Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

A
LSO
BY
J
ON
M
EACHAM

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation

Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship

Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement
(editor)

This is an uncorrected eBook file. Please do not quote for publication until you check your copy against the finished book.

Copyright © 2012 by Jon Meacham

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

[Permissions acknowledgments, if any, go here.]

LIBRARY
OF
CONGRESS
CATALOGING
-
IN
-
PUBLICATION
DATA
Meacham, Jon.
Thomas Jefferson: the art of power / Jon Meacham.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
978-1-4000-6766-4
e
ISBN
978-0-679-64536-8
1. Jefferson, Thomas, 1743–1826. 2. Presidents—United States—Biography. 3. United States—Politics and government—1783–1809. I. Title.
E
332.
M
48 2012 973.4
'
6092—dc23 2012013700
[B]

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

www.atrandom.com

123456789

FIRST
EDITION

Book design by Simon M. Sullivan

T
O
H
ERBERT
W
ENTZ

And, as ever, for Mary, Maggie, Sam, and Keith

A few broad strokes of the brush would paint the portraits of all the early Presidents with this exception.… Jefferson could be painted only touch by touch, with a fine pencil, and the perfection of the likeness depended upon the shifting and uncertain flicker of its semi-transparent shadows.

—H
ENRY
A
DA
MS
,
History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

—P
RESIDENT
J
OHN
F. K
ENNEDY
, at a dinner in honor of all living recipients of the Nobel Prize, 1962

CONTENTS

Cover

eBook Information

Also by Jon Meacham

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

A Note on the Text

Prologue ·
The World's Best Hope

Part I
·
THE SCION
· B
EGINNINGS
TO
S
PRING
1774

ONE
·
A Fortunate Son

TWO
·
What Fixed the Destinies of My Life

THREE
·
Roots of Revolution

FOUR
·
Temptations and Trials

FIVE
·
A World of Desire and Denial

Part II
·
THE REVOLUTIONARY
· S
PRING
1774
TO
S
UMMER
1776

SIX
·
Like a Shock of Electricity

SEVEN
·
There Is No Peace

EIGHT
·
The Famous Mr. Jefferson

NINE
·
The Course of Human Events

TEN
·
The Pull of Duty

Part III
·
REFORMER AND GOVERNOR
·
L
ATE
1776
TO
1782

ELEVEN
·
An Agenda for Liberty

TWELVE
·
A Troublesome Office

THIRTEEN
·
Redcoats at Monticello

FOURTEEN
·
To Burn on Through Death

Part IV
·
THE FRUSTRATED CONGRESSMAN
· L
ATE
1782
TO
M
ID
-
1784

FIFTEEN
·
Return to the Arena

SIXTEEN
·
A Struggle for Respect

SEVENTEEN
·
Lost Cities and Life Counsel

Part V
·
A MAN OF THE WORLD
·
1785
TO
1789

EIGHTEEN
·
The Vaunted Scene of Europe

NINETEEN
·
The Philosophical World

TWENTY
·
His Head and His Heart

TWENTY-ONE
·
Do You Like Our New Constitution?

TWENTY-TWO
·
A Treaty in Paris

Part VI
·
THE FIRST SECRETARY OF STATE
·
1789
TO
1792

TWENTY-THREE
·
A New Post in New York

TWENTY-FOUR
·
Mr. Jefferson Is Greatly Too Democratic

TWENTY-FIVE
·
Two Cocks in the Pit

TWENTY-SIX
·
The End of a Stormy Tour

Part VII
·
THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
·
1793
TO
1800

TWENTY-SEVEN
·
In Wait at Monticello

TWENTY-EIGHT
·
To the Vice Presidency

TWENTY-NINE
·
The Reign of Witches

THIRTY
·
Adams vs. Jefferson Redux

THIRTY-ONE
·
A Desperate State of Affairs

Part VIII
·
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
·
1801
TO
1809

THIRTY-TWO
·
The New Order of Things Begins

THIRTY-THREE
·
A Confident President

THIRTY-FOUR
·
Victories, Scandal, and a Secret Sickness

THIRTY-FIVE
·
The Air of Enchantment!

THIRTY-SIX
·
The People Were Never More Happy

THIRTY-SEVEN
·
A Deep, Dark, and Widespread Conspiracy

THIRTY-EIGHT
·
This Damned Embargo

THIRTY-NINE
·
A Farewell to Ultimate Power

Part IX
·
THE MASTER OF MONTICELLO
·
1809
TO
THE
E
ND

FORTY
·
My Body, Mind, and Affairs

FORTY-ONE
·
To Form Statesmen, Legislators and Judges

FORTY-TWO
·
The Knell of the Union

FORTY-THREE
·
No, Doctor, Nothing More

Epilogue

Author's Note and Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

About the Author

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

T
HOMAS
J
EFFERSON
LEFT
POSTERITY
an immense correspondence, and I am particularly indebted to
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,
published by Princeton University Press and first edited by Julian P. Boyd. I am, moreover, grateful to the incumbent editors of the
Papers,
especially general editor Barbara B. Oberg, for sharing unpublished transcripts of letters gathered for future volumes. The goal of the Princeton edition was, and continues to be, “to present as accurate a text as possible and to preserve as many of Jefferson's distinctive mannerisms of writing as can be done.” To provide clarity and readability for a modern audience, however, I have taken the liberty of regularizing much of the quoted language from Jefferson and from his contemporaries. I have, for instance, silently corrected Jefferson's frequent use of “it's” for “its” and “recieve” for “receive,” and have, in most cases, expanded contractions and abbreviations and followed generally accepted practices of capitalization.