Founding Brothers (39 page)

Adams also
received many requests from federal and state committees charged with
organizing the celebration of what was being called “the Jubilee of
Independence.” Irreverent to the end, for a time he resisted, insisting
that the Fourth of July was not really the right date, indeed there was no one
right date, and the passage of the Declaration of Independence was merely an
ornamental occasion bereft of any larger historical significance. When a
delegation from Quincy came out to visit him to request words for a toast at
the local celebration, he was curt. “I will give you INDEPENDENCE
FOREVER,” he replied. When asked to enumerate or explain, he refused.
“Not a word,” he insisted.

Eventually, several family
friends prodded a few amplifying rewards from the otherwise-loquacious
patriarch. He conceded that the era of the American Revolution had been
“a memorable epoch in the annals of the human race,” but the jury
was still out on its significance. He doubted whether the republican principles
planted by the founding generation would grow in foreign soil. Neither Europe
nor Latin America were ready for them. Even within the United States, the fate
of those principles was still problematic. He warned that America was
“destined in future history to form the brightest or blackest page,
according to the use or the abuse of those political institutions by which they
shall in time to come be shaped by the
human mind.
” Asked to
pose for posterity, he chose to go out hurling it a challenge.
⁷⁰

The Adams
formulation was precisely the opposite of Jefferson’s. It lacked the
lyrical eloquence and the floating optimism of the Jeffersonian version because
it was grounded in the palpable sense of contingency Adams had internalized
over his long career. For Adams, the American Revolution was still an
experiment, a sail into uncharted waters that no other ship of state had ever
successfully navigated. There were no maps or charts to guide a republican
government claiming to derive its authority and legitimacy from public opinion,
that murky source of sovereignty that could be as choppy and unpredictable as
waves on the ocean. He had been a member of the crew on this maiden voyage,
even taken his turn at the helm, so he knew as well as anyone, better than
most, that they had nearly crashed and sunk on several occasions, had argued
bitterly among themselves throughout the 1790s about the proper course.
Jefferson seemed to think that, once unmoored from British docks and unburdened
of European baggage, the ship would sail itself into the proverbial sunset.
Adams thought he knew better, and he also would go to his grave believing that
a fully empowered federal government on the Federalist model was a fulfillment,
rather than a betrayal, of the course they had set at the start. Without a
sanctioned central government to steer the still-fragile American republic, the
new crew was certain to founder on that huge rock called slavery, which was
lurking dead ahead in the middle distance and that even Jefferson acknowledged
to be “a breaker.”

The more providential Jeffersonian
version of the story triumphed in the history books, as Adams knew it would,
helped along by one final act of fate that everyone, then and now, regarded as
the unmistakable voice of God. On the evening of July 3, 1826, Jefferson fell
into a coma. His last discernible words, uttered to the physician and family
gathered around the bedside, indicated he was hoping to time his exit in
dramatic fashion: “Is it the Fourth?” It was not, but he lingered
in a semiconscious condition until shortly after noon on the magic day. That
same morning, Adams collapsed in his favorite reading chair. He lapsed into
unconsciousness at almost the exact moment Jefferson died. The end came
quickly, at about five-thirty that afternoon. He wakened for a brief moment,
indicated that nothing more should be done to prolong the inevitable, then,
with obvious effort, gave a final salute to his old friend with his last words:
“Thomas Jefferson survives,” or, by another account, “Thomas
Jefferson still lives.” Whatever the version, he was wrong for the moment
but right for the ages.
⁷¹

NOTES

The notes that follow represent my attempt to adopt a sensible approach to the customary rules of scholarly citation. A full accounting of all the books and articles consulted would produce as many pages of notes as there are of text. This strikes me as cumbersome, more than most readers want, and a clear case of conspicuous erudition. I have cited all primary sources quoted in the text, plus those secondary sources that seem to me seminal or those that had a decided impact on my thinking. The awkward truth is that this book represents a distillation of my reading in the historical literature on the revolutionary era over the past thirty years. A faithful recounting of all the scholarly influences that have shaped my interpretation of the revolutionary generation would entail a massive listing that would still fail to capture the whole truth. In partial compensation for my sins of omission, I have littered the notes below with my assessment of the sources cited, thereby giving them the occasional flavor of a bibliographic essay.

