Authors: Joseph J. Ellis
11.
Discourses on Davila
first appeared as a series of thirty-one articles in the
Gazette of the United States,
starting in April of 1790. Jefferson to Washington, 8 May 1791, Ford, vol. 5, 328–330; see also Jefferson in his “Anas,” Ford, vol. 1, 166–167; Jefferson to Adams, 30 August 1791; Adams to Jefferson, 39 July 1791, Cappon, vol. 1, 245–250.
12.
Jefferson to Adams, 30 August 1791, Cappon, vol. 1, 250. For Jefferson’s latter-day recollection of the episode, in which he emphasizes his abiding sense of Adams as a traitor to the republican tradition, see Jefferson to William Short, 3 January 1825, Ford, vol. 10, 328–335. Jefferson simply told Adams a different version of the story than he told everyone else.
13.
Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 February 1793,
Adams,
reel 376.
14.
For a convenient summary of Adams’s most colorful fulminations against the French Revolution, see Ellis,
Passionate Sage,
91–98. For his assessment of Jefferson’s motives for supporting the French Revolution, see Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 February, 26 December 1793,
Adams,
reel 376.
15.
Adams to Abigail Adams, 6 January 1794,
Adams,
reel 377.
16.
Adams to John Quincy Adams, 3 January 1794, ibid.
17.
The seminal study of the Jefferson-Madison collaboration is Adrienne Koch,
Jefferson and Madison: The Great Collaboration
(New York, 1950). Madison to Jefferson, 5 October 1794, Smith, vol. 2, 857.
18.
Jefferson to Madison, 5 October 1794, 27 April 1795, Smith, vol. 2, 857, 897–898; Jefferson to Adams, 25 April 1794, Cappon, vol. 1, 254; Jefferson to Washington, 14 May 1794, Ford, vol. 6, 509–510. And these are merely illustrative of the much larger exchange in this vein.
19.
See Malone,
Jefferson and His Times,
vol. 3, 276–283, for an incisive discussion of the Burr visit and the political context in Virginia at this time. See Ellis,
American Sphinx,
121–133, for Jefferson’s capacity to seclude himself at Monticello while silently and surreptitiously launching a campaign for the presidency.
20.
Madison to Monroe, 26 February 1796, Smith, vol. 2, 940–941; Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 4 January 1797, Ford, vol. 7, 103.
21.
Three modern biographies of Abigail Adams are especially useful: Charles W. Akers,
Abigail Adams: An American Woman
(Boston, 1980); Lynne Withey,
Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams
(New York, 1981); Phyllis Lee Levin,
Abigail Adams: A Biography
(New York, 1987). Though not a full life, the best character study of Abigail is Edith B. Gelles,
Portia: The World of Abigail Adams
(Bloomington, IL, 1992). For the quotations, see Adams to Abigail Adams, 5 December, 16 December 1794,
Adams,
reel 378; Abigail Adams to Adams, 5 January 1795,
Adams,
reel 379.
22.
Adams to Abigail Adams, 2 December, 1793, 12 March 1794; Abigail Adams, 6 December 1794,
Adams,
reel 378.
23.
Abigail Adams to Adams, 4 January 1795; Adams to John Quincy Adams, 25 August 1795,
Adams,
reel 379.
24.
Adams to Abigail Adams, 2, 6 December 1794,
Adams,
reel 378; Abigail Adams to Adams, 10 April 1796,
Adams,
reel 381.
25.
Adams to Abigail Adams, 10 February 1796,
Adams,
reel 381.
26.
Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 February 1796, ibid.
27.
Abigail Adams to Adams, 21 January, 20 February 1796; Adams to Abigail Adams, 15, 19 March 1796, ibid.
28.
Adams to Abigail Adams, 7 January 1796, ibid.; Abigail Adams to Adams, 31 December 1796, 1 January 1797,
Adams,
reel 382.
29.
Adams to Abigail Adams, 8 April, 8, 12 December 1796,
Adams,
reels 381, 382.
30.
Jefferson to Madison, 1 January 1797, Smith, vol. 2, 953; Jefferson to Stuart, 4 January 1797, Ford, vol. 7, 102–103; Abigail Adams to Adams, 31 December 1796,
Adams,
reel 382.
31.
Jefferson to Madison, 22 January 1797, Smith, vol. 2, 959–960; Abigail Adams to Adams, 15 January 1797,
Adams,
reel 382.
32.
Fisher Ames to Rufus King, 24 September 1800, Charles R. King, ed.,
The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King,
6 vols. (New York, 1895), vol. 3, 304; Adams to Elbridge Gerry, 20 February 1797,
Adams,
reel 117.
33.
