Madison and Jefferson (127 page)

28.
Adrienne Koch noted the similarity in Paine’s and Jefferson’s language, in
Jefferson and Madison
, 82–85.

29.
Burke,
Reflections on the Revolution
, and Paine,
Rights of Man
, 272–74, 277–78, 283–86, 294–96, 364, 383–84. The second volume of Paine’s work, published early in the following year, would be dedicated to the Marquis de Lafayette. Paine would send twelve copies of part 2 of
The Rights of Man
to Washington when it was published. See Washington to Paine, May 6, 1792,
PGW-PS
, 10:357–358n.

30.
Discourses on Davila
, in
The Works of John Adams
, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston, 1851), 6:254–62, 270–75, 284; letter to Sherman, 428; Peter Shaw,
The Character of John Adams
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1976), 230–36.

31.
TJ to Washington, May 8, 1791; to Adams, July 17, 1791; to Paine, July 29, 1791;
PTJ
, 20:291–92, 302, 308; Adams to TJ, July 29, 1791,
PTJ
, 20:305–7; TJ to JM, May 9, 1791; JM to TJ, May 12, 1791,
RL
, 2:689–91; Malone, 2:355–59; John Ferling,
John Adams: A Life
(Knoxville, Tenn., 1992), 311–12, 316. See also the extended Editorial Note, “
Rights of Man:
‘The Contest of Burke and Paine … in America,’ ” in
PTJ
, 20:268ff.

32.
“The Northern Journey of Jefferson and Madison,”
PTJ
, 20:436. The other Albany paper had nothing to say about the Madison-Jefferson visit, while unfriendly newspapers that picked up the story reprinted it with a different purpose: to make the point that Charles Fox symbolized opposition to the established government.

33.
“The Northern Journey of Jefferson and Madison,”
PTJ
, 20:437–42;
JMB
, 2:819–25.

34.
Ketcham, 323–26, quote at 325; Malone, 2:359–61.

35.
This last remark is outright racism, not even credible as eighteenth-century logic. Banneker’s astronomical calculations were corroborated and his intellectuality verified by none other than David Rittenhouse of Philadelphia, a scientist whom Jefferson quite literally worshipped, and whom he advertised in
Notes of Virginia
as “second to no astronomer living.” See Banneker to TJ, August 19, 1791; TJ to Banneker, August 30, 1791; TJ to Condorcet, August 30, 1791,
PTJ
, 22:49–54, 97–99; Andrew Burstein,
The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist
(Charlottesville, Va., 1995), 180–81; John Chester Miller,
The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
(New York, 1977), 76–77.

36.
Jeffrey L. Pasley, “
The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early Republic
(Charlottesville, Va., 2001), 51–66; Pasley, “The Two National Gazettes: Newspapers and the Embodiment of American Political Parties,”
Early American Literature
35 (2000): 66; Richard A. Harrison,
Princetonians, 1769–1775: A Biographical Dictionary
(Princeton, N.J., 1980), 149–53.

37.
“Jefferson, Freneau, and the Founding of the
National Gazette
,”
PTJ
, 20:718–56; Ketcham, 326–27; Pasley, “
Tyranny of Printers
,” 74–76. While Madison took the lead in recruiting Freneau, Jefferson did all he could to smooth the way. As parties became better defined in 1792, both Virginians insisted that they did not have in mind an antiadministration paper, only one that would criticize the political theory they saw as monarchism in Adams’s writings. For an early elaboration, see Cunningham,
Jeffersonian Republicans
, 13–19.

38.
“Population and Emigration,”
National Gazette
, November 21, 1791,
PJM
, 14:117–22.

39.
For more on “the class of literati” as “cultivators of the human mind—the manufacturers of useful knowledge,” see Madison’s “Notes for the
National Gazette
Essays,” December 19, 1791–March 3, 1792,
PJM
, 14:168. The relevant books that Madison read were those sent by Jefferson from France. French thinkers associated public opinion with the growth of print media and the free exchange of ideas among enlightened men. They drew a sharp distinction between this and the other definition of popular opinion—the unsophisticated views of the masses. See Colleen A. Sheehan, “Madison and the French Enlightenment: The Authority of Public Opinion,”
William and Mary Quarterly
59 (October 2002): 925–56.

40.
“Notes for the
National Gazette
Essays,”
PJM
, 14:163–64.

41.
“Consolidation,”
National Gazette
, December 5, 1791,
PJM
, 14:137–39.

