THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT
I
In the personal appearance of Thomas Jefferson there was little to
denote the powerful, dominating leader and strict disciplinarian that he
was. Unlike Hamilton, he did not look the commander so much as the
rather shy philosopher. The gruff Maclay, on seeing him for the first
time, was disappointed with his slender frame, the looseness of his
figure, and the ‘air of stiffness in his manner,’ while pleased with the
sunniness of his face.[354] He was of imposing height, being more than
six feet, and slender without being thin.[355] All contemporaries who
have left descriptions refer to the long, loosely jointed limbs, and
none of them convey an impression of grace. His hair, much redder than
that of Hamilton, was combed loosely over the forehead and at the side,
and tied behind. His complexion was light, his eyes blue and usually
mild in expression, his forehead broad and high. Beneath the eyes, his
face was rather broad, the cheek-bones high, the chin noticeably long,
and the mouth of generous size. The casual glance discovered more of
benevolence than force, more of subtlety than pugnacity. Nor, in that
day of lace and frills, was there anything in his garb to proclaim him
of the élite. His enemies then, and ever since, have made too much of
his loose carpet slippers and worn clothes, and the only thing they
prove is that he may have had the Lincolnian indifference to style. Long
before he made his ‘pose’ in the President’s house for the benefit of
the groundlings, we find a critic who was to be numbered among his
followers complaining because his clothes were too small for his
body.[356] The truth, no doubt, is that he dressed conventionally,
because men must, and was careless of his attire.
Certain it is that when she first met him, Mrs. Bayard Smith, who had
been unduly impressed with the Federalist references to the ‘coarseness
and vulgarity of his manners,’ was astonished at the contradiction of
the caricature by the man. ‘So meek and mild, yet dignified in his
manners, with a voice so soft and low, with a countenance so benign and
intelligent’ she found him.[357] In truth there was enough dignity in
his manner to discourage the stranger on a first approach, as Tom Moore
found to his disgust. Even Mrs. Smith thought his ‘dignified and
reserved air’ chill at first;[358] and a French admirer who made a
sentimental journey to Monticello thought him somewhat cold and
reserved.’[359] ‘The cold first look he always cast upon a
stranger’[360] appears too often in the observations of his
contemporaries to have been imaginary.
As some have found fault with his dress, others have criticized a
slovenly way of sitting--‘in a lounging manner, on one hip commonly,
with one of his shoulders elevated much above the other’;[361] while
another--a woman too--was charmed at the ‘free and easy manner’ in which
he accepted a proffered chair.[362] The natural deduction from the
contradictions is that he seated himself as comfortably as possible with
little regard to the picture in the pose. There is a manifest absurdity
in the idea that the man who moved familiarly in the most cultured
circles of the most polished capital in Europe could have been either
impossible in dress or boorish in manner.
But there is one unpleasant criticism of his manner that cannot be so
easily put aside--a shiftiness in his glance which bears out the charge
of his enemies that he was lacking in frankness. The most democratic
member of the first Senate, meeting him for the first time, was
disappointed to find that ‘he had a rambling vacant look, and nothing of
that firm collected deportment which I expected would dignify the
presence of a Secretary or Minister.’[363] Another found that ‘when
speaking he did not look at his auditor, but cast his eyes toward the
ceiling or anywhere but at the eye of his auditor.’[364] This weakness
was possibly overemphasized, for he was notoriously shy.
Aside from this, there is abundant evidence that there was an ineffable
charm in his manner. One who objected to his ‘shifty glance’ was
favorably impressed with ‘the simplicity and sobriety’ of his
deportment, and found that while ‘he was quiet and unobtrusive ... a
stranger would perceive that he was in the presence of one who was not a
common man.’[365] He was free of the affectations of pedantry, courteous
and kindly, modest and tolerant. Thus he appeared to excellent advantage
in conversation, and, with one exception, all who knew him and have left
their impressions found him an entertaining and illuminating talker.
Maclay, who was certainly not the most competent of judges, thought his
conversation ‘loose and rambling,’ and yet admitted that ‘he scattered
information wherever he went, and some even brilliant sentiments
sparkled from him.’[366] It is probable that the gout-racked radical
confused conversation with set speeches, and quite as possible that on
this particular occasion, when Jefferson was meeting with a curious
senatorial committee, he was not inclined to tell all he knew.
Certainly the polished nobleman, familiar with the most intellectual
circles of Paris, who found his ‘conversation of the most agreeable
kind,’ and that he possessed ‘a stock of information not inferior to
that of any other man,’ and ‘in Europe ... would hold a distinguished
rank among men of letters,’ was quite as competent a judge as the
Senator from the wilderness of Pennsylvania.[367] Among men his manner
of conversation was calm and deliberate, without the Johnsonian
_ex-cathedra_ touch, and yet he ‘spoke like one who considered himself
as entitled to deference.’[368] Among friends, and particularly women,
he appears to have been deferential and captivating in his tactful
kindness. Then when, ‘with a manner and voice almost femininely soft and
gentle,’ he ‘entered into conversation on the commonplace topics of the
day,’ at least one woman found that ‘there was something in his manner,
his countenance and voice that at once unlocked [her] heart.’[369]
Such was the Jefferson seen superficially by his contemporaries.
