 1776. The wide-spread tradition of the sign- 
 ing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 
 with its attendant stories of Franklin's and Harri- 
 son's facetiousness, is due to the following curious 
 fact. The secretary, Charles Thompson, in making 
 up his minutes for the session of July 4, left a blank 
 space for the text of the Declaration. The space 
 was filled later by pasting into it a copy of the Dec- 
 laration, to which were appended the names of the 
 signers as they appeared on the engrossed copy. 
 August 2 was the date on which most of the mem- 
 bers actually signed. The original Declaration as 
 sent out by Congress bore only the name of the 
 president, John Hancock, written in the bold letters 
 "which George III could read without his specta- 
 cles," and of the clerk, Charles Thompson. 1 
 
 1 Some of the men whose names thus mistakenly appear as signers 
 on July 4 were not present in Congress that day, and some were 
 not even members of Congress then. The original Declaration, in 
 the handwriting of Jefferson, as reported from the committee to 
 Congress, is preserved with the Jefferson manuscripts in the De- 
 partment of State. The engrossed copy, signed by the members, is 
 also there, but since 1894 it has been kept from public view, in a steel 
 case, to prevent further fading and cracking of the parchment. Jef- 
 ferson made a number of copies of the Declaration in his own hand- 
 writing for various friends. Two of these copies are now in Wash- 
 ington, another was given by R. H. Lee to the American Philosophi- 
 cal Society at Philadelphia, a fourth is in the Lenox Division of the 
 Public Library of New York, a fifth in possession of the Massa- 
 
44 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Many years after the Declaration was written, 
 when Jefferson and Adams had become estranged 
 by bitter partisan strife, the Massachusetts patriot, 
 both in his Autobiography and in his letters, sought 
 to belittle Jefferson's merits. He declared that he 
 and Jefferson were both appointed as a subcom- 
 mittee to make the draft; that they each urged the 
 other to write it; that he finally persuaded his 
 younger colleague to do the work because he was 
 not only a better writer but was a Virginian and a 
 "less obnoxious and suspected" (" distinguished"?) 
 person than himself; and that finally, after some 
 strictures on the document which Jefferson pre- 
 pared, he " consented to report it" to the committee. 
 As to the Declaration itself, Adams wrote to Pick- 
 ering in 1822: "As you justly observe, there is not 
 an idea in it but what had been hackneyed in Con- 
 gress for two years before. . . . Indeed, the essence 
 of it is contained in a pamphlet, voted and printed 
 by the town of Boston, before the first Congress met, 
 composed by James Otis, as I suppose in one of his 
 lucid intervals, and pruned and polished by Samuel 
 Adams." 
 
 Jefferson's reply to these ungracious remarks of 
 
 chusetts Historical Society. Copies that we know from Jefferson's 
 correspondence were given to Page, Pendleton, Wythe, and Mazzei 
 have disappeared. A great number of facsimiles are in existence, 
 two hundred having been made by order of Congress in 1824 and 
 presented to the three surviving signers — Jefferson, Adams, and 
 Charles Carroll of Carrollton. 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 45 
 
 the man who forty-six years earlier had stood by his 
 side as "the Colossus of the Debate" on the adop- 
 tion of the Declaration, is simply that the committee 
 "unanimously pressed" him to write the draft, that 
 he submitted it to Adams and Franklin for their 
 corrections (which were trifling), that as to its 
 merits he was not the judge. "Otis' pamphlet I 
 never saw," he continues, "and whether I had 
 gathered my ideas from reading or reflection I do 
 not know. I only know that I turned to neither 
 book nor pamphlet while writing it. I did not 
 consider it as any part of my charge to invent new 
 ideas altogether, and to offer no sentiments which 
 had ever been expressed before." 
 
 It is precisely the marvelous skill of Jefferson in 
 focussing in sharp, distinct lines the wavering senti- 
 ment of independence that makes his document so 
 great. For us the Declaration of Independence is 
 the birth certificate of the American nation; for the 
 men of 1776 it was a proclamation, a bugle-call. It 
 cleared the air. Men were no longer to wonder how 
 they could "own the King and fight against him at 
 the same time," as a Delaware patriot said. Hesi- 
 tation was at an end. The Tories had been lagging 
 brothers, fearful of treason to their King. The 
 Declaration made them traitors to America. Cau- 
 tion and calculation had postponed the fatal step 
 of separation from Great Britain. The middle col- 
 onies were lukewarm; decisive action might mean 
 
46 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 their secession. And the same rash step that pro- 
 duced division at home would cement the union of 
 Whigs and Tories in England. For the Whigs were 
 our friends as long as we demanded reforms, but 
 our enemies when we fell away from the empire. 
 The same William Pitt who "rejoiced" that America 
 had resisted the Stamp Act, declared a few years 
 later that if he believed that the Americans enter- 
 tained "the most distant intention of throwing off 
 the legislative supremacy of Great Britain/ ' he 
 would be the first to enforce British authority 
 "by every exertion the country was capable of 
 making." In the compelling faith of freedom the 
 Declaration risked the double danger of a disunited 
 America and a united England. And its faith was 
 justified. 
 
 Not all were won to the patriot cause. Careful 
 students of the loyalist sentiment in the American 
 Revolution believe that fully one-third of the popu- 
 lation of the colonies held by the King. But the 
 men who were waiting to have the issue clearly de- 
 fined, the leaders who for a decade had felt the con- 
 victions of their heart growing to belie the profes- 
 sions of their lips, the soldiers who wanted to know 
 finally for what they were fighting, hailed the Dec- 
 laration with joy. It was read in courts and council 
 halls, on public squares and village greens, from pul- 
 pits and platforms. It was received with proces- 
 sions, banquets, and salvos of cannon. In Phila- 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 47 
 
 delphia the people tore down the "late King's" arms 
 from the State House and burned them in a bonfire 
 on Independence Square. In New York the troops 
 and citizens together, after hearing the Declaration 
 read, proceeded to Bowling Green and dragged 
 down the leaden equestrian statue of George III, 
 which was melted up into bullets for patriot rifles. 
 The citizens of Savannah, after a day of feasting, 
 burned George III in effigy and read a mock funeral 
 service over his grave. Uncertainties, timidities, 
 inconsistencies were removed. The issue was clearly 
 defined and the battle fairly joined. On July 9 
 George Washington published the Declaration to 
 his army in New York with the following order: 
 "The General hopes that this important event will 
 serve as an incentive to every officer and soldier to 
 act with fidelity and courage, as knowing now that 
 the peace and safety of his country depend, under 
 God, solely on the success of our arms." It is said 
 that the Marseillaise was worth ten thousand men 
 to the Jacobin generals of the French Revolution. 
 Who shall say how many regiments the Declaration 
 of Independence was worth to the great patriot who 
 bore the burden of our tottering cause from Brooklyn 
 Heights to Yorktown ! 
 
 One other service of far-reaching importance the 
 Declaration rendered to the American cause. It 
 was a stroke of diplomacy. So long as we were fight- 
 ing to reform the British Empire, the secret commit- 
 
48 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 tee on foreign correspondence appointed by Con- 
 gress on November 29, 1775, could hardly expect 
 any aid from European nations. But when the 
 cause which we submitted to a " candid world" took 
 the form of independence help came. As soon as 
 Louis XVTs government heard that the American 
 colonies had declared themselves free it proposed 
 that France and Spain should begin war against 
 Great Britain. Men and money began to come to 
 us from France. In October our agent in Paris, 
 Silas Deane, could ship to America a large amount 
 of ammunition, thirty thousand muskets, and cloth- 
 ing for twenty thousand soldiers. The commission 
 from the independent United States of America, 
 which superseded Deane's agency in Paris at the 
 close of 1776, made steady progress toward the 
 negotiation of our first treaties of alliance and com- 
 merce. Jefferson had been asked to serve on this 
 commission with Franklin and Deane, but another 
 service, which we shall study in our next chapter, 
 appealed to him with a clearer call, and Arthur Lee 
 was substituted in his place. That foreign nations 
 helped us for the destruction of the British Empire 
 rather than for the establishment of the American 
 Republic did not affect the value of their aid. What 
 that value was every student of the American Revo- 
 lution knows. Whether or not we should have even- 
 tually established our independence without the help 
 of France it is impossible to say. So judicious a 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 49 
 
 scholar as Mr. Lecky believes that most of the States 
 would have given up the struggle without this help. 
 Although New England and Virginia might have 
 kept up a valiant but desperate resistance for a 
 time, "the peace party would soon have gained the 
 ascendancy and the colonies have been reunited to 
 the mother country.' ' 
 
 The Declaration of Independence was a fitting 
 climax to Jefferson's splendid campaign for political 
 freedom, and would alone suffice to place him high 
 in the honor-roll of the founders of the American 
 state. It was a masterly condensation of the Sum- 
 mary View and the Reply to Lord North, thrown into 
 the form of a stirring manifesto to the American 
 people and the world at large. And its influence on 
 America and the world at large has been beyond 
 calculation. Even England herself, led astray for 
 the moment by false counsels, was helped by its 
 plain and ruthless lesson to regain the path of jus- 
 tice; for the Declaration was an appeal from an 
 England badly governed to an England to be better 
 governed. It was the voice of Milton speaking 
 again. There is no need to introduce Rousseau and 
 the French philosophers of the eighteenth century 
 to explain Jefferson's language. " The natural rights 
 of man" was a doctrine as old as the Roman law, 
 and "government by consent of the governed" was 
 the principle for which the "republicans" of the 
 seventeenth century had fought their battle of four- 
 
50 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 score years against the Stuart kings. It is doubtful 
 whether Jefferson had read a word of Rousseau's 
 Contrat social in 1776, but for a decade he had been 
 a profound student of Coke and Milton, of Harring- 
 ton and Locke. 1 
 
 To the end of his long career of varied service to 
 the American Republic Jefferson continued faithful 
 to the doctrine of government by the consent of the 
 governed, of confidence in the people to shape their 
 own political destinies, of liberty as a gift of God 
 and not a grant from monarchs. On the approach 
 of the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of 
 Independence the city of Washington invited Jef- 
 ferson to take part in its celebration. He had 
 entered his eighty^fourth year and was too feeble 
 to accept the invitation. But in his letter of regret 
 written to Mayor Weightman on June 24, 1826 — 
 the last letter of his life — he renewed his pledge to 
 the doctrines of the immortal Declaration and sum- 
 moned his countrymen to "an undiminished devo- 
 tion" to its principles: "May it be to the world 
 what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to 
 others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing 
 men to burst the chains under which monkish igno- 
 rance and superstition had persuaded them to bind 
 
 1 The influence of John Locke's Two Treatises on Government, pub- 
 lished at the time of the English revolution of 1688-9, is traceable 
 even to words and phrases in the Declaration. Compare the ex- 
 amples cited from Locke's second Treatise by Professor Channing, 
 in his History of the United States, vol. Ill, p. 10. 
 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 51 
 
 themselves, and to assume the blessings and security 
 of self-government." 
 
 On the granite obelisk which he had chosen for 
 his monument, Jefferson asked to have three of his 
 services to the cause of liberty inscribed. The first 
 was: Author of the Declaration of American 
 Independence. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 
 
 The Gothic idea that we are to look backwards instead of forwards 
 for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of 
 our ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion, and 
 in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion and government by 
 whom it has been recommended, and whose purpose it would answer. 
 (Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, January 27, 1800.) 
 
 "Liberty and union, now and forever, one and in- 
 separable!" Since Daniel Webster pronounced the 
 marriage banns between liberty and union, and Abra- 
 ham Lincoln stopped the action for divorce, the tie 
 has remained consecrated and inviolable in our 
 American democracy. But Liberty was a jealous 
 maiden, needing many years of wooing before she 
 would consent to Union, and dwelling long even 
 after her grudging consent was given on the fear of 
 " losing her freedom." It was liberty, not union, 
 for which our fathers fought in the Revolution. 
 Union was the necessaiy means, for unless the pa- 
 triots of Massachusetts and Virginia, of Pennsyl- 
 vania and Georgia, made common cause, they could 
 not hope to win. But the union was only the sum 
 of its parts, a federation, and the Congress a central 
 board of direction, without any specified powers or 
 sanctioned authority, until a few months before the 
 
 52 
 
REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 53 
 
 British surrender at Yorktown. Even for eight 
 years afterward it was without the fundamental 
 sovereign rights of taxation and executive au- 
 thority. There was no national government during 
 the American Revolution and the " critical period" 
 which followed, but only a national committee con- 
 vened by the governments of the States. There 
 was no supreme national state, but only a consensus 
 of the States. If Congress actually assumed great 
 powers, raised and equipped armies, declared inde- 
 pendence, borrowed money, and concluded treaties, 
 it was only as the steward of the interests of the 
 States and in some cases by their explicit mandate. 
 The Congress of the Confederation exercised only 
 powers of attorney. 
 
 Unless we realize these facts we shall misunder- 
 stand the spirit and misjudge the men of the early 
 years of our history. " Citizenship, " " patriotism, " 
 "allegiance," and the like terms, which inevitably 
 mean for us American citizenship, patriotism, and 
 allegiance, had a different signification before our 
 national state was firmly founded, before we had a 
 national domain, before our national courts admin- 
 istered a national law impartially throughout our 
 land, before a powerful national executive was chosen 
 by a nation-wide franchise to conduct the govern- 
 ment, not of a majority of the States nor even of the 
 sum of the States, but of a new, independent, and 
 autonomous United States. In the early days there 
 
L THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 were citizens of New Hampshire, of New York, of 
 Vir£?. lia, of South Carolina, attached by long tradi- 
 tion to their colonial institutions, and owing a larger 
 but remote allegiance only to a King or Parliament 
 across the ocean. Their "land" was not England, 
 however, nor yet America, but the particular colony 
 in which they lived. In his Notes on Virginia, pub- 
 lished just at the close of the American Revolution, 
 Jefferson constantly speaks of Virginia as "my 
 country." When the breach with England came, 
 the most immediate and urgent duty of patriots, 
 next to vindicating their independence in arms, was 
 to reshape the government of their new-fledged 
 "States" to accord with the political principles 
 which had been developing in the American mind 
 since the publication in 1762 of James Otis's Vin- 
 dication of the Conduct of the House of Representa- 
 tives of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. 
 
 In no other State was the need of reform more 
 crying than in Virginia. New England, often aris- 
 tocratic and intolerant enough in practice, had, nev- 
 ertheless, the seeds of democratic institutions in its 
 founding. "I can give you the receipt for making a 
 New England in Virginia," said John Adams one 
 day at dinner to a friend from the Old Dominion 
 who was bewailing its conservatism — "town-meet- 
 ings, training days, schools, and ministers." The 
 Middle States, with their cosmopolitan population, 
 their commercial preoccupations, their religious va- 
 
REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 55 
 
 nations, escaped the cramping mould of a social 
 type-form. But Virginia was social England trans- 
 planted. The Old Dominion, "most faithful of the 
 King's distant children/' as Charles II called it, 
 clung tenaciously to its habits when its children 
 came of age. Estates were held in "fee tail": that 
 is, not an acre or a slave could be alienated to pay 
 the debt which might hang like a millstone about 
 the neck of an incompetent or extravagant proprie- 
 tor. The law of primogeniture devised the entire 
 property to the eldest son, leaving his mother and 
 sisters dependent on his bounty and condemning the 
 younger brothers to be pensioners or adventurers. 
 The landed aristocracy lacked only the titles of their 
 English cousins to be a complete caste. Between 
 them and the negroes were only the "poor whites/ ' 
 a miserable class pushed by the rich planters into 
 the unfertile uplands and excluded by the slaves 
 from the dignified diversity of labor. A solid middle 
 class, industrious, inventive, educated, conscious of 
 its freedom, sharing equitably in the soil, the bone 
 and marrow of a community, was lacking. 
 
 Stupid and cruel laws stood on the statute-books 
 of Virginia, laws the more cruel and stupid because 
 the exercise of the royal veto in the colony had dis- 
 couraged the efforts for reform. Jefferson speaks 
 bitterly in his Memoir of the "negations (vetoes) of 
 councils, governors, and kings/' to restrain us from 
 doing right. Twenty-three acts against the slave- 
 
56 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 trade were passed by the Virginia House of Bur- 
 gesses between the years 1699 and 1772, and every 
 one of them was vetoed by the King or by his gov- 
 ernor in the colony. There were laws against witch- 
 craft, laws for the ducking of women and the inflic- 
 tion of the barbarous punishment of the lex talionis 
 — "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." There 
 were heresy laws which, if enforced, would have 
 brought Thomas Jefferson to the stake. To deny 
 the Trinity meant three years' imprisonment. A 
 Unitarian or a freethinker was considered unfit to 
 be the custodian of his own children. "I want to 
 breathe again your free air," wrote young James 
 Madison to a northern friend after he had returned 
 to Virginia from Princeton College. He cried out 
 against "the diabolical, hell-conceived principle of 
 persecution" that "raged" among the clergy of his 
 native State, and declared that the King would re- 
 duce all America to submission if the Church of 
 England were established and endowed in all the 
 colonies as it was in Virginia. 
 
 The reform of the political and social institutions 
 of his "country," in such glaring contradiction to 
 the republican principles which he himself and a 
 score of other able writers, like Otis, the Adamses, 
 Dickinson, Hopkins, and Bland, had made the ac- 
 cepted doctrine of the American Revolution, ap- 
 pealed to Jefferson with irresistible force. He threw 
 himself into the work with unflagging zeal, seizing 
 
REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 57 
 
 "the laboring oar." In September he resigned the 
 seat in Congress to which he had been re-elected, 
 and on October 7 entered the Virginia house of dele- 
 gates, the first legislature of the State convened 
 under its new constitution. 1 The day he took his 
 seat a messenger from Congress arrived at Williams- 
 burg, with the flattering invitation for him to join 
 Franklin and Deane at Paris in a mission to seek aid 
 from France and other European countries. Jeffer- 
 son wanted very much to go. The attractions of 
 the "capital city of the world," its music, art, letters, 
 and science, appealed strongly to the refined tastes 
 and insatiable mental curiosity of the young man 
 of thirty-three. He considered the offer three days, 
 
 1 The Virginia constitution of 1776, with the noble bill of rights 
 accompanying it, was drawn by George Mason. Jefferson was in 
 Congress at the time and serving on several committees; but he 
 found time to write the full draft of a constitution for Virginia, which 
 he forwarded to the convention at Richmond by his friend George 
 Wythe. It arrived on the very day that Mason's draft, after sev- 
 eral weeks of debate, "inch by inch," was finally reported to the 
 house, and the committee was unwilling, "from mere lassitude," 
 as Jefferson says, to reopen the debates on the subject. However, 
 they liked Jefferson's preamble so well that they "tacked it on the 
 work of George Mason." Jefferson's draft was lost for a hundred 
 years. It is published in full in P. L. Ford's edition of Jefferson's 
 Writings (vol. II, pp. 7-30), and it is well worth study both as a 
 foretaste of the legislation which Jefferson introduced into the 
 house and as an illustration of his jealousy of the executive power. 
 Jefferson thought that a new convention should have been convened 
 with specified constituent powers for so serious a matter as framing 
 a new State constitution. In view of the development of the doc- 
 trine of "States' rights" in the South, it is a fact of curious inter- 
 est that a Virginia member, Ludwell Lee, proposed in 1776 that 
 Congress should " prepare a uniform plan for the governments in 
 America to be approved by the colonies " (States). 
 
58 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 and then resolutely put the noble temptation behind 
 him. He had put his hand to the plough to break up 
 the hard and stubborn soil of generations of feudal 
 privilege and aristocratic caste in his beloved " coun- 
 try" of Virginia; and having put his hand to the 
 plough he would not turn back. "When I left Con- 
 gress in 1776," he says in his Memoir, "it was in the 
 persuasion that our whole code must be reviewed, 
 adapted to our republican form of government, and 
 . . . corrected in all its parts, with a single eye to 
 reason and the good of those for whose government 
 it was framed." 
 
 On October 11 Jefferson was appointed on several 
 important committees of the legislature, and the 
 next day he obtained leave to introduce a "Bill to 
 enable tenants in tail to convey their lands in fee 
 simple." The bill was passed. "It was the first 
 great blow at the aristocratic class in Virginia," 
 which had been based on the transmission of un- 
 divided estates from one generation to the next. It 
 had formed, says Jefferson, "a patrician order dis- 
 tinguished by the splendor and luxury of their es- 
 tablishments," an order from which "the King 
 habitually selected his counsellors of state." "To 
 annul this privilege and instead of an aristocracy of 
 wealth ... to make an opening for the aristocracy 
 of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely pro- 
 vided for the direction of the interests of society 
 and scattered with equal hand through all its con- 
 
REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 59 
 
 ditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered re- 
 public. " 1 With entails went the allied institution 
 of primogeniture. Pendleton, in behalf of the old 
 families of Virginia, pleaded that the eldest son 
 might have at least double the portion of the 
 younger ones, but Jefferson was inexorable: not un- 
 less the eldest son needed a double portion of food, 
 he said, or did a double portion of work ! 
 
 The social revolution wrought by this legislation 
 was complete. It threw every acre of land and every 
 slave in Virginia into the economic current of ex- 
 change and put all heirs on an equality. The old 
 Virginia families were attached to their estates with 
 a religious devotion. "They had come chiefly from 
 the country districts of England," says Shaler, "and 
 their absorbing passion was the possession of land." 
 There is a story that John Randolph of Roanoke 
 set his dogs on a man who came to ask the price of 
 the estate. The thought of any of the beloved 
 acres of Tuckahoe or Mount Vernon or Rose- 
 well or Gunston Hall going into the hands of a 
 stranger was like treason or profanation. The aris- 
 tocrats of Virginia, among them some of his own kin 
 on his mother's side, never forgave Jefferson for this 
 
 1 It is only an instance of the depreciatory tone in which certain 
 historians still deal with Jefferson, when J. T. Morse cites this sim- 
 ple, straightforward statement as written in "Jefferson's grandiose, 
 humanitarian, and self -laudatory vein." Humanitarian it may be 
 — the more the credit ! — but what there is grandiose or self -laudatory 
 about it is hard to see. 
 
60 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 legislation, put through the house by the influence 
 of the democracy of the counties back of the tide- 
 water. There were even those who, adding a Bour- 
 bon piety to a Bourbon pride, declared that the 
 death of Jefferson's only son in infancy (1777) was 
 a " judgment of God" upon him; and fifty years later, 
 when Virginia was declining in economic prestige 
 before the rising manufactures of the North, there 
 were still belated Cassandras harping on the ruin 
 to the State caused by Jefferson's abolition of entail 
 and primogeniture. 
 
 It would take us far beyond the limits of this brief 
 biography to give even the merest outline of the 
 manifold activities of Jefferson in the new Virginia 
 Legislature of 1776. In the opening month of 
 October, for example, besides elaborating the laws 
 on entails and descent, he served on committees 
 dealing with naturalization laws, the definition of 
 treason, the location of the capital, the encourage- 
 ment of manufactures, the improvement of naviga- 
 tion, the organization of courts, the regulation of 
 the militia, the refining of the currency. There 
 were two of these October committees, however, on 
 which Jefferson's work was so significant and lasting 
 that we must devote a few pages to them — the 
 standing committee "of religion," appointed Octo- 
 ber 11, and the committee, chosen in pursuance of 
 Jefferson's bill of October 24, for the "revision of 
 the laws." 
 
REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 61 
 
 Religion was in a parlous state in Virginia. The 
 Episcopal Church was established by law, endowed 
 with lands (glebes), and supported by taxes (tithes). 
 Secure in their position, the clergy performed their 
 Sunday duties in a proper and perfunctory fashion, 
 paying little attention to either religion or charities 
 during the week. They were, as some one remarked, 
 "a gentleman's club." "Against this inactivity," 
 says Jefferson, "the zeal and industry of the secta- 
 rian (especially the Baptist) preachers had an open 
 and undisputed field; and by the time of the Revo- 
 lution a majority of the inhabitants of the colony 
 had become dissenters from the established church, 
 but were still obliged to pay contributions to sup- 
 port the pastors of the minority." The legislature 
 of 1776 was " crowded with petitions to abolish this 
 spiritual tyranny." Jefferson wanted full religious 
 liberty and a complete separation of church and 
 state; but the powers of the establishment were too 
 strong. If the majority of the inhabitants were 
 dissenters, the majority of the legislature were 
 churchmen. After a bitter fight of two months, all 
 that the radicals could obtain was a repeal of the 
 laws making heresy or absence from worship a 
 crime and forcing dissenters to contribute to the 
 support of the church. Jefferson kept up the fight, 
 however, from session to session, until in the sum- 
 mer of 1779 the Anglican Church was disestab- 
 lished. Another seven years passed before the man 
 
62 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 on whom Jefferson's mantle fell in the Virginia Leg- 
 islature, James Madison, was able to get the bill for 
 religious liberty passed. 
 
 This famous bill was drawn by Jefferson in June, 
 1779, and watched through all its fortunes with 
 jealous care. Jefferson was our minister in Paris 
 when the bill finally passed in 1786. He had it 
 printed in both English and French and circulated 
 as a pamphlet. It was received with great enthusi- 
 asm in Europe. And well it might be! For al- 
 though there were lands in which religious persecu- 
 tion had wholly ceased in western Europe, there 
 was no sovereign state in Christendom in the year 
 1786 that had formally proclaimed in its laws the 
 absolute religious freedom of every one of its citi- 
 zens. The honor of making that declaration to the 
 world was Virginia's — and Thomas Jefferson's. 1 
 The second of the three services which Jefferson 
 asked to have engraved on his monument was: 
 Author of the Statute of Virginia for Relig- 
 ious Freedom. 
 
 The magnificent language of this statute, though 
 
 1 Some of the foremost men of Virginia in the struggle for political 
 liberty were opposed to the radical religious programme of Jefferson, 
 Madison, and Monroe. Henry and R. H. Lee both believed with 
 the clergy that religion would be destroyed "without a legal obliga- 
 tion to contribute something to its support." Washington wrote 
 Mason in 1785: "Although no man's sentiments are more opposed 
 to any kind of restraint upon religious principles than mine are, yet 
 I confess I am not among the number of those who are so much 
 alarmed at making men pay toward the support of that which they 
 profess." 
 
REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 63 
 
 unfortunately it must be somewhat abbreviated, 
 shall stand here without paraphrase or comment: 
 
 Well aware that the opinions and beliefs of men depend 
 not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evi- 
 dence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath 
 created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will 
 that free it shall remain, by making it altogether insus- 
 ceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by 
 temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacita- 
 tions, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and mean- 
 ness; . . . that the impious presumption of legislature 
 and ruler, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being them- 
 selves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed do- 
 minion over the faith of others . . . hath established 
 and maintained false religions over the greatest part of 
 the world and thro' all time; that to compel a man to 
 furnish contributions of money for the propagation of 
 opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and 
 tyrannical; . . . that our civil rights have no dependence 
 on our religious opinions any more than on our opinions 
 in physics or geometry; . . . that the opinions of men 
 are not the object of civil government, nor under its juris- 
 diction; . . . that it is time enough for the rightful pur- 
 poses of civil government for its officers to interfere when 
 principles break out into overt acts against peace and 
 good order; and finally that truth is great and will pre- 
 vail if left to herself . . . errors ceasing to be dangerous 
 when it is permitted freely to contradict them: We the 
 General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall 
 be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, 
 place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, re- 
 strained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, or 
 shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions 
 
64 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 or beliefs; but that all men shall be free to profess and by 
 argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, 
 and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or 
 affect their civil capacities.' ' 
 
 The Jeffersonian principle of religious freedom 
 was introduced into the Constitution of the United 
 States by the First Amendment, chiefly through the 
 efforts of James Madison, and for half a century it 
 furnished the progressive men of every State the 
 inspiration and arguments for religious emancipa- 
 tion, until civil authority and religious conformity 
 were divorced in every part of the Union. We re- 
 gard religious liberty as a natural right to-day, and 
 look on it as intolerable that any man should pre- 
 sume to have in his keeping the conscience of 
 another. Yet this was not so when Jefferson began 
 his liberating work a century and a half ago. It is 
 often the greatest benefits that we requite with the 
 least gratitude, because they are just the ones which 
 we can least imagine ourselves being without. No 
 invention of science, no creation of art, no reform of 
 politics can compare in importance for the human 
 race with freedom of conscience. 
 
 We have seen that Jefferson's avowed object in 
 leaving Congress for a seat in the Virginia Legisla- 
 ture was the reform of the entire law code of his 
 State, "with a single eye to reason and the good of 
 those for whose government it was framed." In No- 
 vember, 1776, a committee of revision was appointed, 
 
REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 65 
 
 consisting of Jefferson, Pendleton, Wythe, Mason, 
 and T. L. Lee. They met at Fredericksburg early 
 in January to agree on the principles of revision 
 and to portion out the work among themselves. 
 When they came to the actual work of revision, how- 
 ever, Mason and Lee resigned from the committee 
 because they were not lawyers, and the whole work 
 fell upon the other three. Jefferson's burden was, 
 as usual, the heaviest. To him was assigned the 
 whole field of the common law and statutes of Eng- 
 land down to the foundation of the colony of Vir- 
 ginia in 1607. The British statutes from 1607 to 
 the end of the colonial period were assigned to 
 Wythe and the Virginia laws during the same 
 period to Pendleton. After two full years' work in 
 their respective fields, the committee met at Wil- 
 liamsburg in February, 1779, and went over the re- 
 sults together, "day by day, sentence by sentence, 
 scrutinizing and amending" until they had agreed 
 upon the whole. On June 18, 1779, they pre- 
 sented the result to the legislature in one hundred 
 and twenty-six bills, "making a printed folio of 
 ninety-two pages." 
 
 This elaborate draft of one hundred and twenty- 
 six bills was never acted on as a whole, but "some 
 bills," as Jefferson says in his Memoir, "were taken 
 out occasionally . . . and passed." The interrup- 
 tion of the work of legislative reform was chiefly due 
 to the turn which the Revolutionary War had taken. 
 
66 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 The British, defeated in their campaign for the Hud- 
 son and driven to extreme measures by the alliance 
 between America and France, had transferred the 
 seat of war to the Southern States. General Prevost 
 seized Savannah in December, 1778, and proceeded 
 to the conquest of South Carolina. Just at the 
 moment that the revisers were presenting their re- 
 port to the Virginia Legislature, General Lincoln was 
 hastening to save Charleston. The Carolinas and 
 Georgia looked to the rich and populous State of 
 Virginia to help them. Food, horses, ammunition, 
 men, and guns were generously sent by the legisla- 
 ture at Williamsburg. Then came the invasion of 
 Virginia itself, the raids of Leslie and Arnold herald- 
 ing the campaign of Cornwallis, which brought the 
 active hostilities of the Revolution to an end on the 
 Virginia peninsula of Yorktown. Inter arma silent 
 leges. When peace came, and the recovery from 
 the ravages of war, the unfinished business of legal 
 reform was renewed. Jefferson was no longer in 
 the legislature, but his faithful lieutenant, Madison, 
 by his "unwearied exertions" got most of the im- 
 portant bills through. It happened, as with every 
 extensive plan of reform, that some measures were 
 adopted at once, some were temporarily defeated 
 only to triumph later over conservative opposition, 
 and some were dismissed finally into the realm of 
 the Utopian. The successful measures included the 
 abolition of the slave-trade, the laws for the recovery 
 
REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 67 
 
 of debts, for the organization of the courts, and for 
 the reform of the penal code. By the latter the 
 death penalty for twenty-seven felonies was abol- 
 ished, and by a later addition (1796) the barbarous 
 features of the lex talionis were stricken from the 
 Virginia code. 
 
 On the other hand, two projects of reform which 
 Jefferson cherished equally with religious emancipa- 
 tion and the abolition of entails were doomed to 
 utter defeat. Jefferson was a consistent antislavery 
 man. When he entered the House of Burgesses in 
 1769, he tells us in his Memoir, his first act was an 
 effort to secure the passage of a bill permitting mas- 
 ters to emancipate their slaves at will. 1 We have 
 seen how in the original draft of the Declaration of 
 Independence he arraigned George III for his part 
 in fixing slavery on the colony of Virginia. Now 
 that Virginia was free from royal control he hoped 
 his countrymen would abolish the evil entirely. But 
 he was doomed to disappointment. The committee 
 on revision refused to report a bill in favor of eman- 
 cipation and would only agree to the form of an 
 amendment to be offered to the legislature in case 
 such a bill should be taken up. This singular amend- 
 ment, unmistakably from Jefferson's pen, provided 
 that the children born of slave mothers "should con- 
 
 1 A colonial statute of 1729 provided that no slave should be set 
 free "on any pretence whatsoever, except for some meritorious ser- 
 vices, to be adjudged and allowed by the Governor and Council." 
 
68 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 tinue with their parents to a certain age, then be 
 brought up at public expense, to tillage, arts or 
 sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females 
 should be eighteen and the males twenty-one years 
 of age"; then they should be sent out in colonies to 
 some "proper place" [a West Indian island] fur- 
 nished with arms, live stock, seeds, tools, etc., by the 
 government, and taken under the protection of the 
 State until they were strong enough to care for 
 themselves. This quixotic plan was never even de- 
 bated. Writing nearly a half a century later, under 
 the ominous peace of the Missouri Compromise, 
 Jefferson says of his emancipation plan: "It was 
 found that the public mind would not bear the 
 proposition, nor will it bear it even to this day (1821). 
 Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and 
 adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more cer- 
 tainly written in the book of fate than that these 
 people are to be free." 
 
 Another project which was dear to Jefferson's 
 heart, but which the "public mind" of Virginia 
 "would not yet bear," was a general system of edu- 
 cation. The bills which he prepared on this sub- 
 ject at the request of his colleagues on the board of 
 revisers called for the institution of primary and 
 secondary schools all over the State. At the same 
 time the College of William and Mary, whose cur- 
 riculum was confined to theology, philosophy, and 
 the classics, was to be enlarged into a State univer- 
 
 
REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 69 
 
 sity with ample provision for history, modern lan- 
 guages, and applied mathematics and science. And 
 finally the sum of two thousand pounds a year was 
 to be set apart by the legislature for the establish- 
 ment and maintenance of a free public library at 
 Richmond. 
 
 The education bills were not acted on until 1796, 
 and then "only so much of the first as provided for 
 elementary schools/ ' whose establishment was left 
 optional with the courts of each county. Little was 
 done, naturally, under this system of local option, 
 for public education in Virginia. The piedmont 
 counties were poor, and the large dissenting popula- 
 tion in them was jealous of the supervision of over- 
 seers and visitors who were required by law to be 
 churchmen. The tide-water counties were "aris- 
 tocratic," without any conviction of the necessity 
 or expediency of educating the "lower classes" be- 
 yond their station. In spite of the defeat of his 
 projects, however, Jefferson never lost a grain of his 
 faith in the mission of education to ameliorate the 
 condition of the people at large. Like the warning 
 against the danger of perpetuating negro slavery, 
 this other warning against the evils of an uneducated 
 populace runs through his writings. "If a nation 
 expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civiliza- 
 tion," he wrote to Charles Yancey in 1816, "it ex- 
 pects what never was and never will be." 
 
 After he had done with the cares of office and re- 
 
70 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 turned to Monticello to spend the declining years of 
 life, Jefferson bent his best energies to the creation 
 of a State university which should be a model for 
 institutions of higher learning throughout the land. 
 The results of his efforts of a half a century in the 
 cause of education were so important both for his 
 own State and for the country at large that we shall 
 return to the subject in a later chapter. Here we 
 simply record the eventual triumph of the project 
 which failed so signally in the meagre legislation 
 which the friends of education could wring from the 
 Virginia Legislature before the nineteenth century. 
 Jefferson thought of the revision of the Virginia 
 laws as a contribution to a definite social reform of 
 the State, especially in the major bills on entail, 
 primogeniture, religious freedom, and public educa- 
 tion. Referring to them, he says in his Memoir: 
 "I considered four of these bills, passed or reported, 
 as forming a system by which every fibre would be 
 eradicated of an antient or future aristocracy, and a 
 foundation laid for a government truly republican." 
 We have seen that his program was only imper- 
 fectly realized. It was Utopian in parts; it was 
 everywhere boldly and bravely optimistic. It failed 
 in many of its recommendations; but its signifi- 
 cance is not finally in the success or failure of this or 
 that particular bill. James Bryce, in his lecture on 
 " Jefferson and the Constitution," says truly: "Jef- 
 ferson's influence has been on the spirit of the people 
 
REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 71 
 
 and their attitude towards institutions rather than 
 on the formation of institutions themselves.' ' To 
 the mind that finds it difficult to appreciate such 
 imponderable influences, Jefferson seems like a 
 dreamer dwelling in a fool's paradise of optimism or 
 blocking the path of efficient government with ex- 
 asperating political scruples. "He died as he had 
 lived," says Oliver, "in the odor of phrases." That 
 is the way principles appear to some minds. 
 
 Jefferson's work as a reformer of the laws and cus- 
 toms of old Virginia has been far too little noticed 
 by his biographers. This lies partly, no doubt, in 
 the comparative indifference of the Northern schol- 
 ars who have written most of our histories to the 
 development of local institutions in the South. "If 
 Jefferson had done his [legal] work east of the Hud- 
 son or north of the Susquehanna," writes a member 
 of the Virginia bar, "he would be rated far higher 
 among the greatest legal minds America has pro- 
 duced." To my mind, however, the neglect of 
 Jefferson as a legislator and reformer is due far more 
 to the overemphasis of his work as a party organ- 
 izer and politician. He is far better known as the 
 antagonist of Hamilton than as the colleague of 
 Wythe and Pendleton. And yet, while we may not 
 allow a man to be the final judge of his own charac- 
 ter, it is only fair to respect his estimate of his own 
 accomplishments, especially when he makes that 
 estimate calmly and reflectively at the end of a 
 
72 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 long life. In a pathetic little passage stitched into 
 his Memoir on a memorandum leaf, Jefferson says: 
 "I have sometimes asked myself whether my coun- 
 try is better for my having lived at all. I do not 
 know that it is. I have been the instrument of 
 doing the following things — but they would have 
 been done by others, some of them, perhaps, a little 
 better." The things he goes on to mention are just 
 these reforms which we have been studying. In a 
 list of ten services, only one is national and political 
 in its nature — the Declaration of Independence. 
 The others are reforms — religious, economic, penal, 
 educational, agrarian, fiscal — which he accomplished, 
 or strove to accomplish, for his " country" of Vir- 
 ginia. He does not mention the Louisiana Pur- 
 chase, but recalls with satisfaction the improvement 
 of the navigation of the Rivanna. He omits the 
 triumph over the Federalists in the great battle of 
 1800, but dwells with pride on the introduction into 
 Virginia of a better quality of rice from Lombardy. 
 When we remember that Virginia was the largest 
 and richest State in the Union during the first gen- 
 eration of our history under the Constitution, that 
 she furnished four out of our firfet five Presidents, 
 that her influence was enormous on the States to 
 the south of her and considerable on the States to 
 the north, we realize what it meant, not for Virginia 
 alone, but for our whole country, that the stamp of 
 Thomas Jefferson's liberalism was put on the insti- 
 
REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CODE 73 
 
 tutions of the Old Dominion in the critical years just 
 following our independence. His was the first law in 
 the modern world sanctioning expatriation. His was 
 the first law of a slave state abolishing the slave- 
 trade. His was the first law of modern times appor- 
 tioning punishment to crime on a rational and hu- 
 mane principle. His was the first conception in our 
 country of a free university as a "group of faculties" 
 in which the elective system prevailed. His was the 
 first formal declaration of complete religious liberty 
 by a sovereign state in the history of the world. 
 For half a century the influence of his work for Vir- 
 ginia was spread abroad — his educational ideas to 
 Michigan, Missouri, Massachusetts, Maine, and 
 Kentucky; his antislavery principles to the North- 
 west Territory; his elective system to Harvard; his 
 liberal ideas of citizenship to the nation. New York 
 followed Virginia's lead in the abolition of entails 
 in 1782, North Carolina in 1784, Kentucky in 1796, 
 New Jersey in 1820. Far down into the nineteenth 
 century broad-minded men in every State were 
 drawing on Jefferson's arguments, citing his letters, 
 quoting the forceful passages of his Notes on Virginia, 
 and the preamble to his bill for religious freedom, 
 until all over our republic there was vindicated the 
 simple but hard-won truth that "the opinions of 
 men are not the object of civil government nor 
 under its jurisdiction.' ' 
 As a politician Jefferson appears to some as crafty 
 
74 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 and oversubtle. Others regard him as a feeble and 
 counsel-reft executive. His fundamental political 
 principle of trust in a people trained to mistrust its 
 governors seems to many open to grave objections 
 on the grounds of both policy and wisdom. But 
 as a liberalizing and liberating influence on the 
 spirit of the American people he stands without a 
 peer until the advent of Abraham Lincoln. Napo- 
 leon Bonaparte said: "I shall go down to posterity 
 with the Code in my hand." How much more 
 finely could Jefferson say this ! For the code of 
 Napoleon was order, but the code of Thomas Jeffer- 
 son was order and liberty. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 
 
 We consider ourselves bound in honor, as well as interest, to share 
 one general fate with our sister colonies; and we should hold ourselves 
 base deserters of that union to which we have acceded, were we to agree 
 on any measures distinct and apart from them. (Address from Vir- 
 ginia Burgesses to Governor Dunmore, June 12, 1775.) 
 
 A few days before the committee of revisers 
 made their report to the legislature, Jefferson was 
 chosen governor of Virginia to succeed Patrick 
 Henry, who had served for three consecutive an- 
 nual terms since the State became a free republic. 
 Jefferson occupied the office for two years, from 
 June, 1779, to June, 1781 — two years which, with 
 the possible exception of the closing years of his 
 presidency, were the most irksome period of his 
 whole public life. In his Memoir, after devoting 
 twenty pages to the work of the law revision, he 
 passes over the governorship in silence, alleging as 
 his reason that to write his own history during those 
 two years would be but to duplicate the histories 
 of the State already written. But we may suspect 
 that it was more than a scruple against furnishing 
 a redundancy of historical material that made Jef- 
 ferson so reticent during his whole life on the sub- 
 
 75 
 
76 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ject of his gubernatorial office. His sensitive nature 
 shrank from controversy. Accused of timidity, 
 vacillation, incapacity, and even personal cowardice 
 in his high office, he made a dignified defense before 
 the legislature, which won a unanimous vote of con- 
 fidence in his "ability, rectitude and integrity as 
 chief magistrate of the Commonwealth/ ' and left 
 further vindication of his behavior to his friendly 
 biographers. The task has been performed with 
 pious and laborious devotion by Mr. Randall, who, 
 in over a hundred and twenty large octavo pages, 
 sifts every ugly charge, and succeeds, even in the 
 opinion of the acrid Morse, in "establishing a 
 satisfactory defense" of his hero, albeit the facts 
 and arguments have to be "rescued dripping from 
 a sea of rhetoric and fine writing.' ' 
 
 The year 1779 was ominous for the States south 
 of the Potomac. Defeated in their endeavor to 
 occupy the Hudson-Champlain line of communica- 
 tion with Canada, exasperated by the consequent 
 affiance of the French King with the rebellious 
 Americans, forced to evacuate the "capital" of 
 Philadelphia for want of proper defenses in Delaware 
 Bay against the appearance of a French fleet, the 
 British had decided to transfer their military opera- 
 tions to the south and to prosecute them with a 
 ruthlessness which contrasted strangely with the 
 dilatory and urbane assaults of Howe, Burgoyne, 
 and Clinton. "The whole contest is changed," ran 
 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 77 
 
 the proclamation issued by the English commission- 
 ers in October, 1778; "the policy as well as the 
 benevolence of Great Britain has thus far checked 
 the extremes of war, where they tended to distress 
 a people still considered as our fellow-subjects, and 
 to desolate a country shortly to become a source of 
 mutual advantage. But when that country pro- 
 fesses the unnatural design of mortgaging herself to 
 our enemies . . . the question is how far Great 
 Britain by every means in her power may destroy or 
 render useless a connection contrived for her ruin 
 and for the aggrandizement of France." Thus the 
 policy of "f rightfulness" was announced. 
 
 Savannah was taken by the British in December, 
 1778, and the entire defenseless State of Georgia 
 thereby put at the mercy of the invader. The 
 British moved on to Charleston from the south, 
 while General Clinton detached two thousand men 
 from his army in New Jersey to ravage the coast 
 of Virginia. It was under the shadow of these ca- 
 lamities that Jefferson took the oath as governor 
 of Virginia. 
 
 The condition of the State was precarious. Broad 
 rivers running through the flat lands of the tide- 
 water emptied along an extensive coast line in 
 Chesapeake Bay, and offered the opportunity for 
 vessels of several hundred tons to ascend far into 
 the interior of the State. There were no mountain 
 fastnesses, caves, and lairs to offer a small guerilla 
 
78 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 force the protection whence they could sally forth 
 to harass large numbers of invaders. The State 
 had but four vessels of war. Its militia of fifty 
 thousand men, an average of one man to the square 
 mile, was scattered and ill-equipped. Jefferson 
 doubted if there were more than one gun to every 
 four or five soldiers. The immense region stretch- 
 ing like an opening wedge westward to the Missis- 
 sippi and northward to Lake Superior was still a 
 part of Virginia according to the interpretation of 
 the royal charter of 1609, and its defense against 
 the Indians incited by the British commander at 
 Detroit was a heavy drain on the resources of the 
 State. 
 
 To place the Virginia coast in a state of defense 
 against raids while the British held control of the 
 seas was a task which ten times the resources of the 
 State in men and money would not have been able 
 to accomplish. Nor was it expected. The British 
 landed where they would, from Boston to Savannah. 
 All that could be done was to check their progress 
 inland and to prevent the junction of their forces. 
 The military genius of Washington himself, with 
 the continental army at his back, could do no more; 
 and he knew that the civilian governor of a State, 
 with a scanty militia to rely on, must perforce do 
 even less. All his correspondence with Jefferson 
 during the war shows that he accepted this inevi- 
 table menace of invasion with equanimity, or at 
 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 79 
 
 least with resignation. He only suggested that 
 Jefferson might do something for the defense of 
 the State in constructing boats to prevent the 
 enemy "from being able to move up and down the 
 rivers in small parties." 
 
 But even if Jefferson had had the whole body of 
 the militia of Virginia at his disposal on the lower 
 James, these troops could not have been employed, 
 consistently with the policy of the American strat- 
 egy, in defending Virginia. The common cause de- 
 manded the application of such forces as the States 
 could muster to the points of common danger. The 
 descent of a British raiding-party on Portsmouth or 
 Suffolk or Richmond was a slight calamity as com- 
 pared with the total subjugation of the Carolinas 
 by Cornwallis and his "hunting leopard," Tarleton. 
 For the loss of the Carolinas meant the invasion of 
 Virginia in force. The Old Dominion fought best 
 for her own life out beyond her borders. "The 
 evils you have to apprehend from these predatory 
 excursions," wrote Washington to Jefferson after the 
 severe raid of 1781, "are not to be compared to the 
 injury to the common cause and with the danger 
 to your own state in particular, from the conquest 
 of the states to the southward of you. I am per- 
 suaded that the attention to your immediate safety 
 will not divert you from the measures intended to 
 reinforce the southern army." Washington was 
 even convinced that the raid on Virginia was only 
 
80 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 intended as a diversion to relieve Cornwallis by the 
 withdrawal of Virginia troops from Greene's army 
 in the South. According to the commander-in-chief 
 of the American army, then, Virginia's first duty 
 was to pour her aid into the Carolinas and "keep 
 the weight of war at a distance from her." 
 