42.
“Public Opinion,”
National Gazette
, December 19, 1791,
PJM
, 14:170; on Madison’s support for lowering the postage for newspapers, which failed to gain approval, see ibid., 186. He continued to denigrate orators, who he felt were the bane of society. He imagined that public opinion expressed in print was less likely to excite the passions and more reasonable than the inflamed rhetoric of public speakers such as Patrick Henry. The acerbic, highly emotionalized partisan direction of newspapers would soon show that Madison was wrong. For his continuing distrust of orators, see “Notes for
National Gazette
Essays,”
PJM
, 14:165.

43.
Madison sharpened his criticism in the essay “Spirit of Governments,” leaving the impression that Hamilton was distributing “bounties” to “favorites” and converting republican government into the “real domination of the few.” Here Madison took a swipe at Adams as well, warning that Americans would only remain “happy and honorable” if they “never descend to mimic the costly pageantry” of Old World forms. See “Universal Peace,” “Spirit of Governments,”
National Gazette
, January 31, February 18, 1792, in
PJM
, 14:207–8, 233–34.

44.
Drew R. McCoy,
The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America
(New York, 1980), 148, 151, 159; Elkins and McKitrick,
Age of Federalism
, 258–63. Proponents of the Paterson experiment, including Hamilton, would be deeply troubled when they learned that some of the chief private investors—presumed friends of the federal
government—promptly sold off their subscriptions to others, before operations were even under way, so as to make a quick profit.

45.
JM to Lee, January 1, 1792; Lee to JM, January 8, 1792,
PJM
, 14:180, 184. Madison told Edmund Pendleton that Hamilton’s
Report on Manufactures
defied “the sense in which the Constitution is known to have been proposed, advocated and adopted. If Congress can do whatever in their
discretion
can be
done by money
, and will promote the
general welfare
, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” See JM to Pendleton, January 21, 1792, ibid., 195.

46.
PTJ
, 20:315–22; Jacob E. Cooke,
Tench Coxe and the Early Republic
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1978), esp. chap. 9. Coxe had given his preliminary “Plan for a Manufacturing Society” to both Hamilton and Jefferson in April 1791. See ibid., 191.

47.
“Republican Distribution of Citizens” and “Fashion,”
National Gazette
, March 5 and March 20, 1792,
PJM
, 14:245–46, 257–59. The historian Drew R. McCoy has concluded that Hamilton was unconcerned about the dehumanization that attended progress. See McCoy,
Elusive Republic
, 149.

48.
On the death of Lee’s wife, see Paul C. Nagel,
The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family
(New York, 1992), 165.

49.
National Gazette
, December 5 and December 19, 1791, January 23 and April 2, 1792. See in this context Jack Rakove’s appraisal of Madison’s “calculated” but not “cynical” reassessment of the proper balance between national and state authority, in Rakove,
James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic
(New York, 1990), 99–102.

50.
Madison’s memorandum, dated May 5, 1792; Brant, 3:355–56; Malone, 2:420–21. When Washington some months later confided in a female friend, the wife of a Pennsylvania official, that he wished to resign, she wrote to him: “Your Resignation wou’d elate the Enemies of good Government and cause lasting regret to the friends of humanity … The Anti-federalist would use it as an Argument for dissolving the Union, and would urge that you, from Experience, had found the present System a bad one, and had, artfully, withdrawn from it that you might not be crushed under its Ruins.” Elizabeth Willing Powel to Washington, November 17, 1792,
PGW-PS
, 11:395–96.

51.
Beeman,
Old Dominion and New Nation
, 114–18.

52.
“T.L. No. III,” August 11, 1792,
PAH
, 12:193–94.

53.
“An American, No. I,” August 4, 1792; “Metellus,” October 24, 1792,
PAH
, 12:157–64, 617;
Gazette of the United States
, September 22 and November 24, 1792.

54.
National Gazette
, September 26 and December 22, 1792.

55.
TJ to JM, October 1, 1792,
RL
, 2:742.

56.
Cunningham,
Jeffersonian Republicans
, 33–49; Raymond Walters, Jr.,
Alexander James Dallas
(Philadelphia, 1943), chap. 4;
Albany Gazette
, June 28, 1792; JM to Edmund Pendleton, December 6, 1792,
PJM
, 14:421; Nancy Isenberg,
Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr
(New York, 2007), 108–19; Brant, 3:359.