II
Those who prefer to think of Jefferson as an aristocrat, born to the
purple, who departed from the paths of his fathers, refer only to the
maternal ancestry. The American founder of this branch of the family
liked to think of himself as the descendant of gentlemen of title and of
the half-brother of Queen Mary. Jefferson preferred to dismiss this
claim on the aristocracy with the statement that his mother’s family
traced ‘their pedigree far back in England and Scotland, to which let
every one ascribe the faith and merit he chooses.’ From the Randolphs he
probably inherited his love of beauty, his fondness for luxury, but they
failed utterly to transmit to him any aristocratic notions of
government. There was a reason--his father was a middle-class farmer,
and it was from him and his early environment that he received his
earliest and most lasting political impressions.
This father was no ordinary man. Physically a giant, he was big in mind
and strong in character. By the light of the log fire in the evenings,
he was wont to read Shakespeare, Swift, and Addison to his family. An
ardent Whig with advanced democratic ideas, he as a magistrate
manifested sympathy for the plain people.[370] His thousand acres at
Shadwell were in the wilderness and on the frontier, and his son was as
much a Westerner in his boyhood as is the boy of Idaho to-day, for the
West is a relative term.
This Western boy at the most impressionable age was sent to school in
Louisa County, which was then the hot-bed of radical democracy and
Presbyterian dissent. The natives about him were in buckskin breeches
and Indian moccasins, and, with no coat over their rough hunting shirts,
they covered their heads with coon-skin caps. It was a long cry from the
polished circles of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia to this typical
Western scene; if one was the East, the other was the West. The small
proprietor farmers lived in crude cabins, and theirs was the hard lot of
the pioneer. Thus Jefferson’s training was that of the Westerner.[371]
The boy was father to the man. When he entered college at Williamsburg,
he found himself in the headquarters of the aristocracy, for there, at
the capital, the lords of the land had their winter homes where lavish
hospitality was displayed. Into this society Jefferson was thrown, and
he moved therein as to the manor born--at heart a Western man with
Eastern polish.[372] It was not for nothing that there was Randolph
blood in his veins.
Even as he moved among the hard-drinking, fox-hunting imitators of the
English squires, his sympathies were enlisted in the growing democratic
movement of the small farmers among the upper rivers, the
tobacco-growers, the hunters and trappers of the Alleghany slopes. The
western counties, then the western frontier, had been populated by the
Scotch-Irish and Germans--earnest, hard-working, hard-thinking men, who
wrestled with nature as with their consciences, built churches in the
woods, and school-houses in the clearing. These men were democrats, and
their cause became the cause of Jefferson even while he was in college.
Volumes have been written to explain Jefferson, but it was reserved for
Professor William E. Dodd to do it in a paragraph:
It is not difficult ... to see how the great principle of
Jefferson’s life--absolute faith in democracy--came to him. He was
the product of the first West in American history; he grew up with
men who ruled their country well, who fought the Indians
valiantly.... Jefferson loved his backwoods neighbors, and he, in
turn, was loved by them.[373]
If in college he was confirming his faith in democracy, born of his
schooling in the land of the small farmers, he was burnishing his
weapons for the fight. It is significant that he disliked Blackstone and
liked Coke because he found the former a teacher of Toryism and the
latter a reflector of the philosophy of the Whigs. His training in the
law was thorough, for he studied under George Wythe, with whom both
Marshall and Clay received their legal schooling. The friendship of
Professor Small encouraged his natural spirit of toleration and
investigation; and at the ‘palace’ of Francis Fauquier, the gay and
brilliant royal governor--‘a gentleman of the school of Louis XV
translated into England by Charles II, and into English by Lord
Chesterfield’[374] he formed his literary tastes and learned the virtues
of literary style. Thus assiduous in his studies, reasonably circumspect
in his morals, and profiting immeasurably by contact with superior
minds, he was receiving an intensive preparation for his future labors.
In the seclusion of his room he communed with Coke and Milton,
Harrington and Locke, and the time was to come when his most notable
literary production was to disclose, in word and phrase, the influence
of the latter. Locke, not Rousseau, was the well from which he drew;
and there is no sillier assertion in history than that his democracy was
born of association with the men of the French Revolution.
III
Long before there were levelers in France, Jefferson was a leveler in
Virginia; and because he was a leveler in Virginia, the reactionaries
who resented his reforms were afterward to charge his democracy to the
influence of the levelers of Paris. His democracy was inherent, in part
inherited from a pioneer father. His dislike of the aristocratic system
amounted to a prejudice, and he could not bear the novels of Scott
because of his detestation of the institutions of medieval times.[375]
Having written the Declaration of Independence in the house of a
bricklayer, he declined a reëlection to Congress to enter the House of
Burgesses in Virginia to revamp the institutions of the State along
democratic lines. When he finished his work there, he had made himself
one of the foremost democrats of all times--and the French Revolution
was still in the distance.
The Virginia system had been made for caste society; the landed
aristocracy were as much a caste as that in England--minus the titles.
They had the same love of land, the same obsession that the alienation
of any part of their possessions was treason to the family. Through the
system of entail, the lands and slaves of the aristocracy could be
passed on down through the generations, proof against the extravagance
and inefficiency of the owners and the attacks of creditors. The law of
primogeniture was designed to serve the same general end of preventing
the disruption of the great estates. With a fine audacity, Jefferson
sallied forth quite gayly to attack them both. Even Henry thought this
was radicalism gone mad. Pendleton was more hurt than outraged. The
aristocratic members of his mother’s family looked upon him as a
matricide. Undaunted by the hate engendered, he put his hand to the
plough and kept it there until he had ploughed the field and prepared it
for a democratic harvest. His friend Pendleton begged a compromise on
primogeniture giving the eldest son a double share of the land. ‘Yes,’
replied the leveler, ‘when he can eat twice the allowance of food and
do double the allowance of work.’ It was his purpose to eradicate ‘every
fibre of ancient or future aristocracy.’[376] The outraged landed
aristocracy never forgave him. He was the first American to invite the
hate of a class, and from the beginning he turned his back on the
aristocracy and made his appeal to the middle-class yeomanry.[377] All
this was behind him when he went to Paris before the Revolution there
began. There the tall, slender American in the elegant house on the
Grande Route des Champs Elysées, with its extensive gardens and court,
was an impressive figure. ‘You replace Doctor Franklin, I hear,’ said
Vergennes, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. ‘I succeed him,’ Jefferson
replied; ‘nobody could replace him.’ There could have been no more
ingratiating reply, for his predecessor had been greatly admired and
loved.