 This duty Virginia performed nobly. From her 
 stores of grain, vegetables, pork, wagons, horses, 
 and men she contributed liberally. When Charles- 
 ton capitulated to the British in May, 1780, the 
 Virginia Legislature sent seven hundred militiamen 
 to strengthen the regular army, established muni- 
 tion works and public stores, and authorized im- 
 pressments of foodstuffs and military supplies. 
 Jefferson's own horses and wagons were among the 
 first taken. The ill-starred Gates assumed com- 
 mand of the Southern army in the summer of 1780. 
 From his appearance in Richmond early in July to 
 his disastrous defeat at Camden on the 16th of 
 August, he received noble support from Virginia. 
 On August 4 Jefferson wrote him that cartridge- 
 boxes, bayonet-belts, axes, beef, ammunition, and 
 arms were being forwarded to his troops. After 
 the disaster of the 16th (a disaster which was pre- 
 cipitated by the panic of the raw militia from Vir- 
 ginia) Jefferson, though "extremely mortified" by 
 the conduct of the troops, only made the more 
 strenuous efforts to repair the evil. "Instead of 
 considering what is past," he wrote to the com- 
 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 81 
 
 mander of the Virginian troops in Gates's army, 
 "we are to look forward and prepare for the future." 
 To Gates himself he wrote, promising more (and 
 let us hope better) men, "three thousand stand of 
 arms, and military stores." "Our treasury is 
 utterly exhausted," he adds, "and cannot be re- 
 plenished until the assembly meets in October. We 
 might, however, furnish considerable quantities of 
 provisions, were it possible to convey it to you. 
 We shall immediately send an agent into the south- 
 ern counties to collect and forward all he can." "It 
 could not be expected," he generously wrote to 
 Madison in the midsummer of 1780, "that North 
 Carolina, which contains but one tenth of the 
 American militia, should be left to support the 
 Southern War alone." 
 
 So Virginia sent off her men and supplies to stay 
 the tide of invasion rolling up from the south, well 
 knowing to what peril she was exposing herself in 
 case the invasion could not be checked. 
 
 Ten thousand Virginia troops, including regulars 
 and militia, were in the armies north and south of 
 the State. As the year 1780 drew to a close the 
 mind of the governor was fixed, where the com- 
 mander-in-chief had urged him to fix it, on the war 
 beyond his borders. Jefferson wrote on Christmas 
 eve to the lieutenants of the counties of Hampshire 
 and Berkeley: "A powerful army forming by our 
 enemies in the south, and an extensive combination 
 
82 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 of savages in the west, will probably render the en- 
 suing campaign exceedingly active, and particularly 
 call forth the exertions of this state. It is our duty 
 to look forward in time and to make proper division 
 of our force between these two objects." 
 
 It was under these trying circumstances that the 
 blow of invasion fell on Virginia. Some eighteen 
 hundred men in twenty-seven ships commanded by 
 the traitor Benedict Arnold appeared suddenly in 
 Chesapeake Bay. We can do no better than to 
 transcribe a few sentences on the event from Jeffer- 
 son's own diary: 
 
 Saturday, Dec. 30, 1780. Eight o'clock a.m. Re- 
 ceived first intelligence that twenty-seven sail were, on 
 the morning of Dec. 29, just below Willoughby's Point. 
 Sent General Nelson with full powers. 
 
 Jan. 1, 1781. No intelligence. 
 
 Jan. 2d, ten o'clock a.m. Information from N. Burwell 
 that their advance was at Warrasqueak Bay. Gave or- 
 ders for militia, a quarter from some, a half from other 
 counties. Assembly rose. 
 
 . . . Thursday, Jan. 4th, five o'clock a.m. Called 
 whole militia from adjacent counties. I was then anxious 
 to know whether they would pass Westover or not, as 
 that would show the side they would land. . . . Five 
 o'clock p.m. Learned by Capt. De Ponthere that at 
 2 o'clock p.m. they were drawn up at Westover. Then 
 ordered arms, stores etc. to be thrown across the river at 
 Richmond; and at half-past seven o'clock p.m. set out to 
 the foundry and Westham ... to see everything wag- 
 goned from the magazine and laboratory to Westham and 
 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 83 
 
 there thrown over [the river] to work all night. The 
 enemy encamped at Four-Mile Creek. 
 
 Jan. 5. . . . Went myself to Westham; gave orders 
 for withdrawing ammunition and arms (which lay ex- 
 posed on the bank to the effect of artillery from the oppo- 
 site shore) behind a point. Then went to Manchester. 
 Had a view of the enemy. My horse sank under me with 
 fatigue. Borrowed one, went to Chetwoods, appointed 
 by Baron Steuben as a rendezvous and head-quarters. . . . 
 The enemy arrived at Richmond at one o'clock p.m. 
 One regiment of infantry and thirty horse proceeded with- 
 out stopping to the foundry, burned that and the maga- 
 zine. . . . They returned that evening to Richmond. 
 Sent me a proposition to compound for property. Re- 
 fused. 
 
 Jan. 6. In the morning they burned certain houses and 
 stores, and at 12 o'clock that day left Richmond. 
 
 Jan. 7. Rained excessively the preceding night and 
 continued to do so till about noon. Gibson has one 
 thousand [militia], Steuben eight hundred, Davis two 
 hundred, Nelson two hundred and fifty. . . . 
 
 Jan. 9. The enemy remain in their last encampment, 
 except embarking their horse. 
 
 Jan. 10. At one o'clock p.m. They embark infantry 
 and fall down the river. 
 
 Jefferson has received unmerciful censure for per- 
 mitting this raid of Arnold's. Henry Lee (" Legion 
 Harry") in his Memoir of the War in the Southern 
 Department of the United States, declared that Vir- 
 ginia was not defended in 1781 because her public 
 spirit was paralyzed by the " timidity and impotence 
 of her rulers, " and that a soldier of genius could 
 
84 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 have preserved the State from insults and injuries 
 "with 300 horse, 300 musketry, and a battalion of 
 infantry.' ' John Marshall, in his Life of Washing- 
 ton, upbraided Jefferson for neglect of warning: "So 
 early as the 9th of December, 1780, a letter from 
 Gen'l Washington announced to the Governor [Jef- 
 ferson] that a large embarkation, supposed to be 
 destined for the South, was about taking place at 
 New York." And, following the lead of Lee and 
 Marshall, modern historians have characterized 
 Jefferson's behavior as "culpably remiss," "weak 
 and vacillating," and "stupid." J. T. Morse even 
 dismisses Jefferson's desperate efforts during four 
 days to collect militia and save stores and lives with 
 the sneering remark that "the enemy cared little 
 for all his prancing to and fro on blooded steed or 
 raw colt." 
 
 Jefferson was certainly not a "soldier of genius," 
 but that he did all in his power to raise a defensive 
 force of militia in the sorely drained State, as soon 
 as he knew that the British ships were in the Chesa- 
 peake, no one who reads his letters to General Nel- 
 son or Baron Steuben or the county lieutenants can 
 doubt: "That there may not be an instant's delay, 
 let them come in detached parties, as they can be 
 collected: every man who has arms bring them." 
 The legislature adjourned January 2, in spite of his 
 message to them the day before asking their advice. 
 The members of the council went to their homes. 
 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 85 
 
 Jefferson was left alone to cope with the situation. 
 He spent over eighty hours in the saddle ("prancing 
 to and fro")> directing measures of safety which 
 were wise and necessary. The militia, dispersed 
 over a large tract of country, with wretched equip- 
 ment and inadequate means of transportation, came 
 in but slowly. Jefferson wrote to the president of 
 Congress later that on the day the enemy reached 
 Richmond "only 200 [militiaj were embodied. They 
 were of this town and too few to do anything." As 
 the militia increased the enemy withdrew. "To 
 what place they will point their next exertions we 
 cannot conjecture," wrote Jefferson to Congress: 
 "The whole country on the tide-waters and some 
 distance from them is equally open to similar in- 
 sult." 
 
 As to the "warning" Jefferson received from 
 Washington, it was only a general circular letter 
 sent to the various executives, and not at all, as 
 Marshall's language implies, a special message to 
 Jefferson that Virginia was about to be attacked. 
 In fact, Washington had no idea what the destina- 
 tion of the rumored "embarkation" was. He wrote 
 Baron Steuben on December 10: "It is reported 
 from New York that the enemy are about to make 
 another detachment . . . their destination conjec- 
 tured to be southward." Certainly not a very ur- 
 gent warning to the man who commanded the mili- 
 tary forces of the State, under the governor, and 
 
86 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 who was responsible for such defense as it could of- 
 fer in case of invasion. 
 
 But the final justification of Jefferson's conduct is 
 in the approbation of the commander-in-chief him- 
 self. Washington was not slow to discover and re- 
 buke the slightest dereliction of duty. His wrath 
 fell like a thunderbolt on everything that he con- 
 sidered cowardice or "culpable remissness." Yet he 
 wrote Jefferson a few weeks after Arnold's invasion 
 as follows: "It is mortifying to see so inconsiderable 
 a party committing such extensive depradations 
 with impunity, but considering the situation of 
 your State, it is a matter of wonder that you have 
 hitherto suffered so little molestation. I am appre- 
 hensive you will experience more in the future; nor 
 should I be surprised if the enemy were to establish 
 a post in Virginia till the season for opening the 
 campaign here. But as the evils you have to ap- 
 prehend from these predatory excursions are not to 
 be compared to the common cause from the con- 
 quest of the States to the southward of you, I am 
 persuaded the attention to your immediate safety 
 will not divert you from the measures intended to 
 stop the progress of the enemy in that quarter. 
 The late accession of force makes them too power- 
 ful to be resisted without powerful succors from 
 Virginia, and it is certainly her policy, as well as 
 the interest of America, to keep the weight of war 
 at a distance from her. There is no doubt that a 
 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 87 
 
 principal object of Arnold's operations is to make 
 a diversion in favor of Cornwallis, and to remove 
 this motive by disappointing the intention will be 
 one of the surest ways of removing the enemy.' ' 
 A few days later, in a letter to Baron Steuben, 
 Washington acknowledged that the evil which Vir- 
 ginia had suffered was a natural result of the sub- 
 stantial aid which the State was furnishing to Gen- 
 eral Greene in the South, and begged that Steuben 
 would do everything in his power "to make the 
 defence of the State interfere as little as possible 
 with an object of so much the more importance as 
 the danger is so much the greater." Washington 
 was a son of Virginia, too. 
 
 Whether Greene would have been able after Guil- 
 ford Court House to keep the whole South from 
 submission to Cornwallis without the aid sent by 
 Virginia is doubtful. The "northern bretheren" 
 did not help. In fact the armies of North and 
 South had little common direction. Washington, 
 intent to the last on driving the British from New 
 York, had to leave the Southern commanders to 
 get on as best they could, and very often had only 
 the most scanty and belated news of their fortunes. 
 Both Gates and Greene looked to Virginia rather 
 than to New York for help. Both corresponded 
 freely with Jefferson, begging for men and supplies. 
 Seven hundred Virginia militiamen joined Greene's 
 little army before the battle at the Cowpens (Janu- 
 
88 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ary 17, 1781), and a thousand more the next month. 
 Six hundred stand of arms went through Richmond 
 for Greene on February 22, followed by lead, car- 
 tridges, bread, and blankets. Greene, though some- 
 times nervously importunate in his demands on 
 Jefferson, wrote to Washington of his great gratitude 
 for the aid from the protecting State of the South. 
 Cornwallis himself confessed to his superior, Clin- 
 ton, that his "hold on the Carolinas must be diffi- 
 cult if not precarious until Virginia is in a manner 
 subdued." When, therefore, the British commander 
 left Greene in the Carolinas and struck north into 
 Virginia to put an end to the chief source of Greene's 
 supplies, he found a State crippled in the defense 
 of its neighbors. "An enemy 3000 strong," wrote 
 Jefferson to Congress, "not a regular in the State, 
 nor arms to put into the hands of the militia, are 
 indeed discouraging circumstances." 
 
 As the spring of 1781 advanced it became evident 
 that the issue was to be fought out on the soil of 
 Virginia. With reinforcements from Clinton's army 
 in the North, Cornwallis had about seven thousand 
 infantry and cavalry in the State by the end of May, 
 while his privateers, besides ravaging the shores, 
 were effectively preventing the co-operation of the 
 militia in the counties lying on the navigable rivers. 
 Washington had detached Lafayette from the 
 Northern army early in April, but rather to support 
 the Southern States in general than to defend Vir- 
 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 89 
 
 ginia in particular. In fact, Lafayette was to "ad- 
 vise Governor Jefferson " of his intended march 
 through the State of Virginia to reinforce Greene's 
 army. But when Lafayette reached Virginia he 
 found the enemy there. The summer's campaign, 
 conducted at first by Lafayette and Steuben, and 
 finally drawing in Washington, Rochambeau, and 
 the French fleet for the denouement at Yorktown, 
 we shall not describe. Before it had proceeded 
 many days Jefferson's term of office came to a 
 close, and we might let it come to a close in silence, 
 if it were not that accusations of remissness and 
 cowardice pursued him to the end. 
 
 Morse says that when Cornwallis reached Peters- 
 burg " Jefferson could devise nothing better than to 
 implore Washington to hasten to Virginia's rescue." 
 This is what Jefferson actually wrote to Washington 
 over a week after Cornwallis reached Petersburg: 
 "The whole force of the enemy within this State, 
 from the best intelligence I have been able to get, is 
 I think about 7000 men, infantry and cavalry. . . . 
 Your Excellency will judge, from what you know of 
 our country, what it may probably suffer during 
 the present campaign. . . . Were it possible for 
 this circumstance to justify in your Excellency a 
 determination to lend us your personal aid, it is 
 evident from the universal voice, that the presence 
 of their beloved countrymen . . . would restore 
 full confidence of salvation and would render them 
 
90 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 equal to whatever is not impossible. I cannot un- 
 dertake to foresee and obviate the difficulties which 
 lie in the way of such a resolution. The whole sub- 
 ject is before you, of which I see only detached 
 parts, and your judgment will be formed on the 
 view of the whole. ... I have undertaken to hint 
 this matter to your Excellency not only on my own 
 sense of its importance to us, but at the solicitation 
 of many members of weight in our Legislature." 
 This is what Morse, with characteristic misrepre- 
 sentation of Jefferson's spirit, calls "imploring" 
 Washington to come to Virginia's rescue. 
 
 At the close of the letter just quoted Jefferson 
 expressed his gratification in the rapid approach of 
 the day which should end his term of office as gov- 
 ernor. Though eligible for a third term, he had re- 
 solved to retire to private life, believing that " under 
 the pressure of the invasion under which we were 
 then laboring the public would have more confidence 
 in a military chief." However, when the day for 
 Jefferson's retirement arrived (June 2) no successor 
 had been chosen. Cornwallis's advance into Vir- 
 ginia had thrown the legislature into a kind of 
 panic. They adjourned when he approached Rich- 
 mond (May 10), and twice again within the month. 
 They sought refuge in Charlottesville, and when 
 Tarleton's raid drove them out of there, they fled 
 to Staunton, west of the Blue Ridge. Again the 
 report of Tarleton's approach precipitated a panic 
 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 91 
 
 (June 10), and the legislature, after passing a reso- 
 lution that the speaker might call a meeting when 
 and where he pleased, again broke up and dispersed. 
 Many were in favor of appointing Patrick Henry 
 dictator in the crisis. Jefferson, who characterized 
 the move as "treason against the people," says that 
 the proposition "wanted a few votes only of being 
 passed." During all this excitement Jefferson con- 
 tinued to perform the duties of governor in a kind 
 of unofficial interregnum. When the agitation over 
 the dictatorship calmed down and the legislature 
 regained its poise, he surrendered the reins of gov- 
 ernment into the hands of his successor, General 
 Thomas Nelson. 1 
 
 It was, strictly speaking, therefore, as a private 
 citizen that Jefferson suffered the indignity of being 
 driven from his house at Monticello by Tarleton's 
 troopers, and of having his neighboring plantation 
 of Elk Hill visited with all the fury of war's desola- 
 tion and insolence. In the early morning of June 4, 
 1781, a messenger brought Jefferson word at Monti- 
 cello that Tarleton's men were on the way to Char- 
 lottesville, where the legislature was in session. 
 Several members of the legislature, including the 
 speakers of both Houses, were Jefferson's guests at 
 
 1 General Nelson was one of the wealthiest and bravest of Vir- 
 ginia's sons. His old family mansion was within the British lines 
 at Yorktown, and actually occupied by British officers. During the 
 siege Washington wished to spare the house from bombardment, 
 but Nelson proudly refused the favor. 
 
92 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 the time. After breakfast they went down to Char- 
 lottesville, where the assembly met and hastily ad- 
 journed, while Jefferson sent his wife and children to 
 the home of Colonel Coles, some fifteen miles away, 
 and busied himself securing his most important pa- 
 pers. He ordered his groom to have his horse ready 
 at a point on the road to Carter's Mountain, but 
 seeing no signs of the British in the streets of Char- 
 lottesville when he went out to reconnoitre with his 
 telescope, he started back to the house to put a few 
 last papers in order. By a lucky chance he discov- 
 ered that he had lost his light "walking sword' ' 
 from its sheath when he kneeled down to level his 
 telescope; for on his return to the spot to pick it up 
 he looked again in the direction of Charlottesville 
 and saw the streets filled with Tarleton's dragoons. 
 Jefferson then sprang on his horse and rode away 
 to safety. Had he gone back to the house, as he 
 intended, he would have fallen directly into the 
 hands of Captain McLeod, whom Tarleton had sent 
 ahead "to seize Mr. Jefferson and occupy Monti- 
 cello as a look-out." McLeod was actually in pos- 
 session of the house when Jefferson turned back, 
 and he remained there for eighteen hours, depart- 
 ing, be it said to his credit, without injury to prop- 
 erty or persons. 
 
 Far different, however, was Tarleton's behavior 
 at Jefferson's plantation of Elk Hill, which he passed 
 on his way down the James to rejoin Cornwallis. 
 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 93 
 
 Jefferson gives a heartrending description of Tarle- 
 ton's wanton cruelty in a letter written to Doctor 
 Gordon seven years later: "He remained ten days. 
 ... He destroyed all my growing crops of corn 
 and tobacco; he burned all my barns . . . having 
 first taken what corn he wanted. He used, as was 
 to be expected, all my stock of cattle, sheep, and 
 hogs for the sustenance of his army, and carried off 
 all the horses capable of service; of those too young 
 for service he cut the throats. He burned all the 
 fences on the plantation so as to leave it an utter 
 wreck. He carried off, also, about thirty slaves. 
 Had this been to give them freedom he would have 
 done right; but it was to consign them to inevitable 
 death from smallpox and putrid fever then raging in 
 his camp. He treated the rest of the neighborhood 
 in somewhat the same style, but not with the spirit 
 of total extermination with which he seemed to rage 
 over my possessions. . . . History will never re- 
 late the horrors committed by the British army in 
 the Southern States of America. They raged in 
 Virginia six months only . . . and I give you a 
 faithful specimen of their transactions for ten days 
 of that time, and on one spot only. Ex pede Hercu- 
 lem. I suppose their whole devastations during 
 those six months amounted to about £3,000,000 
 sterling. " 
 
 Jefferson's narrow and fortunate escape from 
 seizure by McLeod's troops at Monticello has been 
 
94 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 called by unfavorable biographers " running away 
 from the British/ ' and the impression has been 
 created in thousands of minds that it was cowardice 
 and not prudence that dictated his behavior. Yet 
 the mere statement of the facts shows how inevita- 
 ble was the course which Jefferson took. Every one 
 of his critics would have done the same thing in the 
 same predicament. If anything, he was rashly 
 courageous in staying too long in an exposed and 
 defenseless position. In the panic which seized the 
 State on Cornwallis's invasion, there was the usual 
 nervous campaign of incrimination, the usual hunt 
 for a political victim. Men began to blame the 
 governor for his generosity. If he had kept the 
 arms and soldiers in the State instead of sending 
 them to reinforce Washington in the North and 
 Greene in the South, Virginia would not now be 
 lying prostrate under Tarleton's iron heel. If he 
 had only spent the money to fortify the coast, raids 
 like Arnold's could not have occurred. They forgot 
 that Virginia never had enough and never could 
 get enough money to protect her coast without a 
 navy; and that even if her coast were impregnable it 
 would not prevent Cornwallis from coming up from 
 the Carolinas. They forgot that Virginia was best 
 defended, in the opinion of her own greatest son, by 
 checking the progress of the enemy in the States to 
 the south. Now that this policy had failed and 
 the enemy was upon them, somebody must have 
 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 95 
 
 been guilty of a dereliction of duty. George Nicho- 
 las, of Albemarle, rose in the House and accused 
 Jefferson of not having acted with wisdom and de- 
 cision at the time of Arnold's raid, and demanded 
 an investigation of the facts by the legislature. 
 How the legislature itself had acted, in panicky dis- 
 solutions when Jefferson wanted its advice, he did 
 not dwell on. Jefferson's supporters readily agreed 
 to the investigation, and the hearing was set for 
 December 19, 1781. 
 
 Before the legislature met in the autumn Mr. 
 Nicholas's colleague from Albemarle resigned his 
 seat in Jefferson's favor, to put the ex-governor "on 
 an equal ground for meeting the inquiry," and Jef- 
 ferson was unanimously elected. On the day ap- 
 pointed for the hearing he rose and declared himself 
 ready to meet any charges and answer any inquiries 
 that any member of the assembly chose to make. 
 There was silence. A resume of the intended 
 charges, answered point by point, had been prepared 
 by Jefferson during the summer and sent to the 
 members. It had convinced them all of his blame- 
 lessness in his high office. The session that was set 
 for an investigation of the executive's conduct was 
 turned into a meeting of testimony to his virtues. 
 Both House and Senate passed by a unanimous vote 
 the resolution, "That the sincere thanks of the 
 General Assembly be given to our former governor 
 Thomas Jefferson, for his impartial, upright, and at- 
 
96 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 tentive administration whilst in office. The Assem- 
 bly wish, in the strongest manner to declare the high 
 opinion which they entertain of Mr. Jefferson's 
 ability, rectitude, and integrity as chief magistrate 
 of this Commonwealth, and mean by thus publicly 
 avowing their opinion to obviate and remove all 
 unmerited censure." 
 
 The commendation bestowed by Washington on 
 Jefferson's administration of the State of Virginia 
 was no less hearty. In a letter written to Jefferson 
 on June 8, 1781, the commander-in-chief says: 
 "Allow me, before I take leave of your Excellency 
 in your public capacity, to express the obligations 
 I am under for the readiness and zeal with which 
 you have always forwarded and supported every 
 measure which I have had occasion to recommend 
 through you, and to assure you that I shall esteem 
 myself honored by a continuation of your friendship 
 and correspondence, should your country permit 
 you to remain in the private walk of life." This 
 unqualified and generous praise Mr. Morse calls 
 "some courteous words" at the close of a letter 
 which Washington had found occasion to write to 
 Jefferson, giving the latter "a sort of certificate of 
 good character." "With such comfort as he could 
 find in these testimonials," continues Morse, "Jef- 
 ferson withdrew to private life. . . . Altogether 
 he had had decidedly hard fortune." 
 
 Jefferson had indeed had "hard fortune." But 
 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 97 
 
 hard fortune is no disgrace. He was a man of peace 
 called to preside over a State inevitably exposed to 
 the most exasperating form of war. He was a man 
 of extreme sensitiveness subjected to a criticism 
 from old friends which was no less galling because it 
 was undeserved. His domestic life was saddened 
 by the death of an infant daughter in April, 1781, 
 and the steady deterioration of his frail wife's health. 
 Not all of his measures as governor may have been 
 the wisest. He might, as Eckenrode suggests, have 
 requisitioned tobacco, flour, and beef in the State, 
 to purchase arms and ammunition in France. But 
 when British cruisers were swarming in Chesapeake 
 Bay and hovering over the shores of Virginia with 
 menace of fire and plunder, it is difficult to see how 
 Jefferson could have either got the tobacco to 
 France or the arms into Virginia. The French fleet 
 could not be enlisted in any permanent defense of 
 our shores. At most they would come up from the 
 West Indies to participate in some strategic move 
 against the British. They hardly helped us at all 
 until the Yorktown campaign — but there their help 
 meant victory. 
 
 The single official act of his governorship that 
 gave Jefferson unalloyed satisfaction was the signing 
 of the resolution of the Virginia Legislature trans- 
 ferring the western territory, which was Virginia's 
 by the double claim of charter and conquest, to the 
 government of the United States. On January 2, 
 
98 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 1781, the very day that the definite news of Arnold's 
 approach reached Richmond, the legislature, before 
 its hasty adjournment, ceded the territory north of 
 the Ohio to the United States, on condition that the 
 States should ratify the Articles of Confederation. 
 Jefferson transmitted the resolution to the president 
 of Congress, expressing the hope that "the other 
 States of the Union, equally impressed with the 
 necessity of that important convention [the Arti- 
 cles of Confederation] shall be willing to sacrifice 
 equally to its completion. This single event [con- 
 federation], could it take place shortly, would 
 overweigh every success which the enemy have 
 hitherto obtained, and render desperate the hopes 
 to which those successes have given birth." Vir- 
 ginia's splendid example won the cause. Within 
 two months the last State, Maryland, signed the 
 Articles, and the United States had its first Con- 
 stitution in black on white. 
 
 The Northwest Territory thus ceded by Virginia 
 was the beginning of the magnificent public domain 
 of the United States, which, during the next two 
 generations, through cessions by the States, pur- 
 chase from France, treaty with England, conquest 
 from Mexico, was extended to the Pacific coast; and 
 whose political organization, economic development, 
 and social amalgamation have exercised the most 
 potent influence on the course of American history. 
 By the transfer of the Northwest Territory, as gov- 
 
JEFFERSON AS WAR GOVERNOR 99 
 
 ernor of Virginia, and the purchase of the Louisiana 
 Territory, as President of the United States, Thomas 
 Jefferson set his seal to the acquisition of a national 
 domain imperial in extent and exhaustless in wealth; 
 by his plan of government for the territory west of 
 the Alleghanies in 1784 and his despatch of Lewis 
 and Clark to the Pacific coast twenty years later, he 
 stamped his name on our great Western wilderness 
 and his ideas on all our subsequent territorial policy. 
 Jefferson retired from the governorship in the 
 midsummer of 1781 under the double cloud of official 
 criticism and domestic anxiety. He was a man 
 singularly free his life long from feelings of resent- 
 ment or revenge. Yet the sense of his imputed 
 failure in the highest office within the gift of his 
 " countrymen " lingered for many months to em- 
 bitter a heart racked with the pain of watching its 
 dearest treasure slowly stolen away by the inexora- 
 ble hand of death. He believed that he had done 
 with public life forever. The thought of office al- 
 most sickened him. He declined an appointment 
 by Congress in June, 1781, to join Adams, Franklin, 
 Jay, and Laurens in Europe to represent the United 
 States in a proposed peace congress at Vienna. He 
 refused an election to Congress by the Virginia 
 legislature in December. To his kinsman, Edmund 
 Randolph, he wrote from Monticello: "I have re- 
 tired to my farm, my family, and my books, from 
 which I think nothing will evermore separate me. 
 
100 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 A desire to leave public office with a reputation not 
 more blotted than it has deserved will oblige me to 
 emerge at the next session of our assembly and 
 perhaps to accept a seat in it, but as I go with a 
 single object I shall withdraw when that shall be 
 concluded." 1 His intimate friends, Madison and 
 Monroe, both tried to coax him from the tent of 
 Achilles. The former thought that his "keen sensi- 
 bility" (sensitiveness) was not "dictated either by 
 philosophy or patriotism," and Monroe frankly told 
 him that his conduct was provoking murmurs. But 
 still Jefferson persevered in his course of "obstinate 
 condolement." He could have comforted himself, 
 he writes Monroe, "under the disapprobation of the 
 well-meaning but uninformed people," but the mis- 
 trust of their enlightened representatives, letting 
 him "stand for months arraigned of treason of the 
 heart" as well as "weakness of the head," was a 
 "wound in his spirit which could only be cured by 
 the all-healing grave." This distressing period of 
 morbid reflection on past chagrin and mortal anxiety 
 for what the next day might bring forth passed with 
 the death of Mrs. Jefferson, early in September, 
 1782. That great baptism of sorrow swept away all 
 lesser memories of ill, and Jefferson was ready when 
 his country called him a few weeks later to a post of 
 honor and service. 
 
 1 Referring, of course, to the proposed examination of his conduct 
 by the legislature, set for December 19, 1781. Jefferson's letter to 
 Randolph was written in September. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE MISSION TO FRANCE 
 
 / do love this people with all my heart, and think that with a better 
 religion, a better form of Government and their present governors their 
 condition and Country would be most enviable. (Jefferson to Mrs. John 
 Adams, June 21, 1785.) 
 
 The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown put an 
 end to the American Revolution. On March 5, 1782, 
 the British Parliament authorized the ministry to 
 make peace, and a fortnight later Lord North, who 
 had been at the head of the government for twelve 
 years, resigned the seals to the Marquis of Rock- 
 ingham, the liberal Whig under whom the Stamp 
 Act had been repealed in 1766. Rockingham died 
 in July, but his successor, Lord Shelburne, carried 
 on his policy of a friendly consideration of American 
 claims. Benjamin Franklin was at the head of our 
 peace commission in Paris, with Jay, Adams, and 
 Laurens as his colleagues. They were all able men, 
 but the negotiations halted a bit. Franklin was 
 seventy-six years old and not in the best of health. 
 Jay and Adams had to leave their respective diplo- 
 matic posts in Madrid and Amsterdam to take part 
 in the discussions in Paris, while Laurens was cap- 
 tured by the English on the voyage to Europe and 
 held a prisoner in the Tower of London until the 
 
 101 
 
102 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 conferences were nearly over. Congress thought it 
 wise to add to the commission a member fresh from 
 America, acquainted at first hand with the condi^ 
 tions of the later years of the war; and their unani- 
 mous choice fell on Jefferson. The appointment 
 reached him at Monticello, November 25, 1782, and 
 he immediately accepted it, not only as a rare op- 
 portunity for public service, but as a relief from the 
 brooding sorrow of his great affliction. His passion 
 for art, music, science, and philosophy heightened 
 the anticipation of companionship with the noted 
 men of culture whose names graced the intellectual 
 capital of the world in the latter days of the old 
 regime in France. Paris was his Mecca. 
 
 Jefferson left Monticello for Philadelphia in De- 
 cember. The French minister, Luzerne, offered him 
 passage on the frigate Romulus, on which Jefferson's 
 friend and late visitor to Monticello, the Marquis de 
 Chastellux, 1 was also to sail. But Jefferson's view 
 of the towers of Notre Dame and the courts of the^ 
 Louvre was destined to still further postponement. 
 While the Romulus lay a few miles below Baltimore, 
 blocked by the ice and fearful of the British cruisers 
 
 1 De Chastellux (1734-88) was one of the French generals in the 
 American Revolution, and a member of the Academie frangaise. He 
 published his Travels in the Southern States of America in 1788. We 
 are indebted to Chastellux for one of the most charming descriptions 
 of Jefferson in retirement at Monticello in the spring of 1782: "A 
 man not yet forty, tall and with a mild and pleasing countenance, 
 but whose mind and understanding are ample substitutes for every 
 exterior grace. An American who, without ever having quitted his 
 own country, is at once a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 103 
 
 that were reported off the capes of Chesapeake Bay, 
 word arrived that the preliminaries of peace had 
 been signed in Paris. There was, then, no further 
 immediate need for Jefferson's services abroad, 
 though he remained in Philadelphia, his mission 
 " suspended" only, until Congress should have 
 assurance that everything was proceeding smoothly 
 toward the final peace. On April 1, 1783, Congress 
 thanked Jefferson for the readiness with which he 
 had undertaken "a service which from the present 
 situation of affairs" they "apprehend can be dis- 
 pensed with," and by the middle of May he was 
 back at Monticello. 
 
 But not for long. Just three weeks after his 
 arrival home he was elected by the Virginia legisla- 
 ture, with his friend James Monroe and three other 
 colleagues, to serve for the next ensuing term of 
 Congress. The impotence and ignominy of that 
 body at the close of the Revolution were notorious. 
 Our debt was huge, the continental currency was 
 worthless, and Congress had no competency to lay 
 taxes. The States were quarrelling over boundaries 
 and tariff reprisals, while Congress had no adequate 
 
 and astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesman. 
 A Senator of America, who sat for two years in that famous Con- 
 gress which brought about the Revolution ... a Governor of 
 Virginia, who filled that difficult station during the recent invasions 
 of Arnold, of Phillips, and of Cornwallis. . . . Sometimes natural 
 philosophy, at others politics or the arts were the topics of our con- 
 versation, for no object had escaped Mr. Jefferson; and it seemed as 
 if from his youth he had placed his mind, as he had his house, on 
 an elevated situation from which he might contemplate the universe." 
 
104 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 machinery either for the settlement of their quarrels 
 with one another or the enforcement of their obedi- 
 ence to the central power. Foreign nations were 
 naturally sceptical about reposing confidence in a 
 government which could not win the confidence of 
 its own States, and diplomats in Paris, London, and 
 Madrid blandly asked whether they were expected 
 to make treaties with thirteen American nations or 
 one. The army was unpaid and mutinous. "They 
 have swords in their hands," wrote Gouverneur 
 Morris to Jay, "and you know enough of the history 
 of mankind to know much more than I have said." 
 The dignified and pathetic appeal of Washington 
 himself quelled the insubordination of the officers 
 at Newburgh, in March, 1783, but a few months 
 later eighty men of a Pennsylvania regiment, raw 
 recruits whose pay was in arrears, marched on 
 Philadelphia declaring that they would "have their 
 rights" from Congress. They swaggered through 
 the streets with a good deal of harmless bluster, 
 which was turned into riot and ribaldry when they 
 "found their unerring way to the wine-bottles and 
 ale-casks of hospitable Philadelphia." Congress 
 protested against this insult to its dignity by with- 
 drawing from the city and the State. It established 
 itself first in Princeton, New Jersey, then moved to 
 Trenton, and finally to Annapolis, Maryland. 
 
 It was at Trenton that Jefferson found Congress 
 and took his seat, November 4, 1783. That same 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 105 
 
 day the body adjourned to meet at Annapolis three 
 weeks later. But so insignificant had Congress be- 
 come that a majority of the States, necessary to 
 constitute a house for any kind of business, were 
 not represented in Annapolis before the middle of 
 December. Jefferson sat only from December until 
 the following May, but these five months were full 
 of activity. His name was at the head of most of 
 the important committees and his pen was in con- 
 stant requisition. He wrote the reply which the 
 president of Congress made to General Washington 
 when the latter laid down the command of the 
 army which he had so wonderfully led for eight 
 years. He took up Gouverneur Morris's suggestion 
 for a decimal system of coinage, substituting our 
 dollar for Morris's absurd unit of 1-1440 of a dollar, 
 and advocating the extension of the decimal system 
 to all our tables of weights and measures — a service 
 for which school children and teachers, clerks and 
 merchants, "the mason, the shipwright, and the 
 carpenter/' the "butcher, the baker, and the can- 
 dlestick-maker" will all gladly join in erecting a 
 monument to him when the present complicated 
 and stupid tables are abolished. 
 
 The treaty of peace with Great Britain came be- 
 fore Congress in December, 1783, but it was not 
 until the middle of January that representatives 
 from the nine States necessary for its ratification 
 could be secured. Several members of Congress 
 
106 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 were in favor of ratifying by the vote of seven 
 States only, trusting that the British Government 
 might not detect the harmless fraud — an eloquent 
 testimony both to the members' own regard for the 
 sanctity of the law of their country and to their 
 estimate of its importance in the eyes of foreign 
 nations. Jefferson discountenanced this plan as "a 
 dishonorable prostitution of our seal." 1 Delegates 
 from Connecticut and South Carolina arrived at 
 last, and on January 14, 1784, Jefferson had the 
 satisfaction of setting his name to the ratification 
 of the treaty acknowledging the Declaration of In- 
 dependence which he had drafted seven and a half 
 years before. Other signers of the Declaration who 
 were present in Congress to participate in the rati- 
 fication were Roger Sherman, Elbridge Gerry, Rob- 
 ert Morris, and William Ellery. 
 
 By far the most important of Jefferson's many 
 services, however, during the few months of his 
 attendance at Congress was the drafting of a plan 
 
 1 Jefferson had been appointed on July 4, 1776, on a committee 
 with Franklin and Adams to prepare a device for a seal for the 
 United States. Each of the three members of the committee sug- 
 gested a device, Jefferson's being the most elaborate. But Congress 
 was too critical or too busy (although further designs were submitted 
 in 1779 and 1780) to decide on the seal until the close of the war. 
 On June 20, 1782, the great seal of the United States was adopted 
 from a design sent over from England by our minister, John Adams, 
 and furnished to him, it is said, by Sir John Prestwich, Baronet, who 
 was a friend of America in the Revolution. A most interesting illus- 
 trated article in Harper's Magazine for July, 1856, describes the 
 genesis of the great seal, and the reproductions show the great 
 superiority of Jefferson's design to the one adopted. 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 107 
 
 for the government of our western territory. Vir- 
 ginia's cession of the territory north and west of the 
 Ohio, which we mentioned near the close of the last 
 chapter, was completed on March 1, 1784. Jeffer- 
 son was appointed with Chase, of Maryland, and 
 Howell, of Rhode Island, to prepare a plan for its 
 temporary government. Without waiting for the 
 other States with western claims to cede their lands 
 beyond the Alleghanies, Jefferson drew up and re- 
 ported an " Ordinance for the government of the 
 Western Territory of the United States." The 
 draft of the ordinance in Jefferson's handwriting is 
 in the archives of the State Department at Wash- 
 ington. It provided for the division of the whole 
 territory between the Alleghanies and the Missis- 
 sippi, into "States" by degrees of latitude and 
 meridians of longitude. Each " State," as soon as 
 it should have " acquired 20,000 free inhabitants," 
 should be authorized by Congress to establish a 
 permanent constitution and government for itself, 
 which must conform to the following principles : 
 
 (1) It must forever remain a part of this Confed- 
 
 eration of the United States of America. 
 
 (2) Its powers, property, and territory must be 
 
 subject to the government of the United 
 States in Congress assembled. 
 
 (3) It must pay the part of the federal debts con- 
 
 tracted or to be contracted which was 
 apportioned to it by Congress. 
 
108 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 (4) Its government must be republican in form 
 
 and admit no person to be a citizen who 
 holds any hereditary title. 
 
 (5) Slavery should not exist in any of the " States" 
 
 after the year 1800 of the Christian era. 
 
 Whenever any of these new States gained as 
 many inhabitants as the least populous of the 
 thirteen original States, its delegates should be ad- 
 mitted to Congress "on an equal footing with the 
 said original States, provided nine States agreed to 
 such admission." Until then they should have a 
 representative in Congress with the right of debat- 
 ing but not of voting. 
 
 The student of our political institutions will rec- 
 ognize in this ordinance of Jefferson's all the essen- 
 tial principles of the organization and government 
 of Territories of the United States. Since the year 
 1910 Territorial governments within our country 
 proper have ceased; an unbroken band of forty-eight 
 States extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 
 But from the Virginia cession of 1784 down to the 
 Civil War at least one-half of the area of the United 
 States was in the form of Territories, and the recip- 
 rocal influence of the old States on the new Territo- 
 ries and the new Territories on the old States has 
 been one of the most important of the political and 
 social chapters of American history. In the light of 
 these facts Jefferson's Ordinance for the government 
 of the West takes on a great significance. Its provi- 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 109 
 
 sions were copied largely in the famous Northwest 
 Ordinance of 1787 and in the Constitution of the 
 United States. Its spirit influenced our Territorial 
 governments for more than a century. 
 
 Jefferson's Ordinance was not adopted in toto, 
 however. The fantastic names which he suggested 
 for the new Western States were dropped; the clause 
 forbidding the holder of an hereditary title to be- 
 come a citizen was stricken out; and the provision 
 for the abolition of slavery after the year 1800 was 
 defeated. Only the three States of South Carolina, 
 Maryland, and Virginia actually voted against the 
 no-slavery clause; but Georgia and Delaware had 
 no delegates at all in Congress at the time, New 
 Jersey's vote was lost because she had only a single 
 delegate present, and North Carolina's because her 
 two delegates were paired. So there remained but 
 the six States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 
 Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and Penn- 
 sylvania in support of the clause. One more dele- 
 gate in attendance from New Jersey, or the change 
 of one vote of the Virginia or North Carolina dele- 
 gation would have given the vote of the seventh 
 State necessary to make the majority. 
 
 It is doubtful if a vote fraught with more serious 
 consequences for the subsequent history of our 
 country has ever been passed by the Congress of 
 the United States than this rejection of a no-slavery 
 clause in the plan of government for our Western 
 
110 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 territory. Had the clause been adopted and ob- 
 served, the territory south of the Ohio as well as 
 that to the north would have been organized as free 
 soil. The next fifteen years would not have seen 
 the admission of Kentucky (1792) and Tennessee 
 (1796) as slave States, and the organization of the 
 huge Mississippi Territory (1798) with slavery. 
 The invention of the cotton-gin and the consequent 
 hunger for new slave soil was still a decade off when 
 Jefferson's clause was rejected. A broad band of 
 free soil might have extended from the Lakes to the 
 Gulf, shutting slavery up in the original States of 
 the South along the Atlantic, and presenting a solid 
 front of freedom on the Mississippi. Instead, the 
 sectional antagonism in the old States was carried 
 out to the frontier, there to kindle a struggle for the 
 possession of every new acquisition of territory. 
 The Civil War is latent in the vote of 1784. Abra- 
 ham Lincoln and the Republican party came back 
 to the rejected clause of Jefferson's Ordinance for 
 their platform: no slavery in the Territories of the 
 United States. Jefferson expressed his disappoint- 
 ment mildly to Madison in a letter of April 25: 
 "South Carolina, Maryland, and! Virginia! voted 
 against it"; but to his French friend, De Meusnier, 
 he poured out his indignant sorrow: "The voice of a 
 single individual would have prevented this abomi- 
 nable crime from spreading itself over the new coun- 
 try. Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hang- 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 111 
 
 ing on the tongue of one man, and heaven was silent 
 in that awful moment." 
 
 With the advent of peace and the acknowledg- 
 ment of our independence it became necessary for us 
 to win a respected place in the family of nations. 
 Our commerce had been monopolized by England 
 to such an extent that we had had little opportu- 
 nity of showing to other European nations the 
 reciprocal advantages that would result from an 
 exchange of goods. John Adams declared in his 
 later days that he could not read the British Acts of 
 Trade as a young lawyer "without pronouncing a 
 hearty curse upon them ... as a humiliation, a 
 degradation, and a disgrace" to his country. But 
 the British acts were not exceptionally severe. On 
 the contrary, they were rather more liberal than 
 those of most European countries. Free trade was 
 a thing unknown in the eighteenth century. Every 
 land surrounded itself with tariff walls and tried to 
 monopolize its colonies' products. So long as we 
 were a part of the great British Empire we enjoyed 
 the benefits of her colonial monopoly, in spite of 
 the exasperating acts arising from the enforcement of 
 that monopoly, and our products found good mar- 
 kets and favorable tariff discriminations within the 
 Empire. But when we became an independent na- 
 tion we found ourselves outside the protective sys- 
 tem of Great Britain, without thereby being ad- 
 mitted to the privileges of trade with the other 
 
112 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 countries of the Old World. We were independent, 
 but alone. We were known as " successful rebels," 
 but not as good customers. We had, to be sure, 
 made a fairly favorable treaty of commerce with 
 France in 1778, but the grip of monopoly and privi- 
 lege on the old regime prevented Louis XVI's min- 
 isters from putting it into operation. Holland and 
 Sweden also had made commercial treaties with us 
 during the war and so opened a modest opportunity 
 for the " economic invasion" of Europe by our fish 
 and rice, our lumber, whale-oil, tobacco, and wheat. 
 But Great Britain refused to open to the United 
 States the trade with the West Indies which we had 
 enjoyed as British colonies. She even refused to 
 put us on the footing of "the most favored nation" 
 in our trade with the home land. We had no trade 
 agreements, hence no security of commerce, with 
 Russia, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Tus- 
 cany, Naples, Venice, Rome, Turkey, Morocco, Al- 
 giers — in short, with hardly any of the maritime 
 nations of the Old World. 
 
 Congress decided in the spring of 1784 to make &n 
 effort to break down the protective barriers in 
 Europe. On May 7 it resolved that "a minister 
 plenipotentiary be appointed to active conjunction 
 with Mr. Adams and Doctor Franklin in negotiating 
 treaties of commerce with foreign nations." The 
 choice of Congress fell on Jefferson. It was his 
 fourth invitation since the Declaration of Indepen- 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 113 
 
 dence to go to Paris on a public mission. And this 
 time he was not to be disappointed. As the ap- 
 pointment was for only two years, he left his younger 
 daughter and his nephews at home, taking only his 
 eldest daughter, Martha, who since Mrs. Jefferson's 
 death had become his inseparable companion. He 
 left Annapolis for Philadelphia and Boston four days 
 after his appointment. " While passing through the 
 different States," he says in his Memoir, "I made a 
 point of informing myself of the state of commerce 
 in each, went on to New Hampshire with the same 
 view, and returned to Boston." He was enthusias- 
 tically received in Boston, where, as he wrote Gerry, 
 much of his time was " occupied by the hospitality 
 and civilities of this place." A guest's chair was 
 provided for him in the general court of Massa- 
 chusetts. He sailed for Europe on Monday, July 5, 
 in the Ceres, and as his ship dropped down the har- 
 bor, through its emerald islands, she was wafted on 
 her way by the cheers of thousands of patriots 
 gathered in Faneuil Hall, the " Cradle of Liberty," 
 to listen to the annual oration on the text of his 
 immortal Declaration. A pleasant voyage of nine- 
 teen days brought the Ceres to Cowes, where Jeffer- 
 son was detained by the illness of his daughter. 
 He reached Paris early in August. " Immediately 
 called on Doctor Franklin at Passy," he writes, 
 "communicated to him our charge, and we wrote 
 to Mr. Adams, then at the Hague, to join us." 
 
