had occasioned the delay. Before an impartial jury Burr’s conduct would
convict himself, were not one word of testimony to be offered against
him. But to what a state will our law be reduced by party feelings in
those who administer it? Why do not Blannerhasset, Dayton, &c.
demand private and comfortable lodgings? In a country where an equal
application of law to every condition of man is fundamental, how could
it be denied to them? How can it ever be denied to the most degraded
malefactor? The enclosed letter of James Morrison, covering a copy of
one from Alston to Blannerhasset, came to hand yesterday. I enclose
them, because it is proper all these papers should be in one deposite,
and because you should know the case and all its bearings, that you may
understand whatever turns up in the cause. Whether the opinion of the
letter-writer is sound, may be doubted. For however these, and other
circumstances which have come to us, may induce us to believe that the
bouncing letter he published, and the insolent one he wrote to me, were
intended as blinds, yet they are not sufficient for legal conviction.
Blannerhasset and his wife could possibly tell us enough. I commiserate
the sufferings you have to go through in such a season, and salute you
with great esteem and respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER LXI.--TO GEORGE HAY, September 4, 1807
TO GEORGE HAY.
Monticello, September 4, 1807.
Dear Sir,
Yours of the 1st came to hand yesterday. The event has been ------
that is to say, not only to clear Burr, but to prevent the evidence from
ever going before the world. But this latter case must not take place.
It is now, therefore, more than ever indispensable, that not a single
witness be paid or permitted to depart, until his testimony has been
committed to writing, either as delivered in court, or as taken by
yourself in the presence of any of Burr’s counsel, who may choose to
attend to cross-examine. These whole proceedings will be laid before
Congress, that they may decide, whether the defect has been in the
evidence of guilt, or in the law, or in the application of the law, and
that they may provide the proper remedy for the past and the future. I
must pray you also to have an authentic copy of the record made out
(without saying for what) and to send it to me: if the Judge’s opinions
make not a part of it, then I must ask a copy of them, either under his
hand, if he delivers one signed, or duly proved by affidavit.
This criminal is preserved to become the rallying point of all the
disaffected and the worthless of the United States, and to be the
pivot on which all the intrigues and the conspiracies which foreign
governments may wish to disturb us with, are to turn. If he is convicted
of the misdemeanor, the Judge must in decency give us respite by some
short confinement of him; but we must expect it to be very short.
Be assured yourself, and communicate the same assurances to your
colleagues, that your and their zeal and abilities have been displayed
in this affair to my entire satisfaction and your own honor.
I salute you with great esteem and respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER LXII.--TO GEORGE HAY, September 7, 1807
TO GEORGE HAY.
Monticello, September 7, 1807.
Dear Sir,
I received, late last night, your favor of the day before, and now
re-enclose you the subpoena. As I do not believe that the district
courts have a power of commanding the executive government to abandon
superior duties and attend on them, at whatever distance, I am
unwilling, by any notice of the subpoena, to set a precedent which
might sanction a proceeding so preposterous. I enclose you, therefore, a
letter, public and for the court, covering substantially all they ought
to desire. If the papers which were enclosed in Wilkinson’s letter may,
in your judgment, be communicated without injury, you will be pleased to
communicate them. I return you the original letter.
I am happy in having the benefit of Mr. Madison’s counsel on this
occasion, he happening to be now with me. We are both strongly of
opinion, that the prosecution against Burr for misdemeanor should
proceed at Richmond. If defeated, it will heap coals of fire on the
head of the Judge: if successful, it will give time to see whether a
prosecution for treason against him can be instituted in any, and
what other court. But, we incline to think, it may be best to send
Blannerhasset and Smith (Israel) to Kentucky, to be tried both for the
treason and misdemeanor. The trial of Dayton for misdemeanor may as well
go on at Richmond.
I salute you with great esteem and respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER LXIII.--TO THE REV. MR. MILLAR, January 23, 1808
TO THE REV. MR. MILLAR,
Washington, January 23, 1808.
Sir,
I have duly received your favor of the 18th, and am thankful to you
for having written it, because it is more agreeable to prevent than to
refuse what I do not think myself authorized to comply with. I consider
the government of the United States as interdicted by the constitution
from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines,
discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that
no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of
religion, but from that also which reserves to the States the powers
not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any
religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has
been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the
States, as far as it can be in any human authority. But it is only
proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe, a day of fasting and
prayer. That is, that I should indirectly assume to the United States an
authority over religious exercises, which the constitution has directly
precluded them from. It must be meant, too, that this recommendation is
to carry some authority, and to be sanctioned by some penalty on those
who disregard it; not indeed of fine and imprisonment, but of some
degree of proscription, perhaps in public opinion. And does the change
in the nature of the penalty make the recommendation the less a law of
conduct for those to whom it is directed? I do not believe it is for
the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct
its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious
societies, that the General Government should be invested with the power
of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting and
prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline.
Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times
for these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their
own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their
own hands, where the constitution has deposited it.
I am aware that the practice of my predecessors may be quoted. But I
have ever believed, that the example of State executives led to the
assumption of that authority by the General Government, without due
examination, which would have discovered that what might be a right in a
State government, was a violation of that right when assumed by another.
Be this as it may, every one must act according to the dictates of his
own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given
to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the
religious exercises of his constituents.
I again express my satisfaction that you have been so good as to give
me an opportunity of explaining myself in a private letter, in which
I could give my reasons more in detail than might have been done in a
public answer: and I pray you to accept the assurances of my high esteem
and respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER LXIV.--TO COLONEL MONROE, February 18, 1808
TO COLONEL MONROE.
Washington, February 18, 1808.
My Dear Sir,
You informed me that the instruments you had been so kind as to bring
for me from England, would arrive at Richmond with your baggage, and you
wished to know what was to be done with them there. I will ask the
favor of you to deliver them to Mr. Jefferson, who will forward them
to Monticello in the way I shall advise him. And I must intreat you
to send me either a note of their amount, or the bills, that I may be
enabled to reimburse you. There can be no pecuniary matter between
us, against which this can be any set-off. But if, contrary to my
recollection or knowledge, there were any thing, I pray that that may
be left to be settled by itself. If I could have known the amount
beforehand, I should have remitted it, and asked the advance only
under the idea that it should be the same as ready money to you on your
arrival. I must again, therefore, beseech you to let me know its amount.
I see with infinite grief a contest arising between yourself and
another, who have been very dear to each other, and equally so to me. I
sincerely pray that these dispositions may not be affected between you;
with me I confidently trust they will not. For independently of the
dictates of public duty, which prescribes neutrality to me, my sincere
friendship for you both will insure its sacred observance. I suffer no
one to converse with me on the subject. I already perceive my old friend
Clinton estranging himself from me. No doubt lies are carried to him,
as they will be to the other two candidates, under forms, which, however
false he can scarcely question. Yet I have been equally careful as to
him also, never to say a word on his subject. The object of the contest
is a fair and honorable one, equally open to you all; and I have no
doubt the personal conduct of all will be so chaste, as to offer no
ground of dissatisfaction with each other. But your friends will not be
as delicate. I know too well from experience the progress of political
controversy, and the exacerbation of spirit into which it degenerates,
not to fear for the continuance of your mutual esteem. One piquing
thing said, draws on another, that a third, and always with increasing
acrimony, until all restraint is thrown off, and it becomes difficult
for yourselves to keep clear of the toils in which your friends will
endeavor to interlace you, and to avoid the participation in their
passions which they will endeavor to produce. A candid recollection of
what you know of each other will be the true corrective. With respect
to myself, I hope they will spare me. My longings for retirement are
so strong, that I with difficulty encounter the daily drudgeries of my
duty. But my wish for retirement itself is not stronger than that of
carrying into it the affections of all my friends. I have ever viewed
Mr. Madison and yourself as two principal pillars of my happiness.
Were either to be withdrawn, I should consider it as among the greatest
calamities which could assail my future peace of mind. I have great
confidence that the candor and high understanding of both will guard
me against this misfortune, the bare possibility of which has so far
weighed on my mind, that I could not be easy without unburthening it.
Accept my respectful salutations for yourself and Mrs. Monroe, and be
assured of my constant and sincere friendship.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER LXV.--TO COLONEL MONROE, March 10, 1808
TO COLONEL MONROE.
Washington, March 10, 1808.
Dear Sir,
*****
From your letter of the 27th ultimo, I perceive that painful impressions
have been made on your mind during your late mission, of which I had
never entertained a suspicion. I must, therefore, examine the grounds,
because explanations between reasonable men can never but do good. 1.