No one could have found the conversation of the salons and dinner tables
more congenial. His manners were those of a man of the world, and he
shared the French fondness for speculative talk, and the French knack of
spicing gravity with frivolity. Even his table tastes were similar. He
ate sparingly and preferred the light wines. Both his natural
hospitality and his respect for the dignity of his position spread the
reputation of his lavish table; and while he gave no great parties, gay
and frequent dinners were the rule. Lafayette ran in and out constantly;
members of the diplomatic set found Jefferson’s house an agreeable
meeting-place; the young French officers who had served in America liked
his company, and De la Tude, the wit, who had served thirty-five years
in prison for writing an epigram on Pompadour, enlivened many an evening
with his reminiscences. American tourists were captivated by his
civilities, introductions to celebrities, itineraries for profitable
trips. Like Franklin before him, he charmed the beautiful women of the
court with his wit and humor, and the eloquence of his conversation. He
loved the promenades and shops, and was constantly alert for something
unusual to send his friends at home--rare books for Madison, Monroe, and
Wythe, a portable table for Madison, an artistic lamp for Lee. And yet
he was far from an elegant idler, and his days were laboriously passed;
mornings at his office, afternoons given to country walks, evenings to
society, art, music. He found time for elaborate and illuminating
reports that are models in diplomatic literature and which exacted
tribute from even John Marshall. Feeling frequently the need of absolute
seclusion for his work, he had rooms in the Carthusian Monastery on
Mount Calvary where silence was enjoined outside the rooms, but where he
had the privileges of the garden.
‘I am much pleased with the people of this country,’ he wrote a lady.
‘The roughness of the human mind is so thoroughly rubbed off with them,
that it seems one might glide through a whole life without a
jostle.’[378] And in another letter, the same impression: ‘Here it seems
a man might pass a life without encountering a single rudeness.’[379]
But if he loved the society of Paris, he was not, like Morris, seduced
into an acceptance of its system. His passion for democracy did not
permit him to judge the happiness of a nation by the luxuries of the
court and aristocracy. He struck out into the country to judge for
himself of the condition of the peasants, looked into the pots on the
fire to see what they ate, felt their beds to see if they were
comfortable. He inquired into the wages and the working conditions of
the artisans of the cities--and his conclusions were unavoidable, of
course. ‘It is a fact,’ he wrote, ‘in spite of the mildness of their
governors, the people are ground to powder by their form of government.
Of twenty million people supposed to be in France, I am of opinion there
are nineteen million more wretched, more accursed in every circumstance
of human existence than the most conspicuously wretched individual in
the whole United States.’[380] And to another: ‘I find the general fate
of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire’s observation
offers itself perpetually, that every man here is either the hammer or
the anvil.’[381] He was shocked by a system that dedicated the sons of
peasants as cannon fodder in remote wars precipitated by the whims of a
prostitute; that winked at the debauchery of their wives and daughters;
that gave men to the Bastile for the expression of a criticism; that
crushed the people with intolerable taxation to sustain the luxury of a
few; that forced the poor to live on food not fit for a stray dog in a
city slums, and which awed the masses into submission to such conditions
by the bayonets of the soldiery. This was the France of which he
thought in the day when his sympathy with the Revolution was to damn him
with the Federalists’ taunt of ‘Jacobin’ and ‘anarchist.’
Such being his observations and views, he rejoiced in the popular
awakening in the dawning days of the Revolution. Witnessing the meeting
of the Assembly of the Notables, a fascinated spectator of the razing of
the Bastile, listening, deeply moved, to the audacious eloquence of
Mirabeau, he wrote, with the joy of the reformer, to Washington that
‘the French nation has been awakened by our Revolution.’ It was in those
days that Gouverneur Morris, the friend of Hamilton, was accustomed to
drop in on Jefferson for a chat on the situation, and their friendly
disagreements were soon to appear in a party division in America. ‘He
and I differ,’ wrote Morris in his diary, ‘in our system of politics. He
with all the leaders of liberty here is desirous of annihilating
distinctions of order.’[382] And yet he was not hostile to the King or
the monarchy. He hoped for reforms, freely granted. Louis he found
‘irascible, rude, very limited in his understanding,’ with ‘no
mistress,’ but governed too much by the Queen--‘devoted to pleasure and
expense, and not remarkable for any other vices or virtues.’[383] As the
storm-clouds lowered and the easy-going monarch remained inert, he
became less tolerant. ‘The King, long in the habit of drowning his cares
in wine, plunges deeper and deeper. The Queen cries but sins on. The
Count d’Artois is detested.’[384] And a month later: ‘The King goes for
nothing. He hunts one half the day, is drunk the other, and signs
whatever he is bid.’[385]
As the future Terrorists ascended from the cellars and descended from
the garrets, and occasional riots gave premonitory signs of the bloody
days ahead, he reported to Jay that the rioting was the work of the
‘abandoned banditti of Paris,’ and had no ‘professed connection with the
great national reformation going on.’[386]
All this time he was being constantly consulted by Lafayette and the
moderate leaders who were to become the members of the attractive but
unfortunate party of the Gironde. They even met at his dinner table to
make plans, without notifying him of their intent, and his voluntary
explanation to the Minister was received with the expression of a hope
that he might be able to assist in an accommodation of differences. He
did, in fact, propose a plan, which, had it been accepted, might have
saved the monarchy. It was his suggestion that Louis step forward with a
charter in his hands, granting liberty of the person, of conscience, of
the press, a trial by jury, an annual legislature with the power of
taxation, and with a ministry responsible to the people.[387] These
associations and these views are conclusive as to the absurdity that he
was permeated with the theories of Jacobinism and brought them back to
the United States. He was the same kind of Jacobin as Lafayette. His
interest was the interest in democracy and popular rights that he had
taken with him when he sailed for Europe. Mirabeau was still laboring to
save the monarchy with reforms when Jefferson returned to America on
leave.