114 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 As soon as the plenipotentiaries were all together 
 in Paris they drew up the general form of a commer- 
 cial treaty on a plan proposed by Jefferson and re- 
 flecting his humanitarian principles. This treaty 
 has seldom received its due notice at the hands of 
 historians, because, unfortunately, instead of being 
 written into the law of nations, it was consigned to 
 the archives of the diplomatic correspondence of the 
 United States. Washington called it "the most 
 original and liberal treaty ever negotiated/ ' and 
 declared that it would open "a new sera in negotia- 
 tion/ ^ Some of its twenty-seven articles reveal 
 the inhuman practices which prevailed even among 
 friendly nations toward the close of the eighteenth 
 century. 1 Others run far in advance of the position 
 yet reached by nations that call themselves civilized, 
 in the delimitation of the inevitable horrors of war 
 and in the protection of the rights of neutrals. The 
 coasts of the enemy were not to be ravaged, priva- 
 teering was forbidden, non-combatants on land and 
 sea were not to be molested, neutral property was 
 not to be confiscated. "It seems a mockery of 
 noble endeavor/ ' says James Parton in his enter- 
 taining biography of Jefferson, "that such a draft 
 should have been placed on record on the eve of 
 
 1 The articles, for example, providing that mariners who were 
 shipwrecked should not be plundered, and that "when subjects or 
 citizens of one party shall die within the jurisdiction of the other," 
 their bodies "shall be decently buried and protected from violence 
 or disturbance." 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 115 
 
 wars which desolated Europe for twenty years, dur- 
 ing which every principle of humanity and right was 
 ruthlessly trampled under foot." So the moralist of 
 to-day might view the noble labors of The Hague 
 conferences and Lake Mohonk peace meetings ! 
 
 John Adams was appointed minister to England 
 in February, 1785, and the aged Franklin was re- 
 lieved of the burden of his diplomatic post at Paris 
 a few weeks later. Jefferson was appointed minister 
 to France in Franklin's place, for a period of three 
 years from March 10, 1785. He entered on his 
 mission with the best of auguries for its success with 
 the French Court — a neatly turned phrase. "You 
 replace Doctor Franklin, I hear/' said the foreign 
 minister, Vergennes. "I succeed him," replied 
 Jefferson; "nobody could replace him." 
 
 There is little that is exciting or even picturesque 
 in the strictly official life of Jefferson in his four 
 years residence in Paris. He says himself: "My 
 duties at Paris were confined to a few objects, the 
 receipt of our whale-oils, salted fish, and salted meats 
 on favorable terms, the admission of our rice on 
 equal terms with that of Piedmont, Egypt, and the 
 Levant, a mitigation of the monopolies of our to- 
 bacco by the Farmers-General, and a free admission 
 of our productions into their islands." He found 
 the foreign minister, Vergennes, "frank, honorable, 
 and easy of access," though he had the reputation 
 with the diplomatic corps at Paris of being "wary 
 
116 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 and slippery." But frank and honorable as Ver- 
 gennes might be, he did not advance far on the way 
 of commercial confidence in the new American na- 
 tion. 1 Jefferson returned again and again to his 
 assault on the privileges of the tobacco monopolists 
 and the salt ring. "His diplomatic correspondence 
 with Vergennes and Montmorin," says Morse, 
 " fairly reeks with the flavor of whale-oil, salt-fish, 
 and tobacco. " He declared that his countrymen 
 were ready and eager to buy French goods if they 
 could only find the return market in France for 
 their own. He drew up statistics to show that 
 King Louis would gain, as well as the American 
 government, by breaking up the monopoly of the 
 farmers-general and collecting his own royal im- 
 posts directly on American importations. But it 
 was of no avail. Vergennes confessed that he saw 
 the force of Jefferson's arguments, but replied that 
 the King received $28,000,000 a year from the Farm 
 now, that this method of collecting the revenue 
 "was of very ancient date, and that it was always 
 hazardous to alter arrangements of long standing" 
 
 1 In his Memoir, written nearly forty years later, Jefferson speaks 
 of Vergennes and the French Government as "entirely disposed to 
 befriend us on all occasions and to yield us every indulgence not ab- 
 solutely injurious to themselves." But in a letter of January 30, 
 1787, to Madison, he says of Vergennes: "He is a great minister in 
 European affairs, but has a very imperfect idea of our institutions 
 and no confidence in them. His devotion to the principles of pure 
 despotism renders him unaffectionate to our governments [notice 
 the plural!]. But his fear of England makes him value us as a 
 makeweight." 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 117 
 
 — the doctrine which brought the throne of France 
 down with a crash before another ten years passed ! 
 Some few minor privileges for American com- 
 merce Jefferson did gain by dint of persistent notes. 
 Two new free ports were opened to American goods; 
 duties were lowered somewhat in other ports and 
 their collection made less annoying; whale-oil and 
 spermaceti were allowed to come in with only the 
 duty on their crude bulk, and pearl-ashes, beaver- 
 skins, leather, ship-timber, and some minor articles 
 were admitted free of duty. The farmers-general 
 were ordered to purchase some of their tobacco in 
 America, and a commission to encourage the impor- 
 tation of American rice was promised. But this 
 was the extent of our minister's success when, on 
 August 6, 1787, he "received an intimation from 
 the French government," as he wrote our foreign 
 secretary, John Jay, "that it would be agreeable 
 not to press our commercial regulations at that 
 moment, the Ministry being too much occupied 
 with the difficulties surrounding them to spare a 
 moment on any subject that would admit of delay." 
 The difficulties were gathering indeed. A comp- 
 troller-general of the finances had announced the 
 bankruptcy of the Court. The King had in vain 
 summoned the notables to Versailles to help him 
 out of the predicament. The Parlement refused to 
 register the royal edicts of taxation, and letters 
 were already prepared for the exile of its members 
 
118 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 in a body. The pains of the great Revolution had 
 seized on France. 
 
 In spite of the fact that the results of Jefferson's 
 diplomacy were so meagre in comparison with his 
 efforts, those efforts were by no means wasted. 
 The files of our State Department contain no more 
 striking examples of clear and accurate reasoning, 
 of just reflection on international obligations, of 
 illuminating estimate and analysis of the national 
 psychology of a foreign people, than Jefferson's de- 
 spatches from France. Even his enemy John Mar- 
 shall admitted that Jefferson " quitted himself much 
 to the public satisfaction" in his mission to France; 
 and Daniel Webster declared that "Mr. Jefferson's 
 discharge of his diplomatic duties was marked by 
 great ability, diligence, and patriotism." In addi- 
 tion to his labor for commercial concessions, Jeffer- 
 son devoted much time to the improvement of the 
 condition of our travellers, traders, and seamen 
 actually in French ports. He completed a consular 
 convention in 1788 which safeguarded the rights of 
 visiting seamen. His private purse was often at 
 the disposal of his embarrassed countrymen. His 
 valuable time and legal advice were given without 
 price and without stint to his fellow Americans in 
 difficulty abroad. 
 
 Nor were his activities confined to France alone. 
 A most disgraceful state of affairs existed in the 
 western Mediterranean. The "Barbary States" of 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 119 
 
 Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, combining 
 fanatical religion with mundane greed, were waging 
 a war of piracy against the maritime nations of 
 Christendom. They held the keys to the Medi- 
 terranean, and took tribute of Great Britain, France, 
 Spain, Holland, Portugal, Venice, and Naples alike. 
 America was expected to pay, too. An American 
 brig, the Betsy, was seized and taken to Morocco in 
 the spring of 1785, and its craw finally liberated only 
 by the intervention of Spain. When asked by Jef- 
 ferson with what right his people made war with 
 an unoffending nation at peace with them, the 
 Tripolitan envoy in London replied that it was 
 "written in the Koran that all nations which had 
 not acknowledged the Prophet [Mohammed] were 
 sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the 
 faithful to plunder and enslave." Outrageous as 
 the depredations of these fanatical pirates were, the 
 impotent government of the United States under 
 the Articles of Confederation could not stop them. 
 Jefferson was ordered to make a "present" of $20,000 
 to the Dey of Algiers, the "King of Cruelties," and 
 another of $20,000 to the Sultan of Morocco. Trip- 
 oli demanded $150,000, with a tip of $15,000 for the 
 ambassador, to guarantee a perpetual peace. We 
 were reduced to bargaining with the monastic order 
 of the Mathurins, who acted as emancipation bro- 
 kers in the Barbary states, to get our sailors and 
 captains ransomed at the best figures possible. 
 
120 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Indignant over the treatment of civilized peoples 
 by these Mohammedan brigands, Jefferson tried to 
 unite the maritime nations of western Europe in a 
 league to enforce peace and security in the Mediter- 
 ranean. A joint fleet of six frigates and as many 
 smaller vessels was to be maintained by contribu- 
 tions in proportion to benefits received. The direc- 
 tion of the fleet was to proceed from Paris, under a 
 committee of the resident ambassadors and minis- 
 ters. Even in the case of war arising between par- 
 ties to this league, it should not interrupt the work 
 or hinder the parties from being "reputed at peace 
 as to this enterprise." Several of the European 
 states responded favorably to Jefferson's proposal, 
 although the suspicion that either France or England 
 might join with the pirate states against the league 
 could not be wholly hidden. However, when Jef- 
 ferson applied to Congress to initiate the scheme by 
 the loan of a frigate and a contribution for its sup- 
 port, the States refused to contribute and the whole 
 plan fell through. Jefferson's ears were filled with 
 the wails of American sailors unransomed in African 
 prisons during the whole of his residence in France. 
 Their doleful cries followed him home across the 
 sea. As secretary of state he was still negotiating 
 for them in 1793, and ten years later, as President 
 of the United States, he sent our new navy to the 
 Mediterranean to seek out the pirates in their own 
 lair and scourge them into decency. 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 121 
 
 It is rather the unofficial activity of Jefferson dur- 
 ing his French mission that enlists our interest. 
 The stimulus to his receptive spirit of the opportu- 
 nities of culture in Paris keyed his mind to a pitch 
 of creative and versatile energy such as we have 
 not seen in him before. His correspondence from 
 France and in France is voluminous and varied. He 
 revelled in pictures, sculpture, architecture, ma- 
 chinery, books, plants, and seeds. He visited the 
 provinces to get acquainted with the French peas- 
 ant, writing from Nice to his friend Lafayette: 
 "You must ferret the people out of their hovels as 
 I have done, look into their kettles, eat their bread, 
 loll on their beds under pretence of resting yourself, 
 but in fact to find if they are soft." He got so ab- 
 sorbed in a controversy with the celebrated Buffon 
 over the natural history of the moose that he com- 
 missioned his friend General Sullivan, of New 
 Hampshire, to go into the woods and shoot a moose 
 and send its bones and skin to Paris. The box ar- 
 rived duly, with an incidental bill of expense amount- 
 ing to thirty-six guineas. Buffon was convinced. 
 
 Soon after his arrival in Paris, before he had suc- 
 ceeded to Franklin's place as minister, Jefferson won 
 his admission into the literary circle by the publi- 
 cation of his Notes on Virginia, the only one of his 
 compositions to rise out of the class of pamphlets 
 to the dignity of a bound book. The Notes on Vir- 
 ginia were written in 1782, after Jefferson's retire- 
 
122 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ment from the governorship, in answer to a series 
 of questions addressed to him by the secretary of 
 the French Legation at Philadelphia, the Marquis 
 de Barbe-Marbois. They contain a complete de- 
 scription of the State of Virginia, its natural history, 
 products, climate, population, laws, education, re- 
 ligion, manners, manufactures and commerce, pub- 
 lic revenues and expenses, history, memorials, and 
 state papers. There is much in the work that is 
 antiquated and irrelevant now, of course. Many 
 of the speculations on ethnology and natural history 
 have been corrected by modern science. But in 
 spite of this the volume is a most valuable contri- 
 bution to our social and economic history, and a 
 fascinating picture of the life of the great State of 
 Virginia at the end of the colonial period. 
 
 Finding that he could have his Notes printed in 
 France at about one-fourth the cost of publication 
 in Virginia, Jefferson had two hundred copies struck 
 off in Paris for distribution among his friends in 
 America and learned men in Europe. The work 
 was soon translated into French and won for its 
 author a reputation in the world of letters. A little 
 later his statute for religious liberty was passed 
 through the legislature of Virginia. It was trans- 
 lated and circulated in Europe, where it made a 
 great and immediate impression. Jefferson wrote 
 to his fellow reviser, Wythe, August 13, 1786: "Our 
 act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 123 
 
 The ambassadors and ministers of the several na- 
 tions at this court have asked of me copies of it to 
 send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full 
 length in several books now in the press; among 
 others in the new Encyclo-pazdia" Jefferson was 
 invited by De Meusnier, the editor of the part of 
 the Encyclopedie Methodique which dealt with politi- 
 cal economy and diplomacy, to answer many queries 
 about the political and economic history of our 
 country, and he revised the whole article, "United 
 States," written for the same work. When the ex- 
 citing political events of the convocation of the 
 notables, the quarrel of the Court with the Parle- 
 ment, the agitation over the new taxes and loans, 
 the fall of Lomenie de Brienne, and the summons 
 of the States General followed in rapid succession 
 (1787-9), Jefferson was recognized by the liberal 
 statesmen as a valued adviser. 
 
 From the space which the narration of the events 
 leading up to the French Revolution occupies in 
 both his Memoir and his correspondence, we may 
 judge how prominent a place they held in his mind; 
 and from the justice and insight with which he de- 
 scribes these great events, with which he was so 
 intimately associated, we can only regret that we 
 do not have a complete and elaborate history of the 
 outbreak of the French Revolution from his pen. 
 The delicate responsibility of his position as accred- 
 ited minister of a friendly nation to the Court of 
 
124 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Louis XVI prevented his taking that public part 
 in the conduct of the Revolution which the liberal 
 leaders would gladly have assigned to him, and to 
 which some of them actually invited him. But in 
 his private correspondence and intercourse he mani- 
 fested the liveliest interest in their cause. He was 
 just setting out on a journey to the south of France 
 when the notables met in February, 1787. He 
 wrote Lafayette: "I wish you success in your meet- 
 ing. I should form better hopes of it if it were 
 divided into two houses instead of seven. 1 Keeping 
 the good model of your neighboring country [Eng- 
 land] before your eyes, you may get on step by step 
 towards a good constitution." And to the Countess 
 of Tesse, a few days later, he wrote: "I would have 
 the deputies by all means so conduct themselves as 
 to have him [King Louis] repeat the calls of the 
 Assembly. . . . They would thus put themselves 
 in the track of the best guide they could follow 
 [Parliament]. . . . Should they attempt more than 
 the established habits of the people are ripe for, 
 they may lose all and retard indefinitely the ulti- 
 mate object of their own aim." 
 
 When the States General were called eighteen 
 months later Jefferson continued his moderating ad- 
 vice. "If the Etats-Generaux do not aim at too 
 
 1 The notables were divided into seven bureaus with a prince of 
 the blood at the head of each. It took a vote of four bureaus to 
 pass any measure. 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 125 
 
 much," he wrote Madison in November, 1788, "they 
 may begin a good constitution. There are three 
 articles which they may obtain: 1, their own meet- 
 ing periodically; 2, the exclusive right of taxation; 
 3, the right of registering laws and proposing amend- 
 ments to them, as exercised now by the Parlement. 
 ... If they push at much more, all may fail." 
 Jefferson frequently attended the sessions of the 
 National Assembly at Versailles and followed the 
 debates with sedulous attention. When the quarrel 
 between the privileged orders and the third estate 
 threatened to wreck the work of the Revolution at 
 its inception, he prepared a plan of compromise 
 which he sent to Lafayette and Rabaut St. Etienne. 
 The plan was for the King to come forward in a 
 royal session with a charter of rights in his hand, 
 which every member of the Assembly should sign. 
 The charter was to contain five important conces- 
 sions which the Court was willing to make in return 
 for the support of the nation, namely: (1) Free 
 annual assemblies of the delegates of the people, (2) 
 who should have the sole right of originating the 
 laws, and (3) of laying and appropriating the taxes; 
 (4) abolition of all pecuniary privileges and exemp- 
 tions; and (5) a "bill of rights" guaranteeing lib- 
 erty of conscience and the press, habeas corpus, and 
 trial by jury. The leading "patriots" (Barnave, 
 Lameth, Dupont, Mounier), invited by Lafayette, 
 gathered around Jefferson's dinner-table to discuss 
 
126 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 plans of reconciliation between the factions. The 
 Archbishop of Bordeaux, chairman of the Committee 
 on the Constitution, formally invited Jefferson, by a 
 letter of July 20, 1789, "to attend and assist" at 
 the committee meetings, an invitation which Jeffer- 
 son very properly declined on the "obvious consid- 
 eration " that his mission to King Louis XVFs Court 
 forbade him "to intermeddle with the internal trans- 
 actions " of France. In all the delicate matter of 
 his official neutrality Jefferson conducted himself so 
 correctly as to receive the unqualified commenda- 
 tion of the King's foreign minister Montmorin. 
 
 While the Revolution was coming to a head in 
 France an event of prime importance was taking 
 place at home. Eleven weeks after the notables 
 met at Versailles, an illustrious group of American 
 statesmen met in the convention of Philadelphia to 
 frame a new Constitution for the United States. 
 "An assembly of demigods," Jefferson called them. 
 He followed their work with intense interest, writing 
 home long letters to Washington, Madison, Monroe, 
 Jay, and other influential friends during the period 
 of deliberation and ratification. Because Jefferson 
 became a bitter opponent of the Federalist leaders 
 who interpreted and administered the Constitution 
 during Washington's and Adams's terms of office, 
 he has often been represented as an opponent of 
 our federal form of government. It has even been 
 asserted that he was sent out of the country on the 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 127 
 
 French mission in order that his democratic and 
 decentralizing theories might not interfere to thwart 
 the drafting of a "strong" Constitution. Jefferson's 
 correspondence, however, furnishes no support for 
 such a view. He realized the necessity for a cen- 
 tral control over our commerce and our foreign rela- 
 tions. On the very eve of his departure for France 
 he wrote from Boston to James Madison: "I find 
 the conviction growing strongly that nothing can 
 preserve our confederacy unless the bonds of union 
 be strengthened/' This was after a visit to the 
 principal towns of the New England States to study 
 their commerce. 
 
 Jefferson also found himself is substantial agree- 
 ment with the new Constitution when it reached 
 him in Paris in finished form. In a long letter to 
 Madison, written December 20, 1787, he commended 
 the security of the Federal Government from inter- 
 ference by the State Legislatures, the grant of the 
 taxing power to Congress, the division of the Na- 
 tional Government into its three great departments, 
 the election of the House of Representatives by 
 popular vote, the equal representation of the States 
 in the Senate, the voting in both Houses by indi- 
 viduals and not by States, the veto power of the 
 President (though he would like to have seen it 
 exercised in conjunction with the judiciary), and 
 "many other good things of far less moment." He 
 repeated his assertion in a letter to Francis Hopkin- 
 
128 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 son, March 13, 1789: "I approved from the first 
 moment the great mass of what is in the new Con- 
 stitution." 
 
 What Jefferson found amiss in the Constitution 
 was, first of all, that it did not contain a Bill of 
 Rights guaranteeing to every citizen such funda- 
 mental liberties as freedom of speech and religion, 
 habeas corpus, trial by jury, the right of petition, and 
 the like. Even in a democratic government, con- 
 ducted wholly by the people's representatives, Jef- 
 ferson still thought these rights should be explicitly 
 safeguarded and not merely left to be inferred. The 
 second point that Jefferson objected to was the re- 
 eligibility of officers, especially the President, "who 
 might be transformed by successive reflections, 
 which he would be tempted to secure by foul means, 
 if fair means failed, into a virtual dictator." In a 
 postscript Jefferson thought it might be well, in 
 view of "the instability of our laws," if the Con- 
 stitution provided that a year must expire between 
 the engrossing of a bill and its passage, or in case of 
 "urgency" that a tftvo-thirds vote instead of a bare 
 majority should be necessary. 
 
 Despite these objections to the Constitution 
 (which are much less serious than those of Hamil- 
 ton, who is reckoned among its "champions") Jef- 
 ferson wanted the Constitution to be adopted by 
 the necessary nine States "in order to insure what 
 was good in it," while the other four States should 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 129 
 
 hold off until a newly assembled convention added 
 the desired amendments. He soon came over to 
 the "Massachusetts plan," however, of ratification 
 with the recommendation to Congress of further 
 amendment. " I learn with great pleasure the prog- 
 ress of the new Constitution," he wrote to Colonel 
 Carrington in May, 1788; "the general adoption 
 is to be prayed for, and I wait with great anxiety 
 the news from Maryland and South Carolina, which 
 have decided [on ratification] before this; and with 
 [anxiety] that Virginia, now in session, may give 
 the ninth vote of approbation. There could then 
 be no doubt of North Carolina, New York, and 
 New Hampshire. . . . We should give Rhode 
 Island time. I cannot conceive but that she will 
 come to rights in the long run. Force in whatever 
 form would be a dangerous precedent." The "gen- 
 eral adoption" was secured, Rhode Island finally 
 came in, and the bill of rights was added in the 
 first ten amendments, passed in the first session of 
 Congress and ratified by the States. The indefinite 
 reeligibility of the President was not forbidden by 
 law, but Washington and Jefferson set the exam- 
 ple of retirement from the office after the second 
 term, which has been followed to this day. 
 
 The radicalism of Jefferson's democracy comes 
 out more strongly in the correspondence of his 
 Paris days than at any other time of his life. His 
 contact with the courts of Europe only confirmed 
 
130 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 in him the opinion of the happiness of the American 
 republic. "My God!" he wrote to Monroe in the 
 summer of 1788, "how little do my countrymen 
 know what precious blessings they are in possession 
 of, and which no other people on earth enjoy." 
 He found the French people "ground to powder by 
 the vices of their form of government." "Of 
 20,000,000 people supposed to be in France," he 
 writes to a friend in Philadelphia, "I am of opinion 
 there are 19,000,000 more wretched, more accursed 
 in every circumstance of human existence than the 
 most conspicuously wretched individual in the 
 whole United States." Kings he thought the bane 
 of their people. There was not a crowned head in 
 Europe, he wrote to Washington, "whose talents or 
 merits would entitle him to be elected a vestryman 
 in any parish in America." There was scarcely 
 an evil in Europe, he said, which might not be traced 
 to their kin as its source, nor a good which was not 
 derived from the "small fibres of republicanism ex- 
 isting among them." If all the evils that could 
 arise under a republican form of government from 
 now till the day of judgment could be weighed 
 against the evils which France suffered in a week 
 or England in a month from its monarchical gov- 
 ernment, the scales would incline in favor of the 
 former. No race of kings had ever produced more 
 than one man of common sense in twenty genera- 
 tions. The best behavior of kings was to leave 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 131 
 
 things alone: wherever they meddled it was to do 
 harm. Of course, many of these sentiments are 
 ridiculous exaggerations. When Jefferson wrote 
 them Frederick the Great had been dead less than 
 two years ! 
 
 The same suspicion of anything approaching arbi- 
 trary power or despotic government led Jefferson to 
 condone revolution in words which have often been 
 quoted to prove that he was little better than an 
 anarchist. Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts in 
 1786-7 did not seem to him ominous. It was only 
 a proof that the people had "liberty enough/ ' and 
 he would not have had them have less. "If the 
 happiness of the mass of the people can be secured 
 at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or 
 even of a little blood," he wrote Doctor Stiles, the 
 president of Yale College, in acknowledging an 
 honorary degree, "it will be a precious purchase. 
 Malo libertatem periculosam quam quietam servitu- 
 tem!" To others also he "talked some very bad 
 nonsense" about seditious uprisings, declaring that 
 no country should be too long without a revolution; 
 that no country could be safe unless its rulers were 
 warned from time to time that the people possessed 
 the power and spirit of resistance; that between 
 a government without newspapers or newspapers 
 without a government he would not hesitate a 
 moment to prefer the latter; that the lives lost in a 
 century or two in such a good cause as rebellions 
 
132 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 to tyranny mattered little. "God forbid that we 
 should ever be twenty years without such a rebel- 
 lion!" he cried. "The tree of liberty must be re- 
 freshed from time to time with the blood of patriots 
 and tyrants. It is its natural manure." We should 
 not take these "wild and whirling words" more seri- 
 ously perhaps than Jefferson himself took Shays's 
 Rebellion. They were rather a philosophical dogma 
 with him (after the manner of the political theorists 
 of the eighteenth century) than a sober plan of 
 public conduct. At any rate, in his long life of 
 service to his State and nation, which covered not 
 one but three spans of "twenty years," Jefferson 
 never planned or sustained any "rebellion" except 
 the great revolution which accomplished the inevita- 
 able political severance with Great Britain. 
 
 Neither did Jefferson learn his radicalism in 
 France. To represent him, as William E. Curtis 
 does, for example, as returning from Paris infected 
 by the "frenzy of Jacobinism," is a grotesque per- 
 version of the truth. There were no "Jacobins" in 
 evidence in France when Jefferson was there. The 
 Reign of Terror was as undreamed of in 1789 as 
 the despotism of Napoleon. Jefferson's associations 
 were all with the moderate liberals whom the Jaco- 
 bins later sent to the guillotine when they could 
 catch them. Camille Desmoulins, who let loose the 
 fury of the people of Paris on the Bastile, declared 
 in 1789 that there were not ten republicans in 
 
THE MISSION TO FRANCE 133 
 
 France besides himself. Jefferson's radicalism was 
 far more advanced than that of his Parisian friends, 
 and if there was any "infection" it was rather they 
 who got it from him. We cannot imagine Mounier 
 or Lafayette talking of kings the way Jefferson did. 
 If he had learned such language from anybody it 
 was from Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine, and 
 perhaps those hardy Puritan adversaries of the 
 Stuart "man of blood" a hundred years before. 
 Jefferson's "democracy" was based less on the 
 reading of Rousseau than on the behavior of 
 George III. 
 
 In the summer of 1789, while Mirabeau was la- 
 boring with voice and pen to guide the titanic forces 
 of the French Revolution into the channels of broad 
 national reform, Jefferson asked for leave of absence 
 to return to America for private and domestic rea- 
 sons. He had left Monticello intending to be ab- 
 sent for two years, and had been away five. His 
 affairs needed his personal attention, and he wanted 
 to have his daughters back among American com- 
 panions — especially as the elder, Martha, had ex- 
 pressed the desire to take the veil and spend her 
 life in a French convent. Jefferson's request was 
 granted, and he left Havre on October 8, 1789, send- 
 ing back to Necker from the deck of his ship, like a 
 Parthian shot, his last plea for the admission of 
 American salted meats into the French kingdom. 
 He landed at Norfolk on November 23, after the 
 
134 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 exciting dangers of storm, collision, and fire within 
 the capes of Chesapeake Bay. After a short visit 
 with his brother-in-law, Mr. Eppes, at his country- 
 seat in Chesterfield, Jefferson was back at Monti- 
 cello, amid jubilant demonstrations of welcome 
 from his slaves and household, to celebrate the fes- 
 tivities of the Christmas season. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 
 
 Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single gov- 
 ernment. . . . And I do verily believe that if the principle were to 
 prevail of a common law being in force in the U. S. . . . it would be- 
 come the most corrupt government on the earth. (Jefferson to Gideon 
 Granger, August 13, 1800.) 
 
 During the early summer days of 1789, while Jef- 
 ferson was intently following the debates of the 
 National Assembly of France from the galleries of 
 the hall at Versailles, George Washington and the 
 first Congress of the United States under the new 
 Constitution were setting in motion the wheels of 
 government of the American Republic. 
 
 For the important post of secretary of state 
 Washington's choice fell on Jefferson. "When I 
 arrived in Norfolk," writes the latter to the charge 
 d'affaires left behind at Paris, "I saw myself in the 
 newspapers nominated to that office. " The personal 
 letter of the President reached him at Eppington, 
 on his way to Monticello, in December. " I received 
 it with real regret," says Jefferson in his Memoir; 
 "my wish was to return to Paris when I had left my 
 household establishment as if there myself, and to 
 see the end of the Revolution, which I then thought 
 
 135 
 
136 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 would be certainly and happily closed within less 
 
 than a year. ... In my answer of December 
 
 15, I expressed these dispositions candidly to the 
 
 President . . . but assured him that if it was 
 
 believed I could be more useful in the administra- 
 
 ation of the government, I would sacrifice my own 
 
 inclination without hesitation." A second letter 
 
 from Washington, strongly urging the acceptance 
 
 of the nomination, overcame Jefferson's reluctance. 
 
 He only asked to be allowed to remain at Mon- 
 
 ticello long enough to attend to the affairs which 
 
 had brought him over from Paris. On March 
 
 1, 1790, he left Monticello, and, after pausing in 
 
 Philadelphia to visit the venerable Franklin, who 
 
 was then on his death-bed, he reached the seat of 
 
 government in New York on the 21st of March. 
 
 The second session of Congress was already over 
 
 two months old. John Jay, the foreign secretary 
 
 of the old Congress of the Confederation, who had 
 
 agreed to hold over until Jefferson's arrival, had a 
 
 large mass of accumulated business waiting for him. 
 
 The State Department was not then the highly 
 
 organized and complex institution that it is to-day, 
 
 with its four assistant secretaries, its thousands of 
 
 clerks, its law counsellor, its diplomatic and consular 
 
 bureaus, its divisions of citizenship, appointments, 
 
 trade relations, archives, rolls, and library. One 
 
 assistant and one translator were all the secretary's 
 
 staff in Jefferson's day. There was considerable 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 137 
 
 uncertainty, too, as to just what matters came under 
 the department's authority, but it was the general 
 impression that, in addition to foreign affairs, it 
 should have charge of whatever domestic business 
 did not fall distinctly under the heads of war and 
 finance. Washington assured Jefferson, who was 
 rather alarmed at the prospective demands of the 
 office, that the duties would probably not be so 
 arduous and multifarious as he imagined; and that 
 if the domestic business should prove burdensome, 
 "a further arrangement or division of the office 
 could be made." An examination of the rather 
 uninteresting list of "domestic" subjects on which 
 Jefferson gave the President his written opinion as 
 secretary of state shows how wide the range of his 
 activities was, and how imperfect was the delimita- 
 tion of the duties of the members of the cabinet. 
 To-day a secretary of state does not publish his 
 opinions on finance, nor a secretary of the navy 
 advise on the management of the post-office, but 
 Jefferson reported, among other matters, on the 
 validity of Indian land grants made by the State of 
 Georgia, on the payment of soldiers' accounts, on 
 the right of the President to veto a bill fixing the 
 residence of Congress, on Indian trade, on the for- 
 eign debt, on the establishment of a bank of the 
 United States, on the disposition of western lands, 
 and on the encouragement of the useful arts. Under 
 the Confederation there had been a secretary of 
 
138 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 foreign affairs, but the new Congress judged — by a 
 pardonable inference from the negligibility of our 
 country in the European councils since the peace — 
 that our foreign diplomacy could be taken care of 
 without much additional burden by the secretary 
 who managed a large number of home affairs. The 
 work that was then thought to be incidental came 
 soon to be absorbing and all-important, for the 
 very slight and occasional contact between our 
 national and our State governments has made a 
 secretary of state for home affairs (after the English 
 model) almost a superfluity, while our foreign rela- 
 tions have grown in delicacy and complexity until 
 the secretary of state has become the most impor- 
 tant member of the President's cabinet. 
 
 Of all our diplomatists, after the peerless Frank- 
 lin, Jefferson was the best fitted for this post. He 
 was more supple than Jay, more tactful than Adams, 
 more resourceful than Pinckney, more constructive 
 than Morris. His five years residence in Paris, the 
 centre of European diplomacy, had furnished his 
 receptive mind with a full knowledge of the currents 
 of political thought and commercial ambitions in 
 the Old World. His preference for France was ac- 
 knowledged, and it arose from a variety of causes. 
 First of all, gratitude. He could see no justice, as 
 he wrote Madison in 1789, in viewing two nations 
 with identical feelings when one had spent her blood 
 and money to save us, while the other had "moved 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 139 
 
 heaven and earth and hell to exterminate us in war, 
 insulted us in all her councils in peace, shut her 
 doors to us in every port where her interests would 
 admit it, and libelled us among foreign nations/ ' 
 The memory of the "ungracious notice," which 
 George III and his Queen had given him on the oc- 
 casion of his visit to London in 1786 to confer with 
 John Adams, threw into bright relief the courtesy 
 and amiability of the French Court and ministers. 
 He was convinced, too, that the cultivation of closer 
 commercial relations with France would not only 
 open wide markets for our products among her 
 25,000,000 inhabitants, but would also force Great 
 Britain to modify her harsh navigation acts against 
 us if she wished to keep her just share of our trade. 
 In the French restrictions on our commerce Jefferson 
 saw only a mistaken economic policy, but in the 
 British navigation acts he saw a deliberate purpose 
 to monopolize and control our commerce. 
 
 Then, again, Jefferson's genuine passion for 
 democracy made him hail the French Revolution as 
 the dawn of a new era in Europe. He hated kings 
 and aristocracies. "I continue eternally attached 
 to the principles of your Revolution," he wrote to 
 Brissot de Warville in May, 1793, even after the 
 news of the king's execution and the declaration of 
 war against England had reached America. And to 
 Pendleton he wrote: "The success of the French 
 Revolution will ensure the progress of liberty in 
 
140 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Europe and its preservation here." He was looking 
 with great anxiety, during his whole term of office 
 as secretary of state, for the establishment of the 
 new government in France, convinced that it would 
 be the purveyor of liberty to all the nations of the 
 Old World. Finally, to these reasons of public con- 
 sideration must be added Jefferson's personal "com- 
 patibility of temper" with things French. He liked 
 their art and music, their wit and grace, their clarity 
 of thought and courtesy of speech, their cheerful- 
 ness, their language, their books, their dress, and 
 their wines. 
 
 For all this, it is most unjust to say, as McMaster 
 does, that " Jefferson was at all times more French 
 than American." His preference for France was 
 rather in comparison with England than with his 
 native land. No one can read the hundreds of let- 
 ters which Jefferson wrote from Paris to his friends 
 in America and be left with any doubt where his 
 affections were. "I sincerely wish you may find it 
 convenient to come here," he wrote to Monroe in 
 June, 1785. ... "It will make you adore your 
 own country, its soil, its climate, its equality, lib- 
 erty, laws, people, and manners." He is never 
 tired of contrasting the free opportunities of the 
 new American Republic with the caste and privilege 
 in European society. And if he hails the France 
 of 1789 with enthusiasm it is first of all because he 
 sees promise that she may become free like us. 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 141 
 
 "The French nation," he writes to Washington in 
 December, 1788, "has been awakened by our Revo- 
 lution. They feel their strength, they are enlight- 
 ened, their lights are spreading, and they will not 
 retrograde." Jefferson has been represented by 
 many historians and biographers, from John Mar- 
 shall down, as applying the touchstone of French 
 (and even "Jacobinical") principles as the test of 
 true Americanism. The exact opposite is the truth. 
 He tested the French Revolution by the principles 
 of the American Declaration of Independence, and 
 felt, as he wrote Edward Rutledge, in 1791, that the 
 success or failure of those principles in France 
 meant their confirmation or their weakening in 
 America. 
 
 The foreign questions with which Jefferson had 
 to deal as secretary of state were bequeathed to 
 him from the days of the Confederation. They 
 arose almost entirely out of the diplomacy of the 
 American Revolution and the peace negotiations of 
 1783, and were referable to three main categories: 
 the attainment of a suitable commercial status with 
 the nations of Europe, the adjustment of our rela- 
 tions with neighboring possessions of European 
 countries on this continent, and the expediency of 
 our participation or even our partisanship in the 
 great cycle of European wars precipitated by the 
 French Revolution. Not one of these three ques- 
 tions was settled during Jefferson's occupancy of the 
 
142 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 secretaryship of state. Not even one of the treaties 
 marking the first steps in their eventual settle- 
 ment was signed. But, nevertheless, Jefferson made 
 valuable contributions in his state papers to the 
 solution of them all. 1 
 
 With France our relations were naturally friendly 
 when the new government was inaugurated at New 
 York. We had been her ally for more than ten 
 years. Her aid to us in our Revolution, from what- 
 ever motive rendered, had been the indispensable 
 condition of the attainment of our independence. 
 Moreover, France had no possessions on the main- 
 land of North America, and no desire for any. She 
 had already made some concessions to our com- 
 merce. What further demands we wished to make 
 upon her ministers we readily postponed in 1789, to 
 watch with genuine sympathy the progress of her 
 great Revolution. Serious trouble between America 
 and France began only in the second administration 
 of Washington, with the kindling of a general Euro- 
 pean war. 
 
 It was not thus, however, in our relations with 
 England and Spain. They were both our neighbors 
 on the American mainland and both unfriendly to 
 
 1 Jefferson resigned the secretaryship at the close of 1793. The 
 Jay Treaty with England was concluded in 1794-5, the Pinckney 
 Treaty with Spain in 1795, and the convention with Napoleon in 
 1800. These treaties were the preliminary and partial adjustment 
 of questions that were not finally settled until the close of the war 
 between England and Napoleon (1815) and the elimination of Spain 
 from the Floridas (1819). 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 143 
 
 the new republic. The British refused to evacuate 
 rich fur-posts on the Great Lakes, which lay within 
 the territory they had abandoned to the United 
 States in the treaty of peace. They carried off 
 negroes, mostly from Virginia, in violation of the 
 treaty stipulations. They refused to open their 
 West Indian ports to our trade, and would not even 
 recognize the new nation by sending us a minister. 
 Washington instructed Gouverneur Morris, our 
 agent in London, to seek satisfaction on these 
 points, but Pitt was obdurate. When at last the 
 British Government condescended to send Mr. 
 Hammond to the United States as minister in 1791, 
 Jefferson took up the negotiations with him over 
 the fur-posts, the negroes, commerce, and the debts 
 due English merchants. In a long note to Ham- 
 mond, dated May 29, 1792, Jefferson reviewed the 
 whole course of the dispute between Great Britain 
 and the United States since the peace with modera- 
 tion and "sweet reasonableness/' showing by an 
 array of legal and historical proof that Congress had 
 scrupulously fulfilled its treaty obligations in recom- 
 mending the States to place no impediments in the 
 way of the collection of the British debts, whereas 
 the British, after having agreed by the same treaty 
 to withdraw their garrisons from all the posts in the 
 United States "with all convenient speed," had 
 shown and still showed, after nine years, not the 
 least sign of complying. If laws had been passed 
 
144 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 by certain States to relieve debtors by extending 
 the time of payment or issuing paper currency, they 
 were not dictated by any hostility to England, but 
 by the necessity of preserving the business and prop- 
 erty of the States from utter bankruptcy and con- 
 fiscation. The precious metals had been drained 
 out of the country in payment of arms, munitions, 
 and other necessaries from Europe, so that the huge 
 debt could not be paid in coin. "Even if the whole 
 soil of the United States had been offered for sale 
 for ready coin/' said Jefferson, "it would not have 
 raised as much as would have satisfied this stipu- 
 lation/ ' Furthermore, the British, by their illegal 
 retention of the rich fur-posts, were helping to de- 
 prive the States of the very money which might 
 enable them to pay the debts. Not arbitrary re- 
 prisals, but orderly prosecution through the courts, 
 was the proper way of obtaining redress if there was 
 any unlawful obstruction of justice toward British 
 creditors. The note had no immediate effect on 
 England's behavior, but it remains one of the 
 ablest diplomatic documents in our archives. It set 
 a standard for fairness of spirit, thoroughness of in- 
 formation, and cogency of reasoning that subsequent 
 secretaries of state have felt it an honorable task 
 to emulate. 
 
 Jefferson's unbounded confidence in the destiny 
 of the American people to expand and fill the conti- 
 nent made him the most ardent champion in the 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 145 
 
 cabinet of our rights and interests in the West — a 
 more ardent champion, even, than President Wash- 
 ington himself. He looked with alarm on any 
 movement from within or without the republic that 
 threatened or thwarted this expansion. "I fear 
 from an expression in your letter," he wrote to 
 Archibald Stuart from Paris in January, 1786, "that 
 the people of Kentucke think of separating not only 
 from Virginia (in which they are right), but also 
 from the confederacy. I own I should think that 
 a most calametous event, and such a one as every 
 good citizin on both sides should set himself against. 
 Our present federal limits are not too large for good 
 government, nor will the increase of votes in Con- 
 gress produce any ill effect. On the contrary, it will 
 drown the little divisions at present existing there. 
 Our confederacy must be viewed as the nest from 
 which all America, North and South, is to be peo- 
 pled. . . . The navigation of the Mississippi we 
 must have." 
 
 No one in America, now that Franklin was dead, 
 appreciated so fully as Jefferson both how necessary 
 the free navigation of the Mississippi was to the 
 security of the new union, and how difficult it would 
 be to gain the acknowledgment of our right to the 
 free navigation of the river from Spain. It was by 
 far the most important diplomatic problem of Wash- 
 ington's administration, and Jefferson was the only 
 man in the cabinet to fully realize its importance. 
 
146 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 He had had ample chance to study the disposition 
 of Spain in his five years' residence at the Court of 
 France. He knew how Spain had entered the 
 Revolutionary War in 1779 in order to recover her 
 lost province of Florida and her lost fortress of 
 Gibraltar from Great Britain; how she had resisted 
 Vergennes's appeals to join in the fight against 
 England until he threatened to dissolve the " Fam- 
 ily Compact" of the Bourbon Kings concluded in 
 1761; how she had hated to give even indirect aid 
 to colonies revolting against their absent monarch, 
 when the southern hemisphere of America was 
 filled with her own distant and ill-governed depen- 
 dencies; how jealous she was lest a strong nation 
 should grow up on the eastern bank of the Missis- 
 sippi to confront her dominion on the western bank 
 and to dispute the commerce of the great highway 
 and the possession of New Orleans. Spain had 
 made no alliance with us, as France had, on entering 
 the war, nor had she been a party to our treaty of 
 peace with England. Her minister, Florida Blanca, 
 had declared that there was "a sort of equality of 
 enmity" in the relations of England and America 
 to Spain, which made it " difficult to desire that 
 either side should win." When, therefore, the 
 American commissioners at Paris, departing from 
 the letter of their instructions, concluded peace with 
 Great Britain alone, and France after some righteous 
 protest acquiesced in the general pacification, Spain 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 147 
 
 had to be content with the recovery of Florida, 
 leaving her great Mediterranean fortress in the 
 hands of England. Partly to take revenge on the 
 United States for precipitating the peace, partly 
 to build up a powerful and exclusive empire on the 
 Gulf of Mexico, Spain promptly closed the Missis- 
 sippi to our western settlers and even arrested our 
 traders on the eastern bank of the river above the 
 Florida boundary. 
 
 Jefferson, as an expansionist, a patriot, and a 
 Virginia "frontiersman/' was opposed to yielding 
 our rights on the Mississippi. He agreed with his 
 predecessor at Paris, Benjamin Franklin, who said 
 that a neighbor might as well ask him to sell his 
 street door as to part with a drop of the waters of 
 the Mississippi. "The disposition of Congress to 
 shut up the Mississippi," wrote Jefferson to Madi- 
 son from Paris, "gives me serious apprehension of the 
 severance of the eastern and western parts of our 
 confederacy." When he became secretary of state in 
 1790 he pressed the matter with vigor. On August 
 22 he sent to Carmichael, our minister at Madrid, 
 certain "heads of considerations on the navigation 
 of the Mississippi." It was our right, he claimed, 
 and not a favor from Spain. "More than half the 
 territory of the United States," he wrote, "is on the 
 waters of that River. Two hundred thousand of 
 our citizens are settled on them. . . . These have 
 no other outlet for their tobacco, rice, corn, hemp, 
 
148 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 lumber, house timber, ship timber. We have hith- 
 erto respected the indecision of Spain, because we 
 wish peace and because our western citizens have 
 had a vent at home for their productions. A sur- 
 plus of products begins now to demand foreign 
 markets. " 
 
 Jefferson then considered the actual situation 
 which the United States faced of either having to 
 coerce the western settlements to accept their own 
 economic ruin or to abandon them to Spain (to 
 which they were "not disposed"); or to join them 
 in a war against Spain to secure their economic 
 freedom. He had no doubt that the United States 
 would choose the last course. And he begged 
 Spain to make the wise choice now of a permanently 
 friendly neighbor 1 and the guarantee of the peaceful 
 possession of all the territory west of the Mississippi, 
 by voluntarily ceding to the United States the ter- 
 ritories to the east of the river [New Orleans and 
 the Floridas]. Needless to say, the Spanish Govern- 
 ment did not adopt this amicable proposition of 
 Jefferson's. Negotiations dragged on until he was 
 out of office. It was not until 1795 that the treaty 
 concluded by Thomas Pinckney secured us even a 
 
 x The passage in Jefferson's original draft is interesting: "Safer 
 for Spain that we should be her neighbor than England. Conquest 
 not in our principles. Inconsistent with our government. Not our 
 interest to cross the Miss, for ages. And will never be our interest 
 to remain with those who do." We bought the western basin of the 
 Mississippi only thirteen years after this was written — and Thomas 
 Jefferson was the purchaser ! 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 149 
 
 temporary right of deposit and reshipment at New 
 Orleans. For a full score of years from the peace 
 treaty of 1783 to the purchase of Louisiana and the 
 Island of New Orleans by President Jefferson in 
 1803 we were kept on the verge of a war with Spain 
 over the navigation of the Mississippi. 
 
 Valuable as Jefferson's services were in his nego- 
 tiations with foreign countries, and important as 
 were the precedents which he established as our 
 first secretary of state, it is for other activities and 
 interests that he is chiefly remembered as a mem- 
 ber of Washington's cabinet — just as during his 
 years in France his official business was overshad- 
 owed by the issues of the approaching Revolution. 
 The new Constitution of the United States abolished 
 the clumsy and inefficient political machinery of 
 the Confederation altogether. Federal government 
 was built up de novo. Organization, which is the 
 prior condition to administration, brought with it 
 a multitude of questions bearing on the relations of 
 the different departments of government to each 
 other, the limits of executive and legislative powers, 
 the interpretation of the mandates and prohibitions 
 of the Constitution, and the reconciliation of pro- 
 jected legislation with its letter and spirit. It was 
 not to be expected that a man of Thomas Jefferson's 
 philosophical curiosity and practical experience in 
 politics should renounce an active part in these 
 questions in order to devote himself to the technical 
 
150 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 duties of his department. Furthermore, the mem- 
 bers of the cabinet were expected and invited by the 
 President to furnish him advice on all important 
 measures and policies. Washington was eminently 
 cautious and deliberate. Though he did not shun 
 responsibility or darken counsel by indecision, he 
 took pains to learn the opinions of his subordinates 
 and to defer to them so far as possible. As com- 
 mander of the armies of the Revolution he heard 
 patiently and weighed carefully the advice given 
 in the council of his generals. As President he 
 treated his cabinet as a council, supporting the 
 opinion which won his consent or casting a deciding 
 vote in case of a balance of opinion among the four 
 members. 1 
 
 We have seen that Jefferson had some misgivings 
 about certain details of the Constitution adopted by 
 the fathers at Philadelphia (as what American pa- 
 triot did not !) ; but we have also seen that he was a 
 sincere believer in the Constitution as a whole, and 
 unreservedly commended its chief features, such as 
 the division of the government into three great 
 branches, the " happy compromise" of interests be- 
 
 1 Some members of the Constitutional Convention wanted the 
 President limited by an executive council, but the proposition was 
 defeated. Charles Pinckney in his plan of government spoke of the 
 heads of departments as forming a "cabinet council," whose advice 
 the President should consult. But the Constitution mentions 
 neither "cabinet" nor "council." It does not even require the 
 President to call the heads of the departments together in cabinet 
 meetings. The cabinet was not officially recognized in our system 
 until 1907. 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 151 
 
 tween the large and the small States, the qualified 
 veto power of the executive, the power of taxation. 
 "I would wish it not to be altered," he wrote in a 
 letter from Paris to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 
 1789, "during the life of our great leader, whose 
 executive talents are superior to those I believe of 
 any man in the world, and who alone by the author- 
 ity of his name and the confidence reposed in his 
 perfect integrity, is fully qualified to put the new 
 government so under way as to secure it against 
 the efforts of opposition." 
 