You consider the mission of Mr. Pinckney as an associate, to have been
in some way injurious to you. Were I to take that measure on myself,
I might say in its justification, that it has been the regular and
habitual practice of the United States to do this, under every form
in which their government has existed. I need not recapitulate the
multiplied instances, because you will readily recollect them. I went as
an adjunct to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, yourself as an adjunct first
to Mr. Livingston, and then to Mr. Pinckney, and I really believe
there has scarcely been a great occasion which has not produced an
extraordinary mission. Still, however, it is well known, that I was
strongly opposed to it in the case of which you complain. A committee of
the Senate called on me with two resolutions of that body on the subject
of impressment and spoliations by Great Britain, and requesting that
I would demand satisfaction. After delivering the resolutions, the
committee entered into free conversation, and observed, that although
the Senate could not, in form, recommend any extraordinary mission,
yet that as individuals, there was but one sentiment among them on the
measure, and they pressed it. I was so much averse to it, and gave them
so hard an answer, that they felt it, and spoke of it. But it did not
end here. The members of the other House took up the subject, and set
upon me individually, and these the best friends to you, as well as
myself, and represented the responsibility which a failure to obtain
redress would throw on us both, pursuing a conduct in opposition to the
opinion of nearly every member of the legislature. I found it necessary,
at length, to yield my own opinion, to the general sense of the national
council, and it really seemed to produce a jubilee among them; not from
any want of confidence in you, but from a belief in the effect which an
extraordinary mission would have on the British mind, by demonstrating
the degree of importance which this country attached to the rights which
we considered as infracted.
2. You complain of the manner in which the treaty was received. But what
was that manner? I cannot suppose you to have given a moment’s credit
to the stuff which was crowded in all sorts of forms into the public
papers, or to the thousand speeches they put into my mouth, not a word
of which I had ever uttered. I was not insensible at the time of
the views to mischief, with which these lies were fabricated. But my
confidence was firm, that neither yourself nor the British government,
equally outraged by them, would believe me capable of making the editors
of newspapers the confidants of my speeches or opinions. The fact
was this. The treaty was communicated to us by Mr. Erskine on the day
Congress was to rise. Two of the Senators inquired of me in the evening,
whether it was my purpose to detain them on account of the treaty. My
answer was, ‘that it was not: that the treaty containing no provision
against the impressment of our seamen, and being accompanied by a
kind of protestation of the British ministers, which would leave that
government free to consider it as a treaty or no treaty, according
to their own convenience, I should not give them the trouble of
deliberating on it.’ This was substantially, and almost verbally, what
I said whenever spoken to about it, and I never failed when the occasion
would admit of it, to justify yourself and Mr. Pinckney, by expressing
my conviction, that it was all that could be obtained from the British
government; that you had told their commissioners that your government
could not be pledged to ratify, because it was contrary to their
instructions; of course, that it should be considered but as a projet;
and in this light I stated it publicly in my message to Congress on the
opening of the session. Not a single article of the treaty was ever made
known beyond the members of the administration, nor would an article of
it be known at this day, but for its publication in the newspapers,
as communicated by somebody from beyond the water, as we have always
understood. But as to myself, I can solemnly protest, as the most sacred
of truths, that I never, one instant, lost sight of your reputation and
favorable standing with your country, and never omitted to justify your
failure to attain our wish, as one which was probably unattainable.
Reviewing, therefore, this whole subject, I cannot doubt you will become
sensible, that your impressions have been without just ground. I cannot,
indeed, judge what falsehoods may have been written or told you; and
that, under such forms as to command belief. But you will soon find,
my dear Sir, that so inveterate is the rancor of party spirit among us,
that nothing ought to be credited but what we hear with our own ears. If
you are less on your guard than we are here, at this moment, the designs
of the mischief-makers will not fail to be accomplished, and brethren
and friends will be made strangers and enemies to each other, without
ever having said or thought a thing amiss of each other. I presume that
the most insidious falsehoods are daily carried to you, as they are
brought to me, to engage us in the passions of our informers, and stated
so positively and plausibly as to make even doubt a rudeness to the
narrator; who, imposed on himself, has no other than the friendly view
of putting us on our guard. My answer is, invariably, that my knowledge
of your character is better testimony to me of a negative, than any
affirmative which my informant did not hear from yourself with his own
ears. In fact, when you shall have been a little longer among us, you
will find that little is to be believed which interests the prevailing
passions, and happens beyond the limits of our own senses. Let us not
then, my dear friend, embark our happiness and our affections on the
ocean of slander, of falsehood, and of malice, on which our credulous
friends are floating. If you have been made to believe that I ever did,
said, or thought a thing unfriendly to your fame and feelings, you do me
injury as causeless as it is afflicting to me. In the present contest in
which you are concerned, I feel no passion, I take no part, I express no
sentiment. Whichever of my friends is called to the supreme cares of the
nation, I know that they will be wisely and faithfully administered, and
as far as my individual conduct can influence, they shall be cordially
supported,
For myself I have nothing further to ask of the world, than to preserve
in retirement so much of their esteem as I may have fairly earned, and
to be permitted to pass in tranquillity, in the bosom of my family and
friends, the days which yet remain for me. Having reached the harbor
myself, I shall view with anxiety (but certainly not with a wish to be
in their place) those who are still buffeting the storm, uncertain
of their fate. Your voyage has so far been favorable, and that it
may continue with entire prosperity, is the sincere prayer of that
friendship which I have ever borne you, and of which I now assure you,
with the tender of my high respect and affectionate salutations.