IV
Jefferson was a humanitarian ahead of his time. His humanity spoke above
the passions of the Revolution in his letter to Patrick Henry against
the mistreatment of the German prisoners. ‘Is an enemy so execrable,’ he
wrote, ‘that though in captivity his wishes and comforts are to be
disregarded and even crossed? I think not. It is for the benefit of
mankind to mitigate the horrors of war as much as possible.’[388] These
captives, interned near Monticello, came to love the master on the hill
for his efforts to lighten the burdens of their captivity.[389] A little
later, in the Virginia Legislature, we find him opposing the death
penalty except for treason and murder, and the policy of working
convicts on the highways and canals. ‘Exhibited as a public spectacle,’
he wrote, ‘with shaved heads and mean clothing, working on the highroads
produced in the criminals such a prostration of self-respect, as,
instead of reforming, plunged them into the most desperate and hardened
depravity.’[390] It was novel then to hear men speaking of reform
instead of punishment.
That this humanitarian impulse was not confined to people at a distance
is shown in his relations to his own servants, both the employees and
the slaves. A woman of fashion commented on ‘the most perfect servants
at the White House’ during his eight years there and the significant
circumstance that ‘none left.’[391] But we must turn to his relations
with his slaves to find him at his best. One picture will suffice. It is
on the occasion of his return to Monticello from his French mission. At
the foot of the hill all the slaves in their gaudiest attire are
assembled to greet him. The carriage appears down the road. The slaves,
laughing, shouting, rush forward to welcome him, unhitch the horses to
draw the carriage up the steep hill, some pulling, some pushing, and
others huddled in a dark mass close around the vehicle. Some kiss his
hands, others his feet, and it is long after he reaches the house before
he is permitted to enter. This was long before the day when
correspondents with cameras pursued public men and demonstrations were
staged.[392] Here was a master who loved his slaves.
Nor can there be any possible doubt as to his hostility to slavery. One
of the features of his Virginia reforms was abolition. While he failed,
he never doubted that ultimately the chains would fall. ‘Nothing is more
certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be
free’ he wrote in his ‘Autobiography.’[393] A little later, referring to
his strictures on slavery in his ‘Notes on Virginia,’ he expressed a
desire to get them to the young men in the colleges. ‘It is to them I
look, to the rising generation, and not to the one now in power, for
these great reformations.’[394] Declining membership in a society for
abolition in France on the ground that his official status would make
improper a demonstration against an institution his own people were
retaining, he said that ‘it is decent of me to avoid too public a
demonstration of my wishes to see it [slavery] abolished.’[395] Without
any of this evidence, his hostility to slavery would be irrefutably
established by the Ordinance of the Northwest Territory, in the
handwriting of Jefferson in the archives of the Nation, prohibiting
slavery in any of the States that might be carved therefrom after the
year 1800.
V
Such is the persistency of falsehood that Jefferson has come down to us
vaguely as an atheist and an enemy of the Christian religion. Since this
charge is to play a part in the political story we are about to tell, it
calls for some attention. He was brought up in the Church of England,
and his earliest recollection was of saying the Lord’s Prayer when his
dinner was delayed.[396] He planned at least one church and contributed
to the erection of others, gave freely to Bible Societies, and liberally
to the support of the clergy. He attended church with normal regularity,
taking his prayer book to the services and joining in the responses and
prayers of the congregation. No human being ever heard him utter a word
of profanity. During the period of his social ostracism by the
intolerant partisans of Philadelphia, he passed many evenings with Dr.