ABBREVIATIONS

PREFACE

1.
Adams to Nathan Webb, 12 October 1755,
Works,
vol. 1, 23–34; Adams to Abigail Adams, 2 June 1776, Lyman Butterfield, ed.,
Adams Family Correspondence,
3 vols. (Cambridge, 1963), vol. 2, 3; Adams to Benjamin Rush, 21 May 1807,
Spur,
89.

2.
Francis Fukuyama,
The End of History and the Last Man
(New York, 1993).

3.
Benjamin Rush to Adams, 20 July 1811,
Spur,
183.

4.
Ira Gruber,
The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution
(Williamsburg, 1972); Kevin Phillips,
The Cousins’ War: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America
(New York, 1999), 291–299.

5.
Writings,
517.

6.
The seminal study of republican ideology as a defiant repudiation of consolidated power is Bernard Bailyn,
Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
(Cambridge, 1967); as applied to the 1780s, the classic work is Gordon Wood,
The Creation of the American Republic
(Chapel Hill, 1969); as applied to the 1790s, the standard source is Lance Banning,
The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1978).

7.
Adams to Benjamin Rush, 10 July 1812,
Spur,
231–232.

8.
T. H. Breen, “Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions
Once More
in Need of Revising,”
JAH
84 (June 1997): 13–39; John Murrin, “A Roof Without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity,” in Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, Edward Carter, eds.,
Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity
(Chapel Hill, 1987), 334–38.

9.
Jefferson to William Fleming, 1 July 1776, Boyd, vol. 1, 411–12; U.S. Bureau of Census,
First Census
(Baltimore, 1966), 6–8.

10.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich,
A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary,
1785
–
1812
(New York, 1990); Robert E. Desrochers, Jr., “ ‘Not Fade Away’: The Narrative of Venture Smith, an African American in the Early Republic,”
JAH
84 (June 1997): 40–66. Another approach has been to study the political culture “from below,” meaning the way attitudes were shaped at the local level in public ceremonies and rituals. The best analysis of emerging nationalism in this mode is David Waldstreicher,
In the Midst of Perpetual Fêtes: The Making of American Nationalism,
1776
–
1820
(Chapel Hill, 1997).

11.
Mercy Otis Warren,
History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution,
3 vols. (Boston, 1805); John Marshall,
The Life of George Washington,
5 vols. (Philadelphia, 1804–1807).

12.
My thinking about the circularity of the debate on the American Revolution was stimulated by the same analysis of the French Revolution by François Furet,
Interpreting the French Revolution,
trans. Elburg Foster (Cambridge, England, 1981).

13.
Martin Smelser, “The Federalist Period as an Age of Passion,”
American Quarterly
10 (Winter 1958): 391–419; see also John R. Howe, Jr., “Republican Thought and the Political Violence of the 1790s,”
American Quarterly
19 (Summer 1967): 147–165.

14.
Whitehead’s assessment is reported as a conversation with Perry Miller in Miller’s collection of essays,
Nature’s Nation
(Cambridge, 1967), 3–4. For a convenient overview of the ninety-nine men who signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, see Richard D. Brown, “The Founding Fathers of 1776 and 1787: A Collective View,”
WMQ
33 (July 1976): 465–480.

15.
Douglass Adair, “Fame and the Founding Fathers,” in Trevor Colbourn, ed.,
Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair
(New York, 1974), 3–26.

CHAPTER ONE: THE DUEL

1.
The most original and recent interpretation of the duel is Joanne Freeman, “Dueling as Politics: Reinterpreting the Burr-Hamilton Duel,”
WMQ
53 (April 1996): 289–318. The fullest narrative of the story is W. J. Rorabaugh, “The Political Duel in the Early Republic,”
JER
15 (Spring 1995): 1–23. All the biographers of Burr and Hamilton obviously cover the duel. The standard collection of documents is Harold C. Syrett and Jean G. Cooke, eds.,
Interview at Weehawken
(Middletown, Conn., 1960). The authoritative collection, with an accompanying introductory note of considerable grace and wisdom, is Syrett, vol. 26, 235–349.

