Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (44 page)

The embargo turned American politics upside down. Jefferson became the explicit advocate of strong central power. Republicans who favored less government became the most meddlesome of regulators. Connecticut became a bastion of states' rights, asserting that “in such a crisis of affairs, it is right, and has become the duty of the legislative and executive authorities in the State, to withhold their aid and cooperation from the execution of the act passed to enforce more effectually the embargo system.”

The embargo succeeded in the sense that it postponed war with Britain, though neither it nor any other policy finally prevented what became known as the War of 1812. The diplomat William Pinkney probably had it right when he told Madison in 1809: “Any other measure than the embargo would have been madness or cowardice. For no others were in our choice but war with both aggressors, or submission to both; with the certainty, too, that that submission would in its progress either lead to war, or to a state of abject degradation.”

The embargo was not out of character for Jefferson. In the broadest sense, it put him in control, but somewhat at a remove, and it avoided immediate conflict with the European powers. Like the Louisiana Purchase—which was, to say the very least, vastly more successful—the embargo illustrated Jefferson's flexibility and capacity to adapt his professed ideology to present realities. “The embargo is salutary,” Jefferson wrote Benjamin Rush in January 1808. “It postpones war, gives time, and the benefit of events which that may produce, particularly that of peace in Europe, which will postpone the causes of difference to the next war.”

History has not been kind to Jefferson's embargo; it is commonly seen as bad policy that delayed but did not prevent war and left America weaker. There is much to this criticism, but the options Jefferson had were such that the embargo, as he himself put it, may not have been a good idea, but it was the least bad. The country was not ready for war with Britain (or with France) either politically or militarily, and the politics of the moment worked against attempts to strengthen the army and the navy. Prevailing opinion held that standing armies were bad and that naval establishments were invitations to—rather than defenses against—war, as well as incredibly expensive. These were Jefferson's opinions, too, in the abstract, but he had proven adept at adapting his convictions. He did ask Congress for measures that would have strengthened the nation's defenses at least somewhat. Congress resisted, or moved slowly, and that was that. Neither Jefferson nor the national leadership of the first decade or so of the nineteenth century comes off well in terms of military preparedness. The American failure to provide sufficiently for defense until war was actually upon her was a phenomenon the country would see again.

J
efferson tried to convince himself the embargo was working. “I have been happy in my journey through the country to this place to find the people unanimous in their preference of the embargo to war, and the great sacrifice they make rendered a cheerful one from a sense of its necessity,” Jefferson wrote from Monticello in May 1808.

His own mail suggested otherwise. “You infernal villain,” wrote a John Lane Jones from Boston in August. “How much longer are you going to keep this damned Embargo on to starve us poor people. One of my children has already starved to death of which I am ashamed and declared that it died of an apoplexy. I have three more children which I expect will starve soon if I don't get something for them to eat which cannot be had.”

“You are the damdest fool that God put life into,” an anonymous letter writer told Jefferson in the middle of 1808. “God dam you.”

Another anonymous writer with a unique sense of capitalization wrote in June: “
TH
y
DES
truction is n
EA
r
A
t
HAND
THOMAS
.
THE
,
RE
tri
BUT
ive,
S
word is
S
usp
ENDED
OVE
r
TH
y
HEAD
,
BY
A
S
l
ENDER
THREAD
.—
BEWARE
.”

I
n some quarters in New England—especially in Boston—the reaction to the attack on the
Chesapeake
had been muted. John Quincy Adams, who was sympathetic to Jefferson in the crisis, had to convince Federalists in Boston to hold a town meeting, he said, “in an open, free-hearted manner, setting aside all party feeling … to support the government of their country.” He succeeded but at a price: He was told that he “should have his head taken off for his apostasy to the Federalists.”

Talk of disunion was revived. Timothy Pickering wrote a public letter attacking the embargo and the president; in New York, villagers burned Jefferson in effigy on the Fourth of July 1808.

From Boston, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, James Sullivan, was convinced that the embargo was strengthening the hands of the pro-British forces. “The attempt is to … divide the nation, and establish in this
part
of this hemisphere a different form of government, under the protection of Great Britain,” Sullivan wrote to Jefferson in April 1808. “You will laugh at this, and so would Southern members of Congress, but their destruction will come upon them as a whirlwind.… The walls of Monticello are not impregnable to the arm of civil contest, or the rapacious hand of tyranny.”

T
he Federalists had more conventional means at their disposal to show that they, not the Jeffersonians, represented the American mainstream: the presidential election of 1808.

Early that year, James Madison was nominated for president by congressional caucus. Jefferson had long hoped that Madison would succeed him, but he worried about competition between Madison and James Monroe, who had also won votes in the caucus.

“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,” Jefferson wrote Monroe from Washington in February 1808. “I sincerely pray that these dispositions may not be affected between you.… 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.”

His astute delineation of the environment and the emotions of the politician was born of a lifetime of experience. The tension between social harmony and the demands of politics was not one that Jefferson—or anyone else—could ever resolve. It could only be managed.