Rush in conversation on religion.[397] ‘I am a Christian,’ he once said,
‘in the only sense in which Jesus wished any one to be--sincerely
attached to his doctrines in preference to all others.’ On one occasion
when a man of distinction expressed his disbelief in the truths of the
Bible, he said, ‘Then, sir, you have studied it to little purpose.’[398]
While the New England pulpits were ringing with denunciations of this
‘infidel’ and old ladies, unable to detect the false witness of the
partisan clergy, were solemnly hiding their Bibles to prevent their
confiscation by the ‘atheist’ in the President’s House, he was spending
his nights in the codification of the ‘Morals of Jesus,’ and through the
remainder of his life he was to read from this every night before
retiring.[399] In his last days he spent much time reading the Greek
dramatists and the Bible, dwelling in conversation on the superiority of
the moral system of Christ over all others. In his dying hour, after
taking leave of his family, he was heard to murmur, ‘Lord, now lettest
Thy servant depart in peace.’[400]
The reason for the myth created against him is not far to seek. Just as
the landed aristocracy of Virginia pursued him with increasing venom
because of his land reforms, the clergy hated him for forcing the
separation of Church and State. When he made the fight for this reform,
it was a crime not to baptize a child into the Episcopal Church; a crime
to bring a Quaker into the colony; and, according to the law, a heretic
could be burned. If the latter law was not observed, that compelling all
to pay tithes regardless of their religious affiliations and opinions
was rigidly enforced. This outraged Jefferson’s love of liberty. The
Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists, who were making inroads on the
membership of the Established Church, were prosecuted, and their
ministers were declared disturbers of the peace and thrown into jail
like common felons. Patrick Henry and his followers fought Jefferson’s
plan for a disestablishment--but he won.[401] The ‘atheist’ law, which
was never forgiven by the ministers of Virginia and Connecticut, was
simple and brief:
No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious
worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced,
restrained, molested or burdened in his mind or goods, nor shall
otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief;
but all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain,
their opinions in matters of religion, and the same shall in no
wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
Here we have the secret of the animus of the clergy of the time--but
there were other reasons. In his ‘Notes on Virginia’ he did not please
the orthodox, and Dr. Mason, a fashionable political minister of New
York City, exposed him in the pulpit, holding him up to scorn as a
‘profane philosopher’ and an ‘infidel.’ Discussing the theory that the
marine shells found on the high mountains were proof of the universal
deluge, Jefferson had rejected it. ‘Aha,’ cried Mason, ‘he derides the
Mosaic account’; he ‘sneers at the Scriptures’ and with ‘malignant
sarcasm.’ When Jefferson, referring to the tillers of the soil, wrote
that they were ‘the chosen people of God if ever He had a chosen
people,’ and referred to Christ as ‘good if ever man was,’ the minister
charged him with ‘profane babbling.’[402]
His view of creation is set forth in a letter discussing a work by
Whitehurst. He believed that a Supreme Being created the earth and its
inhabitants; that if He created both, He could have created both at
once, or created the earth and waited ages for it to get form itself
before He created man; but he believed that it was created in a state of
fluidity and not in its present solid form. This was his infidelity. He
probably did not believe that Jonah was swallowed by the whale--and that
was enough to damn him. But if he was not a Christian, the pulpits are
teeming with atheists to-day.[403]
VI
We have seen that Hamilton had no faith in the Constitution, but did
yeoman service for its ratification; we have the charge that Jefferson
was hostile to both; and the truth is that he was hostile to neither and
favorable to both. The evidence is overwhelming.
When the new form of government was under consideration, he proposed ‘to
make the States one in everything connected with foreign nations, and
several as to everything purely domestic,’ and to separate the
executive, legislative, and judicial branches.[404] He was bitterly
hostile to any plan based on the monarchical idea, and advised its
friends ‘to read the fable of the frogs who solicited Jupiter for a
King.’[405] When the Convention met, he wrote Adams that it was ‘really
an assembly of demigods,’ but regretted that they began their
deliberations ‘by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the
tongues of the members.’[406] His first impressions of the completed
document were unfavorable. In a letter to Adams he complained of the
reëligibility of the President.[407] To another correspondent he
complained that the proposed system would merge the States into one
without protecting the people with a bill of rights.[408]
Writing to Madison, he went more into detail, balancing the good against
the bad. He liked the separation of the departments, endorsed the
lodging of the power of initiating money bills with the representatives
of the people, and was ‘captivated with the compromise of the opposite
claims of the great and little States’; but he insisted that a bill of
rights ‘is what the people are entitled to against every government on
earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse
or rest in inference.’ Professing himself ‘no friend to a very energetic
government’ as ‘always oppressive,’ he added that should the people
approve the Constitution in all its parts he should ‘concur in it
cheerfully in hopes that they will amend it whenever they think it works
wrong.’[409]
Little more than a month later he had become an ardent friend of
ratification. ‘I wish with all my soul,’ he wrote, ‘that the nine first
Conventions may accept the Constitution, because this may secure to us
the good it contains, which I think great and important. But I equally
wish that the four latest Conventions, whichever they may be, may refuse
to accede to it till a declaration of rights is annexed.’[410]
When the Massachusetts Convention accepted with ‘perpetual instructions
to her Delegates to endeavor to secure reforms,’ he was delighted,[411]
and the same day he wrote another correspondent of his pleasure at the
progress made toward ratification. ‘Indeed I have presumed that it would
gain on the public mind as I confess it has on my own.’[412] When South
Carolina acted, he wrote E. Rutledge his congratulations. ‘Our
government wanted bracing,’ he said. ‘Still we must take care not to run
from one extreme to another; not to brace too high.’[413] When the
requisite nine States had ratified, he wrote Madison in a spirit of
rejoicing. ‘It is a good canvas on which some strokes only want
retouching. What these are I think are sufficiently manifested by the
general voice from North to South which calls for a bill of
rights.’[414]
After the ratification, he wrote Madison in praise of ‘The Federalist,’
describing it as ‘the best commentary on government ever written,’ and
admitting that it had ‘rectified’ him on many points.[415] In the same
vein he wrote to Washington, expressing the hope that a bill of rights
would be speedily added.[416] In the spring of 1789 he wrote another
that the Constitution was ‘unquestionably the wisest ever yet presented
to men.’[417] And after the Bill of Rights had been added, he wrote to
Lafayette that ‘the opposition to the Constitution has almost totally
disappeared’ and that ‘the amendments proposed by Congress have brought
over almost all’ of the objectors.[418]
Years afterward, when he wrote his ‘Autobiography,’ he reviewed his
reactions on the document: ‘I received a copy early in November,’ he
wrote, ‘and read and contemplated its provisions, with great
satisfaction.... The absence of express declarations, ensuring freedom
of religious worship, freedom of the press, freedom of the person under
the uninterrupted protection of the Habeas Corpus & trial by jury in
civil as well as in criminal cases excited my jealousy; and the
reëligibility of the President for life I quite disapproved. I expressed
freely in letters to my friends, and most particularly to Mr. Madison
and General Washington, my approbations and objections.’[419] His
recollections were true to the facts as conclusively shown in the
correspondence to which reference has been made.