2.
The standard Burr biography is Milton Lomask,
Aaron Burr,
2 vols. (New York, 1979–1982). Still helpful because of its original material is James Parton,
The Life and Times of Aaron Burr
(New York, 1864).

3.
There are several excellent Hamilton biographies. The standard account is Broadus Mitchell,
Alexander Hamilton,
2 vols. (New York, 1957–1962). For sheer readability, John C. Miller,
Alexander Hamilton and the Growth of the New Nation
(New York, 1964), is quite good, now joined by Richard Brookhiser,
Alexander Hamilton, American
(New York, 1999). The most incisive and sharply defined portrait is Jacob Ernest Cooke,
Alexander Hamilton: A Biography
(New York, 1979). Old but reliable, and with an excellent account of the duel, is Nathan Schachner,
Alexander Hamilton
(New York, 1946).

4.
“Statement on Impending Duel with Aaron Burr,” Syrett, vol. 26, 278–281.

5.
Parton,
The Life and Times of Aaron Burr,
349–355, offers a splendid description of the site as it still appeared about fifty years after the duel.

6.
On the history of the duel as an institution, the works I found most helpful were: Edward L. Ayers,
Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the
19
th Century American South
(New York, 1984); V. G. Kiernan,
The Duel in European History: Honor and the Reign of Aristocracy
(Oxford, 1986); Lorenzo Sabine,
Notes on Duels and Dueling …
(Boston, 1855); Bertram Wyatt-Brown,
Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South
(New York, 1982).

7.
Merrill Lindsay, “Pistols Shed Light on Famed Duel,”
Smithsonian,
November 1971, 94–98; see also Virginius Dabney, “The Mystery of the Hamilton-Burr Duel,”
New York,
March 29, 1976, 37–41.

8.
Syrett, vol. 26, 306–308.

9.
David Hosack to William Coleman, 17 August 1804, ibid., 344–347.

10.
Joint Statement by William P. Van Ness and Nathaniel Pendleton on the Duel Between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, 17 July 1804, ibid., 333–336.

11.
Benjamin Moore to Coleman, 12 July 1804, ibid., 314–317.

12.
Ibid., 322–329.

13.
William Coleman,
A Collection of the Facts and Documents, Relative to the Death of Major-General Hamilton
(New York, 1804), which reviews the newspaper coverage and multiple eulogies for Hamilton. I have also looked over James Cheetham’s editorial assaults on Burr in the
American Citizen
during July and August of 1804, as well as the pro-Burr editorials in the
Morning Chronicle
at the same time. The story of the wax replica of Burr in ambush comes from Parton,
The Life and Times of Aaron Burr,
616.

14.
See the exchange of letters between Van Ness and Pendleton, then “Joint Statement,” Syrett, vol. 26, 329–336.

15.
See the several documents and notes in ibid., 335–340.

16.
The scholarly consensus accepts the Hamilton version of the duel, primarily because that version dominated the contemporary accounts in the press, and also because it is the only version that fits with Hamilton’s purported remarks about the still-loaded pistol. While absolute certainty is not within our grasp, what we might call “the interval problem” strikes me as an insurmountable obstacle for the Hamiltonian version. For that reason, while the mystery must remain inherently unsolvable in any absolute sense of finality, the interpretation offered here seems most plausible and most compatible with what lawyers would call “the preponderance of the evidence.” It also preserves what the Hamilton advocates care about most; namely, Hamilton’s stated intention not to fire at Burr. There is
a pro-Burr version that argues otherwise. See Samuel Engle Burr,
The Burr-Hamilton Duel and Related Matters
(San Antonio, 1971).

17.
Burr to Van Ness, 9 July 1804, Syrett, vol. 26, 295–296. For the tradition of aiming to harm but not kill, see Hamilton Cochrane,
Noted American Duels and Hostile Encounters
(Philadelphia, 1963); Don C. Seitz,
Famous American Duels
(New York, 1919); and Evarts B. Greene, “The Code of Honor in Colonial and Revolutionary Times, with Special Reference to New England,”
Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts
26 (1927): 367–368.

18.
Charles D. Cooper to Philip Schuyler, 23 April 1804, Syrett, vol. 26, 243–246; see also Burr to Hamilton, 18 June 1804, ibid., 241–243.