 Although Jefferson recognized the necessity for a 
 Constitution and accepted the one framed, he was 
 nevertheless solicitous that the federal power cre- 
 ated by it should keep strictly within the letter of 
 the law. He saw in the institutions of township, 
 county, and State, in close touch with the people, 
 the best guarantees of democracy. The New Eng- 
 land town meeting he thought the most perfect form 
 of government in America. He was jealous lest 
 local liberties be encroached on by the Federal Gov- 
 ernment, and so be developed insidiously the cen- 
 tralization and paternalism which he considered the 
 curse of the European monarchies. This solicitude, 
 which was shared in a lesser degree by his kinsman 
 and colleague in the cabinet, Attorney-General 
 Edmund Randolph, was in sharp contrast with the 
 bold, aggressive policy of the secretary of the trea- 
 sury, Alexander Hamilton, who advocated the en- 
 
152 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 largement and consolidation of the central power. 
 Secretary of War Knox followed Hamilton almost 
 slavishly. And Washington, while prizing Jeffer- 
 son's advice highly, and attempting to hold the 
 balance justly between the two " factions" of his 
 cabinet, inclined more and more to the views of 
 Hamilton. This condemned Jefferson finally to 
 the role of the "leader of the opposition" in the 
 cabinet. 
 
 When Jefferson reached New York in March, 
 1790, to take his seat at Washington's council 
 board, the policy of the administration was well 
 under way. Congress was in the midst of its second 
 session. A tariff act had been passed to provide a 
 national revenue and incidentally to afford protec- 
 tive encouragement to American manufacturers. 
 The executive departments had been organized. 
 The Supreme Court had been constituted, consist- 
 ing of a chief justice and five associate justices, with 
 seventeen subordinate circuit and district courts in 
 the States. And, most significant of all, Alexander 
 Hamilton, at the head of the treasury department, 
 was fairly launched on the financial programme 
 which split cabinet, Congress, and the country into 
 the opposing parties of Federalists and Republicans. 
 
 On January 14, 1790, while Jefferson was still 
 tarrying at Monticello, Hamilton presented to Con- 
 gress his first Report on the Public Credit, a long 
 document which Henry Cabot Lodge ranks second 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 153 
 
 only in importance to Lincoln's Emancipation Proc- 
 lamation in our American state papers, for the far- 
 reaching results which it produced. In it Hamilton 
 urged not only the payment in full of the face value 
 of the foreign and domestic debt of the United 
 States contracted in the Revolution and under the 
 Confederation, but even the assumption of the 
 State debts by the central government — thus creat- 
 ing a great national debt of some seventy-five 
 million dollars, held by the capitalists of the coun- 
 try, and assured to them as a permanent invest- 
 ment by the provision that Congress might redeem 
 no more than two per cent of the principal annu- 
 ally. To Hamilton's opponents this scheme ap- 
 peared like simply mortgaging the government of 
 the United States to the capitalist class, extracting 
 the annual interest of millions of dollars on the 
 mortgage from the toil of the farmer, the artisan, 
 and the merchant. Hamilton did not deny that his 
 chief object was to rally the wealth of the country 
 to the support of the government, to preserve the 
 credit of the country in the eyes of foreign nations. 
 As far back as 1780, when the paper currency of the 
 country was almost worthless, he had written, as 
 a young man of twenty-three, to the experienced 
 financier, Robert Morris: "The only plan that can 
 preserve the currency is one which will make it 
 the immediate interest of the moneyed men to 
 co-operate with the government in its support." 
 
154 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 From this advocacy of a partnership between capi- 
 tal and government Hamilton never departed. 
 
 The contest over the assumption of the State 
 debts, the hardest part of the Hamiltonian pro- 
 gramme to put through Congress, was at its height 
 when Jefferson arrived in New York. In the Anas, 
 a kind of scrap-book thrown together nearly thirty 
 years later from memoranda of conversations and 
 impressions jotted down at the time, Jefferson gives 
 a lively description of how he was drawn into the 
 controversy. "So high were the feuds excited by 
 this subject that . . . business was suspended. 
 Congress met and adjourned from day to day with- 
 out doing anything, the parties being too much out 
 of temper to do business together. The Eastern 
 members particularly, who, with Smith from South 
 Carolina, were the principal gamblers in these scenes, 
 threatened a secession and dissolution. Hamilton 
 was in despair. As I was going to the President's 
 one day, I met him in the street. He walked me 
 backward and forward before the President's door 
 for half an hour. He painted pathetically the tem- 
 per into which the legislature had been wrought, the 
 disgust of those who were called the Creditor states, 
 the danger of the secession of their members, and 
 the separation of the states. He observed that the 
 members of the administration ought to act in con- 
 cert, that tho' this question was not of my depart- 
 ment, yet a common duty should make it a common 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 155 
 
 concern; . . . and that the question having been 
 lost by a small majority only, it was possible that 
 an appeal from me to the judgment and discretion 
 of some of my friends might effect a change in the 
 vote, and the machine of government, now sus- 
 pended, might be again set into motion. I told him 
 I was really a stranger to the whole subject; not 
 having yet informed myself of the system of finances 
 adopted, I knew not how far this [assumption] was 
 a necessary sequence; that undoubtedly, if its rejec- 
 tion endangered a dissolution of our union at this 
 incipient stage, I should deem that the most unfor- 
 tunate of all consequences, to avert which all par- 
 tial and temporary evils should be yielded. I pro- 
 posed to him, however, to dine with me the next day, 
 and I would invite another friend or two, bring 
 them into conference together, and I thought it im- 
 possible that reasonable men, consulting together 
 coolly, could fail, by some mutual sacrifices of 
 opinion, to form a compromise which was to save 
 the union." The informal diplomats of the dinner- 
 table arranged the matter satisfactorily. Hamilton 
 got his Southern votes for assumption, and the loca- 
 tion of the capital went to the banks of the Potomac. 
 Later on, when Jefferson saw the full significance 
 of Hamilton's financial programme, and realized to 
 his horror that he had been made a party to fixing 
 the " octopus' 7 of the money power on the govern- 
 ment, he complained bitterly that he had been 
 
156 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 "duped" by Hamilton and "most ignorantly and 
 innocently been made to hold the candle" for his 
 nefarious act. At the time the bargain was made, 
 however, Jefferson does not seem to have had any 
 suspicion of deceitfulness on Hamilton's part or 
 impropriety in his own behavior. In his contempo- 
 raneous correspondence he speaks of assumption in 
 a disinterested fashion as "one of those questions 
 which present great inconveniences whichever way 
 it is decided"; as a measure "to be yielded to for 
 the sake of union and to save us from the greatest 
 of all calamities, the total extinction of our credit 
 in Europe"; and as "a proposition which could not 
 be totally rejected without preventing the funding 
 of the public debt altogether, which would be tanta- 
 mount to a dissolution of the government." On the 
 day before the bill passed he wrote approvingly to 
 Francis Eppes, his brother-in-law: "The assumption 
 of the state debts will, I believe, be agreed to." 
 These quotations make clear that Jefferson, in so 
 far as he had given any attention to the question of 
 assumption, was not at any serious disagreement 
 with Hamilton, and give some color to the charge 
 of his hostile biographers that he was inclined to 
 read sinister motives into the acts of men from 
 whom he had come to differ. Jefferson had no 
 cause to complain of the assumption bill. He had 
 been in this country ever since the policy was 
 broached in Hamilton's first Report. He was an 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 157 
 
 astute observer of current opinion and a close stu- 
 dent of public affairs. If he was " duped" by Ham- 
 ilton in 1790 he had only himself to blame. 
 
 The statement, often repeated, that Washington 
 called Jefferson and Hamilton into the cabinet as 
 representatives of opposing opinions, so that he 
 might hear both sides of every question and himself 
 hold the balance between the conflicting opinions, is 
 not true to fact. The two men probably knew each 
 other only slightly, though both had been occasional 
 members of the old Congress of the Confederation. 
 They could never have been congenial friends with 
 their total disparity in tastes and temper, but there 
 is nothing to show that they did not regard each 
 other with mutual respect when they first met at 
 Washington's cabinet table. Jefferson, at any rate, 
 had written from Paris in 1785 to an English friend 
 who was thinking of opening a lawsuit for the re- 
 covery of confiscated lands in New York, "to apply 
 to Colo. Hamilton, who was an aid to Genl Washing- 
 ton, and is now very eminent at the bar and much 
 to be relied on." Antagonism developed rapidly, 
 however, between the two secretaries after their 
 first months in the cabinet together, and before a 
 year had passed they were sure to be found pitted 
 against each other on every measure proposed. 
 Hamilton had the advantage of being earlier on the- 
 field and getting his measures well started before 
 Jefferson appeared. He also enjoyed the friend- 
 
158 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ship and confidence of Washington to a degree not 
 shared by any other man. The establishment of our 
 finances on a sound basis being the most important 
 task of the new government, Hamilton's office and 
 person were brought into a prominence in the new 
 government which not even the delicate and com- 
 plicated questions of foreign policy could obscure. 
 Against these handicaps Jefferson only fought the 
 harder for his principles. If his language was some- 
 times extreme, if his methods at times verged on 
 arbitrariness, if he was too quick to read interested 
 motives into his adversary's acts, or if he took 
 fright too easily at the spectre of "monarchy," it 
 is only fair to remember that he was the " leader of 
 the opposition" in the government. 
 
 The Hamiltonian policies of funding the debt of 
 the Confederation at par, of assuming the State 
 debts, and of erecting a national bank to hold the 
 government balances and handle the government 
 loans and disbursements, all seemed to Jefferson 
 parts of a cleverly laid conspiracy to convert our 
 new republic into a virtual monarchy. Hamilton 
 was outspoken in his admiration for the English 
 model. Once when John Adams remarked in his 
 presence that the British Government, if purged of 
 its corruptions, would be the most perfect govern- 
 ment on earth, Hamilton replied that even with its 
 corruptions it was the most perfect government on 
 earth — a reply on which Jefferson based his charge 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 159 
 
 in the Anas that "Hamilton was not only a mon- 
 archist, but for a monarchy based on corruption." 
 We had no aristocracy of blood and title, but its 
 place could be supplied by an aristocracy of wealth, 
 just as effectively in control of the government 
 through the monopoly of its funds. 
 
 Moreover, the way by which such control was 
 being secured by Hamilton's followers, Jefferson 
 contended, was dishonorable if not downright dis- 
 honest. Members of Congress and their friends 
 among the capitalist class of the Atlantic seaboard, 
 knowing of the probable passage of the funding bill 
 long before the news reached the "common people" 
 and especially the farmers of the interior regions, 
 began to buy up the depreciated securities of the 
 Confederation (often the only wealth of the retired 
 Revolutionary soldier) with great eagerness and at 
 a substantial discount. "Couriers and relay horses 
 by land," says Jefferson in the Anas, "and swift 
 sailing pilot boats by sea, were flying in all direc- 
 tions. Active partners and agents were associated 
 and employed in every State, town, and country 
 neighborhood, and this paper was bought up at 
 five shillings and even as low as two shillings in the 
 pound, before the holder knew that Congress had 
 already provided for its redemption at par. Im- 
 mense sums were thus filched from the poor and 
 ignorant, and fortunes accumulated by those who 
 had themselves been poor enough before. Men thus 
 
160 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 enriched by the dexterity of a leader would of 
 course follow the chief who was leading them to 
 fortune, and become the zealous instruments of all 
 his enterprises." Jefferson called the fund-holders 
 in Congress "a corrupt squadron" marshalled by 
 the secretary of the treasury. 
 
 It is unfortunately true that speculation took 
 place, and even reached a mania which Hamilton 
 himself deplored as much as Jefferson. It is true 
 that men gained undeserved fortunes rapidly, and 
 that the fund-holders voted solidly for Hamilton's 
 measures in Congress. But even Jefferson confessed 
 that our credit must be restored. Could it have been 
 restored without the funding measures, even though 
 they brought speculation in their train ? And grant- 
 ing that there was room for an honest difference of 
 opinion on the equity of the funding measures, there 
 is still no reason for characterizing Hamilton's party 
 as " corrupt." The secretary of the treasury acted 
 in good faith. There is no evidence at all that he 
 gave "tips" to congressmen or capitalists on the 
 policy of the department. He believed that the 
 debt of the country should be redeemed at par value 
 for the sake of the country's credit and common 
 honesty. His object was not to rob anybody. He 
 did not act precipitately or secretly. The question 
 of redemption was already agitated before Hamilton 
 made his famous Report of January 14, and had re- 
 ceived the approbation of President Washington. 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 161 
 
 The price of the certificates of the Confederation 
 debt had been rising steadily since the adoption of 
 the new Constitution. 
 
 When Washington signed the bill establishing a 
 national bank in 1791, and thus put the capstone 
 on the Hamiltonian financial structure, Jefferson, 
 defeated in Congress and the cabinet, turned else- 
 where for allies in his fight to "save the republican 
 form of government." He had faith in "the peo- 
 ple," the great mass of farmers, artisans, small 
 traders, and humble folk, whom Hamilton and his 
 followers half feared and half despised as the "mob." 
 "Your people, sir," exclaimed Hamilton in a post- 
 prandial discussion, bringing his fist down on the 
 table, "is a great beast" ! To educate the mass of 
 the people, on whom the hope of continued freedom 
 must depend, so that they should be increasingly 
 capable of supervising and controlling their gov- 
 ernors, seemed to Jefferson the sublimest mission of 
 the republic. He didn't object to "a little rebellion 
 now and then," nay, he even prayed God that we 
 should never be twenty years without one, because 
 rebellions showed that the people were alert "to 
 resist the evils under which, if they remained quiet, 
 it meant a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the 
 public liberty." He owned that he was "not a 
 friend to a very energetic government," which 
 tended invariably to oppression. "The people are 
 the only censors of their governors," he declared 
 
162 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 . . . "they may be led astray for a moment, but 
 will soon correct themselves." Publicity was the 
 only cure for political evils. The basis of our gov- 
 ernment being the opinion of the people, its very 
 first object should be to keep that right. 
 
 It was in perfect accord, therefore, with Jeffer- 
 son's principles to transfer the fight against Hamil- 
 ton's financial measures, the " corrupt squadron," 
 the "anglomaniacs" and "monocrats," who wished 
 to subvert our Constitution, from Congress to the 
 country at large, and to educate the people to a 
 jealous guardianship of their liberties. A certain 
 Philip Freneau, poet and journalist, an ardent Dem- 
 ocrat, was recommended to the good offices of Jef- 
 ferson by his old college-mate at Princeton, James 
 Madison. Jefferson gave Freneau a position as 
 translating clerk in the Department of State at the 
 magnificent salary of two hundred and fifty dollars 
 a year, and encouraged him to set up a newspaper 
 in Philadelphia as a makeweight to John Fenno's 
 United States Gazette, which under Hamilton's pat- 
 ronage was "disseminating the doctrines of mon- 
 archy, aristocracy, and the exclusion of the influ- 
 ence of the people." Freneau's National Gazette, 
 which began to appear weekly in the autumn of 
 1791, was the most caustic sheet that ever came 
 from the printing-presses of America. In prose and 
 verse alike it lashed the "First Lord of the Trea- 
 sury" and all his satellites. Even the imperturb- 
 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 163 
 
 able Washington, to whom the editor with diabolical 
 politeness mailed three " complimentary " copies of 
 every issue, was stung to indignant protest by its 
 virulent abuse. He complained to Jefferson, but 
 got little comfort. "I took it his intention," says 
 Jefferson, "to be that I should interfere in some 
 way with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appoint- 
 ment as translating clerk to my office. But I will 
 not do it. His paper has saved our Constitution, 
 which was galloping fast into monarchy/ 1 
 
 The attacks of Freneau in the Gazette destroyed 
 the last semblance of friendship in the relations of 
 Hamilton and Jefferson, already strained to the 
 breaking-point by contests in the cabinet over every 
 detail of the treasury programme, and embittered 
 by the high-handed interference of Hamilton with 
 the business of the Department of State. The 
 secretary of the treasury accused Jefferson of being 
 the "patron" of the Gazette, and scored him for vili- 
 fying the administration in which he himself held 
 so conspicuous a place. Jefferson declined to reply, 
 but Freneau made an affidavit to the effect that 
 Jefferson had nothing to do with his paper and had 
 "never directly or indirectly written, dictated, or 
 composed a single fine for it." The unedifying 
 wrangle of the two chief officers of the cabinet, 
 sometimes coming near to blows across the council 
 table, distressed the President. He wrote to them 
 both in the summer of 1792, endeavoring to effect a 
 
164 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 reconciliation, but without success. Both secre- 
 taries were devoted to Washington, and would have 
 done anything possible to please him; but it was 
 impossible for them to agree or even to agree to 
 disagree. Each in his reply to Washington threw 
 the blame on the other, and both offered to resign. 
 But Washington wanted them both in his cabinet, 
 and they remained to quarrel for more than a year 
 longer. 
 
 During the sultry days of August, 1792, while 
 Washington was laboring to restore harmony in his 
 cabinet, a Jacobin uprising in Paris drove King 
 Louis XVI from the throne which his Capetian an- 
 cestors had occupied for eight centuries. On Sep- 
 tember 22 a convention of seven hundred and fifty 
 delegates of France, assembled at Paris, proclaimed 
 the first French Republic. When the news of these 
 events reached America in the early winter there was 
 great rejoicing. The Society of Tammany illumi- 
 nated the windows of its " wig- warn" in New York. 
 In Boston a great "civic feast" was held in honor of 
 the new republic. The name of Oliver's Dock was 
 changed to Liberty Square; an ox was roasted whole 
 and distributed to the people with bread and punch; 
 the school children were given "civic cakes" stamped 
 with "liberty and equality." Men and women wore 
 the tricolor cockade and addressed each other as 
 "citizen" and "citess" after the manner of the 
 Jacobins. Then more news came of a different sort: 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 165 
 
 how the convention had divided into the warring 
 factions of the Mountain and the Gironde, how they 
 had executed their King and declared war against 
 Great Britain. 
 
 The effect of these rapid events of the French Rev- 
 olution on America was to widen the cleft between 
 the two parties, which had already formed on the 
 financial issue, and which had already had their first 
 trial of strength in the elections of 1792. 1 The Fed- 
 eralists, as Hamilton's followers were called, includ- 
 ing the great merchants and bankers, the place-men 
 and security-holders, the Tories and the majority 
 of the clergy, sympathized with England. Over fifty 
 per cent of our trade was with British ports and over 
 seventy-five per cent of our revenue was derived 
 from that trade. Our imports from Great Britain 
 and her colonies in 1792 were over fifteen million 
 dollars, as against two million dollars from France. 
 Large amounts of British capital were invested in 
 the shares of our national bank. The farmers, arti- 
 sans, and small traders, on the other hand, whose 
 interests were wholly domestic and whose desire was 
 for economy with low taxes, followed Jefferson as the 
 party of the Democratic-Republicans. They sym- 
 
 1 Washington was again the unanimous choice of the electors for 
 President, but the choice for the second place was contested with 
 party bitterness. John Adams, the administration candidate, re- 
 received 77 votes, while his Republican opponent, George Clinton, 
 got 50, and Jefferson the 4 votes of Kentucky. A Republican 
 majority was elected to Congress. 
 
166 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 pathized with France, both because she was our ally, 
 to whom we owed in large measure our indepen- 
 dence, and because she was the enemy of England, 
 whose institutions we were now " slavishly copying." 
 They saw in the French Declaration of the Rights of 
 Man (August, 1789) the reassertion of the princi- 
 ples of the Declaration of Independence, to which, 
 they said, we were becoming recreant. 
 
 We had made a treaty of alliance — the only one 
 in our history — with France in 1778, guaranteeing 
 her possessions in the West Indies in case of rupture 
 between France and England, and opening the 
 ports of the United States to French ships of war 
 bringing in enemy prizes. When Edmond Genet, 
 emissary from the new French Republic to the 
 "sister Republic" of the United States, landed at 
 Charleston, South Carolina, in April, 1793, he ex- 
 pected to profit by this alliance. He didn't ask us 
 to join in the war against Great Britain, because he 
 knew that the terms of our treaty would not warrant 
 that request, but he did ask certain favors and 
 assume certain powers which soon brought him into 
 conflict with the authorities at Philadelphia. He 
 wanted us to advance interest payments on our 
 debt to France which he might expend for military 
 supplies in America. He took a British prize 
 within the capes of Chesapeake Bay, and proceeded 
 to fit out ships in our ports to prey on British com- 
 merce. He brought blank commissions to fill out 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 167 
 
 with the names of American citizens who should 
 raise regiments or naval recruits for the war. 
 
 Washington, with the unanimous consent of his 
 cabinet, declared our neutrality toward the Euro- 
 pean struggle (April 22, 1793), but Genet's excitable 
 temper was only the more aroused. He criticised 
 the President and scolded the secretary of state. 
 He paid his sarcastic compliments to a " republic " 
 that allowed itself to be governed by an "aristo- 
 crat." He used the Republican press to make prop- 
 aganda for France, indulging in highly colored 
 rhetoric on the ingratitude of a land where French 
 blood had been poured out like water for the cause 
 of freedom. In defiance of the warnings of the 
 government, and in violation of his own implicit 
 promise to Jefferson, he allowed the converted prize 
 the Petite Democrate to sail away from her moorings 
 at Philadelphia. 
 
 Jefferson's conduct in these trying circumstances 
 is acknowledged even by those historians who are 
 quick to condemn his motives to have been most 
 correct. It was a great disappointment to him 
 that the envoy from the nation which he set next 
 to his own in his affections should behave in such a 
 way as to merit rebuke and finally dismissal, but he 
 did not hesitate on that account to do his duty. 
 He delivered a cabinet opinion on May 16, 1793, to 
 the effect that we should forbid France to fit out 
 privateers in our harbors and apologize to Great 
 
168 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Britain for the capture of any of her vessels on the 
 high seas by such privateers. He warned Genet 
 that French vessels illegally equipped and com- 
 manded must leave our waters. He quoted Vattel 
 and other learned authorities on the laws of nations, 
 much to Genet's disgust, who begged that they 
 might treat like republicans and not " lower" them- 
 selves "to the level of ancient politics by diplomatic 
 subtleties." "I do not augur well of the conduct 
 of the new French minister/' wrote Jefferson to 
 Monroe on June 28, 1793. " I am doing everything 
 in my power to moderate the impetuosity of his 
 movements and to destroy the dangerous opinions 
 which have been excited in him that the people of 
 the United States will disavow the acts of their gov- 
 ernment, and that he has an appeal from the Execu- 
 tive to Congress and from both to the people." 
 And a few days later to Madison: "Never in my 
 opinion was so calamitous an appointment made as 
 that of the present minister of F[rance] here. Hot- 
 headed, all imagination, no judgment, passionate, 
 disrespectful, and even indecent to the P [resident] 
 ... he renders my position immensely difficult." 
 Finally Genet's recall was demanded, Jefferson 
 writing to our minister at Paris, Gouverneur Morris, 
 a review of the conduct of the impetuous envoy, and 
 declaring that "if our citizens have not already been 
 shedding each other's blood, it is not owing to the 
 moderation of M. Genet." Jefferson realized, of 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 169 
 
 course, that the recall of Genet, while a relief to 
 himself, would be in the nature of a triumph for the 
 Hamiltonian party, who had warned against the 
 danger of showing any sympathy with the French 
 democrats; but he was not deterred thereby from 
 doing his duty to the President and the laws of the 
 country. Professor McMaster's unjust remark that 
 Jefferson was "at all times more French than 
 American" needs no further refutation than the 
 Genet episode. 
 
 Ever since his failure to check the financial cen- 
 tralization of the Hamiltonian programme, and his 
 consequent alienation from the policy of the admin- 
 istration, Jefferson had been anxious to resign from 
 the cabinet. He intended fully to retire at the end 
 of Washington's first term, and wrote to the Presi- 
 dent from Monticello on September 9, 1792, in reply 
 to the appeal for reconciliation with Hamilton, that 
 he looked "to that period with the longing of a 
 wave-worn mariner who has at length the land in 
 view." At the President's solicitation, he consented 
 to remain, but the vexation of Genet's conduct and 
 the encroachment of Hamilton on his department 
 by instructing the collectors of customs to be on 
 the lookout for French violations of neutrality and 
 report them to him in secret made the thought of 
 continuing in the cabinet intolerable to him. On 
 July 30, 1793, he again wrote Washington, begging 
 to be relieved of his office "at the close of the pres- 
 
170 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ent quarter (September 30)." He alleged his doubt- 
 less sincere desire to return to Monticello to repair 
 his estate, but political vexations were probably the 
 chief reason for his request. When Washington 
 called on him in August to persuade him to remain 
 until the end of the year, Jefferson declared that he 
 was obliged in the present cabinet to move exactly 
 in the circles which bore him peculiar hatred: "That 
 is to say, the wealthy aristocrats, the merchants 
 connected loosely with England, the newly created 
 paper fortunes." "Thus surrounded my words are 
 caught, multiplied, misconstrued, and even fabri- 
 cated and spread abroad to my injury." Jefferson 
 stayed to the end of the year, however, and de- 
 parted for Monticello with a New Year's letter of 
 hearty commendation from the President: "Since it 
 has been impossible to persuade you to forego any 
 longer the indulgence of your desire for private life, 
 the event, however anxious I am to avert it, must 
 be submitted to. But I cannot suffer you to leave 
 your station without assuring you that the opinion 
 which I had formed of your integrity and talents, 
 and which dictated your original nomination, has 
 been confirmed by the fullest experience; and that 
 both have been eminently displayed in the discharge 
 of your duty. Let a conviction of my most earnest 
 prayers for your happiness accompany you in your 
 retirement." So clear had Jefferson been in his 
 great office that John Marshall could not withhold 
 
IN WASHINGTON'S CABINET 171 
 
 a word of tempered praise in declaring that "this 
 gentleman withdrew from political station at a time 
 when he stood particularly high in the esteem of his 
 countrymen." 1 
 
 1 William E. Curtis in The True Thomas Jefferson, sl book teem- 
 ing with errors, says that Jefferson "used underhand methods and 
 was commonly engaged in intrigue not only against his colleagues 
 in the cabinet but even against Washington"; that his reply of Sep- 
 tember 9, 1792, to Washington's letter was "insulting and inexcusa- 
 ble"; but that Washington out of respect for Jefferson's ability and 
 patriotism "overlooked the insult and allowed him to remain in the 
 cabinet"; that Jefferson promised to resign in January, 1793, but 
 when the time came reconsidered and held on to his place, much to 
 the President's disappointment; and that, finally, "Jefferson de- 
 clined to dismiss Freneau and was himself compelled to resign." 
 Every single one of these statements is false. But perhaps nothing 
 better could be expected of a book that is vitiated all the way 
 through by the hypothesis that Jefferson was a demagogue whose 
 "plans of government were acquired from the French revolution- 
 ists," who had moved among "the citizen leaders of the Revolution 
 and experienced the bloody and furious scenes in France." Mr. 
 Curtis makes Jefferson bring home to America the Jacobin fury two 
 years before it broke out in France. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 
 
 We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions 
 to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience until they get 
 right if they happen to be at any time wrong. (Jefferson to John 
 Breckenridge, January 29, 1800.) 
 
 "The ensuing year will be the longest of my life, and 
 the last of such hateful labors/' wrote Jefferson to 
 his daughter, Martha Randolph, in March, 1792; 
 "the next we will sow our cabbages together." In 
 letters written to his friends after his belated return 
 to Monticello, he renounces all further interest in 
 politics. He is now "settled at home as a farmer," 
 his mind "totally absorbed in rural occupations. " 
 To John Adams he writes that his only regret is 
 that his retirement was "postponed four years too 
 long." He replies to a friendly letter from Washing- 
 ton with the sentiment: "I cherish tranquillity too 
 much to suffer political things to enter my mind at 
 all"; and declares to Madison that he has not seen 
 or wished to see a Philadelphia paper since he left 
 the town. Indeed he doubted if he should "ever 
 take another newspaper of any sort" — the man 
 who preferred newspapers without a government to 
 a government without newspapers! If such senti- 
 
 172 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 173 
 
 merits sound hypocritical, especially in view of the 
 fact that Jefferson presently entered the political 
 race and spent twelve consecutive years in the 
 offices of Vice-President and President, we must 
 remember that it was the fashion in his day for 
 public men to protest in elaborate terms their aver- 
 sion to the cares of office, and to think themselves 
 in "declining years" when they had reached the 
 age of fifty. Jefferson was probably sincere in his 
 belief that he had given up active political life for- 
 ever for his cabbages at Monticello. But he soon 
 began sowing the seeds of a different harvest. 
 
 "It is easier to get into politics than to get out of 
 them," remarks the Tory in Lowes Dickinson's 
 Modern Symposium. So it proved with Jefferson. 
 His retirement from the cabinet left a free field in 
 the administration to Hamilton, under whose influ- 
 ence Washington became an out-and-out Federalist. 
 "I shall not," the President wrote to Pickering in 
 September, 1795, "while I have the honor to ad- 
 minister the government, bring a man into any office 
 whose political tenets are adverse to the measures 
 which the general government are pursuing, for 
 this, in my opinion, would be a sort of political sui- 
 cide." The brief experiment of non-partisan gov- 
 ernment was at an end in the United States. But 
 Thomas Jefferson was not the man to stand idly by 
 and see what he considered the wrong party and 
 principles win. He was too much of a politician 
 
174 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 and too much of a patriot for that. The opponents 
 of the administration in Congress and the country 
 at large had already come to look on him as their 
 leader, and he must not fail them. The Republicans 
 of Boston in a caucus wrote him just after his resig- 
 nation from the cabinet that "if he would place 
 himself at their head, they would choose him at 
 the next election.' ' The politics which he banished 
 from his earliest letters from Monticello in 1794 
 came stealing back, in first a sentence, then a para- 
 graph, then a disquisition. He checks himself reso- 
 lutely with "but away, politics!" and turns to the 
 praise of his clover or the price of his wheat. But 
 the old lure is too strong for him. His conversion 
 is unconvincing. He reminds one of Saint Jerome, 
 turned Christian, trying to scourge the love of Cicero 
 out of his mind. 
 
 The leaders of political parties have always been 
 inclined to attribute base motives to their oppo- 
 nents and high motives to themselves; and the his- 
 torians who come after them have too often been 
 willing to accept one or the other of the evaluations 
 as true according as their own sympathies inclined. 
 For the Federalists, Jefferson and his followers were 
 the advocates of the irresponsible rule of the mob. 
 They were deliberately working to bring the gov- 
 ernment into contempt and ruin its credit in the 
 eyes of Europe. They opposed its "compulsive 
 energy" because they didn't want to pay their 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 175 
 
 debts. They "generated mistrust and irritation 
 between this country and Great Britain" because 
 they were under "the baleful ascendency of French 
 influence" and the victims of "a contagion of level- 
 ism." They were inoculated with the incendiary, 
 anarchistic, atheistic poison of the Jacobins. For 
 the Republicans, on the other hand, Hamilton was 
 the chief of a "corrupt squadron" in Congress who 
 had created a fictitious debt in order to keep the 
 common people of the country under a perpetual 
 burden of taxation, which would insure their social 
 serfdom to "the rich, the well-born, and the able." 
 The Federalist system "flowed from principles ad- 
 verse to liberty." Its adherents flouted the Con- 
 stitution and wished to "administer it into a mon- 
 archy." Their contempt for the people proceeded 
 from the motives of aristocratic snobbery and eco- 
 nomic greed. What each party prized as its princi- 
 ples the other denounced as rank prejudices. The 
 fiscal system which Hamilton regarded as the 
 guaranty of our national honor, was for Jefferson 
 "a tissue of machinations against the liberty of the 
 country"; while Fisher Ames stigmatized as "revo- 
 lutionary Robespierreism " the Republican move- 
 ment which Jefferson called "the awakening of the 
 spirit of 1776." 
 
 It would be idle to multiply quotations to prove 
 the truth or the falsehood of either of these points 
 of view. The test of their "truth" is an experimen- 
 
176 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 tal one. Politics is not a determined science^ but a 
 very flexible and pragmatic art. And, doubtless, 
 since speculation on the forms and functions of gov- 
 ernment began, men have been divided into these 
 two fundamental parties — one advocating govern- 
 ment/or the people by the strong, the rich, the titled, 
 the educated; the other advocating government by 
 the people through eliciting the dormant intellect 
 and virtue of the whole community by a wide-spread 
 system of free education, a close control of public 
 officers by the people, and a wide extension of the 
 suffrage. As long as men live together in political 
 societies there will be those who fear anarchy more 
 than tyranny and those who set freedom above 
 efficiency. We incline toward the one or the other 
 of these opinions according to our nature and 
 nurture, and the bias is seldom removed by educa- 
 tion or experience. There are "tastes" in pol- 
 itics as well as in food, and they are as impossible 
 to account for. Witness Alexander Hamilton, the 
 illegitimate son of a Scotch father and a French 
 mother, a restless spirit with the shrewd sense of 
 one parent and the versatility and grace of the 
 other, an ardent, precocious boy, coming from the 
 British island of Nevis to New York as a venture 
 for his education, an orator swaying crowds as an 
 undergraduate of King's College at the age of sev- 
 enteen; and Thomas Jefferson with the aristocratic 
 blood of the Randolphs in his veins, dining with the 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 177 
 
 royal, governor's little partie quarree in Williams- 
 burg, settled on his broad acres at Monticello with 
 his numerous slaves and dependants, retiring in na- 
 ture, silent in public, ultra-sensitive, a litterateur 
 and musician, a philosopher and scientist. By all 
 the canons of probability Jefferson should have 
 been the aristocratic Federalist and Hamilton the 
 Democratic-Republican. Dis aliter visum! 
 
 Jefferson's democracy was not a pose or a pre- 
 text: it was a deep-seated principle. He devoted 
 himself wholly to the reform of the evils which 
 "the shameless corruption of a portion of the rep- 
 resentatives in the first and second Congresses" had 
 introduced, as he wrote to his successor in the 
 State Department, Edmund Randolph, "because on 
 the success of such exertions the form of the gov- 
 ernment is to depend." "Were parties here," he 
 writes to the Virginia congressman, Giles, "divided 
 merely by greediness for office as in England, to 
 take a part in either would be unworthy of a reason- 
 able or moral man; but where the principle of differ- 
 ence is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as 
 between the Republicans and Monocrats of our 
 own country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm 
 and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle 
 line as between the parties of honest men and 
 rogues into which every country is divided." Jef- 
 ferson believed in the common people as "the most 
 honest and safe, tho' not always the most wise de- 
 
178 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 pository of the public interest." He confessed that 
 he was not among those who feared the people. 
 George Washington wrote: "Mankind left to them- 
 selves are unfit for their own government. " John 
 Marshall said: "I fear, and there is no opinion more 
 degrading to the dignity of man, that those have 
 truth on their side who say that man is incapable of 
 governing himself. " But Thomas Jefferson never 
 experienced such disillusionment. His optimism 
 was too deeply founded in the philosophy of human 
 perfectibility through education to be shaken even 
 by revolutions, whether tiny as Shays's or mighty 
 as Danton's. He didn't dread wiping the slate 
 clean — of constitutions, national debts, religious 
 creeds, privileged orders, or even a whole generation 
 of men and women — if liberty depended on the issue 
 of the contest. The September massacres in Paris 
 he deplored, but rather than have seen the cause 
 of the Revolution fail, he wrote to William Short, 
 he would have had half the earth desolated. "Were 
 there but an Adam and Eve left in every country 
 and left free, it would be better than it now is." 
 
 There is obviously much ridiculous exaggeration 
 in these sentiments, just as there is in the expres- 
 sions of the Federalists in the countercharges that 
 the Republicans were "a composition of incongru- 
 ous materials all tending to mischief, " led by "an 
 atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics" (the 
 words are Hamilton's). Jefferson may well have 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 179 
 
 been mistaken in his estimate of the effect on the 
 country of the Hamiltonian measures of funding, 
 assumption, the tariff, excise duties, and the bank; 
 but to make jealousy of their author the source of 
 Jefferson's opposition to them is to take the effect 
 for the cause. Jefferson distrusted and even de- 
 tested Hamilton, not because he was a successful 
 rival for the favor of the President and Congress, 
 but because he was the advocate of principles which 
 Jefferson believed his life long to be destructive of 
 genuine democracy. One need not agree with Jef- 
 ferson's political philosophy to accord him the jus- 
 tice of the recognition of this truth. 
 
 When Jefferson left the cabinet the "treasury 
 phalanx" was still intrenched in Congress and the 
 courts. The opposition to Hamilton's political and 
 financial centralization was wide-spread but unor- 
 ganized. "Are the people in your quarter as well 
 contented with the proceedings of our government 
 as their representatives say they are?" asked Jef- 
 ferson of R. H. Lee as early as February, 1791. 
 "There is a vast mass of discontent gathered in the 
 South, and how and when it will break God knows. 
 I look forward to it with some anxiety." To organ- 
 ize this "vast mass of discontent," not only in the 
 South, but all through the land, was the task which 
 Jefferson undertook in the enthusiasm of his demo- 
 cratic faith. He believed that the great majority 
 of the American people, if they found their voice, 
 
180 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 would protest against the Hamiltonian policy 
 through which our country was fast "galloping 
 into monarchy.' } There was no further help in an 
 unreformed Congress which passed Hamilton's bills 
 at his bidding. "The only correction of what is 
 corrupt in our present form of government/' wrote 
 Jefferson to George Mason, "will be the augmenta- 
 tion of the numbers in the lower house, so as to get 
 a more agricultural representation, which may put 
 that interest above that of the stock-jobbers." 
 
 Jefferson had so strong a prejudice in favor of the 
 agricultural classes that he was even partially rec- 
 onciled to the ravages of the yellow fever in the 
 cities. It swept away the "artificers" (mechanics), 
 whom he considered "the panders of vice and the 
 instruments by which the liberties of a country are 
 generally overturned." The cultivators of the soil, 
 on the other hand, he wrote to John Jay in 1785, 
 "are the most valuable citizens: they are the most 
 vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, 
 and they are tied to their country and wedded to its 
 liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds." 
 Hence Jefferson's opposition to the mercantile and 
 industrial interests which were encouraged by Ham- 
 ilton's funding policy and protective tariff. Jeffer- 
 son was a "physiocrat." If he had any French 
 tutor it was not the eccentric Rousseau with his 
 "virtuous savage," but the practical Turgot, who 
 sought to build the state on the broad foundations 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 181 
 
 of local liberties, resting on the ultimate base of the 
 nation's wealth — the soil. It was not because Jef- 
 ferson was "stupid" or "lacking any capacity for 
 financial matters" that he rejected the whole struc- 
 ture of Hamilton: industrial stocks resting on the 
 bank issues, and these on the consolidated public 
 debt, and all on the foundation of taxation. It was 
 rather because he saw in it what to him was the 
 vicious principles of a perpetual debt with its double 
 curse of speculative attraction for the rich and bur- 
 densome taxation for the poor. He looked askance 
 on Hamilton's cunning in figures, as Luther did on 
 the great Augsburg bankers, the Fuggers. "I am 
 not skilled in accounts," said Brother Martin, "but 
 I do not understand how 100 guldens can gain 20 
 in a year, or how one can gain another, and that 
 not from the soil or cattle, where success depends 
 not on the wit of men but on the blessing of God." 
 The skill and diligence with which Jefferson or- 
 ganized the opposition to the policy of the adminis- 
 tration has been recognized by his friends and his 
 foes alike. "Almost never," says Professor Chan- 
 ning, "has a political party been so efficiently or so 
 secretly marshalled and led." Jefferson had need 
 of all the patient optimism of his nature in building 
 up a Republican party, for not only were the "Mon- 
 ocrats" firmly intrenched in public office, with the 
 private support of wealth and of that social defer- 
 ence which was common in the days of our fore- 
 
182 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 fathers, but there was little apparent promise in 
 the material out of which the new party had to be 
 built. Soon after he left the cabinet Jefferson wrote 
 from Monticello to Madison: "I could not have sup- 
 posed when I left Philadelphia that so little of what 
 was passing there could be known even at Kentucky 
 as is the case here. Judging from this of the rest of 
 the Union, it is evident to me that the people are 
 not in a condition either to approve or disapprove 
 of their government, nor consequently influence it." 
 To cure this ignorance and indifference, which alone 
 kept the great majority from the exercise of political 
 power, Jefferson started a campaign of education. 
 He did not write for the press himself, but he en- 
 couraged his political henchmen to do so, with little 
 scruple for the niceness of thei. speech. "Jacobin" 
 papers began to appear everywhere, and the success 
 of their propaganda is evidenced by the outrageous 
 Sedition Act passed by John Adams's first Congress 
 primarily to punish Republican editors. " Along 
 with infidel philosophy," wails a Federalist organ, 
 "a most powerful cause of the rapid decay of our 
 government is a licentious and prostituted press." 
 Another Federalist editor bemoans the fact that 
 Republican papers have been established "from 
 Portsmouth to Savannah." 
 
 Jefferson was tireless in his devotion to the cause. 
 He gathered his "lieutenants," Madison, Monroe, 
 and Nicholas, about him at Monticello for weekend 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 183 
 
 conferences. He wrote hundreds of letters to the 
 growing group of Republicans in Congress and the 
 State legislatures. His political clientele reached 
 from the Maine wilderness to the Kentucky frontier, 
 and his power to command the co-operation of his 
 followers seemed almost hypnotic. " Every man 
 must lay his purse and his pen under contribution, " 
 he wrote to Madison in the fiercest part of the strug- 
 gle with federalism; "let me pray and beseech you 
 to set apart a certain portion of every post-day to 
 write what may be proper for the public." 1 From 
 1789 to 1793 about twenty per cent of Madison's 
 correspondence was with Jefferson; from 1793 to 
 1800 the percentage rose to nearly eighty. If Jef- 
 ferson could so command the political service of 
 James Madison, it is easy to see what his influence 
 must have been on lesser men from Monroe down. 
 Probably the chief cause of Jefferson's ultimate 
 success was his confidence in the triumph of democ- 
 racy because democracy was right. In this faith he 
 never faltered. If the Jacobins of Paris plunged 
 into an orgy of blood in the sacred name of democ- 
 racy, it was the Jacobins and not democracy that 
 should bear the stigma. If rogues in America mas- 
 queraded as friends of the people, it was no argu- 
 
 1 In the same letter Jefferson asked Madison to publish his Notes 
 taken in the Federal Convention, thinking they would revive inter- 
 est in the first principles of our democracy. These valuable Notes 
 were sold to Congress in 1837 by Madison's widow for thirty thou- 
 sand dollars, and published by the government in 1841. 
 
184 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ment that the real friends of the people were rogues. 
 Neither the indiscretion of Genet nor the perfidy of 
 Talleyrand could disturb his faith. Neither defeat 
 in diplomacy nor disaster at the polls could shake 
 his confidence. When his friends lost courage he 
 cheered them. "The tide against our Constitution 
 is unquestionably strong," he wrote to Congressman 
 Giles, "but it will turn. Everything tells me so, 
 and every day verifies the prediction. Hold on, 
 then, like a good and faithful seaman till our brother 
 sailors can rouse from their intoxication and right 
 the vessel." When John Taylor, of Caroline, ad- 
 vised secession from the perverse aristocrats of New 
 England, who had acquired an "unrepublican ascen- 
 dency," Jefferson rebuked him: "It is true that we 
 are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts 
 and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard 
 . . . but if in a temporary superiority of one party, 
 the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no 
 federal agreement can ever exist. . . . Suppose the 
 New England states alone cut off, will our nature be 
 changed? Are we not men still to the south of 
 that, with all the passions of men? Immediately 
 we shall see a Pennsylvania and a Virginia party 
 arise in the residuary confederacy, and the public 
 mind will be distracted with the same party spirit. 
 ... A little patience and we shall see the reign of 
 witches pass over, their spells dissolved, and the 
 people recovering their true sight and restoring their 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 185 
 
 government to its true principles. . . . For this is 
 a game where principles are at stake." The echoes 
 of these words are in the speeches of Webster and 
 the messages of Lincoln. 
 
 If the Constitution was maladministered, in other 
 words, the remedy was not to destroy the Constitu- 
 tion but to change the administration. Slowly but 
 steadily Jefferson's propaganda gained ground, win- 
 ning a district here and a county there. The Fed- 
 eralists saw it encroaching even on their sacred pre- 
 cinct of New England, and likened it to the plague 
 of locusts; but they were powerless to check it. 
 They had never taken the people into their con- 
 fidence. They knew only how to rule, not to per- 
 suade. They clung to old shibboleths and sounded 
 wild cries of warning against the " political heresies 
 gaming ground among us," preached by "demo- 
 cratical Jeffersonians" and "itinerant Jacobins" 
 holding forth in the bar-rooms of Rhode Island 
 and Vermont. But they were fighting an ideal with 
 memories. Jefferson asked only for "' health and a 
 day." The great ally, Time, was on his side. 
 
 But if Jefferson was an idealist in theory, in prac- 
 tice he was one of the most astute and hard-headed 
 politicians that ever appeared in our public life. 
 The contrast between his lofty professions and his 
 shrewd methods has tempted many historians to 
 dismiss him rather contemptuously as a deliberate 
 hypocrite or a self-deceived visionary. He was as 
 
186 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 elusive as Robespierre. He avoided a frontal at- 
 tack for the hidden policy of sapping and mining. 
 He was exasperatingly silent when his enemies were 
 waiting for him to deliver himself into their hands 
 by confession or apology. He was fertile in the 
 suggestions that set a hundred men to work. Being 
 in opposition to the administration during the full 
 decade which elapsed from the triumph of Hamil- 
 ton's financial policy to his own inauguration as 
 President, he be.came a past master in the Mephis- 
 tophelian art of destructive criticism and "slow 
 disparagement." Not an act of the government 
 of Washington and Adams escaped his lynx-eyed 
 scrutiny. Our whole domestic and foreign policy 
 during the last decade of the eighteenth century 
 was a continuous text for his running sermon on 
 the betrayal of democracy in the house of its glori- 
 ous birth. 
 
 The resignation of Jefferson from the cabinet co- 
 incided with the development of complications be- 
 tween this country and France and England, which 
 were destined to involve us in two actual wars, and 
 to bring us again and again to the verge of war 
 before Napoleon Bonaparte was finally sent to his 
 rocky exile on St. Helena. So long as the French 
 Revolution was a purely domestic affair or (with 
 the intervention of Austria and Prussia in 1792) 
 only a continental European affair, it did not touch 
 us directly. The "Francophiles" and "Anglomen" 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 187 
 
 in this country could rejoice over the victory of 
 Valmy together, or shudder at the slaughter of the 
 aristocrats. They could chant the carmagnole or 
 quote Burke's mournful prophecies with the de- 
 tachment of distant, if interested, observers. But 
 when Great Britain was drawn into the conflict the 
 war came home to us; for Great Britain ruled our 
 commerce. We proclaimed neutrality and rebuked 
 Genet. But neutrality was hard to keep. 
 