He was no more opposed to the Constitution and its ratification than he
was an atheist.
VII
This brings us to Jefferson the creator and leader of a party, and his
methods of management. Here he was without a peer in the mastery of men.
He intuitively knew men, and when bent upon it could usually bend them
to his will. He was a psychologist and could easily probe the minds and
hearts of those he met. In his understanding of mass psychology, he had
no equal. When a measure was passed or a policy adopted in Philadelphia,
he knew the reactions in the woods of Georgia without waiting for
letters and papers. This rare insight into the mass mind made him a
brilliantly successful propagandist. In every community he had his
correspondents with whom he communicated with reasonable regularity,
doing more in this way to mould and direct the policies of his party
than could have been done in any other way. Seldom has there lived a
more tireless and voluminous letter-writer. With all the powerful
elements arrayed against him, he appreciated the importance of the press
as did few others. ‘I desired you in my last to send me the newspapers,
notwithstanding the expense,’ he wrote a friend from Paris.[420]
Believing that the people, in possession of the facts, would reach
reasonable conclusions, he considered newspapers a necessary engine of
democracy. ‘If left to me,’ he once wrote, ‘to decide whether we should
have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a
government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the
latter.’[421] There is not a scintilla of evidence to confute his stout
contention that he never wrote for the papers anonymously, but the
evidence piles mountain high to prove that he constantly inspired the
tone of the party press.
In his personal contacts he was captivating--a master of diplomacy and
tact, born of his intuitive knowledge of men. Perhaps no better
illustration of his cleverness in analyzing men can be found than in his
letter to Madison on De Moustier, a newly appointed French Minister to
the United States. ‘De M. is remarkably communicative. With adroitness
he may be pumped of anything. His openness is from character, not
affectation. An intimacy with him may, on this account, be politically
valuable.’[422]
In his leadership we find more of leading than of driving. He had a
genius for gently and imperceptibly insinuating his own views into the
minds of others and leaving them with the impression that they had
conceived the ideas and convinced Jefferson. To Madison this was a
source of keen delight.[423] Jefferson was the original ‘Easy Boss.’ His
tact was proverbial. He never sought to overshadow or overawe. Inferior
men were not embarrassed or depressed in his presence. He was amazingly
thoughtful and considerate. In a company he instinctively went to the
assistance of the neglected. Thus at a dinner party, a guest, long
absent from the country, and unknown to the diners, was left out of the
conversation and ignored. In a momentary silence, Jefferson turned to
him. ‘To you, Mr. C., we are indebted for this benefit--’ he said, ‘no
one deserves more the gratitude of his country.’ The other guests were
all attention. ‘Yes, sir, the upland rice which you sent from Algiers,
and which thus far succeeds, will, when generally adopted by the
planters, prove an inestimable blessing to our Southern States.’ After
that the neglected guest became the lion of the dinner.[424]
Thoughtfulness in small things--this entered not a little into
Jefferson’s hold on his followers.
It was at the dinner table that he planned many of his battles. He did
not care for the stormy and contentious atmosphere of a caucus. He was
not an orator. In the Continental Congress he was disgusted by the ‘rage
for debate.’[425] Later he was to find his lot in the Cabinet
intolerable because he and Hamilton were constantly pitted against each
other ‘like cocks in a pit.’ He was not afraid of a fight, but the
futility of angry controversy repelled him. It was this which made him a
delightful dinner host--all controversial subjects that might offend
were taboo. If his position were warmly controverted, he changed the
subject tactfully. It was never the opposition that interested him, but
the reason for it; and with rare subtlety he would seek to obliterate
the prejudice, if it were prejudice, or to remove the misunderstanding
if it were ignorance of facts. Thus he won many victories through a
seeming retreat.[426]
Unescapable quarrels and separations were minor tragedies to him. He
long sought to get along with Hamilton. He advised his daughters to be
tolerant of disagreeable people and acted on his own advice. Fiske has
explained him in a sentence: ‘He was in no wise lacking in moral
courage, but his sympathies were so broad and tender that he could not
breathe freely in an atmosphere of strife.’[427] Thus considerate of his
foes, he never hurt the sensibilities of his friends through offensive
methods. He liked to gather his lieutenants about him at the table and
‘talk it out’--each man free to give his views. Here he ironed out
differences, dominating by the superiority of his intellect and
fascinating personality while appearing singularly free from domination.
In his power of self-control Jefferson had another advantage over his
leading political opponents. There was something uncanny in his capacity
to simulate ignorance of the hate that often encompassed him. To the
most virulent of his foes he was the pink of courtesy. He mastered
others by mastering himself. And because he was master of himself, he
had another advantage--he kept his judgment clear as to the capacity and
character of his opponents. One may search in vain through the letters
of Hamilton for expressions other than those of contemptuous
belittlement of his political foes. Jefferson never made that mistake.
