Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (53 page)

Once again I am indebted to my friend Mike Hill, who was as invaluable and gracious as ever. Louisa Thomas was indispensable, and I am looking forward to her book about Louisa Catherine Adams. (I am sure it will be quite kind about Jefferson.) Jack Bales once again worked his bibliographical magic. My thanks to Christine Mejia for her grace and hard work, and to Rob Crawford, who played a critical role in checking the manuscript. Lucy Shackelford also checked a final draft.

This is my fifth book with Random House, and I continue to be dazzled by, and grateful for, Gina Centrello. Her intelligence, friendship, and support are without peer. My editor, Kate Medina, is a master of the craft, and her impeccably high standards inspire those of us lucky enough to benefit from her wisdom. Thanks, too, to Anna Pitoniak and Lindsey Schwoeri for their steadfast grace and good work. Will Murphy was a generous reader. Susan Kamil and Tom Perry are terrific, and they lead a wonderful publication team. As ever, I am indebted to the erratic but charming Sally Marvin and to Barbara Fillon. Thanks also to Benjamin Steinberg, Jonathan Jao, Andy Ward, Allison Dobson, Bill Takes, Porscha Burke, Selby McRae, Sara Velazquez, Sanyu Dillon, Avideh Bashirrad, Erika Greber, Carole Lowenstein, Paolo Pepe, and Carol Poticny, who once again worked artistic magic. Michelle Daniel was a superb copy editor. In my view, had the incomparable Benjamin Dreyer and Dennis Ambrose been in charge of Operation Overlord, the Allies would have braved the rain and stuck to schedule, attacking on June 5. As it is, I am grateful they do what they do, and do it so well. And as ever, I agree with Christopher Buckley's view that Amanda Urban will be my first call if I ever fall into the hands of the Taliban.

This book is dedicated to Herbert Wentz, my teacher and friend. I owe him and his wife, Sofia, debts I cannot possibly repay.

My wife, Keith, has long endured my journeys into the past, offering love, support, and (not always initially welcome) counsel. She makes all things possible, and our children—Mary, Maggie, and Sam—are, now and forever, the things that matter most.

NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS USED

Anas
        
The Complete Anas of Thomas Jefferson,
ed. Frank B. Sawvel

APE, I        
Gil Troy, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Fred L. Israel, eds.
History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–2008
. 4th ed. Vol. 1,
1789–1868
.

EOL
        Gordon S. Wood,
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815

FB        Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book: With Commentary and Relevant Extracts from Other Writings,
ed. Edwin Morris Betts

GB        Thomas Jefferson's Garden Book 1766–1824: With Relevant Extracts from His Other Writings,
ed. Edwin Morris Betts

Henry Adams,
History
        Henry Adams,
History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson,
Writings        
Thomas Jefferson,
Writings,
ed. Merrill D. Peterson (Library of America)

JHT,
I–VI        Dumas Malone,
Jefferson and His Time

LOC
        
Library of Congress

MB,
I–II        
Jefferson's Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826,
ed. James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton

Parton,
Life        
James Parton,
Life of Thomas Jefferson

PTJ,
I–XXXVIII        
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson

PTJRS,
I–VIII
        The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Retirement Series

Randall
, Jefferson,
I–III        Henry S. Randall,
The Life of Thomas Jefferson

TDLTJ        
Sarah N. Randolph,
The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson

TJ        Thomas Jefferson

TJF        The Thomas Jefferson Foundation

VTM        
Merrill D. Peterson,
Visitors to Monticello

EPIGRAPHS

“
A
FEW
BROAD
STROKES
”
Henry Adams,
History,
188.

“
I
THINK
THIS
IS
THE
MOST
EXTRAORDINARY
”
John F. Kennedy, “Remarks at a Dinner Honoring Nobel Prize Winners of the Western Hemisphere,” April 29, 1962. Online, by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8623 (accessed 2012).

PROLOGUE
·
THE WORLD'S BEST HOPE

H
E
WOKE
AT
FIRST
LIGHT
TJ to Vine Utley, March 21, 1819, LOC. Extract published at Papers of Thomas Jefferson Retirement Series Digital Archive, www.monticello.org/familyletters (accessed 2011). “But whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun,” he wrote Utley. (Ibid.) “He said in his last illness that the sun had not caught him in bed for fifty years,” grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph recalled to the biographer Henry S. Randall. (Randall,
Jefferson,
III, 675.) Visiting Monticello in December 1824, when Jefferson was eighty-one, Daniel Webster wrote: “Mr. Jefferson rises in the morning as soon as he can see the hands of his clock, which is directly opposite his bed, and examines his thermometer immediately, as he keeps a regular meteorological diary.” (
VTM,
98.)