The election of 1808 was a referendum on Jefferson. With Madison, his closest ally, as the Republican candidate, it could be no other. The Federalists put Charles Cotesworth Pinckney forward again. The arguments against Madison were echoes of old refrains against Jefferson—that Madison favored the French and disliked the British; that Virginia had held too much power for too long; that the Republican creed inevitably led to mob rule.

Nothing worked. Madison won a substantial victory, with 122 electoral votes to Pinckney's 47.

J
efferson's presidency was ending as his public life had begun: amid fears of monarchy. In Congress during the first week of January 1809, there was a debate over calling for a session in May to end the embargo and, in the event of ongoing European hostilities, issuing letters of marque and reprisal, meaning private ships could act as vessels of war, attacking and capturing enemy craft. To Jefferson, “the monarchists of the North (who have been for some time fostering the hope of separation) have
 … 
federalized the 5 Eastern states and
 … 
endanger[ed] N. York
… 
. The Massachusetts legislature, which is to meet the middle of this month, it is believed will call a convention to consider the question of a separation of the Union, and to propose it to the whole country East of the North river, and they are assured of the protection of Gr. Br.”

The enveloping fear was of British encroachment. “A line seems now to be drawing,” Jefferson said, “between the really republican Federalists and the English party who are devoted, soul and body, to England and monarchy.” Some things in Jefferson's world never changed.

THIRTY
-
NINE

A FAREWELL TO ULTIMATE POWER

Considering the extraordinary character of the times in which we live, our attention should unremittingly be fixed on the safety of our country.

—T
HOMAS
J
EFFERSON
, in his final message to Congress

I
T
WAS
ALMOST
TIME
to go. “The diseased jaw bone having exfoliated, the piece was extracted about a week ago, the place is healed, the swelling nearly subsided, and I wait only for moderate weather to resume my rides,” Jefferson wrote Patsy in his last Washington winter.

“I am already sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be,” he wrote his old colleague Charles Thomson on Christmas Day 1808. “This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it; but I ascribe to years their share in it also.”

He had been at this for so long. As he inventoried the furniture in the President's House and thought about how to pay his bills (he estimated he was eight to ten thousand dollars more in debt from his years as president), he knew an epoch was coming to a close—an age that had lasted more than forty years, through war and peace, at home and abroad, all over the Atlantic world from Williamsburg and Richmond to Philadelphia and New York and Annapolis to Paris and London and Amsterdam and finally to this nascent capital on the Potomac. He came to think of these decades in mythic terms: he and his colleagues—Madison, Adams, Washington, Rush, Page, and so many others now gone—as Argonauts of old.

He had, he believed, done his duty. “Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science by rendering them my supreme delight,” he wrote Pierre S. du Pont on Thursday, March 2, 1809. “But the enormities of the times in which I have lived have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions. I thank God for the opportunity of retiring from them without censure, and carrying with me the most consoling proofs of public approbation. I leave everything in the hands of men so able to take care of them, that if we are destined to meet misfortunes, it will be because no human wisdom could avert them.”

He inspired as much division in his exit as he had in his election eight years before. “A few fleeting years will scarce have passed away before the men even of the present day, casting a retrospective eye upon these times, will be seized with wonder and astonishment at the strange contrarity of opinions, the strange bickerings we have fallen into, and the unaccountable distrust that seems to exist,” the Allegany County, Maryland, citizens wrote him on Monday, February 20, 1809.

The distrust was real, though, and sentiment could not blunt the parting attacks of his foes. “Thou strange inconsistent man!” a New Yorker wrote in February 1809.

“You have brought the government to the jaws of destruction,” wrote “Cassandra” from Philadelphia on Tuesday, February 28. “I do not undertake to say whether by supineness, timidity, or enthusiasm. The effect is certain. On the cause I cannot pronounce.”

J
efferson himself was reflective and candid. In reply to a request for recommendations for which books of history to read, Jefferson suggested a long list that included Edward Gibbon, and spoke of what it felt like to make, not just read, history. “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,” Jefferson wrote. “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.”

The Republican victory of 1800, Jefferson said, “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.”

The target? Jefferson himself. “I became of course the butt of everything which reason, ridicule, malice and falsehood could supply,” he said.

Still, accolades and tributes arrived regularly. From France, the U.S. consul at Paris sent Jefferson a book about Marcus Aurelius. “In the character of Marcus Aurelius I perceive only one error: he employed no sure means to perpetuate the blessings of his reign,” the consul wrote. “He seemed constantly impressed with the idea that, at the moment of his extinction, the noble fabric which he [sewed], must infallibly sink in ruins. For this, as in every other respect, the citizens of the United States are more fortunate than the Romans, as there is every reason to believe that the benefits of the present enlightened administration will extend to other generations.”

The challenges endured. Jefferson constantly weighed the question of war versus embargo. “We are all politics here,” he wrote Charles L. Bankhead, who had married his granddaughter Ann Cary Randolph in September 1808. “The Congressional campaign is just opening,” Jefferson had written Levi Lincoln in November 1808. “Three alternatives alone are to be chosen from. 1. Embargo. 2. War. 3. Submission and tribute. And, wonderful to tell, the last will not want advocates.”