He conceded Hamilton’s ability and admired it. Visitors at Monticello,
manifesting surprise at finding busts by Ceracchi of Hamilton and
Jefferson, facing each other across the hall, elicited the smiling
comment--‘opposite in death as in life.’ There never would have been a
bust of Jefferson at ‘The Grange.’ Through the long years of
estrangement with Adams, Jefferson kept the way clear for the
restoration of their old relations. Writing Madison of Adams’s faults,
he emphasized his virtues and lovable qualities. When the bitter battles
of their administrations were in the past and a mutual friend wrote that
the old man at Quincy had said, ‘I always loved Jefferson and always
shall,’ he said, ‘That is enough for me,’ and set to work to revive the
old friendship. Thus the time came when in reply to Jefferson’s
congratulations on the election of John Quincy Adams in 1824, Adams
wrote: ‘I call him our John because when you were at the Cul de Sac at
Paris, he appeared to me to be almost as much your boy as mine.’[428]
This capacity for keeping his judgment clear of the benumbing fumes of
prejudice concerning the qualities of his enemies was one of the strong
points of his leadership.
This does not mean that in practical politics Jefferson was a ‘Miss
Nancy’ or a ‘Sister Sue.’ This first consummate practical politician of
the Republic did not consider it practical to underestimate the foe, nor
to dissipate his energy and cloud his judgment by mere prejudices and
hates. He was not an idealist in his methods, and this has given his
enemies a peg on which to hang the charge that he was dishonest. He was
an opportunist, to be sure; he never refused the half loaf he could get
because of the whole loaf he could not have. He trimmed his sails at
times to save his craft--and this was wisdom. He compromised at the call
of necessity. He was hard-headed and looked clear-eyed at the realities
about him. He was cunning, for without cunning he could not have
overcome a foe so powerfully entrenched. He was as elusive as a shadow,
and this has been called cowardice--but it was difficult to trap him in
consequence. His antipathy to the frontal attack has often been referred
to with contempt, but, leading a large but unorganized army against one
of tremendous power, he preferred the methods of Washington in the
field--which was to avoid the frontal attack with his ragged
Continentals against the trained and disciplined army. Because of these
conditions he was given to mining. When apparently quiescent, he was
probably sowing discord among his foes--his part concealed. This was
hateful to the Federalists--just as the tactics of Frederick were
hateful to the exasperated superior forces against him.
Jefferson was the most resourceful politician of his time. For every
problem he had a solution. He teemed with ideas. These were his shock
troops. If he seemed motionless, it was because by a nod or look he had
put his forces on the march. Like the wiser of the modern bosses, he
knew the virtue of silence. When in doubt, he said nothing. When certain
of his course, he said nothing--to his foes. It was impossible to smoke
him out when he preferred to stay in. In the midst of abuse he was
serene. And he was a stickler for party regularity.[429] He appreciated
the possibilities of organization and discipline. When money was needed
for party purposes, his friends would receive a note: ‘I have put you
down for so much.’ When the party paper languished, he circulated
subscription lists among his neighbors, and instructed his friends to
imitate his example. He was never too big for the small essential
things, and he was a master of detail--very rarely true of men of large
views. His energy was dynamic and he was tireless. He never rested on
his arms or went into winter quarters. His fight was endless. The real
secret of his triumph, however, is found in the reason given by one of
his biographers: ‘He enjoyed a political vision penetrating deeper down
into the inevitable movement of popular government, and farther forward
into the future of free institutions than was possessed by any other man
in public life in his day.’
VIII
No American of his time had such versatility or such diversified
interests. He was asked to frame the Declaration of Independence because
of his reputation as a writer. Adams has told the story: ‘He brought
with him a reputation for literary science and a happy talent for
composition. Writings of his were handed about[430] remarkable for their
peculiar felicity of expression.’ It was the ‘Summary View’ which
elicited the admiration of Edmund Burke. A more ambitious effort, his
‘Notes on Virginia’ were written during the fatal illness of his wife,
and while he was confined to the house two or three weeks by a riding
accident.[431] It was a valuable contribution to the natural, social,
economic, and political history of the State, with a number of eloquent
passages and fascinating pages.
He had an artistic temperament, loved music, and at the beginning of his
career we find him busy planning his garden at Monticello, and
practicing three hours a day on his loved violin, under the instructions
of an Italian musician. His hospitality to the Hessian prisoners is
partly explained by a mutual love of music. Returning from an absence to
find ‘Shadwell,’ his early home, in ashes, he inquired anxiously about
his books. ‘Oh, my young master,’ exclaimed the distressed slave, ‘they
were all burnt, but we saved your fiddle.’[432]
Loving art in all its forms, he was fond of the company of artists. It
was he who arranged in Paris for Houdon to go to America to make the
statue of Washington.[433] He entertained Trumbull in the French
capital, accompanying him to Versailles to see the King’s art
collection, and urged him to remain in Paris and study.[434] He was
delighted with architectural beauty and lingered about the masterpieces.
From Nesmes, he wrote enthusiastically to a woman friend: ‘Here I am,
Madame, gazing whole hours at the Maison Quarree, like a lover at his
mistress. This is the second time I have been in love since I left
Paris. The first was with a Diana at the Chateau de Laye-Epinaye in
Beaujolais, a delicious morsel of sculpture, by M. A. Soldtz. This you
will say was in rule, to fall in love with a female beauty; but with a
house. No, Madame, it is not without a precedent in my own history.