L
EAN
AND
LOOSE
-
LIMBED
Margaret Bayard Smith thought him “tall and slender.” (
The First Forty Years of Washington Society in the Family Letters of Margaret Bayard Smith,
ed. Gaillard Hunt [New York, 1965], 80.) In 1760, Jefferson was, James Parton wrote, “tall, raw-boned, freckled, and sandy-haired.… With his large feet and hands, his thick wrists, and prominent cheek-bones and chin, he could not have been accounted handsome or graceful. He is described, however, as a fresh, bright, healthy-looking youth, as straight as a gun-barrel, sinewy and strong, with that alertness of movement which comes of early familiarity with saddle, gun, canoe, minuet, and contra-dance.… His teeth, too, were perfect.… His eyes, which were of hazel-gray, were beaming and expressive; and his demeanor gave assurance of a gentle heart, and a sympathetic, inquisitive mind.” (Parton,
Life,
1.) For a collection of contemporary accounts of Jefferson's physical appearance and demeanor, see TJF, “Physical Descriptions of Jefferson,” http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/physical-descriptions-jefferson (accessed 2011). “This sandy face, with hazel eyes and sunny aspect; this loose, shackling person; this rambling and often brilliant conversation, belonged to the controlling influences of American history, more necessary to the story than three-fourths of the official papers, which only hid the truth,” wrote Henry Adams, the unflinching but sometimes appreciative historian of the Jefferson presidency. “Jefferson's personality during these eight years appeared to be the government, and impressed itself, like that of Bonaparte, although by a different process, on the mind of the nation.” (Henry Adams,
History,
127.)

C
ONRAD
AND
M
C
M
UNN
'
S
Allen C. Clark, “Daniel Rapine, the Second Mayor,”
Records of the Columbia Historical Society
25 (1923), 198. See also
MB,
II, 1032.

A
BASIN
OF
COLD
WATER
PTJRS,
VIII, 544. “I have for 50 years bathed my feet in cold water every morning … and having been remarkably exempt from colds (not having had one in every 7 years of my life on an average) I have supposed it might be ascribed to that practice,” Jefferson wrote James Maury. “When we see two facts accompanying one another for a long time, we are apt to suppose them related as cause and effect.” (Ibid.) See also Gordon Jones and James A. Bear, “Thomas Jefferson's Medical History,” unpublished manuscript, Jefferson Library. Jones and Bear attributed Jefferson's habit to a reading of Sir John Floyer's popular book
Psychrolousia: Or, the
History of Cold Bathing;
Jefferson owned a 1706 edition of the work. (Ibid.) For details on Floyer, see D. D. Gibbs, “Sir John Floyer, M.D. (1649–1734),”
British Medical Journal
1, no. 5638 (1969): 242–45.

WORE
A
GROOVE
Susan R. Stein, “Notes on Jefferson's Bed Chamber,” memorandum to author, November 10, 2011. Stein is Richard Gilder Senior Curator and Vice President of Museum Programs, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. The groove is on the side of Jefferson's bed facing the fireplace. (Author observation.)

S
IX
FOOT
TWO
AND
A
HALF
James A. Bear, Jr., ed.,
Jefferson at Monticello
(Charlottesville, Va., 1967). According to Edmund Bacon, a Monticello overseer, “Mr. Jefferson was six feet two and a half inches high, well proportioned, and straight as a gun barrel.” (Ibid.)

H
IS
SANDY
HAIR
Parton,
Life,
1.

FRECKLED
SKIN
Ibid.

WRINKL
ING
A
BIT
TDLTJ,
337.

ALTERNAT
ELY
DESCRIBED
AS
BLU
E
,
HAZEL
,
OR
BROWN
TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/eye-color (accessed 2012).

H
E
HAD
GREAT
TEETH
Parton,
Life,
1. “His teeth, too, were perfect,” reported Parton. Writing in 1824, Daniel Webster observed: “His mouth is well formed and still filled with teeth; it is strongly compressed, bearing an expression of contentment and benevolence.” (
VTM,
97.)

MUDDY
AVENUES
AND
SCATTERED
BUILDINGS
Records of the Columbia Historical Society
25, 198–99. Federalist lawmaker James A. Bayard of Delaware wrote this to Andrew Bayard on January 8, 1801: “We have the name of a city [Washington], but nothing else. The [North] wing of the Capitol which is finished is a beautiful building. The President's House is also extremely elegant. Besides these objects you have nothing to admire but the beauties of nature. There is a great want of Society, especially female.” A week later, Albert Gallatin wrote to his wife, Hannah Gallatin: “Our local situation is far from being pleasant, or even convenient. Around the Capitol are 7 or 8 boarding houses, one tailor, one shoemaker, one printer, a washing woman, a grocery shop, a pamphlets and stationery shop, a small dry goods shop, and an oyster house. This makes the whole of the Federal City as connected with the Capitol.” (Ibid.)