57.
Hamilton to Adams, June 25, 1792,
PAH
, 11:559.

58.
TJ to JM, March 13, 1791; JM to TJ, March 13 and ca. April 18, 1791,
RL
, 2:682–85.

59.
Brant, 3:337, 358–59; Malone, 2:393–99, 413.

60.
Morris to TJ, August 22, 1792,
PTJ
, 24:313.

61.
Tom Paine was as vocal as Lafayette in his opposition to the politically conservative Morris, appealing to Jefferson to reverse what he saw happening in U.S. foreign policy. See Paine to TJ, February 13, 1792; Short to TJ, July 26, September 18, and September 28, 1792,
PTJ
, 23:115; 24:252, 402, 425–26.

62.
Morris to Hamilton, October 24, 1792,
PAH
, 12:618. On Adams’s symbolic victory over Jefferson, see Ellis,
Passionate Sage
, 92–93.

63.
Hamilton to Carrington, May 26, 1792,
PAH
, 11:426–44.

64.
JM to Pendleton, November 16, 1792,
PJM
, 14:408–9; Maria Reynolds to Hamilton, June 2, 1792; Hamilton to James Reynolds, June 3–22, and June 24, 1792;
PAH
, 11:481–82, 558; Jacob Katz Cogan, “The Reynolds Affair and the Politics of Character,”
Journal of the Early Republic
16 (Autumn 1996): 398–417; Brant, 3:365–69.

65.
Washington to TJ, August 23, 1792; TJ to Washington, September 9, 1792,
PTJ
, 24:317, 351–59. Jefferson was more cautious when he wrote to Edmund Randolph the following week. The latest in Hamilton’s unsigned attack essays could easily be proven false, he said, but he had resolved to keep his anger in check. “For the present,” Jefferson qualified, “lying and scribbling must be free to those mean enough to deal in them, and in the dark.” He wished to give Randolph the impression that he could exercise control, whereas Hamilton could not. TJ to Randolph, September 17, 1792,
PTJ
, 24:387.

66.
Hamilton to Washington, September 9, 1792,
PAH
, 12:347–49.

1.
TJ to JM, March 25, 1793; JM to TJ, April 12, 1793,
RL
, 2:765, 768.

2.
Lee to Washington, April 29, 1793; Washington to Lee, May 6, 1793,
PGW-P
, 12:493–94, 533; Lee to Hamilton, May 6, 1793,
PAH
, 14:416–17. Lee was originally inspired by the prospect of serving with Lafayette and had asked the marquis for a commission.

3.
George Green Shackelford,
Jefferson’s Adoptive Son: The Life of William Short, 1759–1848
(Lexington, Ky., 1993), 64–67, 115.

4.
Noailles Lafayette to Washington, March 12, 1793; TJ to Washington, March 15, 1793; Washington to Noailles Lafayette, March 16, 1793,
PGW-PS
, 12:307–9, 321, 331–32; TJ to Washington, March 13 and March 15, 1793; to Gouverneur Morris and Thomas Pinckney, March 15, 1793,
PTJ
, 25:382, 387–88, 390–92.

5.
TJ to Short, January 3, 1793,
PTJ
, 25:14–16; Shackelford,
Jefferson’s Adoptive Son
, 68–69; Gore Vidal,
Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson
(New Haven, Conn., 2003), 57.

6.
TJ to Lafayette, June 16, 1792,
PTJ
, 24:85.

7.
Thomas O. Ott,
The Haitian Revolution, 1789–1804
(Knoxville, Tenn., 1973), 6–17; Laurent DuBois,
Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
(Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 29–33, 40, 45, 56; Donald R. Hickey, “America’s Response to the Slave Revolt in Haiti, 1791–1806,”
Journal of the Early Republic
2 (Winter 1982): 362–63; John H. Coatsworth, “American Trade with European Colonies in the Caribbean and South
America, 1790–1812,”
William and Mary Quarterly
24 (April 1967): 245–47. For the most accurate account of the population of St. Domingue in 1789, see David P. Geggus,
Slavery, War, and Revolution: The British Occupation of Saint Domingue, 1793–1798
(Oxford, U.K., 1982), 405; for the repressive nature of the planter elite, see ibid., 6, 25.

8.
Nathaniel Cutting to TJ, August 4, 1790,
PTJ
, 17:301; David P. Geggus, “Racial Equality, Slavery, and Colonial Secession during the Constituent Assembly,”
American Historical Review
94 (December 1989): 1297–98, 1300–1303; Ott,
Haitian Revolution
, 36–38. David Geggus observed that the insurrection “produced acts of great savagery from the slaves, as from whites and coloured.” Geggus,
Slavery, War and Revolution
, 41. John D. Garrigus argues that racial reforms for free blacks were crucial in undermining the slave regime. Garrigus,
Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue
(New York, 2006), 227–63.