While in Paris I was violently smitten with the Hotel de Salm.’[435]
When the Capitol at Richmond was in contemplation, he urged the
construction of the most beautiful edifice possible as a model to be
emulated in other buildings; drew some plans himself; examined those of
Hallet, was captivated with those of Thornton, and urged their
acceptance. ‘Simple, noble, beautiful,’ he wrote home.[436]
And yet, so many-sided was this man, that he was a utilitarian and
scientist as well as artist. In Europe he was thought a philosopher, and
Humboldt came to America to pass many hours under his roof. A perusal of
his letters discloses the intensity and range of his interests. He was
entranced with clocks, and we find him writing David Rittenhouse
reminding him of ‘a kind promise of making me an accurate clock,’[437]
and later to Madison of a watch he had made for himself and inquiring if
his friend wished one.[438] He summoned a Swiss clock-maker to
Monticello who died on the mountain and is buried in the enclosure with
his patron. He put the noted Buffon to rout in Paris on points in
natural history.[439] Admiring the red men, he spent years collecting
their vocabularies.[440] When in Paris he heard that an Arabic
translation of Livy had been found in Sicily, and importuned the
_chargés des affaires_ of Naples to make inquiries, and was much excited
to hear that such a translation had been found ‘and will restore to us
seventeen of the lost books.’[441] In the midst of the political
diversions and social distractions of Paris he found time to write at
length on the ‘latest discoveries in astrology.’[442] As early as the
summer of 1785, when Pilatre de Rozière made his fatal attempt to cross
the English Channel in a balloon, we find him eagerly discussing the
possibilities of the aeronautical science.[443] A newly invented lamp
pleased him and he sent one to a friend from Paris.[444] The use of
steam in the operation of grist mills interested him and he found time
to witness the test.[445] Even the absorbing drama of the French
Revolution in its early stages did not lessen his interest in Paine’s
iron bridge, and he attended its exhibition,[446] and finding the
inventor hesitating between ‘the catenary and portions of a circle,’ he
sent to Italy for a scientific work by the Abbe Mascheroni.[447]
Fascinated by inventions, he was, himself, the inventor of a plough.
IX
Interested as he was in art and inventions, his heart was with the
country life and the farmer’s lot. He was never happier than when, in
the early morning, mounted on one of his beloved horses, he rode over
his broad acres at Monticello, observing with a perennial zest the
budding of the trees in spring, the unfolding of the flowers, the
ripening of the harvest. Wherever he was, throughout his life, he longed
for the house he had made on the hill, the broad fields, the family
circle and the servitors and slaves. There he was lord of the domain. If
he employed Italian gardeners, they conformed to his ideas. If he had a
supervisor, it was he himself who determined what should be planted and
where--where the orchards should be, what trees should be set and their
location; and even the vines and shrubs, the nuts and seeds, the roots
and bulbs claimed his personal attention. Even his hogs were named, and
when one was to be killed, he designated it by name.[448] There, too, he
lived in an atmosphere of affection. There he had taken his bride, a
woman of exquisite beauty, grace, and loveliness; there his children had
been born, and there, all too soon, their mother died. He was
passionately devoted to her and there was no successor. To the daughters
who were left he became both a father and a mother, resulting in an
intimacy seldom found between father and daughters. In Paris he would
not permit even his trusted servant to do their shopping, reserving that
duty for himself. Always patient, never harsh, and ever sympathetic, he
was the ideal parent.[449]
Though he did not remarry, he was fond of the society of women and they
of his. The few letters to women that have been preserved are
masterpieces of their kind, sprightly, playful, sometimes beautiful. His
relations with the women of the Adams family are shown in a note to John
Adams’s married daughter, written from Paris: ‘Mr. Jefferson has the
honor to present his compliments to Mrs. Smith and to send her the two
pair of corsets she desired. He wishes they may be suitable, as Mrs.
Smith omitted to send her measure. Times are altered since Mademoiselle
de Samson had the honor of knowing her; should they be too small,
however, she will be so good as to lay them by a while. There are ebbs
as well as flows in this world. When the Mountain refused to go to
Mahomet, he went to the Mountain.’[450] In Paris he formed a few
cherished friendships with women, notably with Mrs. Cosway, Italian wife
of an English painter, a woman of charm, beauty, and intellect, with
whom he corresponded. One of his letters, the dialogue between the Head
and the Heart on her departure for England, is unique and
sparkling.[451] He appreciated the exquisite Mrs. Bingham whom he met in
Paris, and his chiding letters to her after her return to America must
have pleased that artificial lady immensely.[452] He was a friend of the
Comtesse De Tesse whose mind he admired,[453] and of Madame De Corney
whose beauty attracted him. ‘The Bois de Boulogne invited you earnestly
to retire to its umbrage from the heats of the sad season,’ he wrote her
gallantly. ‘I was through it to-day as I am every day. Every tree
charged me with this invitation.’[454]
Such was Thomas Jefferson who took upon himself the organization of the
forces of democracy, when its enemies were in the saddle, booted and
spurred, and with a well-disciplined and powerful army at their back.
None but an extraordinary character could have dared hope for victory,
and he was that, and more. Democrat and aristocrat, and sometimes
autocrat; philosopher and politician; sentimentalist and utilitarian;
artist, naturalist, and scientist; thinker, dreamer, and doer; inventor
and scholar; writer and statesman, he enthralled his followers and
fascinated while infuriating his foes.