 The French Republic immediately threw open 
 the French West Indian ports to our ships, a piece 
 of crafty generosity to prevent the islands from 
 being starved when England's powerful navy should 
 cut them off from the French trade. Great Britain, 
 invoking the "Rule of 1756," which forbade a bel- 
 ligerent to open its ports to a nation to whom they 
 had been closed in time of peace, refused to regard 
 our trade with the French Indies as "neutral." 
 She seized hundreds of our vessels, condemned the 
 cargoes, destroyed the ships, maltreated and im- 
 prisoned the seamen, or impressed them into ser- 
 vice on British men-of-war. Orders in Council of 
 the summer and autumn of 1793 instructed British 
 captains first to stop vessels loaded with corn, flour, 
 or meal bound for France, and later all ships carry- 
 ing products of the French colonies or conveying 
 food to French colonies. This arbitrary extension 
 of the list of contraband of war was a violation 
 of the code of international law. It aimed at the 
 
188 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 starvation of France. Great Britain determined 
 that in this war " there should be no neutrals." 
 
 In the early spring of 1794 war with Great Britain 
 seemed inevitable, even to "most of our good, cool 
 men of Boston," as a merchant of that town wrote 
 to Secretary Knox. Dayton, of New Jersey, pro- 
 posed in Congress that debts due to English sub- 
 jects be sequestrated and the amount paid into the 
 treasury of the United States to indemnify the 
 American merchants who had been despoiled by 
 England's cruisers. A bill to suspend all commer- 
 cial intercourse with Great Britain until she made 
 reparation for her aggressions and delivered up the 
 Western fur-posts which she still held in defiance of 
 the treaty of 1783, was defeated only by the casting 
 vote of John Adams in the Senate. Lord Dorches- 
 ter, the governor of Canada, added fuel to the 
 flames by a speech to a delegation of hostile Indians 
 of our Northwest, in which he tried to rouse them 
 to a campaign to regain their lost lands by telling 
 them that it was probable that England and America 
 would be at war within a year. Congress voted 
 bills to fortify our harbors and build frigates. The 
 artillery service was strengthened and a levy of 
 eighty thousand militia authorized. The seaport 
 towns sent memorials to Congress breathing defi- 
 ance. Three thousand men actually began to drill 
 at Marblehead, Massachusetts. 
 
 But other counsels prevailed. To avoid both 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 189 
 
 war and the interruption of our commerce with 
 England, Washington sent John Jay, chief justice 
 of the supreme court, as envoy extraordinary to 
 London to smooth out our difficulties. The treaty 
 which Jay brought home after several months la- 
 bor with the British ministers was more meagre 
 even than the proverbial "half a loaf." It was 
 silent on the major questions of impressments and 
 the repeal of the odious Orders in Council, and 
 granted only niggardly concessions to our West 
 Indian traders. It was so unpopular in the seaport 
 towns that Jay was burned in effigy in Boston and 
 Hamilton was struck in the face by a brick-bat while 
 defending it in an open-air meeting at New York. 
 Yet it was ratified, by the bare two-thirds vote of 
 the Senate necessary, in deference to Washington's 
 conviction that the alternative was a war with 
 Great Britain, which we could ill afford to wage. 
 
 Naturally, the Republicans made great capital 
 out of the Jay Treaty. They had a rejoinder now 
 to the charge of their subserviency to France in the 
 days of the Genet mission. "Mr. Jay's representa- 
 tion was not in the stile of a firm demand for com- 
 pensation for injuries done to our citizens," wrote a 
 prominent Republican lawyer of Virginia to Madi- 
 son, "but rather supplicating the benevolence of 
 his Brittanic Majesty for relief." Jefferson called 
 the treaty "an execrable thing," "an infamous act 
 which is really nothing more [less] than a treaty of 
 
190 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 alliance between England and the Anglomen of this 
 country against the Legislature 1 and the people of 
 the United States." He maintained that a policy 
 of firmness, by which he meant enforcement of non- 
 intercourse, would have brought England to terms. 
 In the light of his policy of " firmness" when applied 
 a dozen years later by President Jefferson, we can 
 see the superior wisdom of Washington's course, 
 but to the Republicans of 1794 Jefferson's untested 
 theory carried the recommendation of the prestige 
 of his name. And they were fortified in their con- 
 tention that the treaty embroiled rather than ame- 
 liorated our foreign relations, by alienating our only 
 friend in the vain attempt to conciliate our most 
 dangerous enemy, when news came of its reception 
 in France. 
 
 James Monroe, a Virginia Republican, had been 
 appointed minister to the French Republic at the 
 same time that Jay was sent to England. His in- 
 structions contained the superfluous injunction to 
 cultivate good relations with France, and expressly 
 warranted him to say that the projected negotiations 
 with Great Britain concerned only the settlement of 
 
 1 Because the lower house of Congress had passed a non-inter- 
 course act with Great Britain, which was defeated only by John 
 Adams's casting vote in the Senate. Jefferson wrote sarcastically 
 of this vote: "The Senate was intended as a check on the will of the 
 Representatives when too hasty. They are not only that, but com- 
 pletely so on the will of the people. ... I have never known a 
 measure more universally desired by the people than the passage 
 of that bill." 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 191 
 
 some controversies arising out of the interpretation 
 of the treaty of peace of 1783, and would in no wise 
 impair our alliance of 1778 with France. The nego- 
 tiation, then, of a new treaty with Great Britain 
 which seemed to make us her accomplice in a pred- 
 atory war on -French commerce, appeared with not 
 a little show of justice to the government at Paris 
 as an unfriendly and even a treacherous act. It 
 greatly embarrassed Monroe, who had given hos- 
 tages to the French Republic in the shape of ex- 
 traordinary protestations of sympathy. Whether 
 he sinned more against diplomatic reserve than he 
 was sinned against by Federalist disavowal is a 
 question which his friends and his opponents have 
 not ceased to argue. At any rate, after reading 
 some sharp letters of rebuke from the acrid pen of 
 Secretary Pickering, he was recalled by Washington, 
 and returned to America to contribute his bit to 
 the Republican cause by the publication of an 
 apology for his conduct in a volume of over five 
 hundred pages. Needless to say, Jefferson did not 
 discourage its sale. 
 
 While Jay was busy negotiating his treaty an 
 event occurred at home which furnished more grist 
 for the Republican mill. Hamilton's excise tax, 
 ever since its passage in 1791, had been resisted by 
 the distillers of the back counties in the Central 
 and Southern States. The whiskey which they 
 made was not merely a deleterious luxury. It 
 
 / 
 
192 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 served as currency in a region where bank paper 
 was scarce and specie almost unknown. To tax it 
 for the support of the capitalist's currency on the 
 seaboard seemed like a hard and unjust discrimina- 
 tion. The farmer distillers of western Pennsylvania 
 broke out into a riot against the tax-collectors in 
 the summer of 1794. It was the first sectional con- 
 flict and the first test of the authority of the central 
 government under the new Constitution. President 
 Washington called fifteen thousand militia from 
 Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, 
 and sent them against the insurgents, who dis- 
 persed before a force several times larger than they 
 could hope to resist. A few of the ringleaders were 
 seized and brought to trial. Two were found guilty 
 of treason and condemned to death, but they were 
 pardoned by the President. 
 
 The " Whiskey War" was denounced in unmea- 
 sured terms by the Republicans as a cruel parade 
 of force to support an " infernal law." Jefferson 
 saw no justification in " arming one part of society 
 against another," and "declaring civil war the mo- 
 ment before the meeting of that body [Congress] 
 which has the sole right to declare war"; in " being 
 so patient of the kicks and scoffs of our enemies 
 [England] and rising at a feather against our friends " ; 
 in "adding a million to the public debt" for the 
 sake of crushing out a spirit of independence among 
 our own citizens. The Federalists, on the other 
 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 193 
 
 hand, called the prompt action of the government 
 the salvation of the country. They maintained 
 that the rebellion was "the legitimate fruit of the 
 doctrines of the French Revolution/ ' which were 
 spreading in our country and paving the way for 
 anarchy and mob violence. Washington shared 
 this view. On quitting the expedition at Bedford, 
 he told the militia that they were engaged in a ser- 
 vice which was " nothing less than to consolidate 
 and preserve the blessings of that Revolution which 
 at such expense of blood and treasure constituted 
 us a free and independent nation." In his speech 
 at the opening of Congress a few weeks later he 
 attributed the disorder to "certain self-created 
 societies," "combinations of men who, disregarding 
 the truth that those who rouse cannot always ap- 
 pease a civil commotion, disseminate suspicions, 
 jealousies, and accusations of the whole Govern- 
 ment." "If these self-created societies cannot be 
 discountenanced," he wrote Secretary of State Ran- 
 dolph, "they will destroy the Government of the 
 country." 
 
 The Republicans, with Jefferson in the lead, took 
 up the cudgels for the defense of freedom of dis- 
 cussion and criticism. "It is wonderful," wrote 
 Jefferson, commenting on the President's speech to 
 Congress, "that he should have permitted himself 
 to be the organ of such an attack" on these funda- 
 mental liberties. The denunciation of the Demo- 
 
194 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 cratic societies, he said, was "one of the extraordi- 
 nary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many 
 from the faction of Monocrats." As a matter of 
 fact the Democrats aimed at " destroying the gov- 
 ernment " of the country only as the government 
 was identical with the Federalist administration. 
 They wanted to "overthrow the government" in 
 the European sense of the phrase. To the Consti- 
 tution and the Union they professed an utter devo- 
 tion, but declared that it was "the duty of every 
 freeman to regard with attention and discuss with- 
 out fear the conduct of public servants in every 
 department of government " — a doctrine of social 
 as well as political offense to the "ruling classes" of 
 the eighteenth century. The "liberal communica- 
 tion of Republican sentiments/ ' which they advo- 
 cated as the "best antidote to political poison/ ' gen- 
 erally took the form of bitter attacks on the persons 
 as well as the measures of the Federalist leaders, 
 who were charged openly with "an amazing want 
 of republicanism. " Washington's Proclamation of 
 Neutrality, for example, was condemned as an act 
 of "Ottoman tyranny worthy of the grand Sultan 
 of Constantinople." The militia marching under 
 the eye of Hamilton to quell the whiskey riots were 
 "Janissaries executing the orders of the Grand 
 Vizier." All this was provoking and much of it 
 puerile, but the Federalists made the mistake of 
 meeting this Republican criticism with a persecution 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 195 
 
 which culminated in the arbitrary acts of repression 
 and censorship under John Adams. 
 
 The refusal of Washington to serve a third term 
 made the presidential election of 1796 the first na- 
 tional struggle between the two parties. No for- 
 mal nominations were made. Jefferson, by common 
 consent, was the Republican candidate, with Aaron 
 Burr as the favorite for the second place. The Fed- 
 eralists were not so united. John Adams had every 
 claim to be recognized as the leader of the party 
 after Washington's retirement, but Alexander Ham- 
 ilton had acquired the habit of dictatorship over the 
 cabinet and a large part of Congress, and he was 
 loath to see a man of Adams's independence in the 
 presidential chair. By the end of the summer, 
 however, it was generally expected that the Federal- 
 ist electors would cast their votes for John Adams 
 and Thomas Pinckney. The campaign was a vio- 
 lent one, each party accusing the other of doctrines 
 and practices destructive to the republic and of dis- 
 graceful vassalage to a foreign power. Washington's 
 serious warning against the "spirit of faction," in 
 his Farewell Address of September 17, 1796, fell on 
 unheeding ears. When the electoral votes were 
 counted in January, Adams had seventy-one, Jef- 
 ferson sixty-eight, Pinckney fifty-nine, and Burr 
 thirty, while the forty-eight remaining votes were 
 scattered among nine other names. Adams and 
 Jefferson, therefore, were chosen. Jefferson, by a 
 
196 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 strange irony, owed his elevation to the vice-presi- 
 dency to his arch-enemy, Alexander Hamilton. 1 
 
 The vice-presidency furnished Jefferson an ideal 
 vantage-ground for the consolidation of his party. 
 Without any official responsibility beyond wielding 
 the gavel in the Senate, he was at the seat of the 
 government, where he could watch the men and 
 study the measures of the administration at first 
 hand, and through his indefatigable correspondence 
 keep his lieutenants in the various States fully in- 
 formed of the trend of national affairs. At first he 
 seems to have had hopes of " converting" Adams to 
 the Republican party, for he and Adams were much 
 closer together than either was to Hamilton. 
 
 The two men called on each other in Philadelphia 
 before the inauguration and discussed the foreign 
 situation. Adams expressed the wish that Jefferson 
 might undertake a special mission to France, "if the 
 people would be willing to spare him for a short 
 time." When Jefferson declined the honor, Adams 
 asked him to sound his friend Madison on the prop- 
 osition. A few days later Adams and Jefferson were 
 dining with Washington, and left the house together. 
 "As soon as we got into the street," says Jefferson, 
 
 1 Hamilton was suspected by the New England Federalists of a 
 plot to bring in Pinckney just ahead of Adams by getting one or 
 two Federalist electors from the Southern States to leave Adams's 
 name off their ballots. To thwart this trick sixteen New England 
 electors wrote the name of Ellsworth or Jay for the second place on 
 the ticket, thus reducing Pinckney's vote not only far below Adams's 
 but below Jefferson's, too. 
 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 197 
 
 "I told him the event of my negotiations with Mr. 
 Madison. He immediately said that on consulta- 
 tion some objections to that nomination had been 
 raised . . . and was going on with excuses which 
 evidently embarrassed him, when we came to Fifth 
 Street, where our roads separated. ... He never 
 after that said one word to me on the subject or 
 ever consulted me as to any measures of the gov- 
 ernment." So it was Adams, not Jefferson, who 
 abandoned the idea of "fusion." He had had his 
 first cabinet meeting that morning ! 
 
 A few days after the inauguration news came that 
 the Federalist minister, C. C. Pinckney, whom 
 Washington had sent to Paris to succeed Monroe, 
 had been denied an audience by the Directory and 
 refused even the permission to remain on the soil 
 of France. Adams, while resenting the insult in a 
 spirited message to Congress, was sincerely anxious 
 to preserve peace with France. He nominated John 
 Marshall, a Virginia Federalist, and Elbridge Gerry, 
 of Massachusetts, a recent convert to Republican- 
 ism, to join Pinckney in a commission to Paris to 
 bring the French Directory to reason. The com- 
 missioners arrived in Paris in the early winter of 
 1797, but their treatment was even worse than 
 Pinckney's had been. The wily Talleyrand, minis- 
 ter of foreign affairs, did not deign to receive or 
 recognize them officially, but instead sent obscure 
 agents, who told them that no negotiations could be 
 
198 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 begun until an apology was made for the language 
 of President Adams's message to Congress and a 
 substantial sum of money paid to the directors. 
 Marshall and Pinckney quitted France in high in- 
 dignation, while Gerry was flattered into remaining 
 as a persona grata to continue the negotiations. He 
 was really a hostage in Talleyrand's hands. When 
 the news of this fresh indignity reached America 
 early in March, 1798, Adams sent a message to 
 Congress which was virtually a call to arms. Mar- 
 shall landed the next month, and was received like 
 a Regulus returned from Carthage. He was ac- 
 claimed in the streets and feted at banquets. The 
 toast "Millions for defense, but not one cent for 
 tribute" ran through the States as the slogan of 
 America's defiance. 
 
 The Republicans tried to make the best of a poor 
 case. Jefferson called the President's message "in- 
 sane." The Federalists, he declared, were deter- 
 mined to have a war with France, else why their 
 readiness to take the reported insults of a trio of 
 irresponsible swindlers (Talleyrand's agents) as the 
 act of the French Government. Did not Talley- 
 rand's invitation to Gerry to stay in Paris show 
 that he was desirous of reaching an understanding 
 with the United States ? The British were our real 
 enemies. Even at that moment their depredations 
 on our commerce, as the books of the merchants of 
 Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore showed, were 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 199 
 
 far more serious than the Frenchmen's. Jay's " in- 
 famous" treaty was the root of all the trouble. 
 And it was a futile sacrifice of honor, too. In the 
 very first year after its promulgation, the Republican 
 press claimed, the British had seized three hundred 
 American ships and impressed one thousand Ameri- 
 can seamen. But the Republican case broke down 
 completely when Adams ordered Secretary Pickering 
 to send to Congress, and Congress voted to publish 
 the correspondence of the commissioners with the 
 French agents. 
 
 The "X Y Z" correspondence 1 kindled the war 
 spirit in America. Congress in a score of acts 
 passed before midsummer of 1798 enlarged the 
 army, built and purchased ships, created a navy 
 department, strengthened the coast defenses, sta- 
 tioned squadrons in the West Indies, authorized our 
 vessels to take French privateers and ships of war, 
 and formally repealed the treaty of alliance of 1778. 
 Washington was made commander of the army with 
 the right to name his staff of major-generals. "On 
 the Fourth of July," wrote Troup to Rufus King, 
 "New York City resembled a camp rather than a 
 commercial port." Loyal addresses poured in on 
 the President. The theatres and concert-halls rang 
 with the new patriotic songs, "Hail, Columbia," and 
 
 1 So called because Pickering substituted these letters for the 
 names of Talleyrand's agents when he sent the correspondence to 
 Congress. 
 
200 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 "Adams and Liberty. " For one brief hour John 
 Adams was popular. 
 
 Then came a series of acts by the Federalist Con- 
 gress in June and July, which were dictated by a 
 mixture of panic and arrogance, acts not unlike those 
 of the French Jacobins, whom the Federalists held 
 in abhorrence. A Naturalization Act required aliens 
 who had come to America since 1795 to reside here 
 fourteen years before they could become citizens. 
 Alien Acts gave the President the power to remove 
 all "such aliens as he should judge dangerous to the 
 peace and safety of the United States." A Sedi- 
 tion Act imposed the penalty of fine and imprison- 
 ment on all who should forcibly oppose the execu- 
 tion of the laws of the United States, or should 
 publish a false or malicious writing against the gov- 
 ernment of the United States, the President, or 
 Congress. The Naturalization Act, while harsh, 
 was entirely within the constitutional powers of 
 Congress. The Alien Acts, while causing some 
 foreigners to leave the country, were not enforced 
 in a single instance by President Adams. But the 
 Sedition,. Act led to what John Randolph called "the 
 American Reign of Terror." Men were indicted, 
 fined, and imprisoned for such criticism of the ex- 
 ecutive as nowadays would be thought tame and 
 comical: for saying that Adams was "hardly in the 
 infancy of political blundering," or for expressing 
 the pious wish, as a New Jersey Republican did, 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 201 
 
 that the wadding of a cannon fired in honor of John 
 Adams might lodge in the seat of his breeches. 
 The Republican editors and printers were perse- 
 cuted with an almost ferocious zeal by the courts. 
 A Federalist judge of the supreme court, Samuel 
 Chase, was so savage in the prosecution of the trials 
 that he was later impeached by a Republican House 
 of Representatives. 
 
 Jefferson and his followers protested against the 
 Alien and Sedition Acts as a clear violation of the 
 Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech 
 and press, and which reserves to the States all 
 powers not expressly delegated to the central gov- 
 ernment. The federal courts, they declared, had 
 a right to take cognizance only of those criminal 
 cases which were mentioned in the Constitution. 
 The Constitution was a compact between the 
 States which federal officials had no right to assume 
 to interpret definitively. These ideas were em- 
 bodied most clearly in a set of resolutions prepared 
 by Jefferson for introduction into the legislature of 
 North Carolina, but transferred to Kentucky, in 
 December, 1798. The Kentucky Resolutions de- 
 clared the Alien and Sedition Acts "void and of 
 no force," and called upon the "co-States" to join 
 with Kentucky in protest. When the Northern 
 States replied unfavorably and the Southern States 
 not at all, the Kentucky Legislature adopted a sec- 
 ond set of resolutions from Jefferson's pen (Novem- 
 
202 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ber, 1799) declaring that "nullification" by the 
 State "sovereignties" was the "rightful remedy" for 
 federal usurpation. This was the first announce- 
 ment of the policy which South Carolina put into 
 operation a generation later, and which a generation 
 later still grew into the formidable doctrine of 
 secession. 
 
 Jefferson has been not only blamed for encourag- 
 ing disunion in the Kentucky Resolutions, but also 
 ridiculed for entertaining baseless fears. Either 
 charge is hard to prove in the light of contemporary 
 evidence. Jefferson was far ahead of the public 
 sentiment of the day in his devotion to the Union. 
 He wrote to Elbridge Gerry a month after the reso- 
 lutions were passed: "I do with a sincere zeal wish 
 an inviolable preservation of our Federal Constitu- 
 tion according to the true sense in which it was 
 adopted by the States." To the sincerity of this 
 vow his voluminous writings bear testimony. He 
 rebuked speculations on disunion, whether they 
 came from friends like Taylor, or enemies like 
 Hamilton and Wolcott. His object in the Ken- 
 tucky Resolutions was decentralization, not dis- 
 union. Indeed, it was just exactly the destruction 
 of the Federal Union through its conversion into a 
 consolidated despotism that he believed he was 
 working to prevent. He considered the Alien and 
 Sedition Acts " merely an experiment on the Ameri- 
 can mind to see how far it will bear an avowed vio- 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 203 
 
 lation of the Constitution/' and thought that if they 
 were swallowed by the people other acts would follow, 
 such as a life term for President and senators, or "the 
 transfer of the succession to the President's heirs." 
 "That Jefferson ever wrote such folly/' says Mc- 
 Master, "is of itself enough to deprive him of every 
 possible claim to statesmanship." But we have 
 abundant testimony that Hamilton was looking for 
 "the crisis/' even if it came by arms, which should 
 convert the "frail and worthless fabric of our Con- 
 stitution" into something nearer the admired Eng- 
 lish model. He and King and Gouverneur Morris 
 and other Federalists corresponded quite frankly on 
 the prospects of establishing an American empire 
 on "foundations much firmer than have yet been 
 devised." Morris confessed a few years after Ham- 
 ilton's death that "Hamilton disliked the Constitu- 
 tion, believing all Republican governments radically 
 defective." He had assented to the Constitution 
 because he thought it "might hold us together for 
 a time; but he trusted that in the changes and 
 chances of time we should be involved in some war" 
 [the "crisis"] "which might strengthen our Union 
 and nerve the executive." Jefferson may have, let 
 his fears get the better of his judgment, just as his 
 Federalist opponents did when, like Uriah Tracy, 
 they spoke of the Democrats as "worthy of the gal- 
 lows," or, like Fisher Ames, that such a government 
 as Jefferson preferred "would soon ensure war with 
 
204 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Great Britain, a Cisalpine Alliance with France, 
 plunder and anarchy." But to call Jefferson's fears 
 groundless or the expression of them "folly" is 
 rather to estimate the security of the Union of 1798 
 by the results of the struggle of 1861-5. 
 
 Passions ran high in those closing years of the 
 eighteenth century, when the moderating effect of 
 Washington's presence was removed. "Men who 
 had been lifelong friends," wrote Jefferson, "crossed 
 the street to avoid saluting each other." We were 
 actually at war with France on the ocean, yet the 
 French faction in America were loudly insisting that 
 the enemy was England. There was little in fact to 
 choose between the two countries in the matter of 
 depredations on our commerce. Fortunately for 
 our peace, offers of conciliation came from France. 
 Talleyrand wanted only to embroil us with Great 
 Britain. When he saw the effect of the X Y Z let- 
 ters on America he changed his tactics. With char- 
 acteristic effrontery he denied all connection with 
 his insulting agents and assured our envoy at The 
 Hague that a minister from the United States would 
 be received in Paris "with the respect due to a free, 
 independent, and powerful nation." President 
 Adams, to the disgust of the Hamiltonians, who 
 were bent on war, 1 and to his own eternal credit, 
 
 1 It is hard to absolve Hamilton from the charge of deliberately 
 fomenting the war spirit in order that he, as ranking major-general 
 and commander in the field, might have an army to use in his cher- 
 ished plan of co-operation with the Venezuelan adventurer, Miranda, 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 205 
 
 again sent a commission to Paris, in October, 1799. 
 Before they arrived, however, Napoleon Bonaparte 
 had overthrown the corrupt directory by the coup 
 d'etat of Brumaire, and made himself master of 
 France under the title of First Consul. Bonaparte 
 posed as a republican and a reconciler. He sought 
 peace to prepare for conquest. He was a man of 
 armies and diplomacy, a continental man. Sea 
 power or the economics of trade he never under- 
 stood. He boasted that he would "make commerce 
 manoeuvre like battalions." America was remote 
 and negligible as yet. Napoleon offered to release 
 us from the treaty of alliance of 1778 if we would 
 waive our claims on France for unlawful seizures of 
 our vessels. The formal convention restoring peace 
 between the United States and France was signed 
 September 30, 1800. 
 
 Our country was already in the midst of another 
 violent presidential campaign in which Adams and 
 
 in freeing the Spanish colonies and bringing them under Anglo- 
 American influence to balance the power of France. Hamilton wrote 
 to Miranda in August, 1798, the very month that Talleyrand was 
 offering peace to our minister in Holland: "The plan in my opinion 
 ought to be a fleet of Great Britain and an army of the United 
 States, and a government for the liberated territory agreeable to both 
 the cooperators, about which there will be no difficulty. To arrange the 
 plan a competent authority from Great Britain to some person here 
 is the best expedient. Your presence here in that case will be ex- 
 tremely essential. We are raising an army of about 12,000 men. 
 General Washington has resumed his station at the head of the 
 armies. I am second in command. 
 
 " With esteem and regard, 
 
 "Alexander Hamilton." 
 
206 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Jefferson were again the candidates, with C. C. 
 Pinckney and Aaron Burr for second place. The 
 Federalists were torn with faction. The persecu- 
 tions under the Sedition Act had neutralized the 
 brief popularity of the administration after the 
 X Y Z disclosures. Adams's courageous peace with 
 France had brought down anathemas on his head. 
 Hamilton, with his chances of military glory gone 
 glimmering and his friends removed from the cabi- 
 net, wrote a bitter invective against John Adams 
 to prove his unsuitableness for the chief magistracy 
 — and then urged the Federalists to vote for him. 
 War taxes for a war that was never declared and 
 that was unrecognized by half the country increased 
 the dissatisfaction with the administration. The 
 physician for the country's ills was already at hand, 
 said Jefferson, in the person of the tax-collector. 
 The Federalists hung together in a discordant unity 
 to prevent the calamity of a Republican triumph; 
 but they were powerless to check the rising tide. 
 Every local election in New England and the Middle 
 States showed an increase in the vote, and the in- 
 crease was largely in favor of the Republicans. Jef- 
 ferson was tireless in his propaganda and unwearied 
 in his patience. He noted the gain of a Republican 
 congressman here and the State assemblyman there; 
 he cheered Madison with the report of "a consider- 
 able change working in the minds of the people to 
 the eastward'' [New England], and congratulated 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 207 
 
 Burr on the visible "dawn of change" in his State 
 of New York. He had full confidence that Repub- 
 licanism was growing like a sound tissue to possess 
 the whole body politic. Patience and labor! till 
 "time has been given to the States to recover from 
 the temporary frenzy into which they have been 
 decoyed, to rally round the Constitution and rescue 
 it from the destruction with which it has been 
 threatened." Jefferson hoped even to convert the 
 Federalists, while they expected only to defeat and 
 awe the "Jacobins." It was a battle between in- 
 trenched privilege and insurgent democracy — be- 
 tween the expiring eighteenth century and the 
 dawning nineteenth. 
 
 The battle was close and fiercely fought. Jeffer- 
 son, as leader of the "opposition," was subjected to 
 extravagant abuse. He was accused of having 
 robbed a widow and her children of an estate of 
 ten thousand pounds; of preaching class hatred and 
 "Jacobinical phrensy"; of slandering George Wash- 
 ington and ridiculing the Christian religion. The 
 direst predictions were made in the event of his 
 election. Government would be at an end and 
 civic virtue a thing of the past. One panic-stricken 
 Federalist declared that every decent man would 
 have to go abroad armed "to defend his property, 
 his wife, and children . . . from the daggers of 
 his Jacobin neighbors." Old ladies in Connecticut 
 hid their family Bibles, believing that the first act 
 
208 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 of the " atheistic' ' President would be a decree con- 
 fiscating all copies of the Sacred Book. Following 
 his custom, Jefferson ignored these attacks. While 
 he was contradicting one campaign lie ; he said, they 
 would publish twenty new ones. 
 
 With his usual political sagacity, Jefferson de- 
 clared that as New York City went the election 
 would go. And so it was. Aaron Burr arranged 
 an attractive slate of the city candidates for the 
 State legislature in the spring election of 1800. 
 They carried the city and insured a Republican 
 majority in the legislature which was to choose the 
 presidential electors in November. As a last resort 
 to save a few of New York's votes for the Federalist 
 ticket, Hamilton wrote a letter to Governor Jay, 
 advising him to reconvene the old legislature and 
 put through a law for the choice of presidential 
 electors by districts. He confessed that it was not 
 a "regular or delicate proceeding/' but urged that 
 "scruples of delicacy and propriety ought to be laid 
 aside" when it was a question of preventing the 
 election to the presidency of "an atheist in religion 
 and a fanatic in politics." Governor Jay filed the 
 letter with the indorsement: "Proposing measures 
 for party purposes which I think it would not be- 
 come me to adopt." 
 
 When the electoral votes were counted in January, 
 Jefferson and Burr had seventy-three apiece, to 
 sixty-five for Adams and sixty-four for Pinckney. 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 209 
 
 Not a single Republican elector had been thoughtful 
 enough to vote another name than Burr's for second 
 choice, so Jefferson and Burr were technically tied 
 for the presidency, and the decision was thrown 
 into the House of Representatives. Burr knew that 
 every elector had intended to vote for him for Vice- 
 President, and, had he been an honorable man, he 
 would have given first place to Jefferson immedi- 
 ately. But Burr was not an honorable man. He 
 allowed himself to be put forward by a caucus of the 
 Federalists in the House against the man of his own 
 party who was obviously the choice of the nation. 
 
 When the balloting began in the House on Feb- 
 ruary 11, 1801, Vermont and Maryland were equally 
 divided, and lost their vote. Of the other fourteen 
 States six voted for Burr (New Hampshire, Massa- 
 chusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, 
 and South Carolina), and the remaining eight for 
 Jefferson. Nine States were the majority necessary 
 for an election. Day after day the balloting was 
 repeated with the same result. There were rumors 
 that the Federalists would continue the deadlock 
 till the 4th of March, and then devolve the presi- 
 dency on John Marshall, who had just been ap- 
 pointed by John Adams as chief justice of the 
 supreme court. The two great States of Pennsylva- 
 nia and Virginia, with their Republican governors, 
 McKean and Monroe, were ready to appeal to arms 
 rather than see Jefferson cheated out of the presi- 
 
210 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 dehcy. Hamilton, too, used his influence in behalf 
 of Jefferson, not that he loved Jefferson more, but 
 that he loved Burr less. At last the Federalists in 
 the House gave up the hopeless policy of obstruc- 
 tion. On the thirty-sixth ballot the Federalist 
 members of all the States except New England cast 
 blanks, and Jefferson was elected by a vote of ten 
 States to four. 1 
 
 Ousted from the presidency and their majority 
 gone in Congress, the Federalists attempted to keep 
 control of the third branch of the government by a 
 reorganization of the judiciary in the last days of 
 Adams's term. A law was passed creating sixteen 
 new federal judgeships, with a number of marshals, 
 attorneys, and clerks. Adams was busy until 
 nine o'clock on the evening of March 3, signing the 
 new commissions. Before sunrise on the morning 
 of the 4th he drove away from the White House, 
 and the reign of Federalism was ended. 2 
 
 1 The vote of Maryland was still divided, and Delaware had only 
 one representative in Congress, the Federalist Bayard, whose vote 
 could at any moment have elected Jefferson. Jefferson, without 
 making any "capitulation" to the Federalists, seems to have let it 
 be understood among them that he would not disturb the main 
 institutions of the government if elected (bank, tariff, army and 
 navy). He had no hard feeling toward Burr, who, to his credit be 
 it said, did not attempt to influence the members of the House in 
 their choice. The direst effects of the choice of "a feeble and false 
 enthusiast, a profligate without character or property (!)" for 
 President were predicted by the unreconciled Federalists of New 
 England. 
 
 2 Two persistent fables have clung to the last days of Adams's 
 presidency. One to the effect that Levi Lincoln, Jefferson's desig- 
 nated attorney-general, appeared with watch in hand, in the office 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH 211 
 
 We have tarried so long over the great battle of 
 1800 because it is the central fact of Thomas Jeffer- 
 son's career. From his entrance into the cabinet 
 in March, 1790, to his entrance into the White 
 House eleven years later, he waged an uninterrupted 
 campaign against what he believed to be a deliber- 
 ate plot to subvert the Constitution and nullify the 
 Declaration of Independence. For him the victory 
 of 1800 was the vindication of the principles of 
 1776. He was not overscrupulous in his methods, 
 though he never descended to such trickery as Ham- 
 ilton's advice to Governor Jay. He gave secret en- 
 couragement, if not open support, to such writers 
 as Freneau, Bache, Duane, and Callender, whose 
 slanderous articles on the Federalist leaders tried 
 their patience to the utmost. His compilation of 
 the Anas, with their gossipy depreciation of the 
 deeds and motives of his political adversaries, was 
 unchivalrous. His correspondence too often shows 
 
 of the State Department at midnight of March 3, to order John 
 Marshall to discontinue signing the commissions of the new judges 
 — the "midnight judges of the Duke of Braintree" [Adams], as 
 the Republicans called them. But Jefferson used the term "mid- 
 night" in connection with these new officers, just as we use the 
 phrase "the eleventh hour," to mean late. In a letter of March 24 
 he speaks of "Adams's midnight appointments, to wit, all after De- 
 cember 12" (the day on which the defeat of the Federalists was cer- 
 tainly known) . The other story is that Adams left the White House 
 before dawn of the day Jefferson entered, in order to avoid the 
 humiliation of meeting his successor. But the reason for Adams's 
 hasty departure was the sudden death of his son Charles at New 
 York. He entertained no ill feeling toward Jefferson, and wrote to 
 him a few days after the inauguration, "heartily wishing" him a 
 "quiet and prosperous administration." 
 
212 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 a trace of that satisfaction which men who are of a 
 retiring disposition take in the unburdening of their 
 grievances to their intimate friends. But for all 
 these faults of disposition or judgment, there was 
 nothing mean or base in Thomas Jefferson. He was 
 an idealist through and through. His whole being 
 was devoted to his cause. And it is not the least 
 testimony to his labors for democracy that since 
 the Republican triumph which ushered in the nine- 
 teenth century every political party that has gained 
 or sought the direction of our government has made 
 its appeal to the people of America. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 
 
 A just and solid republican government maintained here will be a 
 standing monument and example for the aim and imitation of the 
 people of other countries; and I join with you in the hope and belief 
 that they will see from our example that a free government is of all others 
 the most majestic. (Jefferson to John Dickinson, March 6, 1801.) 
 
 Thomas Jefferson was approaching his fifty-eighth 
 birthday when he entered the White House. The 
 vigor of his tall spare frame was somewhat disguised 
 by a studied negligence of dress and carelessness of 
 posture; and the incessant activity of his forceful, 
 orderly mind was concealed beneath an ostentatious 
 indifference to social conventions. He was anxious 
 that the triumphant democracy of which he was the 
 oracle should avoid all appearance of conformity 
 to the Old World traditions of pomp and ceremony. 
 He held no stiff levees like Washington's, but was 
 easily accessible to callers. In place of the formal 
 "speech from the throne" to the Houses of Congress, 
 with their formal reply delivered by a delegation, he 
 substituted a written message to be read by the 
 clerk of the House. He answered a petition from 
 the merchants of New Haven with his own pen. 
 He received the British minister, Anthony Merry, 
 
 213 
 
214 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 in a dressing-gown with slippers run down at the 
 heels, to the great chagrin of that gentleman in cor- 
 rect diplomatic tenue. To the minister's secre- 
 tary he made an appearance very much like that of 
 "a tall, large-boned farmer" — a characterization 
 which probably would have pleased Jefferson rather 
 than nettled him. 
 
 Yet there was nothing coarse or boorish about 
 the "Jeffersonian simplicity," nothing like those 
 revellings of King Mob amid unlimited orange 
 punch which Webster and Story describe with a 
 kind of tolerant disgust in their accounts of the 
 inauguration of Andrew Jackson a generation later. 
 Jefferson was a man of rare accomplishments and 
 fine tastes, a scholar, a diplomat, a musician. He 
 was the very soul of hospitality, keeping in the 
 White House as at Monticello an open table at which 
 his guests were cheered by good fare and charmed 
 by brilliant discourse. His wine bills for the first 
 year of the presidency were two thousand seven 
 hundred and ninety-seven dollars and thirty-eight 
 cents. His pride in a fine stable did credit to the 
 traditions of the Virginia aristocracy. "His inter- 
 ests," says Henry Adams, "were those of a liberal 
 European nobleman like the Due de Liancourt," a 
 welcome visitor at Monticello. "He seemed," says 
 Adams again, "during his entire life to breathe with 
 perfect satisfaction nowhere except in the liberal 
 literary and scientific air of the Paris of 1789." The 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 215 
 
 demagogues of the Paris of 1792, the Marats and 
 Desmoulins and Huberts with whom his Federalist 
 opponents compared him, would have filled him 
 with disgust. For he had none of the arts of the 
 popular orator and shrank from the rude blows of 
 public controversy with a sensitiveness which some 
 of his biographers have called timidity. 
 
 Jefferson regarded the victory of 1800 not as a 
 personal triumph or a mere change of administra- 
 tion only. It was a political revolution, furnishing 
 the first opportunity for true Republicans to admin- 
 ister a government professedly republican, but per- 
 verted by Hamilton and the Essex men 1 into a sem- 
 blance of monarchy. The country had found itself 
 in the election of 1800. To use a simile which Jef- 
 ferson never tired of, the ship of state had righted 
 itself to an even keel. Ten years of vigilant labor 
 and patient persuasion had organized the good sense 
 of the masses into a compact party, and now deliv- 
 ered into the hands of that party those branches of 
 the national government (executive and legislative) 
 which were in the people's gift. Jefferson's inaugu- 
 ral address was a hymn of reconciliation. Harmony 
 was restored except for the few malcontents in New 
 
 J The "Essex Junto" was a name applied to a group of ultra- 
 Federalists (Ames, Cabot, Pickering, Parsons, Higginson) whose 
 activities lay chiefly in Essex County, Massachusetts. Though 
 their faithful followers numbered no more than five hundred, accord- 
 ing to Ames's confession, their wealth, social eminence, and alliance 
 with the Congregational clergy gave them a great influence in the 
 politics of Massachusetts and New England. 
 
216 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 England who were destined to dwindle into a little 
 factious group of leaders without a following. "We 
 have called by different names bretheren of the 
 same principles/ ' cried Jefferson. "We are all re- 
 publicans; we are all federalists !" He spoke of the 
 republic as "in the full tide of a successful experi- 
 ment " under a government "which has so far kept 
 us free and firm." He urged that we "pursue with 
 courage and confidence our principles/ ' and pledged 
 himself to the "preservation of the general Govern- 
 ment in its whole constitutional vigor as the sheet 
 anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad." 
 Not a word of the bitter battle of 1800 or the ten 
 years opposition to the "vigor" of the general gov- 
 ernment under the Federalists! Not a hint that 
 the authors of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolu- 
 tions had come to sit in the seats vacated by Timo- 
 thy Pickering and John Adams! What did these 
 "amiable professions of harmony" mean when the 
 whole hated structure of the Hamiltonian finances, 
 with debt, bank, funds, excise, stood intact; when 
 the Naturalization Act and the Enemies Alien Act 
 still disgraced the statute-books; when the newly 
 appointed Federalist judges were stretching out 
 their hands for their "midnight" commissions; when 
 the tax-gatherer was trying to meet the unprece- 
 dented budget of over eleven million dollars caused 
 by the "needless quarrel" with France over the 
 X Y Z "frenzy"? 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 217 
 
 If we turn to Jefferson's private correspondence 
 during the few months after he entered the presi- 
 dential office, we find in it little that matches the 
 roseate view of reconciliation and harmony ex- 
 pressed in the inaugural address. He wrote to 
 Monroe three days after the inauguration that he 
 would never turn an inch out of his way to placate 
 the Federalist leaders; and to General Gates a day 
 later that he hoped to make up an administration 
 which should "bid defiance to the plans of opposi- 
 tion meditated" by them. He would rebuke "Mr. 
 Adams' indecent conduct in crowding nominations 
 after he knew they were not for himself/' by treat- 
 ing such nominations "as nullities." To his attor- 
 ney-general, Levi Lincoln, he wrote in midsummer 
 deploring the "inflexibility of the federalist spirit" 
 in Connecticut, and asked for a list of "Essex men" 
 in office in New England with a view to their re- 
 moval. Commenting on his first annual message 
 of December, 1801, in a letter to Dupont de 
 Nemours, he excused himself for not having at- 
 tacked the financial system inherited from Alexan- 
 der Hamilton. "It mortifies me," he wrote, "to be 
 strengthening principles which I deem radically 
 vicious, but this vice is entailed on us by the first 
 error. In other parts of our government I hope 
 we shall be able by degrees to introduce sound prin- 
 ciples and make them habitual." The leaders of 
 the Federalists he considered incorrigible, but their 
 
218 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 followers might be won. As Henry Adams neatly 
 says: " Jefferson intended to entiee the flock with 
 one hand and belabor the shepherds with the other." 
 When Jefferson's first Congress adjourned on 
 May 3, 1802, though there was a Republican ma- 
 jority in both Houses, the sum total of its onslaught 
 on the Federalist measures against which the Re- 
 publicans had protested for a decade was the repeal 
 of the Judiciary Act, the Naturalization Act, and 
 the internal taxes. Economies were introduced in 
 army and navy by Jefferson's able secretary of the 
 treasury, Albert Gallatin, a budget system calling 
 for specific appropriations was introduced, and pro- 
 vision was made for setting aside enough of the 
 annual income as a sinking fund to extinguish the 
 debt by the year 1817. But no steps were taken to 
 modify the structure of government or to guard 
 against those centralizing tendencies which the Re- 
 publicans professed to detest. The Alien and Sedi- 
 tion Acts expired by limitation in 1801, but the 
 Enemies Alien Act remained, and still remains, on 
 our statute-books. The central doctrine of Jeffer- 
 son's political creed was that the " general Govern- 
 ment" must not be the final judge of its own pow- 
 ers. Such a government he had lately called a 
 " despotism." Yet his Republican Congress took 
 no steps toward initiating an amendment to the 
 Constitution by which the justices of the supreme 
 court should have a limited or elective term or 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 219 
 
 should be removable on petition by Congress. Jef- 
 ferson spoke bitterly of the Federalists " retiring 
 into the Judiciary as a stronghold* from which they 
 might batter down all the works of republicanism; 
 yet he left the stronghold unattacked. Where was 
 the spirit of the Kentucky Resolutions ! 
 
 Uncompromising Republicans of the South, like 
 John Randolph, John Taylor, Macon, and Giles, 
 attributed Jefferson's acquiescence in the status quo 
 to the influence of Secretary Madison's still uni- 
 formed Federalism, while the Federalists rejoiced at 
 the signs of approaching disaffection in the Republi- 
 can ranks. It is hard to know just what the mo- 
 tives for Jefferson's " inconsistency" were, for the 
 story that he promised the Federalists of the House 
 not to interfere with the financial institutions of 
 their party, in order to secure his election over Burr, 
 he categorically denied. The most charitable view 
 of the matter is that Jefferson was so convinced of 
 the change of heart of all but a negligible remnant 
 of Federalists that he thought the Constitution was 
 in no further danger of being " perverted into mon- 
 archy." After all, it was not the instrument that 
 mattered so much as the character of the men in 
 whose hands the instrument was. The least chari- 
 table view of Jefferson's behavior is that it was of a 
 piece with the "ineradicable duplicity" of mind 
 which made him say one thing to the public to 
 establish his popularity, and work another course 
 
220 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 in private to preserve his domination. At any rate, 
 the majority of Jefferson's biographers have adopted 
 the shrewd and pitiless judgment of his quondam 
 colleague, Hamilton, written to persuade Bayard to 
 cast the vote of Delaware for Jefferson instead of 
 Burr: "Nor is it true that Jefferson is zealot enough 
 to do anything in pursuance of his principles which 
 will contravene his popularity or his interest . . . 
 and the probable result of such a temper is the 
 preservation of systems, though originally opposed, 
 which, once being established, could not be over- 
 turned without danger to the person who did it. 
 To my mind, a true estimate of Mr. Jefferson's 
 character warrants the expectation of a temporizing 
 rather than a violent system." 
 
 But apart from nice calculations of political phi- 
 losophy or personal popularity, practical questions 
 arose early in Jefferson's administration which made 
 it imperative for him to preserve the " general Gov- 
 ernment in its whole constitutional vigor." We 
 have seen in a former chapter what efforts Jefferson 
 made, while minister at Paris, to curb the pirates 
 of the Barbary Coast. He failed to enlist the sup- 
 port of the maritime Powers of Europe, and, worse 
 than that, our own government consented to pay 
 ransom money and tribute all through the adminis- 
 trations of Washington and Adams. Early in Jef- 
 ferson's term the crisis came in the Mediterranean. 
 The Dey of Algiers compelled Captain Bainbridge, 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 221 
 
 who had just brought him tribute money from 
 America, to raise the Algerian standard to the mast- 
 head of the American ship and go on an errand for 
 him to the Sultan of Constantinople. A few months 
 after this humiliating event, the Bashaw of Tripoli 
 demanded an increase of the meagre tribute of 
 eighty-three thousand dollars, which he was receiv- 
 ing from America, and on being refused, declared 
 war on the United States, more barbaricOj by chop- 
 ping down the flagpole in front of the American 
 consulate. 
 
 Jefferson and Gallatin both deplored the necessity 
 of war: the former because it disturbed his dream 
 of a new and peaceful empire on this side of the 
 Atlantic, the latter because it interfered with his 
 programme of economics for the reduction of the 
 national debt. But theoretical and practical ob- 
 jections both had to yield to the exigencies of the 
 situation. Instead of laying up our few war-ships 
 in the eastern branch of the Potomac, where they 
 could be taken care of by "a single set of plunder- 
 ers/ J and roofing them over to protect them from 
 the sun and rain, Jefferson had to despatch several 
 expeditions under Dale, Morris, Preble, and Rodgers, 
 to the Mediterranean. The work of chastising the 
 Barbary pirates lasted through the four years of his 
 first administration, but when it was done the 
 Mediterranean was as safe for commerce as the 
 English Channel. The brilliant exploits of Decatur, 
 
222 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Preble, and Somers aroused the admiration of 
 Europe and wrote a second chapter in the history 
 of our navy, not less glorious than the one opened 
 by John Manley and John Paul Jones. But they 
 did not convert Jefferson and his secretary to a 
 strong naval policy. The President advocated in- 
 stead of war frigates a number of small gunboats for 
 coast defense, which could be drawn up on land like 
 a fisherman's dory, while the Treasury Department 
 emphasized the temporary nature of the increased 
 tariff duties necessitated by the war by setting them 
 apart as a special " Mediterranean fund." Jeffer- 
 son's amphibious navy caused much contemptuous 
 merriment to his opponents, and his policy of "un- 
 preparedness " has been held directly responsible by 
 most of our historians for the humiliations of his 
 second term, which culminated in the War of 1812 
 with Great Britain. 
 