Madison to Jefferson, 22 January 1797, Smith, vol. 2, 961.
34.
Adams to Abigail Adams, 15 March 1797,
Adams,
reel 382.
35.
Jefferson to Edward Rutledge, 27 December 1796, Ford, vol. 7, 93–95; Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, 28 November 1796, quoted in Malone,
Jefferson and His Times,
vol. 3, 290–291; Jefferson to Madison, 16 January 1797, Smith, vol. 2, 958–959.
36.
Jefferson to Madison, 8 January 1797, Smith, vol. 2, 955; Merrill D. Peterson,
Visitors to Monticello
(Charlottesville, 1989), 31.
37.
Jefferson to Adams, 28 December 1796, Smith, vol. 2, 954–955.
38.
Madison to Jefferson, 15 January 1797, ibid., 956–958.
39.
Jefferson to Madison, 30 January 1797, ibid., 962–963.
40.
Ford, vol. 1, 272–273; Smith, vol. 2, 966–997.
41.
Adams to Abigail Adams, 9, 17, 27 March 1797,
Adams,
reel 383.
42.
This is my own interpretive synthesis based on the standard accounts of the Adams presidency: Stephen G. Kurtz,
The Presidency of John Adams: The Collapse of Federalism,
1795
–
1800
(Philadelphia, 1957); Manning Dauer,
The Adams Federalists
(Baltimore, 1953); Ralph A. Brown,
The Presidency of John Adams
(Lawrence, KS, 1975). The authoritative account of this entangled moment in American politics is Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick,
The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic,
1787
–
1800
(New York, 1993), 513–528.
43.
Jefferson to Rutledge, 24 June 1797, Ford, vol. 7, 154–155; Jefferson to John Wise, 12 February 1798; Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, 17 May 1798, Smith, vol. 2, 996, 1063.
44.
Adams to John Quincy Adams, 3 November 1797,
Adams,
reel 117.
45.
Abigail Adams to Cotton Tufts, 8 June 1798,
Adams,
reel 392; Smith,
John Adams,
vol. 2, 933.
46.
Adams to John Quincy Adams, 2 June 1797,
Adams,
reel 119.
47.
Abigail Adams to Mary Cranch, 20 March 1798, Stewart Mitchell, ed.,
New Letters of Abigail Adams,
1788
–
1801
(Boston, 1947), 146–147.
48.
Smith,
John Adams,
vol. 2, 937.
49.
Ibid, 958; Abigail Adams to William Smith, 20, 30 March 1798,
Adams,
reel 392; Smith, vol. 2, 1010.
50.
The standard work on the Alien and Sedition Acts is James Morton Smith,
Freedom’s Letters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1956). Among Adams’s biographers, Smith,
John Adams,
vol. 2, 975–978, tends to defend Adams by playing down the severity of the threat to civil liberties; Ferling,
John Adams,
365–368, sees this episode as a major blunder by Adams. The discussion in Elkins and McKitrick,
The Age of Federalism,
590–593, 694–695, is elegantly balanced and warns against imposing our modern notion of civil liberties or freedom of the press on an age that was still groping toward a more expansive version of First Amendment protections. This latter warning, which strikes me as historically, if not politically, correct, clearly needs to be underlined. As a monumental example of how to make all the presentistic mistakes, see Richard Rosenfeld’s blunderbuss of a book,
American Aurora: A Democratic-Republican Returns
(New York, 1997).
51.
Abigail Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, 25 April 1798, quoted in Ferling,
John Adams,
365; Abigail Adams to Cranch, 26 April 1798, Mitchell, ed.,
New Letters,
165; Smith, vol. 2, 1003–1005.
52.
Richard Welch,
Theodore Segwick, Federalist: A Political Portrait
(Middletown, Conn., 1965), 185–186; Syrett, vol. 22, 494–495; Abigail Adams to Adams, 3 March 1799,
Adams,
reel 393.
53.
Adams to Abigail Adams, 31 December 1798, 1 January 1799; Abigail Adams to Adams, 27 February 1799,
Adams,
reels 392, 393.
54.
Abigail Adams to Elizabeth Peabody, 7 April 1799,
Adams,
reel 393.
55.
Adams to James McHenry, 22 October 1798,
Adams,
reel 119. The standard work on the threat posed by the New Army is Richard W. Kohn,
Eagle and Sword: The Beginnings of the Military Establishment in America
(New York, 1975). See also Syrett, vol. 22, 452–454.
56.
Abigail Adams to William Smith, 7 July 1798,
Adams,
reel 392.
57.
Jefferson to Madison, 2, 21, 22 March 1798, Smith, vol. 2, 1024, 1029.
58.
Madison to Jefferson, 18 February 1798, ibid., 1021.
