Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (78 page)

“T
HE
ACQUIREMENTS
WHIC
H
I
HOPE
”
Ibid., 359.

“
C
ONSIDER
THE
GOOD
LADY
”
Ibid., 359–60. As he traveled as a member of the Congress, Jefferson kept an eye on his daughters. On the road, this time to Annapolis, he wrote James Monroe that he was leaving Patsy in Philadelphia “having had it in my power to procure for her the best tutors in French, dancing, music, and drawing.” (Ibid., 355.)

Also to Patsy, who was apparently caught up in an enthusiasm about the coming of the apocalypse in the wake of a severe earthquake, Jefferson advised caution and perspective. “I hope you will have good sense enough to disregard those foolish predictions that the world is to be at an end soon,” he wrote her on December 11, 1783. “The Almighty has never made known to anybody at what time he created it, nor will he tell anybody when he means to put an end to it, if ever he means to do it.” (Ibid., 380.)

“
W
ITH
RES
PECT
TO
THE
DISTRIBU
TION
”
Ibid., 360.

“Y
OU
ARE
NOW
OL
D
ENOUGH
”
Ibid., 379.

TO
BECOME
“
A
MAN
”
Ibid.

“O
UR
FUTURE
CO
NNECTION
WITH
S
PAIN
”
Ibid., VIII, 408.

“F
IX
REASON
FIRMLY
”
Ibid., XII, 15.

“M
ONROE
IS
BUYING
”
Kaminski,
Founders on the Founders,
291.

“T
HOUGH
THE
DIFFERENT
WALKS
OF
LIFE
”
PTJ,
XXXI, 118.

T
H
E
NOTE
, D
ONALD
TOLD
J
EF
FERSON
, “
WAS
SO
FRIEND
LY
”
Kaminski,
Founders on the Founders,
224–25.

“A
DMONITION
AFT
ER
ADMONITION
”
PTJ,
VI, 546.

“A
MON
G
OTHER
LEGISLATIVE
”
Ibid., 549.

TO
WARN
OF
“
ENCROACHMENTS
”
Ibid., 511–12.

“
GIVES
A
PICT
URE
”
Ibid., VII, 15–16.

“
AN
ATTACK
OF
M
Y
PERIODICAL
HEADACH
E
”
Ibid., VI, 570.

“I
SUPPOSE
THE
CRIP
PLED
STATE
”
Ibid
.,
VII, 25.

FOR
PR
EWAR
DEBTS
EOL,
112, and Charles Pinnegar,
Virginia and State Rights,
1750–1861
(Jefferson, N.C., 2009), 53.

AT
LEAST
TWO
ELEMENTS
Ibid.

A
TRADE
ROUTE
CONNECTING
PTJ,
VI, 548. See also Joel Achenbach,
The Grand Idea: George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West
(New York, 2004), 34–35.

“T
HIS
IS
T
HE
MOMENT
”
Ibid., VII, 26–27.

FASCINATE
D
W
ASHINGTON
Achenbach,
Grand Idea,
37. See also Stuart Leibiger,
Founding Friendship: George Washington, James Madison, and the Creation of the American Republic
(Charlottesville, 1999), 37.

“I
HAV
E
NO
EXPECTATION
”
PTJ,
VII, 49.

W
ASHINGTON
SUPERVISED
IMPROVEMENTS
Leibiger,
Founding Friendship,
46. See also Achenbach,
Grand Idea,
129–35.

C
HESAPEAKE
AND
O
HIO
C
ANAL
Leibiger,
Founding Friendship,
46–47.

“opinion of the Institution of the Society of Cincinnati”
PTJ,
VII, 88–89.

“
IS
INTERES
TING
,
AND
,
SO
FAR
AS
”
Ibid., 105–7.

“T
HE
WAY
TO
MAKE
FRIENDS
QUARRE
L
”
Ibid., 106.

W
ASHINGTON
APPEAR
S
TO
HAVE
TAKEN
J
EFFE
RSON
'
S
COUNSEL
SERIO
USLY
Ibid., 108–9. See also Markus Hunemorder,
The Society of the Cincinnati: Conspiracy and Distrust in Early America
(New York, 2006), 28–29.

“
MIGHT
DRAW
I
NTO
THE
ORDER
”
Hunemorder,
Society of the Cincinnati,
47.

J
EF
FERSON
THOUGHT
BROAD
LY
AND
BOLDLY
The West let him dream big, and he proposed the union of the Ohio and Potomac rivers. “This is the moment … for seizing it if ever we mean to have it,” he said. “All the world is becoming commercial.” Jefferson was pushing Virginia to approve a special tax for the river project, but, as he told George Washington, “a most powerful objection always arises to propositions of this kind. It is that public undertakings are carelessly managed and much money spent to little purpose.” (
PTJ,
VII, 26–27.)