 Determined as Jefferson was, however, to keep us 
 free from imperialistic ambitions abroad, he was an 
 ardent apostle of a greater America at home. For 
 almost a score of years before he became President 
 we can trace in his writings these twin ideas of a 
 sundered America and a vast America. He was an 
 advocate of the principle which found its classic 
 expression near the close of his long life in the Mon- 
 roe Doctrine. Even before Washington had fore- 
 shadowed that doctrine in his Farewell Address of 
 1796, we find Jefferson writing from Paris (1787) 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 223 
 
 recommending peaceful commercial relations with 
 European Powers, without " entangling alliances." 
 This was the text of his policy as secretary of state 
 in Washington's first administration. So, too, in 
 the Paris days, we find him encouraging the Ameri- 
 can traveller, Ledyard, to cross Siberia and return 
 to his New England home by way of the great un- 
 explored West of our continent. In the same year 
 that Captain Grey entered the Columbia River 
 (1792), Jefferson urged the American Philosophical 
 Society to raise funds by subscription for the explo- 
 ration of the trans-Mississippi country (which be- 
 longed to Spain). The English settlements on the 
 Atlantic coast were the "nest" from which the 
 whole American continent was to be populated. 
 He already saw in imagination a people of one 
 hundred millions here — the United States of the 
 early twentieth century. 
 
 Soon after Jefferson's election to the presidency 
 the opportunity came for him to render the greatest 
 service of his administration and one of the greatest 
 services of the nineteenth century to the American 
 people. The reader will recall how the Citizen Con- 
 sul Bonaparte, fresh from his triumph over the Aus- 
 trians at Marengo, signed the convention restoring 
 peace between the French Republic and the United 
 States, September 30, 1800. The very next day he 
 concluded the treaty of San Ildefonso with Spain, 
 by which he gained the retrocession of the vast ter- 
 
224 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ritory of Louisiana, which Louis XV had handed 
 over to his ally, Spain, at the close of the long strug- 
 gle between France and England for the possession 
 of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi valleys (1762). 
 "The treaty of October 1," says Henry Adams, "un- 
 did the treaty of September 30." As soon as it was 
 known in Washington that Napoleon had acquired 
 Louisiana, Jefferson began to take alarm. "Spain 
 is ceding Louisiana to France," he wrote to Rufus 
 King in London, May 14, 1801, "an inauspicious 
 circumstance for us." And to Monroe, a few days 
 later, he wrote: "There is considerable reason to 
 apprehend that Spain cedes Louisiana and the 
 Floridas to France. It is a policy very unwise in 
 both, and very ominous to us." Napoleon's cher- 
 ished plan of rebuilding a French colonial empire in 
 America developed apace in the brief interval of 
 peace which the years 1801 and 1802 brought 
 to France. He sent his brother-in-law, General 
 Leclerc, with ten thousand troops to reduce the 
 island of Santo Domingo as a preliminary to occu- 
 pying New Orleans. His plan was to oust the 
 Americans from their lucrative trade with the An- 
 tilles, and joining the islands of the Caribbean Sea 
 with the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and the Mis- 
 sissippi Valley, to restore the colonial empire which 
 France had lost a generation before. 
 
 Leclerc and twice ten thousand men were destined 
 to succumb to the desperate resistance of the negro 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 225 
 
 chieftain, Toussaint Louverture, and to the deadly 
 ravages of the yellow fever in Santo Domingo, before 
 a year had passed. But Jefferson could not foresee 
 how fate would work to frustrate Napoleon's ambi- 
 tions. In great alarm he wrote, on April 18, 1802, 
 to Robert R. Livingston, our minister in Paris, that 
 the cession of Louisiana to France completely re- 
 versed all the political relations of the United States, 
 and "would form a new epoch in our political 
 course." "There is on the globe," he said, "one 
 single spot the possessor of which is our natural and 
 habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which 
 the produce of three-eighths of our territory must 
 pass to market. France, placing herself in that 
 door assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain 
 might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific 
 dispositions, her feeble state, would induce her to 
 increase our facilities there so that her possession of 
 the place would be hardly felt by us, and it would 
 not perhaps be very long before some circumstance 
 might arise which might make the cession of it to 
 us the price of something of more worth to her. 
 Not so can it ever be in the hands of France. The 
 impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restless- 
 ness of her character . . . make it impossible that 
 France and the United States can continue long 
 friends when they meet in so irritable a position. 
 The day France takes possession of New Orleans 
 fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever 
 
226 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 within her low-water mark. It seals the union of 
 two nations which in conjunction can maintain ex- 
 clusive possession of the ocean. From that moment 
 we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and 
 nation." This from Thomas Jefferson, the lifelong 
 friend of France and the denouncer of the "execra- 
 ble" Jay Treaty with England! 
 
 In October, 1802, the Spanish authorities at New 
 Orleans (whether at the instigation or for the em- 
 barrassment of Napoleon, who had not yet taken 
 possession of Louisiana) closed the mouth of the 
 Mississippi to American vessels by suspending the 
 right of deposit at New Orleans which had been 
 granted by the Pinckney Treaty of 1795. The de- 
 cree was received with consternation by "the pres- 
 tigious and restless population" of our West, who 
 sent their produce down the great river. "The 
 Mississippi is everything to them," wrote Madison 
 to our minister in Spain; "it is the Hudson, the 
 Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable rivers 
 of the Atlantic States, formed into one." During 
 the year 1802 the farmers of Kentucky and the Mis- 
 sissippi Territory alone had sent one million six 
 hundred thousand dollars' worth of produce through 
 that channel. The reports of the Spanish custom- 
 house showed transhipments of over a thousand 
 hogsheads of tobacco and a hundred thousand bar- 
 rels of flour, with great quantities of bacon, pork, 
 lead, cordage, and apples. Of the two hundred and 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 227 
 
 sixty-five vessels that sailed from the Mississippi 
 the same year, one hundred and fifty-eight were 
 American, as compared with one hundred and four 
 Spanish and only three French. The Americans 
 were rapidly gaming a monopoly of the trade of New 
 Orleans. Petitions began to pour into Congress 
 from the Western settlements for the defense of their 
 commerce. They were anxious to hav£ the United 
 States troops at Natchez march on New Orleans 
 forthwith. 
 
 Never before was Jefferson confronted with so 
 difficult and delicate a situation, and never, before 
 or after, did he display to better advantage his re- 
 sources of patient and tactful diplomacy. He 
 calmed Congress by a confident message which con- 
 tained no mention of the suspended right of deposit, 
 but dwelt on the return of peace in Europe and the 
 growing prosperity of our country. He only men- 
 tioned the cession of Louisiana to France as a trans- 
 action which, if carried into effect, would make a 
 change in the aspect of our foreign relations. He 
 encouraged the exasperated people of the West to 
 trust to the protection of the party which had con- 
 sistently supported their interests rather than fly 
 to the new and simulated friendship of the Federal- 
 ists. He secured the appointment of James Monroe 
 as a special envoy to France to co-operate with our 
 minister, Robert R. Livingston, and the appropria- 
 tion of two million dollars "to enable the Executive 
 
228 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 to commence with more effect a negotiation with 
 the French and Spanish governments relative to 
 the purchase from them of the Island of New Or- 
 leans and the provinces of East and West Florida." 
 
 In spite of his easy tone to Congress, however, 
 Jefferson realized to the full the seriousness of the 
 situation. "It is a crisis/' he wrote to his old 
 friend, Dupont de Nemours, "the most important 
 the United States have met since their independence 
 and which is to decide their future character and 
 career"; and to Livingston, in France, he wrote: 
 "The future destinies of our country hang on the 
 event of this negotiation." Livingston's instruc- 
 tions in the note of April 18, 1802, had declared that 
 the cession of New Orleans and the Floridas to us 
 by France "would certainly in a great degree remove 
 the causes of jarring and irritation between us," if 
 France were determined to keep Louisiana. But 
 there is proof that Jefferson would have been con- 
 tent for the moment to consider the restoration of 
 the right of deposit and the free navigation of the 
 river as a basis for further peaceful negotiation. 
 Monroe's instructions were left vague enough to 
 admit of almost any deal with Napoleon and Tal- 
 leyrand. They consisted of hardly more than ex- 
 aggerated expressions of confidence in Monroe's 
 discretion. 
 
 It was not, however, the faithful labors of Liv- 
 ingston or even the far-seeing ambitions of Jefferson 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 229 
 
 that were the primary cause of our acquisition of 
 that splendid domain which stretches from the Mis- 
 sissippi to the Rockies and from Canada to the 
 Gulf. Livingston's offers had been coldly received 
 by Talleyrand, and he wrote home to Madison just 
 as Monroe was starting for Paris: "With respect to 
 the negotiations for Louisiana, I think nothing will 
 be effected here." Jefferson himself confessed in a 
 letter to John Bacon (written curiously enough on 
 the very day the treaty of cession was dated in 
 Paris, April 30, 1803) that he was "not sanguine in 
 obtaining a cession of New Orleans for money, " but 
 was "confident in the policy of putting off the day 
 of contention for it" till we should be "stronger in 
 ourselves and stronger in allies"; especially till we 
 should have "planted such a population on the Mis- 
 sissippi" as would be able to defend their rights. 
 He did not expect Napoleon to yield, but his hope 
 was to "palliate and endure" until war between 
 France and England, with our threat to join the lat- 
 ter, gave him the chance to bring to bear on the 
 First Consul the only kind of argument which he 
 heeded. 
 
 But Napoleon did not wait. He never let the 
 initiative in an inevitable act come from another. 
 The ill-kept peace of Amiens was wearing thin. 
 England refused to abandon Malta in the Mediter- 
 ranean, and Napoleon continued his aggressions on 
 the Republics along the French borders. Each 
 
230 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 made the other's acts a cause of war, and both began 
 preparations for war. On the very day after Liv- 
 ingston wrote home his pessimistic prospects for the 
 purchase of any of Louisiana, Napoleon practically 
 declared war on England by publicly insulting Lord 
 Whitworth at an audience of ambassadors at the 
 Tuileries: " You are determined to make war against 
 us. You drive me to it. I shall be the last to 
 sheathe the sword." Devoted as Napoleon was to 
 his colonial scheme, not even his colossal brain 
 could manage the affairs of both hemispheres. He 
 had to choose between Europe and America, be- 
 tween the Continent and the colonies — and he chose 
 as every French ruler had chosen since the days of 
 Richelieu. Santo Domingo had cost him twenty- 
 four thousand men. Spain, secretly encouraged by 
 England, had persistently refused to include the 
 gulf shores of the Floridas in the cession of San 
 Ildefonso. Pichon, the French agent at Washing- 
 ton, was writing home alarming reports of the " re- 
 doubled civilities" of President Jefferson for the 
 British charge. England's renewal of the war 
 meant a rebuilding of the European coalition. With 
 characteristic abruptness, Napoleon ordered his 
 finance minister, Barbe-Marbois, to offer the whole 
 province of Louisiana to Livingston for fifty mil- 
 lion francs (April 11, 1803). Talleyrand, to whom 
 Napoleon had also disclosed his plan, had already 
 surprised Livingston by asking him how much the 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 231 
 
 United States would give for the whole of Lou- 
 isiana. 
 
 Livingston and Monroe (who arrived in Paris the 
 day after Talleyrand's proposal) had authority to 
 negotiate for New Orleans and the Floridas only, 
 and had but two million dollars, or one-fifth the 
 price Napoleon asked, to spend. Marbois at first 
 put the price of Louisiana at one hundred million 
 francs, instead of the fifty million which Napoleon 
 had suggested; but finally came down to sixty mil- 
 lion clear, with the proviso that the American Gov- 
 ernment would assume liability for the claims of 
 its citizens for damages done their shipping. These 
 claims amounted to some twenty million francs. 
 The responsibility put on the envoys was great. 
 Fifteen million dollars was a sum considerably in 
 excess of the total annual revenue of the United 
 States, and the French title to Louisiana was not 
 unimpeachable. 1 Yet Livingston and Monroe did 
 not hesitate to accept the bargain. On May 2, 
 1803, they signed the treaty transferring the prov- 
 ince to the United States. Well might Livingston 
 
 1 (1) Napoleon had not taken possession of Louisiana when he 
 sold it to us. (2) He had never fulfilled his part of the bargain with 
 Spain, which was an Italian throne for the King's nephew. (3) He 
 had promised Spain never to transfer Louisiana to a foreign Power. 
 (4) He was forbidden by the French Constitution to alienate any 
 of the territory of the Republic. "In taking Louisiana," says 
 Professor Edward Channing, "we were the accomplices of the 
 greatest highwayman of modern history, and the goods which we 
 received were those which he compelled his unwilling victims to 
 disgorge." 
 
232 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 exclaim as he rose and shook hands with Monroe 
 and Marbois: "We have lived long, but this is the 
 noblest work of our whole lives. . . . From this 
 day the United States take their place among the 
 powers of the first rank. The instruments which 
 we have just signed . . . prepare ages of happiness 
 for innumerable generations of human creatures. " 
 The price paid for that princely domain out of which 
 fourteen States of the Union have been carved was 
 fifteen million dollars. A little over a century later 
 the value of the farm property alone in those States 
 was sixteen billion dollars, or more than a thousand 
 times the price of the purchase. 
 
 It was a very embarrassed rejoicing with which 
 Jefferson received the report of the purchase of the 
 whole of Louisiana. This advocate of strict econ- 
 omy had spent on his own executive authority an 
 amount equal to almost three-fourths of the debt 
 which Hamilton had assumed for the States, with 
 the sanction of Congress. This champion of the 
 letter of the Constitution had exercised the power 
 of acquiring foreign territory and promising foreign- 
 ers admission to the citizenship of the United States 
 for which no clause could be found among the "enu- 
 merated powers." This opponent of the extension 
 of the "general Government" had stretched its 
 power far beyond any point the Federalists had 
 reached, and laid the foundation, in the creation of 
 an immense national territory in the West, for that 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 233 
 
 definitive triumph of the nation over the States 
 which his "country men" of the second generation 
 fought so desperately to avert. 
 
 Jefferson was quick to recognize the irregularity 
 of his act and cry, "PeccaviV He had no apology 
 to make for the nature of the bargain, and looked to 
 "this duplication of area for extending a govern- 
 ment so free and economical as ours" as a great 
 achievement, which he was sure the nation would 
 not disavow. But he confessed that "the Execu- 
 tive, in seizing this fugitive occasion which so much 
 advances the good of their country, have done an 
 act beyond the Constitution." He compared his 
 deed to that of a guardian who invests his ward's 
 money in a valuable piece of property and trusts 
 that the benefits to accrue will redeem the unau- 
 thorized risk. He expected Congress "in casting 
 behind them metaphysical subtleties and risking 
 themselves like faithful servants," to ratify the act 
 and pay for Louisiana, and then "throw them- 
 selves on the country for doing for them unau- 
 thorized what we know they would have done for 
 themselves had they been in a situation to do it." 
 "Paternalism" in government, which Jefferson had 
 always abhorred, could hardly be more boldly 
 stated ! 
 
 Jefferson drew up an amendment to the Constitu- 
 tion to regularize the purchase of Louisiana, ex post 
 facto. But when letters came from Livingston at 
 
234 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Paris warning him that there must be no delay in 
 the ratification of the treaty and the appropriation 
 of the funds, lest Napoleon should change his mind, 
 Jefferson changed his tone. He wrote to some friends 
 to whom he had expressed his desire for a constitu- 
 tional amendment that the less said about the "con- 
 stitutional difficulties " respecting Louisiana the bet- 
 ter, and that whatever was " necessary for surmount- 
 ing them must be done sub silentio." Accordingly, 
 when Congress met by special call in October nothing 
 was said of the irregularity of the purchase. The 
 Senate promptly ratified the treaty by a vote of 
 twenty-four to seven, and the House two days later 
 voted by ninety to twenty-five the necessary funds, 
 by the authorization of eleven million two hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand dollars of six-per-cent stock. 
 The little group of Federalists made a desperate re- 
 sistance. They attacked the treaty as unconstitu- 
 tional on the ground that Congress alone could 
 "regulate trade" and "admit new States to this 
 Union." They asked whether the payment of so 
 large a sum of the public money to a belligerent 
 nation were not virtually a breach of neutrality. 
 They doubted the validity of Napoleon's title to 
 Louisiana, and declared that we had simply bought 
 of France at an exorbitant price "the authority to 
 make war on Spain." But their opposition was 
 vain. They could muster only a handful of votes. 
 The Louisiana Treaty was as popular as the Jay 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 235 
 
 Treaty had been unpopular. Public opinion car- 
 ried the administration to a splendid victory, and 
 "the theory of strict construction was abandoned 
 in the house of its friends. " 
 
 If the Constitution was strained by the treaty 
 acquiring the province of Louisiana, the Declaration 
 of Independence was outraged in the provisions 
 made for its government. Thomas Jefferson, the 
 author of the document which declares that gov- 
 ernments "derive their just powers from the con- 
 sent of the governed," was, by an act of March, 
 1804, given an authority over the Territory of Or- 
 leans which resembled that of an imperial Roman 
 governor rather than a constitutional Republican 
 magistrate. He simply replaced King Charles of 
 Spain as ruler of the province. He was to appoint 
 the governor of the Territory, the council to make 
 its laws, the superior judges in its courts — in short, 
 the whole governmental machinery, executive, legis- 
 lative, judicial. The thirty thousand inhabitants 
 of Louisiana, who by the third article of the treaty 
 had been promised that they should be "incorpo- 
 rated into the Union of the United States and 
 admitted as soon as possible . . . into all the 
 rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the 
 United States," were relegated to a state of colonial 
 dependence as absolute as that of our Filipinos in 
 1901. They protested in a memorial drawn up by 
 Edward Livingston, the younger brother of the 
 
236 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 minister who had negotiated the purchase, begging 
 to know whether political principles which were 
 valid on the Atlantic coast lost their force when 
 transferred to the banks of the Mississippi, and 
 citing the Jeffersonian doctrines of 1775 as a rebuke 
 to the Jeffersonian policies of 1804. "Taxation 
 without representation, an obligation to obey laws 
 without any voice in their foundation, the undue 
 influence of the executive upon legislative proceed- 
 ings, and a dependent judiciary, formed, we believe, 
 very prominent articles in the list of grievances com- 
 plained of by the United States at the commence- 
 ment of their glorious contest for freedom. Were 
 the patriots who composed your councils mistaken 
 in their political principles?" The act of 1804 was 
 somewhat modified in response to this strong and 
 able remonstrance; but still the President was left 
 with unprecedented powers over the new domain. 
 
 Louisiana was handed over to the French by the 
 Spanish governor on November 30, 1803, and twenty 
 days later was transferred from France to the United 
 States. Just what its boundaries were was uncer- 
 tain then and has continued to be a subject of lively 
 controversy among historians ever since. Did it in- 
 clude Texas on the west, or any part of the Flor- 
 idas on the east ? A map in the French foreign of- 
 fice (drawn by Marbois ?) includes both these regions 
 in the Louisiana which France secured from Spain in 
 the treaty of 1800, and General Victor's instructions 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 237 
 
 to take possession of the province distinctly state 
 the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) as the western bound- 
 ary. Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, who were 
 all intimately concerned in the purchase negotia- 
 tions, believed that Texas was included. But we had 
 no trans-Mississippi settlements as yet, and the claim 
 on Texas was abandoned in the Spanish treaty of 
 1819, only to be revived again a quarter of a cen- 
 tury later, in Polk's campaign cry for the "re-annex- 
 ation of Texas/ 1 With the Floridas the case was 
 different* Large rivers from our Territory of Mis- 
 sissippi emptied along the Florida Gulf coast, and 
 the control of this coast was necessary both for the 
 outlet of our commerce and for the protection of our 
 territory against Indian raids. 
 
 Into the complications of the Florida case we can- 
 not enter here. Suffice it to say that neither Napo- 
 leon nor Monroe believed that Florida was included 
 in the Louisiana Purchase. The former instructed 
 his agent, Berthier, in August, 1800, to get Spain 
 "to join to this cession (Louisiana) that of the two 
 Floridas, Eastern and Western," and as late as the 
 autumn of 1802 was still vainly urging King Charles 
 to part with the Floridas. Monroe was on the point 
 of setting out for Madrid, immediately after the 
 conclusion of the treaty at Paris, to endeavor to 
 buy the Floridas from Spain "for another million 
 or two/' when he was deterred by the French min- 
 isters, who had good reason for not advertising in 
 
238 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Madrid their sale of Louisiana to the United States. 
 These facts would seem to be proof enough that we 
 did not purchase the Floridas in 1803. Yet Jeffer- 
 son studied up the old boundaries of French, Span- 
 ish, and English claims in Florida during his sum- 
 mer rest at Monticello, and came to the (highly de- 
 sirable) conclusion that we had purchased West 
 Florida up to the Perdido River — the division be- 
 tween French and Spanish spheres of influence on 
 the Gulf shore at the close of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. "I am satisfied our right to the Perdido is 
 substantial/ ' he wrote to Secretary Madison on 
 August 25, "and can be opposed by a quibble . . . 
 only." 
 
 Encouraged by the administration in this further 
 adventure in expansion, Congress in February, 1804, 
 authorized the President to erect the "shores, 
 waters, and inlets of the bay and river of Mobile" 
 into a customs district; and on May 20 Jefferson, in 
 spite of spirited protest from the Spanish minister 
 at Washington, carried out the act by proclama- 
 tion. The rest of the story of Florida is an illustra- 
 tion of La Fontaine's fable of the wolf and the lamb. 
 Spain sank into a state of vassalage to France. The 
 mighty Napoleon deposed her sovereign and set his 
 own brother on the throne of Madrid. Her colonies 
 in America revolted one by one and established their 
 independence. Step by step we absorbed the val- 
 uable Gulf shore of Florida under Jefferson's sue- 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 239 
 
 cessors, Madison and Monroe. In 1810 Madison 
 proclaimed the annexation of West Florida; in 1812 
 that part of it west of the Pearl River was added to 
 the newly created State of Louisiana; in 1813 the 
 country was occupied as far as the Perdido; in 1818 
 General Jackson swept across East Florida to chas- 
 tise the Seminole Indians; and finally, in 1819, a 
 treaty was negotiated by which Spain withdrew 
 from the Floridas altogether. Thomas Jefferson, in 
 that piece of historical research at Monticello in the 
 summer of 1803, was preparing the ground for Jack- 
 son's conquest. It was Jefferson's claim that Madi- 
 son and Monroe extended and consummated. 
 
 Nor was Jefferson's vision of expansion bounded 
 by the Rockies and the Gulf. We have already 
 noticed his interest in the exploration of the Far 
 West which antedated even the treaty of our inde- 
 pendence. When Jefferson became President he 
 took advantage of his position to push the matter. 
 He sent a message to Congress on January 18, 1803 
 (just a week after the appointment of Monroe as 
 special envoy to Paris), asking for an appropriation 
 of twenty-five hundred dollars to send "an intelli- 
 gent officer with 10 or 12 chosen men fit for the 
 enterprise," to explore "even to the Western Ocean," 
 to get acquainted with the various Indian tribes, 
 secure admission among them for our traders, and 
 bring back geographical, zoological, and botanical 
 knowledge of the land. With a quite naive disre- 
 
240 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 gard of the ethics of sending an armed force through 
 the territory of a friendly power, he says that the 
 nation [Spain] claiming the region would be inclined 
 to regard the expedition as "a literary pursuit/ ' and 
 would not be jealous — "even if the expiring state of 
 its interests there did not render it a matter of in- 
 difference." The " intelligent officer" whom Jef- 
 ferson had in mind to lead the expedition was his 
 private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, whom he had 
 tried to start on a similar expedition with the 
 French explorer, Michaux, eleven years before. 
 With Lewis he joined William Clark, a younger 
 brother of George Rogers Clark, the hero of Vin- 
 cennes. After a year of serious training, the expe- 
 dition consisting of forty-five persons left camp on 
 the Du Bois River, a little above St. Louis, for the 
 long journey to the "Western Ocean." They went 
 up the Missouri in three boats, rowing and poling 
 through the muddy stream, while their hunting 
 horse followed along the bank. 
 
 No story in our history is more fascinating than 
 the original records of the Lewis and Clark expedi- 
 tion, gathered with great diligence and edited in 
 most attractive form by the late Professor R. G. 
 Thwaites, unless it be Francis Parkman's account 
 of his repetition of the journey in "The Oregon 
 Trail." The instructions given to Lewis by Jeffer- 
 son covered every possible topic of inquiry concern- 
 ing the lands and tribes through which the explor- 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 241 
 
 ers should pass; and the fidelity with which the 
 chief and the members of the party kept their notes 
 enables us to follow them day by day, almost hour 
 by hour, up the Missouri to its source, across the 
 "great divide" to the headwaters of the Columbia 
 system, and down to what Clark in his homely, 
 direct, ungrammatical style calls "the great Pacific 
 Otean which we have been so long anxious to See 
 and the roreing noise made by waves braking on 
 the rocky Shores (as I suppose) may be heard dis- 
 tictly." The party spent its second winter (1805-6) 
 on the Pacific coast at the mouth of the Columbia, 
 and, starting on the return trip in March, were back 
 in St. Louis before the end of September, 1806. The 
 Lewis and Clark Expedition was the first recorded 
 passage of white men across the northern part of 
 what is now the United States. It forms an im- 
 portant chapter in the history of our expansion, for 
 not only did it lay a foundation for the scientific 
 acquaintance with our newly acquired territory of 
 Louisiana, but it proved the best of our claims to 
 the great Oregon region beyond. So the other half 
 of the slogan of Polk's campaign in 1844, the "re- 
 occupation of Oregon" also goes back to the expan- 
 sionist activities of Thomas Jefferson. 1 
 
 1 There is no evidence that Jefferson gave the directions to Gen- 
 eral Wilkinson for sending Zebulon Pike to find the headwaters of the 
 Mississippi in 1805 or to explore the region south of the Arkansas 
 and the Missouri in 1806, though, as Channing remarks of the later 
 mission, "it seems unlikely that Wilkinson would have sent a de- 
 
242 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 The presidential election of 1804 found Jefferson 
 at the full tide of his success and popularity. His 
 foreign policy had been approved by large majorities 
 in both Houses of Congress. The reports of the ex- 
 ploits of our gallant sailors in the Mediterranean 
 filled American hearts with pride. Our revenues 
 were so swelled by duties on our imports that we 
 were able to pay the current expenses of the gov- 
 ernment, civil and military, the interest on the 
 Louisiana stock, three million, six hundred thou- 
 sand dollars on the principal of the debt, and still 
 have a balance in the treasury, September 30, 1804, 
 of nearly five million dollars, without resorting to 
 increased taxation. Harmony reigned in Congress 
 and the cabinet. 
 
 In the country at large Republicanism had been 
 growing steadily. With the sole exception of 
 Matthew Lyon, of Vermont, the electors of the 
 New England States had cast their votes solidly 
 against Jefferson in the great contest of 1801. Four 
 years later Connecticut alone remained faithful to 
 the waning Federalist cause. Factious opposition 
 to the Louisiana Purchase, jingo patriotism to stir 
 up war in the Western settlements, sarcastic toasts 
 at banquets to the "limitation of Virginia's domi- 
 nation by the Constitution — or by the Delaware," 
 
 tachment of his small army into a region which was in dispute be- 
 tween the United States and Spain without the authorization of 
 those who were responsible." 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 243 
 
 desperate plans to join New York, New Jersey, and 
 Delaware with New England in a secessionist move- 
 ment, through appeals to the ambition of the dis- 
 contented Burr, all resulted in nothing except the 
 defeat of Burr for the governorship of New York 
 and his murderous revenge on Alexander Hamilton 
 on the duelling-ground at Weehawken Heights. 
 
 Jefferson declared that it was his "decided pur- 
 pose," when he entered the presidency, to retire at 
 the end of one term to a life of tranquillity. But 
 early in 1804 he wrote to Governor McKean, of 
 Pennsylvania: "The abominable slanders of my 
 political enemies have obliged me to call for [a] 
 verdict from my country in the only way it can be 
 obtained." He therefore allowed himself to be 
 nominated by a Congressional caucus, with George 
 Clinton, of New York, for his running mate. The 
 Federalists, without the formality of a nomination, 
 agreed to vote for C. C. Pinckney, of South Caro- 
 lina, and Rufus King, of New York. The Twelfth 
 Amendment was ratified and proclaimed before the 
 election, providing for the specific designation of 
 President and Vice-President on the ballots, and 
 thus obviating either of the electoral anomalies of 
 1797 and 1801. Seventeen States voted, Ohio hav- 
 ing been admitted into the Union in 1802. The re- 
 sult of the contest was never in doubt, but the com- 
 pleteness of Jefferson's victory was a surprise. His 
 Federalist opponent carried only the two States of 
 
244 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Connecticut and Delaware, which, with a little help 
 from Maryland, gave them fourteen votes in the 
 electoral college to one hundred and sixty-two for 
 Jefferson and Clinton. No other President, with 
 the exception of Washington, has ever received so 
 complete an indorsement of his administration or 
 so universal an expression of the confidence of the 
 American people. 
 
 Jefferson believed that he had "brought over" 
 the great body of Federalists to Republicanism; but 
 he had in reality gone far more than half-way to 
 meet them. He had more than redeemed the 
 pledge of his inaugural address to "preserve the 
 general Government in its whole constitutional 
 vigor." He had endowed it with extra-constitu- 
 tional vigor. The Jefferson of the Kentucky Reso- 
 lutions seemed a figure of the dim past. The "Vir- 
 ginia school" had protested all through the closing 
 years of the eighteenth century against the assump- 
 tion of undelegated powers by the central govern- 
 ment, but four years of power had wrought such a 
 change that the Federalists were now asking within 
 what limits the "Virginia domination" could be 
 restrained. A President who took it upon himself 
 to double the area of the United States by purchase, 
 to incorporate a foreign population into our body 
 politic and accept a dictatorship over them, to de- 
 cide from his own private researches the limits of 
 territory in dispute between this country and Spain, 
 
JEFFERSON THE EXPANSIONIST 245 
 
 to send a force of soldiers and explorers through the 
 region belonging to a friendly power, to threaten 
 to join our nation in marriage "to the British fleet 
 and nation" without asking the consent of either, 
 to advise Congress to "cast metaphysical subtleties 
 behind them" and take the risk of supporting an 
 executive who had confessedly "done an act beyond 
 the Constitution" — such a President was hardly 
 less a Federalist than Washington or Adams. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 
 
 Peace is our passion. (Jefferson to Sir John Sinclair, June 30, 1803.) 
 
 It would have been well for his peace of mind if 
 Jefferson had swallowed the "abominable slanders" 
 of his enemies and returned to his beloved Monti- 
 cello at the end of his first administration, for his 
 second term was a "sea of troubles." The triumph 
 of 1804 he took to be the harbinger of a long period 
 of harmony and prosperity, when Republicanism 
 should have put down all things under its feet. 
 Writing to General Heath in December to rejoice 
 with him over the "conquest" of New England, he 
 said: "All will now come to rights. . . . The new 
 century opened itself by committing us on a boister- 
 ous ocean, but all is now subsiding; peace is smooth- 
 ing our path at home and abroad-; and if we are 
 not wanting in the practice of justice and modera- 
 tion our tranquillity and prosperity may be pre- 
 served until increasing numbers shall leave us noth- 
 ing to fear from abroad. With England we are in a 
 cordial friendship; with France in the most perfect 
 understanding; with Spain we shall be always bick- 
 ering, but never at war till we seek it. Other na- 
 
 246 
 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 247 
 
 tions view our course with respect and friendly 
 anxiety." It would have been impossible for a 
 deceptive optimism to pack more errors of fact and 
 judgment into a single paragraph. The " bicker- 
 ings " with Spain were the only true prophecy — a 
 prophecy which needed the touch of no very live 
 coal from the political altars. Jefferson had spoken 
 of the presidency when he was elected to the second 
 place in 1797, in terms perhaps of self-solacing de- 
 preciation, as a "splendid misery." He was now to 
 have full experience of the misery of the office whose 
 splendor he had always spurned. 
 
 First of all came schism within the Republican 
 ranks. We have already touched on the bitter 
 strife of the Clinton and Livingston factions in New 
 York, with Aaron Burr, the "arch opportunist in 
 conspiracy," first coquetting with the Federalists in 
 plans of disunion, then slaying their leader in a 
 duel. Faction raised its ugly head in Pennsylvania, 
 too, the charter State of Republicanism north of 
 the Potomac. Massachusetts, over whose "con- 
 version" Jefferson exulted in December, 1804, 
 elected a Federalist governor and legislature the 
 following April. "I see with infinite pain the 
 bloody schism which has lately taken place among 
 our friends in Pennsylvania and New York," wrote 
 Jefferson only two months after his second inaugu- 
 ration, "and which will probably take place in the 
 other States." This time his prophecy was correct. 
 
248 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 His own State of Virginia was ready for partial re- 
 volt, and the leader of the disaffection was Jeffer- 
 son's distant kinsman, John Randolph, of Roanoke. 1 
 "Eccentric," " vituperative, " "sarcastic," "un- 
 controllable," "venomous" are the adjectives which 
 precede Randolph's name with Homeric constancy, 
 and a Homeric phrase, too, fitly describes his mental 
 superiority of his fellow members of Congress. In a 
 House of mediocrities he alone, like Tiresias in the 
 underworld in the Odyssey "was wise, and the others 
 flitted as shadows." He might have broken the ad- 
 ministration's control of Congress, had not his ex- 
 cess of zeal and temper delivered him into the hands 
 of the patient, wary President. As it was, he led a 
 schism, and gave the Federalists the immense satis- 
 faction of seeing disunion among the "Virginia 
 lordlings." Randolph prided himself on being a 
 Simon-pure Republican of the "old school," with 
 no apologies to make for the Virginia and Kentucky 
 Resolutions, whose authors had gone far on the 
 path of reconciliation with Federalist doctrines. 
 Why should Thomas Jefferson seek the Lincolns 
 and Dearborns and Crowninshields of Massachu- 
 setts for his advisers, drawing only a single member 
 of his cabinet from the States south of the Potomac, 
 and that one a man still "tainted" with the old 
 
 1 Randolph with his inimitable genius for barbed epigram, likened 
 the second administration of Jefferson to the seven lean kine of 
 Pharaoh's dream who rose up and devoured the seven fat kine of 
 the first administration. 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 249 
 
 heresy of Federalism ? Where were the representa- 
 tives of the Southern planters' interests? 
 
 Randolph's break with the administration came 
 in the winter session of 1805-6, but he was already 
 estranged at the opening of the new presidential 
 term. Both the estrangement and the rupture were 
 provoked by measures which Jefferson insisted on 
 with a tenaciousness which contrasted strangely 
 with his general pliability in matters of practical 
 government. We have already seen with what 
 jealousy Jefferson regarded the life-tenure and the 
 practical immunity from popular control of the 
 federal judiciary. While in many of the colonies 
 the judges had been responsible to the legislatures, 
 while even in England itself they were removable 
 on address by the Houses of Parliament, our repub- 
 lican Constitution had out-monarchied monarchical 
 Britain by placing the judges beyond popular, legis- 
 lative, or executive control except by the cumbrous 
 process of impeachment "for high crimes and mis- 
 demeanors," initiated by the House and sustained 
 by a two-thirds vote of the Senate. The Federalists, 
 defeated at the polls in the election of 1800, had 
 "taken refuge in the judiciary," as Jefferson com- 
 plained. Commissions had been withheld, to be 
 sure, from the new batch of superfluous judges cre- 
 ated by John Adams in the "midnight hours" of 
 his term, and the act creating the new positions 
 had been repealed. But still there remained the 
 
250 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 supreme court, inviolate because created by the 
 Constitution. And at its head was a man ap- 
 pointed by Adams after the victory of the Jefferson- 
 Burr ticket, John Marshall, who began his long 
 career of thirty-four years of fortification of the 
 power of the central government by ruling in the 
 case of Marbury vs. Madison that the supreme 
 court could declare laws of Congress null and void 
 if they conflicted with the court's interpretation of 
 the Constitution. 
 
 Jefferson ordered the attack on this stronghold 
 of Federalism, the national judiciary. The first vic- 
 tim was John Pickering, a district judge of New 
 Hampshire, who was impeached early in 1804 on 
 the charge of habitual drunkenness, profanity, and 
 gross language of abuse on the bench, and, in spite 
 of a touching petition from his son, alleging insanity 
 as the cause of the old judge's deplorable behavior, 
 was voted guilty by the Senate and removed. After 
 this " experiment in corpore vili" the administration 
 sought higher game. Samuel Chase, of Maryland, 
 a veteran of the Revolution and a signer of the Dec- 
 laration of Independence, had been appointed to 
 the supreme court by Washington in 1796. He had 
 been particularly fierce against the Republicans in 
 his conduct of trials under the Alien and Sedition 
 Acts, overstepping the line of impartial instruction 
 in the points of the law by converting his charges to 
 the jury into political harangues. In addressing a 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 251 
 
 grand jury in Baltimore on May 2, 1803, he had 
 attacked the Jeffersonian doctrine of popular gov- 
 ernment as "fatal to all security for property and 
 personal liberty" and a harbinger of "mobocracy, 
 the worst of all possible governments." Jefferson 
 was stirred to revenge. " Ought this seditious" (note 
 the adjective from the author of the Kentucky 
 Resolutions !) "and official attack on the principles of 
 our Constitution . . . to go unpunished ?" he wrote 
 to Nicholson; adding with characteristic caution: 
 "for myself, it is better that I should not interfere." 
 The "hint" was taken. The same day that Judge 
 Pickering's sentence was pronounced the House 
 voted to impeach Samuel Chase of high crimes and 
 misdemeanors. 
 
 John Randolph undertook the management of 
 the case and expected to make it the grand event of 
 the administration. The Senate chamber was hung 
 with crimson, blue, and green. The temporary gal- 
 leries were crowded with fashionable spectators. 
 The gala scene recalled the impeachment of Warren 
 Hastings in Westminster Hall twenty years before. 
 But John Randolph was not Edmund Burke. His 
 sarcastic jibes and vitriolic ravings, so effective in 
 the running fire of debate in the House, were out of 
 place in the solemn court. On some of the charges 
 Chase was unanimously acquitted, and in none could 
 a vote of more than nineteen senators (four less than 
 the necessary two-thirds) be marshalled against him. 
 
252 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 On the 1st day of March, 1805, three days before 
 Jefferson's second inauguration, Aaron Burr rose 
 from his chair as presiding officer of the Senate, and 
 with ill-concealed congratulation in his voice and 
 gesture declared the defendant "not guilty." As 
 twenty-four of the thirty-four members of the Sen- 
 ate were Republicans, it was evident that Judge 
 Chase had not been acquitted by the strength of 
 the "Federalist faction"; and it was also evident to 
 John Randolph that the cause of his party's infidelity 
 and his own humiliation was the baleful influence of 
 the Northern and Middle States on the administra- 
 tion. Jefferson had set on foot the impeachment 
 proceedings, but had not been able to hold his fol- 
 lowers in the Senate together for a verdict of con- 
 demnation. The President was shielded behind his 
 discreet silence, while the obloquy of a public defeat 
 rested on John Randolph of Roanoke. He was 
 through with being the catspaw to pull Thomas 
 Jefferson's chestnuts from the fire. 
 
 Randolph's opportunity for revenge was not long 
 delayed. Since his excursion into the historical 
 study of the boundaries of Louisiana during his 
 summer rest at Monticello, Jefferson had been ob- 
 sessed with the idea that Florida was rightfully 
 ours. He came to feel that the whole glory of the 
 Louisiana Purchase for his administration depended 
 on the possession of Florida. But Spain interposed 
 her stubborn refusal to give up an inch of territory 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 253 
 
 east of the Iberville and the Lakes, while Talleyrand, 
 after having encouraged the American envoys to 
 push the claim, blandly announced that France had 
 not really received Florida from Spain in 1800, and 
 hence could not have sold it to the United States in 
 
 1803. Jefferson, however, thought he knew better 
 what Napoleon had bought and sold than Napoleon 
 knew himself, and bent all the powers of his diplo- 
 macy to persuade the Corsican, who assumed the 
 imperial crown of Charlemagne on December 2, 
 
 1804, to force Spain to relinquish Florida. It was 
 the most unwise policy of Jefferson's administra- 
 tion. It exposed him to the triple charge of im- 
 patience, infatuation, and venality: impatience, 
 because Jefferson himself had declared that the 
 Floridas would come to us sooner or later through 
 the development of our Mississippi Territory; infat- 
 uation because he thought he could exert pressure 
 on the man who was setting out on the conquest 
 of Europe 1 ; and venality, because he was willing to 
 pay again secretly through Napoleon as the "honest 
 
 1 Little did Jefferson realize the course which the renewed war be- 
 tween England and Napoleon would take in Europe. He looked on 
 it as an embarrassment to Napoleon, which would dispose him to 
 lend a favorable ear to representations from Washington! "The 
 present crisis," he said in a message to Congress, December 6, 1805, 
 "is favorable for pressing such a settlement [the claim to Florida] 
 and not a moment should be lost in availing ourselves of it." Four 
 days before this message was read Napoleon had shattered the im- 
 perial armies of Austria and Russia at Austerlitz, and established 
 the mastery of the Continent of Europe which was to be finally 
 broken only on the field of Waterloo a decade later. 
 
254 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 broker" for what he publicly insisted we had al- 
 ready bought. 
 
 In fact, Jefferson was in a most uncomfortable 
 dilemma. To waive the claim to Florida would 
 tarnish, as he believed, the most brilliant and popu- 
 lar act of his administration. To insist on the claim 
 to Florida would mean war with Spain (unless Na- 
 poleon should help us), which Jefferson was more 
 anxious to avoid than the Court of Madrid. "Why 
 should we give up Florida without a struggle," said 
 the Spaniards, "when all you could get as a result 
 of a victory over our arms would be just Florida?" 
 In this dilemma Jefferson resorted to tactics which 
 he had practised three years before in the purchase 
 of Louisiana. Just as he then threatened that we 
 would "marry ourselves to the British fleet and 
 nation" the moment the French established them- 
 selves at the mouth of the Mississippi, and at the 
 same time instructed our minister to negotiate for 
 the purchase of New Orleans, so now he threatened 
 war with Spain in public, hoping to frighten her to 
 consent to a bargain in private. The regular annual 
 message which was sent in to Congress on Decem- 
 ber 3, 1805, was quite belligerent in tone, as it re- 
 counted the manifold offenses of Spain: her refusal 
 to recognize the just limits of Louisiana, her depre- 
 dations on our commerce at Mobile, the marauding 
 expeditions of her subjects into our Mississippi Ter- 
 ritory. A further communication on the subject 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 255 
 
 was promised shortly. Three days later a "confi- 
 dential" message came from the President and was 
 read behind closed doors to a House tense with the 
 expectation of the recommendation of war. But 
 the message proved to be as mild as any pacifist 
 could wish. Instead of calling for the use of the 
 army and navy against perfidious Spain, it sug- 
 gested that the time was "favorable for pressing a 
 settlement," and pledged the President to pursue 
 with zeal the course which Congress (to whom it 
 "belonged exclusively to yield or deny" [resist]) 
 should determine. This cryptic message was re- 
 ferred to a committee of which John Randolph was 
 chairman. When Randolph demanded in a per- 
 sonal interview at the White House what the Presi- 
 dent meant in plain terms, he was told that two 
 million dollars were wanted to secure the cession of 
 the Floridas. 
 
 Randolph had not scrupled to lend his aid to a 
 similar negotiation for the purchase of Louisiana, 
 but that was in the early days when he was friendly 
 to the administration. Now Randolph, to the dis- 
 may of the President's friends, rose in his seat and 
 , opposed the appropriation of the two million dollars 
 with all the sarcastic vehemence of his nature. 
 What was the meaning of this double dealing of the 
 President, he asked : a message for the public breath- 
 ing dire defiance and a secret message for Congress 
 hinting that they might choose peace and the pay- 
 
256 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ment of tribute? Did the President wish to pose 
 before England and Spain as a warrior bold, and 
 shift to Congress the unpopular role of seeming to 
 restrain him within the peaceful bounds which he 
 never in his heart meant to exceed? Were we to 
 "prostrate our national character to excite one na- 
 tion [France] by money to bully another nation 
 [Spain] out of its property?" He for one would 
 have no part in this nefarious scheme to " deliver 
 the public purse to the first cutthroat that de- 
 manded it." 
 
 Surprised and chagrined by this proclamation of 
 rebellion, Jefferson saw himself obliged to choose 
 between the harmony of his party and the mainte- 
 nance of his policy. He chose the latter, and John 
 Randolph led off his group of " Quids" in schism. 
 They were not many. Jefferson affected a certain 
 indifference to their defection, speaking of them a 
 year later in a letter to W. C. Nicholas as a "little 
 band of schismatists who will be 3 or 4 (all tongue)." 
 But in spite of this exaggerated depreciation Jeffer- 
 son felt it keenly when twelve of the twenty-two 
 Virginia members of the House voted against the 
 two-million-dollar bill. He carried the measure, by 
 V the rather narrow margin of seventy-six to fifty-four, 
 and with it a bill to prohibit American trade with 
 the French island of Santo Domingo, which Talley- 
 rand had declared "must stop." So far was he will- 
 ing to go on the road of deference to Napoleon! 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 257 
 
 Still the price he paid for having his way was high, 
 and the returns that he got were small. He incurred 
 the charge of truckling to France, of holding the 
 whip-hand over Congress, of alienating some of the 
 leading Virginia Republicans, and of causing an 
 open rupture in his party, just like John Adams. 
 Napoleon took not a single step toward satisfying 
 our claims to the " rightful boundaries of Louisiana." 
 The Emperor was busy elsewhere. His face was 
 turned from Washington toward Jena, Eylau, and 
 Friedland. Florida still dangled before Jefferson's 
 Tantalus gaze. A dozen years were to pass before 
 Spain, exhausted by her struggle with the mighty 
 Corsican, and shorn of her colonies in the New 
 World, was to yield us title to the shores which Ponce 
 de Leon had christened the "land of flowers' ' in the 
 days of her strength and glory three centuries past. 
 The stormy session of the ninth Congress which 
 had opened on the day of Austerlitz (December 2, 
 1805) came to a close on April 21, 1806. The 
 President had carried through a fruitless programme 
 at the cost of divided counsels and waning popular- 
 ity. "Mr. Jefferson has worried himself so much 
 ; with the movements of Congress," wrote the French 
 i minister at Washington to Talleyrand on May 10, 
 1806, "that he has made himself ill and grown ten 
 I years older." But Jefferson's troubles were only 
 - beginning. While he was laboring during the sum- 
 mer of 1806 to heal the schism in the party, combat- 
 
258 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ing the charges of inconsistency and intrigue which 
 John Randolph was publishing over the signature 
 of Decius in the Richmond Enquirer, indignantly 
 denying to Duane the rumor that he had "denounced 
 the old Republicans by the epithet of Jacobins/ ' and 
 exhorting his secretaries, Gallatin, Madison, and 
 Dearborn not to let the "malignant . . . efforts of 
 their adversaries succeed in sowing tares" between 
 them, difficulties and dangers were multiplying at 
 home and abroad. Persistent and ugly rumors 
 came to Washington of the treasonable movements 
 of Aaron Burr in the Western country, and the dep- 
 redations of French and English cruisers on our 
 commerce were growing intolerable. 
 