59.
Jefferson to Madison, 6 April 1798; Madison to Jefferson, 15 April 1798, 13, 20 May 1798, ibid., 1002, 1036–1038, 1048–1049, 1051.
60.
Jefferson to Madison, 24 May 1798, 3 January, 19, 26 February 1799, ibid., 1053, 1056, 1085, 1086.
61.
For Callender’s career, see Michael Durey,
With the Hammer of Truth: James Thomas Callender and America’s Early National Heroes
(Charlottesville, 1990). Jefferson to Monroe, 26 May 1801, 15 July 1802, Ford, vol. 8, 57–58, 164–168. The best scholarly study of the Republican effort to smear Adams is C. O. Lerche, Jr., “Jefferson and the Election of 1800: A Case Study in the Political Smear,”
WMQ
8 (1948): 467–491.
62.
Jefferson to Monroe, 5 April 1798, Ford, vol. 7, 233; Madison to Jefferson, 18 February 1798; Theodore Sedgwick to Rufus King, 9 April 1798, Smith, vol. 2, 997, 1021.
63.
Jefferson’s draft of the Kentucky Resolutions is reprinted in Smith, vol. 2, 1080–1084. The introductory essay in ibid., 1063–1075, provides the fairest and fullest coverage of the context. The previous account, more charitable toward Jefferson, is Adrienne Koch and Harry Ammon, “The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions: An Episode in Jefferson’s and Madison’s Defense of Civil Liberties,”
WMQ
5 (1945): 170–189.
64.
Smith, vol. 2, 1108–1112; see also the editorial notes in Rutland, vol. 17, 199–206, 303–307.
65.
Jefferson to Madison, 23 August 1799, Smith, vol. 2, 1118–1119; Jefferson to Wilson Cary Nicholas, 5 September 1799, Ford, vol. 7, 389–392. For an elegant appraisal of the Madisonian influence on Jefferson, and the huge constitutional gap the two colleagues managed to ignore, see Drew R. McCoy,
The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy
(Cambridge, 1989). See also Leonard Levy,
The Emergence of a Free Press
(New York, 1985), 315–325.
66.
Madison to Jefferson, 4 April 1800, Smith, vol. 2, 1131–1132. For the enforcement of the Sedition Act, see Smith,
Freedom’s Letters,
176–187.
67.
Smith,
Freedom’s Letters,
270–274; Elkins and McKitrick,
The Age of Federalism,
694–713; Ellis,
American Sphinx,
217–219. The scientific evidence establishing Jefferson’s paternity of at least one of Sally’s children, Eston Hemings, was published in
Nature,
November 1998, 27–28. See also the explanatory note by Eric S. Lander and Joseph J. Ellis, “DNA Analysis: Founding Father,”
Nature,
November 1998, 13–14.
68.
Jefferson to John Breckenridge, 29 January 1800, Ford, vol. 7, 417–418; Jefferson to Madison, 4 March 1800, Smith, vol. 2, 1128–1130. For an overview of the election from the Jeffersonian perspective, see Daniel Sisson,
The American Revolution of
1800
(New York, 1974).
69.
Ferling,
John Adams,
403–404; Abigail Adams to Cranch, 5 May 1800, Mitchell, ed.,
New Letters,
251, 265.
70.
Syrett, vol. 25, 178–202, for the text of Hamilton’s pamphlet as well as the correspondence by Adams and other Federalists in response to it.
71.
Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, 25 October 1802, Ford, vol. 8, 175–176; see the concluding thoughts of Elkins and McKitrick,
The Age of Federalism,
750–754.
72.
The first Adams quotation is from Zoltán Haraszti,
John Adams and the Prophets of Progress
(Cambridge, 1953), 57; Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 24, 26 January 1801,
Adams,
reel 400; Ferling,
John Adams,
405–413, provides a nice summary of Adams’s sense of resignation.
73.
Adams to Gerry, 30 December 1800,
Adams,
reel 399. This is a much-condensed version of the historic vote in the House to choose between Jefferson and Burr. The standard account is now Elkins and McKitrick,
The Age of Federalism,
743–750.
74.
Jefferson to Madison, 19 December 1800, Smith, vol. 2, 1154, for Jefferson’s expectations concerning civility. I have told the story of these last days of the Adams presidency more fully in
Passionate Sage,
19–25.
CHAPTER SIX: THE FRIENDSHIP
1.
Adams to Samuel Dexter, 23 March 1801; Adams to Benjamin Stoddert, 31 March 1801,
Works,
vol. 10, 580–582.
2.
Abigail Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 12 July 1801,
Adams,
reel 400; Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, 25 January 1806,
Adams,
reel 118.