Jefferson's plan for overcoming these obstacles: Recruit Washington from retirement to head up the project. The general's reply was astute. Though he agreed with Jefferson about the merits of the project, Washington said, “I have no expectation that the public will adopt the measure; for besides the jealousies which prevail, and the difficulty of proportioning such funds as may be allotted for the purposes you have mentioned, there are two others, which in my opinion, will be yet harder to surmount. These are (if I have not imbibed too unfavorable an opinion of my countrymen) the impracticability of bringing the great and truly wise policy of this measure to their view, and the difficulty of drawing money from them for such a purpose if you could do it.” (Ibid., 49.) Washington was insightful, too, about the nature of legislative assemblies. “Men who are always together get tired of each other's company,” he told Jefferson. “They throw off the proper restraint. They say and do things which are personally disgusting. This begets opposition. Opposition begets faction, and so it goes on till business is impeded, often at a stand.” (Ibid., 51–52.)

In April, Washington implicitly complimented Jefferson by writing for his “opinion of the Institution of the Society of Cincinnati,” an organization of Washington's officers that some feared was a nascent aristocratic order that could corrupt the republic. (Ibid., 88.)

Jefferson was happy that Washington had asked. The issue of the Cincinnati, he said, “is interesting, and, so far as you have stood connected with it, has been a matter of anxiety to me.… I have wished to see you stand on ground separated from it; and that the character which will be handed to future ages at the head of our revolution may in no instance be compromised in subordinate altercations.”

Jefferson knew his man. Nothing could be better calculated to win Washington's attention than the suggestion that his own reputation was at risk. Jefferson said that he was certain that Washington meant no harm. The “moderation and virtue of a single character”—Washington—“has probably prevented this revolution from being closed as most others have been by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish,” but even he “is not immortal, and his successor or some one of his successors at the head of this institution may adopt a more mistaken road to glory.” Congress, Jefferson said, shared his views. (Ibid., 105–7.)

Jefferson argued against the Order on two grounds. First, that the political nature of man made it highly unlikely that a society designed to meet regularly would long endure peaceably. “The way to make friends quarrel is to pit them in disputation under the public eye,” Jefferson said. A second Jeffersonian objection was that a hereditary society was out of harmony with the spirit of a republic based on what Jefferson called the “natural equality of man.” (Ibid., 106.)

Washington appears to have taken Jefferson's counsel seriously. (Ibid., 109.)

“I
SEE
THE
BEST
EFFECTS
”
PTJ,
VI, 548–49.

C
ONGRESS
ACCEPTED
T
HE
V
IRGINIA
CESSION
Ibid., 571–80.

A
PLAN
TO
CREATE
NEW
STATES
Ibid., 581–617.

HAD
NAMES
FOR
THEM
Ibid., 591.

O
RDINANCE
OF
1784
Ibid., 581–617.

“
FOR
EVER
REMAIN
A
PART
”
Ibid., 614.

“
THEIR
RESPECTIVE
GO
VERNMENTS
”
Ibid.

BANNED
TH
E
EXPANSION
OF
SLAVE
RY
Miller,
Wolf by the Ears,
27.

T
HE
PLAN
FAILE
D
BY
A
SINGLE
VOTE
Ibid., 28.

A
DELEGATE
FROM
N
EW
J
E
RSEY
WAS
TOO
ILL
Ibid.

“T
H
US
WE
SEE
THE
FATE
”
Ibid.

WOULD
NO
LONGER
RISK
HIS
“
USEFULNES
S
”
Ibid., 89.

THE
N
ORTHWEST
O
RDIN
ANCE
OF
1787
Ibid., 29. See also Boyer and Dubofsky,
Oxford Companion to United States History,
557–58; Adam Rothman,
Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South
(Cambridge, Mass., 2005), 18–19; and
EOL,
121–22.

THE
M
ORNING
AND
INTO
THE
AFTERNOON
PTJ,
VII, 221–30.

AFTER
TH
E
REGULAR
POST
HAD
L
EFT
A
NNAPOLIS
Ibid., 229.

“I
AM
NO
W
TO
TAKE
”
Ibid., 233.

“A
T
THE
CL
OSE
OF
EVERY
SESSION
”
Ibid.

“
A
TENDER
LEGACY
”
Ibid., 233–34.

A
FAREWELL
TO
THE
V
IRGINIA
H
OUSE
Ibid., 244.

“
FO
OLISH
W
ORLD
IN
P
ARIS
”
Ibid., 257.