SECLUDED
INSIDE
PTJ,
XXXII, 513. In a note dated January 27, 1801, Jefferson, who, as vice president, served as the presiding officer of the Senate, wrote that he was “at home always when not in [the] Senate.” (Ibid.)

WITH
STABLES
FOR
SIXTY
HORSES
Washington
National Intelligencer,
January 30, 1801. An advertisement for the boardinghouse read: “Have opened houses of entertainment in the range of buildings formerly occupied by Mr. Law, about two hundred paces from the Capitol, in New Jersey Avenue, leading from thence to the Eastern Branch. They are spacious and convenient, one of which is designed for stage passengers and travelers, the other for the accommodation of boarders. There is stableage sufficient for 60 horses. They hope to merit public patronage.” (Ibid.)

TWO
HUNDRED
PACE
S
AWAY
Ibid.

A
VICIOUS
EL
ECTION
See James Roger Sharp,
The Deadlocked Election of 1800: Jefferson, Burr, and the Union in the Balance
(Lawrence, Kan., 2010); Susan Dunn,
Jefferson's Second Revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism
(Boston, 2004); John Ferling,
Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800
(New York, 2004); James Horn, Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf, eds.,
The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic
(Charlottesville, Va., 2002);
APE,
49–78. Henry Adams,
The Life of Albert Gallatin
(LaVergne, Tenn., 2009), 232–66, tells the story from the perspective of a crucial Jefferson ally.

HAD
RECEIVED
THE
SAME
NUMBER
OF
ELECTORAL
VOTES
The potential problem for a tie had been clear from the first presidential election, in 1789. The practice was for a few electors to “throw away” a few votes for the vice presidential candidate to a candidate who had no chance of winning, thus giving the presidential candidate the most votes. “The votes were unanimous with respect to General Washington, as appears to have been the case in each of the States,” James Madison had told Jefferson, who was then in France. “The secondary votes were given, among the Federal members, chiefly to Mr. J. Adams, one or two being thrown away in order to prevent a possible competition for the Presidency.” (
PTJ,
XV, 5.) Things had not gone so smoothly this time, hence the crisis.

“
WORN
DOWN
HERE
”
PTJ,
XXXII, 556–57. The letter, to his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph, known as Patsy, was written from Washington on February 5, 1801.

“
TH
E
THEME
OF
ALL
CONVE
RSATION
”
Ibid., 263.

“
T
HE
C
RISIS
IS
MOMENTOUS
”
Washington Federalist,
February 12, 1801. The paper also wrote: “We waited all yesterday in the hourly expectation of being able to announce to our anxious countrymen the result of the presidential election, but it remains to this moment undecided and the happiness of five millions of people awfully suspended in the balance!” (Ibid.)

“
FUN
AND
HONOR
AND
PROFIT
”
EOL,
280.

B
E
MADE
PRESIDENT
Nancy Isenberg,
Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr
(New York, 2008),
196–220.

HAD
“
HEARD
A
MEMBER
OF
C
ONGRESS
LAMENT
”
Anas,
206.

“
A
DESIRE
TO
PROMOTE
 … 
DIVI
SION
”
Ibid., 466.

A
RUMOR
THAT
J
O
HN
M
ARSHALL
JHT,
III, 495.

HAD
JUS
T
BEEN
NAMED
CHIEF
J
USTICE
Kathryn Turner, “The Appointment of Chief Justice Marshall,”
William and Mary Quarterly,
3d ser., 17 (1960): 143–63.

“I
F
THE
UNI
ON
COULD
BE
BROKEN
”
PTJ,
XXXII, 404. For McKean on the overall crisis, see ibid., 432–36.

WAS
TOLD
THAT
TWENT
Y
-
TWO
THOUSAND
MEN
James Roger Sharp,
American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis
(New Haven, Conn., 1993), 269.

WERE
“
PREPARED
TO
T
AKE
UP
ARMS
”
Ibid. Others worried that Hamilton would take advantage of the uncertainty. “An army … with Alexander Hamilton at their head could get possession of forts, arsenals, stores and arms in a short time,” one Pennsylvania Republican told Jefferson. (
PTJ,
XXXII, 485.) Jefferson himself told James Madison that any “legislative usurpation would be resisted by arms.” (
PTJ,
XXXIII, 16.)

AFTER
A
SNOWSTO
RM
STRUCK
W
ASHINGTON
Diary of Gouverneur Morris, February 1801, LOC. It snowed on February 11 and again on the 13th; Jefferson was chosen on February 17. (Ibid.)

THE
THIRTY
-
SIXTH
BAL
LOT
PTJ,
XXXII, 578.