 Just what Burr intended to accomplish by his 
 plots in the Southwest will never be clear, nor could 
 he probably have given a coherent account of them 
 himself. For his plans evidently changed with his 
 fortunes. It is certain, however, that after the ruin 
 of his political career in the East by the slaying of 
 Hamilton he entertained grandiose notions of start- 
 ing a "new empire" in the West. Now it was a 
 scheme to detach all the States west of the Alle- 
 ghanies and join them to Louisiana, as he confided 
 to the English minister, Merry, whom he asked for 
 financial aid to the extent of half a million, and a 
 supporting squadron of British ships at the mouth 
 of the Mississippi. Now it was a desperate plot to 
 kidnap the heads of the government, seize the pub- 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 259 
 
 lie treasure, and sail for New Orleans to proclaim 
 the independence of Louisiana. Now it took the 
 form of a great empire in Mexico and Central 
 America, in which he should be the new Monte- 
 zuma. Now it dwindled into the harmless scheme 
 of purchasing and colonizing the Bastrop grant on 
 the Red River. The whole episode, which fills the 
 two years from Burr's retirement from the vice- 
 presidency in 1805 to his trial in Richmond in 1807, 
 is a tangled drama of intrigue and deception, with 
 the two arch scoundrels, Burr and Wilkinson, in the 
 title-roles; with Major-General Andrew Jackson 
 grazing the edge of treason in his ostentatious recep- 
 tion to Burr in Tennessee, and Henry Clay pledging 
 his own "honor and innocence" in support of Burr's 
 before the grand jury of Kentucky; with the blan- 
 dishments of Theodosia Burr Alston, the "empress 
 elect," and the poor braggart dupe, Blennerhasset, 
 shorn of his money. 
 
 Jefferson had at first rumors, then more definite 
 reports from several sources, of "strange and sus- 
 picious movements" by Burr in the West, early in 
 the year 1806, but he treated them with indifference. 
 He was absorbed in his quest for Florida. General 
 Eaton, a hero of the Tripolitan war, called on him 
 a few weeks after he had carried the two-million-dol- 
 lar bill through the House, and told him from good 
 evidence that "if Colonel Burr was not disposed of 
 we should in eighteen months have an insurrection 
 
260 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 if not a revolution on the waters of the Mississippi." 
 Jefferson replied that he had "too much confidence 
 in the . . . attachment of the people of that coun- 
 try to the Union to admit of any apprehensions of 
 that kind." Mr. Henry Adams says in his detailed 
 account of the conspiracy that "a word quietly 
 written by Jefferson to one or two persons in the 
 Western country would have stopped Burr short in 
 his path and would have brought Wilkinson to his 
 knees." Yet Jefferson, either on account of what 
 Randolph called "the easy credulity of his tem- 
 per," or because Wilkinson had some hold on him 
 which we cannot explain, or because the most con- 
 vincing evidence of Burr's treason was furnished by 
 a Federalist district attorney, took no action until 
 near the close of November, 1806, and then only 
 issued a general proclamation without even men- 
 tioning Burr's name. "Sundry persons," it de- 
 clared, were conspiring against Spain (!), and all 
 officers of the United States were ordered to seize 
 and detain such persons. Burr slipped by the forts 
 at the mouth of the Ohio and kept ahead of the 
 slowly travelling proclamation on his way down the 
 Mississippi. It remained for Wilkinson, betraying 
 Burr as he had for years betrayed his country by 
 the acceptance of Spanish gold, to bring the "con- 
 spiracy" to a halt by prohibiting Burr's approach 
 to New Orleans. Realizing that the game was up, 
 Burr surrendered to Governor Meade, of the Missis- 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 261 
 
 sippi Territory, escaped in the guise of a woodman, 
 and was finally apprehended, at the end of Febru- 
 ary, 1807, near the Spanish frontier of West Florida, 
 and sent to Richmond for trial. 
 
 After his "culpable negligence" in not suppressing 
 the conspiracy, Jefferson now showed great zeal in 
 prosecuting the victim. But his unfortunate delay 
 had made him rather the accomplice of Wilkinson 
 than the dignified first magistrate of the land, the 
 sworn defender of its Constitution and laws. His 
 implacable enemy, John Marshall, presided over the 
 circuit court at Richmond, and designated as fore- 
 man of the grand jury a newer but no less implaca- 
 ble enemy of the administration — John Randolph, 
 of Roanoke. A third enemy, Luther Martin, of 
 Maryland, whom Jefferson called an "impudent 
 Federal bull-dog," was the leading counsel for Burr, 
 as he had been for Chase. At the hands of these 
 men the trial soon assumed the form of an inquisi- 
 tion into the conduct of Thomas Jefferson rather 
 than of Aaron Burr. Instructed by Marshall on 
 the nature of the "overt act" which constituted 
 treason, John Randolph refused to bring in a bill 
 of indictment on that score, and Burr was tried for 
 a misdemeanor only. The court summoned Jeffer- 
 son by subpoena to appear in person with papers re- 
 lating to the alleged conspiracy, and when the Presi- 
 dent refused to obey the summons on the ground 
 that it would be incompatible with the dignity of 
 
262 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 his position, he was obliged to endure sarcasms from 
 Luther Martin, which certainly did not elevate that 
 dignity. He was accused of having prejudged Burr 
 and "let slip the dogs of war and the hell-hounds of 
 persecution" against him. Jefferson did, in fact, 
 write more than a dozen letters from Washington 
 and Monticello to George Hay, the district attorney 
 at Richmond, spurring on the prosecution, threat- 
 ening that Marshall's career would be at an end if 
 he allowed Burr to escape punishment, and even 
 suggesting that Luther Martin be arraigned as a 
 particeps criminis. He was driven to these extremi- 
 ties partly by the embarrassment of having to lean 
 for his star witness on James Wilkinson (a very rot- 
 ten if not a broken reed), and partly by the disgrace- 
 ful partisanship of the Federalists, who for the sake 
 of humiliating Jefferson were willing to caress the 
 man who had cost them New York and the election 
 of 1800 and had slain their leader in duel. The 
 Burr trial was rather a political campaign than a 
 judicial process. When the prisoner was acquitted 
 the Federalists celebrated with feasting and hilarity. 
 Even John Marshall felt a "sober satisfaction" be- 
 neath his impassive mien, and John Randolph was 
 avenged for another acquittal, two years before, 
 when he had borne the odium of defeat hi doing the 
 will of Thomas Jefferson. 
 
 While these scenes were being enacted in Rich- 
 mond, "scenes," said Jefferson, "never before ex- 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 263 
 
 hibited in any country where all regard to public 
 character had not yet been thrown off/' a crisis arose 
 with Great Britain, which threw our land into a 
 state of excitement and exasperation such as it had 
 not experienced since the days of Lexington and 
 Bunker Hill. On June 22, 1807, his Majesty's ship, 
 Leopard, fired on the American frigate Chesapeake, 
 off the Virginia coast, and left her, with twenty-one 
 killed or wounded men on her decks, her hull pierced 
 by twenty-two solid shot and her rigging lacerated 
 by grape, to creep back to her anchorage at Norfolk. 
 To understand this outrageous act, whose conse- 
 quences embarrassed the remaining months of Jef- 
 ferson's already sorely embarrassed administration, 
 and led eventually to our second war with England, 
 we must turn to a brief review of our foreign rela- 
 tions in the years immediately preceding the Chesa- 
 peake affair. 
 
 During the ten years from the Jay Treaty to the 
 second inauguration of Jefferson, we were on good 
 terms with England. Our difficulties with France 
 (the quarrel with the Directory, the X Y Z affair, 
 the quasi war of 1799-1800) tended to obscure the 
 unsatisfactory features of the Jay Treaty, while the 
 able diplomacy of our minister, Rufus King, im- 
 proved our relations with the Court of St. James. 
 Moreover, England's activity in the French Revo- 
 lutionary wars diminished toward the close of the 
 century and expired finally in the Treaty of Amiens, 
 
264 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 concluded with the First Consul on March 25, 1802. 
 Since our controversies with England and France 
 over the rights of neutral trade waxed and waned 
 with the severity of the European struggle, the 
 early years of Jefferson's presidency were peculiarly 
 favorable to our peace and prosperity. The Louisi- 
 ana Purchase put us on those terms of good-will 
 with France which always result from an important 
 transaction highly satisfactory to both parties. A 
 few weeks later (July, 1803) Rufus King, across the 
 Channel, concluded two conventions with the Ad- 
 dington ministry which went far toward removing 
 the lingering resentment over the Jay Treaty. Eng- 
 lan accepted six hundred thousand pounds in pay- 
 ment of the long-standing debts to her creditors 
 and agreed to commissions for the determination of 
 our northwestern and northeastern boundaries. The 
 Barings, with the consent of the British Government, 
 advanced the cash on our Louisiana stock. King 
 was even confident that he would have persuaded 
 the ministry to stop the impressment of American 
 sailors if he had not been on the eve of his departure 
 for home. "The present administration," wrote 
 Jefferson, "is the most favorable that has existed 
 or could exist for the interests of the United States." 
 Then the storm burst in Europe which was des- 
 tined finally to draw us into the maelstrom of war. 
 Eleven days after the signatures were set to the 
 Louisiana Purchase Treaty, Napoleon made his 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 265 
 
 categorical demand on the British ambassador for 
 "Malta or war," and Great Britain took up the chal- 
 lenge by a formal declaration of hostilities, May 18, 
 1803. This opened the titanic struggle which was 
 to convulse Europe from St. Petersburg to Lisbon, 
 and was to end only with the exile of the Corsican 
 to St. Helena. We have seen how Jefferson at first 
 mistakenly supposed that the renewal of war in 
 Europe, from which we were so far and fortunately 
 aloof, would only serve to advance our interests. 
 Napoleon's " embarrassment, " he thought, would 
 be the favorable moment to press his darling proj- 
 ect of the claim to Florida; while England would 
 do nothing to risk losing a trade of forty million 
 dollars with the United States. "Our commerce,' ' 
 he wrote, "is so valuable to them that they will be 
 glad to purchase it when the only price we ask is to 
 do us justice. I believe we have in our hands the 
 means of peaceable coercion." 
 
 The events of the summer and autumn of 1805 
 would have taught a statesman less enamoured than 
 Jefferson of the abstract principles of political ethics 
 that peaceful coercion of England and France had 
 about as much chance of success as peaceful remon- 
 strance with an "infuriated highwayman." In 
 July Sir William Scott, of the admiralty court, re- 
 versing a decision of four years earlier, declared in 
 the Essex case that neutral ships could not carry the 
 enemy's products from the West Indies to Europe, 
 
266 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 even if breaking the voyage by call at an American 
 port. In August, Napoleon moved his grand army 
 from its camp at Boulogne in his wonderful march 
 across Europe to the Danube. In October Lord 
 Nelson shattered the combined French and Spanish 
 fleets at Trafalgar and made England mistress of 
 the ocean. In December Napoleon crushed the 
 combined armies of Austria and Russia at Austerlitz 
 and made himself master of the Continent. From 
 this time forth England had one policy, to control 
 the ocean-borne trade of the world. Her life de- 
 pended on her food supplies from abroad. The 
 wealth for her gigantic struggle against Napoleon 
 depended on her keeping open the markets for the 
 disposal of her manufactures. Britannia must lit- 
 erally rule the waves. Neutral trade must obey 
 her orders or cease to exist. 
 
 Jefferson recognized the change in England's atti- 
 tude; still he labored for peace. He hailed with joy 
 the accession of the liberal and friendly Whig states- 
 man, Charles James Fox, on the death of Pitt in 
 January, 1806. In May he sent William Pinkney, 
 of Maryland, to join Monroe in London to negotiate 
 a new commercial treaty, instructing him to ask for 
 a cessation of impressments, the replacement of our 
 West Indian trade on the basis of 1801, and repara- 
 tion for depredations on our commerce under the 
 Essex ruling. Jefferson could not or would not see 
 that a nation whose foreign trade had grown from 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 267 
 
 363,111 tons in 1791 to 669,921 tons in 1800, and 
 was well on its way to the million mark, did not 
 control the maritime policy of the world. He still 
 believed after Trafalgar that we "held England by 
 the throat." 
 
 Before Monroe and Pinkney put their names to a 
 treaty so careless of American rights that Jefferson 
 would not even submit it to the Senate for ratifica- 
 tion, a new chapter opened in the European struggle. 
 The British ministry, unwilling to see Napoleon's 
 growing empire supplied with colonial products 
 through the neutral carrying trade after the French 
 fleet had been swept from the ocean, began to issue 
 orders blockading the coast of the continent (Fox's 
 blockade of April 8, 1806). Napoleon, on his part, 
 after failing to subdue the British Isles by force, de- 
 termined to starve them by prohibiting all trade in 
 English merchandise on the continent and ordering 
 the seizure of all vessels coming from England or 
 the colonies to a port within his control (Berlin De- 
 cree of November 21, 1806). The British ministry, 
 with quite brutal frankness, made our repudiation 
 of the Berlin Decree the condition for any treaty of 
 commerce with the United States; while Napoleon, 
 with no more good-will but with a cynical flattery, 
 " assumed" that the Americans would not submit 
 to the "unjust and illegal measures" of Great 
 Britain, which "dishonored them and disgraced 
 their independence." The French minister at Wash- 
 
268 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ington, Turreau, unable to appreciate Jefferson's 
 policy of "peaceful coercion/ ' in the face of such 
 manifest encroachment on our rights and dignity 
 by Great Britain, could attribute our passive be- 
 havior only to our "sordid avarice, sentiments of 
 fear and of servile deference for England with which 
 the inhabitants of the American Union are pene- 
 trated." 
 
 Such was the deplorable situation of our com- 
 merce and diplomacy when the attack of the Leop- 
 ard on the Chesapeake aroused our country to a 
 state of excitement "unparalleled since the affray 
 at Lexington." Jefferson assembled his scattered 
 cabinet on July 2, and issued a proclamation order- 
 ing all armed vessels of Great Britain out of the 
 waters of the United States. He directed gun- 
 boats to points on our coast liable to attack, ordered 
 the governors of the States to have one hundred 
 thousand militia ready for call, summoned our fleet 
 from the Mediterranean, and despatched a war-ship 
 appropriately named the Revenge to England to 
 demand the disavowal of the attack on the Chesa- 
 peake, the restoration of the men taken from her 
 decks, and the punishment of Admiral Berkeley, 
 the commanding officer of the British Atlantic 
 squadron. The country stood solidly behind the 
 President. "But one feeling pervades the nation," 
 wrote Nicholson; "all distinctions of Federalism and 
 Democracy are vanished. ... I trust in God the 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 269 
 
 Revenge is going out to bring Monroe and Pinkney 
 home." 
 
 That Jefferson's measures were ineffectual was 
 due rather to the incalculable situation in Europe 
 than to the sentiments of "fear and servile defer- 
 ence" with which the French minister — followed 
 by some American historians — charged him. On 
 the very day of the Chesapeake affair a reaction- 
 ary Parliament met at Westminster with a clear 
 majority of two hundred Tory members, eager to 
 support the most dictatorial coercion of neutrals 
 advocated by Spencer Perceval and George Canning, 
 and to hound on the chauvinistic editors who were 
 denouncing America as "an insignificant and puny 
 power," which would not be "suffered to mutilate 
 Britain's proud sovereignty of the ocean." Three 
 days after the Chesapeake affair, the victor of Fried- 
 land met Alexander of Russia on a raft in the Nie- 
 men and planned the division of Europe between 
 them and the annihilation of Great Britain. It was 
 the climax of the struggle between the master of 
 the land and the mistress of the seas, between "the 
 tiger and the shark." And in the struggle, which 
 meant empire for Napoleon and existence for Eng- 
 land, the last shreds of neutral rights were swept 
 away. British Orders in Council declared every 
 port from which the British flag was excluded (that 
 is, practically the whole Continent of Europe) under 
 strict blockade, and compelled all neutral vessels 
 
270 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 wishing to enter such ports to call first at a British 
 port and pay " transit duties" to the British Gov- 
 ernment. Napoleon replied with the Milan Decree 
 (December 17, 1807), ordering the seizure of any 
 vessel that had touched at a British port, submitted 
 to search on the high seas by a British cruiser, or 
 paid dues to the British customs officers, on the 
 ground that such a vessel had suffered itself to be 
 " denationalized" and become English property. 
 Great Britain closed the Continent to us except 
 through English ports: Napoleon threatened con- 
 fiscation of every ship that came through those 
 ports. Our commerce was ground between the 
 Orders and the Decrees as between the upper and 
 the nether millstones. 
 
 Three courses were open to Jefferson. He might 
 declare war against England or France, or both; he 
 might let things continue as they were, still hoping 
 to make the thin voice of diplomacy heard above 
 the increasing storm of battle; or he might punish 
 both England and Napoleon by cutting off a com- 
 merce which he believed absolutely necessary to 
 their existence. If England fined our trade thou- 
 sands of dollars by the new Orders in Council, we 
 would fine her treasury millions by cutting off that 
 trade altogether. Jefferson had really no idea of 
 going to war. He saw, as well as John Randolph, 
 the futility of a struggle against "the leviathan of 
 the ocean," with such feeble military and naval re- 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 271 
 
 sources as six years of a peace economy had left to 
 the United States. At the same time Jefferson was 
 unwilling frankly to accept the logic of his own pol- 
 icy. His popularity was dearer to him as his term 
 of office drew to an end. He assumed a tone of 
 firmness, and even of menace, in his proclamations 
 and messages, while he sought by secret expedients 
 to "arrange matters" with the British minister and 
 envoy. In the midsummer of 1807, when the 
 American people were seething with indignation, 
 Jefferson breathed out defiance: "If England does 
 us ample justice it will be a war saved, but I do 
 not expect it." "If we must have a war it is a good 
 time, for England has Napoleon on her hands." "I 
 say Down with England! and as for what Bonaparte 
 is to do to us, let us trust to the chapter of acci- 
 dents." When, however, the news reached America 
 at the same moment that Napoleon had determined 
 to enforce the Berlin Decree against us, and that 
 the Tory ministers of George III refused to yield an 
 inch in the matter of impressments, Jefferson spoke 
 no more of war. He sent his orders to an obedient 
 Congress to lay an indefinite embargo on the foreign 
 shipping of America, while his secretary of the 
 navy, Robert Smith, privately interceded, at his 
 request, with Canning's special envoy, George Rose, 
 to have "such steps taken as would conciliate the 
 President's wish to give his Majesty satisfaction 
 . . . and yet to retain what was preeminently valu- 
 
272 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 able to him." The United States, having lost hope 
 of obtaining the Floridas through Napoleon's good 
 offices, said Smith, now "sincerely wished to see 
 them in the hands of Great Britain. " 
 
 It is impossible to approve Jefferson's conduct in 
 all this, though we need not go to the length of 
 Henry Adams's harsh judgment that he " trafficked 
 the people's dignity and his own self-respect," and 
 "begged for mercy from a British minister" in order 
 to save his popularity. Until the batch of ill news 
 (which no man could foresee) arrived from Europe 
 in December, 1807, Jefferson undoubtedly believed 
 sincerely in the efficacy of his humane and economic 
 project of "peaceful coercion." And it is probable 
 that he retired to private life, fifteen months later, 
 still convinced that his plan would have worked 
 had the cabinet, Congress, and the people stood by 
 him as they did in the Louisiana negotiation. He 
 was mistaken in his judgment, deceived and disap- 
 pointed in his hopes; but he was not a hypocrite. 
 
 The wisdom of Jefferson's behavior is quite an- 
 other question than its honesty. A fair judgment 
 of this question cannot be based alone on the events 
 of the year 1807, but must cover the whole policy of 
 the administration. No mortal man, with the pos- 
 sible exception of Napoleon Bonaparte, could have 
 foreseen, in the quiet year of the Peace of Amiens, 
 the events of Austerlitz and Jena, of Friedland and 
 Tilsit. When Jefferson entered the presidency we 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 273 
 
 were, for the first time since the declaration of our 
 independence, not only on terms of formal peace, 
 but also apparently on the way to lasting friendship 
 with the European nations. It looked as though 
 our days of tribulation were over. Except for the 
 trivial war with the Barbary pirates, there was not 
 a cloud in the sky. Jefferson entered on his policy 
 of disarmament not as a wilful and capricious ex- 
 periment, but with the cordial support of the best 
 minds of his party, of Madison and Gallatin, of 
 Randolph, Macon, and Giles. The success of that 
 policy, until the great storm burst in Europe, is re- 
 corded in the treasury reports of Albert Gallatin. 
 When the storm burst, it is true, neither our wealth 
 nor our good intentions nor our fancied isolation 
 could save us from being drawn into it. We were 
 unprepared for war, and we were obliged to endure 
 humiliation. But it still remains for those who 
 have castigated and ridiculed Thomas Jefferson as 
 the author of our misfortunes to prove that we 
 should have been "prepared" to compel justice 
 from the victors of Trafalgar and Friedland, even 
 if every dollar that Gallatin applied to the reduc- 
 tion of our debt had been spent in building frigates. 
 Not only would England "have fought us as readily 
 in 1807 as in 1812" (as the acrimonious Morse con- 
 fesses), but she would have fought us with far 
 greater vigor and freshness. She would have fought 
 us with the ruthlessness of Gambier at Copenhagen. 
 
274 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 For she would then have been fighting for her very 
 life, and as the war progressed the news of Napo- 
 leon's crowning audacities, of Bayonne and Erfurt, 
 of Savona and Schonbrunn, would have spurred 
 her to far other efforts than did the actual reports, 
 a few years later, of the disintegration of the " Grand 
 Army" amid the snows of Russia, the hasty evacua- 
 tion of German soil by Napoleon after the " Battle 
 of the Nations" at Leipzig, and the victorious 
 march of Wellesley through the Peninsula. It was 
 a blessing for us that our second war with England 
 was begun in 1812 and not in 1807. If we could 
 not prevent or avoid the storm, it was infinitely bet- 
 ter that we suffered only its nearly spent fury. 
 
 It is as easy for the modern critic to harp on Jef- 
 ferson's "timidity," "vacillation," and "culpable 
 negligence" in this great crisis of world history, as it 
 was for John Randolph to sneer at Madison's expo- 
 sition of England's depredations on our commerce 
 as "a shilling pamphlet matched against 800 ships 
 of war." But neither John Randolph nor the mod- 
 ern critic would have had us build eight hundred 
 or even eighty ships of war to match Great Britain's. 
 Jefferson saw clearly in 1807 what all the world 
 saw in 1815, that our difficulties with England and 
 France were only "consequential to the great strug- 
 gle between those nations." He sought, like an- 
 other great Democratic President in our own day, 
 to preserve our neutrality on the basis of the ex- 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 275 
 
 pectation of equal justice from both belligerents. 
 He hoped to bide out the storm by patience. He 
 wanted to remove the causes of friction between 
 the United States and the warring countries of 
 Europe, even at the expense of some inconvenience 
 and loss to ourselves. "Till they return to some 
 sense of moral duty," he wrote to John Taylor, of 
 Carolina, in January, 1808, "we keep within our- 
 selves. This gives time. Time may produce peace 
 in Europe. Peace in Europe removes all causes of 
 difficulty." The result of his policy was not war, 
 but rather the postponement of the war for five 
 years. He could have accomplished his purpose as 
 well, however, if he had not put on the lion's skin 
 to frighten Canning and Napoleon Bonaparte ! 
 
 On December 18, 1807, Jefferson, already unoffi- 
 cially informed of the British orders of November 
 11, asked Congress in a brief message to "inhibit 
 the departure of our vessels from the ports of the 
 United States." In four days the Embargo Act, 
 forbidding the exportation of goods from the United 
 States to foreign nations by land or sea, passed both 
 Houses of Congress by large majorities. The em- 
 bargo was a revival of the policy of 1774 and 1794, 
 when we sought to discipline England into respect 
 for our commercial rights by proscribing her valuable 
 trade. But, of course, the embargo was a double- 
 edged weapon. For every bushel of wheat and bale 
 of cotton that we refused to send across the Atlan- 
 
276 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 tic, for every consignment of meat and flour that 
 was stopped at the Canadian border, we had to 
 deny ourselves an equal value in the imported com- 
 forts and luxuries of life which, with our growing 
 wealth and population, were becoming more of a 
 necessity each year. Every vessel tied to the wharf 
 meant the loss of freight fees which the European 
 war had raised to such a point that one successful 
 voyage out of three meant a profit to the carrier. 
 Even in the " simple colonial days" of 1774, in spite 
 of the fervor of our Revolutionary protest, it had 
 been almost impossible to enforce the non-importa- 
 tion agreement. How long, then, would our coun- 
 try acquiesce in the complete suspension of a foreign 
 trade which by the year 1808 had reached an annual 
 volume of fifty million dollars? William Pinkney, 
 our minister at London, put his finger on the spot 
 when he wrote home to Madison in the summer of 
 1808: "The Embargo and the loss of our trade are 
 deeply felt here, and will be felt with more severity 
 every day . . . but our measures . . . have not 
 been decisive, because we have not been thought capa- 
 ble of persevering in self-denial, which is no more than 
 prudent abstinence from destruction and dishonor." 
 The authorities in England naturally did every- 
 thing in their power to defeat the embargo. They 
 tempted American ships to sail for their ports by 
 suspending the navigation acts in their favor and 
 issuing licenses for them to trade with the forbidden 
 ports of the continent. They had ample cause to 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 277 
 
 anticipate the failure of the embargo through the 
 reports of political disaffection in America, which 
 was stimulating and supplementing the strong mo- 
 tives of economic interest. The " Federal mon- 
 archists" of New England and New York, with 
 Timothy Pickering at their head, were pursuing a 
 course little short of downright treason to accom- 
 plish the discomfiture of Jefferson. They declared 
 that the embargo was laid at the behest of Napo- 
 leon. Pickering wrote to Canning's special envoy, 
 Rose: "The interests of the United States are in- 
 terwoven with those of Great Britian and our safety 
 depends on hers." He threatened the secession of 
 New England in a letter to James Sullivan, the Re- 
 publican governor of Massachusetts, declaring that 
 "the States whose farms are on the ocean and whose 
 harvests are gathered in every sea," must "seriously 
 consider" how to preserve their interests. "Every 
 man in New England," reported the British agent, 
 Henry, to Governor Craig of Canada, "is opposed 
 to war and attached to the course of England. 1 
 
 1 Another agent of the British Government, John Howe, reported 
 from Boston to the lieutenant-governor of Halifax, May 5, 1808: 
 "They [the New Englanders] appear to blame their own govern- 
 ment more than ours. . . . The irritation against Great Britain is 
 fast wearing off. . . . They feel how necessary her friendship is to 
 their prosperity." And from New York he wrote, speaking of the 
 sentiment in Connecticut: "Here they speak on the subject with a 
 degree of boldness that astonished me, and many of them even 
 publicly lamenting that ever they were separated from Great 
 Britain." Howe thought the administration would declare war 
 against England in order to prevent the secession of New England. 
 Professor Channing called the letters that Rose carried home with 
 him from the Federalists "unpatriotic and treasonable." 
 
278 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 The embargo was violated openly in the Northern 
 States, in spite of a strict enforcing act to control 
 even the coastwise trade, and the patrol of the 
 Canadian border by armed troops. 
 
 Jefferson's embarrassment was painful. Not only 
 did he have to endure the slanders of his political 
 enemies, who charged him with the deliberate ruin 
 of his country's prosperity, 1 but he had to bear the 
 
 1 The violence of the attack on Jefferson may be measured by the 
 following lines from William Cullen Bryant's poem, called The 
 Embargo. Bryant was fourteen years old when the poem was 
 written, in 1808. 
 
 "Curse of our nation, source of countless woes, 
 From whose dark womb unreckoned misery flows: 
 Th' embargo rages, like a sweeping wing, 
 Fear lowers before, and famine stalks behind. 
 
 r And thou, the scorn of every patriot's name, 
 Thy country's ruin and her council's shame! 
 Poor servile thing ! Derision of the brave ! 
 Who erst from Tarleton fled to Carter's cave; 
 Thou who when menaced by perfidious Gaul, 
 Didst prostrate to her whiskered minions fall; 
 And when our cash her empty bags supplied j 
 Didst meanly strive the foul disgrace to hide; 
 Go, wretch, resign the presidential chair, 
 Disclose thy secret measures, foul or fair. 
 Go, search with curious eyes for horned frogs, 
 'Mid the wild waste of Louisianian bogs; 
 Or where Ohio rolls his turbid stream, 
 Dig for huge bones, thy glory and thy theme. 
 
 But quit to abler hands the helm of state 
 Nor image ruin on thy country's fate. . . ." 
 
 And so on for over five hundred lines. Of course, as Parton says, 
 "this boy, gifted as he was, could only be the melodious echo of the 
 talk he had heard in his native village." 
 
 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 279 
 
 new reproach of the sacrifice of principles which he 
 once had held sacred and of such harmony as was 
 left in his distracted party. In 1794 he had pro- 
 tested violently against the use of the militia by 
 the President to put down the Whiskey Rebellion 
 in western Pennsylvania. But when the embargo 
 was resisted at Oswego in the summer of 1808 he ad- 
 vised Governor Tompkins, of New York, to march 
 against the rebels: "I think it so important to crush 
 these audacious proceedings and to make the offend- 
 ers feel the consequences of individuals daring to 
 oppose a law by force, that no effort should be 
 spared to compass this object. " His cabinet, a 
 model of harmony till now, divided on the question 
 of maintaining the embargo. "Most fervently 
 ought we to pray," wrote Robert Smith to Gallatin, 
 in August, 1808, "to be relieved from the various 
 embarrassments of said Embargo." A Republican 
 governor of Massachusetts at one end of the coun- 
 try, and a Republican justice of the supreme court 
 from Charleston at the other end of the country, 
 condemned the measure. The Federalist Justice 
 Story declared that the embargo "went to the ut- 
 most limit of constructive power under the Consti- 
 tution." This was the kind of indorsement with 
 which the author of the Kentucky Resolutions was 
 ending his administration. 
 
 Jefferson had decided in 1805 not to accept a 
 third term. Like Jackson and Roosevelt after him, 
 
280 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 he selected a member of his cabinet for a successor, 
 and easily commended him to the party by the 
 weight of his own influence. James Madison was 
 nominated by eighty-three out of eighty-nine votes 
 in a Congressional caucus convened in January, 
 1808. The anti-administration Republicans of the 
 South favored James Monroe, whom John Randolph 
 had been " grooming " for the presidency ever since 
 his return from the English mission in 1806; while 
 the disaffected Republicans of New York supported 
 the candidacy of Vice-President Clinton. C. C. 
 Pinckney and Rufus King were again the Federalist 
 candidates. All of New England, except Vermont, 
 reverted to the Federalist column, but still Madison 
 carried the country by one hundred and twenty-two 
 votes to forty-seven for Pinckney and six for Clin- 
 ton. In his farewell message to Congress, in No- 
 vember, 1808, Jefferson praised the embargo as 
 having frustrated the outrages "which meant war 
 if resisted and the sacrifice of the vital principle of 
 our national independence if submitted to." The 
 House voted to maintain the embargo by the large 
 majority of ninety-six to twenty-six. But with the 
 attempt to apply the severe Enforcing Act of Janu- 
 ary 9, 1809, resistance became so wide-spread and 
 desperate that Congress raised the general embargo 
 and substituted therefor a Non-Intercourse Act 
 with Great Britain and France. It was the begin- 
 ning of the end of Jefferson's policy of "peaceful 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 281 
 
 coercion." Unwilling to commit his successor to 
 the battle which he could not win himself, Jefferson 
 signed the act on March 1, 1809, and three days 
 later returned to private life. 
 
 The administration of Thomas Jefferson was a 
 notable period in the development of the American 
 nation. When he came to the presidency in 1801 
 our domain was bounded on the west by the Missis- 
 sippi River, we touched the Gulf of Mexico at no 
 point, no white man had crossed the continent, and 
 but few were familiar with the shores of Lakes 
 Michigan, Huron, and Superior. When he left the 
 presidency eight years later the limits of the United 
 States were the Rockies, the mouth of the Missis- 
 sippi was ours, Lewis and Clark had penetrated the 
 wilderness to the Pacific coast, and John Jacob 
 Astor was planning his fur-posts on the Columbia 
 River. Our population had grown from five mil- 
 lion to seven million two hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand, and was rapidly filling in the land between 
 the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Ohio, ad- 
 mitted as a State in 1802, with some fifty-five thou- 
 sand inhabitants, counted two hundred and thirty 
 thousand in 1810. Kentucky had grown from two 
 hundred and twenty thousand to four hundred and 
 six thousand, Tennessee from one hundred and five 
 thousand to two hundred and sixty-one thousand, 
 the Mississippi Territory from eight thousand to 
 forty-one thousand. Our trade down the great 
 
282 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 river, now wholly American from source to mouth, 
 more than doubled during Jefferson's second term, 
 reaching a figure in 1809 which foretold the day, not 
 distant, when forty per cent of the foreign com- 
 merce of the United States should pass through the 
 port of New Orleans. In the year before the Em- 
 bargo Act took effect our exports and imports 
 reached the considerable sum of one hundred and 
 eight million dollars and one hundred and thirty- 
 eight million dollars respectively — a total volume 
 of trade not to be reached again until the year 1835. l 
 Jefferson's mind expanded with the country. His 
 political philosophy broadened and his constitu- 
 tional straitness was relaxed. Little by little the 
 cautious responsibility with which he wished to 
 see the executive circumscribed had yielded to the 
 splendid opportunities for the exercise of power 
 which the possession of high office brought. Before 
 the close of his term he spoke and acted like a na- 
 tionalist of the Federalist school. The erstwhile en- 
 emy of an industrial economy with its large cities 
 and its thousands of "artificers," "thepanderers of 
 vice and the instruments by which the liberties of 
 
 1 The Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts suddenly reduced ex- 
 ports to $22,000,000 and imports to $56,000,000 in 1808, and 
 $52,000,000 and $59,000,000 respectively in 1809, which was far 
 from a "total annihilation" of our commerce. The nadir was 
 reached in the War of 1812, when our exports sank to $6,000,000 
 and our imports to $12,000,000 in the year 1814. From the con- 
 clusion of peace the recovery was steady, except in the panic year 
 of 1819. 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 283 
 
 a country are overthrown/' spoke sympathetically 
 in his last message to Congress, in November, 1808, 
 of the considerable investments of capital in indus- 
 tries destined to become permanent under the aus- 
 pices of cheaper materials and subsistence, of the 
 freedom of labor from taxation, and of protecting 
 duties ( ! ) and prohibitions. The erstwhile guardian 
 of the "general government" within the limits defi- 
 nitely traced by the clauses of the Constitution, now 
 suggested that Congress might appropriate the sur- 
 plus of its revenues "to the improvement of roads, 
 canals, rivers, education, and other great founda- 
 tions of prosperity and union." But through all 
 the phases of political development, amid the vari- 
 ous vicissitudes of public and private fortune, in 
 office or out of office, from his mature youth to his 
 vigorous old age, there was one principle, sacred as 
 a revelation from on high, from which Jefferson 
 never swerved. He was convinced that the land of 
 America, with all its material resources, belonged in 
 full, undelegated possession to the successive gen- 
 erations of living men; that their rulers were but 
 their honored servants, their laws the changing 
 record of their evolving will, and their institutions 
 the temporary form in which the travailing spirit 
 of freedom was clothed. Thomas Jefferson believed 
 in democracy. 
 
 Jefferson retired from the presidency under the 
 shadow of the defeat of his long-cherished policy of 
 
284 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 "peaceful coercion. " On the eve of his departure 
 from Washington he set his signature to the first 
 and only important bill that Congress passed 
 against his wishes during the eight years of his 
 presidency. Still, when the great democrat took 
 his quiet way to Monticello, men forgot the present 
 discomfiture and remembered only the long service 
 of forty years continuous devotion to his country. 
 Congratulatory addresses poured in upon him from 
 all sides. The memorial of his native State was 
 particularly eloquent and touching. It reviewed 
 the accomplishments of the administration, the 
 pomp and state laid aside, the patronage discarded, 
 the internal taxes abolished, the debt discharged, 
 the pirates of the Mediterranean chastised, the 
 national domain vastly increased. It recalled the 
 peace with the civilized world, preserved through a 
 season of uncommon difficulty and trial, the good- 
 will cultivated with the unfortunate aborigines of 
 our country and the civilization humanely extended 
 among them/ , and "that theme which above all 
 others the historic genius will hang upon with rap- 
 ture, the liberty of speech and the press preserved 
 inviolate, without which genius and science are 
 given to men in vain." 
 
 "From the first brilliant and happy moment of 
 your resistance to foreign tyranny," the address 
 concludes, "to the present day, we mark with plea- 
 sure and with gratitude the same uniform and con- 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR NEUTRALITY 285 
 
 sistent character — the same warm and devoted at- 
 tachment to liberty and the Republic, the same 
 Roman love of your country, her rights, her peace, 
 her honor, her prosperity. How blessed will be the 
 retirement into which you are about to go! How 
 deservedly blessed it will be! For you carry with 
 you the richest of all rewards, the recollection of a 
 life well spent in the service of your country, and 
 proofs the most decisive of the love, the gratitude, 
 the veneration of your countrymen. " 
 
CHAPTER X 
 JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 
 
 / have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every 
 form of tyranny over the mind of man. (Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 
 September 23, 1800.) 
 
 Seventeen years of life were left to Thomas Jef- 
 ferson after his retirement from the presidency, 
 years filled with the multifarious activities of a 
 mind which never lost the zest of curiosity or the 
 fine edge of intellectual discrimination. The quiet 
 pursuits which he had often longed for amid the 
 cares of public office were now his to enjoy to the 
 full. He revelled in his books, his family, his acres, 
 his buildings, his gardens, his undisturbed morn- 
 ings of study, his relaxed hours of genial intercourse 
 with a host of devoted friends and welcome guests. 
 On quitting office, Jefferson had taken the lauda- 
 ble resolution not to act the role of "the power 
 behind the throne/ ' He published a circular letter 
 in March, 1809, declaring that he " would never 
 interpose in any case with the President or the 
 heads of departments in any application whatever 
 for 05106." He insisted that he had no remotest 
 wish to dictate the policy of his successors in the 
 presidential office. He had " taken final leave of 
 
 286 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 287 
 
 politics." Having "gladly laid down the distress- 
 ing burthen of power," he had "exchanged the 
 newspapers for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton 
 and Euclid." "The swaggering on deck as a pas- 
 senger," he playfully wrote to his son-in-law, John 
 Eppes, in 1813, "is so much more pleasant than 
 climbing the ropes as a seaman" — and much more 
 in the same vein. 
 
 But in this matter Jefferson yielded somewhat to 
 a besetting temptation of his nature, namely, that 
 of self-deception through the fervor of his own pro- 
 testations. He was far too active a man and far 
 too thoroughly identified with the life of the Re- 
 publican party and solicitous of its fortunes to ab- 
 jure politics during the exciting days of the War of 
 1812, and the uncertain days of national reconstruc- 
 tion which followed. Especially when the chief 
 magistracy was held for sixteen of the seventeen 
 years of his retirement by two of his closest friends 
 and political lieutenants. Presidents Madison and 
 Monroe consulted the oracle of Monticello on every 
 important crisis of their administrations. Their 
 published correspondence with Jefferson contains 
 only a partial record of their indebtedness to him, 
 for they frequently made the pilgrimage in person 
 to Monticello for long and intimate conferences. 
 
 A striking example of the influence he exerted on 
 the administration at Washington is furnished by a 
 letter which he wrote on October 24, 1823, in his 
 
288 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 eighty-first year, to President Monroe, in answer 
 to the latter's request for his opinion on Canning's 
 proposal of joint action between Great Britain and 
 the United States to warn the Holy Alliance to 
 keep its hands off the western hemisphere. The 
 letter was written six weeks before the President 
 announced his famous Monroe Doctrine to Con- 
 gress. It reads: "Our first and fundamental maxim 
 should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils 
 of Europe. Our second, never to suffer Europe to 
 meddle with cis-Atlantic affairs. America, north 
 and south, has a set of interests distinct from those 
 of Europe and peculiarly her own. ... I could 
 honestly, therefore, join in the declaration . . . 
 that we will oppose with all our means the forcible 
 interposition of any other power, as auxiliary, sti- 
 pendiary, or under any other form or pretext, and 
 most especially their [the former colonies of Spain 
 in the western hemisphere] transfer to any power 
 by conquest, coercion, or acquisition in any other 
 way." Monroe put these ideas into his message of 
 December 2, 1823. 
 
 Jefferson's political prognostications, however, 
 were not always right, nor his judgments always 
 sound. He was curiously mistaken in his prophecy 
 of the course of the War of 1812, when he wrote to his 
 old friend, General Kosciusko, June 28, 1812: "Our 
 present enemy will have the sea to herself, while we 
 shall be equally predominant at land, and shall 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 289 
 
 strip her of all her possessions on this continent." 
 Great Britain did not have the sea to herself, and 
 Detroit, Bladensburg, and Sackett's Harbor are a 
 sufficient commentary on our "predominance at 
 land." The easy optimism with which the Southern 
 statesmen, from the knightly young Clay to the 
 venerable Jefferson, assumed a rapid and jaunty 
 conquest of Canada by our militia, is still a matter 
 of wonder to the historian. "The acquisition of 
 Canada this year as far as the neighborhood of 
 Quebec," wrote Jefferson to Duane, in August, 1812, 
 "will be a mere matter of marching, and will give 
 us experience for the attack of Halifax the next and 
 the final expulsion of England from the American 
 continent." Jefferson didn't go quite to the length 
 that Clay did, however, in declaring that the con- 
 quest of Canada could be accomplished by a thou- 
 sand Kentucky riflemen ! 
 
 On the whole, it seems as though Jefferson in his 
 later years reverted to the particularistic theories 
 of government from which he had grown away dur- 
 ing his tenure of office. The Hartford Convention, 
 the nationalist tendencies in the increase of the 
 army, the raising of the tariff, the re-establishment 
 of the bank, the movement for internal improve- 
 ments at national expense, revived his apprehension 
 of the renaissance of Federalism. Perhaps, too, in 
 the reminiscences of his earlier days of jealous com- 
 bat against the centralizing tendencies of Alexander 
 
290 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Hamilton, and in the ordering and editing of those 
 random notes which he had jotted down during his 
 official career in Philadelphia and Washington — the 
 famous and regrettable Anas — he experienced a 
 fresh realization of the dangers of Federal usurpa- 
 tion. Nor could he have been indifferent to the 
 rapid growth of the power of the Federal judiciary 
 at the expense of States' rights in the successive de- 
 cisions of the supreme court under the influence of 
 Chief Justice Marshall, or to the appearance of 
 Marshall's elaborate Life of Washington (1805), 
 which gave a powerful Federalist interpretation of 
 our government in its inaugural years. His purpose 
 in publishing the Anas was chiefly to counteract the 
 influence of Marshall's book, and he appealed to 
 Madison and the younger men of the Republican 
 party to take care that the people of the country 
 should not be left without an adequate apologetic 
 for Republican principles and policies. He feared 
 that the Republican party, under its new and en- 
 thusiastic leaders, like Calhoun, Porter, Cheves, and 
 Clay, might drift from the true course. 
 
 It is undoubtedly to this renewed fidelity to the 
 doctrines of particularism and States' rights that we 
 must attribute Jefferson's disappointing and reac- 
 tionary attitude on the Missouri question. No man 
 in America had championed the cause of negro 
 emancipation with more consistency and vigor than 
 Thomas Jefferson. From his entrance into the Vir- 
 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 291 
 
 ginia House of Burgesses in 1769 to his retirement 
 from the presidency, forty years later, his every 
 public utterance and private opinion on the subject 
 of slavery had been in favor of abolition. In the 
 first draft of the Declaration of Independence he 
 had made the encouragement of the slave-trade 
 one of the heads of indictment against George III. 
 Chosen with Wythe and Pendleton to revise the 
 Virginia law code in 1779, he prepared an amend- 
 ment emancipating all slaves born in the State after 
 the passing of the act, and providing for their being 
 educated in farming and the mechanical arts at 
 public expense until they came of age, and then 
 being colonized to some suitable place, supplied 
 with arms, household implements, tools, seeds, do- 
 mestic animals, and kept under the " alliance and 
 protection" of the State until they should be nu- 
 merous and strong enough to protect themselves. 
 Shortly after his futile attempt to get emancipa- 
 tion written into the revised Virginia law code, Jef- 
 ferson composed his Notes on Virginia (published in 
 Paris, in 1784), in which he deplored the evil effects 
 of slavery on the manners and morals of the com- 
 munity. "The whole commerce between master 
 and slave," he wrote, "is a perpetual exercise of the 
 most boisterous passions, the most unremitting des- 
 potism on the one part and degrading submission 
 on the other. Our children see this and learn to 
 imitate it. . . . And can the liberties of a nation 
 
292 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 be thought secure when we have removed their only 
 firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people 
 that those liberties are the gift of God; that they 
 are not to be violated but with his wrath ? Indeed, 
 I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is 
 just, that his justice cannot sleep forever." 
 
 In the same year that he published the Notes on 
 Virginia, Jefferson introduced into a bill in Congress 
 a clause excluding slavery from the whole of the ter- 
 ritory of the United States between the Alleghanies 
 and the Mississippi, south as well as north of the 
 Ohio. The clause was lost by the vote of a single 
 State only. 
 
 Probably, finally, no single act of Jefferson's 
 presidency gave him more personal satisfaction than 
 his opportunity of reminding the Houses of Con- 
 gress, in his message of 1806, that the time was ap- 
 proaching when, by the expiration of the twenty- 
 year limit set by the Constitution, they might pass 
 a law putting an end to the slave-trade, and with it 
 to those "violations of human rights which have 
 been so long continued on the unoffending inhabi- 
 tants of Africa, and which the morality, the repu- 
 tation, and the best interests of our country have 
 long been eager to proscribe." Jefferson renewed 
 his devotion to the cause of emancipation in a letter 
 to Edward Coles, in the autumn of 1814, reiterating 
 his faith in the scheme of colonization, and deploring 
 the fact that the younger generation, in whose own 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 293 
 
 breast the flame of liberty had been kindled, were 
 not more eager to extend the process to their negro 
 brethren. For himself, he said, the time for action 
 was past. Old Priam could not buckle on the 
 armor of Hector. The enterprise of emancipation 
 was for the young. ... "It shall have all my 
 prayers — the only weapons of an old man." 
 