Th: Jefferson,
LETTER LXVI.--TO RICHARD M. JOHNSON, March 10, 1808
TO RICHARD M. JOHNSON.
Washington, March 10, 1808.
Sir,
I am sure you can too justly estimate my occupations, to need an apology
for this tardy acknowledgment of your favor of February the 27th. I
cannot but be deeply sensible of the good opinion you are pleased to
express of my conduct in the administration of our government. This
approbation of my fellow-citizens is the richest reward I can receive. I
am conscious of having always intended to do what was best for them: and
never, for a single moment, to have listened to any personal interest
of my own. It has been a source of great pain to me, to have met with
so many among our opponents, who had not the liberality to distinguish
between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to
the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions. I suppose,
indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any
decided character, and who has energy enough to give them effect, must
always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse
principles. But I came to the government under circumstances calculated
to generate peculiar acrimony. I found all its offices in the possession
of a political sect, who wished to transform it ultimately into the
shape of their darling model, the English government; and in the mean
time, to familiarize the public mind to the change, by administering it
on English principles, and in English forms. The elective interposition
of the people had blown all their designs, and they found themselves and
their fortresses of power and profit put in a moment into the hands of
other trustees. Lamentations and invective were all that remained to
them. This last was naturally directed against the agent selected to
execute the multiplied reformations, which their heresies had rendered
necessary. I became of course the butt of every thing which reason,
ridicule, malice, and falsehood could supply. They have concentrated all
their hatred on me, till they have really persuaded themselves, that I
am the sole source of all their imaginary evils. I hope, therefore, that
my retirement will abate some of their disaffection to the government of
their country, and that my successor will enter on a calmer sea than
I did. He will at least find the vessel of state in the hands of his
friends, and not of his foes. Federalism is dead, without even the hope
of a day of resurrection. The quondam leaders, indeed, retain their
rancor and principles; but their followers are amalgamated with us
in sentiment, if not in name. If our fellow-citizens, now solidly
republican, will sacrifice favoritism towards men for the preservation
of principle, we may hope that no divisions will again endanger a
degeneracy in our government.
*****
I pray you to accept my salutations, and assurances of great esteem and
respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER LXVII.--TO LEVI LINCOLN, March 23, 1808
TO LEVI LINCOLN.
Washington, March 23, 1808.
Dear Sir,
Your letter on the subject of Mr. Lee came safely to hand. You know
our principles render federalists in office safe, if they do not employ
their influence in opposing the government, but only give their own vote
according to their conscience. And this principle we act on as well with
those put in office by others, as by ourselves.
We have received from your presses a very malevolent and incendiary
denunciation of the administration, bottomed on absolute falsehood from
beginning to end. The author would merit exemplary punishment for so
flagitious a libel, were not the torment of his own abominable temper
punishment sufficient for even as base a crime as this. The termination
of Mr. Rose’s mission, _re infectâ_, put it in my power to communicate
to Congress yesterday, every thing respecting our relations with England
and France, which will effectually put down Mr. Pickering, and his
worthy coadjutor Quincy. Their tempers are so much alike, and really
their persons, as to induce a supposition that they are related. The
embargo appears to be approved, even by the federalists of every quarter
except yours. The alternative was between that and war, and, in fact,
it is the last card we have to play, short of war. But if peace does
not take place in Europe, and if France and England will not consent
to withdraw the operation of their decrees and orders from us, when
Congress shall meet in December, they will have to consider at what
point of time the embargo, continued, becomes a greater evil than war. I
am inclined to believe, we shall have this summer and autumn to prepare
for the defence of our sea-port towns, and hope that in that time the
works of defence will be completed, which have been provided for by the
legislature. I think Congress will rise within three weeks. I salute you
with great affection and respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER LXVIII.--TO CHARLES PINCKNEY, March 30, 1808
TO CHARLES PINCKNEY.
Washington, March 30, 1808.
Dear Sir,