There were no good choices. “Here, everything is uncertain,” Jefferson wrote Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., from Washington in December.

J
ames Madison's inauguration fell on a Saturday. The day before—March 3, 1809—Samuel Harrison Smith paid tribute to the departing Jefferson in the
National Intelligencer
. “Never will it be forgotten as long as liberty is dear to man,” the paper said, “that it was on this day that Thomas Jefferson retired from the supreme magistracy amidst the blessings and regrets of millions.”

On the morning of the inaugural, Jefferson left the President's House and rode up to the Capitol to watch his beloved friend and secretary of state take the oath as the fourth president of the United States. (He and a grandson departed the mansion by themselves; Madison was being escorted along Pennsylvania Avenue in military pomp.) No one on earth was closer to him politically, and Madison's success was a vindication for Jefferson—a tangible sign that the country approved of his basic vision and stewardship.

After the ceremonies in the House chamber—John Quincy Adams thought the setting “very magnificent,” and observed Jefferson smiling with satisfaction—the now-former president called on the new president at the Madisons' on F Street; Jefferson would not move out of the President's House until a week later. Mrs. Madison looked “extremely beautiful … dressed in a plain cambric dress with a very long train … all dignity, grace, and affability,” said Margaret Bayard Smith.

As the Madisons stood at the drawing room door greeting the overflowing crowd of callers—the streets were crowded with carriages, and there was a half hour's wait to get inside—Jefferson saw Margaret Bayard Smith and reached for her hand.

“Remember the promise you have made me, to come to see us next summer, do not forget it,” he said to Mrs. Smith, “for we shall certainly expect you.”

Mrs. Smith, of course, reassured him that she and her husband would come to Monticello. She then alluded to the drama of the day.

“You have now resigned a heavy burden,” she said to Jefferson.

“Yes indeed,” he said, “and am much happier at this moment than my friend.”

In the swirl of the celebration, Jefferson was soon told that “the ladies” hoped to follow him to the President's House. Twinkling, he said: “That is right, since I am too old to follow them. I remember in France, when his friends were taking leave of Dr. Franklin, the ladies smothered him with embraces, and on his introducing me as his successor, I told him I wished he would transfer these privileges to me, but he answered, ‘You are too young a man.' ”

That evening he joined celebrating Republicans at an inaugural ball. John Quincy Adams was unimpressed. “The crowd was excessive—the heat oppressive, and the entertainment bad.”

A
t Monticello he planned to return to farming and gardening with passionate zeal. “I am full of plans of employment when I get there,” he wrote Charles Thomson, and “they chiefly respect the active functions of the body. To the mind I shall administer amusement chiefly. An only daughter and numerous family of grandchildren will furnish me great resources of happiness.”

He had suggested that perhaps his sister Anne Scott Marks could act as mistress. Patsy hated the thought. She—no one else—was to form the core of his world. “As to Aunt Marks it would not be desirable to have her,” Patsy wrote on Thursday, March 2, 1809. “I had full proof of her being totally incom[petent] to the business the last summer. The servants have no sort of respect for her and take just what they please before her face. She is an excellent creature and a neat manager in a little way, but she has neither head nor a sufficient weight of character to manage so large an establishment as yours will be. I shall devote myself to it and with feeling, which I never could have in my own affairs, and with what tenderness of affection we will wait upon and cherish you My Dearest Father.”

As he ended his Washington days, he ordered an abridgment of John Bell's book
Principles of Surgery,
sent a geranium he had cultivated and kept in the President's House to Margaret Bayard Smith, and arranged payment for three dozen Windsor chairs he had ordered from Richmond for Poplar Forest, his retreat in Bedford County.

Edmund Bacon had come to Washington to help pack up and move Jefferson home. The Monticello overseer was struck by the unceasing demands the capital made on his employer. “He had a very long dining room, and his table was chock-full every one of the sixteen days I was there,” Bacon wrote. Bacon supervised the loading of three wagons with boxes and shrubbery.

Bacon and this entourage set out from Washington on Thursday, March 9, 1809; Jefferson left the capital on Saturday, March 11, in a phaeton. There was a terrible snowstorm along the way, and Bacon prepared Jefferson's accommodations at Benjamin Shackelford's Culpeper Courthouse tavern by ordering a large fire to be built and by fending off a drunken well-wisher eager to see the man he called “Old Tom.” Bacon tried to keep the crowds away from Jefferson when he arrived, but failed, and Jefferson delivered a short speech to the gathering. He was still a public man.

On Wednesday, March 15, 1809, Thomas Jefferson reached Monticello. He brought the great world with him. His chef Julien came to set up the Monticello kitchen to prepare the French dishes Jefferson loved. His correspondence and reading were varied and voluminous. Home to stay, he was never again to stray very far from his mountaintop. His mind was another matter. It never came to rest.