 What more natural than to expect a man with 
 such a record in word and deed in behalf of emanci- 
 pation to hail with joy and support with ardor the 
 efforts of the "restrictionists" in the Congress of 
 1819-20 to exclude slavery from the proposed new 
 State of Missouri and the remaining part of the 
 Louisiana Purchase territory ? It was the first move- 
 ment to stop the spread of slavery west of the Missis- 
 sippi, as his own bill of 1784 had been the first move- 
 ment to stop the spread of slavery west of the Alle- 
 ghanies. Tallmadge's proposal that no more slaves be 
 allowed to go into Missouri was like his own measure 
 in the House of Burgesses many years before to de- 
 clare free after one year any negro slave brought into 
 the State of Virginia. The provision that negroes 
 born in the State of Missouri should become free at 
 the age of twenty-five was less radical than his own 
 proposition of 1779 for Virginia that all children 
 born of slaves should be free from their birth and 
 should be placed under the tutelage of the State 
 until old enough for colonization. Yet, in spite of 
 all this, Jefferson opposed the imposition of any 
 
294 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 restriction regarding slavery upon Missouri by Con- 
 gress as a condition of its admission as a State into 
 the Union, and condemned the famous Compromise 
 which forbade the extension of slavery into the rest 
 of the territory of the Louisiana Purchase above 
 the parallel of 36° 30'. 
 
 In this matter Jefferson's abhorrence of the re- 
 vival of Federalism got the better of his hatred for 
 slavery. He could see in the policy of the restric- 
 tionist only a ruse to restore the prestige of the 
 northern champions of a consolidated government. 
 He who once in his horror of slavery had " trembled 
 for his country/' now found the impassioned pleas 
 of Taylor, Slade, Tallmadge, and King for a race of 
 freemen in our new West only hypocrisy and guile. 
 "The Missouri question/' he wrote to William 
 Pinkney, "is a mere party trick. The leaders of 
 Federalism, defeated in their schemes of obtaining 
 power by rallying partisans to the principle of mon- 
 archism . . . have changed their tack and thrown 
 out another barrel to the whale. They are taking 
 advantage of the virtuous feelings of the people to 
 effect a division of parties by a geographical line. 
 . . . They are wasting Jeremiads on the miseries 
 of slavery, as if we were advocates for it. Sincerity 
 in their declamations should direct their efforts to 
 the true point of the difficulty, and unite their coun- 
 sels with ours in devising some reasonable and prac- 
 ticable plan of getting rid of it." But what plan 
 was either more reasonable or more practicable at 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 295 
 
 the moment for getting rid of slavery than to pre- 
 vent its going into the new lands west of the Missis- 
 sippi, Jefferson, if he knew, did not state. Again he 
 wrote to Lafayette in France, that the Missouri 
 question was "not a moral question, but merely 
 one of power: its object is to raise a geographical 
 principle for the choice of a president, and the noise 
 will be kept up until that is effected." And again, to 
 General Dearborn, after the passage of the compro- 
 mise: "Desperate of regaining their power under 
 political distinctions, they [the Federalists] have 
 wriggled into its seat under the auspices of morality, 
 and are again in the ascendency from which their 
 sins had hurled them." So the man whom cynics 
 ridiculed for his idealism in politics lost the moral 
 point of the Missouri question in his own cynical 
 attitude, and comforted himself, for his country, 
 with the miserable sophistry that the extension of 
 slavery into the new West would lighten the dark 
 cloud by dissipating it, and for his person, with the 
 dismal thanksgiving that he would "not live to see 
 the issue." 
 
 Religious obloquy, which had pursued Jefferson all 
 through his official life, did not cease with his retire- 
 ment or even with his burial. He was accused by the 
 orthodoxy of New England of having imported the 
 atheistical doctrines of the French Jacobins to cor- 
 rupt his countrymen. Ridiculous stories of his hos- 
 tility to Christianity were circulated, even to the ru- 
 mor of a presidential edict to suppress all copies of 
 
296 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 the Bible. But Jefferson was no more an atheist 
 than he was a Jacobin. Whether he was a Christian 
 or not depends on the definition of a word which has 
 never been defined alike by any two of a multitude of 
 sects. The Christianity of the priesthood and the 
 Christianity of dogma he equally abhorred. He re- 
 jected all doctrines which offended his reason or his 
 ethics: the Trinity, predestination, the virgin birth 
 of Christ, apostolic succession, the atonement, mira- 
 cles, et cetera; but his writings abound with refer- 
 ences to a Deity in whose hands are the issues of 
 human affairs, and with expressions of faith in a 
 future life where those parted on earth shall meet 
 again. He fought strenuously against any connec- 
 tion between church and state, as the endowed An- 
 glican clergy of Virginia experienced to their sorrow; 
 but he generally followed the worship and accepted 
 the ministrations of the Episcopal Church, while 
 he was a liberal contributor to churches of many 
 denominations and a good friend to hosts of clergy- 
 men. He rejected the doctrine of the inspiration 
 of the Bible; but he knew the book better than most 
 of his critics, and compiled with considerable labor 
 a kind of " harmony of the Gospels/' called "The 
 Jefferson Bible/' designed to cull out and arrange in 
 order the essential teachings of Jesus. 1 It is prob- 
 
 *He wrote to his friend, Charles Thompson, in January, 1816: 
 "I have made a wee little book . . . which I call the Philosophy of 
 Jesus. It is a paradigm of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts 
 out of the book and arranging them on the pages of a blank-book, in 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 297 
 
 able that he did not differ essentially from Wash- 
 ington, Adams, or Franklin in his religious opinions, 
 except that he was far more interested in religion 
 than any of these. It is difficult to imagine a rev- 
 erend stranger discussing religion for hours with the 
 grave Washington or the pompous Adams or the 
 canny Franklin, and departing under the impression 
 that he had been conversing with a trained theolo- 
 gian. But, then, these men were not "Jacobinical," 
 therefore their heterodoxy was not dangerous. It 
 was really Jefferson's political opinions that were 
 persecuted in the New England pulpits under the 
 head of "atheism and infidelity. " 
 
 Least of all was Jefferson a propagandist in relig- 
 ion. He never attempted to make a convert or 
 wished to change another's creed. So sacredly pri- 
 vate a matter did he consider the individual's rela- 
 tion to God that he hesitated to communicate his 
 religious ideas even to his own family and intimate 
 friends. His eldest grandson and the administrator 
 of his estate, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, wrote to 
 his biographer, H. S. Randall, in 1856: "Of his relig- 
 
 a certain order of time and subject. A more beautiful and precious 
 morsel of ethics I have never seen. It is a document in proof that 
 I am a real Christian, i. e., a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very- 
 different from the Platonists who call me infidel and themselves 
 Christians and preachers of the Gospel, while they draw all their 
 characteristic dogmas from what its author never said or saw. 
 They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system be- 
 yond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of 
 the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return to earth, 
 would not recognize one feature." 
 
298 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 ious opinions his family know no more than the 
 world. If asked by any one of them his opinion on 
 any religious subject his uniform reply was that it 
 was a subject each was bound to study assiduously 
 for himself, unbiassed by the opinions of others 
 . . . that after a thorough investigation they were 
 responsible for the righteousness not the rightfulness 
 of their opinions." At the same time he was patient 
 and courteous with those who tried to " convert" 
 him out of honest solicitude for his salvation. "I 
 must ever believe that religion substantially good," 
 he wrote to one such apostle in 1814, "which pro- 
 duces an honest life, and we have been authorized 
 by One whom you and I equally respect, to judge of 
 the tree by its fruits. . . . Let us not be uneasy, 
 then, about the different roads we may pursue, but 
 following the guidance of a good conscience let us 
 be happy in the hope that by these different paths 
 we shall all meet in the end. ... I salute you 
 with brotherly esteem and respect." 
 
 In a word, Jefferson's religion was a system of 
 practical ethics, built, as he believed, on the teachings 
 of the Nazarene and supplemented by a deliberately 
 undefined faith in a guiding Providence and a future 
 state. "I have never permitted myself," he wrote 
 to that rarest type of friend, a New England clergy- 
 man, "to meditate a specific creed. These formulas 
 have been the bane and ruin of the Christian church, 
 its own fatal invention." In the midst of the busy 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 299 
 
 first term in the White House, Jefferson found time 
 to write a syllabus of the doctrines of Jesus com- 
 pared with the moral codes of the Hebrews, the 
 Greeks, and the Romans, to show the superiority of 
 the Christian ethics. He sent the syllabus to Ben- 
 jamin Rush with the comment: "These [views] are 
 the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and 
 very different from that anti-Christian system im- 
 puted to me by those who know nothing of my 
 opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am 
 indeed opposed, 1 but not to the genuine precepts of 
 Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense 
 he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his 
 doctrines in preference to all others, ascribing to 
 him every human excellence, and believing he never 
 claimed any other. " It was on these ethical princi- 
 ples that Jefferson based a life which was noble, 
 kindly, generous, dignified, sympathetic, and true. 
 There is but one testimony from the host of friends, 
 acquaintances, and visitors who enjoyed the hospi- 
 tality of the master of Monticello, that he himself 
 was the pattern of the righteous man described in 
 his own favorite Psalm: 
 
 "Lord, who's the happy man that may to thy blest 
 courts repair, 
 Not stranger-like to visit them, but to inhabit there ? 
 
 1 He wrote to Colonel Pickering in 1822, thanking him for a copy 
 of Channing's sermons: "Had there never been a commentator there 
 never would have been an infidel." 
 
300 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Tis he whose every thought and deed by rules of virtue 
 
 moves, 
 Whose generous tongue disdains to speak the thing his 
 
 heart disproves." 
 
 Nevertheless, Jefferson's life at Monticello, for 
 all the love and veneration that surrounded it, was 
 not free from care. Debt dogged his footsteps to 
 the grave. The portion of the Wayles property 
 which his wife brought him as a dowry was heavily 
 encumbered, and before he had finally paid off his 
 English creditors over a period of depreciated cur- 
 rency and depressed land values, the debt "swept 
 away nearly half of the estate." During his forty 
 years of frequent absence from Monticello in his 
 country's service his farms were left in the hands of 
 overseers. When he returned in 1809 to take charge 
 of his property in person a series of misfortunes 
 awaited him. Cold weather and the ravages of the 
 Hessian fly reduced the crops of 1810 and 1811. The 
 interruption of our foreign trade by the Embargo 
 and Non-Intercourse Acts closed valuable markets 
 to his tobacco and raised the price of necessary 
 commodities, like farm implements and clothing for 
 his slaves, to a ruinous figure. The war with Great 
 Britain still further aggravated the distress by its 
 close blockade of Chesapeake Bay. And when the 
 war was over an entirely new economic adjustment 
 followed. The fluid capital of the North was turned 
 into mills and factories. The planters of the South 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 301 
 
 carried their slaves across the Alleghanies into the 
 rich Gulf and river lands of the Mississippi Territory. 
 The value of the upland acres sank, and the farm- 
 ing gentry declined before the rising barons of the 
 cotton plantation. There is no more pathetic pic- 
 ture in our economic history than the gradual decay 
 of the splendid estates of the old families of Vir- 
 ginia, whom neither poverty nor penury could wean 
 from their generous traditions of social dignity and 
 limitless hospitality. 
 
 It was not alone the inexorable laws of economic 
 displacement that brought Jefferson into financial 
 straits. Rigid economy in his household and on 
 his estate would have allowed him to finish his days 
 in ease and comfort, if not in affluence. But Jeffer- 
 son could not practise economy. He had expensive 
 tastes. He loved rare books and fine horses. Even 
 so complete a connoisseur as Daniel Webster waxed 
 enthusiastic over the quality of his wines. He was 
 still spending considerable sums on his beloved man- 
 sion of Monticello, thirty years after he had brought 
 his bride to its new chambers through the deep snow 
 of New Year's night, 1772. The doors of Monti- 
 cello were never closed to friend or stranger. Be- 
 sides his own numerous family of dependants, sis- 
 ters, nephews, nieces, sons-in-law, and grandchildren, 
 he supported a constant train of guests, invited and 
 uninvited. They came with their families and ser- 
 vants and horses and carriages. They stayed for 
 
302 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 weeks and months. His daughter, Mrs. Randolph, 
 told of preparing as many as fifty beds for guests on 
 some nights. They ate his good food and drank 
 his choice wines. They literally devoured his sub- 
 stance, like the suitors in Ulysses's halls at Ithaca. 
 
 The vice-presidency is said to have been the only 
 public position occupied by Jefferson in which he 
 lived within his official salary. He left the presi- 
 dency burdened with a debt of twenty thousand 
 dollars, and had to apply for a loan at a Richmond 
 bank in order to square his outstanding accounts in 
 Washington before he could start with a clear con- 
 science for Monticello. When the British burned the 
 public buildings at Washington, in 1814, he offered 
 to sell his fine collection of some thirteen thousand 
 books to Congress, at the valuation which a com- 
 mittee of the Houses should put upon them, partly 
 to replace the Congressional Library which had 
 been destroyed, but more especially to get a tem- 
 porary relief from pressing creditors. After a rather 
 heated debate as to whether the books of the " in- 
 fidel Voltaire " ought to be purchased with the pub- 
 lic funds, and considerable haggling over the esti- 
 mated worth of the library, Congress finally voted 
 to take it for twenty-three thousand nine hundred 
 and fifty dollars, which was probably not more than 
 half its value. The relief was but temporary, the 
 pressure of the debt constant. 
 
 At the opening of the year 1826, the last of his 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 303 
 
 life, Jefferson's financial embarrassments threatened 
 to drive him into bankruptcy and the loss of his 
 estate. In despair he turned to the Virginia Legis- 
 lature, asking permission to sell part of his property 
 by lottery. "If it can be yielded," he wrote to a 
 friend in the legislature, "I can save the house of 
 Monticello and a farm adjoining to end my days in 
 and bury my bones." His countrymen came for- 
 ward with voluntary subscriptions to save his estate. 
 New York contributed eight thousand five hundred 
 dollars, Philadelphia five thousand dollars, Balti- 
 more three thousand dollars. The project of the 
 lottery was suspended, and the immediate demands 
 were met, including twenty thousand dollars for 
 which Jefferson became liable by the indorsement of 
 his friend Wilson Cary Nicholas's note in 1819. 
 The aged statesman was fortunately left to end his 
 days under the happy delusion that this "pure and 
 unsolicited offering of love" by his fellow country- 
 men would suffice not only to pay off all his debts 
 but to leave his dependants in ease at Monticello. 
 The subscriptions ceased, however, and six months 
 after Jefferson's death the costly furniture, pictures, 
 china, and silver of Monticello were put up at auc- 
 tion to help meet the debt of forty thousand dollars 
 on the estate. Jefferson's only surviving child, his 
 daughter, Mrs. Randolph, was forced to leave the 
 beautiful mansion over which she had presided for 
 nearly forty years, and was saved from utter desti- 
 
304 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 tution in her declining days only by the generosity 
 of the legislatures of South Carolina and Louisiana, 
 each of which made her a grant of ten thousand 
 dollars. Monticello passed into the hands of 
 strangers. 
 
 Jefferson found relief from the financial worries of 
 his declining years in absorbing devotion to the no- 
 blest work of his noble life, the establishment of a 
 great liberal and democratic university. "A sys- 
 tem of general instruction/' he wrote in 1818, "which 
 shall reach every description of our citizens, from 
 the highest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, 
 so it will be the latest, of all the public concerns 
 in which I shall permit myself to take an interest." 
 In season and out of season, at home and abroad, 
 in the midst of public duties and in retirement at 
 Monticello, he spread the doctrine of popular edu- 
 cation with the fervor of an apostle: "Preach, my 
 dear sir, a crusade against ignorance/' he wrote to 
 George Wythe from Paris in 1786. "Establish and 
 improve the law for educating the common people. 
 Let our countrymen know that the people alone can 
 protect us against these evils." 1 In his annual 
 message to Congress in 1806 he declared that edu- 
 cation should be "placed among the articles of pub- 
 lic care," and recommended "a national establish- 
 
 1 Jefferson is speaking in this part of his letter of the miseries with 
 which the rich and favored land of France is burdened by its Court, 
 its nobility, and its priesthood, because the people are too ignorant 
 to realize and too passive to throw off their abject condition. 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 305 
 
 ment for education ... a public institution which 
 could apply those sciences ... all the parts of 
 which contribute to the improvement of the coun- 
 try, and some of them to its preservation. ,, 
 
 But the idea of a national university found no 
 more favor with Congress than had the scheme of 
 public schools with the burgesses and the county 
 courts of Virginia. It was not until Jefferson, freed 
 from the burdens of office, bent his whole energy to 
 the cause of the education of his countrymen that 
 the opposition of generations of social and religious 
 prejudice began to yield to the persuasion of his 
 faith. A few important men, including Madison, 
 Monroe, W. C. Nicholas, James Breckenridge, Peter 
 Carr, supported him faithfully, but the one person 
 without whose constant co-operation Jefferson could 
 hardly have succeeded in founding the University 
 of Virginia was Joseph C. Cabell, a brilliant young 
 lawyer who had travelled widely in Europe studying 
 schools and universities, and who for eighteen years 
 in the Senate of Virginia (1811-29) fought a noble 
 battle for the encouragement of higher education 
 by the State. Jefferson and Cabell worked together 
 in perfect harmony. Their correspondence pertain- 
 ing to the foundation of the university was pub- 
 lished anonymously at Richmond on Cabell's death 
 in 1856. It fills three hundred and seventy-seven 
 octavo pages ! 
 
 Jefferson would have liked to see his alma mater, 
 
306 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 William and Mary College, converted into a liberal 
 non-sectarian university; but the traditions of that 
 ancient, endowed seat of Anglicanism were too 
 strong to be overcome. A new centre of learning 
 had to be created. With the aid of voluntary sub- 
 scriptions from a group of nine gentlemen interested 
 in his scheme, contributing himself a thousand dol- 
 lars which he could not spare, Jefferson rescued the 
 old Albemarle Academy at Charlottesville from a 
 moribund condition, and got the legislature to in- 
 corporate the institution, in February, 1816, under 
 the name of the Central College. Three years later 
 the college was widened into the University of Vir- 
 ginia, a board of visitors was chosen, and Thomas 
 Jefferson was unanimously elected rector. From 
 that March meeting of 1819 until his death, seven 
 years later, he labored unremittingly to build up a 
 university which should be an ornament to his 
 State and a centre of liberal learning. He himself 
 chose the sites and drew the plans for the buildings, 
 selected the bricks and timber, imported workers 
 from Italy to carve the capitals of the columns. 
 Almost every day he rode over to Charlottesville, 
 four miles from Monticello, and remained for hours 
 seated on a folding camp-stool of his own invention, 
 superintending the building of his precious halls. 
 When he could not go, he watched the work through 
 a telescope mounted on one of the terraces at Mon- 
 ticello. "He spent almost as much pains on the 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 307 
 
 great rotunda of the central hall of the college/' says 
 Herbert Baxter Adams, "as Michael Angelo did on 
 the dome of St. Peter's.' ' And he had the great 
 satisfaction of living to see the university opened 
 to its first class of students in the spring of the year 
 1825. 
 
 The University of Virginia was the most liberal 
 institution of learning in the world. 1 Its curriculum 
 was wholly elective. There were no religious tests 
 for professors or pupils. Attendance at chapel was 
 voluntary. The modern languages and the sciences 
 stood on a par with the classics and mathematics. 
 The honor system in examinations and student self- 
 government in discipline were adopted. The uni- 
 versity was divided into a number of "schools," so 
 that specialization could begin with the pupil's en- 
 trance. There was no president of the faculty. 
 The professors stood on an equality and exercised a 
 chairmanship in turn. Physical training was com- 
 pulsory. Agriculture and the science of government 
 were for the first time recognized as subjects worthy 
 of a place in a university curriculum. Students of 
 theological schools were invited to attend the uni- 
 versity, enjoying the privilege of the lectures, the 
 library, and "any other accommodations we can 
 give them." "By bringing the sects together, and 
 
 1 Jefferson wrote Mr. Roscoe on December 7, 1820: "The institu- 
 tion will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. 
 For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, 
 nor to tolerate any error, so long as reason is left free to combat it." 
 
308 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 mixing them with the mass of other students/ ' said 
 Jefferson, a we shall soften their asperities, liberalize 
 and neutralize their prejudices, and make the gen- 
 eral religion a religion of peace, reason, and moral- 
 ity." The student of the history of education stands 
 amazed at the "modernness" of the various mea- 
 sures which Jefferson recommended in his famous 
 series of reports as rector of the University of Vir- 
 ginia. Some of these measures have been adopted 
 by us only yesterday, as it were; 1 others still wait 
 until, to use Jefferson's phrase, "the public mind 
 can bear them." 
 
 The influence of Jefferson and his co-workers in 
 the cause of higher education extended far beyond 
 the boundaries of Virginia. The University of 
 Michigan, the first of that splendid group of pio- 
 neer colleges in our Western States, was founded by 
 Jefferson's friend, Judge Woodward, of Michigan 
 Territory, in full sympathy with the Jeffersonian 
 principles. The new State of Maine (1820) inserted 
 in its constitution a "literary article" for the "gen- 
 eral diffusion of the advantages of education" 
 through the State, which the president of the con- 
 stitutional convention and first governor of Maine, 
 William King, acknowledged that he owed to Jef- 
 
 1 For example, the recent arrangement between Union Theological 
 Seminary and Columbia University, by which Jefferson's plan of 
 the interchange of courses between the religious and the secular in- 
 stitutions was adopted, nearly a hundred years after his suggestion, 
 as a "new departure" in education. 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 309 
 
 ferson's suggestion during a visit to the " hospitable 
 mansion " of Monticello the previous winter. George 
 Ticknor, another welcome guest at Monticello, took 
 back to his new professorship at Harvard valuable 
 advice on the advantages of the elective system and 
 the emphasis on the study of the modern languages. 
 Herbert Baxter Adams could well call the University 
 of Virginia "the noblest work of Jefferson's life," 
 marking "the continuation of his personal, vitaliz- 
 ing influence in Virginia and in the country at large 
 more truly than any other of his original creations." 
 It was not a merely professional scientific motive 
 that led Jefferson to devote himself with such zeal to 
 the cause of education in Virginia and the country 
 at large. The enlightenment of the people was for 
 him the corner-stone of the structure of democracy, 
 hence a system of free, popular education was a 
 chief article in his political creed. In the admirable 
 preamble to the revisers' bill of 1779, "For the more 
 general diffusion of knowledge," he declared that 
 even under the best forms of government those in- 
 trusted with power had sometimes perverted that 
 power into tyranny. "The most effectual means 
 of preventing this," he continued, "would be to illu- 
 minate as far as practicable the minds of the people 
 at large, and more especially to give them knowledge 
 of those facts which history exhibiteth, that, pos- 
 sessed thoroughly of the experience of other ages 
 and countries, they may be enabled to know ambi- 
 
310 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 tion under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their 
 natural powers to defeat its purposes." And again 
 in his Notes on Virginia he wrote: " Every govern- 
 ment degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the 
 people alone. The people themselves are its only 
 safe depositories. And to render even them safe, 
 their minds must be improved to a certain degree. 
 ... It has been thought that corruption is re- 
 strained by confining the right of suffrage to a few 
 of the wealthier people, but it would be more effec- 
 tually restrained by an extension of that right to 
 such numbers as would bid defiance to the means 
 of corruption." 
 
 Finally, to complement and justify Jefferson's 
 conviction that the political health of a people de- 
 pends on its own enlightened participation in gov- 
 ernment, and that "no nation," as he nobly wrote 
 in his rectorial report of 1821, "is permitted to live 
 in ignorance with impunity," came his faith in the 
 illuministic philosophy of the perfectibility of the 
 human mind. "We should be far from the per- 
 suasion that man is fixed by the law of his nature 
 at a given point," he wrote to the Virginia Legislature 
 in 1818, "that his improvement is a chimera and 
 the hope delusive of making himself wiser, happier, 
 or better than our forefathers were. ... As well 
 might it be urged that the wild and uncultivated 
 tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, 
 can never be made to yield better. ... It cannot 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 311 
 
 be but each generation must advance the knowledge 
 and well-being of mankind, not infinitely as some 
 have said, but indefinitely and to a term which no 
 man confix and foresee." 
 
 To the end of his days Jefferson maintained his 
 faith in the essential accuracy and justice of the 
 judgment of the mass of the " common people." For 
 him the people were not an object for government 
 to play upon, as it were, but government itself was 
 a function of the people. Liberty was not a privi- 
 lege granted by the government, but government 
 was a responsibility delegated to its officers by the 
 people. On this distinction hangs all the philosophy 
 of democracy. The last letter penned by Jeffer- 
 son's aged and trembling hand was a summons to 
 his countrymen to renew with "undiminished de- 
 votion" their faith in the rights of man and the 
 blessings of self-government. The last word and 
 gesture of his ebbing life was a hand raised feebly 
 and the murmur: "Warn the committee to be on 
 the alert." He died as he had lived, under the in- 
 spiring compulsion of a single great aim — human 
 freedom. Freedom was the text of his life: "I have 
 sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against 
 every form of tyranny over the mind of man." 
 Freedom was the burden of his labors: "I endeavor 
 to keep attention fixed on the main object of all 
 science, the freedom and happiness of man." Free- 
 dom was the legacy for which alone he wished to 
 
312 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 be remembered by his countrymen — freedom in 
 government, freedom in creed, freedom in intellect. 
 And so he wrote the epitaph which is inscribed upon 
 the shaft that stands above his grave: 
 
 HERE WAS BURIED 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 AUTHOR 
 
 OF THE DECLARATION OF 
 
 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 
 
 THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA 
 
 FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND 
 
 FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 
 
 Thomas Jefferson was not perfect. Who of mor- 
 tals is? We can find flaws in his nature and faults 
 in his character, errors of judgment and inconsis- 
 tencies of behavior. He was not endowed with a 
 sense of humor, which would have saved him in 
 many a humiliating situation. His passion for 
 humanitarian philosophy and radical democracy 
 blinded him sometimes to the honesty of purpose 
 and character of excellent men who differed from 
 him. He had a congenital and unconquerable aver- 
 sion to combativeness which his unfavorable critics 
 have usually called " weakness" or " cowardice." 
 At the same time his conviction of the necessity of 
 having the political battles fought kept him urging 
 
JEFFERSON IN RETIREMENT 313 
 
 others to the fray — a policy of indirection which has 
 brought on him the charge of hypocrisy and finesse, 
 of shielding himself behind his agents, and employ- 
 ing his friends as catspaws to pull his hot political 
 chestnuts from the fire. The man of speech who 
 stands up in the battle of debate, giving and taking 
 hard blows, looks a little askance on the man of the 
 pen who carries on his campaign by private letters 
 and quiet interviews, as if he must be engaged in 
 " shady" dealings. And yet a private letter may 
 be as honest as a harangue on the floor of Con- 
 gress, and an after-dinner conversation as guileless 
 as a campaign speech. The voluminous correspon- 
 dence of Jefferson is naturally not free from the re- 
 grettable expressions in which a man, whose political 
 creed is as sacred to him as a religious faith, pours 
 out his soul to a friend against the wickedness of his 
 adversaries. The Mazzei letter and the Anas would 
 better not have been written. And yet these in- 
 stances are few. The sixteen thousand letters of 
 Jefferson that have been preserved to us are a pre- 
 cious heritage. They give us the portrait of a man 
 of just mind and spotless honor, a kindly, generous, 
 sagacious, patient man, marvellously gifted, tire- 
 lessly active, holding the faith in democracy through 
 good and evil days, persevering and noble in his 
 aims, and all his ends his country's and mankind's. 
 Shortly after noon on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth 
 anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, 
 
314 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 Jefferson died peacefully at Monticello, surrounded 
 by an adoring family. Far away to the north, in 
 the little town of Quincy, Massachusetts, another 
 great American patriot and signer of the Declaration 
 of Independence lay on his death-bed that same 
 day. John Adams lingered till sunset. The last 
 whispered words of his failing breath were: " Thomas 
 Jefferson still lives/ ' Thomas Jefferson had al- 
 ready passed away from earth, but John Adams's 
 words were true, and will be true so long as men 
 shall strive for peace, fraternity, and freedom. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adams, Henry, 214, 218, 224, 260, 
 
 272 
 Adams, Herbert B., 307, 309 
 Adams, John, 30/., 41. 44, 54, 99, 
 
 101, 111. 112, 113, 115, 126, 138/., 
 
 158, 165 n., 172, 182, 188, 195/., 
 
 200, 204 /., 208 /., 215 /., 245, 249, 
 
 257, 297, 314 
 Adams, Samuel, 13, 44 
 Albemarle County, 3, 10, 13, 24, 
 
 27, 95 
 Alexander I, 269 
 
 Alien Acts, 200/., 214, 218, 250 
 Ames, Fisher, 175, 203 
 Amiens, Treaty of, 229, 263, 272 
 Anas, The, 154, 159, 211. 290, 313 
 ^Arnold, Benedict, 66, 82, 86, 94, 
 
 95, 98 
 Articles of Confederation, 98 
 Astor, J. J., 281 
 
 Bainbridge, Captain, 220 
 Bank, National, 161 /. 
 Barbary States, 118/., 273 
 Barbe-Marbois, 122, 230 
 Bayard, James A., 210 n., 219 
 Berkeley, Admiral, 268 
 Berlin Decree, 267, 271 
 Bernard. Governor of Massachu- 
 
 sets, 13 
 Blennerhassett, 259 
 Bonaparte (see Napoleon) 
 Botetourt, Governor of Virginia, 
 
 14. 17 
 Braddock's Defeat, 3 
 Brissot de Warville, 139 
 Bryant, Wm. C, 278 
 Bryce, James, 70 
 Bunker Hill, 31, 263 
 Burgesses, House of, 2/., 12, 20, 
 
 28/., 33, 56, 67, 291 
 Burgoyne, General, 76 
 Burke, Edmund, 18, 22, 187, 251 
 Burr, Aaron, 195. 206. 208/., 219/., 
 
 243, 247, 252, 258/. 
 Burr, Theodosia, 259 
 
 Cabell, J. C, 305/. 
 
 Canning, George, 269/., 275, 288 
 
 Carr, Dabney, 17 
 Carrington, Edward, 129 
 Channing, Edward, 181, 231, 241 «., 
 
 277 n. 
 Charles II, 1, 55 
 Charles III, of Spain, 235, 237 
 Chase, Samuel, 201, 250/., 261 
 Chastellux, Marquis of, 102 
 Chesapeake Affair, 263/., 268/. 
 Cicero, 4, 174 
 
 Clay, Henry, 7, 34, 259, 289 
 Clay, John, 34 
 Clinton, General, 76/., 88 
 Clinton, George, 165 n., 243, 280 
 Coles, Edward, 92, 292 
 Columbia University, 308 n. 
 Committees of Correspondence, 
 
 20/. 
 Committees of Public Safety, 27 n. 
 Common Sense, 38 
 Concord Bridge, 11, 31 
 Congress, of the Confederation, 103, 
 
 104, 147, 157 
 Constitution, of the United States, 
 
 126/., 149/., 161/., 184, 201/., 
 
 218 252 f 283 
 Continental Congress, 22, 26/., 36/. 
 Convention Parliament, 26 
 Cornwallis, General, 66, 79, 80, 87 /., 
 
 90, 92, 94, 101 
 Craig, Governor of Canada, 277 
 Curtis, W. E„ 132, 171 n. 
 
 Danton, 178 
 
 Dayton, Jonathan, 188 
 
 Deane, Silas, 48, 57 
 
 Dearborn, General, 295 
 
 Declaration of Independence, 41 /., 
 72, 141. 166, 211, 235, 250, 291, 
 313/. 
 
 Declaration on Colonies Taking up 
 Arms, 32 /. 
 
 De Meusnier, 110, 123 
 
 Democratic-Republicans (see Re- 
 publicans) 
 
 Desmoulins, Camille, 132 
 
 Dickinson, John, 21 n., 31 /., 37, 
 40, 42 /. 
 
 Dickinson, Lowes, 173 
 
 315 
 
316 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Dorchester, Lord, 188 
 
 Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, 17, 
 
 28 /., 35 
 Dupont de Nemours, 217, 228 
 
 East India Company, 18 
 Eaton, General, 259 
 Embargo Act, 275/., 282, 300 
 Eppes, Francis, 36, 134, 156 
 Eppes, John, 287 
 Eppes, Maria, 16 
 Essex Case, 265 /. 
 Essex Junto, 215, 217 
 
 "Family Compact," 146 
 
 Farewell Address, 195, 222 
 
 Fauquier, Governor of Virginia, 5 
 
 Federalists, 165, 175, 178, 185, 
 192/., 198/., 206, 210, 215/., 
 219, 234, 242, 244, 249, 277/., 295 
 
 Fenno, John, 162 
 
 Florida (see West Florida) 
 
 Florida Blanca, 146 
 
 Fox, C. J., 266/. 
 
 France, aids America, 48/., 77, 97; 
 our commerce with, 112/., 116, 
 165, 187; our diplomacy with, 
 197/. (see also French Revolu- 
 tion and Napoleon); our treaties 
 with (see Treaties) ; war with, 204 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 37 n., 41, 43, 
 45, 48, 57. 99, 101, 112/., 115, 121, 
 136, 138, 147, 297 
 
 Frederick the Great, 131 
 
 French Revolution, 47, 117, 123/., 
 132/., 135, 139, 164/., 183, 186/., 
 193, 215, 295 /. 
 
 Freneau, Philip, 162/., 211 
 
 Gage, Governor of Massachusetts, 
 
 22 
 Gallatin, Albert, 218, 221, 258, 273, 
 
 279 
 Gaspee, 16 
 
 Gates, General, 80/., 87, 217 
 Genet, Edmond, 166/., 184, 187, 
 
 189 
 GeorgeIII.il, 18. 22/., 29, 31, 41/., 
 
 47, 67, 133, 139, 271, 291 
 Gerry, Elbridge, 106, 197/., 202 
 Goethe, 4 
 
 Greene, General, 87/., 94 
 Grenville, George, 10 
 Grey, Captain, 223 
 
 "Hail Columbia," 199 
 
 Halifax, 14 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 71, 
 
 128, 
 
 151/., 169. 173, 175, 181, 189, 
 191, 195/., 202/., 208/., 211,215, 
 217, 219, 232, 243. 258, 289 
 
 Hammond, John, 143 
 
 Hancock, John, 43 
 
 Harrison, Benjamin, 34, 43 
 
 Hartford Convention, 289 
 
 Harvard College, 309 
 
 Harvey, John, 4 
 
 Hastings, Warren, 6, 251 
 
 Hay, George, 262 
 
 Heath, General, 246 
 
 Henry, John, 277 
 
 Henry, Patrick, 8, 12/., 15, 17, 21 /., 
 27, 34, 62 n., 75, 91, 133 
 
 Hillsborough, Lord, 13 
 
 "Holy Alliance," 288 
 
 Hopkinson, Francis, 127, 151 
 
 Howe, General, 76 
 
 Jackson, Andrew, 214, 239, 259, 
 279 
 
 Jay, John. 30. 37, 40, 99, 101, 104, 
 117, 126, 136, 138, 180, 187/., 
 199, 208, 211 
 
 Jefferson. Martha Skelton, 16, 100 
 
 Jefferson, Peter, 2/. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, birth, 2; edu- 
 cation, 5/.; as lawyer, 8; as 
 squire, 9/.; elected to burgess- 
 es, 13/.; resists governor, 17; 
 on power of Parliament, 21 ; the 
 Summary View, 22/.; on Com- 
 mittee of Public Safety, 27; an- 
 swer to Lord North, 29/.; in 
 Congress, 30/.; and religious 
 liberty, 34, 61/., 295/.; house- 
 hold at Monticello, 36, 300/.; 
 Declaration of Independence, 41 /.; 
 declines mission to Paris, 48, 57; 
 political theories, 49/.; reforms 
 Virginia laws, 56/.; and emanci- 
 pation, 67/., 290/.; and educa- 
 tion, 68/., 304/.; Governor of 
 Virginia, 75/.; Western land 
 sessions, 97/.; retirement, 99; 
 accepts mission to France, 102; 
 delayed, 103; in Congress again, 
 103/.; plan for territorial govern- 
 ment 107 /.; French mission, 
 112/.; minister to France, 115/.; 
 Mediterranean policy, 118/., 
 220/., 242; and French Revolu- 
 tion, 123/.; views on Constitution 
 of U. S., 126/., 150/.; on repub- 
 licanism, 130, 139, 169; secretary 
 of State, 135/.; negotiations 
 with England, 143/.; interest in 
 
INDEX 
 
 317 
 
 West, 145/., 223. 239; contest 
 with Hamilton, 152/.; curbs 
 Gen8t, 167/.; resigns, 169/.; 
 builds Republican party, 173/.; 
 financial theories, 181; democ- 
 racy, 183, 283, 311/.; on Jay 
 Treaty, 189; on Whiskey War, 
 193/.; Vice-President, 195; on X 
 Y Z Affair, 198/.; on Alien and 
 Sedition Acts, 201 /.; election of 
 1800, 206/.; as President, 213/.; 
 purchases Louisiana, 223/.; on 
 West Florida, 237/., 252/.; 
 Lewis and Clark Expedition, 
 239/.; re-elected. 242/.; prose- 
 cutes judges, 250/.; Burr trial, 
 258/.; Chesapeake Affair, 266/.; 
 Embargo policy, 275 /.; retire- 
 ment, 280/.; on War of 1812, 
 288/.; on Missouri Compromise, 
 290/.; religious beliefs, 295/.; 
 at Monticello, 300/.; character, 
 312/. 
 
 Kentucky Resolutions, 201/., 216, 
 
 219, 244, 279 
 King, Rufus, 199, 203, 224, 243, 
 
 263 /., 280 
 King, William, 308 
 Knox, Henry, 152, 188 
 Kosciusko, 288 
 
 Lafayette, General, 88, 89, 121, 
 
 124/., 133, 295 
 Laurens, Henry, 99, 101 
 Laws of Virginia, 55 /. 
 Lecky, W. E. H., 49 
 Leclerc, General, 224 
 Ledyard, William, 223 
 Lee, Arthur, 48 
 Lee, Henry, 83 /. 
 Lee, R. H., 40, 62 n„ 179 
 Lee, T. L., 57 n., 65 
 Leslie, General, 66 
 Lewis and Clark Expedition, 99, 
 
 239 /., 281 
 Lexington, battle of, 11, 31, [263, 
 
 268 
 Liancourt, Duke of, 214 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 52, 74, 110, 153, 
 
 185 
 Lincoln, General, 13, 66 
 Lincoln, Levi, 210 n., 217 
 Livingston, Edward, 235 
 Livingston, R. R., 40/., 225/., 
 
 230/. 
 Locke, John, 50 
 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 152 
 
 Louis XIV, 48, 112, 116/., 124, 
 
 164/. 
 Louisiana Purchase, 72, 223/., 264 
 Louisiana Territory, 235 f., 242, 
 
 293/. 
 Luther, Martin, 181 
 Luzerne, Marquis of, 102 
 Lyon, Matthew, 242 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 10 
 
 McKean, Governor of Pennsyl- 
 vania, 209, 243 
 
 McLeod, Captain, 92 
 
 McMaster, J. B., 140, 169, 203 
 
 Madison. James, 56, 62, 64, 66, 100, 
 110, 116 n., 125/., 147, 162, 168, 
 172, 182, 183 n., 196/., 206, 219, 
 237, 250, 258, 273/., 280, 287 
 
 Marbury vs. Madison, 250 
 
 Marseillaise, the, 47 
 
 Marshall, John, 2n„ 7, 84/., 118, 
 141, 170, 178, 197/., 209, 250, 
 261 /., 290 
 
 Martin, Luther, 261 /. 
 
 Mason, George, 57 n., 62 n., 65, 
 180 
 
 Mazzei, Philip, 313 
 
 "Mediterranean Fund," 222 
 
 Merry, Anthony, 213, 258 
 
 "Midnight Judges," 211 n. 
 
 Milan Decree, 270 
 
 Mirabeau, 133 
 
 Miranda, 204 n. 
 
 Mississippi, Navigation of, 145/., 
 226/. 
 
 Missouri Compromise, 68, 290/. 
 
 Mobile Act, 238 
 
 Mohammedan pirates, 119/. 
 
 Monroe, James, 62 n., 100, 103, 
 126, 130, 140, 168, 182, 190/., 
 197, 209, 217, 224, 226/., 231/.. 
 237, 266/., 280, 287/. 
 
 "Monticello," 5 n., 15/., 22, 24/., 
 34/., 70, 91, 93, 99, 102, 133/., 
 150, 169/., 182, 214, 238, 240, 
 
 252, 284, 287, 299/., 306/. 
 Montmorin, Count of, 116 
 Moore, G. H., 33 
 
 Morris, Gouverneur, 104/., 138, 
 
 143, 168, 203 
 Morris, Robert, 106, 153 
 Morse, J. T.. 59 n., 76, 84, 89/., 
 
 95, 116, 273 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, 74, 142 n., 
 186, 205, 223 /., 228 /., 234, 237 /., 
 
 253, 256/., 264/. 
 Naturalization Act, 200, 214, 218 
 
318 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Navigation Acts, 11 
 
 Nelson, General, 82, 84, 91 
 
 Nelson, Lord, 266 
 
 Newburgh Address, 104 
 
 Nicholas, Wilson Cary. 14, 182, 
 
 256, 302 
 Nicolas, George, 95 
 Non-intercourse Act, 280, 300 
 North, Lord, 15, 28/., 33, 49, 101 
 Northwest Territory, 98, 109 
 Notes on Virginia, 54, 73, 121/., 
 
 291/., 310 
 
 Odyssey, 248 
 
 Orders in Council, 187, 269, 275 
 Orleans, Territory of, 235 
 Otis, James, 44/., 54 
 
 Paine, Thomas, 38, 133 
 
 Parkman, Francis, 240 
 
 Parton, James, 114 
 
 Pendleton, Edmund, 59, 65, 71, 
 
 139, 291 
 Pickering, John, 250/. 
 Pickering, Timothy, 44, 191, 199, 
 
 216. 277, 299 n. 
 Pike, Zebulon, 241 n. 
 Pinckney, C. C, 197/., 206, 208, 
 
 243, 280 
 Pinckney, Charles, 150 n. 
 Pinckney, Thomas, 138, 148, 195, 
 
 226 
 Pinkney, William, 266/., 276, 294 
 Pitt, William, 18, 46, 143, 266 
 Polk, J. K., 237, 241 
 Primogeniture, Laws of, 55 
 
 "Quids," 256 
 
 Randall, H. S., 9, 39, 42, 76, 297 
 Randolph, Edmund, 2 n., 25, 99, 
 
 151, 177, 193 
 Randolph, Jane, 2 
 Randolph, John, 34 
 
 Randolph, John of Roanoke, 59, 
 
 200, 219, 248 /., 255 /., 258, 261 /., 
 
 270, 273/., 280 
 Randolph, Martha, 16, 113, 133, 
 
 172, 302 /. 
 Randolph, Peyton, 12, 15, 22, 28/., 
 
 34 
 Randolph, Thomas Jefferson, 297 
 Randolph, William, 1 
 Report on Public Credit, Hamilton's, 
 
 152, 156, 160 
 
 Republicans, 165, 172, 178, 182/.. 
 190, 192/., 198/., 215/., 247/., 
 290 
 
 Revolution, American, 10, 65/., 
 
 76/., 101, 103. 141 
 Revolution, French (see French 
 
 Revolution) 
 Richelieu, 230 
 Richmond, 27, 57 n., 80, 82/., 85, 
 
 88, 261 /., 305 
 Robespierre, 186 
 Rochambeau, General, 189 
 Rockingham, Marquis of, 101 
 Roman Law, 49 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 279 
 Rose, George, 271, 277 
 Rousseau, 49/., 133, 180 
 "Rule of 1756," 187 
 Rush, Benjamin, 299 
 Rutledge, Edward, 30, 40, 141 
 Rutledge, John, 31/. 
 
 San Ildefonso, Treaty of, 223 
 Scott, Sir William, 265 
 Sedition Act, 182, 200 /. 
 "Shadwell," 5, 9, 12. 15 
 Shays's Rebellion, 131/., 178 
 Shelburne. Lord, 101 
 Sherman, Roger, 41, 106 
 Short, William, 178 
 Slavery, 67/., 110, 290/. 
 Slave Trade, 42, 56, 292 
 Smith, Robert, 271/., 279 
 Stamp Act, 11/., 21, 26, 46, 101 
 Steuben, Baron, 83/., 87, 89 
 Story, Joseph, 214, 279 
 Stuart, Archibald, 145 
 Sullivan, General, 121 
 Sullivan, Governor of Massachu- 
 setts, 277 
 Summary View, The, 22/., 30, 49 
 Supreme Court, 152, 250 
 
 Talleyrand, 197/., 204, 228, 230, 
 
 253, 256 
 Tallmadge, James, 293 /. 
 Tammany Society, 164 
 Tariff, of 1789, 152. 180 
 Tarleton, General, 79, 90/. 
 Taylor, John. 184, 202, 219, 275 
 Tea, Destruction of, 19 
 Tennis-Court Oath, 26 
 Texas, 237 
 
 Thompson, Charles, 43, 296 n. 
 Thwaites, R. G., 240 
 Ticknor, George, 309 
 Tompkins, Governor of New York, 
 
 279 
 Tories, 46 
 
 Toussaint Louverture, 225 
 Townshend, Charles, 13, 18 
 
INDEX 
 
 319 
 
 Treaties, of 1778, 166, 191, 199, 
 205; of 1783, 103, 105/., 149, 
 191; Jay (1794), 142 n., 189/., 
 199, 226, 263 /.; Pinckney (1795) 
 142 n., 148, 226; of 1800, 142 n., 
 205, 223; Louisiana Purchase 
 (1803), 148 n., 224/. 
 
 Turgot, 180 
 
 Turreau, 268 
 
 University of Virginia, 306 /. 
 
 Vattel, 168 
 
 Vergennes, Count of, 115, 146 
 Victor, General, 236 
 Voltaire, 392 
 
 Washington, George, 2 n., 15, 21 n., 
 27, 30/., 47, 62 n., 78/., 84/., 
 88/., 94/., 104/., 114, 126, 129/., 
 133/., 141, 143, 145, 150, 152, 
 157/., 160, 163/., 165 n., 167, 
 
 169/., 171 n., 172/., 178, 185, 
 
 189/., 191/., 199, 204. 207, 213, 
 
 220, 222/., 244/., 250, 297 
 Wayles, John, 16 
 Webster, Daniel, 62, 118, 185, 214, 
 
 301 
 West Florida, 238/., 252/., 272 
 Whiskey War, 192, 279 
 Wilkinson, General, 259/. 
 William and Mary College, 5, 68, 
 
 306/. 
 Williamsburg, 5/., 21/., 27, 29, 57, 
 
 65/., 177 
 Wirt, William, 13 
 Wythe, George, 7. 21 n., 57 n„ 65, 
 
 71, 122. 291, 304 
 
 X Y Z Affair, 197/., 204, 206, 216, 
 263 
 
 Yancey, Charles, 69 
 
 Yeardley, Governor of Virginia, 2 
 
 Yorktown, 47, 53, 66, 89, 97, 101 
 
627 >*m 
 
 JUH IWk 
 

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